#i think. too. i think he kind of cares about elias now. its complicated

[bingobongobonko]

grumbling sigh. no thoughts. just the tragedy of yves today actually. despite finding out his whole identity is a lie and he's been lying to himself abt everything actually, he was so normal today. he nearly decided to fuck shit up just to get the final pieces of the worldkiller mech, but last minute decided to show up at elias's door at like 2 am and was like "heeeeyyyyyy sorry i didnt respond to your messages for a few days. you wanna help me with something lollll teehee :3"

and honestly? it was good. it was good for him. he needed that. its going to be crash and burn after this babeeeyyyyy

[ellariasand]

Hi! I've been going through some of your asoiaf posts and fic and it made me wonder, why do you think Oberyn never married Ellaria in canon? I've seen someone speculate it was because she was too lowborn, but I'm not sure if Oberyn is someone who would be held back by that considering how much of his life was unconventional. I would love to hear your take. Thank you!

Hi! Thank you so much for your question — I’m glad my work could inspire that kind of thought for you!

Before I get into what my take on Oberyn and Ellaria’s relationship is, I’d like to issue a disclaimer: I know very little about the Martells as it relates to the ASOIAF books. My exposure to them is almost exclusively through the Games of Thrones show and what I’ve read in summaries and articles about them, so I’m well aware that my understanding of their position within Dorne, Westeros, and their own families as a whole is most likely missing key information. This take is most likely going to lack the appropriate amount of nuance, and be mostly based in feeling rather than fact, so I highly recommend checking out @sunontherhoyne for a more in-depth examination of the Martells’ lives and legacies!

That being said: if we’re talking my own personal take on why Oberyn didn’t marry Ellaria….it’s complicated. It’s not out of any lack of love for her, nor is it someone else forcing outside pressure onto him. Personally, I think it’s genuinely just a casualty of the rampant misogyny present in ASOIAF as a whole — the same reason Elia was a victim of rape and murder, the same reason the Sand Snakes are brutally eliminated. GRRM does not care for his female characters, particularly women of color. They have little value to him — yes, even characters like Sansa or Aria. My guess is that he didn’t think it really mattered whether Ellaria was anything more than Oberyn’s lover, and it reads as more salacious if they had daughters out of wedlock, so he just left it.

But if we’re talking specifically in canon, typical fantasy misogyny aside? I think part of it, ultimately, is the fact that, no matter what way you spin it, Ellaria is illegitimate. While her father is head of House Uller, that doesn’t mean anything, and to marry her would be to cause uproar in Dorne, and spark rumors everywhere else. (And the man already has enough of those floating around him as it is, with his lifestyle.) Oberyn doesn’t care for his convention, but he also doesn’t care so little for his family and for Dorne that he’d be willing to send the entire monarchy into chaos. While Oberyn is not Dorne’s ruler, he cares for Doran, who is. He clearly has respect for convention and order, even though he may not respect those who make the orders. And while Dorne is suggested to be a lot more liberal in its culture than the other regions of Westeros — and that’s a whole other can of worms I’m not going to get into — this is still a medieval-inspired fantasy world. Illegitimacy is a running theme through the ASOIAF books, from what little I’ve gathered. (See: Jon Snow.)

And I think, to some extent, everyone in ASOIAF is ruled by those kinds of conventions and constructs, because it’s what they know. To them, the idea of not being able to marry because of a difference in status is just how things are. That does not stop Oberyn from loving Ellaria with everything in him, nor does it stop him giving her privileges usually given to a wife, but it is the law of the land, and a law that Oberyn doesn’t have the power to change. It’s not dissimilar to England’s King George VIII abdicating to be with Wallace Simpson — to marry a non-royal, particularly an illegitimate child, would mean stepping away from all his royal duties and leaving himself, Ellaria, and his daughters all defenseless. And with Doran as frail as he is — which is why Oberyn ends up in Cersei’s court in the first place, as a Royal ambassador — forsaking his royal status when he can just as easily be Ellaria’s husband in all but name feels a foolish choice, even for him.

Oberyn Martell is not as reckless and swashbuckling as people make him out to be. He is noble, and has a flair for the dramatic, and at his end was blinded by rage and emotion, but he is not a stupid man. Not to say that any of that is what you implied with your question at all, but I get the distinct impression that most fans of Oberyn specifically — not ASOIAF in general — think he’s some kind of sex-crazed, Byronic hero who openly gives the finger to everyone and everything that displeases him. He is cunning, and in every step of the way uses the systems placed before him to his advantage. With the complex web of the monarchy presented to him, and the already complex lineage of his daughters, whatever advantages being married to Ellaria might offer clearly do not outweigh the disadvantages for him.

And who’s to say Oberyn really even needs a wife? Dorne is a matriarchy. His brother is on the throne, Arianne is next in line, not him. So, I think, in a way, you’re right — Oberyn and Ellaria live enough of an unconventional life that they see no reason to bother. With all the red tape surrounding it, a wedding is just a formality Oberyn most likely has no desire to bother with, when he can provide all the love and support Ellaria could ever need or want just the way he is now. They know that they love each other, and that’s good enough for them.

[thepictureofsdr]

Hey, what are your theories on what happens in Chain of Thorn. Like, obviously, we want Thomastair, and we want Jordelia, we also want Matthew to be happy. So, can you string a theory in which all of this happens?

hey anon thanks for the ask!!! I am so sorry this is long I just have a lot of thoughts

personally, I don't think we're going to get a fully satisfying conclusion, there's far too much happening and far too little time. This series is very different to what we've seen in the past, the main cast has a lot of emotional trauma from each other, rather than having each other to help with trauma from outside situations. they've all been through an alarming amount, and of course mental healing takes a lot of personal work and time, so either we're getting a time skip or some VERY rushed healing.

I think in this situation, my ideal COT would have all the conflict resolution in the beginning. I talked about thomastair in this post, they would get together in the beginning and we could watch them grow over the course of the book. cordelia and matthew stop hiding from their problems, cordelia goes back to actually being there for her heavily pregnant mother and chronically abandoned brother. james and cordelia sort everything out, they all have a talk with matthew and he decides to get help. while he's away for a bit, we see lucie and jesse try to make a case for him to stay alive. I feel like the family would agree so we could watch the institute petition to take him in, it really depends on what direction CC wants to go with for jesse's story. while I'm madly in love with the joshwood ship (kamala and eugenia) I hate to say it but I think we all know its not going to happen. id love to see alastair and kamala become friends, and with his support have kamala realize that she's never deserved the bullshit of anna. we'd get a confrontation scene and anna can spend a few chapters re evaluating her privilege and ignorance. with all the emotional fiascos sorted out hopefully in the first third (I hate how rushed it would be but it's only one book :/) we could have actual progress for the rest of the book, because ngl im sick of drama being dragged out with annoying tropes, interfering with easy plot solutions, and then suddenly being resolved.

no more of this miscommunication, secret keeping, lying. I think everyone just needs to open up and be honest, so we can have some actual emotional growth and healing over the course of the book as they all work together to tie up the paladin and belial situation. personally I really dont care that much about the technical plot I just really want the character arcs to be done justice.

alastair - gets to apologize to everyone properly and begins to forgive himself and heal. he also gets some apologies from the thieves, gains a friend group, and hopefully one of the parents steps in to give him the support elias ripped away. spends the book learning he holds value and his trauma wasn't his fault, that he can move on and he's loved.

thomas - gets closure for barbara and learns to let himself exist beyond the "kind" box everyone shoves him in. he and alastair have had wonderful communication from the beginning so they just need to keep doing what they're doing

cordelia - realizes she isn't at fault for the paladin situation and forgives herself. is open with james and they properly get married

james - is very complicated. I think he deserves a lot of time to sort his own emotions out, have some time alone, have talks with the people in his life, just have the essential "hi im actually in love with you talk" with cordelia at the beginning then spend the rest of the book healing while also helping out with the plot, hopefully ends the book in a good place emotionally.

matthew - spends some time away to deal with alcoholism. comes back in a much better, sober, and stable state, so he can recognize his own feelings and have talks with his important people, especially finally letting others help him with the guilt of the baby situation. of course they all still love him and he begins to believe his love is real. begins to learn to love himself and like who he is. I dont think he was ever really in love with cordelia (talked about here) so id like to see them fall back into that easy friendship.

lucie and jesse - im not really an expert on their arc, so id love to see them slow down the relationship now that one isn't on deaths door. id love to see jesse get to be there for grace properly and watch lucie be a badass and defend jesse's right to exist bc we all know the clave is gonna have issue with that.

christopher just needs to be appreciated please

kamala - gains some independence, realizes the manipulative shit anna's been pulling isn't okay, confronts her and realizes that she deserves more. solidifies her love for herself and gets to be open with who she is

anna - gets called out on her privileged, arrogant, ignorant, sometimes cruel view of relationships and fixes herself up bc I just know CC is gonna put her w kamala.

I genuinely dont know what to feel about grace. she's been through so much, she's cute with christopher but she's caused so much pain. immediate forgiveness would be BS but she still deserves some compassion. I have no idea what could happen w her, hopefully she could talk things out with james and matthew and have a pretty decent redemption arc. get this girl a parental figure and some friends stat

also with all of this emotional maturing id like the thieves to have a talk. they genuinely love each other so much but I think they've all spent too much time neglecting or focusing on each other. their friendship has a lot of potential to be incredibly close and strong and healthy. also they could have such fun friendships with alastair id like to see them forgive him fully.

we dont need all of these characters to be perfect by the end but id like some assurances that their healing has started with support and healthy foundations. there could be a time skip where they deal with the plot, we skip the healing and see them all happy and healthy in a few years but who knows.

tl;dr stupid miscommunication resolved in the beginning > emotional healing can happen across the book > plot gets resolved without miscommunication getting in the way

[theskywaslookingback]

I've seen you taking prompts and if it's not a bother, Jontim with angy Tim letting all his anger go after Elias or someone equally nasty hurts Jon real bad?

you have the patience of a saint. here you go.

litany (in which certain things are crossed out)

"Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing. You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?" - Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken

When the tape clicks on, Tim can’t even find it in himself to be surprised. He’s been viciously marking over statements for at least an hour, highlighting anything that mentions a circus, skin, or a dance. There’s less of it than he thinks there should be, and every minute his eyes skim over written word after written word makes his blood boil higher and higher. He throws the marker to the floor, the bump and skid of the nub marking a trail of yellow from the desk to the floor where it rolls under Melanie’s desk.

“What do you want?” He asks flatly, his shoulders tucked up to his ears.

The recorder whirrs, cassette winding in its casing, a low hum of static emitting from it as the previously locked trap door to the tunnels swings open. Jon comes tumbling out, breathing hard. He looks...God, he looks like a wreck. Hair cropped haphazardly short, like chunks had been cut out with a bread knife, clothes hanging off him like rags. The door closes with an ominous creak, and is that--? Vaguely he makes out the shape of a hand, though that’s not right because no hand looks like that , waving right before the trap door shuts. But no, that’s…

“Well then, where have you been?”

Jon looks up, startled. There are deep bags under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept in weeks. His eyes dart off of Tim to the desk where the tape recorder sits. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I was...gone.” He says awkwardly. He keeps rubbing at his wrist and hand like they ache, and the skin does look rubbed red and raw.

“I know that. It’s not like you’re ever really here .”

The last time Tim really saw Jon must have been at least six weeks ago, shortly after their boss outed himself as a murderer . Tim tries not to think about that overmuch. The way Jon’s hand had gone for the recorder almost absently as he tried to apologize, to explain. Tim had yelled, he remembers that, said if Jon wanted to talk they would have to do it without the recorders and then Jon had left . And, well, that was the end of it, really.

Now, Jon flinches. His eyes resolutely trained on the floor at Tim’s feet and Tim can’t remember the last time that Jon looked him in the eye. Like everything else at the moment it just makes him angry.

“I-- I have to talk to Elias.” Jon says. He pulls himself up to standing and shuffles past Tim like it hurts to move.

“Jon.”

Jon stops. “Get this thing off my desk.” Tim can’t bear to look at him.

“Oh.” Christ , why does he sound so sad? “Yes, of course.”

The hand that comes down is so small, dark skin pocked over with holes that mirror the ones in Tim’s own hand. He remembers when they were both smooth, unmarked. The weight of that hand in his own, the feel of that palm under his lips. That seems so long ago now, before the stale air of the Archives turned them both sour and rotten. Jon’s hand closes around the smooth dark tape recorder, fingers folded around it both careless and reverential. His wrist and forearm are covered in abrasions, the skin peeling back in spots leaving half scarred, raw red skin. Before he can stop himself Tim closes his hand over Jon’s.

Jon jerks, in either fear or surprise Tim can’t say. “Tim, I--”

“What did this?”

“Tim it’s-- it’s fine I just...I need to talk to Elias.” Jon tries to pull away again and Tim squeezes hard enough to feel those delicate bones under him shift. “Ah! Ah! Tim--”

“ Jon .”

“Ah, the Circus, it was-- one of them kidnapped me and ah, they had me tied to a chair.” Jon chokes a little on his own words. “They-they we’re going to uh, wear me. I-I-I think it had something to do with a ritual. A dance. They called it the Unknowing .”

Tim lets go and Jon takes a step back, cradling his hand and tape recorder next to his heart. Tim can barely hear anything over the rushing of blood in his ears. He flexes his fists, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his chest.

“So what they just...let you go?”

“Not exactly,” Jon huffs, “it’s-- it’s complicated.” He glances over his shoulder to the Archives entrance, like calculating his chance at getting out the door before Tim can-- do what? Stop him? Is that what he wants to do? He looks so tired, his shoulders hunched and arms scabbed over with half healed rope burns.

“They hurt you.”

Jon huffs out a breath, preparing for...something. Some kind of denial most likely, or maybe even an apology. Whatever it is Tim can’t hear it right now. He stands, the scrape of his chair on the floor making Jon’s jaw snap shut.

He swallows. “Well, yes and no. I mean, my skin is in better condition than it’s been in years.” Jon smiles for the briefest moment before it falters into a grimace, “Is that weird? That’s...kind of all they talked about.”

“Of course that’s weird ,” Tim bites, “everything about you is weird .��� He takes a full step toward the door before Jon grabs his arm. Tim shakes him off, more violently than he needs to or even intends.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to have a word with Elias.”

“Why?” Jon asks. It sounds startled out of him, like the abrupt firing of a gun. The tape crackles in Jon’s hand, growling like an aching, hungry stomach. “I mean, why do you care?” He doesn’t sound accusatory or angry, just curious.

‘I don’t,’ is what Tim wants to say. It’s what he means to say. But instead his stomach swoops and the words tumble from his mouth, unwanted and unbidden but true, “You’re all I have left.”

Jon’s mouth does something funny, trembling into an ‘o’. He fumbles for words, though nothing comes out but vague stammering noises. Tim snarls and grabs him by the shirt, twisting his hand in the fabric and pulling hard until Jon meets him chest to chest.

“Do not do that to me ever again.”

“I-I didn’t mean to--”

“Don’t.”

Jon goes quiet. His hand twitches like he wants to grab Tim’s but lets it hover indecisively to the side until Tim lets him go. Jon stumbles backward, bumping into Martin’s desk. “Okay,” he says hoarsely, “okay, I-- okay.” Then, even softer with his eyes on the floor he says, “I’m sorry.”

The inside of his chest explodes white hot, a mix of anger and guilt and shame, and Tim slams his hand on his desk. The cheap wood rattles, pens bouncing off onto the floor and rolling away. His poor desk plant tips to the side and crashes hard against the wood floor and spills ceramic and potting soil across the ground. Martin comes thundering down the stairs a moment later, his eyes wide and startled.

“Tim, what’s--” He starts before his eyes land on Jon and his mouth drops into a soft ‘o’. “Jon?”

“Martin,” Jon breathes, and it comes out sounding overwhelmingly relieved.

Martin crosses the room to fuss, his hands reaching out like he wants to touch but knows he’s not allowed. He reaches out and takes the tape recorder from Jon’s hand, overly gentle. Tim can’t...he turns and strides up the stairs with furious purpose. Martin can do whatever he’d like. If he wants to work himself up into knots trying to care for someone with no sense of self preservation or common sense he’s certainly welcome to do so. Tim’s already burned that bridge.

It’s just...when Tim had nothing else at least he had Jon. And there is a very small part of himself that misses Jon terribly. The easy laughter drawn out by late nights with bad takeout, bent over research reports and books on the occult they couldn’t possibly hope to understand. The curve of his mouth, small and shy, after a kiss. The feel of his hand on Tim’s back, or holding his own. His body, small and lithe, curled into Tim’s side while they walked to the tube after work.

He misses his friend more than any of that. He misses the trust.

Tim is at Elias’ office before he can even think about it, riding a wave of rage so strong it almost knocks the air out of him. He throws the door open, letting it slam against the wall as he storms through.

Elias sits back in his chair and doesn’t even pretend at surprise. “Hello Tim.” He says cordially, smiling for all the world like nothing could ever go wrong for him. “Jon’s back then, is he?”

“You knew,” Tim starts, voice simmering with fury, “this whole time you knew where he was, didn’t you.”

Elias blows out a slow breath. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“Tim--”

“Elias.”

“I knew Jon had been taken, yes,” Elias says, splaying his hands out in front of him as though in supplication, though the look on his face is amused, “but I did not know where. I was working on it, though it seems Jon did not need my help in the end.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Tim snarls, slamming his hands down on Elias’ desk and leaning in toward him. “Why didn’t you say anything ? Why did you let us think--” He cuts himself off, biting into the inside of his own cheek.

Elias tilts his head and narrows his eyes, there’s something vaguely predator-like about that gaze that almost makes Tim uneasy. “And what good would that have done, Tim? Hm? Would you have gone to him? Saved him?” Elias leans in and his eyes are so bright Tim has to lean back. “No. Don’t lie to yourself. You would have watched too, just to see him suffer because you thought he deserved it.”

Tim clenches his jaw, teeth clacking together hard enough it sends a jolt of pain up the muscle. “You--” He starts, but there are no words to convey the wrath making itself at home in his ribcage. A rage turned inward because Elias is right and Tim doesn’t know what to do with that.

Elias just stares at him, patiently, eyes bright and lips turned up in amusement. When nothing else comes he finally leans back into his chair. “Right,” He closes his eyes for half a heart beat and then looks up at the door, “That will do for now, I think. Jon is on his way up here right now so no need to close the door on your way out.”

Tim turns on his heel and leaves, his throat tight. He does slam the door shut behind himself as he leaves, an attempt to soothe the complicated torrent working its way around his chest, making it hard to breathe. He sees Jon down the hall, striding purposefully toward Elias’ office. He’s barehanded, no tape recorder in sight, and somehow that gives Tim enough pause to gasp in a breath.

Jon hesitates when he sees Tim, rocking back on his heel like he doesn’t know where to go, and then Tim takes two steps forward and pulls him into his arms. It’s not quite a hug, Tim’s arms are too tight and Jon has no way to move either forward or back, but Tim presses his face into Jon’s hair anyway just for a moment. When he lets go Jon stares up at him, bewildered.

“Tim?"

“No.” Tim says sharply, “Don’t start, just--”

“Right,” Jon says, confused, “right, okay--”

“Just--” Tim huffs out a breath, “Stay safe.” He says and leaves Jon standing there in the middle of the hall.

Tim has lost so much in his life. He’d lost Danny, and he’d lost Sasha. Now he’d almost lost Jon and didn’t even realize it. It wouldn’t happen again, Tim thought fiercely, not ever again.

[oconnrs]

hockey astrology (sun) signs I didn’t know that either absolutely shocked me or make absolute sense:

this post has taken me FOREVER to finally get up but it was so fun to research about considering these are 2 subjects i enjoy a lot! more than half of it is definitely just me geeking over the complexities of astrology even when all I knew were the sun sign parings and the post is slightly long but it’s all pretty interesting info so here it is!

things that just make sense:

kevin hayes is a taurus

honestly describes his whole energy and I’m not surprised whatsoever

 mikko rantanen is an october scorpio vs petey being a november scorpio

 october scorpios often are a mix of passion & compassion

think complexly but are utterly genuine and physical

are persistent

charming & intriguing in the eyes of others

 vs the early November deacon aka the PISCES DECANTE

 like super shy and reserved and attentive and mysterious yet intriguing and if that DOESN’t describe Elias Pettersson then idk what does

2nd decan has the same ruling planets as pisces

causes scorpio & pisces have a lot of common traits or get along well (cough cough Brock Boeser)

are careful in picking friends & companions, empathetic

PLD IS A FUCKING CANCER !!

this literally just makes so??? Much???? Sense??? To me. Like all the generic/common traits of cancers are things that I’d totally see in him

cancers are commonly loyal, dependable (often are the secret keepers), enigmatic, charming, and intuitive

 often are more into maintaining friendships (maybe through knowing and keeping their friends secrets), and being more lowkey

vindictive

landy is a sagittarius & ej is an aries

an elite friendship and their zodiac pairing really shows it

often both signs are super good at understanding each other, have common traits (spontaneity, activity, curiosity) and inclinations that make them get along easily!

someone online said that the signs “complete each other”, Aries admire honesty, friendliness & open-mindedness while sag adores Aries’ optimistic & bold traits

also both signs are relatively outdoorsy signs so its common they bond over sports/activity

where did you come from because i just cant make sense of this?:

uhhh tito’s a gemini?!?!?!??!?!

 @royaltyofhockeylosers told me this and I’ve never met 2 gemini’s that get along so HOW are him and mat so attached

also it’s not just that they’re Geminis because the different deacons usually add difference (ok im getting too complicated ash shut up) but they’re like 3 days after each other meaning that they’re probably in the same deacon

jt compher is an Aries and josty is a pisces

 now this might be me projecting but I’ve just never met an Aries and pisces who get along well

like fire sign vs water sign, often have completely opposing energies but honestly good for them

matthew tkachuk is a sagitarrius

he just doesn’t really radiate sag energy to me? no i cannot explain

ok actually i did further search and i can see some of the traits

aka passionate, confident, enthusiastic and secure

i was honestly expecting him to be a leo though 

leos are often charming, loyal, slightly narcissistic, natural leaders, and protective

i’m just very ????? i would like to see the rest of his chart bc his sag energy is so unlike landeskog’s 

except i did find an online chart and it said landy had a scorpio moon which could explain their different kinda vibes

other cool things/relations:

jamie the cancer & seggy the aquarius aka opposites attract in its finest

 “Aquarius have a modern, flashy outlook of life while cancer are sensitive and emotional in nature. Aquarius are energetic and friendly (aka people people) while cancer tend to retire to themselves”

cancers are often traditional while Aquarius often rebel

aka a modern case of opposites attract

cancers often teach Aquarius hospitality while Aquarius teach them problem solving

Aquarius are defensive

cancers help break that wall while Aquarius helps to build it/be less self-conscious in cancers

aquarius often relaxed & unconventional 

social and business savvy

brock Boeser is a 1st decan pisces

ruled by Neptune & characterized by romanticism, selflessness, & intuition

usually have a positive and optimistic towards life

other common traits:

 dreamy romantic nature

pretty good and sensing others emotions and helping others’

deal with things in a calm/polite way

prefers to seek comfort 

very selfless

seriously this was stressed like 20 times in the article i read

meanwhile Tyson Jost is a 3rd decan pisces

usually spiritual in nature (i totally added this bc I saw him listening to 187 htz the other day)

passionately loves the people around them, willing to devote themselves to things they found worthwhile

other common traits: 

willing to try anything

easily adaptable

dreamer, ambitious, persevering

EXTREMELY compassionate & kind, find helping/supporting others a natural instinct

favor empathy, selfless & generous

honorable mention for things that make sense: 

anton kudobin is also a taurus and im convinced that’s where the chaotic energy comes from…seriously something about Taureans is just chaotic yet comforting at the same time

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 34: Jon

Sasha apparently has a particular New Year’s Eve tradition involving a karaoke club and far too much alcohol, and the Primes are understandably not enthusiastic about the whole concept, so in the end it’s just Jon and Martin and Tim who venture out to the celebrations. Martin manages to coax Charlie’s grandmother into allowing them to take him along, and they have a grand old time. Jon manages to actually get a decent picture at one point, and now his phone background is of Charlie perched on Martin’s shoulders, arms folded on top of his head, with Tim standing beside them, all three of them looking up at the sky with expressions of absolute delight and wonder. It makes him smile every time he looks at it.

Back in the Archives, they all buckle down to an individual project, in addition to their regular duties. Tim, of course, is still attempting to get a handle on his newfound ability to see the color of fears. It’s slow going, since Jon absolutely forbids him to practice in the Archives, or anywhere on Institute property, until he’s got a better handle on it; the sheer overwhelming presence of the Eye means he can’t look around without nearly passing out, so he finally agrees to hold off until he gets to a point where he can target it to a single person or object, or at least narrow down his field of vision. Jon Prime warns that that’s something that will only come with time, but Tim is determined. He at least makes some small progress.

Martin starts working on a cross-index of the statements they’ve studied—not just which ones relate, or seem to relate, to the same entities, but ones that have common names, locations, circumstances, or even dates. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing they should have been doing from the beginning; it’s just that Martin is the only one with any kind of library training, so he’s the only one who thought of it. And now that they know more about what’s going on, he has something to work with. Wisely, he saves it to a flash drive rather than on the Institute’s servers, so there’s no chance anyone outside the four of them or someone they approve to help out can use it.

Sasha focuses on the Institute, or more specifically on its Heads. While the four of them know that it’s actually been Jonah Magnus the entire time, or at least his eyes, she’s interested in the apparent successors—why they were chosen, how they were chosen, where they came from and what happened to them when Jonah Magnus was ready to move on, at least ostensibly. Jon cautions her to be careful, and she reassures him with a flurry of technical terms he loses track of halfway through, but there’s a crackle and pop of static that makes them both wince but leaves them with the Knowledge that she’s right. Her research is as secure as can be.

For his part, Jon digs into Gertrude.

He knows Jon Prime has some knowledge of her—of her travels, her past—but he wants to find out as much as he can on his own. Besides, he isn’t sure Jon Prime has the answers he’s looking for. Really, he’s not sure what answers he is looking for, but whatever it is, he’s going to do the research himself. It just feels like it’s cheating otherwise. So he tries to find out as much as he can about where she came from, how she came to the Institute, and what sort of things she might have been up to.

In doing his research, he comes across the startling information that Gertrude’s flat is still unlet. Apparently there were some legal complications due to the nature of her disappearance and death, and she was paid up for several months, so the agent simply never bothered to clean the place out. Something about this nags at him with a sense of wrongness, but—perhaps unwisely—he ignores it and keeps looking.

He tells his team that he plans to break into the flat. Tim and Martin both protest, and even he has to admit it’s not the world’s best idea, but he can’t think of any other way to gain access. Sasha rolls her eyes and tells him to give her twenty minutes.

Two hours later, he presents himself at the lending agent’s office as Gertrude Robinson’s grandson and asks, all innocence, what they’ve done with her things.

The agency is only too happy to let Jon clear the place out, even providing Jon with a couple of boxes in case he wants to take things with him. Jon’s not sure what he would want to take, but he accepts anyway. If nothing else, he can take it all and they can sort through it with the Primes’ help. The agent brings him up to Gertrude’s flat, lets him in, and tells him to just lock it behind him when he leaves, then wishes him luck and leaves him alone.

Jon gives the agent to the count of ten to get well away while he unwinds his scarf and unzips his jacket, then reaches into his inner pocket. Once upon a time it’s where he kept his cigarettes, but what he pulls out now is his new tape recorder. Not that he went out and bought one, of course, or that anyone on the team bought it—as far as he knows. They all came back from the holidays to find a neatly-wrapped package topped with a black-and-white striped bow on each of their desks; when they, with some trepidation, unwrapped them, they found separate and distinct tape recorders—a pretty clear sign, as Sasha says with what Jon considers unnecessary enthusiasm, that they’re all meant to be recording statements. And probably everything else they do. Since Elias doesn’t seem to know about them, they’re not using them for anything official, but Jon knows they’re all dictating their supplemental research onto them. He checks to make sure the tape is properly loaded, then thumbs the RECORD button.

“Right,” he says. “I’m standing in Gertrude Robinson’s flat. Former flat, I suppose I should say, but it hasn’t been relet and all her things are still here…such as they are. Thanks to Sasha, and some technical maneuvering I am not going to ask about on the grounds that she is an excellent and able assistant and I don’t want to have to visit her in prison, I was able to gain access by plausibly claiming to be her grandson. I’m here to look around and…hopefully get a better idea of her. So…let’s begin.”

He keeps up a running commentary as he searches the apartment. Gertrude’s life was an austere one; the kitchen contains nothing but a collection of teabags, a pot, a kettle, and a single mug. Jon goes ahead and packs it all into a box, especially the tea, which is Martin’s preferred variety. The bed is neatly made, as if she expected to be back soon—which, well, of course she must have—and she has no more than a dozen different outfits. Three suits—two skirt, one pant—and a red silk chiffon evening gown of a style popular in the 1970s hang in the closet, along with two pairs of sensible brogues and a pair of pointy-toed high heels; the drawers contain a few pullovers and a couple pairs of more casual slacks, beyond the usual assortment of undergarments.

The bookshelf draws his attention. It’s a single shelf, filled with books, but there are no others in the apartment. Quickly, he scans the spines, narrating a few of the titles into his recorder, before stopping and sighing.

“It’s…it seems to be mostly nonfiction,” he says. “Some fiction, but most of these appear to be books on history. I don’t have time to go through them all here, so I’m going to do the next best thing. The agent did tell me to pack up and take what I wanted and they’ll throw away the rest. There might be something useful in here. And if all else fails, we’ll have some new books to read, I suppose.”

His first box is relatively full, so he sets up a second box and begins layering the books in it, muttering to himself as he does so. “I have no idea if all of these will fit in this box or not, but we’ll see what we can do. For that matter, I don’t know if I’m even going to be able to pick it up myself. And if I have to carry more—”

The lightbulb goes out overhead with a faint, metallic pop.

Jon blinks the spangles away from his retinas and glances up with an exasperated sigh. It was late in the afternoon when he arrived here, and the sun has set by now, so with Gertrude’s unexpectedly thick, dark curtains drawn, there’s no light coming from outside. The ceiling light is too high for Jon to reach; he has a brief moment of wishing Martin was there, or Tim, before heaving himself to his feet with a sigh. He gives his eyes a second to adjust, then makes his way carefully towards the end table with its small china lamp. It’s not optimal, but it will at least give him enough light to see.

“You don’t want to do that,” a sing-song voice says from behind him.

Jon nearly leaps out of his skin. Footsteps sound behind him—sharp and crisp and ominous—and he turns around to make out a tall, slim shadow moving towards him.

“I mean,” the same voice continues, “you can if you really want to, but you’re not going to like it. Sometimes not being able to see is a good thing.”

“Wh-who are you?” Jon stammers out. He tries to tell himself that it’s simply one of Gertrude’s neighbors, that this is perfectly harmless, but he doesn’t believe it. The last eight months have knocked most of his capacity for deliberate self-delusion right out of him.

He can’t actually see the grin in the darkness, but he can hear it. “Well, my father named me Nikola, and then I killed him, so I thought I rather deserved to have his second name, too. Which makes me Nikola Orsinov. Pleased to meet you at last.”

Jon now wishes Tim or Martin were here for a completely different reason. He swallows hard. “Y-you, ah—you killed Gregor Orsinov?”

“Yep!” Nikola Orsinov says brightly. “He was really boring, and I’m a monster. What did you want me to do—not pull him to pieces? I did use all the bits.”

Jon can feel the bile rising in his throat and mingling with the terror, threatening to choke him. “How—how did you get in here?”

“I followed you, silly! You didn’t even lock the door.” There’s a slight creaking noise as the shadowy figure shakes its head. “Gertrude would be so disappointed in you. You let me into her house!”

“There’s nothing here,” Jon says. He fervently hopes that’s true. “N-nothing important…”

“Oh, I don’t believe that. And neither do you, or you wouldn’t be here! That nasty old Eye wouldn’t have told you to come if there wasn’t a reason.”

Jon wonders if it was actually the Eye’s idea that he come here, or if it was his own idea, or a conflation of the two. He also wonders if anyone will hear him if he screams, if he can make it past Orsinov to the door or if he’ll need to use the window, and if he’ll manage to survive if he passes out. Irrationally, on top of all of this, he finds himself trying to remember the name of that girl in his Intro to Drama class with the gift for fainting on cue without hurting herself. Slowly, he reaches for the lamp.

“Don’t turn that on,” Orsinov orders, somehow managing to sound sharp and intimidating while at the same time never losing the high, lilting, almost childish sweetness to her voice.

Jon freezes. The name Ellie Hall slams into the front of his brain and he desperately tries to clear it away. He refuses to let his last thoughts be ones of regret, refuses to wonder if he’d still be trapped in a dark flat with a manifestation of the fear of the unknown if he’d stayed on the theatre track, certainly refuses to waste any more brainpower on the stereotypical prima donna who’d been the reason he switched his degree path in the first place. Think, he tells himself. He needs to pull up something to give him strength, or at least the courage to face his doom.

His hand falls away from the lamp and hits his pocket; his fingers trace the outline of his phone through the fabric. He thinks of the picture on the background—of Martin and Tim with Charlie, watching the fireworks display. The people he cares about are waiting for him to come home. Whether they need him or not is immaterial. They’re waiting for him and he can’t let them down.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asks, and he manages to ask it without his voice shaking. Small victory, but he’ll take it.

“No!” Orsinov says, sounding absolutely aghast. Jon relaxes, marginally, until she adds after a moment’s thought, “Well, yes, but not now. That would spoil everything. It would be a shame for you to go to waste.”

Unbidden, Jon wonders how, exactly, she used all of Gregor Orsinov’s “bits” and what she plans to use his for. He really and truly does not want to think about it, but he can’t seem to stop. He decides to put the blame for that on the entity of fearful and forbidden knowledge looming over his shoulder. “Wh-why are you here then?”

“I’ve heard so many interesting things about you, Archivist. I decided it was finally time for us to have a good old chat,” Orsinov says. “Face to no face! Eye to…well.”

Face to no face. Okay. Jon is definitely not turning on the light now. “What have you heard?”

“Well!” Orsinov says with relish. “First my friends came to make a delivery for you, and they said you called on all sorts of nasty powers to send them away. That wasn’t very nice, Archivist. It’s rude to chase away your guests.” She gives a delighted little laugh—not a giggle, not like Michael’s, but unnerving in its own way. “And then it turns out we have a friend in common! Isn’t that nice? Only he’s very sneaky. He came to visit Daniel and Sarah, and they thought he was coming to join us in our dance, but then he was…unmasked. He ran away! So very rude.” She sighs. “But then, what do you expect from the Eye? No manners.”

Tim. Oh, God, she knows Tim was at the Trophy Room, of course she does. And if Breekon and Hope are her “friends”, then she knows about Martin and Sasha, too. Jon’s terror compounds. “Leave them alone.”

“Oh, I’m not interested in them. Maybe. Or maybe it’s all of you! But if you can do it by yourself, that would be fine, I’m sure.”

Jon takes a deep breath and squeezes his phone—for luck or comfort, he’s not sure which. “What do you want from me, then?”

“I want you to find that old skin for me,” Orsinov says cheerily.

“The sk—the gorilla skin?” It’s the only thing Jon can think of—the gorilla skin missing from the Trophy Room when Tim went to investigate.

“Mm-hmm! We thought nasty old Gertrude had destroyed it, but your friend came asking so many nosy questions, so now we think maybe she was just very good at hiding,” Orsinov told him.

“I’m sorry, you want me to find it for you?” Jon’s tongue seems to have become temporarily disconnected from his brain, because he cannot seriously be talking like this to something that has already made no bones about telling him it tore its creator to pieces.

“That would be lovely. And a lot nicer for you than our other ideas.”

The idea that Gertrude might have stolen a skin from the Trophy Room never occurred to Jon, but now that he thinks about it, it makes sense. He’s beginning to realize that she likely did read all of the statements, at least all the real ones; if he and his team can sense a true statement, surely she could, after forty years. She kept the Archives in disarray in hopes of slowing down Jonah’s plan, but he realizes she had to have read the statements to know they needed to be misfiled, and oh, God, why is he thinking about this now instead of getting out of this alive?

Because, a small voice in the back of his head says, if Gertrude stole the skin, it must be important to the Stranger.

“Wh-why—why do you want it?” Jon stammers out.

Orsinov’s hands clap together twice with a disturbingly hollow, plastic sound, and Jon can’t explain why that’s somehow more terrifying than his initial thought that she was an animated piece of taxidermy like Rawlings and Sarah Baldwin. In a voice of childish glee, she says, “I want to wear it when I dance the world new!”

Jon wonders if he can borrow some of Tim’s wit—what, you’re going to turn it into a dress or something?—but as the thought crosses his mind, another one meets it halfway and strikes him momentarily dumb with terror. The painting Martin Prime described all those months ago—the figure in the warehouse with the manic grin, the man tied to a chair. I thought you’d make a lovely frock.

Oh, God.

“But—but wh—” he begins, but gets no further. A shadowy arm shoots out of the darkness, faster than he can move, and seizes him around the throat in a powerful grip. It is, as he surmised from hearing the clapping, made of plastic—or at least something hard and unyielding—smooth, firm, and cold. He finds himself both wishing he kept his scarf on and glad he didn’t, as the plastic joints would probably pinch at Charlie’s inexpert and uneven stitches and unravel them.

That thought quickly takes second place to the fact that his feet are not touching the floor, followed by the fact that his flow of oxygen is very definitely being cut off.

“Question time is over, little Archivist,” Orsinov says, still in that same sing-song voice. “Find the skin. You have until…well, until I change my mind.”

She opens her hand, and Jon drops to the ground in a graceless, undignified heap. He gasps and sputters, struggling to force air back into his lungs, and looks up at the silhouette looming over him, equal parts terrified and angry.

“Shh,” she says, the sound far eerier than it has any right to be. “Save your energy for the dance.”

The plastic footsteps sound on the laminate again, and Nikola Orsinov is gone, leaving Jon alone in the darkened apartment.

He spends a few minutes greedily gulping down air. Tears stream down his cheeks and he’s not sure if it’s from the near-asphyxiation or from fear or maybe a little bit of both. Rubbing at his sore throat with one hand, he fishes out his phone with the other, activates it, and stares at the picture for a long moment, hoping to draw on that sense of peace and happiness he felt in the moment he took it.

He doesn’t. All he feels is a renewed sense of terror, because everything he loves is in this picture. It’s a reminder of what he stands to lose if he fails—of what can be taken from him in an instant if he’s not careful. He has to find that skin. Somehow.

He thumbs over to his contacts, hovers over the button to call Martin, and stops. He can’t. He’s still coughing and gasping for air, so if he tries to call, Martin will know by his voice something is wrong and try to come after him, and he can’t put him in danger. Can’t worry him, not like that.

Instead, he switches over to the group chat Tim has arbitrarily labeled Team Archives Happy Fun Times And Doomsday Prophylactic Society Executive Committee and sends a text. [Almost done. Where are you all?]

Sasha replies first. [Still back at the Archives. Cleaning up for the night.]

Tim is the next to respond. Rather than words, he sends a picture he obviously took at arm’s length, crammed between Martin and Sasha and with the time and date on a laptop screen behind them prominently displayed. Jon smiles, briefly. They’ve all grown a bit less trusting of text messages since the whole Jane Prentiss incident; he’s pretty sure the next step is going to be code phrases that change on the daily.

[Stay there. All of you. I’ll be back shortly.] Jon struggles to his feet and switches on the lamp. He contemplates the boxes for a moment, then sweeps as many of the books as he can into one and folds it up. The other he unpacks and unfolds again, then tucks the box of tea into his jacket along with the tape recorder. He puts the scarf back on carefully, hoping it’ll hide any bruising, hoists the box in both arms, and remembers to lock the door on his way out.

He drove today. Thank God he drove today. After carefully checking the backseat, the boot, and under the car for stray clowns or mannequins or anything else, really, he climbs into the car and drives the exact speed limit back to the Institute. It’s well past the end of the day by the time he arrives, and it’s a Friday to boot, so he’s pretty much the last car in the parking lot. Jon leaves the box of books in the boot, double-checks the locks, and practically runs down the steps into the Archives.

His team is there, standing by the cluster of desks. Martin is the first to notice, and he makes a small noise that alerts the others to turn around. Jon doesn’t slow down, just charges straight across the Archives floor and all but flings himself at Tim and Martin. As their arms wrap around him, he relaxes for the first time since the lights went out, even though he’s very aware of the fact that he’s still shaking.

“Jon? Jon, what’s wrong?” Martin’s voice is sharp with anxiety. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

“We’ve got you. We’ve got you,” Tim murmurs. “It’s okay. You’re safe. What happened?”

“Orsinov,” Jon croaks out, and damn, his voice is still raw. He doesn’t pull back from the comfort of his friends’ embrace, though. “Gregor Orsinov—his, his daughter, I suppose—calls herself Nikola Orsinov—she was there.”

“Oh, God.” Tim pulls both Martin and Jon closer to himself. There’s a brief rustle, and then Jon feels someone else join the embrace; he sincerely hopes it’s Sasha. “In Gertrude’s flat? Was she waiting for you?”

“No—no, she followed me.”

“What did she want?” Sasha asks, and thankfully her voice is right where he’d expect it to be if she was the fourth member of this hug.

Jon tries to take a deep breath and accidentally gets a mouthful of fluff from Tim’s sweater, so it takes a second before he can answer. “The gorilla skin—the one from the statement. The one that Rawlings told you had been stolen. She wants me to find it.”

Some of the pressure eases up; Jon clings harder to Martin and Tim, feeling a little foolish but not really caring. He’s scared, damn it, he needs the comfort, and while sometimes when he’s afraid he wants to be given space and left alone, more and more lately he’s found himself only feeling safe when he’s being held. He decides not to think too hard about what that says about him.

“Why does she think you can find it?” Sasha asks, sounding puzzled.

“A-apparently Gertrude stole it. Orsinov thought she’d destroyed it, but…” Jon hesitates. He doesn’t want to make Tim think it’s his fault.

Tim groans. “But I was asking leading questions, so once Breekon and Hope outed me, she thought we were looking for it, too. God, Jon, I—”

“No, it’s not your fault,” Jon insists. “I-it—it’s not your fault.”

“Did she hurt you?” Martin asks quietly. “Or just try to frighten you?”

Oh, Jon is tempted to lie. Martin didn’t force him to answer; he can just stay silent. But his options don’t exist in a vacuum, and he can’t do that to Martin.

“She grabbed me,” he admits. “By the throat. J-just for a minute, but—”

“Oh, God. Let me see.” Martin tries to pull back, but Jon grabs him tighter and shakes his head.

“I’m all right. I’m all right,” he insists. It’s not quite the truth and not quite a lie. “It’s not—I’ll take a look when we get home. I just don’t—right now I don’t want anyone going anywhere alone. Sasha, are you—do you want to spend the night or—”

“I really need to go home,” Sasha says, and when Jon looks over at her, she seems regretful. “Visiting hours tomorrow, and I promised Uncle Wade I’d be there.”

“Okay. Then I’m driving you, at least.”

“I’ll accept a ride.”

Jon nods. “Just…give me a minute.”

He knows it’s silly. Knows it’s a lot to ask of Tim and Martin. But he just needs a few more minutes in the safety of their arms before he has the strength to move.

They don’t talk about it further that night. They drop Sasha off, bring the books into their house, and have dinner. Martin makes a soothing tea and Tim carefully tends to the bruises forming on Jon’s throat and Jon makes tomato soup despite the other two saying he doesn’t have to cook. They end up going to bed early, snug under a quilt and a knitted afghan and cuddled close together. Jon falls asleep safe and warm in Tim and Martin’s arms, and for the first time in over a year, he doesn’t dream.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 139 - Chosen

Smart move on your part. They always are, aren’t they? Smart moves. Someday you’re going to push your luck too far, and when you do… well you just better hope it isn’t Jude who comes to collect. - Statement of Eugene Vanderstock

She did and it wasn't. I assume Elias was a more merciful murderer than Jude would have been.

Anyone who talks about “the Blitz spirit” wasn’t there, or wants to paper over their fear with nostalgia. Terrible things happened in the Blackout, and we hurt each other just as much as the Germans hurt us.

You know, I think there's a ring of truth to this line. Even having only delved into this topic on a very shallow level, I am already aware of plenty of - hm, how to put this - internal backstabbing, mostly of the non-violent kind, but I'm pretty sure the other kind existed, too. People in a crisis don't just develop a uniform spirit of solidarity. That's just not how people work. There might be a little bit of solidarity between unexpected people, but where there's an ingroup, there's an outgroup. In a war that may be the people actually bombing you, sure, but it may well be your neighbours who are doing a little bit better than you or who have expressed some doubts about your favourite leader's policies. (On a personal note: I have already seen people talking about the early pandemic days in a way that makes it sound like there was some sort of universal all-encompassing spirit of solidarity and the sheer rose-tintedness of those glasses makes me want to VOMIT. Way to sweep all the crisis-induced interpersonal conflict under a rug and pretend it didn't cause some people horrible pain and trauma. If, a few decades from now, I see anyone using the term "covid spirit" in an analogous way to "Blitz spirit" I swear I'm going to absolutely lose it.)

He wanted a grand inferno, a ritual of apocalyptic burning that would make the firebombing of Dresden look like a sparkler. Which sounded… amazing. But a few of us pointed out that the Allied air force had a tad more firepower than we did, as none of us were likely to make the rank of Air Marshal anytime soon.

Oh god, I would love to be a fly on the wall for THAT conversation, the sheer levels of snark in that room must have been off the scales.

Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire.

"But the father was just some guy, the child will never be the true chosen one if she isn't conceived by flame." "Okay, buddy, get back to me when you've figured out how to FUCK FIRE!"

She was quiet, considerate, but prone to fits of violent rage, which, while not unexpected given what burned inside her, still made living in a single location for any length of time untenable.

... "not unexpected given what burned inside her"??? More like "not unexpected given that literally every caregiver she has ever had has been a violent sadist who treated her like a symbol rather than a human being and she has never once experienced actual love and care, learn some basic childcare, you absolute arse!" I'd be prone to fits of violent rage, too!

Arthur tried to frame all this as a test of faith, and declared that those who we lost raising Agnes had been found wanting in their devotion to the Lightless Flame. Prick. She was just a brat.

I have a visceral dislike of the word "brat" because certain people (*cough* my stepdad *cough*) regularly use it as short-hand for "A small child who actually has human needs and expresses them in the only way their still-developing linguistic and emotional abilities will allow them to". And if you disregard the supernatural element, that is pretty much the exact way Eugene uses it here and that, more than the fact that he's a sadistic murderer, makes me want to FUCKING STRANGLE THE GUY!

I took foreign workers, mostly, those with the fewest connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be.

TMA gets really on-the-nose with its politics in season 5 but it is undeniably political even earlier than that and this isn't exactly what I would call SUBTLE (mind you, this is an observation, not a complaint).

Maybe they assumed it was some long, torturous plan, and she was simply building the kindling for a bonfire of aching loss and suffering such as we had never before seen. And I suppose, in a way, she was. Just not the one any of us expected.

Heh. The worshippers of the Desolation, utterly desolated.

I’m curious to see what it was she did to derail this big ritual, because I’m sure she didn’t pay poor Jack Barnabas to fall in love with Agnes. ... Well, ninety percent sure. - Jon

I see. Jon's starting to have the same "Well, you never know with her" feeling that I do.

God knows. It’s not like I don’t have my own office politics to keep track of.

I feel like Jon is perhaps having his own moment of "Damn, I would need a corkboard and some string to figure this out" about all things Lightless Flame. I certainly am!

Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings burned right out of them, but me? I’ve just got to sit in mine.

That's actually very untrue. Most of the avatars are full to the brim with the feels and you can easily tell that even from the little insight into their psychology that we get through the statements and the occasional personal interaction. So I'm not sure what the hell Jon is even talking about here, but it's clearly some frustrated nonsense.

My impression of this episode

The internal dynamics of the Cult of the Lightless Flame are, quite frankly, fascinating. They're all just stumbling around in separate directions, trying to convince the rest of the cult that their idea of "Asag" is the truth. It's amazing. And then there's Agnes, of course, who is just ... well, I have a soft spot for her. Pushed into a role that was chosen for her before she was even born and only allowed to leave that role on death - a death she chose because she didn't think she could fit that role anymore. Agnes deserved better!

[patricianandclerk]

Promises

“I’m going to kill you, Archivist,” says the being called Michael, and Jon ignores it, walking past the looming figure in the doorway to his kitchen and instead making his way down the corridor, to the bedroom. “Did you hear me?” it asks from the bedroom doorway, as Jon unbuttons his cardigan, facing the other way.

“I heard you,” Jon says. His hands are shaking slightly as he drags the cardigan off his shoulders, and he hears the strange pull and tug on the air behind him, making his skin prickle and his hair stand on end, as Michael comes closer. “You told me the last time, before you were going to kill me. It didn’t take. And I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?” it repeats, angry, and Jon turns, and shoves it in the chest.

It makes his hand feel as though it’s full of pins and needles, but it makes Michael stumble back slightly, and it pouts at him, its mouth twisting— And then Michael is smaller than that, no longer hunching to keep from going through the ceiling – still inhumanly tall, but human-looking, its hair a sandy, cascading set of curls around its shoulders.

He wonders, despite himself, how it works, that Michael and Helen should both exist at once. Michael doesn’t have the power he used to, Jon doesn’t think – he can sense that, that the scales are tipped, but the fury that comes off Michael is, if anything, more exaggerated than before. It makes sense, Jon supposes.

It doesn’t want to be Michael.

“Michael,” Jon says, looking at its chest, clad in a flowing shirt that was very much from the 80s, and not at its face, “I haven’t slept in nearly forty hours. Are you going to kill me right now?”

“No,” it mumbles.

“Then be quiet and get out of my way.”

Michael steps back, and Jon drags his shirt over his head, going for the fastening on his jeans and shoving them down so that he could step out of them, all but having to wriggle to get himself free.

It watches him in sullen silence, its hands awkwardly held at its sides, as Jon strips down just to his undershirt and briefs, and when he brushes his teeth over the sink, he feels its eyes boring into him, its gaze focused and never wavering.

“I could kill you while you were sleeping,” it says.

“So could a cat,” Jon retorts, and shoves past it to pull his blinds closed.

“I might.”

“Ditto a cat.”

“Archivist.”

“Michael.”

Jon climbs into his bed, turning on his side to face away from Michael, but he can feel it, still there behind him, lingering. He’s so tired he can’t stand it, and the weight of the week is heavy on his shoulders. He’s read statements, done research, argued with Melanie and Basira and Martin all, not to mention Elias.

He’s tried to sleep in the Institute, but time and time over his dreams have turned to Sasha, to Tim, to his grandmother, to others gone and lost and departed, and he can’t deal with it, not now, not when he’s exhausted, not he can barely think straight, when he just needs to sleep—

It puts weight on his bed. He can feel the mattress depress with its weight, but he doesn’t turn to face it.

“Were you—” Jon starts, and then closes his mouth as the bed depresses further, as he feels the body of Michael on the bed beside him spread out slightly, its feet no doubt hanging off the end of the bed. “Were you into the eighties? Before you became—”

“I don’t like to answer your questions, Archivist,” Michael says. “I am too tangled up in the asking of them.”

“I’m a monster too, you know,” Jon says. “And I got about as much choice in it as you did – I didn’t want to be like this, I didn’t want to become what I’m becoming.”

“You are becoming,” Michael says.

Jon turns to lie on his other side, and to his surprise, Michael’s eyes are closed, one hand curled under the pillow, the other fisted in the duvet that Jon is settled underneath. It looks less like someone who’s sleeping, and more like a doll that has been posed in place.

“Can you even sleep?” Jon asks.

It opens its eyes, and meets his gaze. “Can you?”

It does its stumbling, tangled laugh, like a creaking door on autotune, and Jon sighs lowly.

“Michael Shelley was never really intimate with other men,” it says. “He wanted to be, I believe. It was all so complicated… Until it wasn’t, any longer.” The laugh, again, and Jon closes his eyes when he feels Michael lean closer on the bed, until the radio static feeling settled over him the same way that the duvet did. Michael’s voice is soft and feather-light when it says, “You’re so warm, Archivist. She was so cold.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t actually do… intimacy,” Jon decides to say, slightly woodenly. “I never… felt it. Like people are meant to. Not toward women or men.”

The staticky feeling spreads over him, and then he feels it at his lips: it’s chaste and tingly, leaving a strange electricity lingering on his mouth for only a moment before it pulls away, and he sighs softly. It isn’t at all an unpleasant sensation – it’s nice, actually. Nicer than kissing usually is.

“Have you wanted to do that for a while?”

“Michael Shelley wanted so much, and knew he could have none of it. He tangled himself in knots, wanting Gerard Keay, and Gertrude knew that, Archivist. She held him as though he were bait on a string, and knew that Michael dreamed, and wanted, and that Gerard Keay would See all, but never conceive of such a thing.”

“How sad,” Jon says. He doesn’t sound sympathetic. He is, he thinks – or he would be, were he not so tired.

“I’m going to kill you,” Michael says, without conviction.

“Chop chop with it, then,” Jon says, feeling his eyelids droop, feeling the staticky rush soothe him, somehow, making him feel pleasantly warm and sleepy, able to sink down under dark grey waves. “Time’s a’wasting.”

“You will not dream,” Michael says.

“Thanks,” Jon mumbles, surprising himself by leaning in toward it. “Very kind of you.”

“I can be kind,” Michael whispers, as though it is a revelation, and Jon sinks down, down, into a dreamless – if distorted – sleep.

My Ask | My Ko-Fi | My Ao3 | Requests always welcome!

[p1nkwitch]

May I ask for the Director's Cut on "One man's trash is another man's treasure"? It's the first fic of yours that I read, and it remains one of my favourites in the fandom.

Awww my fist long fic, yes!!! of course, it has a special place in my heart.

Basically i love soulmate Aus with all my heart, and i wanted to do a lonelyeyes one, problem was in canon they are both bastards, So if they figured it inmediatly both would try to outwit each ohter. Sooo, i had to think about what type of soulmate au to use where they would be connecting, but they wouldnt inmediatly pick on the ohter being their soulmate.

I remebered reading a one shot from another fandom about the general idea of finding your significant other lost things. From there it was a matter of them being kind of dumb about it. Which slowly progressed into them moving in together making it impossible to discern that they were finding stuff, cause they assumed it was already there only misplaced.

Now as for the plot. I wanted Elias to deny everything, like he thought he was manipulating Peter’s feelings, until he got hit with the fact that shit he does care!!

Peter on the other hand was panicking through all of of their first dates, thats what i had on mind, he struggled with liking him and being concerned about it. Plus knowing that he had been negletcting his soulmate.

Speaking of that!! Simon knowing but not saying anything was my best idea, because he totally would do that. He saw the pen and decided to troll them both for years. I stan one magnificent bastard.

One of the things that i dont think i pointed out enough, but i wanted to was the moment they both start to lose the things from their soulmates, i wanted it to mean something to them. It represented their relationship, they both thought they were neglecting their respective soulmates and wanted to reject them, but once they finally started to lose their things, they instantly regreted!!! At the end when Elias stops getting stuff after they go their own ways, but slowly starts to get back his little trinkets once Peter can connect again with him? That he reconizes the man he loved even in another body???

The sweater? That was the thing that joined Elias with Peter for years, the one memento from his soulmate that he loved the most.

Peter is the type who would show he cares by gifts or small acts that you wont notice, because he hates saying things, while Elias wants to know, to let it be said.

One of the scenes that i enjoyed the most was when Elias realizes that he cant end things, when Peter wraps himself around him and he finally has to admit he is fucked. i take a lot of joy from having him realize that  YES!! He cares about him, while being soft. I really makes me happy!!

Their first marriage? The post it note? A reference i made in another fic that i had to use. Plus its cute ok? It wasnt legal by any means, but to them it meant something.

Later i would make the joke of the fake divorces written in the fridge to keep it going, but not really having them divorce because im a softy. I may find romance in real life uncomfortable but for this? This deserves everything!!

Elias going for Peter was inspired by another fic that dealt with that, plus my brain always goes Orpheus and Euridice parallel and i go feral, im a sucker from greek mythology. Also i have this idea that Elias is more honest when he thinks Peter is unconcious so admiting to loving him and being his soulmate was.. well perfect.

OH the entire chapter of their legal wedding was so fun!! Mikaele being a sucker for weddings Simon just killing the homophobic asshole!! But the real reason it went like that, was because i have in my head that the piña colada Song fits them too much. And needed to have an excuse to use it in the fic, yes thats why it was put there!! Sorry if its kind of corny.

Also i just put the JM as a literall paralel with lonelyeyes with them being unable to realize they are soulmates.

Jondaisy platonic friends, i wont lie, the actual reason, the actual honest to god reason i started Tma was because i saw fanart of Jon and Daisy being queerplatonic friends and i thought i was delighted, so they have a... somewaht soft spot for me. Now i get the full scope of their complicated relationship, but back then it felt right to let it be like that.

Now the ending, here is the deal, i did not want Peter to die, because he is my favourite character so i needed a reason to keep him. JM being soulmates helped with it by Jon blinding hismelf and having them need to think a new plan.

Mm i dont think i can elaborate on anything else. I mean if you want something specific ask away i dont mind!! But i hope you enjoy this, it might have come a little scrambled so apologies.

Mm final notes!! Yes one more thing which was actually the most important plot point.

Originally i was going to write it all from Peter’s persepective since i had the entire thing planned out from him, but ended up switching to Elias last moment so i could do Peter’s perspective last!! I wanted to practice writing Elias more, since Peter ends up coming easier for me. I find the lonely... easier to write.

Anyways thanks for asking Percy!! This was a lovely ask and im very happy you like my little fic, i hope i improved ever since then!!

[sickfics-for-days]

Blind Spot

Hello!! I’m here with my first TMA fic! Season 5 is hitting me hard in the whump feels, so spoilers for that. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it, and boy does it feel good to be back!

They are almost out of the Dark, a fact Martin is grateful for. Ever since Jon had made his...statement, the only thing he wanted was to get to Elias, punch him in the face, then force him to tell them how to undo the apocalypse. Children was where he drew the line.

But it wasn’t just the righteous anger that fueled his desire to leave the dark empty streets behind. Jon was starting to worry him. Ever since they had arrived in this domain, he had been looking increasingly haggard, steps hastened with urgency to leave, but each one seeming to take more effort than the last. Part of the reason Martin had demanded Jon tell him about the Dark was in the vain hope that actually letting out what was building in his head would help. Much to his dismay, he found that, if anything, it made him seem more exhausted. They had been plodding onward for what seemed like hours, Martin dutifully following Jon’s lead as he was forced to watch his steps go from determined speed to the current staggering shuffle.

“Jon?” Martin breaks the silence, too worried to keep quiet any more. “Are- are you okay?”

At his name, the Archivist stops, swaying slightly in the dim light.

“J-Jon? What is it? You’re scaring me.”

Marin expects some kind of dry response alluding to fear being the point, or maybe a tired dismissal on just focusing towards getting out. Instead, his worry slides straight to panic as he watches Jon fold like a house of cards.

“Jon!”

Jon could feel it the moment they stepped into the Dark. The power of the Eye, the Watcher, the Beholding, whatever you wanted to call it, was much dimmer here. He didn’t lie to Martin when he told him that it did not find the fear of children as interesting, but children are not only afraid of the dark. It had placed them here, because the Dark had always been the most effective at blocking its power. So, it kept it fed and satisfied with those it did not care to See. Because it could not, not while Watching the rest of the domains. Jon, the Archivist and harbinger of the Eye, was cut off from the source of his power. A thin trickle remained, enough to ensure that nothing could harm them, but that was all. He chose to show Martin the avatar of the Dark, because he fervently hoped that seeing a child would cause him to reconsider before he was forced to confess that the Eye could not obliterate him with its gaze because no eye can see clearly in the realm of the Dark.

Then Martin had asked to know, to be told about this place. Of all the domains he asked for, it had to be the one that Jon really didn’t know. But he would do anything for Martin, had promised that he would. So, if Martin wanted to really understand the Dark, then he would do everything he could to tell him. He called upon the Eye to show him, and it took everything he had to pull the information that he sought. He fell into the statement, voice monotone as it always was, as he recited the horrors of children. They may be milder to hear, but they were so much more painful to feel.

Once it was done, once Martin had heard enough, Jon was exhausted. His connection to the Eye faded as if it were falling through water, just out of reach unless he was willing to dive deep to chase it. He tried desperately to keep himself from visibly trembling, exhausted from a combination of the effort of keeping the connection and being again cut off from the force that he is more and more certain is sustaining his existence. When Martin said they could go, that the children would just have to hold on a bit longer, Jon was quick to resume the path that he could just barely See through the darkness.

Each step was harder than the last. There was no way Martin could have missed his state by now. He didn’t have the energy to hide his drifting, unconsciously listing to the side, favoring his leg injury from a lifetime ago. He was so tired. Then Martin called his name, and he stopped, waiting to hear what he needed.

Stopping was a mistake. He knew that as soon as his shuffling steps came to a halt. Darkness that he hadn’t been able to see in the corners of his vision crowded in. He vaguely heard his name again as consciousness faded. Just... just need a minute. Then I...

Martin hovered helplessly around Jon’s still form. His breathing was shallow, concerningly so. Tentatively, he shook his shoulder. As expected, Jon didn’t respond.

“Okay. Okay Martin, you can do this. Your all-powerful boyfriend just collapsed and you’re in trapped in a world of darkness, but you can do this.”

He set his pack down on the ground and pulled out a blanket that he liked to sit on when they stopped for longer breaks. Folding it carefully to keep the dirt-stained spots off the outside, he placed it under Jon’s head. Then he positioned him more comfortably and sat down next to him, humming a soft tune to try and keep the fear at bay.

Martin was scared. It had been hours, and Jon hadn’t moved once. If anything, his breathing had grown shallower and more irregular. If he didn’t know better, Martin would have said this place was draining him, but wasn’t he supposed to be the most powerful person in this new world? Well, except for Elias, but that wasn’t the point. How could anything reduce him to this state?  Regardless, Martin refused to sit and watch any longer. He hovered over Jon’s prone form, desperate to end this unnatural stillness, regardless of how unnatural the world around them insisted on being.

“Jon?” He called softly, cursing himself when his voice cracked. “Jon, are you there?”

Maybe he had just imagined it, hopeful thinking and too little light giving the illusion of what he was so desperate to see, but it looked like Jon had moved. Twitched ever so slightly, but he had responded.

“Jon? Jon please, you’re scaring me,” Marin pleaded, tears streaming down his face. “It’s not safe here, and-” a sob escaped, but he pulled himself together, “I need you. Please don’t leave me here alone.”

Finally, finally, Jon moved. A low moan escaped as he rolled onto his back, opening his eyes with visible effort. “Martin?”

At the sound of Jon’s voice, exhausted though it may have sounded, Martin couldn’t help but to break into full shuddering sobs, the fear and terror of the past hours combining with the relief that Jon was back and overwhelming him.

“Martin? Martin, what’s wrong? Are you alright?” Jon pushed himself up with shaking arms before cupping the sobbing young man’s cheek. “Are you hurt?”

Martin surged forward, tears still flowing, and wrapped his arms around Jon’s neck. “Don’t- don’t ever scare me like that again,” he begged. “I didn’t know what happened to you, if you were dying or-or-or worse. You just collapsed and I didn’t know what to do...”

Jon gently gathered him closer, good hand running though his curls. “I’m sorry; I am. I should have told you, should have warned you. I didn’t want to scare you.”

Martin snorted wetly. “Bit late for that.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But I told you, Seeing the future isn’t something I can do.”

They stayed like that, wrapped together on the dark street, until Martin’s sobs subsided into wet sniffs.

“Better now?” Jon asked.

Martin nodded, pulling back. “So, what happened? Why did you...”

“Ah, yes.” Jon sighed. “It’s the Dark. It’s... complicated, but the best way I can describe it is that it cancels out the Eye. Eyes can’t see in the dark, so the Watcher’s power is limited here. We are safe enough, but connecting to it is... difficult. It took a fair bit of effort to tell you about it. And well, the Watcher is I think what is sustaining me now. Trying to go on without it is... exhausting. It’s like going on hike when you haven’t eaten for a few days.”

Martin stood up, using his sleeves to wipe the tears from his face. “So then, let’s get out of here. You do- you do still know the way, right? We’ve not been going in circles?”

Jon struggled onto his feet, grateful for Martin’s steadying hand. “Yes, I can do that much. Just, don’t ask me to smite anybody.”

Martin giggled, and this time as they started their journey, they went hand in hand.

[absolute-lithops-emotion]

because my brain works the way it works, whenever I get into something I immediately shift into crossover mode, so I was thinking, tma and dghda

Dirk Gently characters in the Magnus Archives universe is just way too sad to think about, but tma characters in the Dirk Gently universe on the other hand!

Imagine:

When Jon is a kid, he encounters something dangerous and supernatural, like in canon, and like in canon he can only stand there and watch. But then it keeps happening. He keeps running into these terrible things happening to other people, and there’s never anything he can do to help, and he remembers all these things perfectly.

Then one day, a man comes to his grandmother’s house. Says he’s from the Magnus Institute, and he knows about this kind of thing. Says he can teach Jon about it, if he comes back to the Institute with him. So of course Jon goes, and when they get there Elias (because that’s the man’s name, of course) leaves Jon with a tape recorder while he “takes care of some paperwork” and suggests that Jon might feel better if he puts his stories to tape. So Jon does, and almost immediately, the awfully present memories begin to fade into something more… ordinary.

Jon lives at the institute, and Elias tells him about his powers, about the Universe and being connected to something bigger, and at first Jon finds it comforting. But as he gets older he begins to realize… that Elias isn’t going to teach him control, isn’t going to tell him that he can do more than just observe. That maybe he can’t do anything more than observe. Maybe that just isn’t what he’s for. Well, that’s fine.

So when Jon’s an adult, Elias sends him out of the Institute to record specific weird stuff, although he usually ends up getting sidetracked and kidnapped a lot before he’s able to get back. And he does go back, every time, because, you know, emotional manipulation. BUT THEN he meets Martin. Martin’s connected with something weird somehow, maybe as it turns out A Lot of weird things, but he doesn’t seem to be actually Involved with any of them. And Jon… keeps running into him??? So Jon is like, obviously this is a Suspicious Figure, in need of Further Investigation. And completely fails to realize that he just has a crush on the guy.

This story is called “New Children of the Old God” of course

More disjointed thoughts about this AU under the cut!

I haven’t figured out exactly what what Jon’s deal is as an Agent of the Universe but he’s probably something like a memory backup system? The stuff he gets drawn to involves other people like him and sticky causal situations, and a lot of the time (increasingly often??) situations where Holistics/the Universe aren’t working the way they’re supposed to and things are going wrong. So Jon observes these events and their fallout and records them in a tangible form that can be referred back to later by other people in case something like this happens again.

And he is ONLY supposed to observe, NOT help or interfere. That would corrupt the data! So as long as he stays out of it, he is very very hard to injure, since he does have to be in close proximity to dangerous situations. But there are times when he can’t help but try to help instead of just observe and he usually ends up horribly injured. Elias berates him for doing this, under the guise of being worried for Jon’s safety, but really he just doesn’t want The Mission to be compromised and he wants Jon to do what he says. Because he’s horrible.

In that vein, Elias has set himself up as this kind of Father Figure Mentor and he absolutely ruffles Jon’s hair a lot.

I also haven’t figured out Jon’s exact attitude towards the whole situation at the start of the story but, much like in canon, I think he’s in heavy Denial Mode. He can’t deny that he has powers or that supernatural stuff exists, but he absolutely is framing it as a power that he has, that comes from him, because he doesn’t want to believe that he’s just being pulled around by the Universe and if he doesn’t acknowledge it it’s not real right??? This is just his Job, and he’s going to be a Professional and Do His Job. Which, does require him to act like an insensitive jerk about other people being in danger, But Hey. (Also this attitude probably interferes with him doing his job effectively BUT HEY)

Oh and he does have the whole “compel people to tell the truth” thing. As well as the “sometimes you just Know Stuff” thing, not that it’s very helpful in actually piecing things together. Jon has the general background awareness of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but not much more in that vein

There are two options for the Institute that I have to decide between. One, every Holistic went through there, like with Blackwing, and just some of them have “graduated” and live somewhere else now or just aren’t affiliated with them anymore. Two, the Institute has only ever had a few Holistics because… they don’t have a military budget lol. I’m leaning towards the second one, because of that and also some other stuff that I’ll get to.

So, the people who I know are at the Institute (in a similar position that the Holistics were at Blackwing): Jon, Gerry, Annabel, formerly Michael Shelley but not anymore. Might be more? I sure don’t know.

Annabel’s deal is the easiest to talk about so I’ll do that first. She’s actually pretty similar to Dirk, minus the detective thing -- she makes sure people and things are where they’re Supposed To Be, doing what they’re Supposed To Do.

She doesn’t do anything as unsubtle as command or compel people, instead she usually has a very good hunch for just what to casually mention or suggest in order to make them have the idea themselves. But she might also be able to control people by whispering to them while they’re asleep, mostly because I think it would be hilarious if she used this power to make Jon do dumb stuff and walk into things when they were kids. I mean, all of this is really subject to change given that we know jack shit about Annabel in canon.

Annabel is also the one who really Gets, like, what they are and what they do and what that means. She is just the kind of person who can fundamentally vibe with the idea that they are really just being pulled around by the Universe for its own designs and they don’t get a say in the matter.

So Michael is hard to figure out because fractals mean something totally different in these two canons. So do I give him a connection to the Backstage of Reality Mandelbrot dealie? Because here’s the thing I’m gonna go on like, a million tangents here but hey everything’s connected right

(Also something I have to figure out is which parts do I take from Michael Shelley and which parts do I take from Michael Spiralentity because we know the latter AN LOT better than the former so like, but on the other hand.... You see what I mean?)

Whatever Michael’s deal is, at some point he gets betrayed or finds out something and completely breaks from the institute and also starts trying to fuck up the Universe. At some point he meets Helen and I guess it’s sort of like a Bart and Ken situation?? Anyway and then at some point the Universe gets Fed Up with Michael’s shenanigans and forcibly rips his powers out of him and gives them to Helen.

But then I was thinking, maybe give the Mandelbrot Powers to Gerry, because I could not for the life of me figure out anything else, and also he has the biggest Hero Of Another Story energy, and also like I said fractals mean something different in the Dirk Gently universe.

But then, like, multiple people can have pararibulitis at once in canon so maybe it’s a moot point! Maybe they can both have Mandelbrot Powers who knows

Anyway

So they all live at the Institute together but they are fairly isolated and don’t see each other much until they’re like, older teens

Also I have to mention at this point: this fic is Jonmartin but! it might also!! be Jongerry!!! Because I’m nothing if not a sucker for “Gerry was Jon’s celebrity crush” and in this case they are actually living in the same building and Jon has absolutely run into Gerry doing inexplicable and slightly concerning Mission-related things in odd corners in the middle of the night, and also keeps hearing all these stories about him, AND THEN, he finally is old enough that Elias lets him go on Missions with the other Holistics his age and he gets to go on one with Gerry and he’s like okay be cool be cool be cool and he psyches himself out so much that he ends up saying something really insensitive and he’s like I Can Never Talk To Him Again, cause he’s a teenager. But, you know, they end up working together often and by the time the story starts they’re actually on pretty good terms. But then Jon’s in denial and Gerry has some complicated feelings about the Institute and he doesn’t really like what they’re doing, and those attitudes clash Bad sometimes.

Martin is also very jealous of the Holistics that Jon grew up with cause like, they grew up together, they probably understand Jon better than he ever will, right? And he’s jealous of Gerry especially but then he deals with his issues and gets over it and then polyamory can happen.

(It goes without saying that Jon is oblivious to ALL of this for a Very Long Time)

I don’t know who came up with “Holistic” but it probably wasn’t Jon, that being said this will not stop him from using it when people point out that he doesn’t actually know what an archivist does. It’s an instant Get Out Of Jail Free card. He can just answer anything with “Well, that’s because I’m a Holistic Archivist”

Jon is Elias’s Favorite but literally no one except him actually cares about that because Gertrude Robinson is also there and she’s just objectively so much cooler.

I’m not sure if Gertrude is Holistic or not? She might be, given her very “for the greater good” attitude that seems to be shared with the Universe (could she be… a Holistic Arsonist). But unlike Jon and his gang she is on pretty much the same level as Elias or at least he wants her to think that.

Dekker might be there too? But he’s definitely not Holistic, he’s a regular guy who just happens to be really badass.

(Much like the Holistic Gang, there might also be other adults there but I haven’t figured that out yet (I mean they’re all adults but some of them weren’t always if that makes sense))

The Deal With Elias: Obviously some kind of body-swapping happened there, there’s body-swapping in Dirk Gently already I have to take advantage of this precedent. Here’s the basic idea that I have currently: Elias Bouchard is kind of a loser. Okay, a big loser. But then one day he encounters something. Something weird. Something that makes him latch on to the idea that there might be Something Bigger. And the Bouchard family is a bit like the Spring family -- they aren’t Holistic or anything like that, but they have seen/done some weird shit, and they do have Resources. Resources Elias can use to, eventually (or maybe not eventually? perhaps even accidentally? definitely accidentally), look into the very Backstage of Reality itself. Resources that would be very useful to Jonah Magnus, who’s been waiting back there for a Very Long Time. Here’s the thing -- Elias Bouchard wanted to play a part in something bigger than himself. To be Important, in a cosmic sense. And Now He Is.

Also, og!Elias absolutely ran into/maybe worked with Gertrude Robinson before The Thing happened, solely because I n e e d to give them Riggins’ and Friedkin’s conversations. Can you imagine

So here’s the thing. I have no clue what Jonah Magnus’s intentions or motivations are in this AU! A possibility: he, like Michael, is Against the Universe, except he’s pretending not to be and in fact might have slightly manipulated Michael into trying to break the Universe? And maybe, when Michael is Replaced By Helen, he also gets taken to the Backstage of Reality (or maybe he was there when it happened and now he has no way to get out) where he meets! none other than og!Elias. I just think that would be fun. But on the other hand why was Jonah Magnus there in the first place? I don’t know, we didn’t get the chance to learn anything about the place before the show was cancelled, so

Another possible plot point: What The Fuck Is Up With Hill Top Road??? Seriously that house is the most Dirk Gently shit in the whole podcast. I mean, I really wouldn’t want to write about it until we learn what the canonical deal with it is but then I definitely for sure will not be finished with this fic by the time we do learn that so

[evak-fic-rec-turtleanon]

Evak Fics - Reconciliation

Read the tags as a few might be open ending. And in some of these they were still together in the beginning. Man, this list is angsty! I’m already planning on rereading them.

This will be under a read more.

Light by bri_ness (885 words) - Open ending. Even lays a beach towel down on the small patch of grass beside his apartment building’s parking lot, right beside the dumpster. He knows romance can thrive in spite of its setting. He looks at the stars, and he remembers. 

pull him back by hippopotamus (2k words) - “That’s my hoodie,” Isak says. “You left it at mine,” Even replies, as if Isak wasn’t fully aware of that. “And you didn’t ask for it back.” 

Resolution by bri_ness (2k words) - Isak's residency has him questioning his decision to be a doctor. When he's home for the holidays, he runs into Even, who gives him a new perspective. 

No One Knows Me Like You Do by obscurial (2.6k words) - He’s also shockingly sober, which only serves to remind him that fuck, he doesn’t even have an excuse for randomly messaging his ex-boyfriend of two years, out of the blue, at a socially unacceptable time to text your ex, if there even was one in the first place. 

Still Unformed by colazitron (3k words) - Even and Isak broke up a few years ago when Even moved to Germany to attend film school. Now he's moved back to Oslo. 

there's no one else I'd rather do this with by daddyhonkkk (3k words) - Even still has the extra Gabrielle ticket Isak got him for his birthday, but that was before they broke up. 

Like Breathing by BraveKate (3k words) - Even invites Isak to the premiere of his first movie. Part of a series but could be read as a standalone. 

left-handed by thekardemomme (3.5k words) - even always asks questions he doesn’t want to know the answers to. 

If Only by Stria (Asia117) (3.6k words) - Chatting with a random stranger that turns out to be your ex trope.

o night divine by thekardemomme (4k words) - This is the first Christmas in nearly five years that he’s spending without Isak, and while he still decorated his apartment and bought eggnog and spent an excruciating amount of time wrapping all of his gifts perfectly, the hole in his heart hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

Homesick by everything_else (4k words) - 5 times they take care of each other after the break up. +1 

Waking up to Nothing by dropdeadfox (4.6k words) - It’s been six months since Even has seen that grumpy- but- adorable pout on the most perfect pair of lips imaginable to men (and women). It’s been six months since he has heard that voice, it’s been six months since he has seen the most perfect, emerald- green eyes, gazing back at him. 

42 Seconds by thekardemomme (5k words) - Sunday is Isak’s ideal day. The day he looks forward to. This Sunday, Isak wakes up at 1pm, and the room is dark. The bed is empty and there’s no smell of breakfast. Even hasn’t slept next to him all week. The only thing that’s the same as every other Sunday for the past 23 months is the fact that Isak doesn’t want to get out of bed. 

Inbox: (1) New Email by scritch (6k words) - A story about falling back in love, one tweet, instagram post and email at a time 

the one where even says the wrong name by pansexuaIeven (6.5k words) - Even's getting married to Sonja, not Isak. The real question is: does he know that? Inspired by Friends. 

Shatter Me by givemesumaurgravy (6.6k words) - Even’s crying, he has been since the words ‘I slept with someone else’ left his mouth. To be honest, he’s been crying for hours since he got home from Mikael’s. Isak just sits there stoically and he says, “I’m not going to yell or any of that. I’m just going to make this really fucking awkward and uncomfortable for you.” “I want you to tell me everything that happened,” 

That look you give that guy by Lokkanel (7.4k words) - Isak and Even love each other in secret. It is almost thrilling at first, but when hiding and lying to their friends begin to take a toll on Even, Isak decides to end it all. He thinks he has taken the right decision, until Even eventually moves on with someone else. 

Calleth You, Cometh I by Kollakolan (8.4k words) - “Isak!” Mikaels pipes up. “Didn´t you two have a thing?” he turns to Even. A thing, Even thinks to himself. Yes, Isak and him definitely had a thing. They actually had a low-key thing going for years, but it never really turned into something more. The timing was never right.  

We Keep This Love in a Photograph by kapplebougher (8.7k words) - It's been four weeks since Isak and Even made the decision to call it off. Now, Isak's back in their apartment of seven years and he's supposed to be moving out, but then he stumbles upon some memories that makes doing that a little difficult. 

Our Steady True North by verlore_poplap (orphan_account) (9k words) - Five times Isak and Even were amicable; plus one time they just weren't. Plus an epilogue 

In Vino Veritas by Sabeley (9.9k words) - After seven years apart, Isak wakes up to find Even in his bed and a wedding ring on his finger.

What becomes of the broken hearted by Kikki1 (12k words) - Set many years after Skam ended. Isak is living the life he always dreamed of. He has a good job, amazing friends and a superhot boyfriend. But his heart is forever broken. 

we still fuck by evak1isak (13k words) - Isak and Even had broken up. Period. But they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.  

Heal My Heart for Christmas by iwritetropesnottragedies (recklesslee) (13.5k words) - It’s been ten years since Isak left his small town for the big city of Oslo with his father. He hardly even thought of his time there anymore. Until he received a letter from his mother asking him to come home for Christmas for the first time since he had left. 

in these deep solitudes and awful cells by hippopotamus (14k words) - it ends badly. so badly that they both wish they could forget about it. they meet again a few weeks later, and it’s hard to remember why it had to end. 

If I Should Fall Behind by MinilocIsland (14k words) -  The plan for tonight had been crystal clear. Stay close to his best friend, and steal her away if needed. Hold her hand through the ordeal of meeting Noora again for the first time in years. Then Even shows up – and suddenly, nothing goes the way it was supposed to.

The Good Side by lavenderlady by (15k words) - Isak got the good side of the break up. 

And after that and after that by Teatrolley (18k words) - They’re friends, and roommates, and exes. Then Even becomes single again 

you told me we were forever by Skamtrash (19k words) - they don’t exactly get back together. Isak finds out he's having a baby soon after Even breaks up with him so he makes the decision not to tell him. Except Even finds out on his own 3 years later. 

I'll be right beside you by hannakin (20k words) - ”It’s ironic isn’t it? I broke your heart and now mine is not working,” Isak continued. “Isak…” Even fought against the lump in his throat and the tears that burned behind his eyes. see the sequel below  

Don't Dream It's Over by hannakin (11k words) - WIP last update march 2019. A new chance at life for Isak and a new shot at love for them that Even is not going to waste. Not this time around. 

Let Me In by milk_o_vich (20k words) - Even’s eyes were wide and a little unfocused, flitting over Isak nervously. He was quiet for a long time, rain hitting the pavement outside, and Isak became kind of aware that Even must be freezing in his thin, damp t-shirt. Even pressed his lips together, then said, voice hoarse and quiet, “Can I stay here tonight?” 

Just give me a reason, just a little bit’s enough by Amfelia (21k words) - Even discovers life is not always shiny and bright, sometimes it is just really hard. 

shred by Jules1398 (22k words) - There were two versions of Isak Valtersen. The first Isak was the one that his friends knew. The second Isak, the real Isak, was much more complicated. He was trans, gay, and then there was his five year-old son, Adrian. Keeping the two Isaks separate wasn't that difficult. At least, not until he saw Even again. 

and you fight until the finish line carries you home by strangetowns (23k words) - “Did you love him?” Isak looked down at the glass in his hand, the wine he’d barely had any of. He shrugged, carefully noncommittal, and glanced at Even out of the corner of his eye, raising an eyebrow at his expression. “What, are you jealous?” “Hearing it makes me glad, actually.” “Why?” A beat of silence. Then - “You deserve all the chances at happiness you can get, Isak.”

We're Not Broken Just Bent by TotallyTinkerbell (26k words) - They had made a decision that didn’t fall easy on either of them. A decision that still kept Isak awake at night in his bed that was too big and in his kitchen that was too empty in the mornings. On the couch in front of his tv-cabinet which was void of Even’s film collection, and in his hallway which no longer had a dozen pairs of shoes in it. 

Self Control by nofeartina (28k words) - “I never meant to hurt you, Isak.” Without any pause Isak replies, “Well, you did.” He looks him in the eyes, and continues. “You fucked me up, Even.” 

Reflections by Laika_the_husband (30k words) - He started walking, listening to Even’s footsteps behind him. Fucking Even. Isak knew he didn’t do this on purpose, that it was just an episode, but he had just grown so tired of them. Every time Even relapsed Isak remembered how only a few years ago he had sworn to take care of him forever. How certain he had been, back then, that minute by minute would turn into day by day and week by week and year by year and then into forever. 

Different, but same by Crazyheart (31k words) - Isak and Even had broken up almost a year ago, and Even was devastated. At Easter he tried to get over it and went on a ski holiday with Yousef and Elias. At the cabin he met a guy that looked like Isak, except his dark, buzz cut hair, well trained body and rough, charismatic personality. The fact that he called himself Markus Simensen was even more confusing 

Scene Three, Take Two by folerdetdufoler (31k words) - Isak is 23, a student in the veterinary program at NMBU, and working an internship at a clinic in Kongsvinger. He hasn't seen Even in three years, but randomly bumps into him on the street when he's visiting his mom in Oslo. 

No day without it by skambition (32k words) - And his lips. Those goddamn lips. They brought back memories that Even had tried to forget about for like 10 years now, memories of laughing, smiling, kissing. 

and the whole world is empty by dreamer_of_dreams (45k words) - The conversations were always stilted and quiet and benignly untrue. The phone calls eventually petered out. So, Even did what he thought was right for Isak. On an ordinary Thursday, eating dinner next to each other on the couch, Even looked up from his bowl of noodles, glanced at the clock ticking 9.21 pm and said, “I think we should break up.” 

Every Minute Gets Easier by CrochetingWords (50k words) - His life had turned out beyond his wildest dreams. It was amazing, and when it got bad from time to time, that was still fine, it was still worth it, because the bad times were just a glimpse in their epic story and the good times were just so good, so pure, so abundant, that he knew they would make it through every struggle. Together. Which is why Isak never imagined his current situation: Filing an application for separation. 

Carry on by hannakin (52k words) - For a moment Even just looked at him. Beautiful, amazing Even who was the best thing that had ever happened to Isak. There were tears in his eyes too. When he shook his head sadly, one tear made its way down his cheek. “I think I want to break up” He finally whispered. 

God Only Knows (What I'd Do Without You) by sundaymournin (52k words) - the break up that would never really happen, but imagine if it did. If Even moved to Trondheim for Uni and returned a little over two years later. Imagine what Isak would do, who he would be, and what could've happened but definitely never would've. 

Love is a battlefield by Minutebyminute (56k words) - Love conquers all. Love defeats all. Sometimes love pulls you apart. Sometimes for a period in time, sometimes forever. And sometimes love is a battlefield.

I Feel It When You Don't Look At Me by photographer_of_thoughts (66k words) - A sequel. “I never wanted to leave without you, Even.” Isak whispered. “I know. But you did. And I let you go.” 

The Boy Who Couldn't Hold His Breath Underwater by patrick_ (camille0078) (102k words) - Now, Even is ready to own up to his mistakes and asks Isak if he wants to get back together again. Isak has no doubt about getting back together, but everyone else believes that he's just asking for more trouble. 

All Stories Are Echoes by sebastianL (felix_atticus) (123k words) - A love story. Because that's the kind of story it has to be. This is an Even who's grown up, who's had hard years since the last time we saw him, and who's trying to get his life back together on his own. This is about potential--realized or not--memory, bravery, movies, accidents, and the nature of stories. (I love this fic so much!)  

WIP - I'm not sure if they all are getting back together

Dysecdysis (a tender history in skin) by unsungyellowraincoat (9k words) - last update Feb 2019. Isak and Even are ex-boyfriends, but S3 never happened, so this is completely au. Terje Valtersen is recovering from a hemorrhagic stroke and that plays a big role in this story. 

We, who quietly bleed by howmanyisaksandevens (31k words) - last update May 2018. They break up, they get back together, they live happily ever after or so I choose to believe. 

The One That Got Away by cami_soul (37k words) - last update Sept 2019. In this AU Even never reached out to Isak on December 9. Isak never left the Christmas concert to go find Even. Even rejected all of Isak’s attempts to reach out to him. Isak came to accept Sonja’s statement that Even never really loved him. It is ten years later and Isak has just moved back to Oslo to work at the University of Oslo’s, Department of Medical Genetics. 

I swear that I will wake up next to you by dantetrieswriting (7k words) - last update July 2018. They were on-and-off for three years. Now two years have passed and Isak is 20 and in need of something exciting. An ad ropes him into booking a seat for a month long bus trip to Greece. It's new. It's interesting. It's cheap. Could it get any better? Yes it could. The ad didn't include the slight 6 foot blonde inconvenience going by the name of Even Bech Næsheim. And the fact that the inconvenience would be no more than five centimeters away from him at all times. Thirty days and 6 feet of sex on legs. 

There's nowhere i'd rather be by JustALittleBitOfYou (4k words) - last update March 2019. It's been a year since Even Bech Næsheim and Isak Valtersen broke-up. Well, technically, it's been a year since Isak sent Even away without a real reason. As they both try to rebuild their life, the Bech Næsheim siblings decide to host a one-week party in Mia's and Even's new couple's honor. Isak attends the party, without knowing the identity of the hosts. 

isak in the bathroom by sundaymournin (14k words) - 4/5 chapters posted. break-up fic where isak hides in the bathroom quite a bit, even is dating mikael, and everything is a bit off-center.

The Good Side by sundaymournin (12k words) - last update July 2018. The only thing Isak had in life was Even and the promise they’d made to each other when they were ten and twelve. Isak and Even used to date, broke up, but are still roommates. 

[timelordthirteen]

Synchronicity 1/?

Mr. Gold/BelleFrench, Teen

Summary: Storybrooke, Maine is a haven for people who haven't found or who have lost their soulmates, allowing them to live a happy, peaceful life away from the pressure to find their One True Love. Elias Gold doesn't believe in soulmates, or rather, he doesn't think there's one in the world for him. Until the library reopens.

Notes: So, this is a one-shot for now, but it will be expanded in the future. I like to call this my anti-soulmate soulmate AU because the idea that you have to find your soulmate to be happy, that there is a person out there in the world that you will know is The One the moment you see or touch or talk to them feels like it craps on the entire concept of what a relationship should be. So, I had this idea, wherein Gold and Belle are two people who have no soulmate, and who are trying to go through life without being overwhelmed by the constant nagging pressures of a society that doesn't understand or accept them. For the Writer's Month prompt #16: soulmates.

[AO3]

Elias Gold did not believe in True Love.

Well, it was a bit more complicated than that. He did, as a general concept, believe in the existence of a bond between persons, which had come to be referred to as Soulmates. Such bonds had been scientifically proven after all, and there were enough pairs of soulmates in the world now that it was far more the norm to have one than not.

There were even professional services, both public and private, dedicated to searching out pairings for people. So extraordinary was the energy between soulmates, that it could alter them on a physical level, including, but not limited to, an enhancement of one’s sight that was described as a fog being lifted such that one could finally see the true beauty of the world. Emotionally, the sense of love and tranquility in these relationships, had come to be known as True Love.

However, Gold did not believe that he, specifically, could ever experience the romantic form of True Love, nor did he entertain the idea that he had a soulmate. He had tried several different services, all claiming to be able to find him his Soulmate, and absolutely none of them succeeding. His hope had been shattered over and over again, and he had learned through the years to be content with the state of things.

His son, Neal, had a soulmate, found rather accidentally at a summer camp a year ago. Both of them were only ten and found the whole thing silly, but there was no denying the connection between Neal and Emma. Emma’s parents were soulmates, of course, and though sometimes their interactions were so lovey dovey that they made Gold feel ill, he liked them well enough individually. If things were to proceed as planned, he’d be seeing a fair bit of them over the course of Neal’s life, and he would just have to accept that they, like so many others, had what he couldn’t have.

These days it was strange for anyone to have a child with someone who wasn’t their soulmate, but at the time Gold and his now ex-wife Milah, had believed it could be enough to bind them together for the long haul. They were both in their mid-thirties when they met, and hadn’t found their soulmates. They’d met through a mutual friend, and got on well enough that they started dating. Plenty of people dated until they found who they were meant to be with, but there was always the understanding that it was temporary.

When Milah told him she was pregnant, he didn’t think twice about marrying her, no matter how out of the ordinary society might have found it. It wasn’t as if they were the only people who found happiness outside of the soulmate bond of True Love.

Unfortunately, a few years later, Milah found her mate, and the peaceful life Gold thought he had made for himself fell apart. Milah divorced him and moved across the country, and Gold found refuge in the town of Storybrooke, Maine, founded by an enclave of folks who were mate-less. Some had found their soulmate only to lose them to a deadly disease, or a tragic accident. Others were simply too old to go looking any longer, or, as Gold believed, had none at all.

He couldn’t say it was all bad though. Neal had a good relationship with his mother and step-father, a man named Rogers. Rogers was a police detective in Seattle, and Milah had found a new career working for an international soulmate search company. Twice a year, Neal went out to visit them, sometimes over his birthday, other times over a holiday. This year he would be staying for Christmas and New Years. Gold was not looking forward to being alone, but he knew that he and Neal would make up for it later.

That was still a few months off, however. School was starting next week, and Gold had heard the town finally found a new librarian. There was always a curiosity around newcomers in places like Storybrooke. Everyone wanted to know what mate-less category they fit into, and if they’d be moving on once they found their soulmate. The previous librarian, a woman named Wendy Darling, had, after nearly sixty years of life, found hers and left.

Naturally, most of the town was happy for her. Gold just sneered and demanded the security deposit back on her apartment. What did she care? She was about to be deliriously happy for the rest of her life, however short that might be.

The world wasn’t always a kind place, and for people like Gold there was a constant tinge of gray. Neal had tried to describe the colors he saw after meeting Emma, but all it ever did was make Gold annoyed. He understood that his son would see things differently, both figuratively and literally, but he didn’t want to hear about it in agonizing detail. He’d adapted a long time ago, treating it as if he was colorblind all together. His wardrobe consisted of mostly dark, sedate colors that were easily matched between shirts and tailored suits. His home was filled with antiques and knick-knacks, in a comfortable level of clutter that made his life feel somehow less empty by its very existence. The outside of the old Victorian was allegedly salmon pink, whatever that was, but to him it just looked vaguely brown and faded.

It didn’t bother him that he’d never see the world as Neal did. He was happy for the boy, truly, and when he looked at his son there was a light there that didn’t exist around anyone else. His love for his child was so great that at least in that small way, he was blessed by a true, unconditional love. Still, the townsfolk labeled him a bastard, and made remarks about how it was no wonder that there was no soulmate for him.

Who could possibly love such a beast?

He reveled in the idea. It meant that he was correct after all, there was no one for him, and that True Love was not the universal ideal that everyone made it out to be. Maybe, in time, enough people would be like him that it wouldn’t matter, and the quest to find the one singular person on whom all your hopes and dreams hung would be a naive fairytale at best.

Gold looked out the window of his pawn shop, eyes narrowing at the building across the street.

Trucks were parked in front of the library with several workmen unloading boxes and carrying them inside. The building had been closed for over a year, but at the last city council meeting, Mayor Mills had announced that it would be reopening due to the hiring of a new librarian.

He hadn’t seen any sign of this new librarian, but in his mind, he pictured an older woman, gray hair, a mouth that always looked like it was frowning, and a severe stare, like the Mother Superior at the convent. He smirked and opened the door, intending to nose around the library and see what was happening. The new librarian would need to sign a lease on the upstairs apartment, and, as it was his building anyway, he should be the one to bring it to her.

He stepped outside and immediately collided with someone.

“Oh!” came a high, soft voice.

Gold staggered backwards, one arm going out to try to brace against the building while the other squeezed the handle of his cane and pushed it against the concrete. Something fell to the ground with a soft thud, and a mass of hair hit him in the face.

“I’m so sorry!”

He shook his head and squared his shoulders as he stepped back, brow knit in annoyance. A young woman turned around, her dark hair flipping over her shoulder. She bent to pick up a book, and when she straightened, his lips parted and a for a long moment he held his breath.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her head tilting to the side.

He met her gaze and held it, astonished by how blue her eyes seemed to be. Something was different about her, but after a long moment, he realized he was staring and recovered, fixing her with his best overdue renter scowl. “You should watch where you’re going, Miss -?”

“French,” she said, smiling. “Belle French. I’m the new librarian.”

His eyes trailed over her. The rest of her looked normal as far as he was concerned, the same drab, muted colors he always saw, but her eyes stuck out so strangely. He glanced down and saw her hand held out, presumably waiting for him to shake it, but he ignored her and she let it drop to her side.

“And you are…?”

Belle’s eyes settled on his again, and he felt the disconcerting sensation that he was falling forward, that the world had somehow started to pivot around him and gravity had been thrown out the window. The blue of her eyes seemed to shift as he watched, brightening like a lamp being turned on, or the sun slanting through glass at just the right angle.

“Mr. Gold,” he replied finally, setting his cane in front of him, hands folded over the handle as stability returned. “I believe, Miss French, that we need to discuss the matter of your rent.”

“Oh, I’m not here to rent an apartment.” Then she held up the book she’d dropped after running into him. “I was told you might deal in rare books, and I was wondering about finding another copy of this.”

The book in her hands was thick and gray, though Gold supposed it could have been blue as well. He frowned and scanned the titled before rolling his eyes. Her Handsome Hero.

“I’m afraid, Miss French, that I don’t traffic in trashy airport gift shop romance novels.”

Her face fell, and for a second he was almost disappointed.

“I see,” she said softly. “Well, thank you anyway.”

She turned to cross the street, but stopped with one foot off the curb. When she turned back to him, something about her expression made him think she was having the same odd dizzy feeling he had, but then she shook her head and gave him a small smile and a shrug. “Maybe I’ll see you at the library?”

With that Belle French crossed the road, and Gold’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head and the odd feeling that had come upon him so suddenly, abated, but the color of her eyes remained alarmingly strange in his mind. He glanced up and down Main Street in front of his shop, but nothing about the world had changed as far as he could see.

“How strange,” he said to no one.

[queerbycrs]

so... i’m not finished writing this yet, but since apparently the idea is So Popular going by @iamalivenow‘s post, i thought i’d... lay out the basis of my the magnus archives good place au? vague spoilers up to current canon of tma (ep 120) and definite spoilers up to the end of s2 of the good place

my basic thought, at first, was that this isn’t a “full” tgp fusion -- it would incorporate elements of tma canon, and involve various kinds of amnesia. so, the characters are tormented by not remembering bits of their lives, or remembering things that line up wrong, or having flashes of memory that don’t make sense.

so, in this au, the characters already knew each other in ways that are similar but not identical to canon. that’s part of the reason elias-as-michael is so confident it’ll work out: that idiot michael just threw together some humans and hoped they’d click perfectly horribly. these people have history, and it’ll torment them or just be informational, as required.

so, elias is michael, obviously. pre-redemption. (my thought for this is that the torture actually works so it never proceeds to the actual plot of tgp s2-onwards, so no need to figure out how it would work with elias. alternately, the humans go off through the afterlife without architectural assistance. who knows)

i’m not set on who janet is, but i might go with the suggestion of distortion? because that sounds hilarious, honestly

and there are def soulmates in this au, because it makes things ALL THE MORE PAINFUL. from most-to-least solidly formed ideas:

basira and daisy. basira remembers a picture-perfect life on earth, fifty years of marriage, dying in each other’s arms.

daisy remembers being a serial killer and trying to hide it for years until basira caught on and daisy killed her in a fit of rage, and spent the rest of her life regretting it.

neither of them have accurate recollections. but according to their first day in the good place, basira is correct, and daisy doesn’t know what the hell is going on or why she’s here, with the love of her life, who she thought she killed in the biggest mistake of her life.

(basira prolllllllllly doesn’t belong in the bad place, but elias prolly just snatched her up for his Evil Plans. no one better to torture daisy with, right?)

next: martin and jon. they remember working together, in... an archive? or something? and martin was in love with jon, and jon was oblivious.

well, the official matchmaking systems of the afterlife have chosen! you’re the perfect match for each other! have fun!

martin is completely blissed out at first! it’s wonderful! he spent all those years in hopeless love, and now he gets to spend eternity with the man he thought could never love him back!

and at first, jon is actually... okay with it? he’s a little nervous, because he’s never had a relationship that didn’t crash and burn (okay, sample size of one, but that says a lot in and of itself) but it feels so easy, at first, and it’s... okay. it’s nice.

but then his memories start to get... weird. he has dreams of the archive where he worked, except it’s... different. he remembers worms, and running, and a man’s body on the floor of his office.

he remembers a tape recorder, and he starts recording here, too. just in case.

eventually, as jon’s paranoia starts to build and build, things start going bad for martin, too: he’s having nightmares too, of worms and crushing loneliness, and jon is retreating and won’t talk to him, and this cute older guy who works at the kayak rental/canoe group/scuba-diving-but-without-equipment-because-we’re-dead-and-don’t-need-to-breathe place keeps hitting in him and he’s kind of into it and he feels Really Bad about it

and then i get to, like, melanie and tim and georgie, and in this version of the au i don’t know what to do with them, so i would probably pair up melanie and tim -- their respective responses to stress don’t work well together, at All, so i guess if the tension started turning up they’d probably torture each other pretty effectively.

which leaves georgie. and i’m thinking, maybe elias just doesn’t know how to torture her. she was added to his carefully-planned group without advance notice (probably as a test, those goddamn suits in the department don’t understand how difficult and complicated this is--) and so he just. tells her that her soul is perfectly complete on its own, and she has the admiral for company, but she doesn’t have a soulmate.

georgie’s like, sweet. she can live her best life (afterlife) and hang out with her cat that will be with her forever! this is awesome.

(the admiral probably died of natural causes a few years before, after living a full and very happy life; it got a lovely afterlife until georgie arrived and they got to hang out again. this is how it is for all pets. don’t @ me you know i’m right and i will not take suggestions)

it’s not perfect, because elias just keeps throwing Problems at her to see what’ll stick. but she’s doing pretty good.

alternately:

basira/daisy, and

jon/tim. tim’s reaction to jon’s paranoia is probably a lot more external than martin’s is, which probably leads to some nasty fights. jon probably thinks tim is turning against him, it’s a whole big mess. tim might get seduced away a couple times to increase his guilt and add some depth to their bad relationship, because this is Literal Hell.

melanie/georgie, because Wrench Thrown Into Plan, had to make some adjustments. there’s probably some memory mismatch and external pressure, but it’s not too bad.

martin is a complete person who needs no soulmate to make his afterlife perfect. not a monk, like jason (elias scoffs at the heavy-handedness, the unsubtlety of that.) just perfectly fulfilled in solitude.

he probably gets fully seduced by peter lukas, aka mr. “kayak rental/canoe group/scuba-diving-but-without-equipment-because-we’re-dead-and-don’t-need-to-breathe place” guy. and then there’s a lot of, “oh god this was a mistake what will we tell our soulmates” from peter (externally) and a lot of “i’m going to be alone for literal eternity and even my hookup doesn’t know about it, because it’s so unusual to not have a soulmate” from martin (internally.)

looking at it now, version 1 does seem better and more thought-out, so if i do actually progress with this i’ll prolly go with that. but hey, if someone wants to run with version 2... (or one, idc really) please do, i will love it.

SO. onto: demons!

you know in the beginning of tgp season 2, when michael is doing the pep talks to the demons and one of them keeps asking if he can bite the humans?

okay, that, but with jane prentiss

she just wants to infect them. just a lil. just a few worms in their houses, even

(elias screams internally. why are his demons so incompetent.)

nikola is a mannequin in the windows of one of the stores in the cute little town. she moves... just a little bit... whenever you look away (like a weeping angel.) she probably shows up in people’s houses in the middle of the night and stands at the foot of their beds. when elias is asked about it, he assures them that it was just a nightmare.

there are so many spiders in this afterlife. martin loves it. nearly everyone else... does not.

jude perry owns a pizza place with a classic pizza oven. it’s... weirdly hot in there? (”she spent all her years on earth perfecting this pizza,” elias explains to someone who feels like they’re dying of heatstroke. “she adapted to the heat. it would be cruel to take it away from her.”)

the pizza is delicious, once it’s burned the roof of your mouth to bloody strips

mike crew runs the skydiving/flying place. the humans don’t understand why it’s so painful and weird when they do it. they’re clearly just doing it wrong! why don’t they try again. and again.

not!sasha is there, and sasha isn’t. (i don’t know, i can’t think of how it would work.) (maybe she kept throwing a wrench in elias’s plans so he didn’t want her in his neighbourhood.) she’s soulmates with some random demon and is probably out there, idk, tormenting people with weird uncanny valley.

she runs a wax museum, like the museum in tgp s2, when the gang goes to the real bad place and it has plaques for the first person to do some petty bad thing (telling a woman to smile, sending an unprompted dick pic, flossing in an open-concept workplace, etc.) the wax figures also move in creepy ways, just a little bit.

i’m sure once i write this i’ll flesh out more of the demons, but one last thing:

who is mindy st. clair, you ask?

my answer is: it’s not one person. it’s gertrude and gerry.

but how, you ask? isn’t that like, a really special, one-time thing?

well, dear reader, for one thing, points and afterlife designations work differently in this au than they do in tgp, for practical reasons of getting all the characters i care about into hell. and also, the system doesn’t make sense.

so gertrude and gerry either a) both evened out the points (and medium places aren’t very uncommon) or b) this is an au where you can be “claimed” by the good place or the bad place at random, and neither place wanted them. either/or.

the thing is, though, that the medium place is not meant to be torture. and for the vast majority of people, being alone for eternity with only the most mediocre entertainment and literally nothing to do? is torture.

for mindy, she was incredibly self-centred; being alone is fine. she doesn’t mind being around other people for short periods of time, and she probably wants to get laid, but she’s okay in her own company.

most people are not. and obviously we don’t actually know much about gertrude and gerry’s relationship, but what i’m going to guess is that they didn’t hate each other, or especially like each other, but they aren’t each other’s favourite person, either.

thus, the best person to spend eternity with for absolute mediocrity, they can both be alone when they want and also have company when they need to not go completely off the deep end.

and that’s what i have so far.

and here’s a bonus if you read this far: i also started writing a tgp magnus archives au, where michael (tgp michael) got the gang together in s3 by sending them all to the magnus institute to give a statement. i have most of eleanor’s statement written. still not sure what i want to do with it, but there you go: fusion-ception, an au both ways.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Winter 2017 Anime Overview: The Ancient Magus Bride

This is an anime that’s still in progress, so keep that in mind as I review it...it’s continuing on into the winter 2018 season. 

The Ancient Magus Bride follows a young girl named Chise, whose ability to see supernatural beings has caused her so much trauma she volunteered to be sold as a slave to the highest magical bidder. She’s purchased by Elias, a hulking mage with a scary skull face, who declares that he will take her on as his apprentice...and bride (he doesn’t seem to realize what the latter term really means, though). Chise begins a journey with Elias where she learns more about her power and the world around her and slowly gains a better understanding of herself.

The world if the Ancient Magus Bride is intriguing and beautiful immediately- celtic and european folklore is woven intricately and smartly into the setting. The visuals and atmosphere of the show is truly striking (the animation is even more beautiful in OVAs- which I’d definitely recommend watching, they’re available on Crunchyroll with the rest of the series and can be enjoyed as a standalone story).

Chise immediately caught my interest too- it was clear she had suffered a lot of trauma, and the show started to dig into what makes her tick little by little. Elias is also a compelling figure- both sympathetic and suspicious, a lot of mystery hangs around him and it’s clear he’s still learning to be human. He and Chise have a truly strange dynamic and their relationship is still in very early stages.

But while AMB is immediately intriguing, it’s also immediately uncomfortable, and it takes quite a while (like six to eight episodes) for the show to begin exploring and addressing those uncomfortable aspects. I can completely understand how people got frustrated with that- I did a little as well. The fact that Chise was bought by Elias can’t really be overlooked and the whole situation between them is immediately several levels of alarming. Chise is clearly an abuse victim, so she’s willing to go along with whatever Elias does, and immediately feels beholden to him when he shows her the slightest bit of acceptance and kindness. Meanwhile, Elias declares the young, vulnerable child in his care will be his bride- when she wants to, and she will want to- which reeks of grooming. He calls her “his puppy” and is immediately pretty possessive. He even undresses and bathes her without asking (in a very quick and understated first episode scene, he’s later called out on it, though arguably not harshly enough).

The only thing that softened this was the fact Elias was not human, and it was clear he didn’t really understand how human interactions worked. I suspected from his attitude he didn’t even understand what “bride” actually meant, and that was eventually revealed to be the case. But the show took its sweet time doing this. In the meantime, there was lot of uncomfortable romantic hinting, complete with Chise blushing at the thought of them having children.

But I kept at it, because the whole “fucked-up fairytale” atmosphere of the show made the whole thing somewhat more palatable and because this fantasy world was truly enthralling, and I was very curious to learn more about it and about Chise and Elias themselves. And finally, the show began to acknowledge Chise’s codependence, had her ruminate on how Elias isn’t very trustworthy, and made it clear Elias didn’t really get humans and thus probably didn’t actually have romantic intentions (right now, at least) and that everyone was aware of how messed up the situation was. The other adults in Chise’s life also actually took her to stay with them a bit so they could talk with her and make sure she was okay, which was good. 

The glimpses into Chise’s psychology were also fascinating- she has a rough past and a tragic and complicated relationship with her mother to deal with, and she has sucidal tendencies that still linger. Now she’s started her journey of healing and recovery and is starting to gain some self confidence and beginning to question why she is so willing to be used by others. Her flashbacks and panic attacks broke my heart. I can’t wait to see her grow and she’s already a great character, and it’s nice to have a story focusing on a female character dealing with her mental illness and trauma while finding her power. So far, she’s discovering her self worth not mainly because of Elias, but thanks to to support of ALL the friends she’s made and the ways she’s been able to help people. And that is absolutely excellent.

But again, pacing is a problem, and the umcomfy parts really drag. Then episode 8 had the opposite problem and had way too many things happening too quickly. The show seems to have settled with its pacing now, but it was definitely an issue. (One person I saw reccomended maybe watching the OVAS and skipping the first six eps of the anime because of this- I’m not sure how that would work, since I honestly found the OVAs a little confusing, but it’s a thought)

Other things to warn for: there’s a flashback storyline that involves a man relentlessly butchering cats and it’s a bit graphic, and also one of the antagonists in the series was Cartiphilus (also known as “the Wandering Jew”). He’s a genuine legendary figure, but also one that has been used to justify a lot of anti-semitism, I’m told. I think the author was likely just doing her thing and using figures from mythology and I don’t know much about the whole deal, but I totally get that it’s an issue so I figured I’d warn for it. There’s also the occasional weird big boobs money shot with some of the supernatural beings. 

For all its potential issues, The Ancient Magus Bride was one of the shows that hooked me the most this season. The rich tapestry of fantasy it wove, the breathtaking scenes of magic and mystery and the fact Chise and Elias are two of the most intriguing characters to be introduced in anime this year are huge draws. The varied cast of creatures and characters and great design really boost things too. It’s a detailed and thoughtful series. The show has the makings of something really special and I know the source material it hails from is considered very strong.

 I look forward to seeing this complex world unfold and these characters grow. I also look forward to seeing Chise learn her own worth as a person and how to value herself, as she has already begun to. Ancient Magus Bride certainly has a kind of magic about it, and I am well on my way to being enchanted.

[easyfoodnetwork]

The Coronavirus Delivery Pivot Is Already Coming to an End

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

“I don’t think we as a society are fully grasping how fucking dire and dystopian this can get,” says Andy Ricker, the chef and owner of the Pok Pok restaurant group. In the week following Oregon’s March 17 order to shutter dining rooms statewide to slow the spread of COVID-19, five of Ricker’s seven Portland-area restaurants continued operating in a takeout or delivery capacity. But after chef Floyd Cardoz’s March 25 death from complications of COVID-19, a loss that Ricker described on Instagram as “an arrow to the heart,” he decided to close all of his restaurants. “We are food professionals,” he wrote. “We’re okay following health code, and being careful about spreading foodborne illnesses. But a deadly coronavirus? That’s just not something we’re trained to deal with. It just hit me: It’s better to close than to be open.”

Ricker joins a growing number of chefs and restaurant owners across the country who initially tried to make a go of takeout and/or delivery after many cities implemented social distancing or shelter-in-place plans, but have recently decided it was too risky for the health and safety of their workers, and are instead choosing to close entirely. Last week, Chicago’s One Off Hospitality Group announced it was closing its restaurants (which include Big Star and the Publican) due to safety concerns for staff and customers; in Houston, Ford Fry announced he was shutting down his restaurants for similar reasons. This week, Los Angeles’s Sqirl added to the chorus, writing on Instagram that the restaurant’s last day of service will be April 3. At suburban Detroit’s Eli Tea, Elias Majid made the tough decision to close his shop thanks in part to “customers not respecting distance,” he tells Eater. “One lady came in visibly sweating and coughing.” From a financial perspective, Majid had been doing well, as had many of the restaurant owners interviewed for this story. But it’s public health they’re more concerned about now.

“The unfortunate reality is that there are no concrete guidelines available for small restaurants about how to operate in a way that’s not endangering their employees and potentially their customers,” says Heather Sperling, co-owner of Botanica in Los Angeles. When the city’s “safer-at-home” orders came down on March 19, Sperling and her partner, Emily Fiffer, quickly rejiggered their restaurant setup into a marketplace, selling pantry items, fresh produce, and prepared foods.

Business was “hugely successful,” Sperling says, and the revenue sustainable enough to allow Botanica to stay open indefinitely. And yet, on March 20, she and Fiffer announced on Instagram that they were closing to “regroup, restock & do a precautionary quarantine.” Ultimately, “until we better understand how to operate in a way that truly feels safe — if that’s even possible — we didn’t feel it was fair to put our employees at risk,” Sperling says.

In other parts of the country, other operators echoed that sentiment. On March 25, the team at Jonathan Waxman’s beloved New York City restaurant Barbuto announced they were halting their popular to-go operation and closing entirely. “We have been so thrilled to have your support, however the crisis has become too hard to justify our staying open. ... Until the government declares New York City safe, we will remain hunkered down for the duration,” they wrote. Other restaurants across the city, including Superiority Burger and Cafe Katja, posted similar messages of their own.

Back in Portland, Ricker’s post hit home for Johnny Nunn, the owner of Verdigris. Although the French-inspired restaurant had been doing a robust curbside takeout business, Nunn decided to close down on March 25. “I just feel outmatched,” he explains. “I’m a cook. I’m not qualified to make decisions about people’s wellbeing in the face of a crisis.”

Some chefs and owners say that part of the issue is the lack of guidance about worker safety from local and federal officials, who are themselves scrambling to manage and distribute information to an industry in crisis. Nick Cho, the owner of San Francisco’s Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, has written Medium posts about the measures he’s put in place to keep his workers safe: They include trying to minimize all contact by moving service to the front door, installing an enormous plexiglass sneeze guard that separates customers from baristas, and asking all customers to wrap their fingers in a sheet of thin wax paper before signing on a touch screen for their credit card orders. Momofuku owner David Chang has also been particularly vocal on this topic: As part of a long Twitter thread on the question of how to keep workers safe in the event that restaurants reopen, he wrote, “One thing is for certain we cannot wait for local, state or federal authorities to prepare us. We need to go on the offensive here.”

“What I wish is that there would be rapid training and mobilization within the Health Department, to send a free consultant to any operation that wants to stay open at all, to come into their facility and help establish best practices,” Sperling says. “Instead, what we got was an email alerting us to the safer-at-home ordinance that had been passed four days earlier. It was laughably, dismayingly useless.”

When I reached out to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to ask if it had any specific guidelines for restaurants to operate safely in a takeout or delivery capacity, it sent over this link, which encourages increased handwashing, basic food safety precautions, and the establishment of “social distancing practices for those patrons in the queue when ordering or during pick-up.” It declined to comment further.

Other officials are trying to address an issue of unprecedented scale, while grappling with quickly changing and sometimes-conflicting information about the virus and best practices for preventing it. In Oregon’s Multnomah County, where Portland is located, environmental health supervisor Jeff Martin says his team has been calling every restaurant in their district individually, talking to them about how to safely execute delivery and takeout and answering as many questions as possible—often, he says, about proper sanitation procedures and what exactly “contactless” delivery means. “We’re doing phone calls, video inspections, and email—we’re trying to use technology to cover as much ground as possible,” he says. The Multnomah County Health Department has set up an online FAQ page that’s updated constantly with questions like “Should I wear a mask when preparing food?” (“No, masks should only be worn for people experiencing symptoms. If you are experiencing symptoms, you should not be at work.”) and “What are acceptable takeout and grab-and-go methods?” (Maintain social distance, no self-service, etc.)

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

Not everyone is discouraged by the efforts of their local officials. In Raleigh, North Carolina, chef Ashley Christensen has been working closely with the Wake County Health Department to stay ahead of rapidly changing developments: On March 17, the state ordered all bars and restaurants closed for dine-in; on March 27, Wake County issued shelter-in-place orders. “We’ve been in constant contact with the governor and county reps; any time any document is produced, we have direct access to it, and we distribute it to a number of colleagues,” Christensen says. “These guys are busy, they have a lot on their plates right now.”

Christensen started offering takeout at her restaurants two weeks ago, but found herself dealing with an unforeseen problem: the crowds who clamored outside without adhering to social-distancing guidelines. It’s an issue that has dogged restaurants around the country, and created perhaps the biggest threat to takeout safety. This became startlingly clear the week before last at the New York City restaurant Carbone, where the crowds of delivery workers and pickup customers were so bad that the police had to be called and the restaurant’s managers eventually closed down the operation, leaving a number of customers empty-handed.

“We can’t really control how the public thinks and how they interact with each other in front of our shops,” Christensen says. So she and her business partner and wife, Kaitlyn Goalen, quickly made the decision to pivot to a delivery-only model, offering premade dinner kits prepared in a commissary kitchen with social-distancing practices in place.

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

The pair aren’t sure what they’ll do in a few days when they run out of the product they had already ordered, and which had made the switch to delivery temporarily possible. “Takeout and delivery was important for us to do for a week to stretch the timeline of what we could do for the team we’ve been able to retain, and hopefully stretch the cash flow until we can access some other kind of support,” says Goalen. “But the biggest concern here is the very real reality that people are getting sick and dying.”

All of the chefs interviewed for this story have been in constant communication with their staff about whether they felt comfortable coming to work. “I checked in with every person on my team, and they all said, as bad and hard as this is, I feel safer not working,” says Sylvie Gabriele, owner of Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach, California. After initially pivoting to become a curbside and delivery grocery popup, Gabriele decided to close on March 26. “I wanted to ride as far as we could until some relief came through, so there could be a little good news,” Gabriele says. “I’m just hoping I didn’t wait too long.” The day after she closed the restaurant, the House of Representatives passed a $2 trillion economic stimulus plan, which will offer some relief to affected workers in the restaurant industry — though it still might not be enough for small-business owners and millions of workers.

Some owners who are frustrated by the lack of guidance from official sources are still choosing to stay open, and implementing extraordinary safety precautions as best they can. In San Francisco, which ordered restaurants and bars to close for dine-in service and residents to shelter in place on March 17, Wrecking Ball owner Nick Cho says that safety means “taking control of our space and the customer environment.” Of the measures he’s taken to that end, he explains, “I’m just trying to think about it in terms of managing systems and creating protocols and procedures. Too much is being left to individuals to figure this out on our own.”

Most chefs emphasize with their colleagues who choose to stay open. “I can’t find fault with it — I myself was there just a few days ago,” says Ricker. “I wanted to protect as many employees’ job status as I could, and I wanted to show spirit and feed the community. I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

He hopes that as the situation continues to evolve, the government will “do the right thing” and provide relief so that more operators feel comfortable shutting their doors. “I love my restaurants, and I love the restaurant world, but we are not a part of the supply chain that can deliver basic human necessities to stay alive in hardship,” Ricker says. “We have got to stay home. All of us.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3aDPQ12 https://ift.tt/2QZaBws

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

“I don’t think we as a society are fully grasping how fucking dire and dystopian this can get,” says Andy Ricker, the chef and owner of the Pok Pok restaurant group. In the week following Oregon’s March 17 order to shutter dining rooms statewide to slow the spread of COVID-19, five of Ricker’s seven Portland-area restaurants continued operating in a takeout or delivery capacity. But after chef Floyd Cardoz’s March 25 death from complications of COVID-19, a loss that Ricker described on Instagram as “an arrow to the heart,” he decided to close all of his restaurants. “We are food professionals,” he wrote. “We’re okay following health code, and being careful about spreading foodborne illnesses. But a deadly coronavirus? That’s just not something we’re trained to deal with. It just hit me: It’s better to close than to be open.”

Ricker joins a growing number of chefs and restaurant owners across the country who initially tried to make a go of takeout and/or delivery after many cities implemented social distancing or shelter-in-place plans, but have recently decided it was too risky for the health and safety of their workers, and are instead choosing to close entirely. Last week, Chicago’s One Off Hospitality Group announced it was closing its restaurants (which include Big Star and the Publican) due to safety concerns for staff and customers; in Houston, Ford Fry announced he was shutting down his restaurants for similar reasons. This week, Los Angeles’s Sqirl added to the chorus, writing on Instagram that the restaurant’s last day of service will be April 3. At suburban Detroit’s Eli Tea, Elias Majid made the tough decision to close his shop thanks in part to “customers not respecting distance,” he tells Eater. “One lady came in visibly sweating and coughing.” From a financial perspective, Majid had been doing well, as had many of the restaurant owners interviewed for this story. But it’s public health they’re more concerned about now.

“The unfortunate reality is that there are no concrete guidelines available for small restaurants about how to operate in a way that’s not endangering their employees and potentially their customers,” says Heather Sperling, co-owner of Botanica in Los Angeles. When the city’s “safer-at-home” orders came down on March 19, Sperling and her partner, Emily Fiffer, quickly rejiggered their restaurant setup into a marketplace, selling pantry items, fresh produce, and prepared foods.

Business was “hugely successful,” Sperling says, and the revenue sustainable enough to allow Botanica to stay open indefinitely. And yet, on March 20, she and Fiffer announced on Instagram that they were closing to “regroup, restock & do a precautionary quarantine.” Ultimately, “until we better understand how to operate in a way that truly feels safe — if that’s even possible — we didn’t feel it was fair to put our employees at risk,” Sperling says.

In other parts of the country, other operators echoed that sentiment. On March 25, the team at Jonathan Waxman’s beloved New York City restaurant Barbuto announced they were halting their popular to-go operation and closing entirely. “We have been so thrilled to have your support, however the crisis has become too hard to justify our staying open. ... Until the government declares New York City safe, we will remain hunkered down for the duration,” they wrote. Other restaurants across the city, including Superiority Burger and Cafe Katja, posted similar messages of their own.

Back in Portland, Ricker’s post hit home for Johnny Nunn, the owner of Verdigris. Although the French-inspired restaurant had been doing a robust curbside takeout business, Nunn decided to close down on March 25. “I just feel outmatched,” he explains. “I’m a cook. I’m not qualified to make decisions about people’s wellbeing in the face of a crisis.”

Some chefs and owners say that part of the issue is the lack of guidance about worker safety from local and federal officials, who are themselves scrambling to manage and distribute information to an industry in crisis. Nick Cho, the owner of San Francisco’s Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, has written Medium posts about the measures he’s put in place to keep his workers safe: They include trying to minimize all contact by moving service to the front door, installing an enormous plexiglass sneeze guard that separates customers from baristas, and asking all customers to wrap their fingers in a sheet of thin wax paper before signing on a touch screen for their credit card orders. Momofuku owner David Chang has also been particularly vocal on this topic: As part of a long Twitter thread on the question of how to keep workers safe in the event that restaurants reopen, he wrote, “One thing is for certain we cannot wait for local, state or federal authorities to prepare us. We need to go on the offensive here.”

“What I wish is that there would be rapid training and mobilization within the Health Department, to send a free consultant to any operation that wants to stay open at all, to come into their facility and help establish best practices,” Sperling says. “Instead, what we got was an email alerting us to the safer-at-home ordinance that had been passed four days earlier. It was laughably, dismayingly useless.”

When I reached out to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to ask if it had any specific guidelines for restaurants to operate safely in a takeout or delivery capacity, it sent over this link, which encourages increased handwashing, basic food safety precautions, and the establishment of “social distancing practices for those patrons in the queue when ordering or during pick-up.” It declined to comment further.

Other officials are trying to address an issue of unprecedented scale, while grappling with quickly changing and sometimes-conflicting information about the virus and best practices for preventing it. In Oregon’s Multnomah County, where Portland is located, environmental health supervisor Jeff Martin says his team has been calling every restaurant in their district individually, talking to them about how to safely execute delivery and takeout and answering as many questions as possible—often, he says, about proper sanitation procedures and what exactly “contactless” delivery means. “We’re doing phone calls, video inspections, and email—we’re trying to use technology to cover as much ground as possible,” he says. The Multnomah County Health Department has set up an online FAQ page that’s updated constantly with questions like “Should I wear a mask when preparing food?” (“No, masks should only be worn for people experiencing symptoms. If you are experiencing symptoms, you should not be at work.”) and “What are acceptable takeout and grab-and-go methods?” (Maintain social distance, no self-service, etc.)

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

Not everyone is discouraged by the efforts of their local officials. In Raleigh, North Carolina, chef Ashley Christensen has been working closely with the Wake County Health Department to stay ahead of rapidly changing developments: On March 17, the state ordered all bars and restaurants closed for dine-in; on March 27, Wake County issued shelter-in-place orders. “We’ve been in constant contact with the governor and county reps; any time any document is produced, we have direct access to it, and we distribute it to a number of colleagues,” Christensen says. “These guys are busy, they have a lot on their plates right now.”

Christensen started offering takeout at her restaurants two weeks ago, but found herself dealing with an unforeseen problem: the crowds who clamored outside without adhering to social-distancing guidelines. It’s an issue that has dogged restaurants around the country, and created perhaps the biggest threat to takeout safety. This became startlingly clear the week before last at the New York City restaurant Carbone, where the crowds of delivery workers and pickup customers were so bad that the police had to be called and the restaurant’s managers eventually closed down the operation, leaving a number of customers empty-handed.

“We can’t really control how the public thinks and how they interact with each other in front of our shops,” Christensen says. So she and her business partner and wife, Kaitlyn Goalen, quickly made the decision to pivot to a delivery-only model, offering premade dinner kits prepared in a commissary kitchen with social-distancing practices in place.

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

The pair aren’t sure what they’ll do in a few days when they run out of the product they had already ordered, and which had made the switch to delivery temporarily possible. “Takeout and delivery was important for us to do for a week to stretch the timeline of what we could do for the team we’ve been able to retain, and hopefully stretch the cash flow until we can access some other kind of support,” says Goalen. “But the biggest concern here is the very real reality that people are getting sick and dying.”

All of the chefs interviewed for this story have been in constant communication with their staff about whether they felt comfortable coming to work. “I checked in with every person on my team, and they all said, as bad and hard as this is, I feel safer not working,” says Sylvie Gabriele, owner of Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach, California. After initially pivoting to become a curbside and delivery grocery popup, Gabriele decided to close on March 26. “I wanted to ride as far as we could until some relief came through, so there could be a little good news,” Gabriele says. “I’m just hoping I didn’t wait too long.” The day after she closed the restaurant, the House of Representatives passed a $2 trillion economic stimulus plan, which will offer some relief to affected workers in the restaurant industry — though it still might not be enough for small-business owners and millions of workers.

Some owners who are frustrated by the lack of guidance from official sources are still choosing to stay open, and implementing extraordinary safety precautions as best they can. In San Francisco, which ordered restaurants and bars to close for dine-in service and residents to shelter in place on March 17, Wrecking Ball owner Nick Cho says that safety means “taking control of our space and the customer environment.” Of the measures he’s taken to that end, he explains, “I’m just trying to think about it in terms of managing systems and creating protocols and procedures. Too much is being left to individuals to figure this out on our own.”

Most chefs emphasize with their colleagues who choose to stay open. “I can’t find fault with it — I myself was there just a few days ago,” says Ricker. “I wanted to protect as many employees’ job status as I could, and I wanted to show spirit and feed the community. I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

He hopes that as the situation continues to evolve, the government will “do the right thing” and provide relief so that more operators feel comfortable shutting their doors. “I love my restaurants, and I love the restaurant world, but we are not a part of the supply chain that can deliver basic human necessities to stay alive in hardship,” Ricker says. “We have got to stay home. All of us.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

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