#i do get to see killdeer at least

[vonecent]

crazy how birds are regional, you're telling me i have to go to the shore to see shorebirds??????? wild stuff

[pomrania]

Actually working on the Bestiaryposting thing this week! If everything goes as planned, this'll be my progress thread; if not, then I'll at least have this much to share.

I had ideas for this creature right from the start; unfortunately, I didn't draw any of it THEN, so I have to do it NOW. At the top, you can see my three "inspiration" components (as usual, drawn with zero reference). Opossums have their whole "playing dead" thing (although I think I've read that it's actually a stress response), plus I like opossums and think they're cool so of course I'm going to try and incorporate them here if I've a chance. Next, I know there's at least one kind of snake which plays dead, I've seen a video of it flipping itself over "no I'm dead" when turned right-side up. Finally, an animal which I know for positive actually feigns some type of injury for its own benefit, the killdeer; it pretends to be INJURED in order to lure away predators from its nest, but what it lacks in "not quite fitting the bill" it makes up for in "I've actually seen this one in real life, albeit decades ago".

On the bottom left, we see what happens when I try to draw something from scratch, no sketch, that I'm not already familiar with; it doesn't show up in my finished pieces, because it's ugly and looks bad so I generally erase it once it's served its purpose of "getting something from my head into the visual realm", but I keep it for "this is how I'm working on things". Bottom middle, sketch of the intended pose with "what is even proportion and angle" but it's something I could work with. Bottom right, actually working on the creature.

[library-child]

How Armstrong Feint became Hangfire

Re-reading ATWQ fueled my brainrot concerning the radicalization of Armstrong Feint. How did a loving father become a terrorist hell-bent on slaughtering children? So I did some research on common risk factors that can make people susceptible to terrorism and checked how they apply to Armstrong. Needless to say, this only made my brainrot worse. Anyway, here are the results.

Social isolation ☑️

The first risk factor is the lack of reliable social connections. You may be all alone or unable to open up emotionally to the people close to you. You might even have trouble interacting with other people in the first place. This can result in feeling alienated. There also is no one to support you when you are hurting or interfere when you start radicalizing.

While having only Ellington's limited and likely romanticized perspective on her life with her father, there are some hints Armstrong may have been lonely. He was a single parent who spent most of his time working alone in the wild. Ellington does say she contacted people who knew him, but she never mentions anyone but her father when talking about her past. This could imply they led a very isolated life. Also, Armstrong's enthusiasm about nature could have something to do with his having trouble getting along with other people. At least, he seemed to prefer plants and animals over people.

Hardship ✅

Intense suffering makes you vulnerable in many ways. If you experience hardship and don't get support, you might become more susceptible to radical views/groups. That's what's so seductive about things like cults or terror organizations, after all: They promise you a community, a sense of belonging, and an easy solution for your problems.

Again, we don't know enough about Armstrong's past. He certainly must have been stressed out by being a single parent and the only bread-earner of the family. And he must have gotten into this position somehow. We never learn why Ellington's mother has never been in the picture. Furthermore, as a nature-loving person, he must have felt extreme anguish at the destruction of his home region caused by the flood. Not to mention the destruction of his hometown and the life he had built for himself.

There is also one intriguing aspect that doesn't get explored in the books, so it's purely speculative: the war that made Colonel Colophon a hero. We don't know when exactly this war happened or how involved the Snicket country was, but it does open the possibility that Armstrong's generation had to fight as soldiers.

Lack of perspective ❓

You're in a bad place and don't see a way out. You don't see the point anymore and don't know how you want to go on. Another allure of terrorism is providing you with a 'meaningful life'.

This one is tricky. Armstrong did have a purpose in the form of a young daughter whom he undoubtedly loved with all his heart. We don't know if or how he intended to reunite with her had he succeeded. We can only speculate if he fell into resignation. Perhaps he was shaken by the futility of his life's work after one tycoon's decision had undone it. Perhaps he realized Ellington was growing up and wouldn't need him in a few years.

Powerlessness and injustice ✅

This is relevant both on a social and individual level. When you live under corruption, tyranny, etc without a way to defend yourself, you're more likely to resort to terrorism. It's also relevant if you personally feel you're being treated unfairly and there's nothing you can do about it.

The social injustice is blatantly clear: Ink Inc. was allowed to destroy Killdeer Fields for profit, and its inhabitants could not prevent it. The flooding must have started several years before the beginning of ATWQ. Who knows what Armstrong and the rest of the town did to fight it, all in vain? We also see how corrupt and incompetent the institutions, such as the police, the official fire department, the press, and the legal system, are in the Snicketverse. This might have been a reason the V.F.D. became successful in the first place: They fixed the failed state.

Armstrong's individual perception is more obscure. He certainly realized he was a victim and probably became increasingly obsessed over this. He may have started out being rightfully outraged by the injustice done to him by Stain'd-by-the-Sea and shaken by his own helplessness. But eventually, he got stuck in this state of mind until he forgot he still had agency and responsibilities.

Over-simplified worldview ✅

You tend to view the world in clear black-and-white categories: You are always the hero, and the others are the villains. You're always the victim, the others the oppressors. You're never responsible for your actions; it's everyone else's fault. You lose touch with reality as you sink deeper into a super simple, convenient narrative of how the world works, and spreading terror and violence is the only right to do.

Hangfire displays this attitude during his conversation with Lemony in book 4. He only points out Stain'd-by-the-Sea's crimes without taking ownership of his own. He equates humanity to beasts trying to survive. There are no morals; every act of violence is just self-preservation. It's kill or be killed, meaning kill the children of Stain'd before they can repeat their parents' mistakes.

Conclusion

What can I say? These books have messed up my brain.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 179

January 28, 2023

Went birding around the area surrounding Distrito T-Mobile in San Juan for a couple hours.

Spotted a bunch of the usual birds. Greater Antillean grackles, bananaquits, grey kingbirds… The grackles are generally the first thing I see. And hear. I swear I hear their squeaky-gate calls in my sleep now. I’d much rather have the melodic sound of the coquí etched in my memory, but instead I’m subjected to the clacks and squeaks of these grackles in my dreams…

Gray kingbirds seem to be everywhere in Puerto Rico, though strangely, they weren’t as vocal today. Pairs usually sit on the lines and call to each other almost constantly, but I guess they were busy with something else this afternoon.

Bananaquits are tiny and a nightmare to spot if they don’t want you to see them, but they’re pretty much ubiquitous. I’d be surprised if I’ve submitted a checklist in Puerto Rico that doesn’t have at least one bananaquit in it. Most high-pitched, soft chirping noises are likely going to belong to one of them, although many warbler calls sound similar. Bananaquit songs manage to be simultaneously distinct and confusing; few birds have a buzzy song quite like they do, but the songs appear to be learned, which makes different individuals’ songs sound like potentially different species. I would be surprised if this species didn’t have regional song dialects/accents.

The feral pigeons here vary a ton in size, though the ones today were quite a lot stockier than the doves they were foraging with. They also seem to be the only pigeons/doves in the area that sometimes glide with their wings at a sharp dihedral. This appears to be for display purposes; I remember that the ones from the old Disaster Recovery Center would usually do the glide immediately after mating.

Saw a ton of white-winged doves. A pair noticed me looking, and each bird began flicking its tail and bobbing its head. They seem to spread their tails somewhat rhythmically as a stress response, rather than moving them erratically as is common with other birds. The white bars on the outsides of their tails accentuate this motion.

Quite a few Zenaida doves as well, though these guys were slightly shier than the white-winged doves. I don’t think I heard any of their songs today, which is somewhat unusual.

There are surprisingly few house sparrows in most places I go here. They’re not native, so that’s probably a good thing, but I still find it strange how they don’t even seem common in urban areas. I heard some far off and watched a couple follow each other between the traffic light poles, but that was about the extent of it.

Finally got a good enough monk parakeet ID for the life list, though I’m pretty certain I’ve heard them here before. They aren’t native to Puerto Rico but have established colonies along the island. Unlike the white-winged parakeets I’ve been seeing up until now, the monk parakeets have rather solid-colored wings without any obvious field marks.

Heard a bird I didn’t recognize in a short tree by the side of a road, but I never managed to see the bird itself. It sung very softly and awkwardly, reminding me of one of the introduced munia species. I wasn’t able to get a sound ID either; the recording would have been too soft, and I am not very strong at identifying quick and complex songs.

Walked around one of the artificial lakes and was surprised to see a plain greyish sandpiper and a pair of killdeer along the rock and concrete shore. I determined the smaller sandpiper to be a spotted sandpiper, so that’s another bird for the life list. These sandpipers are somewhat solitary and perhaps the size of a thrush, if that. They bob their entire bodies as they run across the shore, as if they are wind-up or drinking-bird toys brought to life.

The killdeer didn’t seem too thrilled about me staring at them, and one seemed to be starting a broken-wing display. I walked away.

Heard a very high-pitched siiii call, reminiscent of a Puerto Rican spindalis. It was a while before I actually saw the bird, but my identification turned out out to be correct. This particular bird was a female or immature.

I heard an unfamiliar call and began to look for the source. I spotted a fledgling that is likely a red-legged thrush. I later saw an adult thrush carrying a berry in that direction, which points to this fledgling being one of its own:

Saw a surprising number of pearly-eyed thrashers today. Which was only two or three, but for them being fairly secretive birds, I’d consider that significant. Usually I hear their songs before I see them. Actually think I may have seen more of them today than the northern mockingbirds that are usually so visible.

There weren’t many birds at the T-Mobile District or convention center themselves. Nor were there many people around the latter place. Something about the area feels liminal:

I returned to the hotel and headed to the beach a few hours later with some teammates. No particularly notable birds, though there was this cat colony someone was feeding:

[anonsally]

exciting new birds!

(well, new to me)

I’ve been birdwatching 3 times this week. Here are some highlights:

On Thursday in my neighborhood, I saw a female Nuttall’s woodpecker at a feeder (I’m sure I saw more of them last year than I’ve seen this year), an unexpected pair of mallards flying past (in an area without a body of water), some cedar waxwings (the best look I’ve had at those this year), and a large flock of house finches.

On Saturday in my neighborhood, I heard what Merlin’s sound ID app swore up and down was a red-shouldered hawk. It was vocalising for ages, but though I searched for quite a while and looked at the tree I thought it was in from many angles, I couldn’t find it. I also heard what Merlin claimed was a downy woodpecker; I only had a very brief glimpse but what I saw did plausibly match that identification. There had been a lot of vocalising and I wondered if it was having a territory dispute with some oak titmice. 

Today, a friend and I went to a small estuary across the freeway from the Bay. Our original intention had been to go to a marsh at 8am, but... neither of us wanted to get up that early, so we instead went to a park at 11am. In a little over an hour and a half, we ambled 2.22 miles and saw at least 24 kinds of birds, though only 20 that we could identify positively: 

a turkey vulture being mobbed by crows (usually I see crows attacking hawks, so this was surprising)

10 Canada goslings (cute! shame they will grow up to be assholes) with their parents, plus a few other adult Canada geese

a bunch of adult Mallards, including some with white bibs that I reported as “Mallard (domestic type)”

2 female buffleheads

6 very elegant black-necked stilts

2 American avocets in breeding plumage, one of which appeared to be sitting on a nest

a killdeer

a flock of unidentified peeps

a flock of short-billed dowitchers (pretty sure I’d never seen/identified those before) (hilariously, the Merlin app describes this species as a “plump, medium-sized shorebird with very long bill” ... but in defence of the people who named it, the bill, though long, is not as long as that of the long-billed dowitcher.)

a pelagic cormorant (possibly my first ever)

2 double-crested cormorants

some other cormorants we didn’t identify more specifically than that

3 snowy egrets

a great blue heron (so dinosaur-y)

a black-crowned night-heron

a green heron (!!!!!! definitely my first ever, and a fairly spectacular bird--when I spotted it I exclaimed “what is that?!”)

...and various unidentified gulls and other birds I often see in my own neighborhood.

The thing about going birdwatching in a wetlands/aquatic environment is that you see so many birds. If they’re on the water, you can spot them--unlike the birds in the trees, who are much harder to find amongst the leaves and branches. I don’t go to wetlands or aquatic environments very often, so almost every time I do go, I see at least one species I’ve never seen before. This time I added four to my eBird life list, but I know I had seen the killdeer before.

[luluwquidprocrow]

echoing, echoing

ellington feint

teen

2,968 words

the only way out of town is by train.

unless you’re ellington feint.

ellington feint has a really hard time in a train station, the fic: featuring big trauma vibes/denial/identity issues 

“That can’t have been the last bus,” Ellington insists, leaning forward. “It just—”

The short, round-faced man behind the station ticket counter smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry, miss,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “There seems to be a problem with the other engines, and they’re not up to—”

“They were fine earlier,” Ellington says. They were. She checks the buses in every town, frequently, throughout the day, and these buses had been fine.

“Well, buses, miss, they’re, they’re finicky things,” the man continues. He breathes through his smile as he talks, and Ellington’s hands clench together on top of the counter between them, twisting tight. “But, you know, I think they should be up and running by morning.”

Morning.

The smile slips off the man’s face. Sweat beads on his forehead, a terrible shine in the yellow overhead lights. “But, the train,” he tries, fumbling through the papers on his desk and pulling out a folded schedule, holding it out for her, “the train, that comes in in just an—”

“No, thank you.” Ellington pushes away from the counter, stalking the short length of the bus station. She has to get out of town, as soon as possible. She’s spent too long here as it is. Three years on her own has been more than enough to teach her that the less time she stays in one place, the better. A few days in some small nameless town with too much empty space is certainly enough. She isn’t going to stop now because some bus isn’t running. She’ll figure out something. Ellington always figures out something.

She makes her way behind the two little rows of metal benches and over to the coffee machine by the window, a shade drawn down against the night. She’s not hungry, she’s never hungry, but a cup of coffee would be nice. It always helps.

Ellington pushes the buttons with more force than she really needs, and the machine whirs and thuds in return. She takes a styrofoam cup from the stacks on the nearby table and slides it under the tap and watches the coffee drip impossibly slow into it. She tries to time her breathing to the drip so she can calm down. It only makes her start thinking again. The old thought comes back, a jagged, angry line shaking through her, her nails digging into her palms, her back teeth grinding. That boy took everything Ellington had, didn’t he, including her French press. She never got it off the train. But he didn’t take this. She still has this.

A reflection slides up and over the smooth surface of the coffee machine.

No, Ellington thinks. Not here.

The long, distorted figure creeps behind her, an impenetrable blur for a face. It gets simultaneously smaller and larger as it moves, disappearing and reappearing in bursts, cutting around the curve of the buttons and along the silver body of the machine.

Ellington whips around, her hair flying.

No one’s there.

The machine gives a harsh click. The coffee stops dripping.

For bus station coffee, it’s not terrible. Ellington’s tasted worse. She drinks it quickly, her back flat against the wall, her eyes on the ticket man as he shifts papers from one side of his desk to the other. She really can’t stay here. If he’s already found her—she doesn’t have much chance if she takes off on foot. She doesn’t know enough to hotwire a car. She could break into a shed and steal a bike, but how much faster is that than running? But she will not get on that train.

She takes the last sip and turns her head to look at the doorway she’s been avoiding. The bus station connects to the train station next door through a set of wooden double-doors on the wall across from the coffee machine. She’s not taking the train. But there has to be someplace to hide in there. There’s barely any space in the bus station, just the benches and the ticket window counter, the coffee machine and a utility closet. And if he’s been in here once, it’s only a matter of time before he shows up again. What’ll she do then? The ticket man certainly can’t do anything about him. He probably doesn’t even realize she’s still in the room. If she keeps moving, at least she can look. She can get somewhere else, if only for a moment. Keep going, she thinks. Keep going, Ellington. She can’t stand there forever.

She casts another look around the room. Then she throws away the cup and walks to the double-doors, nudging them open slowly.

It is bigger. The train station expands out in front of her, a high, domed room where the light must pour in during the day, quiet and alone now in the dark, barely illuminated by flickering little sconces on the tall wooden beams lining the walls. More seats, collecting in the space between her and the empty ticket counter on the far wall. If it wasn’t a train station, she thinks, maybe it would be nice. But it is, so it sets off a nervous ache under her skin, vibrating through her bones. Ellington grips the strap of her purse. At least, at least there are definitely more places to hide here. Just for that, she feels slightly more at ease.

Once, she’d caught a look at the man. It hadn’t been that long after she left Stain’d-by-the-Sea. He showed up in one town, then another, then another, not long after she would. Always a step behind her. The same tall figure, in his same dark hat and coat, with the same straightforward, calculated gait. He would be across the street at a payphone, behind a newspaper on the corner, a few seats behind her on a bus. That was when she saw him head-on, when he got on the bus after her.

She recognized him. He’d been on the train that night. So then she had to be two steps ahead of him.

It’s good, though, to have seen him that time, to know the face that’s after her. To know what he looks like, to have a solid image of him, to see a young but drawn face with a short beard, makes him more real and less of a mystery. Otherwise, from behind, sometimes she thinks he almost looks like—

Don’t, Ellington tells herself firmly. Her lips press together. That wasn’t him. She shakes her head and reminds herself. Her father in the kitchen at home in Killdeer Fields, making her breakfast with the morning sun at his back. Her father in the library across the street from their house, reading to her. Her father, alive and next to her, telling her a story about birds, his voice calm. Armstrong Feint. Nobody else. My father was a wonderful man.

She keeps close to the walls as she walks. One of the local maps framed between the beams catches her eye, and she draws near, moving her finger over the glass until she finds the name of the town. She’s a lot closer to the city than she thought. She hasn’t been traveling with any specific aim, just to get farther and farther from where she’d started, but Ellington figures that the city might be better than a million small towns. There’s a lot of things she can do there. It’s big enough for anyone to get lost in. She can disappear in there and get a job, find a place to live, she can be anybody. Or maybe she can be Ellington Feint there.

She takes a step back, her stomach seizing up into her lungs in an instant. No. Somehow that’s the last thing she wants to be. It’s so stupid, it’s her own name, it’s the person she is—Cleo Knight was easier, something in her says. Filene N. Gottlin was easier. Anyone was easier. She shakes her head again, trying to rattle the thoughts out. What she needs is to get out of this town, out of this train station. How long until morning? She should’ve bought a watch somewhere along the line. There has to be a clock in here somewhere. She tears her eyes from the wall and looks around through the gray shadows.

Creak.

Ellington stays rooted to the spot. She can’t see anyone else, but that doesn’t mean much, with all the darkness. The noise splits through the room a second time, a floorboard bowing from weight. She listens. She moves closer to the center of the room and out from any light cast from the sconces. Nothing. No sound at all. She holds her breath and doesn’t hear anyone else breathing. Not the whistle of the ticket man, not the heavy breathing of the man in the dark coat. Not a single thing.

But there, again. It sounds like it’s coming from the opposite corner, on the other side of the ticket counter. One footstep, and then another. Another. Another.

Ellington shoots across the station, towards a door at the back. She grabs the handle and pulls, but it sticks, stutters under her hand. The footsteps pick up. Please, she thinks, pushing her shoulder against the door.

It gives. Ellington falls inside and slams the door behind her. The handle can’t possibly deter him for long. She gropes through the dark, feeling for a light switch, and knocks against one by the door jamb. It’s another utility closet, cramped and close, barely stocked. She looks around—a mop, a stool, a little box of light bulbs, a door wedge. She snatches it up and jams it into the slit of space under the door. She’s not sure if it’s enough, but it’s going to have to be. At least for a while. But for now, there’s a door between her and the man in the coat. More than usual. That helps.

Ellington slides herself down to the floor between the box of light bulbs and the stool. She takes a long, deep breath. It’ll be fine. She’s safe in here. The man is out there, and she’s in here. She’s safe.

You’re safe, Ellington thinks. You’re safe, Ellington. She repeats it, and it echoes in her head until it almost starts to sound like someone else, distorted by memory. She frowns. She hears a rumble in the distance, low in the floor, the train pulling into the station. Someone else used to tell her that. Someone had taken her hand, said it softly in her ear, like—

You’re safe, Ellington. Her father had told her, a long time ago, when Ellington was six and scared of the shadows on her bedroom wall. He had smiled at her. In the darkness of a train, he turned around and smiled at her. He sat beside her on the edge of her bed and smiled at her. He pointed out the silhouettes, her sweater curled on her chair by her bed, her record player, in the corner of Handkerchief Heights, he pointed them out to her, picked them up and held them close in his arms like a child and turned to her and smiled at her. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

She was six and her father was smiling. She was thirteen and Hangfire was taking off his mask and he was smiling. She’s sixteen and trapped in the utility closet of a train station, hearing an engine roar, watching him turn and look at her.

It hits her in the chest, a hollow thud against her ribs, knocking everything off center. A delayed drop rippling through her. Armstrong Feint; Hangfire; her father.

You lied to me, Ellington thinks, her whole body shaking. That whole time, you lied to me. 

Why would I lie to you, Ellington? Her father had asked. His face is in shadow, then and now. The train clatters in the distance. Ellington can’t breathe. You’re my daughter.

Ellington pushes the heels of her palms into her eyes. Stars burst in the black and turn into that sweater on the chair, Hangfire holding the Bombinating Beast statue, her bedroom, a smile that looked nothing like the one she remembered, the lines between them all blurring. “Stop,” she whispers, “stop, stop—”

Don’t be unreasonable, her father said gently.

I never forced her, Hangfire said.

Nothing can hurt you.

No one can force Ellington Feint to do anything.

Nothing will hurt you.

A human being is like any other animal. If it wants something enough, it will do anything at all.

She’s there too, splayed out on the floor of the train car, playing dead, doing anything and everything. She has to be dead now, that’s the only explanation for the roar getting louder in her head and all of this and to think of the two of them together as the same person, a father, a murderer, a human being, a monster, someone who knew her and had her under his thumb the whole entire time, hands around her throat, firing a poison dart right at her and knowing he could’ve landed the hit, he could’ve tossed her aside the second he didn’t need her anymore, what else would he have needed—

Hangfire could’ve killed me. He could’ve killed me for real. The Armstrong Feint in her memory frowns. The Hangfire burned behind her eyes flickers in and out of sight, behind flashing lights in a train car, his back turned away from her. He can’t even look at her. He didn’t even look at her, the second he had his hands on that statue. Would you have killed me?

I didn’t want to kill her, you know, Hangfire had said on that train.

But you were lying to him, Ellington thinks. We were lying to him. Were you lying to me?

What kind of father would do that? What sort of daughter was she to do that? When would it have ended? What would he have asked her to do, how much more would she have done? She’s terrible; she’s sick; she’s twisted—she is a Feint, through and through, and she will wind up just like him—

Maybe there are more important things. That boy’s voice cuts through everything, like it always did, and the anger bursts inside her, fear and disgust and hate boiling—

It’s all I have, she’d said. Even now, it’s true, isn’t it? She isn’t capable of anything else—

“No!”

Something shatters against the wall. All the noise stops. Ellington looks up, blinking, her right hand on the floor. Shards glint dully at her feet. She must’ve grabbed a light bulb from the box nearby and thrown it.

She breaths carefully, letting the sound fill up the space of the closet, until her fingertips start to tingle and she feels lightheaded, so Ellington pushes her back against the wall and closes her eyes. She curls her hands together. Okay. Okay, okay. It’s not okay. But she doesn’t know what else to do. If she starts crying now, she’s never going to stop, and she can’t.

She thinks of black turtlenecks. Jazz music. Coffee. Cats. Saxophones. Short nights. Cold, brisk mornings. No masks. No lies from anyone. Worlds without trains.

Ellington jerks awake to the handle on the door turning. Immediately alert, she shoves back against the wall, but when the door opens, that short ticket man stands there, looking mildly perplexed. He smiles, gives the handle a little jiggle and points at it.

“Been meaning to fix that,” he says apologetically, his voice still whisper-thin and high. Ellington’s almost relieved to hear it now.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Just past ten,” he says. “The bus, if you wanted to catch it, it leaves in about twenty minutes—I’ll, I’ll go get a ticket for you—”

Ellington stands up. “Thank you.”

Back in the bus station, he presses a small ticket into the palm of her hand, and smiles one last time. Ellington tries to manage one back, but he’s already turned towards his desk.

Barely anyone stands on the concrete square strip outside the station. A couple, an old woman, a kid in a hat watching the road with his back to her. The man in the coat is nowhere to be seen, for now. She rubs her thumb over her ticket. She’ll go to the city, and, figure something out. She always figures something out. She’ll—she’ll figure something out.

A flash of brown catches her eye, someone moving quickly along the platform. Ellington turns out of habit to look.

The whole world slows to a stop around her. She feels each breath like inhaling water, dragging heavy through her lungs. That kid, that boy, older now, almost her height, walking off the concrete, a thin, fraying brown jacket draped over his arm. He pulls his hat down low over his eyes, a too-familiar gesture.

Ellington runs.

She pushes someone out of the way, careening over the platform, her heart pounding in her chest, her hands, her ears. He’s here. He’s here and Ellington is going to grab him. She darts after him, a blur moving faster and faster, over the grass, beyond the station building. Lemony Snicket. She’s going to shake the answers out of him, she’s going to kill him. Lemony Snicket, dead. Lemony Snicket, swallowed whole. Lemony Snicket, snapped up by a narrow, endless jaw, too many teeth, so many bones, what he deserves—she’s so close—his jacket flickers in front of her—

Through and through.

She stops, just for a moment—she stumbles against the wall—a noise catches in her throat and she keeps going—no, something, anything else, anything—she keeps going—she rounds the corner of the station—

She’s alone.

[theoriquewitherseld]

Heck I DO wanna know more! I'm super interested in thia fic 👀

OK I am SUPER happy receiving this ask, but alas all I can offer is a lot of excerpts,, more under the cut

When Jacques arrives at Stain'd, he finds the records to be VERY accurate: it's a deadzone. That would likely explain the weird look the conductor gave him when he requested to get off. There's no longer anybody here

Back then there must have been some, perhaps, in order to enact Lem's apprenticeship. But he still regards the situation with an air of apprehension. Large chunk of reports were missing, reports that were leading up to his disappearance. It could be that VFD hid it, of course, but intentional or not, its denominator remains the same: something monumentally terrible occured for that to happen.

And he will have to walk straight to it. Or at least, its aftermath.

The rattle of the train leaving startles him, and he shakes off his nerves. He wants so badly to get back on the train, jump on the railings perhaps but the rear has gotten quite a distance away. He's already alone.

(Oh God I just realized I have no idea what people do after they get off trains. Should there be like people taking ur tickets or something?? Ive been on a train only once and that was super long ago)

The Stain'd Station was utterly deprived of life. Everything was cracked and looked in the danger of falling apart. Litter and dirt was strewn all around. There was no place that Jacques just wanted more to bail out of immediately (except, perhaps, that one wasp-infested area but that is besides the point). It unnerves him, to listen to the echoes of his footsteps in the abandoned station, with its business nothing more than a ghost of its past. It rattles him more than the rattle of train wheels on the tracks. But he trudges on, hoping to find some clue.

Out on the street was no better. All buildings were boarded up, some windows smashed. Brown grass was growing out of the sidewalks. There was few vehicles on the side of the road: a brown rusty one with its hood popped up and its insides gone, a yellow cab so terribly dented, and a black one with its paint job scratched and all four of its tires missing. It was a miserable place, not fit for any human life, much less an apprenticeship. He grimaces in dismay. This is where they dumped his brother? Even as a containment procedure, it was a bit much. No person should be in this place.

But that wasn't the most pressing issue. The most pressing issue is where to start. He does not have the faintest idea where he is in this desolate town, much less where his brother stayed for the duration in the past — except for the address of The Lost Arms. But that information was useless without a map, and every other map he scoured to know about the town has vehemently insisted that Stain'd-By-The-Sea does not exist. Whether VFD has already tampered with those maps, he can not tell.

He had hoped there may be a clue in there, some forgotten item, a thing accidentally left behind. But with no map, his best course of action is to simply search every establishment and hope for serendipity. Not all of the best things are necessarily good things.

He hears a rumble of an engine.

His gaze snaps upwards, puzzled if whether or not he had imagined it. Then he can see the yellow dented cab making its way towards him at a snail's pace. Jacques's heart stops, and gripped his suitcase until his knuckles turned white. It was a trusty little suitcase, filled with tools and files that are of great use of him, but he's not so sure if it were of any use against a damned ghost cab. If it were really a ghost. If Kit was here, she would've scoffed at him. But he's not really feeling up to an argument, not when his feet was stuck to the pavement, body frozen into place. He stares, heart pounding like there was no tomorrow as the taxi pulls up to its side, exactly right in front of him, and stops.

But then the window rolls down, and Jacques felt very, very foolish, but immensely relieved, as it reveals a worn and much younger face of a boy with a busted blue cap.

"Well, hello there friend," he says, with a voice just as tired. "Another visitor was the last thing we expected, but —" he gives a small shrug, "— here we are. Need a taxi?"

It took him a moment to realize how stupid he looked with his mouth gaping open. "I-I'm sorry," Jacques stammered, once he found his voice. "We?"

Another younger face pops up from below the young driver, and Jacques nearly jumps in surprise. "That would be us, the Bellerophon brothers," he reveals with a squeaky but cracked voice. "I'm Pecuchet, and this—" he points upward, and his brother tipped his hat at him, " — is Bouvard, but that makes people's tongue tired, so you can call him Pip, and me, Squeak."

The driver known as "Pip" frowned. "Are you alright though? You've looked like you've seen a ghost."

His eyes fluttered. "Er  — Yes, yes, I... I am afraid I also didn't expect anyone to come here either." He tips his white hat at them in turn. "Greetings to you, I am Ja— James Moore."

Internally, he cringed. It was a sloppy pseudonym, but he can't risk revealing who he is in the potential situation VFD managed to track his trail, they wouldn't be able to hold incriminating evidence against him. Curiously, it didn't arouse much suspicion from the odd duo, except for a slight tilt of the head.

"Well, nice to meet you Mr. Moore. Do you need a ride anywhere?"

Jacques is not quite sure what to think of climbing into a cab with kids of odd names in an abandoned town. However, his relief in discovering that there is fellow life, inexplicable as it is, and a likelier possibility of gaining information triumphed over whatever reservations he had at the moment. In the pursuit of his search, with its very nonexistent lead, he'd take anything.

"I'd like to go to the Lost Arms please."

"Sure," Pip reached out behind him and opened the door. "Hop in."

He pauses, and then climbs in and closes it shut, and soon enough, the two brothers drive away from the Station with startlingly expert hands on both wheel and brakes. Jacques is fairly impressed at their coordination.

"Say," Pip starts, once they got a quite the distance away. "Apologies if it sounds prying, friend, but out of curiosity, what business does a stranger have with Stain'd-By-The-Sea?"

That shook him out of his stupor. Idiotically, he hasn't prepared for that, he was ascertain there won't be anyone here, he even got business cards and all but it's not in his suitcase (which he wants to smack himself on). His mind blanks for a moment, but he manages to scramble an answer that isn’t necessarily a lie nor a truth. "I am private investigator hired to search for someone last seen in this town."

Pip looked at him through the rearview mirror, which was a bit dirty and cracked. "Oh? That certainly does explain why someone wants to be in this town."

Jacques didn't bother to clarify he does NOT want to be here at all, but he nods his head instead.

He expertly steered the wheel. "You wouldn't happen to be allowed the details no? Sorry, but interesting things have rarely happened here since..."

"I'm afraid not, no," Jacques blinks. That felt off. "Speaking of visitors, you haven't happened to have driven someone around lately no?"

"Until you came along? Not one for the past year. No outsiders at the very least."

He deflates a little, but he's unsurprised. So he really wasn't here recently. He was about ask more, when the taxi came to a stop in front of a shabby and derelict building he would presume to be the Lost Arms.

Once again, Pip reached out to open the door for him. "Here we are then, Mr. Moore."

"Thank you," he says, retrieving his wallet. "How much is the fare?"

Pip blinked in surprise. Then his eyes flickered towards the wallet, and his eyes widened further. "Huh, I never expected a paying customer today either."

It puzzles him so much that he tilts his head. Did they just let him ride as a charity? "Well, it's only natural to pay for a service, no?"

He just shrugged. "It's alright. Keep the money, it's not gonna be much use anyways, with the state of the town. You may wanna give that to the proprietor though —" he nods to the building, "— Prosper Lost."

"Well, I shan't dare to think of leaving this taxi without giving something in return," Jacques insisted.

"How about a tip then?"

"A tip?" he frowns. "A tip what?"

"Anything really, s'long as its useful."

That got him thinking. He thought of giving them a tip of accepting money when they get it and leave this terrifying place, but decided against. He then looks up.

"Here's a tip, there's this book that..." he trails off, feeling a painful lump form in his throat. "That my associate enjoys. Champion of the World, heard of it?"

~

Ellington feels the bitter sweetness on her tongue. The air was damp and cold after the shower, having ceased into droplets. Everything reminded her the cool greens and blues of a watercolor painting. At the distance, the light of the morning sun peaks through. She's glad she's getting some pieces of her back, but some of the damage will be permanent, and some things are just lost forever. Seeing the Association and strangers and natives to Killdeer fields all work together to set things right was amazing, but also drove home on the tragedy of Armstrong Feint, whose pursuit of vengeance blinded him, destroyed himself and set back hopes of recovery for years. The pain he inflicted was an unnecessary cruelty, that if he had bothered to spare, even the tinniest bit of mercy and offered his help, he would've witnessed the return of the sea and the recovery of the environment, and they could've been together.

But he had made a decision. All of their parents did — the Mallahans, the Hixes, the Knights, the Bellerophons, the Losts. What's done is done.

She remembers a line that her father read her once, many years ago. It was the book where Snicket claimed a wizard was not so very helpful, and that her father loved because of its elaborate descriptions of trees. Many elaborate description of trees.

"'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo." Ellington murmurs to herself.

"'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'"

She stares at the sky.

~

But there was a knock at the door

They both froze. Moxie is still on the phone — with who, Kellar didn't hear.

It could be anyone, Kellar thought, perhaps some coworkers who forgot their stuff, or has the intention to work overtime. It may even be some neighbor, asking for help or providing assistance. It could even be a fellow Associate. There's no reason really, to think there could be enemies on the other side.

But he walked anyway. His breathing far too loud and uneven, yet his pace cautious and fearful. He calls out, "Who's there?"

No answer.

"I'm warning you," he says slowly, attempting to keep the tremble out of his voice, "that I'm armed."

Silence. It's a blatant lie of course, but no matter how he strained his ears, he still can't hear anyone walking away. They’re not fooled.

He motions to Moxie to get ready to run. A few seconds, he could buy that. Enough seconds to scramble whatever data they need and bolt like hell. Kellar doesn't see if she saw it.

The door is inches away from him now. His heart pounded in his chest. His hands carefully placed on the dark wood, and he looked into the peephole.

Kellar had barely moved his head in time just to dodge the blast shot that would've blown away bits of his brain, but had blown off half of his right ear instead.

He screamed, it hurt, hurt worse than anything he'd known and he's sure he's lost his hearing there, but he let the wound bleed and instead ducked and braced himself against the door to keep them from opening it. "Moxie run!"

~

"Look at him. Look. At. Him." Pip hissed, and Squeak looked at them with an air of innocence. "You think that's an angel?? A beacon of innocence?? Wrong. That's bastard incarnate. The single source of maliciousness on this earthly realm. Look. Look how evil he looks. He's a little prick."

~

"Frankly, I'd love to have a sibling," Cleo said.

Kellar looked at her as if she said something deranged and jabs a thumb towards Lizzie. "No, you don't. I love my sister, but you think she won't sell me off to the circus first chance she gets?" He shook his head. "Think again."

~

"Dibs."

"What the—" Moxie then scowled. "That was too fast."

Snicket just shrugged. "I have two older siblings, Moxie. The true nature of siblings... Is natural selection."

"Are you certain you should be using big boy words like that?" Ellington asked, bemused. "I'm fairly certain you can't even differentiate a crocodile and an alligator."

~

"If I may introduce you to my family," Jacques says.

He points to Kit emerging from his side. "— Parasite number one—".

And he points to Snicket as he emerges from the other. "— and Parasite number two."

~

"Alright, does anyone have any questions?" Jacques asks tiredly.

They all raise their hands.

"That isn’t sarcastic," he snaps.

They all lowered their hands, disappointed.

Jacques sighs. "Lizzie, you've got the stage."

~

"Just what time is it?" Ellington inquires, exhausted.

"Hang on," Kit smiled, and instead of whipping out a clock, she instead produces a clarinet. She took a deep breath, and blew. Before she could even make it to the second note, they look up at the ceiling— startled— suddenly hearing a very muffled but very clear yell from Jacques, Kit, are you seriously playing the clarinet at 2 IN THE DAMN MORNING.

They look down. Kit still has a devilish smile plastered.

"It's 2 am," she announces.

[fanfoolishness]

a world for the birds (1/10)

Andy DeMayo took up birding years ago, but his favorite hobby takes on new meaning when shared with his nephew Steven.

A series of looks at Andy and Steven’s growing family relationship.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

***

Chapter 1: learning how to see

Andy breathed in the salt air.  Another visit back to Beach City in Delmarva; a good place.  He’d forgotten how good, somehow, years of flying on his own and watching folks move away.  But there were new reasons to come back here, Greg and his kid, their weird space family.  He liked having a home base again, even if still he only visited once a month or so.  Some habits died hard.

Andy and Steven sat on the porch, watching the waves as they waited for Greg to come on over. They had dinner plans at the crab place down the street.  Andy was looking forward to it. He’d seen Greg last month, but it’d been a while since he’d gotten a chat with the kid, who’d apparently been spending an awful lot of time in space lately.  It was still hard to wrap his mind around sometimes, though Steven seemed to take it in stride.

Andy let out a sigh, watching the laughing gulls on the beach fighting over a crab.  He found himself asking a simple question.

“Hey Steven, you ever been birdwatching?”

Greg’s kid wasn’t quite as open and excitable as he used to be.  Typical teenager, Andy supposed, especially since the kid had finally started growing.  He’d been weirdly tiny when he met him the first time.  Maybe now that he’d hit that growth spurt, he’d figured out how to get moody, too.  Or maybe it was all the space stuff.  Andy wasn’t sure.

Steven shrugged.  “Uh, I mean, I’ve seen birds…”

“Nah, I mean, you ever actually watched ‘em?  Like those laughing gulls out there?”  Andy rummaged through the knapsack at his feet, pulling out a battered copy of Sibley’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.   He waved the book at Steven.  “I see a lot of birds when I fly, and after a while I got tired of not knowing their names.  If, uh, you ever want to give it a try, it’s pretty fun….”

Steven’s face lit up.  Oh, there was that excitable kid again.  “Sure!”

***

Andy mulled over the destination for their first birding foray for a few weeks.  The weather had been crummy for the rest of his stay last time, so they made tentative plans to bird the woods around Beach City and the local marsh nearby.  Andy sorted through some of his old books.  Was Sibley better for a beginner?  Peterson?  Maybe he’d throw in the National Geographic guide.  He went back and forth about it for longer than he would have liked to admit.

He knocked on Steven’s door bright and early, having landed the plane well above the high tide mark.  “You ready, kid?”

Steven opened the door, strapped to high heaven with binoculars, a camera, and a bulging messenger bag.  He was also wearing a bright pink jacket over a blue shirt. Not exactly nature colors, but it would be fine.  “Oh, I’m ready, Uncle Andy.  I was born ready.”

“I… admire your enthusiasm,” said Andy gruffly.  “Here ya go.  Take your pick.”  He held out two different guides.  Steven grabbed the Sibley’s, leaving Andy with the Nat Geo.

“So I just look up the bird I think it is?”

“Yeah, but you gotta have an idea of what type of bird is, or you can get confused real easy.  There’s like seven hundred birds in that book.”  Andy nodded to a pair of terns flying over the water.  “Any idea what those are?”

“Uh, seagulls?”

Andy tried not to grimace.  “Ain’t no such thing as a seagull.  Just gulls.  There’s lots of different species.”  He showed Steven the right section of the book, and the kid’s eyes widened.

“Whoa.  I had no idea!  I just thought they were all seagulls, and that they like to steal my food.”

“Well, yeah, that they do.  But those there are terns.  Caspian terns, you can tell by the size of ‘em.  And that bright red bill.”

Steven raised his binoculars, struggling with adjusting them for a moment.  Then he grinned, lowering them.  “I see the red!  That’s awesome, Uncle Andy.  I can’t believe I never noticed those before.  Are they rare?”

“Not really, no.  Now that you’ve got an idea of ‘em, you’ll see ‘em all over.  See the thing about birding is, it teaches you how to see birds instead of just looking at ‘em.  It’s not the same thing.”  

“What do you mean?”

Andy thought about the kid’s question.  They walked along the sand to the plane, Andy pointing out a few willets and a lone killdeer as they went.  As they neared the plane, he came up with something, huffing and puffing as they hiked up the hill.

“I mean… so many people see a bird, and they don’t even think about it.  Or if they do, they think, ‘oh, it’s just a bird.’  But there’s more to it than that, ain’t there?  You look a little deeper and you start to see it.  A red beak on a bird you thought was just a gull.  Or the flashy colors of a hummingbird or a painted bunting.  Or a little peep, just digging and digging away until it comes out with a huge clam in its bill.  And it just makes you think, you know?  Like what else am I missing?”

“You mean about birds?” asked Steven as they reached the plane, not the slightest out of breath.

Andy wiped the sweat from his brow.  “Well, yeah.”

***

The birding went great.  Andy found a smooth field to set the plane down in on the edge of the Beach City woods.  It was no Magic Hedge out there -- not that he’d expected that level of activity-- but he was pleased with the different types of environments the little wood and field had.  The field itself, full of horned larks; the deep part of the wood, where a woodpecker lurked frustratingly out of sight; the edge of the wood, where the flycatchers perched and watched for passing bugs.  Steven almost looked like he was gonna cry when Andy showed him the pages of Empidonax flycatchers, all of them almost exactly alike.“You don’t have to get those right away,” said Andy gruffly.  “I’ve been doing this twenty years, I still mix ‘em up if they don’t sing.  People just call them Empids a lot in their notes because you can’t tell ‘em apart.   But I’d guess that one’s a least flycatcher, sitting here on the edge like it is, and that sharp little call.”  

Steven wrote the bird’s name down in a brand-new waterproof notebook in pencil, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth.  “So now I have… twelve birds for my life list?  How many do you have, Uncle Andy?”

Andy laughed.  “I don’t know off the top of my head.  I have a list back in the plane, though.  I think last time I checked I hit somewhere ‘round eight hundred?  Flying takes me all over, you see.  Picked up some great birds when I flew you and your dad to Korea.”

Steven gaped at him with eyes like dinner plates.  “How many species are there?  Now I wish I’d been paying attention when Dad and I went on that trip.”  He frowned.  “I guess I was thinking about other stuff, though…”

Andy looked curiously at the kid.  Pensive was an odd look on him.  “Uh, there’s a ton of species, almost ten grand.  A damn lot of them.  Always new ones to find,” said Andy.  “Ooh!  Look there!  Tufted titmouse.”

They ended the day with forty species, not bad at all considering it was the beginning of summer and migration was over.  Andy had managed to start impressing upon Steven the importance of birding by ear, especially for warblers, and Steven had immediately downloaded something on his phone that did bird calls, promising to study.  

Andy left him with the Sibley’s, Steven giving him a bonecrushing hug.  He’d hugged him back, awkwardly.  He still wasn’t sure what to do with his nephew’s affections, but he thought it was a good problem to have.

*** Bird photos: Cornell Ornithology Lab, Caspian tern; Empidonax flycatchers, Peterson’s field guide (was too lazy to take a good picture of my Sibley lol).

[multifandomhoodies]

. Here’s a. bit of a write up on corps life. 

my big number one? I wanna go back lmao. I’ve been home for a few days and I’m already to go back out there. 

Anyways. I spent two months camping and working in the pacific northwest and. honestly it was the most incredible experience of my life. I was on a five person crew (four members and a lead) and of that group there were only two people that hadn’t already done a session of conservation corps either at this corps or a different one. This was my first time doing a corps! I was like. deadass shitting a brick before I left. I was so nervous to fly across the country (I’d never even flown before!) and go do something I’d never done for two months. I’ve been camping. I’ve been hiking. I’d worked outside for the last nine months and had two seasons of outdoor work in park maintenance. but this was living out of tent for TWO months. I was super excited but I was. so fucking nervous too. And god to fly? Airports seemed scary and busy and I was scared I was gonna miss a flight or not be able to find where to go. So the weeks leading up to my trip I was so goddamn nervous. But I did it lmao. 

And then. corps life. We spent the first day doing orientation where I met my crew!! and then left to head to our campsite where we’d do saw training the next three days. We left the parking lot of headquarters to Colter Wall’s “The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie” and headed to an area in the Willamette National Forest. The drive there was incredible. I’d flown into Oregon the night before and really hadn’t seen much because it was 9:30 when I landed and had only taken a short lyft ride to headquarters p early in the morning so. This was kind of my first time getting to see more than the freeway of Oregon. It was so beautiful. The big ass trees and the river and the mountains were just. incredible. And then that night two of my crewmates made entirely too much spaghetti which we had for two nights. We then had to use the leftover sauce for another meal. Fun fact! We only had spaghetti once more after that. In two months. Spaghetti is usually a staple on corps. Not on Red Crew. We were scared. Also the crewmember who doled out the pasta portions for that very first dinner of too much spaghetti was banned by our crew contract from doling out grain portions. After that, we went into saw training. Three straight days of saw training and evaluations on the last day. We were starting at seven I think? Like, meeting a five minute walk away in full ppe with saws ready to go at 7am. I think I wrote that I woke up at 4:45 the one morning but honestly that may have been the jet lag. Saw training was exhausting but it was so much fun too. There was a lot of information to take in and I’d at least run a chainsaw before. There were people that hadn’t run saws before at all. On the third day of saw training, we loaded up into our rig (by the way! 2021 ford f250. super duty cab. extended bed with a truck cap. gigantic. massive. imposing. it also had no labelling. it was not marked with anything corps related. it did not even have license plates. it was probably a little intimidating when we were bass boosting driving around in that thing. but whiplash inducing bass boosting because like. notorious big to mumford and sons back to back. can you believe that we never got pulled over in driving almost 5,000 miles). anyways. we did saw evals in a burned zone. I got my bar pinched. I know what I’d do differently now but I have a lot more saw time. But I passed! My whole crew passed and are now USDA National Sawyer Certification A Class Sawyers. Or Feller 3s depending on how you wanna say it. I’m super happy because I got my first professional certification at 19. Although my card says I got it after my birthday but I did my eval before I turned 20 so I’m gonna take it. 

After saw training, we went up to a suburb of Portland to. sigh. move sticks for Karens. The area we were in SCREAMED homeowners association. in the name of “fuels reduction” they had us pick up sticks and hike them down to the road. The sticks were down because the trees were dying from this shitty little park. The first week was cold and rainy and we moved sticks. We cleared out an area close to the road the first day and then the rest of the week we had to swamp (move/clear) sticks up a hill onto this narrow trail. Everyone had blisters because no one was used to walking up and down a hill all day. Carrying wet and occasionally rotting sticks. We’d hike it up the hill to the trail and then load sticks into shitty wheelbarrows and then take those down this narrow path on a steep hill when it was fully loaded with sticks. By the end of the week we were walking a good quarter/half mile to the the road with heavy wheelbarrows. It was miserable. NO one wanted to complain because it was our first project but. eventually we all came to the conclusion that it was bullshit. It had nice views tho. Still my least favorite project. Even thought it was miserable I still like. had fun?? 

After that we went into Washington and planted trees. We actually did this for two weeks but with another site in between. This site uh. did not have bathrooms. Learned how to use a cathole. It hailed the first time I used a cathole. That was exceptionally miserable. But we planted trees! I wasn’t a huge fan of the site our first time there but I warmed up to it. We planted over 3,000 trees in our two weeks. One of our project partners stayed out with us, which mad respect. He was so sweet. We all joked that we were a little in love with him. He wound up hanging out with us during a few of our campfires. He told us about this trip he’d taken back in college to Peru. At this site we coined the phrase “meat plate” which would stay with us until the end of session. Meat plate is dinner that is just, assorted meats that need to be gotten out of the coolers. Also on this site a crewmember got his hand in stinging nettle while taking a shit. The first week was cold. It was rainy and shitty, mostly on the weekend. We did check out the ocean though!! I’d never been to see the ocean and we took the 101 north from near the Willamette to where we were and stopped actually at Fort Stevens State Park and that’s where I got to see the ocean for the first time. In march! It was sunny but actually super nice. We all waded in and one of my crewmates jumped in. It was march. IT was cold. This is the Pacific Ocean. Anyways he’s built different. The second time at the site was a week later, and it was super pretty. It was much better weather. We planted more trees. 

Third week was further in Washington like an hour drive from Olympia. This was my first time seeing snow covered mountains that were massive in the distance. We cleaned up 195 trashbags of plastic plant protectors. Also kind of a shitty project but hey. Wasn’t hiking stuff up hills so. Our partner for this had people come talk to us for educational stuff which was okay, bad, and fantastic in order lol. The partner sent people from their org to be with the speakers (who weren’t part of the org) and we told the one lady what we’d been doing and she started LAUGHING and she was like “I’m sorry they gave you that project it’s because no one else wanted to do it” thanks. it was a shitty task but our partners were so nice that it made up for it. they even got a portapotty on site for us. no but they were all super nice. oh god they’d told us not to yell/slam doors/make loud noises because there was an owl in the barn on the property. we all were loud people and kind of forgot but it was okay we didn’t scare the bird. the bird scared us. one of my crewmates got up to go pee in the middle of the night and it swooped at him. this place was great for birds. We had a very angery killdeer beep at us!! we pulled out scotchbroom from the corner of the property and every time we walked near where it must have had its nest it would very angrily beep at us. It was so cute. We all loved it. My crewlead would always yell back at it. “What!! What do you want!!” I love that lil bird. Pulling out scotchbroom was a trip. To pull out scotchbroom you should in theory be ale to use a weedwrench to pry it out. Right? No. This was old growth scotch broom. This stuff was two inches in diameter as the smallest. It wouldn’t always fit in the weedwrenches. At one point it took me, my crewlead, and a crewmate to pull a scotchbroom with as much force/bodyweight as we could put on it. A couple times my crewlead put his entire bodyweight on to it and wound up falling into blackberry lmao. There was so much blackberry there too my god. It was so painful. We all kept joking about letting our crewlead just burn the area in a prescribed burn to get rid of the invasives. In the parking lot of a different preserve from the same partner org I found a red dinosaur who became one of our crew mascots.

After our second week back planting trees, we headed back down to Oregon to work on a fuels reduction project. We were all so excited for this one. We’d gotten certed for saws at the beginning of the session and had been told that we were gonna be a saw crew doing mostly fuels reduction which our lead had specifically asked to do because he had experience with it. But this was our first real saw project with fuels reduction. The weather this week was amazing. It didn’t rain at all, which on the West side of the Cascades in Oregon in April is pretty weird. It was nice for us but Oregon was and maybe still is in a drought. yikes! anyways. this is when we went on a hike to Blue Pool in the Wilamette National Forest. We camped at a little municipal park with another crew! It was weird being around another crew again because we’d spent so long just on our own that we all starting to lose it a little. But the other crew was super nice and we played frisbee in the dark with them the first night we were in the area. The project? was amazing. We worked on private project with a conglomerate of partners in doing fuels reduction. This conglomerate of partners did a whole bunch of other stuff but we only did fuels reduction. That was a week of working in a burn zone moving sticks. Moving sticks and swamping and making sure piles were neat to be able to be chipped. We learned about dispersing and how to remove ladder fuels and where to leave small logs on the ground for ground fuel. My crewlead showed us hazard trees and took a few out. I really loved this project. I loved the “grab stick go” part of it. It was so much fun. I also got to run a lot of saw which was nice. And this property bordered a parcel of BLM land which wound up being the spot we went to go pee at. If you’ve never been West of the Mississippi river, which I hadn’t(!) you’ve never had the opportunity to be on BLM land. There is no BLM land in the East. I wanted to go on all five of big public land holders in the US and that’s the one I don’t have access to here at home. We actually wound up taking a “nature appreciation walk” because we finished our work early around this little nugget of land and it was so cool. It was right on the McKenzie river and it was beautiful. I found our second crew pet/mascot there, a large palm sized egg shaped rock named “Egg.” We were so filthy there. Four 10s in a burn zone makes ya pretty stinky when you dont get to shower. Actually, we weren’t as stinky here because we just smelled like ash. I had ash everywhere. We went out to eat after the last day and my crewlead hadn’t washed his face in four days and was completely covered in ash. 

Our last project took us 8 hours back into Washington. It was a long fucking drive. We stopped at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland tho which was incredible. We rolled into our spot in Washington at 12:40. We slept with our sleeping pads and sleeping bags under a pavilion and were woken up by a ranger the next morning who thought we were homeless or illegally camping. This last project was also kinda bullshit. We were working with the Feds who kept telling us to slow down. We were at this project site for three weeks. The first week we cleared trails of downed trees and brushcut. The second and third weeks we helped General Maintenance take down trees and did so many runs to the dumpsite. We moved a lot of sticks and logs and my arms still look super scratched from moving branches. This spot was in the high desert of Eastern Washington and it was actually super pretty. I didn’t think I’d like the desert all that much but there was definitely a beauty to it. There wasn’t shit out there other than the dam. From there tho we were able to go to Leavenworth, this funky little Bavarian themed village up near the Cascades. We also went to Lake Wenatchee, which wasn’t as fun because we had to go move a fridge for the office staff. We spent about seven and a half hours on our last weekend doing this. I’m not salty. But it was super beautiful so. It’s okay. And we passed a prescribed burn on the way back to our site. 

There’s still so much more I want to write and talk about. I have to say I’m overall. just so glad I did this. I had the absolute time of my life. I have never had so much fun. I learned so much. I learned how to really put out a fire with a pulaski from my crewlead. He taught us how to use the Incident Response Pocket Guide to cross reference and look at the probability of ignition. I learned how to use a chainsaw decently well. I did a lot of things that were far beyond my comfort zone. To fly literally halfway across the country, from Ohio to Oregon, for two months and to live in a tent and work on a conservation corps, it was super beyond my comfort zone. I did things with a saw that were beyond my comfort zone and I had to trust in my ability to saw and trust in my crewlead to let me do something he felt comfortable with me doing and thought was in my capability. And it was it was so fucking cool. I really bonded with everyone on y crew too. I made some good friends. And just like. The things I was able to see and do were amazing. And it was so nice to spend so much time outside. I didn’t spend more than an hour or two at most in a building in two months. I worked in 50s and rain wearing rainpants and chainsaw chaps and I worked in the 80s and sun in chainsaw chaps. I was able to lift a full 5 gal of water (40lbs) onto my shoulder and I’m still super proud of it. I watched a ton of movies in the rig with my crewlead and one of my crewmates. I got to use my crewlead’s chainsaw which was a lot cooler, sharper, and bigger than our corps saws. I cried about trees a lot. I celebrated my 20th birthday in a state park with people I didn’t really know too well who surprised me with homemade rice crispie treats and snacks from the Chevron we were regulars for that week at. I hiked some really pretty trails. I gave a lot of hugs and got a lot of hugs. I became not as terrible at hacky sack. I realized that There Are People In My Life Who See Good Things In Me and I Just Want To Keep Making Them Proud. I realized that I’m incredibly hard on myself. This whole thing furthered my belief of goddammit if I wanna do it by god I’ll do it. It’s been a dream of mine since I was 15 to go be on a conservation corps. I got interested in corps life at 15 because of Youth Conservation Corps posting in Wayne National Forest in southern ohio and since then had just. Always wanted to do it. And that literally changed my life - because of just hearing about corps I got super into parks and researched it and was like “oh i wanna be a park ranger” and I started working at the park doing maintenance and went to school briefly for parks and rec management and then dropped out to work more in parks. but then this year, after five years of wanting to do it, I finally did a conservation corps. Not a youth corps but an adult corps. Five years! The biggest dream I had was to work on a conservation corps. I just wanted to use a pulaski on a trail once. And I did at our last project site, even just removing invasives. But just. This experience was something I’d wanted to do for so long and to finally do it and have it be as amazing as I thought was just amazing. My crewlead saw me taking pictures in Washington along the Willapa bay and was just like “corps is a slippery slope. You either hate it or you get addicted to it.” Tragically I’m addicted to it. I can’t wait until next January and March to get back out there. It was such an amazing experience and I feel like I learned a lot of really good soft skills and really good hard skills. I can’t possibly explain to anyone the full extent of what this meant to me and all the fun I had but. This is a long post and I have to go replace my phone so this will be it for now. In the off chance anyone made it this far, thanks. 

[rosalind-of-arden]

Sword and Pen Reread, chapter 16

Time for things to get stabby! Long post. Some discussion of a canon torture incident (y’all know which one).

We left off last chapter with Dario making his dramatic entrance. We pick up here with Wolfe lecturing Jess, Morgan talking to Dario, and Glain sending Codex messages. Who is Glain messaging? Her squad? Santi? Khalila?

Jess admits he’s dying, and Wolfe shows a flash of emotion - Jess can’t tell if it’s anguish or anger. I think Wolfe is seeing himself in Jess here. Jess’s “Getting killed for something worthwhile is better than dying alone” echoes Wolfe’s death letter from Ash and Quill: “I hope I died for something, as I lived for it.” Wolfe in Smoke and Iron, too; he’s not afraid to go into the Colosseum and probably die fighting, but the thought of dying slowly and helplessly in prison terrifies him. He understands exactly what Jess is thinking, and that hurts.

Why did I go back and reread that whole letter? There’s something in my eye now.

Second page of the chapter, here’s Jess thinking that his friends have made him a better person, while his family’s influence makes him worse. His impulse to kill the Archivist comes from his family, and he expects his friends would disapprove. Interesting parallel with Dario later in the chapter.

Wolfe’s discomfort with violence again? He neither agrees nor disagrees with Jess’s argument about killing the Archivist. He just shakes his head and gets on with the scheming.

But this isn’t just a moral “is it ok to kill the Archivist” thing, necessarily. For Wolfe, especially, there might be a lot of vindication in seeing the Archivist formally and publicly accused and tried for his crimes. Obviously, he’s not going to admit that outright, but it could very well influence his stance on what to do with the Archivist (and co-conspirators).

And why isn’t Wolfe getting into this argument with Jess? He knows how much vengeance means to Jess. With Jess dying, Wolfe doesn’t want to have an argument that would hurt Jess unless it’s absolutely necessary. Wolfe might also know just how much of the “we need to kill the bastard” talk is emotion talking, too. After all, in the end, Jess is surprisingly compassionate toward the dying Archivist. And Jess wasn’t completely on board with assassination when Anit first brought it up earlier in the book, either. If anyone can recognize angry bluster, it would be Wolfe. Echoes there of Wolfe in Ash and Quill telling Jess how well he knows him.

Wolfe goes to talk to Glain and Dario (there’s the planning team), leaving Morgan with Jess. He’s giving those two a private moment - does he know they broke up? Probably not? But also, keeping his distance from Morgan after the energy draining incident?

Morgan and Jess, bonding over their mutual decisions to sacrifice themselves for the people and cause they care about.

Dario’s first response to being asked to lure the Archivist into a trap: “I’ve had enough of intrigue.” He’s still deeply hurt by the betrayal. He doesn’t want to do anything like that again. But here’s Glain trying to talk him into it. What message is Dario getting here? That his friends need him to be a bad person. Ouch. Guess what this pushes Dario toward?

Lose Wolfe’s trust, never get it back. He immediately and aggressively rejects the idea of working with Callum because he expects Callum to betray them. Very similar to his reaction to trusting Zara again in Ash and Quill.

Dad Wolfe holds Jess up when Jess just about collapses coughing. Wolfe’s hands are shaking while he holds Jess, which is interesting, since that’s always been a PTSD thing for Wolfe up until now.

Wolfe very much wants to be there to catch the Archivist.

Dad Wolfe, quietly checking in with Jess: “He glanced at Jess, just briefly, but Jess understood that to mean something.” This is a nice moment of understanding between these two. There’s the nonverbal communication, which itself shows how well they understand each other. But then there’s Wolfe, knowing very well that Jess might not want his vulnerability openly acknowledged, keeping this little check-in quiet. Jess does choose to explain, but Wolfe’s not demanding that. I suspect he would have accepted just a nod.

Jess says he got a new mask and stronger meds “on the way out”. Intercepted by a Medica? (Medica: ugh, you’re all impossible. Fine, have meds if you’re going to insist on sneaking out.) Or lying?

Magic ring restrictions: no harming anyone unless they’re harming the wearer first, no taking away choices from people.

“My clever father,” Wolfe muttered. “Trust Eskander to find yet another way to make this more difficult.” At this point, Wolfe’s talked to Eskander what, once? On page, at least. And hasn’t exactly had a lot of opportunities for off-page conversations. So where is this coming from? Keria, I’m guessing. Wolfe doesn’t know his father, but I’ll bet he heard plenty about Eskander from his mother, whose view would be... biased, to say the least. Rumors from the Archivist and Artifex, too, maybe - he might have been close enough to either of them in the past to hear them griping about Eskander making trouble in the Iron Tower.

Dario-Wolfe parallels: Wolfe doesn’t want to die in a graveyard because that’s embarrassing, Dario doesn’t want to die like a commoner.

“We’ll make sure everyone knows how royally you bled to death.” Glain gets all the best lines.

Also, though. Here’s Dario saying he doesn’t want to kill the Archivist. He says it’s because he doesn’t want to be killed in revenge for that, but is that it? Or is this another hint at conflicted morality? Or devotion to Khalila, knowing she definitely wants a fair trial?

“Their old dormitory must have contained postulants for the upcoming year.” So, by my guess, this is happening in November. I really, really cannot think of a way this could be happening at the beginning of the school year. It would be hard, even, to push the date into December and say Jess means the new year not school year. So... Alexandria isn’t using the same calendar as us? (Where would that be on the ancient Egyptian/Greek calendar?) Or the Library starts school years irregularly? Or Jess is just out of it and not thinking that this group of postulants would already be pretty far into the program. Eh, let’s go with that. Jess is unreliable.

More Dad Wolfe moments: playful slaps on the head for Jess and Dario. @thegreatlibraryfangirl this is it. The closest thing to a sweet dad moment Dario gets. 

I’m kind of sad we don’t get any more Morgan POV. I’d like to know how she’s feeling about Jess when she hugs him here. Questioning her feelings again? Wanting to part on good terms? Just needing a bit of physical comfort and knowing he’ll give it?

So did Callum really set the trap like Jess asked? Or did Callum actually tip the Archivist off, leading the Archivist to send the Elites? I can see him playing both sides. 

Also, is this happening before or after Zara shoots the Archivist? Who knows.

““Any last words, Scholar? I’ll be happy to record them and add them to your journal... Oh, sorry, the Archivist has ordered your journals burned.” That’s just vicious. The Archivist didn’t just send his captain to kill Wolfe, he sent him to taunt Wolfe with an extremely sensitive subject first.

Ok, ok, another tiny little Wolfe-Dario moment: “I don’t have followers [...] Do I?” “No, sir [...] I’m afraid not. You’re too unlikable.” So we have some very small signs of affection between Wolfe and Dario, but they’re wrapped up in mock hostility. Fitting for both of them, since neither likes to show emotion or vulnerability, but still. Poor Dario.

“Make it between adults, if you can manage that.” Wolfe, snarking at gunpoint again. And trying to draw the enemy off the kids. (Unconventional patronus/animagus/daemon for Wolfe: a fucking killdeer.)

Interesting parallel here between Wolfe and Morgan tricking the Elites with Morgan’s illusion and Wolfe and Khalila in the Welsh general’s tent. Wolfe and kid tag teaming an enemy. But also parallels with the Philadelphia planning - once again, Wolfe and Morgan plan to save everyone at the cost of overusing Morgan’s power.

Wolfe tries to spare the Elites’ lives, but when he fails at that, he doesn’t hesitate to shoot the captain. But that’s while the captain is still grappling with Jess and Dario. Once the captain surrenders, Wolfe won’t shoot. How much of Wolfe’s thinking on when it’s ok to kill someone is influenced by all his work with Santi in war zones? This seems like a very military code of conduct. Give the enemy a chance to surrender, fight if he doesn’t, stop when he does.

So, the stabbing. It’s easy to see how Dario gets here. He’s spent the whole series characterizing himself as ruthless and willing to make hard choices, and in this book he’s just been told by the people he cares about that he can only help them by doing the dirty work. Over and over, he feels bad about what he has to do (or thinks he has to do), and over and over, he’s told it’s the only way. Add in whatever fucked up family backstory, and this is where he ends up.

This actually reminds me a bit of what @eli-wray said about Jess and Dario’s plan in Ash and Quill. This is an act of self sacrifice for Dario, much like that plan. He’s doing something he feels is wrong but necessary so that other characters don’t have to. In Dario’s view, the only way to get the information is to torture the captain, and his friends are good people so they shouldn’t have to do it. He’ll be the bad one for them. 

“I want this to be done, for all our sakes.” Here’s Dario’s main motivation. Dario is tired of this fight. He was tired of it after betraying Spain. He was tired of it at the start of this chapter. Dario just wants to get all of this over with. 

Dario’s grinning and threats have Jess freaked out, but we already know Dario is a good actor. I don’t think he’s having as much fun as he pretends he is. Will he feel as bad about this as the betrayal? No. But this is definitely adding to the list of reasons Dario does not think of himself as a good person or worthy of Khalila.

And where does Dario’s act fall apart? It cracks a bit when Wolfe asks him to stop, and he sounds more exhausted and frustrated than gleefully murderous. It shatters when he learns Khalila’s in danger. Genuinely murderous Dario isn’t grinning or taunting anyone. He’s just putting the knife right in the captain’s heart.

Anyway, enough Dario. I’m supposed to be rambling about Wolfe here. So, for obvious reasons, this isn’t going to be comfortable for Wolfe to watch. Jess is oblivious as usual, but we get a couple hints. First, Wolfe’s dialogue. We get “Dario, stop”, then nothing until he checks on Jess as they leave. Short sentences, basic word choices. Twice, Jess notes that “not even Wolfe” said anything. Wolfe gets quiet when he’s triggered. And then there’s the “bleak look in the Scholar’s eyes” at the end of the chapter. There’s more than enough to cause that - Khalila is in danger, Jess and Morgan are dying - but trauma is another cause. Pretty sure his expression has been described as “bleak” before when he’s triggered and/or remembering Rome. This is far from the worst trauma response Wolfe has had, but he’s definitely uncomfortable.

Wolfe might have more pragmatic reasons to object, too. He’s been tortured himself. He probably has a pretty good idea of how likely the captain is to give them true and useful information. This may not even be his first time in this kind of situation - there were those 10 war zones, after all. And sure enough, while the captain does point everyone in sort of the right direction, what he says is as much a taunt as an answer, and it’s leaving out quite a bit - possibly, the captain didn’t even know about the final plan to destroy the Archives. Wolfe would probably expect those problems. Dario doesn’t.

[shirtlesssammy]

10x02: Reichenbach

June 21st, 2003:

A boy wakes from sleep to hear a fight happening in his house. He finds his dad brutally murdered downstairs. As he cries over the body, we see a de-aged Dean Winchester walk in the room with a bloody knife. (Like, what a weird thing to spend money on, idk) 

Cut to (UGH) Cole (UGH) who was that boy. He’s telling his tale to a tied up Sam. He’s going to kill Dean. Sam tells him that “Dean isn’t Dean right now.” Cole is getting high off of thinking about his revenge so there’s no talking to him. Sam tells him that Dean had his reasons for killing his dad. There are monsters out there. 

(UGH) Cole (UGH) thinks he’s talking about human monsters (of which there are many) but Sam tells him REAL monsters. Cole keeps calling Sam the psycho but then puts on gloves and pulls out a hammer. UGH. 

Killdeer, North Dakota

Our Demon Dean Bean is enjoying the view (and touching without consent..smh). He throws money on the ground for the exotic dancer and she’s less than impressed and starts to walk away. He grabs her again and this time the bouncer stops him. Dean headbutts him and we’re suddenly watching (UGH) Cole (UGH) beat up Sam. I’m going to be honest, smart editing makes recapping hard. :D Cole continues to demand where Dean is. Dean continues to wale on the bouncer. Dudes at the bar are not stopping him --like, holy fuck, stop him, assholes! He stops himself, finishes his drink, and leaves. 

(UGH) Cole (UGH) continues to torture Sam, but he doesn’t realize that he’s dealing with Sam Fucking Winchester. That boy is a badass and he will NOT break. Cole’s just about to break Sam’s kneecap when his phone rings. It’s his wife so he answers and walks away, leaving his keys and a knife on the ground. 

Outside the strip club, Dean runs into Crowley. 

For Dear God Dunk Me Under That Running Water Science:

Cas is on the road with Hannah and his fake grace is failing him. She heals a wound of his and he thanks her but tells her she can go. She’s staying. She wants to help. That makes Cas laugh. It’s just so very human of her. (HANNAH) 

Cas gets a call from Sam. He has a lead on Dean and tells Cas to head to North Dakota. Sam then drops the bomb that Dean is a demon. 

Cas and Hannah head out to meet Sam. Hannah doesn’t see the point in helping the Winchesters. Cas sees otherwise. They’re his friends. (Blarf...this is season 10. One more season and he’ll be living in the bunker and he’ll be family and I just can’t take it.) Cas is not ok and starts to nod off while driving, and they crash. #RipPimpMobile

Dean and Crowley are at a bar. Crowley asks Dean how he’s doing, knowing full well that he’s not doing that great. He needs to kill. Crowley offers him a deal that he can’t refuse --kill for him.

Crowley has a list. First up: Mindy Morris. She cheated on her husband and then asked for a divorce. Lester, the husband, would rather sell his soul than give up his money. Mindy’s going to die. Dean agrees. 

Cas and Hannah have the car towed to a car repair shop. The extra nice mechanic invites them into her home. Hannah is not used to this human condition and it’s kinda cute. She also doesn’t get human humor. Also cute. Cas is so out of it, he doesn’t register the exchange. They head inside. Hannah heads to find food for Cas (wait, with his fading grace, does he need to eat?) and returns to the living room to find Cas zonked out on the couch. 

Dean stalks Mindy Morris’s house and just as he’s about to go in to do his job, he sees Lester pull up. He goes to have a chat with Lester. Pro tip: Not a great idea to be at the scene of the crime when the crime is happening. Dean tells Lester that he can’t really blame Mindy for stepping out. “She’s a North Dakota Eight. You’re a Four and a half max.” 

Wanna see a Hollywood Ten:

Also, Lester was already cheating on Mindy (UGH). Demon Dean maybe learned a thing between the no consent touching and this moment, because he ain’t buying the shit that Lester is selling. He punches him. Lester tells Dean that he works for him now and he needs to get in that house and do his job. Uh, demon or no, don’t tell Dean “Free Will” Winchester what to do; He’s going to do the opposite. Dean guts him with the First Blade. Oops. 

Sam’s at the Angelz Strip Club (LOLOLOLOLOLOL, Dean wishes it was one angel --I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But also, wtf? Is it because he’s a demon, and irony?) He’s talking with the bouncer. They exchange war stories. Sam asks the bouncer to call him (or Lemmy Kilmister at least) if he sees Dean again. Meanwhile, (UGH) Cole (UGH) lurks and follows Sam as he drives away. 

The next morning, Cas wakes to Looney Tunes (god, I love this running theme through Andrew Dabb episodes) and a little girl who has the most fascinating dreams about snot and rockets. Epic. 

She offers Cas some of her cereal and he accepts. IT’S ADORABLE, PEOPLE. (A thousand Cas with small child fics were born, I’m sure.) The mechanic and Hannah watch and smile and all is right with the world. The mechanic tells Hannah their car is ready. And then she tells her that she’s got a great guy. (Lol, he’s already taken. Hannah learned that little factoid last season.) 

Meanwhile Crowley’s in hell (seewhatididthere) while a demon explains to him how to make Hell more efficient. Sam calls Crowley, but Interrupting!Dean (‘cause he’s a demon, I guess) strolls in very proud of himself for killing Lester. When Crowley chews him out for it, Dean shoves him to the ground with his little demon head-tilt. Crowley rather insightfully sums it up: Dean’s a li’l bit human and a li’l bit demon. 

Instead of cowering in fear, Dean’s supremely unimpressed by the King of Hell. He informs Crowley that they’re not “besties” and that he’ll come around when he needs someone new to kill. “It's over,” Crowley decrees. “What can I say? Crazy ones...well, they're good for a fling. But they're not relationship material.” It’s okay, Crowley. Breakups are hard!

In sunny angel-land, Hannah takes over driving for Cas who is looking awful. Listen, I don’t often fantasize about swaddling grown men and spoon feeding them soup but Cas! BBY! You look like hammered crap.

Crowley finds Moose and tells him where to find Squirrel. The Mark of Cain’s a PIA and he’d rather be shot of Dean altogether. 

Cas wakes up in the parked car to find Hannah gone. She went up to Heaven to speak to Metatron in jail. Careful! He’s a tricksy devil. She tries to interrogate Metatron for the whereabouts of the last remnants of Cas’s grace. Oh, sure! Coming right up.

Metatron says he’ll barter Cas’s grace for sweet freedom. Hannah’s about to bite when Cas arrives. 

Cas approaches angrily and tells Hannah not to do it. “I've made deals born of desperation, and they always end in blood and tears.”

Castiel doesn’t want to be saved like that. Hannah reluctantly agrees and walks off. Metatron leaves Cas with a parting shot: there’s just enough of his grace to save him. “Keep it,” Cas tells him. “I’ve made peace with my fate.” OKAY BUT we haven’t. Just so you know. 

Metatron decides to make a really compelling argument for freeing him. He’ll escape one day and then...kill everybody. How fun and well-adjusted. He taunts Castiel as he leaves: “Dead man walking!” 

On Earth, Dean pensively plays the piano?????????? Bored with piano practice, he pulls out the First Blade and slices his hand, then watches it heal up while Crowley’s advice to choose between the two natures echoes in his head. Sam approaches. (Aaaaand musical number time. Sing him a song, Dean!)

Dean picks up the blade and stalks over to the bar. Sam suggests a nice, civilized trip home to do the demon cure. For some reason, demon Dean isn’t into that plan. He confesses that he’d like to rip Sam’s throat out with his TEETH which is...certainly an image. 

Sam expresses his unending loyalty: it doesn’t matter what Dean might have done as a demon. He just wants him home. Dean laughs at him but his mirth gets interrupted by a smoke bomb going off. When Sam stumbles outside the bar, he’s met with (UGH) Cole (UGH). Cole knocks Sam “The Head Injury” Winchester out. 

Cole meets Dean at last, who roundly mocks him for not killing Sam already. Cole dramatically announces who he is to Dean. Dun dun DUN. He’s the son of a man you killed decades ago who has since grown into a completely different looking adult! I mean, come on, Dean. Work on your facial recognition here. Dean apologizes - all those dead people over the years have blurred together. 

Dean taunts Cole, telling him to shoot him already. (Side note: as much as I dislike demon Dean, he really plays up his eyes nicely in these scenes.) 

For Eye Crinkle Science:

They fight. Dean reminds me of a cat toying with a mouse. “What did you think was gonna happen, huh? You just stroll up here and say “my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die,” And I'd just roll over? Well, that's just… It makes me sad.”

(UGH) Cole (UGH) cuts Dean, who heals before his eyes. He demon-flashes him.

Dean starts beating Cole within an inch of his life but hesitates… Sam takes that opportunity to toss holy water onto Dean and slap on those warded cuffs. You got ‘im, Sammy! Good work. 

Later, Sam hands the first blade over to Crowley for safe keeping (and WOW about that, really). 

(UGH) Cole (UGH) apparently headed straight to the public library after his little prize fight and, still bloodied and barely standing, asks the librarian for every book she has on demons. Please, Cole, demon and witchcraft books always get stolen within the first month on the shelf. 

Back at the bar, Crowley enjoys his froofy drink and fondles the First Blade while thinking of his ex. And then we get a close-up of his phone. It’s a photo of Dean and Crowley wearing cowboy hats and being dorks together. Over the scene, the song “Lonely girl” plays. I CAN’T EVEN WITH THIS. 

Sam drives Dean home to the bunker. Dean refers to Baby as “just a car” and we all die a little inside. Sam has hope, though. He chose not to kill Cole. Dean just smiles. He didn’t give (UGH) Cole (UGH) mercy...he handed him his destroyed pride on a platter. “That ain’t mercy. That’s the worst thing I coulda done to ‘im.” He then promises to visit more of his anti-mercy on Sam.

______________________________

Quote it Again, Sam:

Sam and Dean may be a bit rough around the edges but they’re the best men I’ve ever known. 

I understand the three beans, but what’s the surprise?

What is this, a lifetime movie?

______________________________

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

[starling-the-whore]

I think that half of not getting blackpilled about things is going outside. like I went to the waterfront park today where my city dumped literally millions of cubic meters of sewage water without telling anyone, where nobody can swim because it's full of blue-green algae and e coli and the water physically smells like sewage, 95% of the land is turned to paved walkways and manicured grass.

I saw dozens of damselflies mating and laying their eggs on all the floating seaweed, several species of other damselflies and dragonflies (which are both indicator species of more insect activity), caddisflies, beetles, probably a dozen different kinds of flies, bees, millipedes, hemipterans, probably at least a half dozen species of butterfly, including monarchs and tiger swallowtails, a couple wasps, a few species of ants, a few different spiders. I could see like 5+ fish in any given spot in the water if I looked long enough. I saw geese, swans, ducks (green-headed and black-headed mallards), terns, blackbirds, sparrows, swallows, finches, killdeer, seagulls, and cormorants.

like I think people turn into environmentalism doomers because they watch too many nature documentaries about the damage that we're doing to the environment, which is extensive and possible to understate, but I promise that if you care and learn and go outside and look with your eyeballs anywhere where there is a square foot of native foliage, it will be made very obvious to you that earth is not past the point of no return.

[hunterswearingplaid]

Family Of Blood - Part 2

Summary: After running into John yet again, the reader is troubled when she is invited to join him and Sam and Dean for a meal.

Pairing: Sam x daughter!Reader

Word Count: Approximately 2K

Warnings: none that I can think of... angst?

Author’s Note: Uh-oh, things are not going as per plan. 

Masterlist

Part 1

“I wanted to ask you after lunch.”

You were sitting in a motel room once again, photo in hand, tears in eyes. But this time, your father was in the room with you, sitting across from you.

“Why didn't you?” He asked, his voice a little soft.

“How do you feel, knowing you have a daughter? Be honest.” You asked, ignoring his question.

“Freaked out, if I’m being honest. I had no idea that that thing I had with Rose led to this. Really.” Sam’s voice was wavering. “I don’t know what to do. I have a daughter.” He stood up, running one hand over his face before beginning to pace the length of the room.

“This is exactly why I didn't tell you.” You said. “Pretty sure you had forgotten about my mom. Right? Right after your little fling, you got back together with Jess. My mother, forgotten.”

“There wasn’t - How do you know about Jess?” Sam asked suddenly, stopping in his tracks.

There was silence in the room for a few minutes, before you answered, “The Winchesters Gospel.” You heard Sam sigh, before continuing, “Funny, that Edlund dude did not mention anything about mom. Wow.”

Sam had his lip between his teeth, he was thinking hard. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, the door to the room opened to reveal Dean.

“Sammy. We’re ready to leave. We’re waiting in the car, please make it quick.” Dean said, leaving as quickly as he came, leaving you and Sam alone in the room again.

You began to make your way out of the room, when Sam began to speak. “Do you want to exchange numbers? Catch a cup of coffee someday?” There was something in his voice that made you want to say yes.

You turned your head over your shoulder, giving him a look with your steely-eyes. “No,” you said sharply before walking out of the room, slamming the door shut on the way.

Two months later.

“Thank you so much.” You said, shooting the cashier a smile as you paid her.

“Y/L/N?” Someone asked from behind you. You spun around, smiling when you saw who it was.

“Winchester!” It was your favourite Winchester. John. Eh, you weren’t as fond of the other two. “What are you doing around?” You asked, giving him a quick hug.

It had been two months since your terrifying ordeal with your father (you didn't even like saying that word), and you had kept your safe distance from him. John, though, you had worked four cases with in the two months you had known each other. He was a good egg, you thought. You two had gotten pretty close within those two months.

“I live here. You? Case?” He said, patting you on your shoulder as he pulled away from the hug.

“You live here?” You asked, smiling. “You, a hunter, has a place to live?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled lightly, “My Dad and Uncle are Men of Letters. Well, Legacies at the least. So they’ve got this bunker they - we live in.”

“That’s nice.” You nodded your head, a smile on your face. “No, I’m not working a case. I was passing through town and decided to stop for a bite.”

“Oh. You headin’ towards a case?” John asked.

“No, why?” You replied.

“If you haven’t grabbed that bite yet,” he smiled, “You could come to the bunker and eat with us. I’m pretty sure Dad and Uncle Sam will be delighted to see you again! Especially Dad, he thinks you’re super cool.” He grinned, hopeful.

Oh, no. How do you say no to an offer like that? Especially when it’s coming from someone you’re pretty close to. You don’t.

“That would be great!” You said as cheerfully as you could manage.

“Great!” John said. He lowered his voice. “How about you follow me there in your car? We don’t generally tell people its location. But I’m sure my Dad or Uncle won’t have a problem with you.”

“Sounds great.”

“Dad, I’m back! Look who’s here with me!” John shouted into the empty bunker.

You let your eyes wander around the bunker, and you had to admit, it was cool. Your eyes went wide as you took in the beautiful illuminated map of the world on a table in the centre of the room.

“This is the War Room.” John said, smiling when you replied with a wow. “Wait till you see the library. You will flip.” He said excitedly, walking towards an archway out of the War Room.

You followed him to enter the room where he was now standing, and you were sure there were tears in your eyes. “Is this a - Is this a library?” You asked, you voice high-pitched.

“Yes, it is!” That wasn’t John. You turned your head to the direction of the sound. It was the older Winchester. “Hello, kid!” Dean took a few steps towards you and patted your arm a few times, gripping it tightly before letting it go. He turned his attention to John. “Son, I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say no one is allowed to the bunker without telling either Me or Sam first. But since it’s only Y/N, I’ll let it slide.” He grinned, just the way John did, before John began to speak.

“Yeah, I know. I ran into her on my supply run. But let’s be honest, you’ve been waiting to meet her again.” John narrowed his eyes. “Y/N, you want to tell Dad about your heroic rescue of that little girl back in Killdeer?” He said dramatically, rolling his eyes.

“It wasn’t such a big deal!” You said shyly, rubbing the back of your neck.

“It’s not the rescue that’s the big deal, it’s how you plan things before it. It’s genius!” Dean said. “It’s like something Sammy would plan.”

Yeah. Of course.

John took a seat at the table, propping his legs up on it. “Hey, Uncle Sam.” He said as his Uncle - your father - walked into the library.

“Hey, J. Did you - Y/N.” Sam said slowly. “Hi,” he began, walking to where you three were standing. “What’s up?” There was a nervous bounce to the tone of his voice.

“She was in town, John called her for lunch.” Dean cut in before you could say anything. Good, because you didn't trust your voice. “Can we eat now, I’m kinda hungry.”

“Ya know, John tells us every time he’s back from working a case with you.” Dean said, poking at his salad. “If I would have known you were coming, I would have whipped something nice up. Now even you’re stuck eating this rabbit food.” He said glumly.

“She likes this rabbit food, dad.” John replied for you.

It had been fifteen minutes into your meal with the Winchesters, and you hadn’t said a word since you had sat down. Only smiles and nods here and there. Sam, too, had not said much. He only ate in silence, listening to John and Dean carry the conversation.

“Why didn't you call?” Dean asked. “You’re pretty cool, hunting with you would’ve been nice.”

“Oh, you know, I was… busy.” You hated making excuses.

After a few minutes of silence, Sam spoke up. “Why didn't you call?” He dropped his fork into his plate and put both of his hands on the table, palms down.

You let go of your fork as well. “I told you why I didn't call. I was busy.”

“No, no you weren’t.” Sam said, shaking his head.

“What do you mean I wasn’t busy?” You asked.

“I mean, you weren’t busy. You didn't want to call. Am I right?” Sam asked, raising his voice just slightly.

You couldn’t say anything. He was right. You didn't want to. And you damn right had a reason for it.

“Why didn't you want to call? Was it something we did?”

Dean and John had both stopped eating and were looking between the both of you, shocked at the exchange of words.

“Or was it something I did?” Sam asked, his voice sharp.

With Dean and John sitting right there, you didn't want to say anything. You didn't want to say anything anyway, but you knew Sam wasn’t going to give you a choice. “I’d like some water.” You said, staring right at Sam.

John stood up immediately, “I’ll get that for you.” He walked out of the room quickly.

Dean followed suit right after, saying, “I’ll go help John.”

Even once they were out of the room, you and Sam continued to stare at each other, venom in your eyes.

“Did you want me to call?” You began, your voice shaking. “Did you want me to call, walking in to your life and turn it upside down? Huh?”

“I never got the chance to -”

You didn't let Sam finish. “You have a thing going for you. Family. Did you want me to come tear that apart?”

Sam didn't say anything this time.

“My mother had been possessed by a demon all the years I knew her, laying dormant in her body. Affecting her thoughts, affecting her actions and her behaviours.” You spat. “I grew up without parents all my life, and I grew up just fine. I don’t need one right now.”

“Y/N, -”

“Don’t you dare say that you had no idea. Don’t you dare. Because you knew. I know you knew.” You went on, tears clouding your vision.

“How do you know?”

“Mom wrote about you. All the damn time. She wrote about how you reacted when she told you she was pregnant with your child. How you ran away.”

“I didn't run aw-”

“You dropped out of college!”

“Will you let me finish my goddamn sentence!?”

You stood up from the table, the sound of the chair scraping against the floor loud in the room filled with tense silence. “What do you want to say?”

“I did not run away. Y/N, my father was on a hunting trip. He hadn’t been home in a while. I had to go.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was looking at you with a hardened look. “And it’s rich, isn’t it? Things about running away coming from someone who’s been running from her father ever since she found out he exists.”

You winced at Sam’s words, tears spilling down your cheeks. You didn't want to be around him any longer. “Thanks for the meal,” you managed to choke out, before you were running up the stairs of the bunker.

Once you were in your car, you put your face in your hands, hot tears of anger pooling in them. You had begun to scream, when someone knocked on the window.

Sam.

You gave him one quick look before averting your attention to your radio, playing something nice and loud. You were bobbing your head to the loud music when there was another strong knock on your window.

You snapped your head towards the window, anger and unhappiness written all over your features. Sam’s eyes had tears in them too. He held up your backpack in his left hand slowly.

You rolled down your window, snatching the bag out of his grip.

The moment your window was open, Sam said, “Y/N, I’m sorry. I know I crossed -”

“I’m sorry, too. I was rude to you.” You muttered loud enough for him to hear, turning the music down as you did.

With that, you rolled up your window again, starting the car and beginning to drive away from the bunker. You know what you were going to do today.

You were going to get drunk.

Tag List:

@hobby27

@thirdwheelchurchill

@curly-haired-disaster

[sorrelchestnut]

EVERYBODY’S PICKIN’ UP ON THAT FELINE BEAT, PART 31

GUESS WHO’S ACTUALLY WRITING IN FALLOUT AGAIN MOTHERFUCKERS.  man it feels good to make some actual progress on this beast.

Part 1.  Part 2.  Part 3.  Part 4.  Part 5.  Part 6.  Part 7.  Part 8.  Part 9.  Part 10.  Part 11. Part 12.  Part 13.  Part 14.  Part 15.  Part 16.  Part 17.  Part 18.  Part 19. Part 20.  Part 21.  Part 22. Part 23. Part 24. Part 25. Part 26.  Part 27. Part 28. Part 29. Part 30.

Title: everybody’s picking up on that feline beat Author: Sorrel Fandom: Fallout 4 Rating: Mature Warnings: None Relationships: Deacon/Female Sole Survivor Series: Part 3 of everybody wants to be a cat

  "Well, at least we know the lay of the land," Whisper says a day later, peering down the scope on her rifle at the courser standing deceptively still in front of the big double doors to Kendall Hospital.  “That’s something, at least.”

  "Unfortunately, so does the other guy, and they've got home field advantage."  Next to her, Deacon studies the approach through a pair of binoculars, but he already knows what he'll see: only one way up from the road, all other entrances carefully blocked off with rubble or flipped cars, just a single clear line with a dozen and a half different sightlines on anyone dumb enough to come up that way without authorization from the second courser posted down by the road.

  He knows it because he set it up that way, goddammit, and it grates even more than he would have thought to see the Institute using his carefully-designed safety procedures against him.  Bad enough that they cracked this place once already, killed their way from top to bottom and left his people where they dropped to be binned like trash by opportunistic raiders, but now this? It's insult to injury, and he knows he's not the only one who's pissed.  Whisper's too-still body next to him screams with tension, more than can be accounted for by the enemy combatant in her sights.

  Even that enemy combatant.

  "You sure those two coursers on watch are the only ones here?" Whisper asks Hancock, on her other side.

  Deacon leans up on his elbow, catches the tail end of Hancock’s answering shrug, a small economical movement of his narrow shoulders under the heavy rotting fabric of his coat.  "'Bout as sure as you can ever be with the Institute, yeah.  We watched 'em a solid week ‘fore I called you in.  They've got a fuckton of the plastic types, but only the two of flesh and blood.  And the doc himself, ‘course."

  “Of course,” Whisper says.  The muzzle of her rifle sweeps from one courser to the other and back again, thoughtful, and Deacon gets a sinking feeling in his stomach.

  “Partner,” he says, not wanting to use her code name in front of Hancock, and when she doesn’t respond, he nudges her with one elbow.  “Ey.  Liv.”

  That gets her attention, sure enough.  The line of her shoulders tightens up, and she shoots him a look he can’t quite read.  “What?”

  He’s spent too many years cultivating a personal talent for being fucking annoying in the name of justice to be put off by her petty irritation.  He nudges her again.  “Tell me you’re not thinking about trying to get past them.”

  “‘Get past’ is such a broad way of phrasing that,” Whisper says, going back to her scope.  She’s not looking at the courser anymore, but something further in the distance, Deacon can’t quite tell what.  “We have to get past them eventually, obviously.  But if you’re asking if I’m planning to storm the front door, then no.  I don’t think that would work as well on ‘cutting edge Institute fuck-up-your-day technology’ as it does on raiders that are too goddamn high to think straight.”

  “Well,” Deacon says, mollified.  “As long as we’ve got that settled.”

  “Such insightful critique.”  Whisper lays down her rifle and rolls over onto her back, bringing up her left wrist to fire up her Pip-boy.  Deacon insinuates himself in against her side to peer nosily over her shoulder, and she obligingly shifts to show him the map she’s pulled up on the screen.  “If you're going to be useful, at least offer constructive criticism.”

  She’s got the map zoomed in as far as it can go, just a few blocks in either direction.  There’s not much nearby; another reason he’d picked this spot, back in the day.  “Give me a hint.”

  “I'm thinking something like a Killdeer Shuffle.”

  It only takes a moment to see what she's talking about, but Deacon allows himself a slow count to five to make sure that he's not imagining things before he slowly twists around to give her a look of pure unadulterated reproach.

  "You're insane."

  "What?" Hancock says, looking back and forth between the two of them.  "What's going on?"

  Whisper doesn't look away from him.  "As I recall," she says, the corner of her mouth ticking up a little, "I specifically asked for constructive criticism.  These personal attacks are so childish."

  "Here's your criticism: it's insane."

  "Seriously, what's going on?"

  Deacon raises his eyebrows at her: you want to tell him?  She grins back.

  "It’s a distraction play,” she explains to Hancock.  “Make a big noise on their front door, draw out the watchdogs, and then slip in the back and take the prize while they’re still chasing their tails.  We can’t face a pair of coursers head on, but…”

  “There’s another way in,” Hancock surmises.  They both nod; Deacon doesn’t have any secrets left to protect here, and maybe Hancock can talk her out of this.  “Okay, sounds like a fair deal.  What’s the catch?”

  “Johnny’s got his panties in a twist about the distraction,” Whisper says.  Hancock raises a polite eyebrow, and she taps her thumbnail on the map, right over the Cambridge Crater.  “If you’re going to throw a party, it’s only polite to invite everyone.”

  Hancock’s not slow on the uptake, Deacon’s got to give him that.  “John’s right,” he says, flatly, after a moment.  “You’re insane.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”  Whisper doesn’t look anywhere near as daunted by their combined disapproval as she rightly should.  “Look, even a courser has to step in if you send a horde of ferals past their front door.  It’s a straight shot up from the crater; two guys in power armor could pull them all the way up here without too much risk, as long as they were moving fast.”

  She’s… not wrong.  Exactly.  “And where are these ‘two guys in power armor’ going to come from, again?”

  “I think Sturges has a few he hasn’t shipped back to Preston yet out at Starlite.  I could send Cait to pick them up; this is just her kind of party.  They’d come down the tracks and cross the river near Graygarden, loop around and come back up across the Longfellow Bridge.  From there it’s a straight shot across the Crater, and since it’s out of clear view from here the lookouts won’t know what started thes scuffle.  It’d look like a normal patrol that just went crossways.”

  She’s put a lot of thought into this.  It’s not some fly-by-night plan (not that they ever do that, of course), and that’s nice, but it doesn’t really make him any less wary.  There’s a lot riding on this- Kendall’s damn near in spitting distance of Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga bother, and they already know about Goodneighbor- and while normally he trusts Whisper to cover all the angles, he can’t forget that she’s been distracted lately.  They can’t afford to give the Institute an opening, not with so many balls in the air.

  “And you think the Institute is going to buy that?” he challenges.  “You think when our fine feathered friends down there finish plowing through those ferals, which they will, and come back to find the body they’re guarding gone with a bunch of dead Gen 2s lying around, which they will, they’re just gonna go, ‘oh yeah, those whacky Minutemen, what a wild co-inky-dink,’ and go home like nothing happened?  You think your people aren’t going to see reprisals for that?”

  Whisper gives him a faintly pitying look.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think the Minutemen are, no,” she says, talking like she’s explaining things to a particularly slow child.  (Or Carrington if you’re trying to piss him off.  Not that Deacon’s ever done that.  Much.)  “A double patrol in power armor, coming up from the southeast and heading west into Cambridge proper?  Why would they think the Minutemen had anything to do with it?”

  The elegance of her plan comes clear to him in one beautiful rush.  “The Brotherhood,” he breathes.  “They’re going to think the Brotherhood is behind it.”

  She nods, trying and failing to bite back a smug grin.  “Sure will, partner.”

  If Hancock wasn’t here, he’d grab her shoulders and plant one right on her smirking mouth.  “And with the Brotherhood seeming to gear up for a move against them, the Minutemen will drop down the Institute’s threat list.”

  “That’s the hope,” she says with a shrug.  “Might not come to anything, but at worst it’ll cover our tracks here, and at best we buy Preston some time.  It’s win/win.”  A sudden wry turn to her smile.  “Assuming we pull it off, that is.”

  “Oh, we’ll pull it off, don’t worry.”  He grins over her shoulder at Hancock, who’s sitting patiently on her other side, keeping very quiet so as not to interrupt and clearly, avidly drinking in every word.  Deacon’s not worried.  Whisper might trust Hancock, but she didn’t say anything he didn’t already know, either.  “Especially with a little help from our favorite local politician.”

  Whisper gives him a look: you sure about that?  Deacon grins lazily back: trust me, grasshopper.  She tips her shoulder in a shrug and turns to Hancock.  “You game?”

  Hancock’s black eyes flicker between the two of them before landing, oddly, on Deacon.  “Hell yeah,” he says.  “I want these bastards out of my city almost as bad as you do.  Just tell me what you need.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Whisper says.  That Pavlov guy really knew his shit, Deacon’s got to figure, because he’s feeling a rush of warmth down to his stomach from nothing more than the triumphant, toothy edge to her grin, in spite of the extra company.  “Okay.  What we’re going to do is this…”

[ferriskilldeer]

from this ask meme

why did they choose their class(es)? their subclass(es)? it was mostly an accident on his part. i wanted a fun weapon, on my part

before they met their party, what was their main goal? avoid being charged for murder, possibly get out of whatever deal with a devil he just made

what is their goal right now? protect ireena and kids, mostly

if they could learn one spell that isn’t available to them at present, which spell would it be? probably wish

do they follow a higher power? what are their thoughts on divinity? he’s not too sure what his patron is–couldnt really call them a higher power. doesnt believe too much in the goodness/activeness of divinity, but does read a lot

which party member do they relate to the most? marceline in that he too is exasperated and horrified by barovia. ismark in that he too has built most of his identity around a duty to someone else. ireena is the most like him in personality–she’s pretty mild and caring.

which party member do they understand the least? marceline

what are three songs that suit them? “viego, the ruined king,” “the belt of faith,” and “of the night”

do they care about their appearance? how much effort do they put into presentation? he cares deeply about his appearance–god forbid anyone think him sloppy or careless. though he puts a lot of effort into grooming, he can get distracted sometimes and go for hours without realizing his hair is wild and his suit is dirty. he’s toying with the idea of growing a beard.

how often do they lie? what situations cause them to be dishonest? he doesnt really lie as boldly as the others do to strangers, but has frequently lied to the party about how well he’s slept or the contents of his dreams. he himself is disturbed by and ashamed of having actual needs/problems, and would be beyond embarrassed to be a subject of serious concern. he must be seen as stalwart, cool, and in control.

what skills are they proficient in? why? cleaning, sewing, bookkeeping, and multitasking. skills he trained himself in from a young age to look after his family, and honed in his twenty years as a butler.

have they ever been in love? not really, not a lot of opportunity for it. may have had a crush on a book character or two, and hopes that he could fall in love if he ever had the chance.

what do they dislike about themself? why? he dislikes having ambitions or desires that are anything less than objective and reasonable. he thinks it’s a mindset that leads to overindulgence and burdening others.

what is something they love about themself? he is very proud of his ability to serve in hospitality and his cleaning ability. he knows he’s a little twitchy about cleaning, but is a firm believer in the importance of it

do they trust their party? why or why not? he trusts that their hearts are all more or less in the right place, and that they’ll back each other up. he doesn’t necessarily trust in their judgment or people skills. both of these estimations come from experience

what are their feelings on the people who raised them? he loves his family, but does not like them. he’s secretly very bitter and resentful of the fact that he spent his childhood looking after his willful, irresponsible brother and his absent-minded, geeky parents.

what do they dream about, when their dreams are their own? besides the ominous dreams lately, he dreams of work. endless anxiety dreams about work, and his boss, and his boss’s pigeons, and bugs. in terms of life dreams, he wants one day to be a happily married father of a small family. but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

do they see themself as a leader or a follower? follower

what haunts them? what doesn’t? he quit in a very explosive way: he stabbed his boss to death and set all of his boss’s pigeons loose, then walked away. he doesn’t really feel great about it

which of the five senses do they rely the most on? sight, but he’s very sensitive about smells, too

do they follow their head, their heart, or their body? head in most things, but he has a very soft heart.

what is a promise they’ve broken? i guess his job contract

how do they feel about nicknames, titles, or labels that have been given to them? how do they feel about their name? he’s fine with ferris killdeer, but his middle name, phosphorus, is a little embarrassing. he was very flattered to be called “well-dressed fella” by a vallaki guard. his family often called him “ferry” and “phossy”–“phossy” he hates, but “ferry” he would be ok with, if it were someone he liked who said it.

which of the four elements speaks to them the most? if he were asked, he’d say water, because it represents cleanliness to him. but narratively, fire comes up more.

what stories do they like to tell? what stories do they like to hear? he mentions that he used to be a butler, and will make an appeal to authority in re birdkeeping, “i used to look after pigeons for some time–sure they’re filthy birds, like,” but doesn’t get more extravagant than that. he is always happy to lend an ear to someone’s troubling backstory.

who do they miss? his family, at the end of the day. his life with them was frustrating, but at least it was simpler than this one.

how do they mourn? silently and stoically–expressive grief is just asking for attention to him

who would they kill? who would they kill for? he would only kill a fully sentient creature out of a deep sense of betrayal or fear, as in the case of his boss. he would kill to save any one of the party members, but only ireena could tell him to kill someone. he would hesitate if marceline or ismark told him to.

who would they save? who would they be saved by? he would save any of the party members–in order of priority, ireena, marceline, and ismark. he would be saved by any of them too, but marceline would probably help him first if it came to that.

what do they seek out from others? company and conversation

they’re given a blank piece of paper–what do they do with it? fold it carefully and save it

do they seek control, or do they want less of it? he does want control–not in a very power-hungry sense, but he wants to be on top of the situation. hates being on the back foot.

what makes them cry? as of now, there’s probably not a lot that could make him cry. maybe being furiously rebuked by the rest of the party for the things he’s ashamed of (having needs+murdering someone), or maybe soft tears at being told he’s valid

which party member do they go to in a crisis? marceline

which party member do they worry for? ireena

what’s a secret they’ve kept? for marceline, that she’s clearly not a great believer in her god. for himself, that he murdered his boss in his bed.

what is their favorite thing to hold? letter opener

what do they smell like? clean and a little sexy. crisp aldehydes–soft white florals–masculine sandalwood and vetiver

are their hands calloused, soft, or something else entirely? mostly soft, as he wears gloves. some calluses on his fingers from repeated motions done in deep cleaning

do they enjoy poetry? yes, in an aesthete kind of way. too shy to write poetry himself

what are they attracted to in other people? thoughtfulness, self-assurance, and cleverness. people who don’t seek out attention, but aren’t afraid of it either. though he has some grudging attraction to physical beauty regardless of personal values

what are three words they would use to describe themself? orderly, tactful, diligent

why do they fight? because ismark started another fight

what do they need to learn? that he is a person, not a servant

how do they hug people? he would be hugged first. jump at the embrace, then slowly reach around and pat them on the back. in a very emotional moment, he might just cling instead of pat, and put his face close to theirs, or their shoulder. eyes always open.

what do they deprive themself of? opportunities for happiness

when they meet someone, what is the first thing they notice? how they dress, what mood they seem to be in, and how intelligent they might be (which ferris judges based on vocabulary+forthcomingness)

what do they see in their future? hell

what makes them smile? acts of generosity or care, or seeing someone else happy

can they sing? can they dance? both! but a better dancer than singer

what is the most beautiful thing in the world, for them? the feeling of a job well done–for a brief moment, nothing to do but soak in the satisfaction. physically, a well-made home with lots of right angles, or ireena’s smile.

from whom do they seek validation? everyone else in the party–ismark the least.

which is more frightening to them: day or night? night. this is barovia

what was their education like? quite good, but with an overemphasis on entomology 

whose hand do they reach out for? marceline and ireena

what animal do they most relate to? probably a nervous bird that has to have its nest just so

what makes them angry? selfishness, loud noises, and ingratitude

what do they think their role in the party is? what is their role in actuality? he thinks his role is the reasonable, cool-headed one who swoops in when the party needs an honest person to communicate concisely. in actuality, he’s that but also the nervous one who can’t hit an eldritch blast and is desperate to please everyone

what is a quiet passion of theirs? his passion for cleaning and the cleanliness/intelligence of birds is well-known at this point. it seems he also has a passion for protecting children and getting everyone to like him. he’s interested in the humanities.

do they whisper or yell more often? whisper

what kind of flower would they choose to pick from a meadow? he’d sooner leave one than pick one–where would he put it? would he have to carry it all the way back to where he came from? how many bugs have been on this? but if he really had to pick, a small one with pale coloring. nothing flashy or strongly-scented

outside of otherworldly forces, what do they believe in? his life is probably already over

what fight has scared them the most? the siege of the burgomaster’s mansion was up there due to strahd’s theatrics, and the hag due to the horror of finding children’s bones, but probably the wolf fight his first night in barovia. it was his first meeting of strahd and marceline nearly died.

do they value mercy or justice more? whatever keeps the peace best at the moment. he wants to believe mercy, but tends toward justice.

what is holding them back? self-esteem issues

who makes them feel warm? ireena

what makes them laugh? i laugh more than ferris does at the campaign–i think once he might’ve had a quick whoop when marceline won big at a dice game.

what was the best moment of their life? none comes to his mind, which makes him feel a bit sad, but he thinks his life has been somewhat unspectacular. in recent moments, maybe it was dancing with the vistani–the rush of escaping barovia and being safe with his new companions, the smile on ireena’s face–or maybe it was getting into vallaki–despite the kind of creepy stepford smiles, it was a pleasant change of pace from everywhere else so far. but really, it was the moment he set all the pigeons free after he murdered his boss. it was a terrible moment. he felt amazed, triumphant, and liberated for just a split second.

how would they describe their party members? marceline: powerful, and ultimately good-hearted, but a little slimy. complains way too much. ismark: a complete idiot who seems to bully anyone who meets his weird personal standards, but an honorable person. ferris pities him a little. ireena: a wonderful person who doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her. 

[ecotone99]

[MF] The Bad Dream of the Quamatch Canyon Snake

I

​

Bleeding green silt into the ocean the Quamatch River clearly remembers its own icy birth. It flings rainbow-tinted mist as alms for the day.

A snake licks the darkness of an egg. It hatches, hunts, and molts.

Canyon-funneled wind whips its skin into the fork of a dead nettle. The ghost twitches and dances translucent, a vision to trouble a winter sleep.

A goose barks and descends into the water with relief as a steady noise emerges from the west. The sound hides the trees' whispering ans ends all lemon songbirds' morning chorusing.

The snake awakens haunted. Feebly worming out into the din it climbs the ivy confused. Amber shadows fall about and blacken. The harrowing sound everywhere crests. Innumerable legions of geese cloak the valley in false night. They cool and rob all vigor from the blood of the snake, killing him.

Woven and cradled in wind-swaying arms he rots.

The geese unveil the day. The last laughing stragglers give back to the valley its stolen calm.

​

II

​

The night she noticed him driving by she crouched low burning bowls in her truck. Thumbing through tokes with each flick of the bic her eyes caught byzantine patterns in the darkness. He rounded her corner, switched off the high beams, gunned it.

​

“Dude. Friends, enemies, people we know, people we will know or used to know before, they, like, they must pass right by us sometimes, like on the freeway going the opposite way or whatever."

"Sure, I bet it happens a lot. Like the other day I think I saw a dude from my elementary school maybe. I didn't say anything. We run into old friends and shit, where we least expect, like, 'Oh my God, what are you doing here?'"

"Yeah but no but it's the misses I'm talking about."

"Ah like a girl in a movie theater sits in front of the future father of her children?"

"Exactly."

"Or a dude unknowingly sells meth to the tweaker grandson of the asshole who tortured and killed his grandfather in World War Two?"

"Mm. Shooting-stars in the daytime."

​

Night shift finally ended. As she followed him deep into the parking lot he praised his personal god of coincidence, Kizmet the Hamster. As a little kid he had imagined (or discovered?) a pantheon to whom he would forever sacrifice logic and house-spiders, for whom he cultivated a devotion far beyond superstition or reverie.

"You don't like me much.”

She was slow to respond, busy noticing his scratched glasses.

"Nah not really."

Admiring her own bluntness she stretched the long night out of her wrists. Moths and mosquito hawks orbited the lights. Two barn owls huddled in a duct on the roof. They both took a deep breath. A killdeer screamed like a painted warrior. It looked up to study secret maps encoded in auroras. Instructing scouts upwind, the killdeer, a chief, cried reassemble. Five arrowhead bird-shadows slid south into the yard where cargo tanks rusted. They sat and sank more mass into each new winter’s mud like dented shields in Carthaginian grass.

Faking nonchalance and walking backwards he away fired one last time with,"Hey if I were you I wouldn't like me either." He smiled and savored a hint of the hidden shape of her body.

“Not everyone can like everybody." She slammed the truck door started her engine and massaged her own neck.

Cars tailgated and passed her truck the left. Neglecting the spectacular sunrise, replaying the day instead, planning ideal responses to future points in fantasy discussions, she missed the miracle of dawn’s lavender tongue licking up the last drops of darkness. One rare east amber cloud was swimming thinly through terraces of rising warmth. As she rounded her corner she yawned. The day broke and crowned. It tore the skin of the horizon and bled life upon the world.

​

He leaned weight into his fingers, massaging her neck. As she swiped through photos he glimpsed her recent roadkill thumbnails. He was at first mistaken in thinking they were photos of living creatures.

“Woah, go back.”

​

Cricket noise in the canyon reminded him of the whir and beeps of the warehouse equipment. Warm sweat marinated their two hands together. She saw the moon’s regretful expression through her ancestor-guardian-ibis-eyes. She artfully said so and asked him what he saw in the moon. Through misshapen corneas and scratched glasses, through flat windshield-insect-residue and crazy windblown mists he saw the moon sinking slow to sleep. He felt the pulse of destiny in his crotch and answered, "I have no words."

​

A blonde canyon tarantula is perplexed by the flatness of the road. Dyspeptic turkey vultures drink not of the creek.

War-flags aflutter the finch mobs and sentinel kestrels, the swallow reconnaissance and nomad meadowlarks and red wing blackbird bandits all vie to balance the sky. All the armies, with good and absolute reason, fear shrikes.

​

“You made up your own secret gods?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you pray to them?”

“When I was a kid I did.”

Quamatch joins a little town called Uverne to the canyon. The vignerons see it as the boundary—where school-skipping couples kiss, where truck-driving midnight johns drop condoms on the gravel, where proud gangs batter prospects into apostles—between zones.

The oaks along the creek-bed died soon after they paved the road. Those that stood out were nailed. Now termite craters freckle the nooks.

“Your eyes are in front, sockets forward.”

“Predatory primate.”

“And yeah, hawk sockets point forward but they can pretty much Exorcist their head all the way around.”

“But horned owls straight murder hawks. They jack ‘em in the dark.”

“Never thought of hawks as prey.”

“Everything’s prey.”

​

Sour vengeance festers in most crows. However the ravens are wiser than smart. They forget and forgive. Both peck and scissor the carrion and swallow the nested eggs of songbirds. Some mornings these cousins show mocking courtesy to the very sparrows whose offspring they digest.

She swiped back a few.

"Yeah. Poor thing. I think that was off Quamatch. The trucks haul ass through there."

"Ew, you got that close to a dead dog?”

“A coyote. Maybe a hybrid? Was a coyote.”

“What in the actual fuck? Ugh. I’m nauseous. I don’t want to see the rest.”

“To me each one of these photos is like a gravestone or something.”

“Obituary?”

“Epitat?”

“Effigy?”

​

“Kozmit’s helmet fits loose on his head. He’s an engineer in the classic, forgotten sense. He steers the big wheel of weird as we dance and die down here like spinning nickels.”

“He’s the god of synchronicity?”

“He’s also the god of gambling and profound road signage.”

“'Yield'.”

“Exactly.”

“‘Merge’.”

"One Way'."

“‘Be Prepared To Stop’.”

“Woah.”

​

After plucking for canyon ticks in the needles a wren sings riddles of melody pebbles with a tiny tongue of turquoise. It bluffs a marmot and retreats to preen deep in its family brambles.

​

A girl toddler smiled and asserted, “Two bewds.”

“Good job, baby. Two birds?”

“Two bewds fly a-moom.”

“Two birds fly to the moon?”

“Yeah.” The baby giggled with closed eyes. After a few seconds she reopened them smiling and blinking.

“Wow honey, that’s so silly.”

Fumbling bottles of lotion, water, and instant imitation breastmilk mom and dad heard distant croaks. They looked up to see, from above the mouth of a skeletal gray arroyo, two crows enter a cloudless sky and each slowly, eventually, directly cross the face of a daytime moon.

A long silence seemed to increase the wind.

“Ok did that just happen?”, asked mom.

“Yeah but I’m totally done with crazy shit right now. Let’s get the baby fed and changed and just go.”

Before removing a chubby arm from her eyes the baby said cheerfully, “Sleepy snake. Sleep in a tree. Silly snake sleep in a tree."

This prompted mom and dad to share an uncertain glance.

“Good job, baby.”

“Let’s just go. She ain’t hella wet or crying.”

“Still no cell service?”

“Spotty.”

​

​

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J. Allen DeVera -- 2020

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