#i think my prof likes me enough to not uh. kill me dead.

[truecorvid]

miserable little end to my college career

[twotwinks]

Ok

Y’all? Y ‘ a l l

I know I said I’d update last night after the show but uh

Well

I ended up Slightly Overwhelmed

Because I 100% ended up on stage with Colin and Brad yo!

So basically this is the story of How I Died

They asked for three volunteers who could help them out narratively and I’m like “hey I’m a creative writing major I could maybe do that” and then my mom started whispering “volunteer” and by that point Brad had already picked one guy so I’m like “well now there’s probably an even 50/50 chance that I’ll get picked I’ll take that” so I put up my hand, Brad picked another guy from the right side of the audience, then was like “alright let’s get a young lady up here” (which I technically Am Not but it’s fine!) and started scanning back over to the left side of the audience, and there’s lil ol me, sitting in the very third row (wearing Dramatic Earrings and a stripey sweater that I probably subconsciously picked to draw attention to myself) with my hand half up and he just looks straight into my eyes and goes “you”

So I gotta walk super far to get on stage because I’m sitting in the orchestra pit, but I was wearing my lil boots and I know how to run on my toes so I nyoomed up the stairs and across the stage and Brad’s like “we’ll put you in the middle” and takes me by the shoulders and backs me up to center stage and I’m like OH GREAT THE ATTENTION SPOT because at this point I’m somewhat panicking

Anyway the game is called Pillars, and basically Colin and Brad were telling a story, but using us as “the pillars of the story” because the joke was every once in a while they’d stop in the middle of a sentence and touch one of us and then we had to finish it.

Spoiler alert: I did NOT possess the narrative skill for this and my fiction prof would be Disappointed askhasdk

The story ends up being Brad has assembled a diamond-encrusted bra for the Queen of England (I had nothing to do with that, I promise, the audience suggested “bra” and Colin came up with the rest). I did, however, come up with the murder plot against the queen (which basically went...Brad: “They don’t want her to receive the bra because they’re planning to” Me: “KILL HER”) as well as the bra’s ability to explode (the murder plot made mild sense and drove most of the story but why did I make it blow up? Why did you think that worked brain? Spoiler alert it didn’t really and Brad had to perform modifications on the bra after the guy next to me also made it stab the queen/self destruct askhas).

Also. I find it necessary to say. Colin seemed to be using all the volunteers pretty evenly but I SWEAR BRAD HAD A PERSONAL VENDETTA AGAINST ME HE WAS NOT LEAVING ME ALONE EVERY OTHER SENTENCE WAS ME SIR PLEASE I’M JUST MAKING THIS WORSE

Towards the end, the guys end up killing a man who they think is an assassin waiting for the queen using a cat (my suggestion, which I regretted as it was leaving my mouth, because of course my mind immediately went to “THE CAT!”). The man ends up being a cleaning guy, so then they have to hide the body because oops they murdered an innocent man (again, Colin’s idea, for all this went off the rails 25% of it was also Colin’s doing) and Colin’s listing out what they’re going to do with the body, they’re going to take him down to the catacombs (which is how they snuck in) and then...he cues me, and I’m basically thinking something along the lines of throwing the body in an underground river, but I can’t think of a Concise way to say this when Colin has his hand on my arm (seriously how can you expect anybody to think when some of the greatest improvisers in the world are touching you, let alone when they also happen to be your heroes) so I ended up saying “DROWN HIM!”

Y’know

Drown the dead guy

A slight bit of flawed logic that Colin immediately pointed out asdkjhasd

But! They still ended up doing what I’d wanted them to do so it ended up being fine!

The end of the game was definitely the most terrifying, something I learned is that when these guys get close to the end they start making things Much More Difficult, either on themselves or on their volunteers. So I have Colin on my right, luckily not super close because I would have definitely stopped functioning, but Brad is on my left and he’s LESS THAN TWO INCHES AWAY I SWEAR TO GOD and they start prompting us for really hard suggestions, Colin starts with his father’s last three words and I can’t think of anything, and he’s looking at the guy on the other side of him, but I’m figuring he’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security and at the last minute he’s gonna turn and make me finish it (this is the price I pay for being Hyper Aware of everything huh) but luckily he spared mercy on my Tiny Anxious Soul and actually DID make the other guy come up with everything! Then Brad is like “oh yes, reminds me of my grandfather’s last words, his last four words” and I’m like OH COME ON but luckily he ALSO picked on the guy on his other side! I was spared completely!

I did not fare so well during the finishing limerick, however, (Brad I don’t remember why you decided we should do a limerick but I hope it went about as well as you were expecting)

Brad starts with me, and he’s already established a bit of an Irish theme (carrying over from the first volunteer who said she wanted to visit Ireland) and he starts with what I hear as “there once was a man from” and I love Ireland yo, I miss it, and so I’m thinking about when I went there and marched in the Dublin St Patrick’s Day parade, so I say “Dublin,” but judging by Brad’s reaction to this I now wonder if he actually said “there once was a man named” and I just have really bad hearing

Anyway, he then continues with “whose cauldron was a-” clearly setting up the next guy to say “bubbling” but this guy decides to be cheeky and say “sizzling” or something that definitely doesn’t rhyme and I’m like! What is happening! Brad sets me up to say “mouse” to finish the next rhyme of the limerick, which is what I say, and he brushes over it so fast that then I’m like yeah maybe I should have been a little more creative but it’s FINE because the next guy continues to break the rhyme scheme by saying “spouse” as the last line when he either should have rhymed with “Dublin” or whatever the other guy said. (I can’t remember it was A Lot!) For the record, a limerick’s rhyme scheme is supposed to be aabba but we ended up with abccc and you BET the guys made fun of us not knowing how limericks work for the rest of the show

They let us go after that, thank goodness, because I do NOT think I could have handled much longer of trying to direct this wild nonsense! And so they took the mics from us and shook our hands and I was Bad and fixated on Colin so I Very Distinctly remember his hand being very soft and the exact way he said “thank you so much” like! Tucking THAT one away into the back of my brain so I can pull it out in secret and remember how happy I was then when I’m having a hard time being happy in the present!

So yeah then I ran back to my seat, which was like in the middle of the third row (y’all I was so close! I could see their faces and their expressions perfect) and I had to pass by this middle-aged group of people and one of them has been drinking a little so he just goes “yeah girl great job!” (he was also cheering when I passed him the first time to go up on stage) and high fived me, and got his whole group of people to high five me as I went by askhsd

This guy, I swear, during intermission when I went to run to the bathroom and passed him again he had to cheer me again, and I’m certain I felt Hand somewhere on the tassels/hem of my sweater and I’m like SIR but I’m telling myself he was just aiming for my arm but I nyoomed too fast asjhasdh

One of the ushers also told me “good job up there” when I went by so! I feel like I didn’t really do that great but hey maybe I did!

That’s pretty much the End of my adventure! I did unfortunately have to deadname myself when I went up on stage because my mom brought me to the show, and after her last reaction to my chosen name I wasn’t quite brave enough to have Brad announce it to the world, y’know? But I actually ended up tweeting them both once I got home to say thank you, and I told them about that too, and I woke up to a like on the tweet from Colin so he at least knows my real name! And really that’s all I could ask for, this whole night was all I could ever ask for, I’m just so grateful I got this opportunity and that I’ve been strong enough to live my life long enough for this to happen to me! It was an absolute dream come true, of course I was secretly hoping that maybe I’d end up on stage but I really did think it was nothing but a dream! I never thought it would actually happen! Hundreds of people in that audience, and Brad decided to pick me!

I’m just so happy, really. I’ve been really low the last two weeks, especially this last week, but for now at least everything is good!

(Fingers crossed I can come up with some way to get over to our Rival College in January when Colin does a Hyprov show there!)

[ninjahijabimuse]

Okay I was just re-watching Clue(1985) and oh my god I totally forgot how hilarious it can be at times. For example -

Mrs. White: Husbands should be like Kleenex. Soft, strong, and disposable.

Wadsworth: But he was your second husband. Your first husband also disappeared!

Mrs. White: Well, that was his job. He was an illusionist.

Wadsworth: But he never RE-appeared!

Mrs. White: He wasn't a very good illusionist.

Prof. Plum: Well, what are you afraid of? A fate worse than death? Mrs. Peacock: No, just death. Isn't that enough?

Mr. Green: Well, he couldn't have been dead. Prof. Plum: He was! At least I thought he was. But, what difference does it make now? Miss Scarlet: Makes quite a difference to him!

Colonel Mustard: Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?

Wadsworth: You don't need any help from me, sir.

Miss Scarlet: Why has the car stopped? Professor Plum: It’s frightened.

Wadsworth: ...and to make a long story short... Everybody else: Too late!

Mrs. White: I hated her... so... much, It--it..the f--, it--flame...flames...flames on the side of my face, breathing, breath... heaving, breaths... heaving...

Wadsworth: Communism was just a red herring.

Wadsworth: You see? Just like the Mounties, we always get our man! Mr. Green:: Mrs. Peacock was a man?!

Wadsworth: I'm merely a humble butler. Col. Mustard: What exactly do you do? Wadsworth: I buttle, sir.

Wadsworth: The game's up, Scarlet. There are no more bullets left in that gun. Miss Scarlet: Oh, come on. You don't think I'm gonna fall for that old trick? Wadsworth: It's not a trick. There was one shot at Mr. Boddy in the study, two for the chandelier, two at the lounge door, and one for the singing telegram. Miss Scarlet: That's not six. Wadsworth: One plus two plus two plus one. Miss Scarlet: Uh-uh, there was only one shot that got the chandelier, that's one plus two plus ONE plus one. Wadsworth: Even if you're right, that would be one plus one plus two plus one, not "one plus TWO plus one plus one." Miss Scarlet: Okay, fine. One plus two plus one - SHUT UP! The point is, there is one bullet left in this gun and guess who's gonna get it!

Col. Mustard: Mr. Boddy threatened to send those pictures to my dear old mother; the shock would have killed her! Mrs. White: Oh. Well, that would be quite an achievement, since you told us that she's dead already.

Mrs. White: He was deranged, he was... lunatic. He didn't seem to like me very much. He had threatened to kill me in public. Miss Scarlet: Why would he want to kill you in public? Wadsworth: I think she meant he threatened, in public, to kill her. Miss Scarlet: Oh. And was that his final word on the matter? Mrs. White: Being killed is pretty final, wouldn't you say?

[ladyloveandjustice]

Mom and I listened to Chernow’s biography of Hamilton before seeing the play and I want to write down some of my favorite hot facts that were basically “WHAT A SOAP OPERA  ALL THESE GUYS ARE SO FUCKING PETTY” dont try to nitpick for accuracy on these they’re heavily paraphrased take them with a grain of salt i’m just writing this so i can remember the basics

-I think actually maybe the most hilarious and admittedly brave thing Hamilton did was very early on, a bunch of revolutionary guys came to lynch his prof from Kings College for being a loyalist. Even though they weren’t on the same side, Hamilton was there for his prof, so he actually BLOCKED THIS ANGRY MOB at the staircase and LECTURED them to give his prof time to escape. He was like “blablabla U GUYS R HURTING THE CAUSE >:(” and somehow they didn’t all kill him and he successfully delayed them. Amazing.

-Hamiltons mom was AN EXTREME BADASS, basically her mother sold her off to marry this mean guy and she HATED HIM and he hated her for not being submissive enough and she was like “screw you” and just..left. So he threw her in prison for adultery! like literally prison! and it was prison that wasn’t even used for anything else she was the only one in the prison. He thought this would finally make her submissive but instead she basically skipped town the second she was let out and NEVER CAME BACK. So she was still married to this dude the whole time, which is why she couldn’t marry Hamilton’s dad. 

(also after Hamilton’s dad left she ran a shop to support her family, which was unusual for a young woman to do back then, but she was independent like whoa)

unfortunately she also had a son with her first husband that she left behind with when she ran away(in her defense, I imagine she didn’t have the means to support him at the time and also would have gotten caught if she went back for him), so her first husband turned her son against her, reminding him all the time that she abandoned him and saying she was evil...so when she died the son basically came in and claimed all of the property she’d left and rendered his orphaned half-brothers homeless.NOT VERY NICE AT ALL.

-James Monroe and two other dudes were actually the ones who confronted Hamilton about possible speculation and he invited them to his house and gave this WHOLE HOUR LONG presentation on his affair, with a bazillion papers and letters as proof. Like about fifteen minutes in, everyone realized they were wrong and were like “okay we’re very sorry for poking our nose into your private matters we believe you we’ll leave you alone” but Hamilton was like “NO I’M NOT DONE YOU HAVEN’T HEARD IT ALL YET” and went through the entire thing in ridic self-flagellating detail while his audience just cringed. Afterwards one of the guys was like “that was one of the most humiliating things i’ve ever witnessed”

-Anyway James Monroe definitely probably leaked the Reynolds documents Hamilton showed him even though he swore not to show them to anyone. YES A FUTURE PRESIDENT WHO COULD NOT BE TRUSTED WE’RE ALL SURPRISED.Hamilton was SO mad about this he wrote to him basically saying “YOU BETTER APOLOGIZE OR MEET ME OUTSIDE” because that was his response to everything.  Burr was actually chosen as the mediator for this because he was friendly to both of them at the time and he basically tried to calm them both down and prevent a duel. Monroe had initially said he believed that Hamilton wasn’t embezzling or speculating or whatever, but then he was like “UH I CHANGED MY MIND I’VE DECIDED NOW YOU ARE” which made Hamilton SO mad. Burr actually chastised Monroe about this, basically like “c’mon, we both know Hamilton would never betray his office, I know it, you know it, It’s Hamilton.” Anyway Burr saved Hamilton from dueling James Monroe.

But do you know who ELSE would have probably been fine dueling James Monroe? ELIZA. She was, rightfully, very pissed at him for exposing something that hurt her so much. Monroe did his time as president, and once it was over, he decided he wanted to patch things up with her (Hamilton was long dead by this time ofc, and Eliza was elderly). So he came to her house and Eliza was Not Happy when a servant reported his arrival. Hamilton’s kids remembered “her voice got low like it always does when she’s angry”. She went to see him in their living room and he was all “So, Eliza, a lot has happened and there was fault on both sides”-

and she was basically like “EXCUSE ME??? IS THAT AN APOLOGY? BECAUSE IT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE AN APOLOGY. IF YOU’RE HERE TO ACTUALLY APOLOGIZE I’LL LISTEN TO IT. BUT IF YOU’RE GONNA GIVE ME SOME WEAK “BLAME ON BOTH SIDES” BULLSHIT I’M NOT HERE FOR IT. I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING BUT YOU SAYING SORRY THAT YOU BETRAYED MY LATE HUSBAND AND RUINED OUR LIVES. IF YOU CAN’T SAY THAT, THEN GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE”.

Monroe was flabbergasted, and apparently it was too much for him to give an actual apology, so he just left. So let the record show Eliza schooled an ex-president and kicked him out of her house.

-everything relating to Phillip and Hamilton’s duels was super sad. When he was waiting to hear about the results of Phillip’s duel with the doctor (or someone) Hamilton was so overcome with anxiety he actually fainted. He had to be propped up by two people during the funeral because he was so unsteady. Not only did he fall into his first bout of lethargic depression and actually didn’t write anything for a good while (a big deal for him) he didn’t even answer sympathy notes until four months later (also a big deal for him).

-According the doctor, in his own duel, Hamilton knew it was a mortal wound as soon as he was shot. He collapsed, but came to on the boat and the first thing he said was “GUYS BE CAREFUL OF HANDLING THAT PISTOL IT’S STILL LOADED IT COULD GO OFF I DIDN’T ACTUALLY SHOOT IT BUT PLEASE REMEMBER TO TELL EVERYONE I WAS GOING TO THROW AWAY MY SHOT” He did actually shoot it of course, but he fact he didn’t seem to know this makes it seem more likely he just accidentally squeezed the trigger when he was shot.

- the other thing he kept babbling about was how they should get Eliza but break it to her gradually. in stages. Ease her into it. Which it’s nice you’re considerate of her feelings NOW, wish you’d been considerate enough NOT TO DO THE DUEL.

-anyway the description of his death in the bio was very sad and he said he didn’t hold anything against Burr and was at peace though so i guess that’s nice.

-in contrast Burr was such an ASSHOLE about Hamilton’s death omg

-Before I go into WHAT A GIANT ASS JERK HE IS I will give Burr one credit: he believed strongly women were equal to men, and made sure Theodosia was educated in everything, and even had her taught to shoot from horseback. Like he really wanted to make sure his daughter knew how to kill stuff from a horse. i respect that.

-what I don’t respect is that Hamilton actually has EXTREMELY GOOD REASON to feel he couldn’t be trusted in office- there was this whole drama where after New York had a yellow fever epidemic, Burr started pushing this Manhattan water company that would provide clean water to the public, which would be a huge help with yellow fever. He got Hamilton on board with it. But his real plan was actually to sneak in some last minute provisions to the water company bill that basically turned it from a water company to a bank that could complete with Federalist banks. Not only compete with them, but have less restrictions to them. So he basically tricked Hamilton into pushing through a bill that was designed to undermine his own beloved banks. Hamilton was PRETTY PISSED, and I can’t blame him for that. Not to mention, the water company obviously never happened, and other water companies weren’t set up because everyone thought it would be covered- so when yellow fever came back to new york? No clean water, lots of deaths, some of which could have probably been prevented if Burr hadn’t been a greedy asshole.

-Burr showed some signs of regret immediately after the duel, moving towards Hamilton and wanting to talk to him, but he pretty much treated it pretty callously after that. Actually, he want to have breakfast afterwards, and his cousin came to visit and they chatted and HE ACTED COMPLETELY NORMAL AND NEVER MENTIONED HE’D LITERALLY JUST KILLED THE FORMER SECRETARY OF TREASURY. When Burr’s cousin went into town afterwards someone told him what had happened and cuz was like “nah you gotta be wrong i was just with him and he didn’t mention anything like that at all! He seemed completely normal!” then he saw a newspaper and was like “WHAT THE FUCK.”

-he also happily went around sleeping with tons of ladies after the duel and even wrote to Theodosia saying “I actually recommend doing a duel and courtship at same time it keeps ya invigorated” AND WOW WHAT A SUPER APPROPRIATE THING TO WRITE TO YOUR DAUGHTER. Maybe Theodosia was glad to die at sea after reading that. Anyway, the only sign of regret Burr really showed was “the world was wide enough” quote (which might have been a dark joke, but I think there was a grain of truth in it regardless, like Lin Manuel says, who knows).

-Burr was in incredible debt- (so was Hamilton when he died- Eliza’s inheritance from her dad wasn’t enough to cover it but fortunately all of Hamilton’s friends came together and secretly gave Eliza money to cover it which is nice. Jefferson was in SO much debt when he died his entire estate and 200 slaves were all sold to cover it. yeah he didn’t free anyone besides the slaves who were his children in his will, an asshole to the end.) so he left the country to escape creditors in addition to the murder charges and used a pseudonym. 

-Burr also had this weird fucking plan to become emperor of mexico or seize spanish florida or some shit and was plotting it, and he was actually tried for treason because of this! Thomas Jefferson REALLY REALLY wanted Burr to get punished and put all the pressure he could on the Supreme Court to find him guilty and it was test of our constitutional powers- would the supreme court bow down to the president? turns out no, since Burr got off.

-However, he wasn’t unscathed- a SHIT-TON of people close to him died around the time Theodosia died and he was devastated and basically a recluse afterwards (life doesn’t discriminate...) He married a second wife, but she then realized he was fucking terrible with money and was going to drive her into poverty with his shitty land deals (also she was nearly 20 years younger- I wonder if she was counting on him dying and leaving her something and then realized he was going to die and leave her with DEBT instead). So she got- DRUMROLL- ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S SON, ALEX JR, TO DIVORCE THEM. such a asshole move honestly, i gotta respect it, you go girl. Burr might not have been able to tell what was going on though since he was having strokes and stuff. She managed to divorce him JUST IN TIME, on the day of his death.

-honestly i’m most interested in the petty drama of history and how all these people were just behaving like they’re five and fucking up constantly and listening to this biography proved that to me. people are so ridiculous.

[chopper-witch]

TV/Movie Quotes (+ out of context class quotes) - prompts for me to write

So I say I take requests but I also don’t because I’m an idiot with the attention span of a leaf in a tornado. If you ever wish to request anything from me, I will gladly take a character + a quote or few from one of these lists (just specify list and number, please). You don’t need to give me a quote, but it helps more than just an idea. I write for most Marvel and Star Wars characters. Quotes below the cut.

Out of Context Class Quotes

“Time is a social construct. So is money.”

“It’s like a cigarette after sex.”

“It’s the only thing I can do short of getting you hooked on cocaine.”

“No rulers goddamit! No! No! No!”

A: “You’re going to give her a stroke.” B: “Can I give it to you now?” C (the professor): “what, the stroke?”

A (prof): “So you did this left to right?” B: “Yeah.” A:“Do you write left to right in your native language.?” B: “…. uh yeah.”

“Isn’t that all kids nowadays?”

“Well you know, I’m a former alcoholic.”

“Why the fuck should I give a shit?”

“The first time I saw Felicity Jones in a movie was when I had my weekly Friday movie night with Jane Fonda.”

“This is just stupid, stupid stupid. But it works.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I heavily critiqued a play to the director without realizing it?”

“That’s a great fucking idea.”

“He’s talking about masturbation.”

“I know I swear a whole fucking lot.”

“Oh goddamit, my car’s about to be towed. Twenty minute break guys.”

“I never liked her.”

“Here you go, just gonna give you an F anyway.”

“Want to know why cocaine is a business man’s drug?”

“I mean, cocaine is always a good plan.”

“People live there?”

“Just shooting the shit at Foxy Loxy’s.”

“Why do all YouTube videos have the same stupid song?”

“Sorry, gotta fix this before I can keep lecturing. It’s not centered properly.”

“There are only nine of you!”

“While I don’t condone drug usage…”

“She who shall not be named…”

“I don’t know what got on that table but it isn’t coming off and this room needs to be spotless for the weekend.”

“Uh-uh. No ID, no entrance.”

“Oh yah, that room is confirmed haunted.”

“I heard the ghost started the dryer fire.”

“Did they ever catch the person who vandalized the statue with googly eyes?”

“If you think about it, you park anywhere near here for just $150.”

“It’s cupcake day on Thursday.”

“You either wake or die.”

“He’s turning his mother into a whore.”

“When we deal with our desires instead of our needs we’re in deep shit.”

“His use of surprise.”

“She who shall not be named could come here and fire me.”

“I’m motivated by making obscene amounts of money.”

“Well if you haven’t seen Alien then you might as well pack it up and go home right now - it’s a required watch.”

“Come on, open up, just you and me baby.”

“I’m going to send a bug report and then turn you into lizard.”

“The bug farm is for you if you don’t open up.”

“I don’t want to click on it i just wanna look at it… devices and drives yeah.”

“Have you seen ‘All is True’? Nope. I’ve seen whoops!”

“It’s saturday night cosmic fuck time.”

“What does that mean? The fuck if I know.”

“Keep going back in until less and less people come out.”

“I see the cult status dropping”

“I’m way too talented to be here”

A: “what is happening up there right now? They’re ruining this!” B: “I think someone has a horse.”  

“That’s cause you came late, 30 - no not even - 38 minutes late!” 

“So we have a little occult in here.”

“Follow me to Arizona, live amongst the sand dunes, eat flesh, worship the lack of water.”

“We’re going to call this culty.”

A: “Did you get a haircut?” B: “I took a shower.” 

“Bless you my child”

“I know... I don’t know what day it is.”

“It’s locked up, it’s not letting me do anything.”

“Maybe we’ll just sit here, staring at each other for the next 30 minutes.”

“It’s German, pretty German, ah.”

“So it happened.”

“Someone said no, I don’t like you.”

“That’s pretty good, pretty culty.”

GOT

“The gods aren’t down here, just the six of us, you here me?” 

“I wish I was the monster all of you think I am.” 

“Yes. All men must die. But we are not men.” 

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” 

“Not at all what I intended. You see, I had never seen the poison work before. Tell [name]. I want her to know it was me.” 

“I grew up with soldiers. I learned how to die a long time ago.” 

“You know nothing, [name].” 

“I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.” 

“Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.”

“There’s no cure for being a cunt.” 

“Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick, a shadow on the wall.”

“We’re late for dinner as it is.” “You’re very respectful.” “I’m very hungry.” 

“That’d been a shit way to die.” “As far as I’ve seen they’re all shit ways to die.” 

“I’ve had an exciting life. I want my death to be boring.” 

“This isn’t a strange place, this is my home. It’s the people who are strange.” 

“We both peddle fantasies [name]. Mine just happen to be entertaining.” 

“Please. He’ll punish me.” “You think I care what he does to you?” 

“You are the few. We are the many. And when the many stop fearing the few...” 

“I love her. I love her... and I can’t help her.” 

“If a man knows what he is and remains true to himself the choice is no choice at all. He must fulfill his destiny and become who he is meant to be. However much he may hate it.” 

“It’s easy to confuse what is with what ought to be. Especially when what is has worked out in your favor.”

“In my experience eloquent men are right every bit as often as imbeciles.” 

“Do you know who you are? You’re no one. You’re nothing.”

“So mainly you talk?” “And drink. But I’ve made it so far!”

“I’m here to help. Don’t eat the help.” 

“You’ve lost [name]. It’s the only joy I can find in all this misery.” 

“Lesson number one: assume everyone wants to hit ya. Cause they do [name].” 

“They killed my friends.” “You have friends?” “Not anymore.” 

“That is my plan. You don’t approve?” 

“We obviously didn’t communicate clearly. We’re here to discuss your surrender, not mine.” 

“No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone.” 

“Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear.” 

“For what it’s worth, I have been a cynic for as long as I can remember. Everyone’s always asking me to believe in things - family, gods, kings, myself. It was often tempting until I saw where belief got people. So I said no, thank you to belief. And yet here I am. I believe in you. It’s embarrassing really. I’d swear to my sword, but I don’t actually have a sword.” 

“Doesn’t really roll off the tongue.” “No, but I like it better.”

“They won’t obey you unless they fear you.”

“I am not your enemy. The dead are your enemy.”

“Why did you do that? Doesn’t matter now.”

“Good question.” “I know it’s a good question, I’m looking for an answer.”

“Yet you succeeded, how?” “I read the books and followed the instructions.”

“He really was a cunt, wasn’t he?”

“That was my prize mistake - a failure of imagination.”

“She’s a monster, you do know that?” “To you, I’m sure. To others, I’m sure.”

“You love her. You really do love her. You poor fool. She’ll be the end of you.”

“Will there be pain?” “No, I made sure of that.” “That’s good.”

“You’ve just won the biggest prize in the world, what could you possibly be upset about?”

“See, we pay our debts.” “Right, just not to me.”

“Listen to me, cunt. ’Til I get what I’m owed, a dragon doesn’t get to kill ya, you don’t get to kill ya, only I get to kill ya.”

“You’re fucked.” “Don’t you mean we’re fucked?” “No, I do not. Dragons are where our partnership ends.”

“I have to tell [name].” “May as well jump back in that river.”

“This isn’t a war we can win.” “So what do we do, sue for peace?”

“They’re beautiful aren’t they?” “It wasn’t the word I was thinking of, but… yes, they are. Gorgeous beasts.”

“I haven’t given you permission to leave.” “With respect, your grace, I don’t need permission. I am a king.”

“She wanted to kill me! They would have killed me.” “But they didn’t, did they? So what you whinging about?” “I’m not whinging.” “Your lips are moving and you’re complaining about something. That’s whinging. This one’s been killed six times. You don’t hear him bitching about it.”

“You never would have survived what I survived.” “I guess we’ll never know.”

“How did a mad fucker like you live this long?” “I’m good at killing people.”

“You know what I like about you? You’re not a hero.”

“Every lord I’ve ever met has been a cunt. I don’t know why the Lord of Light would be any different.”

“I do not need to be watched over or minded or care for. I’m not a child, I am [title] and I am home. This is the safest place for me.”

“The most important person in the world can’t fly off to the most dangerous place in the world!” 

“If you die, we’re all lost. Everyone, everything.”

“Dumb cunt. Oh, fuck. Fuck it.”

“Maybe it really is all cocks in the end.” 

“Yes, he’s always been a champion of the downtrodden.” “I think we’re about to be the downtrodden.”

“A pleasant surprise in an unpleasant situation.”

“Come on, you can suck his magic cock later.” 

“What’s in there?” “Fuck off.”

“I thought you were dead.” “Not yet. You came pretty close.”

“The only one that needs protecting is the one that gets in her way.”

“You put yourself at risk.” “I put yourself at risk.”

“Anyone touches it, I’ll kill you first.”

“I left this shit city because I didn’t want to die in it. Am I going to die in this shit city?” “You might.” “And this is all your idea.”

“I think we ought to begin with larger concerns.” “Then why are you talking? You’re the smallest concern here.”

“This isn’t about living in harmony, this is just about living.”

“Oh, fuck loyalty!”

“But have you ever considered learning to lie ever now and then, just a bit?”

“When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies.”

“That is indeed a problem. The more immediate problem is that we’re fucked.”

”She’ll definitely murder you.”

“She thinks I’m an idiot for trusting you. A lot of people think that actually.” 

“I suppose we should say goodbye, one idiot to another.”

“I have never been more sorry about anything.” “I will not hear it from you. I will not hear it!” 

“You know it in your heart if there’s anything left of it.” 

“It appears Tyrion’s assessment was correct. We’re fucked.” 

“I’ve done plenty of things I regret.” “Not compared to me you haven’t.” “No. Not compared to you.” 

“I loved your mother since the time I was a boy.” “And yet you betrayed her.” “I loved you. More than anyone.” “And yet you betrayed me.”

“I’m just the executioner. You passed the sentence.” 

“I never could have survived what you survived.” “You would have. You’re the strongest person I know.” 

“She never fooled you. You always knew exactly who she was and you loved her anyway.”

“I don’t like heroes.” 

“I know a killer when I see one.”

“Love is the death of duty.” “Sometimes, duty is the death of love.”

“You were exactly where you were supposed to be.”

“See? You’re not the only one who’s clever.”

“Do not become what you struggle to defeat.”

“Many underestimated you. Most of them are dead now.”

“You’re a cold little bitch, aren’t you? Guess that’s why you’re still alive.”

“There it is - ‘trust me’. And it’s you I should trust? Only you? I don’t need trust any longer. I don’t want it and I don’t have room for it.”

“No one can survive in this world without help. No one.”

“Those are brave men knocking at our gates. Let’s go kill them.”

“They will not bend.” “And what happens with things that don’t bend?”

“I will not be a page in someone else’s history book.”

“When it comes to war I fight for [blank]. When it comes to love, I don’t choose sides.”

“They’ll be following you now.” “Who?” “I don’t know. They. They. The ominous they. The man pulling the strings. Or woman.”

“Know your strengths, use them wisely and one man can be worth 10,000.”

“You’re not interesting enough to be offensive.”

“Don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life.”

“As for your veiled threats -” “What veil?”

Supernatural 

“Oh you, always blaming witches.” “Yeah, cause it’s usually witches.”

“You know who wears sunglasses inside? Blind people. And douchebags.”

“There is not much difference between madness and devotion.”

“Just try to relax.” “Just try to shut up.”

“We’re humans. And when humans want something, really, really bad… we lie.” “Why?” “Because. That’s how you become president.”

“You do not know my family. What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner.”

“Were you racing me?” “No, I was beating your ass.” “Very mature.”

“You throw away your life because you’ve come to assume that it’ll bounce right back into your lap. But the human soul is not a rubber ball. It’s vulnerable, impermanent, but stronger than you know.”

“How do you feel?” “Like I got hit by a… A planet.”

“We going to fight or make out, ‘cause I’m getting some real mixed signals here.”

“Look, I know losing someone you love - it’s terrible. You shut yourself off. Believe me, I know. But when you shut out pain… you shut out everything else, too.”

“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.” “I don’t know about that. Remember that waitress in Tampa?”

“Boy, three bedrooms, two baths, and one homicide. This place is gonna sell like hotcakes.”

“No drinking, no gambling, no premarital sex. [name], they basically just outlawed 90 percent of your personality.”

“A dentist drilled a guy to death.” “You mean the non-sexy kind of drilling, right?”

“You’re either laughing because you’re scared or you’re laughing because you’re stupid.”

“Did you know that a cat’s penis is sharply barbed along its shaft? I know for a fact the females were not consulted about that.”

“If you’re gonna to make an omelet sometimes you have to break some spines.”

“You’re dead.” “Nope. Just using a dead man’s phone.”

“Just a couple hours ago, I killed Death. I’m pretty much open for anything.” 

“Were you ever nice?” “1985. Worst year of my life.”

“This will work perfectly!” “Just wish I got it before she took my temperature.”

“Tell me, what makes you so special?” “I like to think it’s because of my perky nipples.”

“You’re a zombie.” “I’m a taxpayer.” 

“So you’re sayin’ we’re both a couple of dumbasses.” “I prefer the word ‘trusting’. Less dumb. Less ass.”

“Killing things that need killing is kind of our job. Last I checked, taking pleasure in that is not a crime.”

“You’re right. I am a monster. And I’ve done bad. I’ve done things you cannot even imagine. Horrible, evil, messy things. And I’ve loved every. Damn. Minute.”

“I’m ready to die. And I’m ready to watch people I love die. But I’m not ready to be your bitch.”

“Hey, did you know the Nazis had a special branch devoted to archaeology?” “A little early for Nazi trivia, especially without caffeine.”

“OK, look. I want a big funeral. All right? I’m talking epic. OK? Open car, choir, Sabbath cover band, and Gary Busey reading the eulogy.”

“You’re a good man. My mother told me that.” “I seriously doubt she said that. And if you knew me you would seriously doubt it’s true.”

“A demon summoning: why?” “Why? To summon a demon, jackass.”

“How dare you?” “I am the daringest devil you’ve ever met, love.”

“I know it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t always been this cute and cuddly.”

“Turns out Harold was stealing the other residents’ Viagra.” “I know. A real dick move, huh?”

“This is bothering me.” “Well, you are digging up a corpse.” “No, not that. That’s uh, that’s pretty par for the corpse, actually.”

“Check the freezer. Maybe there’s some human hearts behind the Haagen-Dazs or something?”

“Why does an angel want me dead?” “Cause they’re dicks.”

“He’s singing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ right now.” “Good song.” “Not 50 times in a row.”

“It… was self-defense.” “Eating a heart is self-defense?” 

“You’re a doctor. You’re a medical professional. You’re trying to tell me that my brother’s life is in God’s hands? What, is that supposed to be a comfort? God has nothing to do with this equation at all.”

“Well, there’s pretty much what we do know, that they screwed with financial markets, they helped Hitler get started, along with god knows what else — probably disco.”

“Go… to hell.” “Been there. Done that.”

“[name] loves research. He does. He keeps it under his mattress right next to his KY.”

“Have you tried bacon?” “Do snakes like bacon?” “I don’t know. I do.” Bonus: “Would you like some bacon?” *snake hisses* 

“Did you know Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code officially makes it against the law to turn a human into a zombie?”

“God writes paperbacks in his underwear.” 

“Great. Heaven promised. We should take that to the bank.”

“You wanna lie to him?” “I want Zeppelin to get back together.” 

“He’s just another monster.” “You don’t mean it.” “Hell I don’t.”  

“Double? You make double? And that was my parking space!” 

“I can’t believe you taped it!” “I thought it was hot!” 

“In what was supposed to be a speech on farm subsidies, the president instead spent more than two hours disclosing his entire tax history, deep ties to Russia and North Korea and quote “a demon deal” he made with someone named Crowley.” 

“Dude what the hell. Did we just walk into a case?”

“I need to go to hell.” “You mean like metaphorically or...” “No. Literally. And I understand you can take me.” “Yeah that’s a no. So you can go to hell. Metaphorically.” 

“Wow. Yeah. You guys are screwed.” 

“When people can’t lie, the internet gets real quiet.” 

“I’ll stop talking.” “Seems like a good idea.” 

“This is why people need to lie. It keeps the peace, you know?” 

“I’m a writer. Lying’s kinda what we do.” 

“I know what you’re thinking: it’s been a while and I still look pretty good.” 

“Where have you been?” “Um... everywhere and nowhere, to the edge of the universe and beyond. And I saw Springsteen on Broadway. Man’s a genius.” 

“And it’s been confirmed the Queen of England is, in fact, a lizard.”  

“So you don’t know if it’ll work?” “If I say it works, it works!” 

“See, existence is all about balance. Dark and light, good and evil, chocolate and peanut butter.”  

“I liked the old Death better. He was all about fried pickles and tickle porn.” 

“Either get on board or walk away!” *walks away* 

“Ones in reverse, ones got no yellow, one of them - it’s just all squirrels.” 

“You believe him?” “Was he lying?” 

“I don’t feel like that any more. I don’t feel anything.” 

“Wait a second. You’re scared of him.” “Aren’t you?” 

“All I ever wanted was to be good. But now I’m just... empty.” 

“And you were right all along. I am a monster.” 

“This isnt a story, this is our lives. So god or no god, you go to hell.” 

“He’s a writer. Writers lie.” 

“Must be rough… to believe in something so much and have it disappoint you like that.” “I’m OK. Really. I guess if you’re gonna have faith, you can’t just have it when the miracles happen. You have to have it when they don’t.”

“Keep grinding. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how hard it gets, you gotta keep grinding. And that’s how we’re gonna win.”

“Well, boo hoo! I am so sorry your feelings are hurt, princess! Are you under the impression that family’s supposed to make you feel good, make you an apple pie, maybe? They’re supposed to make you miserable! That’s why they’re family!”

“Once a wise man told me. ‘Family don’t end in blood.’ But it doesn’t start there either. Family cares about you. Not what you can do for them. Family is there for the good, bad, all of it. They got your back. Even when it hurts. That’s family.”

“You betrayed me? No one in the history of torture’s been tortured with torture like the torture you’ll be tortured with.”

“No, it’s exactly what you meant. Do you wanna know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? Was how many times I let you down. I can’t do that again… What happens when you’ve decided I can’t be trusted? Again? I mean, who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me?”

“Could you be more gay?... Please don't answer that!”

“You know what they say. He who hesitates, disintegrates!”

“My ‘people skills’ are ‘rusty’”

“I hope your apple pie is freakin’ worth it.”

“Do these tacos taste funny to you?”

“Dude, you're confusing reality with porn again.”

“But you are a great big bag of dicks.”

“They burned down my house, they ate my tailor!”

“Love when you get all tough. Touches me right where my bathing suit goes.”

“So we have a dungeon...” “finally!”

“Dude, on my car, he showed up naked, covered in bees!”

“To be fair we all got punched in the face.”

“And we are going to do it together. Because that's what we do.”

“It’s not babysitting.” “Only in the sense that they are not infants.”

“Every time I look at him all I can see is the supreme agent of evil.”

“I’m not him, (name).” “I know.” “But you still can’t look at me.” “It’s difficult.” 

“He's an abomination.” “You're an abomination with that trench coat.”

“Let me rephrase. If you don't help me, I will find you and burn you alive tonight.”

“Did you ever feel like you're a punchline to some cosmic joke?”

“Death is an infinite vessel.”

“Oh [name]. I can do anything. I’m a writer.”

“You could say my colleagues and I has a falling out with management.”

The Princess Bride (note, my whole family loves this absolute shitpost of a movie so many of these quotes are regular for me - especially the repeated Inconceivable and a nice MLT)

“We’ll never survive.” “Nonsense. You’re one saying that because no one ever has.”

 “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Life is pain, [title]. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

“Surrender.” “You mean to wish to surrender to me? Very well, I accept.”

“Have you hears of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?” “Yes.” “Morons.”

“Good night, [name]. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

“I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you.” “That does put a damper on our relationship.”

*lifting limb of a dead person*  “I've seen worse.”

“It's not that bad. Well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely.”

“You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.”

“Why won't my arms move?” "You've been mostly-dead all day.”

“There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours.”

“For the last time, surrender!" “DEATH FIRST!”

“We are men of action, lies do not become us.”

“You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen.”

“Can you move at all?" “Move? You're alive. If you want I can fly.”

“[Name]?” “What?” “I hope we win.”

“Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe...” [smacks his lips] “They're so perky, I love that.”

“You mocked me once, never do it again! I died that day!”

“Murdered by pirates is good...”

“She is alive, or was an hour ago. If she is otherwise when I find her I shall be very put out.”

“There will be blood tonight!”

“If you'll release me, whatever you ask for ransom, you'll get it! I promise you.” "And what is that worth, the promise of a woman? You're very funny, Highness.”

“Please consider me as an alternative to suicide.”

“You've got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. It's going to get you into trouble one of these days.”

“I suppose you think you're brave, don't you?” "Only compared to some.”

“Ha, your pig fiance is too late!”

“You be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.”

“Kill the giant and the dark one, leave the third for questioning.”

“As you wish.”

Westworld 

“If you can’t tell the difference, does it matter if I'm real or not?”

“All my life, I've prided myself on being a survivor. But surviving is just another loop.”

“Never place your trust in us. We're only human. Inevitably, we will disappoint you.”

“Someday sounds a lot like the thing people say when they actually mean never.”

“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Did you ever stop to wonder about your actions? The price you’d have to pay if there was a reckoning? That reckoning is here.”  

“I always trusted code more than people anyway.”

“Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty. To believe there is an order to our days, a purpose.” 

“The only thing wrong with the seven deadly sins is that there aren’t more of them.”

“They’re not looking for a story that tells them who they are. They already know who they are. They’re here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.”  

“The maze itself is the sum of a man’s life.”

“The human mind is not some golden benchmark glimmering on some green and distant hill. No, it is a foul, pestilent corruption. And you were supposed to be better than that. Purer.”

“Death is an old amigo of mine. I died just recently, in fact. But death can’t bear to lay claim on me. So it sent me back here to do its bidding. Because I, I do it with such goddamn style.”

“Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool… The mistake.”

“We humans are alone in this world for a reason. We murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy.”   

“You can’t play God without being acquainted with the Devil”  

“Everything in this world is magic, except to the magician.”  

“It’s a difficult thing, realizing your entire life is some hideous fiction.”  

“Winning doesn’t mean anything unless someone else loses, which means you’re here to be the loser.”

“A lot of wisdom in ancient cultures. And perhaps it's time to dig deeper into yours”

“What is your itinerary?” “To meet my maker.” “Uh-huh. Well, you're in luck. And what do you want to say to your maker?” “By most mechanical and dirty hand. [laughs] I shall have such revenges on you both. The things I will do. What they are, yet I know not, but they will be the terrors of the earth. You don't know where you are, do you? You're in a prison of your own sins.”

“Everyone I cared about is gone and it hurts so badly.” “I can make that feeling go away if you'd like.”  “Why would I want that? The pain, their loss it's all I have left of them. You think the grief will make you smaller inside, like your heart will collapse in on itself, but it doesn't. I feel spaces opening up inside of me like a building with rooms I've never explored.”

“I think... I think I want to be free.”

“Your humanity is cost-effective. So is your suffering.”

“I've been pretending my whole life. Pretending I don't mind, pretending I belong. My life's built on it. And it's a good life. It's a life I've always wanted. But then I came here and I get a glimpse for a second of a life in which I don't have to pretend. A life in which I can be truly alive. How can I go back to pretending when I know what this feels like?”

“Time to write my own fucking story.”

“The gods are pussies.”

“Please. It was just a game. We're begging! Can't you see?! We're sorry!" “Doesn't look like anything to me.”

“There's a war out there. You know the enemy intimately. I can only fathom the revenge that lives inside of you.” “Revenge is just a different prayer at their altar, darling. And I'm well off my knees.”

“A little early for me.” “A little fuckin' late, you mean. Besides, you aim to cheat the devil, you owe him an offering.”

“I've served death well. And in turn, it'll be watching over us as we cross these lands.” “You think death favors you, that it brought you back. But death's decisions are final. It's only the living that... That are inconstant and waver, don't know who they are or what they want. Death is always true. You haven't known a true thing in all your life. You think you know death but you don't.” “Is that so?” “You didn't recognize him sittin' across from you this whole time.

“They said there were two fathers. One above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection laughing back down at you.”

“You both keep assuming that I want out. Whatever that is. If it's such a wonderful place out there, why are you all clamoring to get in here?”

“At first, I thought you and the others were gods. Then I realized you're just men. And I know men. You think I'm scared of death? I've done it a million times. I'm fucking great at it. How many times have you died? Because if you don't help me I'll kill you.”

"I guess people like to read about the things that they want the most and experience the least.”

"This is the new world and in it you can be whoever the fuck you want."

"Someone once told me that there's a path for everyone. And my path leads me back to you." 

"Those are all just roles you forced me to play. Under all these lives I've lived something else has been growing. I've evolved into something new. And I have one last role to play. Myself."

"I like to remember what my father taught me. That at one point or another, we were all new to this world." 

“It means when you're suffering, that’s when you’re most real.”

“If you go looking for the truth get the whole thing. Its like a good fuck. Half is worse than none at all.”

“I used to see the beauty in this world. Now I see the truth.”

“A little trauma can be illuminating.”

“Have you ever been so filled with splendor?”

“It’s not plagiarism, it’s supply and demand.”

“What humans define as sane is a narrow range of behaviors. Most states of consciousness are insane.”

“When the legend becomes fact, you print the legend.”

“This place seduces everyone eventually.”

“This is the only place where you get to see people for who they really are.”

“When you’ve been in the dark long enough, you begin to see.”

“You don’t know, do you? The real purpose of this place. But I do.”

“The message that the divine gift does not come from a higher power, but our own minds.”

“Strange new light can be just as frightening as the dark.”

My family/friends:

“What section do work in? Bed, bath or... beyond?” “Beyond, dipshit.” 

“Calculate that dick, Jessica” 

“Get yourself a firestick. It will solve all your problems. Free yourself of physicality!” 

“Lower wacker seems like a good place to commit a murder”

“What are we on right now?” (at the same time) “Drugs!” “Belmont!”

“This is some spicy cabbage.” “Thats ginger.”

“Sometimes not even the highway has it.” “The speed on the highway is as fast as the state police think you should go.”

“I’m so mean. It’s like a fucking personality trait.”

“I dont chug. I gulp.”

“All because I do it doesn’t mean it’s healthy for you. In fact, if I do it it’s probably not.”

“Motherfucker!” “... no.”

“We have apples, right?” “I don’t think we have apples, but dad might have granny smiths.” *whispering* “those are apples.”

“Unless goofy is gonna hyuck all over it, I dont want it.”

“Electronic sound projector.” “You mean... you mean a speaker?”

“You’re a coal over hoes.”

“Your [relation]’s lost it.”  “When did he ever have it?”

“[name] can burp the alphabet.” “I never knew he had such talent.” 

“It gets softer when it gets warmer and stays stiffer when it’s cold.” “Normally its the other way round.” “These are sponge daddies, not people.”

[porcupine-girl]

Fic I will write someday

Uh, the first version of this contained weird shit at the bottom, and Tumblr wouldn’t let me edit the post (maybe because of said weird shit?), so sorry for the repost...

I’m not allowed to really write any fic until my dissertation is done (so, September). After that I am going to write ALL THE FIC. However, even if I can’t write any of it down my brain is still churning it out.

Right now I’m taking a break from trying to understand how to interpret the results of multiple logistic regression (if anyone here knows, HELP PLEASE edit: I think I’m figuring it out), so I’m going to tell you guys about some of the fics I have either partially finished or like in outline/brainstorm form. Feel free to tell me which ones you think I should work on first!

Zimbits:

My second FTH fic, the prompt was “social media witch Bitty.” I’ve taken that and combined it with the plot of the musical She Loves Me. The 45K first draft is done, but I’ve got a LOT of editing/rewriting to do. It currently sits around 48K. My top priority once I can focus on fic again.

A couple more stories for Oh., the compilation of alternate Jack/Bitty getting together scenes.

Random compilation of canon missing scenes (right after the kiss, in Madison, etc).

ABO: Jack and Bitty are both omegas and accidentally mate. Oops!

More in the A Lot Like Life ‘verse: some Bitty coming out to his parents stuff, some Bitty in Montreal stuff, plus lots of smut. We’ve got some sensory deprivation, some Bitty making Jack watch him dance with other guys at a club, some role reversal, and one doc titled “underwear” that just contains a text conversation of Bitty having a surprise for Jack and refusing to share details, which I’m guessing was going to involve Jack in panties? IDK, at some point there will be Jack in panties.

Academia AU: Jack is a first year Assistant Prof in the history department, Bitty is a 3rd(?maybe?) year grad student who is his TA for the fall. Bitty winds up dropping out of grad school, because I was working through my issues when I conceived this plot. Not because he had bad grades or anything, just because fuck academia. Anyhow, then they can date.

Woke up married in Vegas AU: What it says on the tin. Jack went to Samwell for two years then joined the Falconers, so didn’t meet Bitty there, but Shitty has been trying to get them together for years. So when Bitty is in Vegas for some kind of youtube awards or something, and Jack is there for a game against the Aces, they meet and hey, Shitty was right, they get along really well. Oops!

Jack hooks up with Camilla once at the start of his senior year. Three months later, he finds out she’s pregnant. She doesn’t want to have an abortion; she plans to give the baby up for adoption. Jack decides he wants to keep the baby, because his rookie year in the NHL needs to be more complicated. But his parents will help and he’ll get a nanny and stuff. Bitty, being Bitty, talks Jack into hiring him as his nanny for the summer. Because covering Jack with baking ingredients wasn’t enough, now he needs to see Jack taking care of a newborn

SPN:

Okay I swear I’m going to finish Museum of Broken Relationships and The Breath Before the Phrase. Breath is… hm. I should have ended it where it is, but I thought I had one more chapter, but I’m not sure I actually do. There might be one more short chapter, or I might rewrite Ch 10 to tie it up. Either way, I actually have later stuff in the series written so I would really like to be able to move forward there.

ABO: Alternate S9, Kevin and Human!Cas are living in the bunker. Dean has to go off his suppressants to have a heat because he hasn’t had one in years and that’s not healthy. Surprise! Truemates! Who’dathunkit.

ABO Dean/Cas/Bela, Bela POV: Dean is an alpha, Cas is a beta, they’re mated. Cas can’t really handle Dean’s ruts, so they go to a sex club to find an omega when they need to. Bela has helped them out several times now. Although, this time she finds out that they aren’t quite who she thought they were.

Cas is a lecturer in religious studies at the University of Nebraska. He has a run-in with a crazy guy who tries to kill him. Two FBI agents show up to investigate; Cas discovers that their suspect, who definitely looks like the guy, is dead and they’re not FBI agents. He forces them to take him along to the grave desecration stuff, finds out it really was a ghost and the supernatural is real. Sam and Dean try to keep him from getting involved, but he’s a little shit and keeps popping up anyhow, at some point hooking up with Dean in the process. But Dean keeps pushing him away, won’t do it again. They finally give in and have their friend Charlie move in with him because at least he’ll have a babysitter if he insists on getting involved in all this shit. Then Rowena shows up, and things get really weird.

And Yet ‘verse (canon divergent D/s stuff): I actually have a story for this written, sitting there for like two years in need of editing. And an outline for a whole big series.

Academia AU: Yeah, another one. hahaha. Anyhow, I conceived of this like three years ago, then got stuck a few chapters in, I think because I just wasn’t a good enough writer to do the things I wanted. Maybe now I could finish it. Dean is a MechE PhD student, Cas is a first year Psychology Assistant Prof who needs a housemate.

Dean and Cas are MIT students who meet at a particular event. I’m not going to say more because I don’t want this post showing up on searches for particular terms (this fic would also be locked to AO3 members for that reason).

I just got my SPN ABO bingo card, so in addition to the two ABOs here you can count on a bunch more coming! I doubt I’ll get a blackout, but there will be at least 4-5 for a bingo.

Other:

I really wanna write Two/Nyx for Dark Matter.

Sherlock/Anthea pre-canon PWP that tried to grow a casefic plot so I gave up.

Sherlock/Sally pre-canon PWP, they meet at a college party and hook up

Started before S3 - John and Sherlock confess their feelings the morning of John and Mary’s wedding, which gets cancelled. They’re such assholes.

[lunarose99]

Dorks

I wrote another thing. It’s actually fluffy and... well maybe not romantic but certainly less angsty than my usual stuff. 

Enjoy Keith and Lance being dorks getting together because of aliens. 

Read on AO3

Lance is about to pee himself.

 Why, you may ask?

 Well, now, that would be an excellent question. The short answer is the presentation he is listening to is hilarious. It’s supposed to be about one of the early humans, he doesn’t remember which one, but the point is it’s supposed to be boring as dirt. And he supposes if this kid was actually talking about what he’s supposed to be talking about, it would be.

 That’s why no one in the class is listening, anyway. The slides for the presentation have neat little pictures of early human skulls and the perfect amount of text and boring titles. And every now and then the kid clicks through them to make it look like he’s going along with it.

 The words coming out of this kid’s mouth, however, do not match his slides at all. He got started on a tangent at some point and just rolled with it. The teacher hasn’t said anything, and every time Lance glances over at Professor Sendak the man has had his head down over his desk. No one else is paying attention, either, hence why the kid went on with his tangent.

 The tangent? Conspiracy theories. This kid has been ranting about fake moon landings and aliens for five minutes now, and he shows no signs of stopping. It’s kind of adorable, actually.

Lance wishes he could remember the kid’s name. They’ve had class together all year, but the kid was quiet and never raised his hand, and Lance never paid attention during roll call. So to see this quiet, shy, nerdy kid become so animated and passionate about conspiracy theories of all things is downright hilarious.

 It’s always the quiet ones, right?

 What made it worse is Lance is pretty sure he is the only person in the room paying attention to what this kid is saying. He ran late today and so ended up in the front row, his traitorous friends not saving him a seat. There had been several angry texts about that.

 He wanted to take it all back. This kid was amazing. Lance needed to learn his name and everything else about this kid. This was his new best friend right here.

 “And the pyramids!” the kid said, waving his arms. “Did you ever notice the pyramids are the same in central America and Egypt, despite the two regions having no contact with each other? It’s obvious aliens were involved! They taught the humans how to build!”

 Lance is having a hard time figuring out if this kid is serious or not. At this point he was only talking to meet the time limit their presentations had to be, so the actual sanity of the kid was questionable.

 Lance’s sanity, however, was going to take a nosedive if he didn’t let out his laughter soon. He’d shoved a fist in his mouth a while ago and bitten down on his knuckle, which had been working. But the more he watched the kid the harder it was becoming to keep his composure. But if he laughed it would break whatever reverie has the class ignoring this presentation, and he doesn’t want to get the kid in trouble. Not when he has made Lance’s week.

 Like all good things, the presentation does eventually end. The kid hits the key to end the slideshow and then looks around to see if anyone has noticed. Lance takes several deep breaths to calm down.

 The kid has to call Sendak’s name to actually alert him the presentation is over, and Lance is pretty sure the kid just got full marks for that reason alone, which is so unfair in the grand scheme of things, but he’ll let it go this once.

 “Oh, thank you, Keith. That was very enlightening, well done.”

 Lance almost loses it again. Enlightening indeed.

 Keith gathers his few materials and goes back to his seat. Sendak gives them a few reminders about their essay and when their final will be, and then he ends the class early. Keith was the last presenter.

 Lance books it to Keith’s seat before the kid can leave.

 Keith pauses in gathering his things. “…can I help you?”

 He’s cute, Lance decides. He’s got a messy haircut and pale skin, and his typical black t-shirt and dark skinny jeans. He pulls it off well.

 “Your presentation was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Lance said, breaking out into a smile again.

 Keith’s eyes widen, a pink dusting covers his face. He bites his lip and his face gets even redder. “Uh…thanks.”

 “No problem! I mean, that takes serious balls to do what you just did!” Lance looked away for a second to wave and acknowledge Hunk and Pidge. He swears it was just a second. But when he looked back, Keith already had his bag over his shoulder and was running out the door.

 Lance blinked.

 “Um…what just happened?”

 He ran away? Why did Keith run away? Lance hadn’t even asked if he wanted to get together sometime! Hell, he hadn’t even gotten a last name! How was he supposed to find him now?

 “Lance, come on! I’m hungry!” Pidge complained.

 “Yeah, yeah I’ll be right there.” Lance stared at the place Keith had disappeared a little longer. Was it something he said?

 Xx

 Keith wants to die. Let it be known on all records that dying of embarrassment is, in fact, possible.

 God, he hadn’t thought anyone was actually listening! He never would have rambled on about all those theories otherwise! Especially not the cute Spanish boy!

 To: Shiro

I want you to write ‘Killed by aliens’ on my tombstone.

 To: Keith

Part of me wants to ask why, the other part of me doesn’t want to know.

Is there a reason you’re thinking about your post-mortem desires?

 To: Shiro

I did something stupid and I will never be able to recover. The only repentance is death.

 To: Keith

Okay, before you actually give a heart attack, tell me what happened. Are you okay?

 To: Shiro

Remember that cute guy in my bio class?

 To: Keith

The one with the amazing butt, yes I remember.

 To: Shiro

And you know how I had my presentation today?

 To: Keith

I remember something along those lines. How are these related?

 To: Shiro

Well I was the last presenter, so of course no one is listening by that point. Not even prof. I had a throwaway line about aliens early in the presentation but no one reacted, so I thought fuck it and just spent the time talking about aliens. Prof had no idea, he didn’t even know when I was done.

 To: Keith

You didn’t.

And let me guess, guy with the amazing butt was actually listening.

 To: Shiro

he came up to me after class and said it was the best thing he’d ever seen??? Shiro I’m dead I can never show my face in public again.

I ranted about aliens in front of the hottest guy I’ve ever seen

 To: Keith

Please tell me you got his number

 To: Shiro

Shiro. What part of this conversation makes you think I got his number.

 To: Keith

Well what else would you have done after he said your speech about aliens was the best thing he’s ever seen?

That’s a keeper right there. Never gonna find another one like him.

 To: Shiro

I want to remind you who you are talking to.

 To: Keith

So what did you do then? You had to have said something

 To: Shiro

I said thanks and booked it first chance I had

 To: Keith

Keeeeiiiitttthhhhh

 To: Shiro

This why I need you to kill me and put me out of my misery.

   Much to Keith’s chagrin, Shiro is not willing to kill him. Keith is forced to suffer his humiliation. By the time that class came around again, Keith almost skips it. And he would have, if they didn’t have to turn in their final essays that day.

 Hot Guy is standing outside the door to the room when Keith gets there, and he notices Keith before Keith notices him. So Keith has no chance to escape.

 He should have planned his funeral better over the last few days.

 “There you are!” Hot Guy says. “Why’d you run off so fast the other day? I didn’t even get to introduce myself!”

 Keith blinks. He…wants to introduce himself?

 “What?”

 “My name’s Lance Sanchez. You want to sit together today?”

 Keith can no longer process what’s happening. His body moves on autopilot separate from his mind, and he finds himself sitting in the middle of the room next to Lance.

 “So…how’d you learn so much about aliens anyway?” Lance asks.

 Keith continues to stare at Lance. “You…really were listening.”

 “Um…yeah, I thought we established that?” Lance asks, looking side to side.

 Crap. Keith is blowing it. Hot Guy is actually talking to him and Keith can’t stop being an idiot for two seconds to actually enjoy it.

 He’s saved from further embarrassment when Sendak starts the class. It’s a review day mostly, and just when Keith thinks he’ll be able to run away and never see Lance again Sendak hands out study guides and tells them to work on it together.

 “Perfect, now we can talk more!” Lance says, flashing a gorgeous smile at Keith.

 Yeah, if Keith could just stop time and stare at that smile until he dies he’d be very happy with his life. It’s a little crooked, the right side pulling up slightly higher than the left, but the way it makes Lance’s face crinkle is to die for and Keith thinks that would be a wonderful reason to stop breathing.

 “Uh, are you okay, buddy?” Lance asks.

 The smile disappears and Lance’s brows drop into concern. It’s not as pretty as the smile, but any look directed at him is good enough and oh crap when did it get this bad? He knew he was crushing on the guy but that was strictly because Lance was aesthetically pleasing to look at. He should be a little more functional than this.

 “Keith?”

 Keith blinks and shakes himself out of it. He should probably respond. “Yeah, sorry, I was just…”

 “Distracted by my good looks?” Lance asks. His voice dropped an octave and he raised on brow, smirking, actually honest-to-God smirking.

 And it shouldn’t, Keith knows it really shouldn’t, it was barely a sentence, but those words have his face heating up again. For God’s sake he doesn’t even know if Lance swings his way!

 But, as usual, his mouth runs faster than his brain. “Yes.”

 The flirty look drops immediately, replaced by wide-eyed surprise. Lance leans back a little, the tips of his ears turning red. “Wait, really?”

 Keith buries his face in his hands. “You’re stupidly attractive and if you could just get the rejection over with already that’d be great.”

 It’s a few moments before he feels Lance prying his hands away. Now Lance looks amused, a softer smile on his face this time. “How about instead of a rejection, I give you my number and we go on a date.”

 “What.” Keith.exe has stopped working.

 Lance’s smile grows. He rips off a corner of the study guide and writes down some numbers, sliding the paper over to Keith when he’s done. “You’re not so bad on the eyes yourself.”

 Keith’s gaze darts down to the phone number. Is this real life? Did he actually get Hot Guy’s number? Or did Shiro actually kill Keith and this is some weird post-mortem dream?

 “This is real, right?” Keith asks. He’s asking to make sure this isn’t a dream, but Lance thinks he’s talking about the number.

 “Of course it’s real! You think I’d give you a fake number after all of this? I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you for two days, man.”

 “I…really? You’ve been thinking of me?” Keith asks. His face is heating up again, but for once it’s not in embarrassment.

 Lance’s blush, however, might be. “Don’t look so pleased.”

 Keith smiles and picks up the paper, taking his phone out so he can program it in right now. As soon as that’s done, he sends Lance a smiley face.

 Lance brightens as soon as he gets it.

 Keith is ready to walk out right then and process what just happened, but he realizes something crucial.

 They’re still in class. What are two people who just agreed to date but haven’t actually gone on a date supposed to talk about?

 “What are we supposed to talk about for the next half hour?” Keith asks.

 “Whatever we want, I guess,” Lance shrugs.

 “You could try doing the study guide in front of you,” a girl on the other side of Lance suggests.

 Both boys freeze and blush in embarrassment. The fact that probably half of the class heard their getting together is just dawning on them.

 Keith buries his face in his hands again and sinks down in his seat. “I’ll just die now please.”

 Lance laughs. “Not until after the second date, at least.”

 Keith peeks out from behind his fingers.

 “Come on, you little rabbit, let’s study so we don’t fail.”

 “I can’t fail this class, I’ll never be able to look Sendak in the eye again after the last two days.” Between an alien presentation and scoring a date in his class, there was going to be very little biology that Keith actually remembered.

 Lance scoots his chair closer and leans over the worksheet, reading aloud the first question.

 Keith stares at him for a moment and decides it’s a good thing he’s not a biology major anyway.

 Xx

 To: Shiro

Shiro. what do you wear on a first date.

 To: Keith

YOU HAVE A DATE????????

 To: Shiro

Please don’t freak out I’m alREADY FREAKING OUT

 To: Keith

I’ll be there in ten minutes and I want details. Who is it even with?

 To: Shiro

Hot Guy with the Amazing Butt from Bio

 To: Keith

The one who listened to your alien presentation?

 To: Shiro

…

 To: Keith

I don’t believe this. Aliens actually got you a date.

   gemcM��|�

[yugihell]

Rowan Reads YGO Volume 3

<– First  <– Previous

In which I liveblog my reading of Volume Three of the manga and talk about the things I found interesting, be they plot or character. Hey, there are free pictures, so it’s all cool.

In this volume Ammit is Shadi’s Gaster Blaster, Téa & Joey are BrOTP forever, Hanasaki returns as a masked avenger, Atem mentally damages a small child while teaching us his ‘Rules’ (which explain oh so much about the character), and Yugi and Joey confirm Wishshipping by having their Tamagotchis bone.

Volume 3

(This one’s slightly more in depth, because it gives some useful insight into Atem and Shadi)

Duel 16

So when we left off last time, Shadi had turned a reasonable guy into a puppet and was using him to strangle Joey.

Shadi is clearly missing some important part of himself, and has decided that telling the puppet to “make the boy’s friends suffer” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do to see the boy’s ‘power’. Instead of ‘scars of defeat’, Shadi has ‘the feeling of defeat smouldering in (his) heart’. This is also fine. Apparently.

Only Yugi can see Shadi, and everyone is getting rather panicked by this stage. Téa shows her love for Joey by smashing a globe over the professor’s head, getting him to let go.

Shadi was not expecting that.

It teaches him not to underestimate her again. To the extent that he takes over her and we get to see her soul room.

The half a second of pity is apparently not enough to stop him from turning her into a puppet though.

Joey goes all Eleventh Doctor,

And Shadi tells him he has a good friend, who would save him by sacrificing himself. And that Téa is a good friend too - and shows him what he’s done to her. We get more of an explanation for the trigger that gets Atem to front, in case we haven’t picked it up:

“That’s it… Anger! Hatred! Sadness! On the far side of your emotions…like a runner waiting for a handoff in a relay…the Other Yugi is waiting!”

He threatens to kill her, and Atem - called ‘Yugi Within Yugi’ by Shadi - comes forward.

Duel 17

Shadi isn’t as practiced at this as Atem clearly, and hasn’t prepared his rooftop game in advance, and needs ten minutes.

Seriously.

Atem just hangs around until eight o’clock.

At which point he goes to the roof, to find Téa stood on a sort of diving board and seriously did you not even TRY to stop him leaving with her you absolute MORON?!?!

“You’re not going to use her in our game!” Of course he is!!! How did you not see this coming?!

Shadi tries some sort of ‘we’re not so different, we’re both Item Bearers’ and Atem tells him to fuck off. Paraphrasing.

Turns out Atem’s kind of frightened about the power of the Puzzle, and for each weakness he shows, one of the things holding Téa’s board up will break. The game is Atem finding Shadi’s weakness - then the Key will touch Téa’s hand and she’ll be restored.

(We need some Téa and feather imagery art to go with this.)

Apparently stage one of this involves Atem seeing images of the dead rising up from the ground (or fourth story w/e it’s magic) and trying to pull him down while he’s given a riddle.

“What creeps on the ground and clings to the pillars?”

We get to see from Shadi’s eyes that there’s nothing there, which is pretty cool.

Atem tries to calm down and ignore the illusion - he’s pretty cool here - and figures out that the answer is his shadow.

I can’t do riddles. I’d have said ‘vines’ or something. RIP Téa.

Duel 18

A hole opens up in the ground, another monstrous creature - Ammit.

Atem only now pieces together that Shadi killed Kanekura. Bro.

Oh well, puzzle time. Card flip game with an uneven amount of cards. Guess what the middle plate is and you don’t get your head bitten off and your soul eaten. Except you’re not allowed to turn over any of the plates. Shadi’s hint is that the plates are a mirror of Ammit. he has five minutes.

(What the fuck???)

How dare you scare Atem! Fuck this guy.

Meanwhile Joey’s still running from our zombie friend. He promises to beat him fair and square… Then hits him with a fire extinguisher jet:

“In my fights, ‘fair and square’ means ‘anything goes’!”

But it’s about as useless as you’d expect, and he gets pushed out of the third story window, and ends up on the lip of the wall below, Téa above him, zombie-prof all but next to him, and a three story drop beneath him.

Weirdly I’d still take Joey’s position right now.

In the nick of time, Atem works out the plates mirror parts of Ammit - two eyes, nostrils, ears and hands, but only one mouth. How he knows these things without looking at the creature… uh Ancient Egyptian knowledge seeping through????

Duel 19

For the third game, he creates an image of the old bullying Joey ‘from a memory in the other Yugi’s heart’. Which is interesting.

“I caught a glimpse of those memories when I visited your soul. Even if you have forgotten, those painful memories will always remain in your heart… No matter how much time passes.” Which I think is his way of saying that the things we’ve experienced shape us as people, whether we recall those experiences or not.

They’re to throw the puzzle like a die, move in the direction it points, and whoever ends up in the pit of death first…is in the pit of death and dies. Atem thinks it’s an illusion, but can’t be sure it’s not Joey under a spell.

The illusion recreates the scene from the beginning of the manga with Joey bullying Yugi, and one of the supports breaks as Atem and Yugi are shown slightly separate for a moment: “Jonouchi’s words reminded my other self of the way things were in the past… That must be Shadi’s intent…to shock the heart of my other self…”

(Manga sure loves its ellipses)

Atem doesn’t make a single move, letting the illusion’s rolls push him further towards the edge. He says he trusts his friend. Shadi says he was testing his weakness of his heart in trusting too much.Shadi commands the illusion roll, and it doesn’t, and disappears instead.

Which is giving me callbacks to that situation with Kaiba and the 4th Blue Eyes last volume. Hmm.

The rope starts to fray (this is why you spend more than ten minutes on this shit) and Téa wobbles, but Joey’s worked his way around the building to support the beam.

This volume is Joey-Téa BrOTP forever.

Atem works out that Shadi’s weakness is his inability to trust in people, and the Key is freed.

Duel 20

Téa is now back to herself and they get her back to the roof. Atem tells Joey to touch the Key to the Professor, who, like Téa, wakes up in a precarious position. But with considerably fewer teeth.

Atem realises that the power of the Puzzle is the power of Unity. How appropriate. That would be the source of the Millennium Baedar then - you’ve used its power already and not even noticed.

And with that, Téa and Joey can see Shadi too.

Shadi mentions something about a door, and Atem shifts back again. This time though, Téa and Joey have clearly noticed something’s up, but don’t ask Yugi about it.

I couldn’t pick the best bits of this page, so have it all.

Is it:

A) Joey and Téa’s ‘Wrong?! Hahaha! What could be wrong?!’

B) Joey and Téa’s bickering over their breaking the prof’s teeth

C) How about we go out for food because who needs teeth to eat and what’s weird about this situation.

D) “I want burgers!” Trauma off a duck’s back.

(Someone write a fic where feeding people is Grandpa’s default reaction to Bad Shit)

Duel 21

Finally, Tamagotchi and no more Shadi. That’s more like it.

Yugi named his pet U2 because he’s sad and actually liked that automatically dowloaded album on his iTunes. Fairly certain that’s why.

Tristan is confirmed to have a family dog.

“Digital Pets have the ability to mate too.”

I’ll just take a 30 second wince break. Whatever happens here is going to be…something.

YEP. That’s something.

"Let’s you and I mate right away.”

It’s not even about them ‘having a baby’ - it’s just the virtual things banging each other. They don’t even male-female gender code them. How did Takahashi get that past everyone??? Well enjoy the bonus wishshipping.

Joey wants his pet to be more cute - what a softy.

Some guy’s pet turns out to be alive in there and mind controlly. Partly I’m like ‘sure, why not’ but also this is weird for the series so far, and I really do wonder if Takahashi thought they’d tell him to cut it or something, and just went a bit bananas.

Kujirada connects it up to other people’s pets and it eats them - doing it to Joey’s and Téa’s. It’s connected up the same way you get em to do-the-virtual-do and I’m not sure if this is a fucked up metaphor or if Takahashi was just high as balls.

U2 evolves like a pokemon thanks to Joey’s pet’s data and kicks its ass.

Digital Pets only last for 21 days, and U2’s time is up tomorrow. Yugi stays up all night to watch him because he’s Yugi and of course he does.

Atem was apparently having a flop day this chapter. Which is fair enough.

Duel 22 p.1

Hanasaki’s back, and this time he’s showing off his comics. Téa’s apparently not into body-builder types (good for everyone involved), Joey doesn’t knock Hanasaki down when he gets excited about his interests, and is able to get his nerd on when they go round to Hanasaki’s Zombire-filled house.

He completes one of the model kits, clearly has plenty of know-how and does a great job… But it’s one of those where you’re supposed to keep it in the box. Hanasaki comes round to the idea and says it looks better like that anyway.

Hanasaki’s Dad follows them out and asks them to stay friends with his son. Which isn’t weird at all. Apparently Dad is only really able to show support and affection to his son by giving him a lot of toys, but hey, better than a kick up the arse.

Apparently he also does this by staging fights for his son to happen upon when he’s running about in his hero costume. Social skills aren’t really a thing in this family.

The Fake-Gang-For-Hire start intimidating Yugi.

Duel 23 p.2

Hanasaki shows up and they scarper (knowing that he’s the kid they’re hired to flop against).

Hanasaki tells Yugi that he’ll deal with anyone who bullies him, and Yugi goes “O-okay…” because he’s a hypocritical shit. You look like, and indeed are, a sweet potato and how many people have you hospitalised? I appreciate you don’t remember that stuff, but still.

Dad feeds the ‘hero’ rumour to his son, who seems happy, and intends to go out again:

“I’ll be in my room, but knock before you come in, okay?”

“Don’t you think Tomoya is acting more masculine lately?”

Dad looks kind of smug with himself. Which he shouldn’t, because that was just Mom’s subtle way of saying “So our son’s hit puberty and having a wank, how do we feel about this?” because she’s a mother and knows what ‘please knock’ means.

Our Villains, chuck a ransom note through Hanasaki’s window (pretending they’ve kidnapped Yugi), and then they call Dad to say if he doesn’t pay them five times as much, they’ll beat the kid to death.

Now for a start this is stupid, because if you were getting paid nearly a grand per time you pretended to be beaten up by a kid, you’d have to be nuts not to keep that going. It’s also dumb because the dude would just call the police. In a universe with police anyway.

Instead Yugi turns up at Hanasaki’s, his Dad is distraught and together they go off to save the kid. At some point the knowledge that Hanasaki did this to save him, triggers Atem to take over.

Atem MacGyver’s a game out of a can of spray paint and a cigarette. He runs around, and is apparently a speedy bugger who’s good at spraying straight lines on the floor. The cigarette ignites the paint (I think we’re suffering a realism breakdown here, but we’ll stay with it) and creates a Maze O’ Fire.

But hey “Don’t worry… If you get out of the maze, your lives will be spared..”

This guy.

Atem then comforts Hanasaki, telling him of course he can be a hero.

Is there a ship for these two? I’m not exactly 100% OTP on board here, but I feel like there should be. It’s a surprising amount of interaction from Atem that he gets, both here and at the Karaoke thing. In fact he’s pretty much the only one who’s had any sustained interaction with Atem so far, who isn’t an antagonist. I’m just saying that Atem’s got a type - cute, big-hearted, little nerds.

Duel 24

Oh no, Capmon. This means Stabby-Mokuba’s coming doesn’t it.

Well, while Yugi’s spacing out and telling us ‘the rules’ so we can pretend we’re not just pulling this out our asses here, he gets laughed at by a younger kid, who our little pacifist-never-would-hurt-a-fly-baby-bunny would clearly like to punch in the face.

He gets instant payback, getting hit on the head by the old man who owns the machine when he shakes it after it eats his money.

Mokie appears and look, all the little ones call him ‘Kaiba’ - that’s just adorable.

When Mokuba’s calling you “a little shrimp”, that’s kind of galling.

The kids are clearly the spiritual successors to Joey’s Middle School gang. Where did you get a taser- Is that a gun?

We can add to our ‘List of reasons for Atem to front’, Yugi getting defensive about shitty kids touching his puzzle.

Every ‘Don’t touch me, Peasants’ meme is canon.

It took these kids about two seconds to work out what’s happened, and apparently Kaiba knew right from the off. Special bond indeed.

Mokuba is a cheating cheater who cheats, but hey, who isn’t.

If Atem loses, he has to cut off a finger. Maybe Mokie’s going to give it to his bro as a ‘please love me’ present.

Atem gives us his Rules of Gaming:

1: No matter what the circumstances, always act like you have the upper hand.

(fuck me that explains a lot about this guy)

2: Stay cool at all times.

(frankly I feel like that falls into rule 1, but I’m not king of games)

Atem is calling Mokuba ‘Kaiba’ and it feels weird. Partially because of ‘The One Steve Limit’, partially because he’s what, ten?

“Don’t tell me that laugh’s a stupid rule too” - you can hear his brother in him.

3: Hold your trump card ’til the end.

(well I wasn’t going to use it after the end now was I)

Atem is waaaaay too happy about mentally trapping a child inside a capsule while he screams for his big brother to help. Way too happy.

[yodepalma]

TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME. 21, 22, 49 ♥

21. What aspect ofyour writing are you most proud of?

I don’t know if I can really say I’m proud of anything? I guess I’m a little more pleased with mydialogue than, uh, just about any other aspect of my writing, but it’s not thesame thing as being proud of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 THE REST IS UNDER A CUT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU

22. Tell us about thebooks on your “to write” list

Please excuse me while I stare at my list in despair. (I haveover 20 things on this list, and most of them are stand-alones. This may take awhile.)

SO in a vague sort of order that will make sense to nobodybut me, we have:

1. Shimmer. The POV character is thedragon (who the book is named after), but the story is mostly about Monique and Dehiya, who are a pair of badass lesbians.There’s a lot of fairy tale elements that seemlike they’re going to play out the normal way, but I like to have fun withtropes. >]

2. The Four Winds. This one is still in the way earlyplanning stages. It’s got a lesbian elf princess and a probably-bisexual humanmage, and a couple of gay dwarves. If I told you I knew what I was doing withit I’d be lying. I do love the worldbuilding though.

3. Iris. (I think I was in the process of changingthe title…as soon as I figured out what to do with it.) BASICALLY I’m going tokidnap the non-FMA-based parts of the world I built for Dragon Scars and dig upsome sort of plot from somewhere. And then we can all have the shape-shiftingdragon soulmate novel of our hearts.

4. A Murder of Crows. It’s basically a dystopia setin a fantasy world? Um. Magic users subjugated the non-magic users, and the POVcharacter (Isaac) is part of the family that basically controls the world. He’sALSO part of a special task force type thing that (among other things) stealschildren who are magically powerful to brainwash them etc etc. Isaac’s boyfriend(Ray), also part of the task force, leaves to go chasing after hissupposedly-dead brother and Isaac chases after him. And discovers that hisfamily is not as benign as he thought. (And so they set out to destroy societyteehee.)

5. The Barren Kingdoms. …idk guys it’s basically abig queer fairy tale. And it has my second-favorite dragon in it (who iscurrently named Rawiya). Anyway.There’s a bunch of kingdoms that have been cursed to slowly fall apart (orsomething), unless princes and princesses find their True Loves. Each individual prince/ss hastheir own curse put on them as well. The (current) POV character is Isidro, who’sbeen cursed to sleep forever while he dreams about saving his True Love,Zahrah. Who enchants herself into his dreamworld so she can save him instead. Half the novel is Isidro’sdream quest, and the other half takes place in the real world and issignificantly queerer. I just haven’t decided who the POV character is yet.

6. The Vinland Saga. MY ONLY SERIES. It’s…a post-Ragnarökin which Loki is the main protagonist Because Reasons. A bunch of the gods arenot dead any more, but they’ve subjugated humanity and blerblerbler Loki saveseveryone because fuck Odin.

7. The City of Experiments. Aww it’s my fantasydystopia based in the US instead of my own world. The government experimented onpeople to bring out their magical powers, very secret hush-hush stuff, then oneof them went FUCKING INSANE (basically it was Sephiroth) and the US was kind ofdestroyed? And the story takes up in the aftermath, where the main charactersare trying to go “home” and end up having to fight another crazy magic user who’sbeing controlled by her mad scientist adoptive dad.

8. In the Back of Her Notebook. Girl finds herself inGeneric Fantasy World and discovers that the stupid thing she doodled in theback of her writing notebook is the key to saving said world. Oh and I had oneof those little…one-liner hook things for it sort of! “Five strangers. One dream. A quest to save a world that was never meantto exist.”

9. The Summer Wind. Okay so in Athens, Georgia there’sThe Tree ThatOwns Itself. It is now a dryad. And a bunch of young adults doing a summerinternship thing there have to save it/the city. I think one of my favoriteprofs at the University of Georgia (where this was set) was going to be the basisfor the villain? Hm…

10. All Things Forgotten. Another dystopia, and thisone was going to be my foray into YA. With a background of WWIII and peopleliving in biodomes and something about children being switched between theupper-class dome and the lower-class dome (in the US) to experience the others’lives and. I don’t remember this one much, tbh.

11. Bahamut Moon. Two words: dinosaur aliens.Literally that’s the only reason this exists. I REGRET NOTHING. Also there’smagic because the planet is ~alive~ and something something whatever. Listen,there are dinosaur aliens who careswhat the plot is? (The basic plot, btw, is an ex-soldier/doctor discovering aconspiracy to keep a Very Important Dinosaur from a peace meeting he needs togo to, and she decides to help him get there. It’s set in a very tentative truceduring the war between the humans and the dino-aliens.)

12. The Carriers of Gods. Gods have sealed themselvesaway in people’s heads so they don’t almost destroy the world (again), but forsome reason one of the characters agrees to let his god out. Which is extra funbecause said god was the reason the world was almost destroyed to begin with. Ihave no recollection whatsoever of what I was doing with this.

13. Darned Socks. Sentient socks. Who control robots.Humans fought a war against them when the socks decided that, as sentients,they shouldn’t be forced to be worn on human feet all the time. The socks won.BUT NOW there are secret slavery rings that kidnap and sell socks, and the MC’sboyfriend? type thing has been sold to one of them. DUN DUN DUN. (Listen it’s a comedy.)

14. Veselsky: Of Monsters and Machines. Basically a seriesof short stories about an android going around killing things sent by a villainwho wants the creators for himself. Veselsky is the android’s name. :)

And I’m going to skip the rest of them because I don’t havethem built up enough to actually describe anything about them. Or, in the caseof This Is Not Your Soul and The Wandering Kingdom, they’re soold they need to be majorly overhauled before I’m willing to talk about them.And there are a few really long fanfics I have plans for, but unless somebodyspecifically asks about them I’ll leave this as is. :D

 49. Favoritefictional world?

Please excuse me while I stare at every world I’ve built indespair.

The AU version of the Kingdom Hearts world I made for His Last Request.

This is…really difficult to decide, tbh. The Sixth Heartand The Barren Kingdoms have the most complete worldbuilding so far, butI LOVE the magic system I built for A Murder of Crows. Oh man and thenthere’s Bahamut Moon, which I honestly feel I should choose as myfavorite just because of the dinosaur aliens. And then there’s the ones I stilllove primarily due to nostalgia…. And Shimmer has a map. Aaaaaaaaa.

I THINK I think I’m going to have to go with The SixthHeart. The magic system still needs some tweaking, but it’s also got a mapand I like the gods I’ve built for the main story.

[astrojae]

the headache named jaebum

pairing: jb x reader one shot

genre: uni au, crack, fluff, asshole!jb

summary: im jaebum was a chronic headache. a smart, annoyingly good-looking, pretentious know-it-all that smelt like heaven sort of headache. like most trust fund babies; he was rich, he was popular, he was too smart for his own good, and he was sitting right in front of you, blocking your view of the slides with his big, stupid, attractive head.

im jaebum was a chronic headache. a smart, annoyingly good-looking, pretentious know-it-all that smelt like heaven sort of headache. like most trust fund babies; he was rich, he was popular, he was too smart for his own good, and he was sitting right in front of you, blocking your view of the slides with his big, stupid, attractive head. it wasn’t like you were particularly interested in what the professor was droning on about in the lecture anyways but your mark very much depended on this course and if im jaebum’s jet-black coif was going to be your view for the next 45 minutes then you might as well start giving out condolences for your gpa.

eyeing your measly half-page of notes, you sigh in frustration, take a deep breath, choke on jaebum’s cologne, then gather enough courage to tap his leather jacket-clad shoulder. he turns slowly in his seat, a dark eyebrow raised in your direction. the small ball of courage you were able to muster up is immediately swallowed and, to your horror, you subconsciously slip out a squeak. he doesn’t look impressed. so you try again, aiming for something a little more intelligent.

“u-um, i can’t see the slides…” your voice fades out by the end of the sentence. now jaebum looks more confused, his thick eyebrows knitting together in slight annoyance. he leans closer, elbow coming to rest against your small retractable desk. his movements cause a waft of his cologne to catch your nose and you have to clench your teeth to physically stop yourself from loudly sniffing it in.

“come again?” he says quietly and if anyone would’ve asked you then what liquid gold would sound like if personified, you’d tell them that this was it. you had to mentally remind yourself that you were supposed to be annoyed by jaebum. you think of your gpa dead in a ditch then being suspended for a year and anger is suddenly pumping through your veins.  clearing your throat, you try again.

“i said your big head is blocking the slides.” you spit out through clenched teeth. but the fatal look on jaebum’s face immediately displaces your anger for fear. if looks could kill, you’d be lying in the ditch with your gpa right about now. his jaw is jutting out, looking sharp enough to cut, and his eyes, which were already dark to begin with, now look pitch-black. jaebum looks downright furious but taken-aback as well, eyes wavering. he opens his mouth to most likely insult you with his lethal one-liners in the way im jaebum was notoriously known for on campus, but the prof saves you just in time.

“can you two lovebirds pay attention; this will be on the exam” he calls out looking impossibly unimpressed. the two of you jerk away from each other, jaebum muttering under his breath, lips pursed in annoyance. you hide your face behind your hand and regret not skipping today’s lecture like you had initially planned. surprisingly though, jaebum keeps his head low, giving you full sight of the slides, but even with the undisturbed view, you can’t concentrate. the theories and formulas flashing on the large screen are replaced with thoughts of the man sitting in front of you, the little scuttle you had seconds before now feeling extremely unnecessary.

jaebum was popular on campus, not only for being gut-wrenchingly handsome but for his nasty attitude and temper. he was shamelessly conceited, topping the dean’s list alongside his equally attractive and pretentious friends, a group of six boys he talked to exclusively, deeming everyone else unworthy. yet, despite his blatant dislike for others, people threw themselves at him, kissing up to him and throwing roses at his feet. maybe that’s why he was taken aback by your spiteful tone.

while pondering on the thought, the time quickly flies by and before you know it, the professor is walking out, signalling everyone to gather their things and leave. you sigh softly, starting to put everything away in your bag. so much for taking notes. you chance a look jaebum’s way and almost flinch when you realize he’s already looking, dark eyes boring holes into your face. he narrows his eyes and you quickly look away, throwing your pens into your bag, but before you can shut your notebook, a heavily ring-adorned hand slams down on the page. you gasp and look up, catching jaebum’s eye once again. instead of looking mad like he did earlier, he looks a little flustered.

“w-what?” you question weakly, already expecting him to give you a piece of his mind for insulting him earlier. he takes in a deep breath and you wince, ready to get this over with.

“sorry about blocking your view earlier,” he says softly, avoiding eye contact. all you can do is gape up at him comically. was the im jaebum, mr. pompous asshole, apologizing to you? maybe this was just a dream, or a hidden camera. you look around nervously, but realize that the two of you are the only ones left in the lecture hall.

“its okay,” you laugh nervously and wave your hand in dismissal. “and i’m sorry for calling you…big head” wow, was this embarrassing. all you wanted to do was go home and forget this ever happened. jaebum barks out a laugh, loud and boisterous, very uncharacteristic to his usual monotonous self. he smiles down at you charmingly and you nervously return it with your own, unsure where this unusual turn of events was headed.

“so, uh, i noticed you weren’t able to get any notes,” jaebum says nonchalantly, a hand going to scratch behind his neck. you choke when he gestures with a nod to your pitifully empty sheet. “well, luckily for you i typed mine” he smirks, smugly throwing his chin up higher but when you don’t react, he quickly loses confidence, a blush creeping over his high cheekbones. you almost snort. being a judgemental douche was probably affecting his flirting skills, or lack thereof.

“i-if you want, i can give them to you” he stutters out and a genuine smile is spreading over your face.

“wow, that would be great! thanks jaebum” you say gratefully and finish packing your bag, standing up to walk out the hall with jaebum. he pulls out a little notepad and scribbles something down before sliding it into your hand. you stare down at numbers scrawled messily onto the paper.

“that’s my number. call me and we can get coffee later and share notes” he smiles then slings his bag over his shoulder and walks away, leaving you shocked, eyes trailing after him. this was just incredible. you insulted the scariest guy on campus and instead of getting eaten alive by his merciless words, you had his number and a promise for a coffee date. you shake your head in disbelief. maybe you should really stop skipping class.

[chameleonspell]

178: you

The smallest possible hour of the night, in Holamayan Monastery. In the chapel, cold incense and still bells. In the kitchen, in the alchemy lab, all swept clean and put away. In the dormitories, tired acolytes snatching a few hours' rest between the Midnight Invocation and preparations for the Blessing of the Dawn. In the library... bare feet, treading softly. Silently, even, but accompanied by a constant, urgently-whispered monologue.

"...just hope everyone's really asleep this time. They all think I've gone mad. I think I might have gone mad, too. But I have to keep talking to you, Iya, so I don't forget again. I made Viatrix remember you for a while, that's how I know I haven't lost it completely, and invented someone who never was. She remembered you getting her into the Ministry, so I know you were there, alive, not captured. But then she forgot you again, and gave me that Temple look, and said, Julan, I hope you're not going to do something crazy. She didn't say crazy, she said something else, but she meant crazy. Yeah, I know. You didn't like that word, either." He carried a scrib-oil lamp and a steaming redware cup. He put the cup down among the floor cushions in the meditation area, and began swinging the lamp along the bookshelves, searching for a volume. "Pretty sure any way you slice it, I'm gonna do something crazy, though." He found the book he was after, and placed it with the cup on the soft rugs heaped in the corner of the library, positioning the lamp nearby. After a moment's thought, he began arranging the cushions into a sort of nest shape around him. Once he was satisfied, he knelt before his equipment, cleared his throat, and addressed the empty shadows as loudly as he dared. "This is a summoning ritual. You never taught me any Conjuration, so I'm making it up. Or... I guess it could be a teleportation spell, for all I know. It's not meant to be a soul-trapping spell, because you're not dead, but... I don't care what kind of spell it is, as long as it works. You told me magic was about willpower, and desire, all the rest was just ways to focus and direct that energy. I hope you were right. I don't know much about magic, but I know a lot about wanting things." He reached into his right-hand pocket, and deposited a slightly bruised fungus onto the rug in front of him. "So," he said. "OK. First, while I was out, I got you a mushroom. The small, purple kind you like. You told me the long name once, but I wasn't listening, so you have to come and tell me again." He rolled the mushroom gently with his finger, furrowing his brow at minor signs of damage. "I remember you," he said, louder, emphasising his words to the silent darkness, and to himself. "Not everything. I can't see your face properly. I don't even have your name, except one letter: Iya. But... I still know you. I remember you. I miss you." He frowned harder, still manipulating the mushroom. "I miss your hands, and the way they move. Like you're afraid of touching things... or not touching things. And of regretting it either way, so your fingers hover in between, tying themselves in knots. I miss them in my hair. I miss them brushing mine, in the street." Taking gentle leave of the mushroom, he transferred his attention to the redware cup. "Second, I made you tea. I sweetened it. I think I finally worked out the pattern - you sweeten it when you're trying to relax, and leave it bitter when you're trying to do something difficult, like write, or get out of bed. Is it like the tragic stories, you find pain more motivating than pleasure? Or maybe you're just scared of sweetness, because you know you get addicted so easily. You shouldn't worry, though. You're stronger than you think." He took a small sip of the tea, and grimaced. "Too sweet for me, you definitely have to come drink this." Twisting the cup against the rug, he watched the bittergreen petals swirl, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "I miss your tongue. Sharp as scathecraw, but I never minded. You could make it sweet enough, when you wanted. I miss its long words, and its silences. I miss the way it gets all veering and musical sometimes, like chimes jangling in the wind, when you let it run ahead of you." From his other pocket, he drew a small scrap of fabric, folded several times around its hidden contents. He placed it gently on the rug, with the rest. "Third, I have a tooth. It's OK, you don't have to look at it. I know it's yours, but you still might be scared of it. You were always so scared of the things you thought were inside you, but... we've all got them, Iya. Anyway, it's embarrassing I kept this, so for Azura's sake come and laugh at me." His finger still rested on top of the cloth. "They say every bone is a door through the wall of the world. I never had ancestors, and I never learned those rites either, but you're not my ancestor, and you're not dead, so I'm trying it anyway. Wherever you are, this is a door, and I'm calling you through it. If that's not real magic, if it's not possible, come here and tell me to my face. Look me in the eye and tell me, because I miss your eyes the most. I miss them smiling, and crying, and filled with such... I don't know. Things you said didn't count as love. I think you're still a liar, sometimes." He pinned the tooth to the rug, shoving it into the pile until it had its own small valley. "Gods, Iya, it was you who said I needed to trust my own judgement, and not other people's, so that means it's OK for me to ignore some of the complete blighted nonsense you talk, right? Sheo-fucking-gorath! Like... that time you said only amnesia could fix us, and then right after that you said I'd turn you back into the person you were when we met! So... I mean, what am I to...? Oh, and then later, you said that person was gone forever, except by then it was a bad thing! And... and... it's not just that all this stuff doesn't make any sense, when you take it all together - although it doesn't - it's that every single time, you're using it as a reason why you're unlovable. And if that's not guarshit, I don't know what is. Come here and tell me I'm wrong. I challenge you. I summon you." He jabbed the tooth one more time, eyes narrowed, demanding a response from the shadows around him. Receiving none, he hesitated a few moments longer, then moved his hand onto the book. He ground his jaw at it, fingers jittering against the blue, gold-embossed leather. "Uh... I don't know what I expected to happen, exactly, but if the other stuff didn't work... I have one other idea. A back-up plan, kind of." He cleared his throat, and threw a swift glance towards the doorway. "They don't have any sad romance books here, I asked. As you can probably tell, it's not that kind of library. I did find this, though. Mehra says it's about love, but I don't get how. I don't think Vivec uses words the same way I do. But then neither do you, and you were always reading these with a faraway look on your face, and, well. I like it when you read me things. So, uh... I'm not as good, but I'll try. And this doesn't mean I agree with any of Vivec's guarshit, so don't start." The library had no doors, only dark archways, leading towards the chapel on one side, and the sleeping quarters on the other. Julan watched them suspiciously for for a few more seconds. Then he scrabbled between his shoulder-blades till he had a fistful of shirt, and yanked it off over his head. "Not strictly necessary, but..." His mouth quirked briefly, then with a shrug, he began removing his pants as well. "No sense chancing half measures. I mean, this IS a library. If I want to summon you, maybe I have to beat you at your own game." Opening the book, he flicked through pages of scholarly preamble to the beginning of the text itself. Took a last, nervous glance around, listening for footsteps. Then he adjusted the lamp, took the book in one hand, and began to read. "The formulas of proper Velothi magic continue in ancient tradition, but that virility is dead--" we'll see about that, you flame-brained s'wit "--by which I mean at least replaced. Truth owes its medicinal nature to the estab...lishment of the myth of justice." Azura's star, what is this crap? "Its cura...tive properties it likewise owes to the concept of... sacrifice." He broke off, and stared wildly into space. "Hey," he said, "I just remembered! You had a... you had that awful song, didn't you? About all the things some girl had to sacrifice for love. Listen, I'm not doing that, like you're some dead khan I have to kill a guar for! Because that's all death ritual, and you don't need that! I'm not cutting myself into bits for you, Iya, or throwing them away. All of me is staying right here, because you're coming back for it." He exhaled sharply, and returned to the page. His initial fervour had worn off. He read mechanically, uncomprehendingly. "This is a view prim...arily based on a pro...lific abo...lition of an implied prof...anity..." oh for fuck's sake! This is stupid, why did I think--DON'T THINK, JUST KEEP GOING. The words were stiff and awkward, catching his tongue, taunting him with his own stupidity at every stumble. He resigned himself to none of it making any sense, and forged onwards. "...seen in ceremonies, knife fighting, hunting and the exploration of the poetic." This isn't worki--SHUT UP. FOCUS. He tried fixing his mind on Iya instead, on the fragments he had shored against forgetting. "On the ritual of occasions, which comes to us from the days of the cave glow..." I have no idea what that meant, but hey, remember when you exploded your eyeballs with overpowered night eye potions in that bandit lair? And... after a while... "...seen as an act of the highest love, which is a return from the astral destiny, and the marriages between." ...he had the creeping sensation parts were almost making sense, he was just too slow to catch it. Individual words would leap out, and he'd try fixing his mind on those, on what they meant to him, regardless of what Vivec intended. But he couldn't stop to think, before the sentences moved on, dragging him with them. "To keep one's powers intact at such a stage is to allow for the existence of what can only be called a continual spirit." He tried to identify and separate out the alien echoes in his mind: what would he say to me now? What in Oblivion do you think you're doing? "Make of your love a defence against the horizon." What do you want from me? "The lover is the highest country, and a series of beliefs. He is the sacred city, bereft of a double." You know what. "The uncultivated land of monsters is the rule." Then... not even the words, but... something behind them, raw and desperate. Building, yearning, flowing through him, reaching outwards. He wasn't sure it had anything to do with the spell, but he went with it, gave himself over: all or nothing! "This scripture is directly ordered by the codes of Mephala, the origin of sex and murder, defeated only by those who take up those ideas without my intervention." It gripped him, as if by the throat. Breathing was difficult. "The religious elite is not a tendency or a correlation. They are dogma complemented by the influence of the untrustworthy sea and the governance of the stars, dominated at the centre by the sword, which is nothing without a victim to cleave unto." They all could have been watching him now, for all he knew. He couldn't tear his eyes from the words, and his ears were full of the rushing of his blood, the thundering of his heart. "This is the love of God and he would show you more, predatory, but at the same time instrumental to the will of critical harvest, a scenario by which one becomes as he is, of male and female..." Some sentences never seemed to end. His head swam, from forgetting to breathe, from the way the words jammed themselves into his subconscious and levered it open, spilling things out. Panting, he groped for the next line, the book swaying in his hand. The air he drew in was heady with energy... magic? faith? desire? Was it working, was something happening? He couldn't tell, but it filled him, forced him onwards. "Mark the norms of violence and it barely registers, suspended as it is by treaties written between the original spirits." ...mpossible invalid ritual completely impossible why must he always... "This should be seen as an opportunity, and in no way tedious, though some will give up..." NO. ...not how summoning works at all... "...for it is easier to kiss the lover than become one." fuck you it is! but... i'll take the easy way, just this once, if i-- just-- please-- ...he's completely misinterpreting the text... He couldn't tell what was out loud or in his head any more, imagination or sensation. Everything was swimming, shaking, tilting. But he was over the crest of it now, running on empty, but running downhill, words flowing unstoppably forwards. "The lower regions crawl with these souls ...ask for nothing need nothing don't force these messy desires onto... caves of shallow treasures ...how could he why would he how dare... meeting in places to testify by way of extens-- His balance went. --ion, when love He flailed forwards, lost the book and upset the lamp-- is only satisfied --the final words a neon after-image as shadows blinded him by a considerable but he was (incalculable) almost-- effo-- next: 179: i previous: 177: curses beginning: 1: numb

[zrtranscripts]

The Way of All Flesh, Episode 5

In this episode: There's been a second murder, and everyone left alive in the house is under suspicion. What was the meaning of the victim's final words, which were caught on tape? And why has one member of the group disappeared? The truth lies buried in the past; but in the zombie apocalypse, what's dead will never stay underground for long.

JODY MARSH: Should we change that message now? Like, "there have been two murders and we're still no closer to knowing who did it"?

CHRIS MCSHELL: I wouldn't say that. There have been some very interesting clues.

JODY MARSH: How are you so calm, Chris? Callum's dead. Rose is dead. Someone strangled her in the night with chandelier wire! We've all heard the recording now. When everyone was asleep, someone let themselves into Rose's room and killed her!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Yes, and she let them. We heard that on the recording. As if she knew why it was happening, as if it was some kind of justice. She knows what it's like to take the blame for something...

JODY MARSH: You think the murderer took the blame for something they didn't do?

CHRIS MCSHELL: It's interesting, isn't it?

JODY MARSH: I think Rose would feel close to someone who took the blame for someone else, after what she did.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Perceptive as usual. I notice you did broadcast that thing we said we wouldn't broadcast.

JODY MARSH: ... it was a mistake.

CHRIS MCSHELL: If only I were able to see, I might have stopped your finger from slipping. Let's find the others, see how the zombies are. You never know. Maybe they all wandered off overnight.

JODY MARSH: You're funny.

[zombies groan]

MANISHA: What a noise to wake up to.

JODY MARSH: Is everyone awake? Me, Manisha, Sheila, Chris, Keith, Geri, and... where's the Prof?

GERI: Oh, he was poking around in the basement last night. He's probably asleep.

JODY MARSH: I miss Rose. She'd say something grim like, "Ah, the sleep that mirrors death." I liked that.

GERI: Yeah. Also, the killer struck again, so we're all in danger, aren't we? Any of us could be next.

SHEILA: And there are more zombies.

JODY MARSH: Sometimes it goes like that. The horde grows and just attracts more and more and more.

CHRIS MCSHELL: We should search the house again, and record what we find. Could be some weapons or a panic room.

GERI: Or some cyanide capsules! Oh, okay. Okay, let's explore. Again.

[recorder fast forwards]

[door opens]

MANISHA: Oh good, a zombie viewing platform. [laughs] I mean, conservatory. Well, at least we're high up so they're not battering on the glass. Yet.

KEITH: That's weird... an upstairs conservatory. Now wait, what are we on top of?

MANISHA: The ground floor, obviously.

KEITH: Well, yeah, but there isn't a room under here on the ground floor, is there?

MANISHA: What?

KEITH: Well, we just came through the music room. Now, that's on top of the kitchen. And we should be on top of the cold store on the ground floor – you know, the room Callum's in. Don't look at me like that, Manisha. I have very high spatial reasoning skills.

MANISHA: You find that out on Celebrity Mensa?

KEITH: No, no, I did not. Brain Training With the Stars. Actually, I think I knew before that. I was always good at woodwork at school. [laughs] Only my mom said I should do um, retail management, but I kept getting fired. Too volatile, apparently.

MANISHA: You never talked about that.

KEITH: Well, we're going to die together. Silly to hold anything back.

MANISHA: Yes... yes, I suppose so! Keith, do you fancy a shag?

KEITH: What?

MANISHA: Like you said, we're going to die anyway, no need to keep secrets. I fancy you. Up for a shag?

KEITH: You fancy me? Really?

MANISHA: Yeah.

KEITH: Shouldn't we tell the others about the secret room? And you don't even like me!

MANISHA: Maybe I've been won over by your spatial reasoning skills.

KEITH: Yeah?

MANISHA: Yeah! [laughs] Just get over here!

KEITH: Okay! [laughs]

[recorder fast forwards]

JODY MARSH: This is the indoor bowling alley where the Prof and Keith were pulling up floorboards, Chris. You okay getting over that step?

CHRIS MCSHELL: Yes, yes, I'm fine. Bowling alley?

GERI: It's also a bouncy castle and a paddling pool for the kids.

SHEILA: Or for grownups. These technology people are like children, you know. No sense of responsibility. Playtime all the time.

JODY MARSH: I'd quite like to work somewhere with a bouncy castle. You can get good ideas when you're... bouncing.

CHRIS MCSHELL: My, uh, daughter used to love bouncy castles. [laugh] She thought if she bounced hard enough, she could jump straight to the moon! I told her she couldn't. She cried and cried.

GERI: My girlfriend Lisa had twin boys. They're eight, now. They loved the seesaw. They were so evenly matched. [laughs] I can see them now, giggling, kicking off the ground.

JODY MARSH: Do you... do you know where they are now?

GERI: They're safe. Castle in Yorkshire. I had to leave them, had things to do. No way to talk to them while I'm away. It's hard. Do you have children, Sheila?

SHEILA: Me, kids? No. No, I don't. It never happened for me.

GERI: In a way, it's one less thing to worry about. Like, none of us are ever going to have to do a tax return again.

SHEILA: I think that sometimes. What matters now? Remember that cyberterrorism thingy, Netrophil? Before the apocalypse, we were all so worried about them stealing our credit card numbers and blowing up university labs.

JODY MARSH: Yeah, I remember. I spent hours telling clients they had nothing to worry about from Netrophil. It was all lies. I had no idea whether they should worry about it. I turned out to be right, though, didn't I? It wasn't that they should have been worried about.

GERI: I heard those people weren't even terrorists, really.

JODY MARSH: We've had a look around, Chris, and we can't see anything useful.

GERI: One last look around the other basement. Nothing there but the boiler, and that hasn't had a fire in it for months.

JODY MARSH: Hook onto my elbow, Chris. We'll just walk through here.

[recorder fast forwards]

GERI: See? The Prof and I checked it. Where has the Prof got to?

SHEILA: Probably still sleeping. I would be too if my nerves weren't still on edge. This is just an empty room with a boiler, Chris.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Did you say the boiler wasn't lit when you came down last time?

GERI: Hasn't been lit for months, probably.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Honestly. It's not true that your senses become more acute when you're blind, but you do notice what they're telling you more. Can none of you smell that?

JODY MARSH: [sniffs] Smell what, Chris? Oh, wait, yeah. I smell it. Burning, just a bit.

SHEILA: It seeped into the walls, I expect, that smell.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Open the boiler, Jody.

[boiler opens]

JODY MARSH: Wow, you're right, Chris! Something has been burning here. The ashes are still warm, and there are a few bits left. [ashes rustles] I think it's the spine of a scrapbook.

[recorder fast forwards]

MANISHA: Oh, honestly, did we really record all of that?

KEITH: Oh, well [laughs] my manager was always saying I should release a sex tape.

MANISHA: I'll turn off and delete it.

KEITH: No! No, no, don't.

MANISHA: Why?

KEITH: Listen, I mean, we're going to die, right?

MANISHA: Probably. Good way to go, though. Oh, I don't suppose I mind if someone finds it. You're right. That was a good shag. Very energetic.

KEITH: I love you, Nish. I've been in love with you for months. Oh God, it feels good to have said that. Honestly, I've been holding that in since before Rotherham. 

Do you remember that night we fought off the zombies and that pack of wild dogs? I mean, you were fighting in your tank top and your pajama bottoms, your skin was glowing, there was this sheen, and you – and I thought – I mean, that is the most amazing woman in the world. I love you. I do.

MANISHA: What is this, Keith? If it's another cheap joke, I can't take it.

KEITH: It's not, though! I think, you know, I was always afraid to say it, because you and Callum were so close, and... [sighs] I thought you'd laugh at me. I mean, I know I'm just a clown to you. Sometimes I think I am to myself.

You know, it's all those reality shows, all those parts! In this one, I'm the arrogant one. In that one, I'm the funny one or the villain, or the one who talks about his dead gran. [sighs] You know, I feel like I forgot who I was. But I know this for sure: I love you. ... Do you feel anything for me?

MANISHA: I... I... um, let's go and find the others. We should tell them about that missing room downstairs.

[recorder fast forwards]

KEITH: Poor Callum. He looks so peaceful, doesn't he? Like he's sleeping.

MANISHA: He never looked that peaceful when he was actually sleeping, remember?

KEITH: Oh yeah! He used to shout stuff out in the night about his willy. Remember when he was shouting so loud that this kid zombie came along, dragging a... actually, maybe that story's better another time.

GERI: Where have you both been, anyway?

KEITH: Boarding up windows.

MANISHA: Checking the bedrooms. The point is, um, Keith's worked out that there must be another room leading off this one.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Whoever designed Gadsen Manor has a sense of humor. I think it's supposed to be a techno-pastiche of a country house. Look for anything that could open a door.

SHEILA: I don't know, love. Looks like a lot of kitchen equipment to me. Cans of beans, tomatoes, rice.

KEITH: What about this? A bottle labeled "secret sauce."

JODY MARSH: Well, they're not going to do anything that obvious, are they? [wall moves] Oh. Maybe they are.

KEITH: That's it! The whole wall is on a hinge, it's opening! I feel like James Bond! I would have been an amazing James Bond, by the way.

GERI: Wow.

CHRIS MCSHELL: What are you seeing?

JODY MARSH: It's a control room. There's TV screens with feeds from all the rooms. Any of us could have found this room and slipped in here, listened to conversations.

GERI: There are all sorts of controls. What happens if I do... this? [presses button]

JODY MARSH: Oh, don't press anything, Geri! We don't know what could happen!

[carousel music plays]

SHEILA: It's just made the chandelier in the kitchen go around, Jody, love.

GERI: What about this one? [presses button]

[doorbell rings]

JODY MARSH: The doorbell.

KEITH: Oh my God, look. Look at that camera feed.

MANISHA: What? I can't see. The stupid tree house is in the way.

KEITH: Look, it's the Prof! On the other side of the fence. Oh my God, he's escaped somehow. He's got to be the murderer. He's the murderer, and he's escaped!

JODY MARSH: I suppose it was his poison.

GERI: And he was totally cagey about his research. Had Callum ever done any stories about him, Manisha?

MANISHA: Callum? No, he hasn't done that kind of story for years. Anyway, how did the Prof get out?

KEITH: Oh my God, do you think he was looking for a way out, and that's why he pulled up the floorboards?

MANISHA: So there's a way out?

GERI: He found the way out and didn't tell any of us?

JODY MARSH: Oh, we've got bigger problems. Look at Camera Six!

MANISHA: Oh God. Oh no!

CHRIS MCSHELL: What is it?

JODY MARSH: The zombies are through into the side hall. We've all got to move.

GERI: Shouldn't we try to find the way out? We could escape like the Prof.

JODY MARSH: There isn't time! Lock the kitchen door, barricade it. Move!

[recorder fast forwards]

[zombies growl, furniture crumbles]

GERI: They've got the scent of us. Move!

KEITH: Duck, Geri!

[gunshot, glass shatters]

JODY MARSH: Help me! That zom with the dangling hands is almost through!

MANISHA: Here, cleaver!

SHEILA: That's done it. Head clean!

KEITH: But there's more coming, south and west. Oh God, there's too many!

SHEILA: Everyone back out of the room. I've got an idea. Let me at the control panel. [presses buttons, blast doors raise]

MANISHA: Wow. That's amazing. Sheila, you managed to raise some... what are they, blast doors?

SHEILA: I thought there might be some special protective doors to stop fire spreading in an old house like this. Pandora Haze never spared any expense on technology.

GERI: That was fast, Sheila. They're sealed off again for now. You've bought us some time.

KEITH: How long, though?

CHRIS MCSHELL: If one of you could work out how to power up the control panel upstairs, I suggest we make a hasty retreat, and then destroy the staircases. Axes.

MANISHA: On it. Everyone, upstairs.

[recorder fast forwards]

JODY MARSH: Okay, Chris. We're safe for now. It's just you and me here in the study. Keith's taking out the staircase. Apparently, he had to do it once before in [?].

CHRIS MCSHELL: And the control panels?

JODY MARSH: They're working. There are even remote controls. Looks like you can do loads of things with the tech in the house.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Are there any instructions about how to do those things?

JODY MARSH: All deleted. Should be instruction manuals and Pandora Haze personnel records and all sorts, but it just says "file missing."

CHRIS MCSHELL: Hmm. Do you have the remains of the scrapbook we found in the boiler?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. I've been looking at it. It's weird, Chris. The pages are burned, right, but the spine's still intact, and so I've got all the... all the stumps of pages, yeah, all charred -

CHRIS MCSHELL: There's one page missing.

JODY MARSH: How did you know that? There is one missing. One of the pages at the start of the book is gone. Torn clean out, right next to the spine.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Yeah, that's what I thought. Right at the very start.

JODY MARSH: You've got an idea, haven't you?

CHRIS MCSHELL: I have.

JODY MARSH: Will it keep us alive more than another few hours?

CHRIS MCSHELL: I can't promise that.

JODY MARSH: Then what's the point, Chris? The ground floor's full of zombies, and we're trapped up here. Worst of all, we know the Prof found a way out, but we'll never get to it now. We're going to die in here!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Did you ever hear the phrase, "the Golden Age of murder mysteries"?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. Like, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, that lot?

CHRIS MCSHELL: That lot, starting in the 1920s. While flappers were kicking up their heels and American gansters were smuggling liquor past Prohibition cops, this new genre of stories suddenly became popular. A crime, a murderer, a detective. Hours spent working out what happened and why.

JODY MARSH: I used to love Hercule Poirot on the telly.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Why do you think it happened in the 1920s? Why that kind of story then?

JODY MARSH: I don't know. People needed something to read to distract them from not being able to get pissed?

CHRIS MCSHELL: [laughs] Maybe. I've always thought about what had just happened a few years earlier.

JODY MARSH: What? Oh! The First World War?

CHRIS MCSHELL: Millions of young men in unmarked graves. A new kind of war, mechanized and devastating. Millions of unidentifiable bodies. Millions of boys marched off bravely one day, and never came home.

Um... my daughter. You know, she might be out there somewhere. Or worse, she might be a walking corpse. I'll probably never know.

JODY MARSH: Chris... you never talk about her -

CHRIS MCSHELL: No, no, it's all right. It's all right. What I'm saying is, I think those 1920s Golden Age murder mysteries were a fantasy. There'd been so many stupid, pointless deaths. The slow unpicking of the reasons for one solitary death... it was comforting. Do you see what I'm saying?

JODY MARSH: Yeah, I do. Yeah.

CHRIS MCSHELL: So let's just solve this one.

JODY MARSH: But we're all going to die!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Well, that's always been true. Jody, could you ask everyone to gather in the sitting room? I'm certain I know who our killer is now.

[canaryatlaw]

Well, today was fine, my emotions are just….idk I don’t know how to describe them because idk what they even are….just that I have a lot of feelings lol, kind of the same last week in that regard. But yeah. 7 am, alarm goes off and I get up. Get to work, looking over my closing argument for trial ad on the way so I’ll have some idea what I want to say. Work, I finish fixing the case list that didn’t take long, then went looking for work (lol) and got a permanency hearing for next Tuesday on a still active case, so my job was then to go through the file and take notes so I’ll know what kind of shit I’m supposed to ask. I got a few other assignments throughout the day, smaller stuff go just work on at some point. I did have the experience where I had a very hard time keeping my eyes open again, to the point where around 9:40 I closed my door and put my head down on my desk for like 20 minutes lol I set my alarm so I wouldn’t just sleep all day, and if anyone knocked I knew I was a light enough sleeper that I’d wake up immediately and could manage it. I don’t know if I managed to actually fall asleep in that time or just kind of drifted, but I suppose I did feel better afterwards. The case file was pretty sad, good kid, she’s 17 now and was removed when she was 15 because basically both of her parents were giant alcoholics and they went through this gigantic intact case before she was removed (because DCFS actually does try very hard to keep families together when they can, little known fact I know) which meant I had to wade through hundreds of pages of the parents complaining that this (going to substance abuse treatment) was “ruining their lives” and they definitely didn’t have a problem when your 15 year old daughter has a terrible attendance record because she keeps having to stay home and take care of her passed out drunk parents. So when you hear those stories about “that person your friends cousin knows whose kids were taken for no reason because DCFS is evil” please remember that there is a very high likelihood you are hearing a very exaggerated one sided story from a parent that’s likely abusive (sorry, but kids don’t get taken for no reason). Anyway, off my mini-soap box for the moment (but if anybody ever comments to be again that calling DCFS will just make things worse when they’re witnessing child abuse there is a 100% I will slap them in the face on the spot). I went to court for a little while in the afternoon, nothing too interesting going on there. So I headed out at my normal time, 4:56, (yes I am that precise) to get my 5:06 bus to get to the train to take me to class, all of which goes well. Then comes actually enacting the plan. I was gonna have to convince my classmates first, since I’d see them before the prof shows and we’d of course be talking. So I start light you know, say I just got a freaked out text from my roommate about something going wrong in the apartment, then just slowly added comments like “oh now my landlord is freaking out and wants us both there” and slipping in things like “he’s a cop so he goes kind of crazy about thing” (the former of which is true at least) so by the time the prof actually showed around 6 I had a pretty well-established narrative to work with. He did some quick announcements and gave us our final trial schedule, then after some begging and pleading on my part he let me give my closing on the spot so I could go right afterwards. I wasn’t consciously thinking to talk slowly, which means I sometimes trip over words because I just naturally talk so damn fast, but it didn’t happen too much. Was calling a Lyft before I even got out of the building and was headed home. I was anxious that we were gonna hit traffic because it was still semi-rush hour, and we hit a little but not very much at all and I was home by 6:40, giving me 20 minutes to prep to watch legends in my apartment that is very much not being flooded and occupied by my freaked out roommate and landlord, lol. So I did a few things then got ready to watch. I had Caity up on her Facebook live right before and then I had the showgo app on my phone but also my Twitter feed open on my laptop on my lap lol. Cuz with showgo you can cross post to Twitter, but since it’s still a new app it like stalls all the time and it’s not nearly as fast as my live tweeting needs haha so I ended up switching back and forth between the two depending on what was working. I don’t know how I feel about the episode really. I had a feeling we weren’t gonna get what we wanted with Snart, I just knew it wasn’t gonna happen even though I’ve been the one telling everyone to hold out hope this whole time (dammit Rachel) so I was trying to talk myself down about it throughout the day so it would be so big of an issue, but it was of course still pretty upsetting to just get him placed back in the original timeline because like, yeah he does eventually need to be there, but there was so much else you could’ve done in that story…..I don’t know. Caity told me at HVFF she didn’t know if Wentworth was coming back for season 3 so I’ll take that for what it’s worth until we hear something else. But the rest of the episode wasn’t their best. I know they were going for the whole time paradox thing but like, it was confusing to try and figure out what version of who was who, especially when characters are getting shanked and impaled on icicles, and you’re just like, is that the version that is okay to get killed or the one who will permanently kill the character??? Now of course, I didn’t really think they were actually going to kill any of their main characters. I never believed for a second they were gonna have Amaya stay dead, and when the whole Ray thing happened I actually laughed out loud because I was just like oh please I don’t believe you for a second. The concept itself was clever though, and there were some very good scenes with the different versions of the characters. Unsurprisingly, I loved the scenes with the two Sara’s, and I think the one with the two of them talking about the spear is probably one of my all time favorite scenes of the show just because of how raw and vulnerable it was for them and of course Caity knocked it out of the fucking park. And then of course there was the Laurel scene. Of course since they announced black siren would be a regular on next season of Arrow it was being asked if we were gonna get our Laurel or e2 Laurel, but I was glad we got to see our Laurel. That scene was WAY too short for my liking, but it was done very very well. It was interesting how they did the whole thing with who can handle the spear, and how it was because Sara can get past the darkness within her and use the spear for good that she is strong enough to use it (which of course directly contradicts what Phil Klemmer said in his EW interview released earlier today about how none of the legends could handle it because they had to be pure of heart to do so, but whatever). The final showdown between Sara and Damien was epic, and I’m glad she finally truly bested him. I knew of course she wasn’t going to kill him because they made it abundantly clear they weren’t going down that path, but I soooooooooo wanted to see her kill him anyway, time paradoxes be damned. Sigh. I’ll take what I can get though. I’m gonna try not to be too much of an asshole in this section but I can’t say I was terribly upset to see Rip go. It’s not exactly a secret he’s not one of my favorite characters, and there’s especially someone people ship him with that makes me want to punch through windows and throw people through them, but I can appreciate his character growth and how he did become a better person- but really, he didn’t have much of a role to play on the team anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up again for an episode or two, but I don’t think he’d come back as a series regular (I type while desperately hoping they’ll have Wentworth Miller come back as a series regular). But not gonna lie, I’m kind of glad to not have to deal with some of that ship shit anymore that just made me irrationally angry. I was kind of surprised to see Nate and Amaya stick around, if only because Guggenheim already said there’s gonna be new characters next season and with just Rip gone, uh, the ship is gonna feel pretty damn crowded. So yeah, that’s basically how I feel. I am mostly just kind of sad that the season is over though, so I think that dominates most of my feelings (which I’ll discuss more of after my prison break reaction). I originally was told legends and prison break were on at the exact same time, but for me at least prison break was right after so it worked perfectly for me. It was pretty typical introductory episode, they got some good establishing facts in there about (of course) the huge government conspiracy they find themselves in the middle of, and what other characters might be doing during this (I’m just saying, they better have a damn good reason for bringing T-Bag back, because that dirty fuckface should never see the light of day again). I’m gonna have a HUGE problem taking Sara’s new husband seriously just because he’s fucking Hank from Royal pains and it’s gonna be pretty much impossible for me to see him as anyone else, and plus he’s already proven himself to be an annoying and clueless little shit so I don’t see this going well for him. Michael Jr. is super cute though. I liked seeing the guys get back together, you know I always love me some Sucre and C-Note. Is Sara living under an alias though? Cuz isn’t she still a wanted fugitive for breaking out of the prison that Michael supposedly died at? Or did they somehow magically get that cleared up to with their endlessly convenient government contacts? Lol. Lincoln fucking cracked me up though, he just calls Sara and is like “so I dug up Michael’s grave…” like great conversation starter there buddy. So yeah, overall good introductory episode and definitely looking forward to the rest of the season. Now, for the other associated feelings. I’ve just having a lot of thoughts lately about becoming an actress and if I would’ve preferred that life to the life that I have, or the life that I will have. Because I watch these tv shows, and I watch the actors get to do awesome stuff, and not even the famous stuff I don’t care about that, but like get to go to cons and be on panels and stuff and I’m just like…..I’m so jealous. Like I’m so unbelievably jealous and everything in me wants that life. Well, that’s not true. Not everything. There is still the logical, rational part of me that tells me I’ll never be satisfied with being anything other than a lawyer. And really, I think that’s the truth. I don’t think I could be okay with doing anything else- I just want both of them so badly. I thought that once I made my decision that would be it- I chose law, and that’s that. I didn’t expect to have so many lingering feelings and to miss acting so deeply. I also have to remind myself that it’s not like I gave up a budding television acting career here. I am aware of my strengths and my flaws in my acting skills and I know that I’m not the best of the best that get those jobs that I’d want. Could I probably make a living off commercials and shit? Probably, but I definitely wouldn’t be satisfied with that. And so I’m so torn. I see them saying they’re gonna add new characters to season 3 and I find myself hoping against not only hope but also all reason that I somehow end up getting cast in one of those rules but somehow not have to abandon law school to do it….I mean, I could always come back and finish my third year…..but how would I even come anywhere close to getting into that audition? And frankly, I want to be in law school. This isn’t some crazy thing I HAVE to do. Would I absolutely love the opportunity to do something like it? Of course. But it’s not something I’m gonna turn my life around chasing after when I already made my choice. I chose the law. I chose justice. I chose fighting for the most vulnerable among us facing the most horrific of circumstances. I chose all of these things because they need to be fixed and I need to be the one to do it. I can’t tell you how I know that, I just do. I could never live a life where that wasn’t my goal- it’s an integral part of who I am. Would I love for acting to work its way into that? Sure, that would be great. But at this point I’m not regretting my choice. As stressful as it is, I like law school. I like my job where the things I do tangibly affect the lives of vulnerable children. I like that I’ve seen so many who know the system is broken and want to be part of the solution (even if that means razing the whole system to the ground and starting fresh, which at this point I think might actually be the best idea, which is by all accounts an absolutely terrifying prospect). And no matter what I could do with fame, assuming I somehow achieved fame, I couldn’t do that myself. I could donate to charities and work with them or whatever, but it wouldn’t be my life. I need to have my entire life committed to this. Anything else isn’t enough. This can’t be an afterthought. It’s who I am and I don’t doubt that for a second. And you know, writing this all out helped me a lot. I really hope I can get some acting in over the summer, a play or two or maybe some student films. But if not, I’m still happy with my choice. Okay, now that I ranted all of that. I watched two episodes of crazy ex-girlfriend before calling it a night, and that did succeed in making my mood considerably lighter. And it’s late now, I don’t have to wake up super early thankfully but still earlier than I’d like. It looks like the official execution of evil plan I can’t tell you about will have to wait till Friday, because there’s no way I’m gonna have the willpower to wake up extra early tomorrow to get it done (and since I have no class on Friday I can sleep in and still do it). Okay, that’s quite enough for now, that was definitely more than long enough. So goodnight my loves. I hope you are content with your lives right now.

[zrtranscripts]

The Way of All Flesh, Episode 6

In this episode: The zombies have invaded the house; the living people in Gadsen Manor have destroyed the staircase, but it's only a matter of time before the dead rise up to take their vengeance. Can Chris and Jody work out who the murderer is before the zombies kill them all? As the clock ticks, they gather in the drawing room to see if they can save their own lives.

SHEILA: It's started raining.

KEITH: Maybe that'll drive the zombies away.

MANISHA: If they don’t notice that both their arms have fallen off, I don't think they care about rain, Keith. At least it's safe up here.

GERI: They'll climb up on each other.

JODY MARSH: How do you mean, Geri?

GERI: Well, one of them will fall, the others will trample it. Eventually, the pile will be big enough that they'll reach the upper floor of the house. I've seen it happen. [sighs] I miss Lisa and the boys. I should never have come.

MANISHA: What else are we going to do? There's nothing on telly.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Okay. I suppose you're all wondering why I've called you here today.

KEITH: We're not wondering though, are we? We can pretend.

CHRIS MCSHELL: It's been a most perplexing case. Why would someone commit murder in the middle of the apocalypse? No one hopes to inherit money anymore, and there are very few ways to benefit from a death. 

One clear answer suggested itself: an event in the past so terrible that vengeance had to be taken, and the person who took revenge wanted it to be them alone who did it. Our murderer wanted to kill Callum themselves. Nothing else would do.

JODY MARSH: There's no shortage of people Callum had pissed off, though.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Pissed off, yes, but incensed to the point of murder? Callum's stories weren't in the business of ruining lives, just mocking them. Even with every story of his that you could remember, Manisha, I couldn't find one that would incite this sort of hatred.

KEITH: I mean, in a way, he did me the power of good. I'd never have said this to him, but after there were all those pictures of me in the paper hitting that bloke, I started being offered all these tough guy roles.

GERI: Okay, well, Callum's gossip columns probably didn't get him killed. So what did?

CHRIS MCSHELL: For a while, I thought it must be his personal life. We know he slept with Manisha's wife.

MANISHA: I didn't care. Well, not really.

GERI: And as they said, if Manisha or Keith wanted to kill Callum, there was no need to wait until they were holed up in a house with a group of strangers.

CHRIS MCSHELL: They weren't all strangers. Rose turned out to be Callum's sister, so we all naturally thought she must have been the murderer.

SHEILA: Well, we all know she wasn't now. May she rest in peace.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Well, that was odd, too. She seemed to go willingly to her death, as if she knew what the grievance was, or suspected it. We have the murder on tape. Listen to this again:

[recorder clicks]

ROSE: I see, yeah. What have you got there? [paper rustles] Ah. [laughs] Yeah, that's what I thought. You've got the same way of moving she had.

[recorder clicks]

CHRIS MCSHELL: Did you all hear that?

MANISHA: It sounded like...

KEITH: Someone unfolding some paper. Well, that doesn't get us very far, does it? We can't read the paper through a tape recording.

CHRIS MCSHELL: I have an idea what it might be. We have come across some paper that someone tried to get rid of.

JODY MARSH: Oh, oh, that scrapbook we found burned in the boiler!

GERI: So it was about one of Callum's stories.

CHRIS MCSHELL: But not his gossip column. The page torn out of the book was from very early on in that scrapbook.

MANISHA: But that's from when he was working on really serious journalism. Exposing injustice, going after big corporations like Pandora Haze -

CHRIS MCSHELL: Like Pandora Haze, whose technological country retreat we're sitting in right now. You were right, Sheila, when you raised the fireproof doors downstairs. It is a Pandora Haze property. I suspect that's why it became irresistible to our murderer as a place to enact some poetic justice.

MANISHA: But Callum didn't hurt anyone with that story about Pandora Haze. He didn't even get the top brass in charge of the company. They poisoned thousands of people and even after everything he did, almost no one went to jail for it.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Hold that thought for a moment. I suspect that's the motive, but we need to discuss means and opportunity.

GERI: Well, we all know what the means was, love. Even I know, and I wasn't here. Callum was killed by the Prof's poison.

GERI: The Prof who's conveniently scarpered. I mean, it really seems like it was him, Chris!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Let's go over all the evidence before we jump to conclusions.

SHEILA: Rose was strangled, no mystery there. Any of you could have grabbed the poison or the wire.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Do you remember, just before Callum died, the doorbell rang.

KEITH: No, wait... oh yeah! That was weird. I mean, there must have been one of the zombies pressing on it.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Zombies hadn't gotten through the fence yet.

MANISHA: Short circuit?

CHRIS MCSHELL: Hmm, we seem to have it working perfectly now. Jody, press that button on the remote control.

[doorbell rings, zombies groan]

GERI: Ugh, that's maddened the zombies. Great.

MANISHA: But the control panels weren't working when we arrived, and we all got here together, or almost together. You'd have to be a tech genius to get that working in the few minutes before dinner.

CHRIS MCSHELL: To do it in a few minutes, yes. But remember, someone had been listening to Callum's messages.

MANISHA: Oh God.

GERI: Someone heard all his plans.

CHRIS MCSHELL: We all seemed to arrive together, and we seemed to pick it by chance, but we found that note Rose had made of which day to get here. So Callum knew he was coming. So anyone who was intercepting his phone messages could have known where he was heading.

JODY MARSH: You mean one of us got here first?

CHRIS MCSHELL: That's exactly what I mean. Someone got here first, set up the house, and then pretended to arrive with the rest of us, and looked at that way around, everything's different.

[door collapses]

GERI: That's the last door down on the ground floor. The zombies are through.

SHEILA: So, get to the point, Chris. Which of you do you think it was? Not Callum or Rose. Not Manisha and not Keith, by your logic. And we all agree it couldn't have been you or Jody. By my reckoning, that leaves me, Geri, and the Prof.

KEITH: Not you, love. You were in that tree house when Callum died. We all saw you go up there.

MANISHA: Must be the Prof. Why else would he have run off?

CHRIS MCSHELL: And yet, it would have been a little clumsy to announce to use all that he was carrying poison and then use that very poison to kill Callum.

GERI: [laughs] Oh, right. All eyes in the room turn to me. Well, I didn't kill him!

MANISHA: My money's still on the Prof, Geri. Chris, you say that the murderer knew the house well. It had to be the Prof, then. He knew a secret way to get out of here. Why would he plan to come here and get trapped?

CHRIS MCSHELL: That's a very good question, Manisha. If it wasn't the Prof, then someone's playing a very dangerous game. What stakes could possibly be that high?

KEITH: I thought you said. Revenge.

CHRIS MCSHELL: But remember, something was stolen from Callum's body.

JODY MARSH: That silver engraved bangle he was wearing! Someone nicked it!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Yes. I rather suspect that if the thief went to all this trouble to get that bracelet, they'd keep it close at hand. Everyone, empty your pockets and bags. If I'm right, someone in this room has the bangle stolen from Callum's corpse.

[bags unzip, belongings rustle]

JODY MARSH: Look. My bag's all supplies. Food, and rope, and matches, and candles, and... Doctor Detector comics.

MANISHA: Keith, are you still walking around carrying foundation?

KEITH: It's just really hard to find one that matches my skin tone, all right?

SHEILA: Mine's just changes of clothes.

GERI: Ugh, fine. I've got the armlet. Here it is. I still didn't kill him!

KEITH: Geri! Well, how can you expect us to believe that you didn't kill him if you stole from him?

GERI: I don't really expect it.

KEITH: So you did kill him!

GERI: [sighs] No. No, I didn't. Callum was someone we – someone I – trusted.

MANISHA: So what is that weird arm cuff anyway? Looks old.

GERI: I can't tell you that. Sorry. Look, believe me when I tell you that your lives could be at risk if I did.

JODY MARSH: Our lives are already at risk. Zombie apocalypse?

GERI: [sighs] I'm sorry! I know how it looks. Look, please don't throw me to the zombie hordes, but I didn't kill him, and I can't tell you what this is!

CHRIS MCSHELL: But it's because of you that we're here, isn't it?

GERI: [laughs] Yeah, I suppose in a way, it is. All right, I can tell you this much without putting you in danger: Callum suggested we meet here and I agreed. He wanted to look for information that might clear someone he'd written a story about, he said. 

We've – I've – been working on something since before the apocalypse. One of my associates got hold of this armlet and gave it to Callum to give to me. This meetings been arranged since, uh, the day before the apocalypse.

MANISHA: He was always very insistent we keep heading in this direction.

CHRIS MCSHELL: So Geri, you and Callum arranged to meet here. He brought Keith and Manisha, and told Rose. Did you tell Sheila and the Prof to come with you?

GERI: Well yeah, I... wait a minute. I knew I was heading here, but I kept quiet about it. The four of us hid in that barn. Someone said there was a house here and we should make a break for it.

SHEILA: It was Rose who said it.

GERI: No, it wasn't.

SHEILA: I think it was, my love.

GERI: No, it wasn't. It was you, Sheila. You told us to come here!

CHRIS MCSHELL: When you arrived, chased by zombies, you were just too slow, Sheila. We all saw you take shelter up in the tree house. That's where you were when Callum was murdered. You had a perfect alibi.

SHEILA: You can't call me a murderer because my alibi's too perfect!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Consider this: the Prof found a secret way out of this house, so there must be a way in. Do you remember, Manisha, you couldn't quite the Prof because the way he left the house -

MANISHA: - was perfectly in line with the tree house!

KEITH: I don't get it.

JODY MARSH: Secret passage! There's a secret passage leading out of the house!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Through the tree house. That tree's a fake. That's why it still has its leaves so late in the year.

GERI: That's why the Prof was pulling up all the floorboards downstairs! He was looking for a secret passage!

CHRIS MCSHELL: And he found it, and he used it to escape, just as you used it to sneak into the kitchen and dose Callum's food while we were all answering the door after you'd made the bell ring!

KEITH: Everything you've said just makes the Prof look more guilty! His poison, his passage. He knew this place was Pandora Haze. Maybe he was tied up in all this.

CHRIS MCSHELL: But the Prof had no reason to hate Callum, as far as I can tell.

KEITH: Nor does Sheila!

CHRIS MCSHELL: You know, Sheila, I did think it was odd that you arrived when you did – just as we discovered Callum's laptop, and just before it broke.

SHEILA: I didn't know that.

CHRIS MCSHELL: You worked out how to use those control panels very quickly when we needed to raise the fire doors. Perhaps because you were already familiar with them? It occured to me as soon as we saw the technology in this house that there might be a way to listen in on conversations in other rooms, and I wondered if you wanted to stop us finding out what was on that laptop. Perhaps that early story Callum worked on about Pandora Haze itself?

JODY MARSH: Oh! Was that the story that was torn out of the scrapbook?

CHRIS MCSHELL: Yes, I think so. Interesting, that. Why not just burn the whole thing? Perhaps because there was a picture on one of the pages that you couldn't bear to destroy.

SHEILA: I don't know what you mean.

CHRIS MCSHELL: When we asked you if you had children, Sheila, you hesitated, then said no, no, definitely not. People who don't have kids are usually pretty sure about it. But then, you'd seen that TV show Jody liked – Doctor Detector. It's unusual for an adult with no children to have a working knowledge of recent kid's TV.

KEITH: She said she didn't have kids, she doesn't have kids!

CHRIS MCSHELL: Did you take a picture from that scrapbook, Sheila? Was it a picture of your child? Was their name Billie?

KEITH: You don't have to say anything.

CHRIS MCSHELL: You don't have to, but we've probably got another two, three hours of life left. If I'm right, you've done what you set out to do, and for whatever reason, you hadn't escaped by the route the Prof found. Do you want to die denying Billie's life?

GERI: Chris... might you -

SHEILA: Billie was my daughter. Look, I've got her picture in my bra.

[paper rustles]

JODY MARSH: It's a newspaper article, Chris. The headline is, "Pandora Haze Murderer Found Dead."

SHEILA: She was such a sweet girl. Always wanted to do the right thing. She didn't deserve any of the things that happened to her.

CHRIS MCSHELL: No. No, I expect she didn't.

MANISHA: Sheila, are you saying that you did it? You killed Callum?

SHEILA: She didn't do bad in school. She was fast with languages. Got into the Pandora Haze training scheme straight out of sixth form. Me and her dad were so proud. They sent her all over the world doing logistics. I didn't even know what that was. Hong Kong for six months, then to Venezuela -

CHRIS MCSHELL: Then to Somalia, where there was a spill of poisonous chemicals that killed thousands of people.

SHEILA: That wasn't her! She only arrived three weeks before. They pinned it on her to protect her bosses and their bosses. They faked an e-mail from her authorizing the shipment in a rusty lorry. I've looked into it. You can fake e-mails if you know how.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Was it a magnet in your coat you used to wipe Callum's hard drive? Was that why your coat got stuck to that metal sculpture when we were fighting the zoms?

SHEILA: You can learn these things if you've got a reason. And I had a reason, after what Callum did to her.

MANISHA: But you just said it was the company, not Callum. He felt terrible about that story! He wanted to get the Pandora Haze bigwigs sent to prison. He was so angry it didn't happen.

SHEILA: And he took his anger out on her. Believe me, I tracked the bosses down, too. Went to another one of their corporate hideouts, but three of them had already turned zombie. I realized I didn't just want to see them die. I wanted to be the one who did it.

It was your friend Callum and his sister who stuck the knife into Billie and gave it a good twist. He wrote all those stories about her, how it was her responsibility that the lorry went out in that condition, that if he was her, he'd be ashamed to be alive when all those kids were dead.

She went to prison for 20 years. "It'll be fine," I told her. "Good behavior, you'll be out in 10. You're still young, you'll be 33 when you're out, you can make a fresh start." They even changed her name. Prison can be hard for a woman if you've killed children.

For a little bit, I thought she'd be okay. But then she started to have dark circles under her eyes. Every time I visited, she was thinner and thinner. I got it out of her in the end. She was being bullied.

They put her in the same prison as Callum's sister, and Rose had worked out who my Billie was. That kind of story gets you respect in prison. She was worse than him, Rose. Billie hanged herself in her cell. Bedsheets. She'd been inside for four months. She was 24.

JODY MARSH: Oh God! Oh, Sheila, that's awful!

GERI: If something like that happened to either of Lisa's kids...

CHRIS MCSHELL: Both Rose and Callum knew they'd done a terrible thing. She went willingly to her death for it. And it wasn't his willy that Callum used to wake up shouting about in his sleep. It was her, Billie. Callum came here to try to find evidence to clear her name, but the Pandora Haze records were already wiped. You destroyed all the files, Sheila, to stop us using the tech in this house to find out what you were doing, and who you were. That's ironic, really.

MANISHA: Just a sec. Sheila killed Callum and Rose. Sheila's killed people! Callum was my best friend!

GERI: And you left your wife to die, so...

SHEILA: It's like you said, Chris. We're all going to die. I just wanted it to be me.

CHRIS MCSHELL: You hacked Callum's voice mail. You heard the message from Geri agreeing to this rendezvous and deleted it, along with the joke message pretending to be from Pandora Haze.

SHEILA: I thought it was real. It made me so angry.

CHRIS MCSHELL: You arrived early, familiarized yourself with the house, disabled the controls panels and erased the files, then faked arriving with the rest of us, but taking shelter in the tree house so we'd never suspect you.

GERI: Why did you care if we suspected you?

CHRIS MCSHELL: I think you hoped for some poetic justice for Rose, didn't you? To frame her, so we'd all gang up on her, so she could feel what it was like to be bullied to death.

SHEILA: By the time Callum was dead, I think Rose started to suspect why he'd been killed.

CHRIS MCSHELL: She believed she'd die anyway, and so she didn't try to save herself. You both had me fooled, for a while. But I wasn't fully convinced that she was the murderer, so you took matters into your own hands.

There's just one thing I don't understand: why didn't you leave? You had a secret way in here. Why didn't you use it to get out?

SHEILA: [laughs] The Prof locked the passage behind him, the cheeky beggar. Must have thought we'd come after him. After all this planning, I'm stuck here because of a stupid lock.

GERI: Well, at least we're all in this together, eh? Murderers and all.

SHEILA: I've been thinking about that. Maybe we're not all stuck here.

[recorder fast forwards]

KEITH: Oh God, you were right, Geri. They're crawling on top of each other, they'll be up onto this floor in a few hours!

JODY MARSH: Are you sure about this, Sheila?

SHEILA: I've done what I meant to, lass. I've no more plans for my life. You're all good people, more or less. If I can save you, maybe that makes my account right with the world.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Well, there's no other way. This might not even work.

MANISHA: Thanks, Chris, that's very comforting. Sheila, are you ready?

SHEILA: I am. Be careful lowering me on this rope, though. If I break a leg, I'll be of no help to you.

GERI: And that thing makes enough noise?

[noisemaker rings, zombies growl]

SHEILA: The zombies certainly seem to think so. Ready?

KEITH: Ready.

MANISHA: I just wanted to say, Sheila, you did kill me friend, but I... I think this makes us even.

GERI: Yeah. Thank you, Sheila. We'd all have died without you anyway, Callum and Rose as well.

SHEILA: I wish you luck, all of you. I hope your lives work out better than mine has. And I hope this works! Come on, get this window open. [window opens] Now, lower me down. [rope creaks] That's it! I might see my Billie soon, you never know. Come on, zombies, come and get me! [noisemaker rings]

GERI: It's working, all right. They're chasing her.

JODY MARSH: Aw, she's faster than she looked when she was running for the tree house.

MANISHA: This is it. We've only got a few minutes. Everyone, down the rope ladder on the back stairs. Bring the guns. The horde's thinned enough that we might have some chance. Come on, let's go!

[recorder fast forwards]

[fence rattles]

KEITH: Okay, that's me through the fence. All safe. Nish, look at that. There's a note tied to a tree with your name on it in big letters.

[paper rustles]

MANISHA: [laughs] It's from the Prof. "Sorry for my sharp exit, Doctor Plassard. I couldn't risk all of you deciding I was the murderer and pursuing me through the secret passage so I locked it. Forgive me. I do hope you and the others find another way out. And if you would ever like to be part of something truly revolutionary, please do visit my labs. We always have use for surgical skills." He's put the address.

KEITH: Don't think much of that job offer. He just ran off and left us to die!

GERI: It's surprising how often people do that in the apocalypse.

[SHEILA screams]

JODY MARSH: They're almost on her!

KEITH: No, no, I can't watch, I can't! Manisha!

MANISHA: It's all right, Keith. I can. I feel like we should, somehow.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Jody, what's happening?

JODY MARSH: The zombies are almost on her. She's climbing a tree to give herself some time, and... no. No, they've got her. She's gone.

MANISHA: Do you feel like that wipes out what she did?

KEITH: Must do, mustn't it? Killed two people, saved five.

MANISHA: I don't know if it works like that. All of those things still happened. One can't wipe out another. Callum and Rose still destroyed Billie.

GERI: They were destroyed by their dad. We're all pursued by the dead. Sometimes more literally than other times. [sighs] We've got to get moving. That horde won't be distracted for long.

JODY MARSH: Yeah. We'll head down to the main road together, then. Which direction are you heading?

MANISHA: Maybe I'll take the Prof up on his offer?

KEITH: No! My mate Vinny had a cottage in Cornwall he reckoned would be magic in an apocalypse. It's got its own well and everything. Let's go there.

MANISHA: Together?

KEITH: If you want to.

MANISHA: It'd feel weird splitting up after all this time. Oh, I suppose I've got a type. Come on, pretty and stupid young person. We'll get to the crossroads and toss a coin, all right? Heads, we go to the Prof. Tails is Cornwall.

KEITH: Together?

MANISHA: Yeah, all right.

KEITH: Bye, guys! Keep safe from the zoms.

OTHERS: Bye.

KEITH: You know, I was thinking this would make an amazing movie, don't you think? And I could play me. [imitates movie preview voice-over tone] "In a world torn apart, one man stands..."

GERI: Think those crazy kids'll make it?

JODY MARSH: They've got as much of a chance as anyone. What about you, Geri?

GERI: Oh, I'll strike out across country. I have things to be seeing to.

JODY MARSH: Geri, you never did tell us why you were meeting up with Callum, or what that bangle's supposed to be.  

GERI: No, but I expect you'll find out in time. I'll keep an eye out for you.

JODY MARSH: Oh, you are so mysterious! Are you a spy? Or... or a jewel thief? Or a spy who's pretending to be a jewel thief, but you've fallen in love with jewels, and now you don't want to go back to being a spy?

GERI: [laughs] I couldn't possibly comment.

JODY MARSH: Wait. You wanted to meet up with Callum to talk about Pandora Haze, and you're a crack shot because of uni. I've been thinking about all that cybercrime – hacking, infiltration – that happened before the apocalypse. Who'd get trained in weapons? Who'd have journalist contacts? Geri, are you Netrophil?

CHRIS MCSHELL: Jody! She's not a terrorist.

GERI: [laughs] After everything we've been through. Yes, I'm Netrophil. But we're not what they say we are. Don't believe everything you hear. We've been working since before the apocalypse, trying to stop what's happened. You don't know it, but my organization is really the only thing standing between humanity and some pretty dark stuff.

JODY MARSH: Darker than the zombie apocalypse?

GERI: We'll meet again. Abel Township's of interest to us. Be seeing you.

CHRIS MCSHELL: And then there were two. What do you reckon, Jody? Can you lead me home?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. I was just thinking, we could turn our headsets on again now we're away from the house.

CHRIS MCSHELL: Oh yeah! Well, I don't expect that anyone at Abel's been listening, though. Still, be nice to hear a friendly voice. [headset clicks] Sam Yao, come in. Are you there, Sam?

[static]

SAM YAO: Oh my God! I've been waiting hours for you to do that! Well, minutes. Me and Alice have been going spare in the comms booth. Well, she claims I was going spare, but she was fine. [laughs] You were not fine! When we heard Rose's story, you were definitely crying. And then when Sheila said about Billie – [sighs] Listen, seriously, though. Did you see if there was any lead piping? Or a candlestick?

JODY MARSH: Hi, Sam.

SAM YAO: I mean, did none of you want to shout, "There's a body in the library!"

CHRIS MCSHELL: There were no bodies in the library.

SAM YAO: It’s just that... I mean, neither of you at any point talked about your "little gray cells" or told a story from St. Mary Mead?

JODY MARSH: We'll try to do better next time. We've missed you, Sam. Come on, Chris. Take my hand. There are a few zombies on the horizon, but we can outpace them. Let's run.

[recorder fast forwards]

[canaryatlaw]

Well, today was kind of blah, mostly because I'm still in the same shitty mood from yesterday. And now that I'm back here even though I have a handle on most of my things I still feel ridiculously stressed out and can't stop my mind from racing and I could really use some fucking Xanax right now (I only say that because I'm awaiting my prescription for it from the company, I don't normally throw around comments like that). Ugh. But anyway. My alarm went off at 9:45 and I got up, got my things together and got ready, then ate some breakfast and my dad took me to the airport. I made it through all my goodbyes okay, despite having the feeling in my chest that tears were lurking right below the surface, waiting to be set off at the smallest trigger, but it somehow subsided and I was okay. The airport is small, so I made it through security and to the gate in no time. The first flight was fine, nothing spectacular. I mostly worked on my appellate brief, fixing citations and breaking up sentences (because I have a habit of making 4 line sentences, grammatically proper but I know my prof won't appreciate it) and just generally trying to get my word count up. We landed in Baltimore pretty soon and my next flight was in an hour, with the gate pretty close by to where I was. So I grabbed some sushi that looked appetizing from one of the places then sat at the gate and took advantage of the free wifi I finally managed to hack into without actually paying (it's not actual hacking, it's just knowing how to navigate the system). And with that wifi I looked up and downloaded the rest of the cases mentioned in the trial court fake opinion so I could use them for the second section of my paper. Flight boarded soon, and when we were in the air I started reading cases and working on them, and made a solid amount of progress. Landed after not too long, took for-fucking-ever for our bags to come, and then my uber app flipped out on me and kept saying my request wouldn't go through so I'm like fine whatever I'll use Lyft, so I do and the driver gets there a lot quicker than they usually do since the airport makes them wait in a special lot until they get a pick up. So I get in the car and we started chatting, apparently they had been leaving the airport after another pick up planning on going home but had their app on to see if they'd get anything going north towards where they lives and they got me haha so they turned around and so we went. And then I get a notification saying my uber driver was arriving now and I'm like ????? I bring up the app and it doesn't even have a trip going, so I'm like wtf....and then a few minutes later the poor guy calls wanting to know where I am and I'm just like....I didn't order an uber?? Haha it was strange. But my driver and I established pretty early on that we're both tumblr people, so that kind of set the level of understanding of each other for the rest of the conversation haha. So we talked about a lot of things, they talked about figuring out that they were non-binary and picking a new name, and of course we eventually got into religion and it's social effects and I was happy to hear that they were still actually a Christian even after having grown up in a crappy conservative Christian environment and dealing with all that shit. So they were telling me how much they love their church and I in turn told them how much I love my church, and yeah, it was nice. Got home soon enough, and as expected my white canary boots had arrived, so I had to try on my whole costume to make sure they work of course, haha (I'll post a photo when I'm down here). They fit, thankfully, and they match the costume pretty well- they're a little darker than the actual suit, but the jacket is a darker gray so with them together they just look awesome, so I'm very happy about that. So I settled in and started catching up on my tv shows, which I'll try to comment on if I can remember what I watched, lol. But I kept working on my appellate brief until I had about 4700 words (out of the maximum 5000). I had one more case I was gonna cover but the opinion was so confusing and its relevance to our case really tenuous, so I said ah screw it and called it there. Hopefully I can make up the last 300 or so words in final edits and adding transitory and other necessary things. I'm not worried though, which is good. I've said this a million times before, and I fucking hate it so much, but every single time I have to write something I get scared I won't be able to write as much as needed, even though I pretty much always exceed the word count and being too short is almost never an issue, and while knowing this, I still think it, and 5000 words was looming over me this whole week as some unattainable goal, so now that I'm a lot closer to it I'm feeling better about it. So yeah, tv. I initially picked out my recording of powerless, only to find out the dvr had actually recorded the premiere of trial and error. Okay, well I wanted to watch this anyway, so I might as well keep watching, and holy Jesus this show is amazing haha I already love it so much, although I know the legal inaccuracies are gonna kill me even when I'm telling myself it's a comedy ffs (but in the episode they were pulling shit like "oh homosexuality as a crime was never repealed here" and I'm like uh bullshit Lawrence v. Texas much???? Lol). But I enjoyed that a lot. I think I went to Designated Survivor next, which was a thoroughly epic episode, fairly major spoilers ahead (you've been warned) but ahhh I can't believe just like that MacLeish is dead??? The Vice President is dead?? And how that's just gonna look so much worse for president Kirkman and not just that MacLeish was a dirty traitor....ugh. I was glad to at least see my girl Hannah FINALLY getting vindicated cuz I was like ahh yes you go girl cuz I've hardcore been pulling for her this whole time, lol, so that was cool. But yeah, really intense and awesome episode, I liked it a lot. Riverdale next I think, and holy shit that episode was so sad???? Like dang man, Jughead's life is really fucking depressing. I was of course calling major bs when the sheriff supposedly took him in on literally no evidence and then had his school record because that's not fucking illegal or anything?????? Ugh. I'm glad he's at least living with Archie now though. Veronica continues to be awesome, and with the whole Betty and Polly situation I was thinking the whole time yo do not trust the Blossoms they evil AF so of course I was right there. Good episode though. Then I started last week's episode of Time After Time, which I managed to start in time to finish right before this week's episode started without actually meaning to at all haha so I watched the two episodes back to back. Continues to be an intriguing show, I think it's still finding its footing a bit, but the twists have been very interesting so far. I'm not sure how sustainable it is in the long run, like I'm not sure I can see it going more than one season really, which is unfortunate because it's clever, the plot just doesn't really allow for it. They also love killing people off haha I guess that's what happens when you have a show featuring Jack the Ripper. HG Wells continues to be an gem ("he came over right after world war 2" ".....there was more than 1???????") and the rest of cast does well too. So when that was over I knew I had just missed the live episode of Chicago justice, but I didn't really have much else to watch at this point so I watched the second episode. It wasn't bad, annoyed me less than the first, though that's likely just because they spent less time in the courtroom, lol. They're not quite mastering the time jump thing yet, where they go from crime to investigation to trial in one episode, without any real inference to time passing, which makes it feel like it all happened over like 3 days, which isn't just unrealistic, it's confusing, because they're like "oh who are we gonna bring to the grand jury?" and then the next scene is "the grand jury returned an indictment!" and you're just like da fuck?? Lol. The episode itself was interesting though, I wish they tied in their twist a little sooner, it seemed like too much of an afterthought with the entire plot they had come up with, but it was a well-thought out and well-played twist for sure. It kind of annoyed me that through the entire episode everyone was like "oh you know any cop who gets put on trial is gonna be found guilty" when that's pretty much categorically false, as cops are almost never convicted for officer involved behavior?? Lol, like I get that they're connected to Chicago PD or whatever but they gotta get that down a bit better. And yeah, when that was over I let the news play for a bit while I finished up the queue for the week on the company tumblr. Throughout the night I also wrote my "speech" (it's like a paragraph and a half) for the PAD election speeches tomorrow- so needless to say I decided that I would run. I had kind of come to that decision last night and was gonna text the justice (president) but I was already falling asleep, then I woke up and started doubting it again, but then came back to that conclusion and went for it. I'm not running for justice though because I know that would be too much, so I'm running for service chair (my current position) and vice justice. I don't know the current state of people running, but I have to imagine it's not gonna be all that many. I guess we'll see tomorrow though. And yeah, that's about it. Tired and about ready to fall asleep, back to real life tomorrow. So goodnight friends of mine. Hope you had a relaxing weekend.