#i wrote this on the train and have given it the odd quick edit in my minutes of downtime

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Spinning on That Dizzy Edge

So I was NOT gonna write one today. But then I had a train ride, a notes app, completionist tendencies and no self control. So I'm gonna keep the commentary short and sweet, as I am writing/posting all of this on my phone xD

Short, sweet, somewhat suggestive (the M rating is probably over-cautious, but Charles is feeling frisky!), no warnings off the top of my head. Bon appetit!

Title/various lyrics referenced in the fic are, of course, from Just Like Heaven by The Cure. The other lyrics referenced are A Little Respect by Erasure!

1k, M-rated, also available on Ao3. Thanks again, @painlandweek !

There was a haunting at the old Lamplighter's Arms. 'Least that's what the locals said.

It was an ancient place, older than the dirt, all bare brick and low beams. Inside there was an old upright piano, and it couldn't have been as old as the building, but no one could actually prove that. Dark wood and centuries of drunken etchings, a little warp and wonk in the keys that lent it a honky tonk air. No one knew how it had survived so long, and no one had ever had the heart to replace it. Or the courage to disturb a piano that, supposedly, on a dark and stormy night, was known to play itself.

Urban legend had it that it was the spirit of Susie Shipton, the old innkeeper's daughter - mournfully playing for her husband who went to sea, never to return. Singing sweet songs to lure his wandering spirit home from the troubled depths.

Unlike most pub-haunting legends Charles had come across, this one was actually bang on. Or at least it had been. They'd met Susie Shipton last year; lovely girl! And with a little help from the Dead Boy Detectives, she'd been able to shuffle off to her lovely afterlife. Hand in hand with that wayward soul she'd been singing to all those years. It was dead romantic — Charles might've had a bit of a cry about it.

Susie had moved on, but the Lamplighter still had a haunting. It had just swapped the one resident ghost for a couple of part-timers.

"Bit gloomy this one, innit?" said Charles, swaying on the spot. It was about as close to dancing as he could do when the tempo was this bloody wistful.

Edwin hummed, not looking up. His hands spidered effortlessly along the old wooden keys, picking out interesting little harmonies like it was nothing. He handled the notes like he was crafting a spell. "Mother used to play this one." His brow furrowed. "At least, I seem to recall..."

Charles leaned on a table, smiling at the back of Edwin's bowed head. He remembered the way Edwin's eyes had lit right up when they first spotted the old upright piano. How he'd watched Susie's hands on the keys with barely-disguised envy. He'd been eyeing up her spot on that piano stool since the moment he clapped eyes on it.

"The legend of Susie Shipton has long been a staple of this establishment, Charles," he'd said, all pretending to be casual, as he'd suggested what they ought to do with the first stormy night since solving the case. "It would be a pity to let it die out, don't you think? One must consider historical preservation..."

They'd been coming ever since, showing up with the thunder and lightning. It was one of Charles' favourite things to do. Dancing around, having a laugh. Or even just lounging against the bar, listening to Edwin's music pattering along with the rain on the rattly old glass windows.

Edwin lifted his head a little, tilting his ear back like he was listening for Charles. Then, his playing shifted, smoothly. Slow, meandering melodies gradually becoming faster, more repetitive. Sketching out a familiar riff...

Charles laughed, clapping his hands together. "I tried to discoooover!" he sang, cheerfully off-key.

"A little something to make me sweeter," Edwin joined in softly, throwing a smirk and a twinkle of his eye over his shoulder.

"Oh baby refrain! From breakin' my heeeeaaart!"

Edwin chuckled as he played, watching Charles dance around out the corner of his eye.

"Mate," Charles gushed, a bit breathless after belting out the chorus. "When'd you learn to play this one?"

"I'm quite good at picking things up by ear," said Edwin, smiling as he threw in a few little flourishes that weren't there on Charles' record. "And you've certainly listened to it in the office enough."

"It's brills," Charles grinned, sloping on over to drape an arm round Edwin's shoulders. "You're brills."

Edwin smiled, a lopsided flash of his teeth, and he played on - finding ways to work in some more of Charles' favourite eighties riffs into some sort of medley. When he meandered into The Cure, Charles, tongue in his cheek, tucked his face into Edwin's. Sang the words into his ear, quiet and personal.

"Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream, she said..."

Edwin shivered, just a little, eyes dark as they flickered to him. "Charles," he said, sternly. "You're being very distracting."

Charles grinned. "God, I hope so." He stepped up close, fitting himself into the sliver of space between the piano and the stool, pressed as near to Edwin as he could manage. Fingers teasing the hair at the nape of his neck. "Show me how you do it, and I promise you, I promise that —"

"I'll run away with you," Edwin chorused, smiling eyes and smiling voice.

Charles felt fizzy on the inside, like someone had grabbed him by the heart and given it a shake. Sometimes Edwin just had to look at him, and all Charles could feel was bubbles. "Oh, oh I'll run away with you!"

Charles let him finish the first chorus without interruption. But before Edwin could sidle into the next verse — the proper sad one — Charles took his face in his hands and kissed him.

Edwin's hands came down in a clumsy thonk on the keys, before getting with the programme and getting all over Charles, instead. Well, not quite all over — so far, he was keeping them settled oh-so-politely on his waist.

Charles made to lean on the nearest thing — which just so happened to be the keyboard — but Edwin stopped him with a pointed clear of his throat at the first hint of discordant notes. Edwin reached around him, with both hands, and carefully lowered the wooden lid over the keys.

"You may proceed," he said primly.

Charles laughed, propped himself up on the piano lid, and got right back on the job of tempting Edwin into doing some very impolite things to him on it.

Give him a minute or two, he'd have Edwin forgetting his manners good and proper!

~~

Thanks for reading beloveds!! I shall see you tomorrow for the grand finale of Painland Week! 💛💛💛💛💛

[waveypedia]

New Days

Rymin Week Day 4: Off the Train

1 2 5 6 7

Ao3

~

Contrary to popular belief (his parents), Min-Gi is not a morning person.

He’d trained himself into getting up and going to bed early, first at his parents’ insistence, then as a necessary skill for all the classes he was taking in high school (Gotta make that college application shine!). Yet given the choice, he would happily stay up all night and wake up extremely late.

On the train, all of Min’s obligations and restrictions suddenly vanished. Although his schedule was primarily dictated by not dying, which led him to sleep and wake up at odd hours (and telling time on the train is a complicated task anyways), he started sleeping in later and later. Now that he’s off the train, and most of his days consist of driving, songwriting, and practicing, he’s free to wake up as late as he wishes.

It’s why he finds himself slowly slipping into the world of wakefulness one unassuming Thursday morning. The van is already moving, as per usual - Ryan doesn’t mind the quiet mornings as Min sleeps away. Golden rays of sunlight peak through the van’s windows.

In the driver’s seat, Ryan is spotlighted in one. The sun’s brilliant hues turn his brown hair into shades of tree bark and make his soft skin glow. He’s beautiful.

Ryan is a morning person, in contrast to Min, but he would very much like to be a night person. They’ve spent ages lamenting the fateful injustice. Unlike Min, who used to force himself to go to bed early even if it meant lying awake in the dark for hours, Ryan chooses to just run on little sleep. He’d go out and party and/or perform all night, crash for a few hours, and wake up at his usual time.

He’s been getting better, though. Just like Min, they’ve both been making bounds of progress now that they’re off the train and free from restrictions. Every time Ryan goes to bed at a decent hour, it eases the worry in Min’s heart.

They’re both doing so much better now. Min never thought he’d be grateful for getting spontaneously kidnapped by a magical death train, but he and Ryan are so much happier now than they’d ever thought they’d be.

Ryan glances over, smiling fondly. “Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

It’s a running joke between them, one that started way back on the train with Kez, but Min’s heart never fails to make a little jump whenever Ryan calls him beauty.

“Morning,” Min replies, stretching. He digs around in a bag at his feet. “Did you move the songbook?”

“Yeah, I was working on it earlier,” Ryan says. He jerks a thumb behind him without taking his eyes off the road. “I left some new lyrics and chords for you to look over.”

Min smiles. “Thanks.” Following Ryan’s directions, he grabs the songbook, a blue pencil, and his coveted mini-synth. Items in hand, he carefully slips into the passenger’s seat and buckles up.

Ryan shoots him a quick grin and turns his music off so Min can write.

For the next few hours, they stay as they are - Ryan keeps them on track to their next gig, while Min tackles the lines Ryan wrote earlier. It was a bit of a learning curve, figuring out how to write songs together, when they first started out. Ryan only knew chords and tablature, while Min only knew notated music from his viola days. Now, though, a couple months into their journey, they’ve worked out a good system. Whoever comes up with lyrics or a melody first (usually lyrics, and usually Ryan) will pen it along with any chords or notes they can think of. The other will look it over, edit it, and add the missing element. It usually makes for a solid first draft.

Min twirls the pencil in his hand. Blue. His favorite color. Ryan usually writes in a red pencil, from a set of colored pencils he stole from his younger brother before leaving. It makes contributions easy to distinguish when writing and editing.

Every so often, while Min looks over Ryan’s ideas, he’ll pull out his mini-synth and tap out a melody. Both of them find it easier to create melodies with an instrument in hand. Min may not play his mini-synth on stage like Ryan plays his guitar, but it still makes him happy to play it regularly. Not as a toy, not as something he has to hide from his boss and his parents, but as a genuine instrument.

As he writes and plays, Ryan listens. He keeps his attention on the road and map, but chimes in every so often with little affirmations and suggestions.

“Is that a D?” Ryan muses. “Under a G?”

Min thumbs the corner of the page. “Yeah, I think it sounds cool. Thoughts?”

Ryan graces him with a patented Ryan Akagi grin, all teeth. “I like it! I’ll look it over when you drive.” Ryan squeezes his fists on the steering wheel. “I’m really glad we’re working together, Min. This is way better than anything I’ve written solo.”

Min ducks his head, cheeks flushing. “Oh- Uh- I like writing with you too,” he replies. “

--

In the afternoon, they pull over and Min takes the wheel. Sometimes at this time they stop for food - they’ve made it their mission to catalogue all the small restaurants across Canada and America on the way to New York for future reference. But today Ryan got a late start on driving because he was songwriting (“Inspiration strikes when it strikes, Min! Who am I to deny my muses?” Never mind that Ryan is uncharacteristically close-lipped about what/who said muses even are), so they eat separately in the car. They step out to stretch for a minute, and Min hands over the songbook and food. Then they’re off again.

Ryan makes a few more edits with his red pencil, but they always collaborate on the second pass. At both of their insistence, they have to wait until one of them isn’t driving to truly discuss it. Min thought he might have to put his foot down on this, but Ryan was insistent - he’s an experienced driver and knows far to well just how dangerous and difficult driving is.

The afternoon passes without much fanfare. Min keeps his eyes on the road while Ryan edits and eventually breaks out his guitar. The highway is long, flat, and unassuming. Few other cars pass them.

It’s for that exact reason Ryan gets an idea that is both brilliant and stupid.

“Min. Min. Minminminminminmi-”

“What.” A feeling of dread washes over Min before the words are even out of Ryan’s mouth.

Ryan grins toothily at him. “I’m gonna stick my head out the window.”

Min chokes on air., surprised. “Wh- Ryan. Why would you want to do that? Didn’t you have enough thrills on the death train?”

“Eh,” Ryan says, shrugging. “I’ve always wanted to do it, but i couldn’t exactly do it while driving when I was touring alone. Besides, my parents would never let me.”

“For good reason,” Min grumbles, but in his gut he knows Ryan’s already won.

Ryan frowns at him. “Look, I’m not stupid. I’ll be careful. I won’t lean so far out of the car that I’ll fall. I’ll come back in if there are more cars or it looks like I might hit something.”

“Or if we start turning,” Min warns.

Ryan’s replying smile is blinding. “Does that mean it’s a yes from you?”

Min rolls his eyes. “Just try not to die. If I show up to the venue with only half the band, the manager won’t be happy with me.”

“Yes!” Ryan punches his fist in the air and dances triumphantly - or, he dances as much as one can while sitting in the seat of a moving van.

Ryan rolls down the window and sticks his head out. He’s crouching on the seat, half-standing, in order to fully fit through the window. His upper body is out of the car. His arms wave and flail, making his jacket sleeves flutter even more violently in the wind.

Min starts to shout a warning, to yell about safety precautions, to give into the panic in his heart and yell get down, but the words die in his throat the minute he lays eyes on Ryan’s face.

Ryan is joyful. Euphoric. Happy. He has always been a smiley person, but times where he is truly, unadulteredly happy are rarer than you’d think. Here, riding half-outside of the van while they drive to their fame and dreams, he seems truly free.

Min smiles. God, he loves that man.

Ryan glances back, the light reflecting off his glasses, and flashes Min an adrenaline-fueled grin and a shaky thumbs up. His ankles wobble a bit. Before Min realizes what he’s doing, he reaches out and grabs Ryan for support.

Ryan’s mouth drops open in a small ‘o’. Min moves to take his hand back, but before he can, Ryan twists and reaches back inside the car to grab Min’s wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

Min freezes.

Ryan is smiling, more bashful and careful now than before. He’s still happy, but… nervous? Anxious? 

Min’s heart flutters. He manages to smile back.

“I got you,” he says, although it comes out as a whisper.

“O-oh,” Ryan whispers. His eyes are wide and soft. “I… thank you, Min.”

Min ducks his head awkwardly. “You’re welcome.”

The rest of the drive is quiet. It’s not awkward, but it’s not as comfortable and natural as it usually would be.

Something has changed.

Min grips the wheel tighter and stares down the road, for a lack of real target. If looks could kill, the road would be up in flames. 

It’s… confusing. He’s not sure why a change in their dynamic is so upsetting and off-putting. He and Ryan have gone through so many changes over the years, and they’ve always been able to come back to themselves in the end.

Besides, it’s not like they had an argument. Or even a misunderstanding. All they did was hold onto each other to keep balance. Why does this feel so monumental?

Min chances a glance away from the road to look at Ryan. He’s curled up in the passenger seat (because Ryan seems incapable of sitting normally when he’s not driving) with his guitar. The songbook, flipped open to their latest draft, is balanced precariously on Ryan’s knee. He’s bent over to read it accurately, which must be difficult, especially in the dim light. But he seems to be managing. He’s humming softly to himself, almost too quiet for Min to catch it. As he’s focused on the road (no matter how much he wants to listen to Ryan’s ethereal yet natural and homey singing) the melody floats in and out of focus. Ryan is also plucking at his guitar, playing mostly individual notes instead of chords. It’s calming and comforting, not to mention beautiful. If Min weren’t driving, he might just fall right asleep. Even though he’s the one playing, Ryan seems drowsy as well, judging by the way he’s leaning against the back of the seat.

As they draw closer to their destination, Ryan seems to consciously shake himself into wakefulness. He sits up and puts the songbook away to focus fully on his guitar. As Min pulls off the highway and navigates the city streets, Ryan tunes his guitar and warms up. 

They run through a couple vocal exercises together, practicing harmonies and lyrics as well as warm-ups. Min is a bit shaky since he’s focused on the road, but he and Ryan know their songs by heart, and the warm-up does the job. He’s still a bit jittery as he pulls into the venue parking lot, but that’s normal. He hasn’t quite shaken his stage fright yet, but as long as he has Ryan at his side, he’s able to perform. More than that, he has fun performing.

Besides, Ryan confided in him a while back, before their first real show. “You’re not the only one with stage fright, Min,” he’d confessed. “Yeah, I love it, and the adrenaline basically cancels out the fear, but it’s still there. You just have to go for it.”

Min had felt comforted enough to perform with that, with the admission that even the seemingly-fearless Ryan Akagi, who’d always seemed more at home on a stage than at his actual home got stage fright. But then Ryan had hesitated, glanced down, and taken Min’s hand. Min’s heart had nearly stuttered to a stop in his chest. He almost missed what Ryan said next.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter if you get stage fright or not,” Ryan had said cheerfully, too cheerfully, although Min barely noticed. “All that really matters is if you enjoy what you’re doing. It’s more admirable to conquer your fear in order to chase your dreams than to not have fear.”

Min had smiled back, shaky but euphoric. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, not unlike how he felt onstage. “That’s very profound.”

Ryan had laughed and squeezed his hand. “Eh, I have a lot of experience. Listen to me, I’m the master!”

The mood subtly shifted with the joke, and suddenly they were laughing and Ryan let go of his hand and they were pushing the synthesizer on stage and it was all a blur from there until the curtain went down and Ryan was squealing and hugging him and picking him up and screaming We did it! You did it!

What a first show.

Min shakes himself back to reality and pulls into the venue parking lot. Ryan jumps out of the van before Min is fully parked, despite Min’s loud protests. He rolls his eyes and lets Ryan run ahead anyway.

While Ryan gets checked in with the manager, Min parks and unloads Barold and the rest of their equipment (which is pretty much just Barold now, since Ryan took his guitar with him in his haste). He heads inside, he and Ryan set up, and then they’re standing onstage behind a lowered curtain, waiting in darkness and silence for their cue.

Suddenly, Ryan turns around and flashes Min a thumbs-up and a bright smile. It’s more jerky and jittery than usual, probably because of the nerves and adrenaline. He seems a little more on edge today, though. 

“We’re gonna do great!” Ryan promises, grinning.

Min smiles back. “We’re gonna do rad,” he replies. The tension between them dissipates, and the curtain goes up. Ryan turns toward the crowd, beaming his particular I’m-on-stage-but-I’m-really-enjoying-myself smile, and greets them. The crowd goes wild.

Energy floods Min’s body, and he grins back at the crowd. Ryan counts them off, and they burst into their opening number with the power and passion it requires. The crowd screams, but Min can barely hear them over the music and Ryan’s voice.

He’s living. Far more than he ever was before.

They both are.

--

After the show is a blur of chatting with audience members, grabbing something to eat, and scheduling another show. By the time they head to the hotel, Min’s exhausted. But he dutifully puts all the equipment in their hotel room and locks up the van before he collapses into bed.

Ryan is already in their room when Min comes in. He’s sitting on the bed, facing away from the door, with his hands on his lap. Most striking is the absence of his guitar. Ryan may have been playing all day, but it’s rare for him to be without his instrument and yet so still like this.

Ryan, to his core, is always moving. Even when he’s not physically moving, he’s always singing, humming, thinking. Yet now, he sits in absolute stillness.

“Ryan?” Min whispers. His voice is quieter than he intended, but Ryan jumps at it all the same.

When he turns, he’s smiling disarmingly, but it’s too wide and shaky to be natural. Ryan may have convinced someone else with that expression, but Min knows him too well to be fooled.

Min strides into the room with three short steps, locking the door behind him. He stops in front of Ryan, so close their knees are almost brushing. Ryan blushes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I- Nothing.” Ryan won’t meet his gaze.

Min scowls. “Come on, Ryan. Aren’t we past this? Didn’t the train teach us not to do all this not-talking crap?”

Ryan flinches. “I- Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m just… thinking.”

“About what?” Min finally moves, stepping around Ryan to sit on the bed beside him. He takes care to keep his voice soft and gentle. He doesn’t want to scare Ryan again. Whatever’s going on seems to have him skittish all of a sudden.

Ryan bites his lip. “Min, I… you know I care about you, right?”

Min blinks, surprised. “Of course I do.” Hesitantly, he reaches out to take Ryan’s hand, running his thumb over Ryan’s knuckles. “I care about you too.”

Ryan blushes. His cheeks are nearly scarlet right now. Min’s a bit too tired to unpack that all on his own right now, but he knows it means something. It spurs him on, gives him a burst of courage and energy in the adrenaline crash phase after a show. “I’m glad we’re-” He’s about to say friends, but the word dies on his lips. Suddenly, it feels all wrong, but he can’t put his finger on why.

Slowly, Ryan turns to face him. His eyes are wide and anxious, his lips slightly parted, but there’s a set determination in him that shows in his face. He reaches out to take Min’s other hand, and… leans in closer.

Min finds himself leaning in simultaneously. Soon they’re close enough Min can feel Ryan’s breath on his lips. It’s hot in more ways than one.

Oh. Oh.

So that’s why today, Ryan’s hand on his wrist, the trusting and yet shocked expression of his, felt so weird and so right at the same time.

Their eyes meet. A silent exchange passes between them.

Do you want to do this?

Yes. Do you?

Yes.

If asked after, Min couldn’t say if he initiated it or if Ryan did.

All he knows is the gap between them is now nonexistent, and Ryan’s lips are on his, and suddenly it’s everything he’s ever wanted.

The kiss is slow. Hesitant. Exploring new territory, figuring out boundaries. But it’s not awkward.

No, they are Ryan and Min, Min and Ryan, Chicken Choice Judy, and they have come much too far to be awkward. They’ve been building towards this moment since they first met, even if they didn’t know it.

It feels like a found puzzle piece of himself Min didn’t even realize he was missing. Now, he is complete. Now, they are complete.

Now, they are both truly living their lives to the fullest.

~

this fic is just: *headcanon* *headcanon* *headcanon* *hea-

oh man i almost didn't finish this one in time. it's still the 12th here, though (by a couple hours!), so i'm good! it's hard to write a full one-shot every day, but i've already come farther than i thought i would! i told myself i would finish this today, and i did! i also told myself i would finish the week and my remaining prompts, and i will. :)

title is from new days by dreamcatcher. that's the second time i've used it as a title but the last one was for a zine fic so i can get away with using it here, lol. i really love that song, so that's why. the lyrics translation are absolutely nothing like this, but for some reason it gives off road trip vibes (at least to me), so it works really well for this particular piece!

okay confession time: i think this is the first kiss scene i've ever written lol. i was writing it and i was like "hey wait a minute i have no clue what i'm doing have i done this before??? i don't think so???" it didn't help that i didn't intend to write a kiss scene, but i got to the place where i'd intended to end it and it felt like the natural progression. i'm gonna go research good kiss writing after this. i would've done it while i was writing, but i didn't want to post this any later than i had to

i have a bunch of infinity train snippets and wips i wrote right after book 4 aired and my interest in the show peaked, and i really thought i had something that would fit well for off the train but i guess i didn't?? maybe i just daydreamed it and never actually penned it skfhksl. so i was kind of flying by the seat of my pants for this one. i think it's my favorite of rymin week so far though! it was also the most fun to write. i really love introspective pieces. ryan and min off the train, after their relationship is repaired, when they're in a much better place and truly happy with each other, is also my favorite time in their lives to explore. they're so much happier and healthier, and they can truly start to explore themselves and realize their dreams.

if you have a piano or something on hand you should play the d and g notes together. they sound heavenly. in choir two years ago we had that chord and i have never forgotten it because i love it so much.

if you ever wanna talk infinity train, writing, these amazing characters, or really anything hmu here on my tumblr or twitter! thank you for reading, and please leave a reblog/like/comment if you enjoyed it!

@ryminweek

[snowdice]

Little Kestrel (Part 11)[Birds of Different Feathers Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan & Patton & Virgil (future Virgil/Patton but not in this story)

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton, Virgil

Appear: Thomas

Mentioned: Janus

Summary:

It was supposed to be a quick job either way. Either Virgil would assassinate King Thomas of Prijaznia or he’d be caught and get executed. Yet, when Virgil gets the wrong bedroom and gets caught by Prince Logan and his future royal advisor, Patton, the job ends up getting way more complicated for the 14-year-old. He also ends up sleeping in a (actually pretty comfortable) closet for a few weeks…

Notes: Implied/referenced child abuse, assassination attempt, knives, torture mentioned, captivity, teenagers being really dumb

This is a prequel to Kill Dear. I wrote it 100 words at a time on my blog, but this is the edited version. If you want to see how it was crafted, look at the tag proofread stories.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

Over the course of the next three days of Virgil’s captivity, Virgil would come to the conclusion that his captors were idiots.

This thought flickered to life once again as Logan leaned into the closet to point out another constellation on the ceiling, tottering unstably on his knees as his weight shifted forward and distracted by his enthusiasm.

They were alone in the prince’s room. Patton had left only a few minutes before to help his mother in the kitchen (less because she needed help and more to prevent her suspicion about why he’d spent so much time away in the last few days).

He wouldn’t be back for a while, and Virgil had full mobility in the closet. With Logan leaning over the threshold like that, it would be easy to kill him or even just incapacitate him. One rough yank on his arm would have him completely in the closet. Virgil had no question that he could pin him down so he couldn’t activate the restraints, and even if he managed to do so, he’d have been drawn close enough that Virgil could use his legs. He could either force him to take off the cuffs or, since they automatically went to the second setting when he left the closet, just deal with it until he managed to get away. It would just be so easy.

Yet, he did not act.

He just watched Logan as he leaned stupidly over an assassin while info dumping about stars.

This was the first day that Virgil hadn’t felt at all tired when he’d drank the provided nutrition and healing potion, though it had never affected him quite as much as it had the first day. Logan said that meant that his injuries must be healed. It was a weird feeling. He didn’t remember when the last time was that he wasn’t damaged in some way. Even before his grueling training, there’d always been bullies at the orphanage and he’d been the youngest and smallest in his age group.

He was also more well rested and fed than he had been in as long as he could remember. He felt better than he knew was possible today, and he suspected that he would only feel better after a bit more time under their care.

He told himself that was why he didn’t lash out now. He was waiting until he was as strong as possible to make sure his escape went as well as it could, even if it was a risk. They’d mentioned that the king would be gone for three weeks. After he returned, Virgil would surely be turned over to people much more capable of actually keeping him well trapped and less likely to feed him well, give him a nice place to sleep, and leave him without injury. It was a gamble to stay, because it was possible that he wouldn’t find another opportunity in time and would get handed over to his fate. Really, if he was being reasonable, he should get out now while he felt good and had a secured opportunity.

Still, he did not. He had not any of the times they’d given him the opportunity in the last few days.

Logan finished his sentence and leaned back out of the closet to safety. He still was speaking though in that soft happy tone. Logan liked the stars. He liked to talk about the stars, and Virgil found he liked to listen to him. They tended to end up in this position whenever Patton was away, just talking as Virgil laid in the prince’s closet.

Eventually, Logan’s latest story tapered out. There was silence then for a few moments. Virgil stared up at the fake stars on the ceiling, the stars that Logan had made for him when he really did not have to. Virgil had not been expecting lights in the closet, let alone ones so beautiful and thoughtful. Not ones with stories behind them. Just days ago, if someone had told Virgil the prince would be keeping him in his closet for the next few weeks, Virgil wouldn’t have expected a blanket let alone all of this.

He turned his head to look at Logan. “What?” Logan asked.

“Your magic’s very beautiful,” Virgil said.

Logan seemed pleased by the complement, lighting up almost as much as the stars he’d made. “Well, it’s just a basic light spell,” he said, “though I did make some adjustments to them and the dimmer was a bit more difficult. Anyone could do it with practice.”

Virgil shook his head. “They’re special, I think,” he said. “Your magic’s different than most people’s.”

“How so?” Logan asked curiously.

“It’s gentle,” he said. “Gentle and warm, like eating the warm soup you fed me a couple of days ago.”

“And other people’s magic feels different?” he asked.

Virgil nodded. “I’ve met a lot of magic users, but it always felt bad. Usually it hurts or makes you feel sick or just makes you uncomfortable. Even healing magic always felt like bugs nibbling at my skin, but the potion you’ve been having me drink in the morning feels… safe. It doesn’t hurt or make me want to cry. It’s just good.”

“Magic often has much to do with the caster’s intentions,” Logan said.

“I think you could poison me gently.”

Logan made an odd expression. “That…” he said, nose scrunched. “That is a strange thing to say.”

Virgil cocked his head. “Is it?”

“Yes!” Logan said, shaking his head. “You are far too comfortable with the concept of death for your age.”

“I’m fourteen,” Virgil argued. “That’s old enough to be sent on missions without a blood compulsion!”

“…A what?” Logan asked.

“A blood compulsion,” Virgil said. “You know, with a multrum.” Logan was frowning at him. “One works in your gardens and you’re a prince. You had to have at least seen one or two. They take a bit of blood and multrums process it into a little bead. Then you’ve got to do what your told or it hurts a lot.”

“I know what a blood compulsion is,” Logan said. “I am simply wondering who would put one on a fourteen-year-old.”

“They don’t,” Virgil said. “They stop putting them on people when they turn fourteen.”

“And exactly what is the age range for it?” Logan asked. Virgil was almost startled by the way his tone was quickly hardening. He’d never heard him be that harsh even when he’d first woken up in his custody. It made Virgil tense up.

“They take kids usually when they’re about 8 and it’s a year of training before you’re sent on a mission so 9-13,” he said.

“That’s horrible,” Logan spat so violently that Virgil flinched. Logan didn’t seem to notice. “They force children to kill under a blood compulsion?”

“Well, no one really wants to do it without one when they’re that little. They get scared, and usually try to chicken out so…”

“So, they torture them unless they kill someone.”

“I mean… it’s not. They have to agree to the deal.”

“And if they don’t agree to it?” Logan asked.

Virgil thought back to the second time they’d made him get a blood compulsion. It had been with the multrum before Janus, a girl by the name of Alina. He’d made the mistake of hesitating on his first kill and faced the consequences before finally giving in and doing the job. When the second mission had come around, Virgil hadn’t wanted to accept the blood compulsion.

That had been the first time they’d made him drink a binding potion. Logan seemed to be able to get an idea about it by the look on his face.

“So, your options were to be tortured, be tortured in a different way, or murder someone.” Logan looked at him. “You said your fourteen. Have you ever even killed of your own volition?”

“I… no,” he admitted, but quickly added, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t. I know what I’m doing.”

“That explains a lot about your personality and reactions so far.”

Virgil rankled at that for some reason. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

 Logan just stared at him for a long moment. “What they did, what they are doing isn’t right, you know?” he said.

Virgil blinked at him but said nothing. He became more and more uncomfortable in the silence that ensued.

“Would you like to learn more about magic?” he asked. “There are many uses other than to hurt. I can teach you a few basics if you’d like.”

Virgil was confused about the topic change but was relieved about it. “Uh.” He thought. “Sure. That would be… interesting.”

Logan smiled at him. “I’ll set up something and we can work with it in the next few days. What would you like to learn?”

“Um, I have no idea. What is there?”

Logan considered it for a moment. “We could do a hair color changing potion. Or perhaps a small protection charm or I can teach you to make fire shapes.”

“Protection charm,” Virgil said without hesitation.

Logan gave him a sad smile. “Of course. I’ll start showing you how to make them tomorrow and we can actually make some the next day.”

“Okay,” Virgil agreed.

“Would you like to hear more about the stars?” he asked. Virgil nodded. He once again leaned into the closet to point and Virgil once again did not move to attack. Nor did he attack when that afternoon Patton turned his back on Virgil for far too long when they were alone. Nor did he when they settled him into bed once again in the closet. He told himself it was strategic, but he knew it wasn’t.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

[fractualized]

I tried to respond to this with a “read more” cut that didn’t work, but I made the mistake of adding some HTML editing, and I didn’t realize deleting the post to try again would DELETE THE MESSAGE? Super cool website. Luckily I still had the ask in another tab for a screenshot.

ANYWAY, I’ve only gotten a few asks, actually, but this is many in one! And this took me a while because when it comes to writing I don’t know when to shut up!

The first question is interesting for a Telltale game, because the player chooses what Bruce does, so the answer could easily be whatever YOU like about John that makes you want to treat him more like a person than a tool. Then again, the times when you can make choices are limited, as are the actual choices (see: no opportunity to contact John post lab attack), plus Bruce does have reactions you can’t control. So his character is whatever blend results from the writing and the player.

But we’re specifically talking about the shipping-friendly scenarios! So let’s forget the meta and just assume the player makes the non-jerkass choices with John. Points are in the order they occurred to me.

>>>>>

1) John’s “light outside of Arkham” speech comes to mind first of course. The first time I watched that monologue and the camera switched to Bruce, I realized he and I had the same expression. Interactions with John are largely off-beat, and what he says about the lights still is given that it’s centered around an asylum, but it’s also very earnest and honest. It’s a very humanizing moment that makes clear that John’s attachment to Harley is very real.

I recognize that that is jarley-centric, but a) I don’t subscribe to the idea that John is actually talking about Bruce in this scene and b) that said, I think it still extends to Bruce. John is expressing genuine attachment to a person he admires and seeks guidance from (and sees as attractive), after all. His vulnerability should only emphasize to Bruce the importance of taking him seriously.

2) John is very open with Bruce immediately, starting at Lucius’s funeral. When John talks about being “the new guy” on the outside, it’s very sympathetic, even if you think John is actively playing for that sympathy to get Bruce to help him. Both things can be true. (I imagine this is a tactic he used in Arkham.) Later you get the sense that if John tried to talk to Harley about wanting to retreat to the asylum, she’d probably make fun of him.

John is up front with Bruce constantly, and that can be difficult not to reciprocate at least to some degree.

3) Speaking of the funeral, I think the fact that John brings a card calls for the “thoughtful” option. It is the wrong kind of card, and you wouldn’t normally give one to nonfamily of the deceased at the funeral, and if you’re going to do it anyway I guess you should also bring one for the family, buuuuuuuuuut I can see Bruce appreciating that John tried. And you know what? Telltale wrote that scene with no option to tell John to wait to talk to you OUTSIDE, which is what anybody on earth would do when someone arrived uninvited to a funeral and one of the main facts you know about them is that they happily knifed a guy, so we’re left to assume that Bruce finds John THAT intriguing.

4) When John says he likes Batman, Bruce has this proud little look on his face. “Hell yeah, you think Batman is cool!” He seems too pleased to hear it to think of John as just a game piece.

Jumping back to the coffee date, Bruce also has that semi-sheepish proud little shrug when John tells him how well he’s doing impersonating Harley. Bruce is having more fun in that scene the longer it goes, and probably wishes it really was just a casual conversation with a friend.

5) And related to that, Bruce has multiple opportunities to advise John about Harley (and, really, about how to behave appropriately in general). I don’t think Bruce puts in that effort if he doesn’t feel for John, in how he’s new to… almost everything. Also, to Bruce, the chances of John ending up back in Arkham or in prison must be HIGH, yet he puts in that effort anyway.

6) Taking the time to train John to throw a batarang seems like a little much to keep a good contact happy. Why waste precious laptop hacking time if not because you want to do your little buddy another favor? Also, if you so choose, why GIVE HIM ONE OF YOUR WEAPONS? Just… you don’t do that for someone you don’t like, or for someone you don’t think could be reliable help in combat later.

7) We don’t see Bruce laugh that often in the game, but I think he thinks John is funny. No way Bruce reflects on the shadow puppet scene later and doesn’t at least crack a smile at the idea of Gordon having that mustache as a baby.

8) John saves Bruce’s life multiple times. There’s rescuing him from the Arkham attack in Season 1, and then there’s triggering the EMP generator before Bane decides to kill him, as well as saving his butt from either Freeze or Bane in the virus storage area depending if you threw Catwoman under the bus or not. (If you didn’t, maybe John doesn’t get Bruce out of the ice machine back at Old Five Points, but his attempt to stand up to Harley is a pretty big deal for him.)

John will also save Bruce at certain quick time events, like if Bruce doesn’t duck when you’re with the Pact in the incinerator. You gotta like someone who helps keep you alive.

>>>>>

I tried to stay pre-funhouse, because narratively, that seems like the point where “this person is my friend” should be locked in, whether you tell John you believe him or not. I’m sure I’m forgetting moments since I haven’t played in a while, but I’ve listed enough to demonstrate that the writers provide ample opportunity for a friendship to form.

When it comes to romantic love, though, I’m not sure there’s a definitive moment, especially given the situation Bruce is in. He knows he cares about John, but I think he might need downtime (relative downtime for Batman, so like quiet cave research time) to realize he feels something more. So maybe in the couple weeks before Vigilante Joker’s debut, Bruce realizes he’s not just worried about where John is with the virus, but he really misses his eccentric pal. Or maybe it takes longer and happens post game when he visits John in Arkham, and has time to reflect on what John said about wanting Bruce’s love, not to mention the brief but memorable experience of having John as a partner. (Instant combat coordination! What!)

Now if we’re talking Villain Joker, the whole “I did love you” speech at their final confrontation indicates that Bruce realized his feelings before that. (I mean, people can still interpret that line as nonromantic love, but… come on.) Which seems odd, given that John and Harley started running around offing people by the hundreds, buuuuut that just makes me think it was the fact that John ran off with Harley and abandoned any of Bruce’s influence that made Bruce realize sooner how attached he felt.

(And maybe also that John made out with Harley right in front of him. I know that scene upsets some people, but it just made me laugh. Every single thing John does in the villain scenario is to get under Bruce’s skin, so I just thought, “Are you trying to make him jealous?? dkjfalshgalgha”)

As for BPD, it certainly matches up with a lot of John’s behavior. Honestly, though, fleshing out John’s particular diagnoses is not something I’ve focused on. It was part of a whole load of research I did on mental health care overall, but I just sort of blend what I’ve retained with trying to keep John consistent with his game portrayal. I don’t have substantial experience with mental health care so my personal comfort with representing him as having anything specific is looowwwww.

[sahbibabe]

Ignoring The Obvious

Soulmate AU

Sephiroth/Fem! Reader

Part Eleven

Your hospital stay is short. Your training commences. Reno has serious problems with being... well, helpful. Or encouraging. Especially with a giant Shinra dog chasing you through vents.

THE BED WAS HARD, YOUR knees were killing you, your abdomen was on fire, and the nurse was steadily refusing to give you morphine no matter how much you begged. You had spent the better part of two days as high as a kite, blissfully unaware of the train wreck of memories about to hit you the moment you were weaned off of your medication. The file─your unfiltered, raw test subject notes and classifications─sat innocently on the nightstand as if it was completely separate from the emotional turmoil you were facing.

       It would be easy, so easy to slip into the mercenary's mindset and ignore the pain. To shove the emotions aside and bury them so deep you didn't even have to acknowledge their existence. All you had to do was will them away, and they would be gone. But that was unhealthy and the moment you did that, all of your progress would be ruined forever and you would start from scratch once more.

      But did it really matter? You asked yourself the same question over and over again as you watched the Chocobo documentary on the one-channel television network. You would be going back to that life anyways, with that same mindset and habits, without anyone to stop you from doing otherwise. You would be killing people for Rufus Shinra in the name of eliminating competition; a petty game was what it all came down to.

        And you were the knight who guarded the King.

       You looked away from the television to your food. It was plain hospital food, rich in protein to help you replace all of the blood you had supposedly lost while you fought the doctor tooth and nail when he tried to get a needle in your arm for an IV. Reno had laughed when he told you about the resident's injuries, but it only made you feel sick to your stomach when the nurses had to strap you down like a wild animal.

      Other than Reno, your only other visitor was Rude, and he had been thoughtful enough to bring you a bouquet of real flowers. He wouldn't say where he had gotten them from when you asked, just sat in silence, so you asked him instead how Hojo was doing with that stab wound, as smug as you might have sounded.

       "You didn't stab Hojo," Rude told you bluntly, a slight hint of confusion in his voice. Your smugness was wiped from your face. "You stabbed an assistant doctor who had come in to check your new vitals."

        "No," you had whispered,"no, that… That was Hojo. I remember it like it happened seconds ago…"

       "It doesn't matter. The doctor has been treated and compensated out of your salary. You'll be fifty thousand gil short."

     And that had been the end of that.

     Now, you picked at the cheap, plasticky roast beef on your plate and pushed your asparagus around in circles. You weren't getting anywhere without the alarms sounding on your bed, so you were effectively a prisoner until they turned them off. Add that to the iron they were slowly feeding into your IV and you felt like a rabbit confined in a small cage, pacing a few steps at a time.

       Out of the corner of your eye, sitting right beside the file you were desperately trying to avoid reading, sat the Book of Colors: a book that translated all of the different colors soulmates might see, their specific combinations, and surprisingly, origins.

       The strings felt snug against your fingers as you weighed your options, kneading your fingers into your palm. There was a lot you could learn about the authenticity of soulmate bonds through that book. People followed it like gospel, spoke of it as something holy. You had never had a reason to read it until now, or the money to, but now you had prime opportunity and the eyesight to help you do it.

      You picked up the book and pushed your lunch tray away from the bed.

       It was a hefty leather thing, dyed black and sewn with gold thread to display the title: The Book of Colors. One could easily take it for a children's book, but it was so much more than that. A quick glance at the spine showed it was the newest edition.

       The first page you opened it to described the various types of soulmate bonds, everywhere from bonds to the literal soul to telepathic communication. It depended heavily on the people bound to determine what kind of bonds they got. Cynical, unfair people walked around without color vision until they met their soulmate; quiet, shy people got telepathy; and people like you, a mercenary gone civilian, got strings.

       "Strings guide the lost home," you mumbled, tracing your finger over the plain description beneath the header,"and return hearts to where they belong."

       One of the authors theorized heavily that strings meant involvement with the lifestream personally, or some kind of way to identify past soulmates with one another.

       "It's a very unique thing, the strings," the author wrote,"just like anyone else's, but this means that the two souls have already connected before in the past. Eons or two hundred years ago, who can say?"

      You skimmed over the rest and flipped over to the colors, the part you had been dreading and also curiously dying to read. There were sections to different soulmate types, some colors meaning different things, so you found your section and settled down in your springy hospital bed.

       "Identify the weave of your strings," the book told you. It offered a small chart of different weave types. "You may have two types or you may have four. Find yours and look at the pairing chart to determine the intent of your bond."

       That was easy enough. You shook the threads out and looked closely at their weave; there was a single double braid, what looked like a dutch braid, and an elaborately woven pattern that repeated halfway through the string on each one.

       "The double braid signifies a union between two people," you read, following the lines with your finger. "If there is a child born from that union, two becomes three on this specific line."

        You didn't have a third thread, like you expected, so you moved on.

      "The dutch braid signifies a match with power and darkness. Don't worry yourself, though! Darkness can be equated to many things, such as self conflict, a trouble within the body, or even a mental disconnection from stress."

      Sephiroth didn't seem to be mentally disconnected, but you didn't even know him that well. You messed with the threads for a few moments, stuck on that phrasing, before finding the last section where the more elaborate braids were.

       "This gorgeous flower patterned weave means that you have reunited with your soulmate several times in various past lives. Much like additional colors to the vision discussed in the previous soulmate identification, the different petals on it connote just how many times you have been with your soulmate in past lives. Count them! How many do you have?"

         You raised an eyebrow and counted the individual petals. One, two, three, four, five, six, and… just burgeoning on the final petal, weaving itself before your eyes, was seven.

         But there wasn't a number for that─there wasn't even a color combination or weave combination for the mess around your hand. You checked several times, but to no avail; no one had ever had gold, purple, and green and black threads.

       You slammed the book shut and tossed it back on the nightstand just as the door handle turned and popped open. Reno sauntered past the threshold and made himself at home in the guest chair, eating popcorn and humming an odd tune.

       "So, how's the chocobo documentary doing?" His eyes sparkled with mirth. "Making you bored yet?"

       "Sure. If you count restlessness as bored." You crossed your arms and fixed him with a hard stare. "When can I get out and do my job?"

        "In an hour." Reno threw a handful of popcorn in his mouth dismissively. "Doc says you're cleared to start training and work off that excessive energy you have."

        "Good." You ripped your blankets back and hopped out of the bed. The floor was still cold beneath the cheap socks the hospital had given you. The world swam around you for a moment and you steadied yourself against the nightstand. "Good. That means I didn't pass the exam?"

        Reno shrugged. "You never finished it. Tseng pulled some strings. As long as you pass training you should be fine."

       "Why do you sound like you doubt me?"

       "You'll find out in… oh, about an hour."

      And oh, find out you did.

      "Reno, I'm going to murder you for this."

       Sweat traced rivers down your face as you shimmied your way through the ventilation system of the training barracks, a guard dog snapping at your heels. He didn't answer over the comms system, but you knew he had to be laughing at you somehow.

       "Shit," you yelped, feeling the dog's teeth sink down into your shoe. You kicked back on reflex and it cried out, releasing you instantly. You moved a little faster, relieved at the sight of a vent, and slammed your elbow down on the grate. It didn't budge and there was a very pissed off hound breathing down your neck. "Oh, fuck me."

       "Keep on moving, [Name]!" Reno chortled. You scowled and got on your knees, moving as fast as you could given the cramped space. "Three minutes left!"

        "You and your three minutes can go to hell!"

       "Yeah, but then who would sic hounds on you then? You'd fail your training no problem."

      "Reno," you growled, shoving your fingers into another grate just ahead and pushing down hard. It swung open. The dog got closer. "I'm going to kick your ass."

       "Get out of the vents and then we can talk!"

        You dropped neatly onto a bench, the leatherwork groaning beneath your feet. You hopped off and opened the door right as the dog dropped out behind you, hightailing it down the hall at full speed.

        "Gotta take out the dog, too, [Name]!" Reno reminded you.

        Feet skidding into the marble floor, you whirled around, cursing Reno for his snarky reminders and tackled the dog head on. It flailed as you wrapped your arms around its neck and cut off its breathing, barely keeping purchase by pinning your knees to the over muscled thighs. It growled and tried to bite you, the struggle slowing second by second, until it flopped down on the floor, tongue hanging.

         Unconcious, but not dead.

      You reclined back on your haunches with a sigh, wiping sweat from your forehead, and when you opened your eyes, you found the full brunt of Reeve Tuesti's gaze staring you down.

       Your hand dropped from your forehead. Not even your labored breathing helped you forget that you had somehow ended up in a completely different building than Reno had told you to go to.

       "Damnit."

[whatcouldgowrong-ohthat]

Hurts to be Human Chapter 3

Hey guys!! I have internet!! It’s a miracle!! But because I don’t have it long, I am not having this edited. Just going for it and hoping for the best. o.o But here is chapter 3 of Hurts to be Human!! Thank you for being patient!!!

Warnings: I mean, I don’t really think there are any? I think it’s all good this time around!! 

Please don’t post this anywhere without my permission o.o

No gif because I suck..I’m sorry :(

Chapter Three — Walk Me Home

“Life isn’t picking and choosing where you left off and where you can begin again, Bucky.”

Bucky shifted his gaze from the ground to the man sitting across from him. He was older, fought in Vietnam. He was someone he could relate to. A vet with a rough past, someone who did things they weren’t exactly proud of. It was why Sam recommended him. Hell, it was why he worked as his therapist. And seeing him, the man reminded Bucky of when he and Steve had seen Snow White. He was shorter, on the rounder side with constantly flushed cheeks, a big nose, and glasses.

Thus the nickname “Doc” was born.

It helped that he was also a doctor, but the nickname definitely had nothing to do with that and had everything to do with the Disney classic.

“I know, I know,” Bucky agreed, unclasping his hands and leaning back on the couch. He slouched, still not as short as Doc was in his chair. No, still the man managed to be shorter than him. It was incredible really. Bucky couldn’t help, but wonder — how short was the guy’s torso? It was a thought that crossed his mind at least once every session.

“Bucky, are you listening?” Bucky jerked, blinking when he realized he’d zoned out. It happened only when Doc tried telling him something he didn’t like. They both knew it and Doc wasn’t fond of it. “You do know that you pay me for my honesty and help, right?”

Bucky chuckled, smiling as he ran a hand through his short hair. Still, he wasn’t used to the length. He was used to the mane he had for sixty years. Give or take a few. It was a shield, a barrier to protect him from the outside world. Doc and him had several sessions over cutting it and how that would open Bucky up, provide him with a new level of vulnerability. And now that vulnerability meant a different sort of relationship with Y/N.

Y.N. That damn woman. She had been at the compound for two weeks, constantly working on damage control with the media while Sharon took on the government. They finally took the time to explain to Sam and Bucky what was going on and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like that she had to clean up his mess. She was back. Shouldn’t he be taking the time to learn about the woman she had become? Especially after their last conversation? It seemed playing pretend provided new opportunities to frustrate Bucky. He wanted to go back, not to the way they left things, but back to when things were good. 

And Doc was reminding him that that was not a good idea.

“Believe me, it’s hard to forget,” he snarked back, earning an amused chuckle from the old man. Old man. Bucky chuckled to himself. He was still older than Doc, but he looked far from it. “And I do understand, but…”

“You miss her.”

Bucky frowned, looking away. He wasn’t ready to admit that — not aloud, not to anyone else. If he did, that meant there was a whole new level of admitting, of facing the thing he had walked away from.

“It’s okay to miss her. She was your closest friend after Steve left. And when she did —“

“Thin ice, Doc.”

He quieted and Bucky managed to breath a sigh of relief, his shoulders relaxing in the slightest sort of way. The phrase was a warning, something they had come up with when Doc pried too fast. At first it was something used every week. The initial wall Bucky had, required Doc earning his trust, earning his thoughts and concerns so that they could make progress. He hadn’t actually used the phrase in almost a year. Then again, they hadn’t talked about Y/N in almost a year. 

Drumming his pen on his fingers, Doc tried to tread carefully on the sensitive topic. Silence fell between them in those moments. What about Y/N was safe to discuss and yet would bring about an opportunity for Bucky to open up more? Finally, Doc asked, “You said she has a pet now? Was that something she was initially against?”

Bucky nodded. “H.D. I…when we were together, I always talked about getting a pet. Something to take care of.”

“And something that could also take care of you.” Doc smiled knowingly as Bucky looked up.  Clearly the super soldier hadn’t expected that to be so blatantly clear. “Pets have a way of bringing out a person’s softer side. They’re good for us. It’s why we train them to be service animals. It’s no surprise to hear that was something you were considering.”

Bucky was bitter as he muttered, “She was so against it.”

“Why?”

Frustrated. “Hell if I know. She told me it was because they’re too needy.”

“You sound like you don’t believe that.” 

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. The feeling was a distraction from the topic at hand. At one point in his life, he rarely touched his hair. When he became the Winter Soldier, it was simply to get it out of his sight when lining up a target. Once he reunited with Steve, it became a nervous habit, something he used to bring him back to his reality. The habit, something Y/N often teased him about, was something he still couldn’t break. It was comforting in an odd sort of way. 

“Bucky?”

He looked up, blinking before he finally answered, “No, of course I don’t. This is the same girl that would run up to dogs in the park. She’d beg the owners to let her pet them, Doc. At shelters, she would have as many cats as possible just curled up on her as if she were wearing a ‘welcome home’ sign. Hell, Finding Nemo was one of her favorite movies and she bought a mug with that dog from Up on it. Someone like that doesn’t think pets are too needy.”

“No?”

Bucky hesitated, knowing why Doc was questioning him. He wanted Bucky to think past the rashness of his initial thoughts and assumptions. Though his process was always quick and calculating, it was more often right when he was the Winter Soldier. Now? He was just Bucky.

Even so, he felt he was right. He knew he was right.

“No. Y/N wasn’t avoiding the idea of a pet because they’re needy. It…” He hesitated as the realization finally sunk in, heavy like a hunk of lead on his heart. “She felt broken. Feeling like that, knowing you’re broken, you don’t feel like you deserve to have anything good in your life. Not even something as small as a pet because they…well, they need you, they rely on you.”

“Some people seem to believe they might not be fully capable of taking care of a pet to the extent the animal deserves.”

“Fuck, I’m an ass,” Bucky groaned, running a hand over his face.

Doc laughed, shaking his head. “Far from it, Bucky. You’re human and you’re one of those in the world that has been put through a great deal.”

“But shouldn’t I have realized or noticed? Something?” Doc didn’t say anything, only looking at him. It was frustrating to say the least. “Come on, Doc.”

Doc adjusted his glasses and wrote something down before explaining, “I don’t think so. While we haven’t talked much about Y/N in the past, what you have told me has provided me enough clarity on the subject. The two of you were working through a great deal and relying on each other in a way that eventually became unhealthy. It lacked stability, communication, and openness. Instead, the two of you became lost in yourselves and your own trauma. With that in mind, it’s only understandable that you’d grow oblivious in each other’s needs while sorting through your own.”

Bucky stared at the ground, unable to let go of the guilt that twisted in his gut. They were supposed to be a team and yet he had grown completely oblivious to her and her needs. She had felt broken, shattered, and he never even realized.

—

Bucky’s session had ended not long after his realization. It seemed he always had the best timing when it came to his time with Doc. A miraculous breakthrough followed by the last five minutes and Doc doing his best to work with the time he had. Stepping outside, he quickly took a step back when he saw the downpour that greeted him. 

He truly did have the best timing, didn’t he?

Staring up at the darkened sky, Bucky huffed a frustrated sigh and watched as the cold air tinted his breath. Adjusting his leather jacket, he allowed the rough material to protect him from the chill. Then came tugging at his gloves, keeping his metal arm hidden from onlookers. Always careful, always checking. It was part of his routine. 

As he searched for what he hoped would be a much needed pause in the weather, he noticed the art gallery across the street. It was something new and edgy that Shuri had told him to look into. Apparently it was one of her favorite places to visit when she stopped by. He never did look into it, of course. The only art he really looked at was Steve’s and that stopped a long time ago. No, now he looked not because of the art, but because of who was finishing with a purchase just inside. He smiled, leaning against the brick wall as he watched her. This wasn’t weird, right? Watching her? As a curious and concerned friend?

No, certainly not weird at all.

Today she had worn one of those slouchy beanies he’d often seen this time of year. It was a maroon sort of color, the shade complimenting her skin as if it was made for her. She turned and stepped outside and his eyebrows shot up. Over the leggings and boots, over the t-shirt, barely peeking through, was the leather jacket he’d given her all those years ago. 

It could be a new one.

He brushed aside the voice in his head, searching for the key to knowing whether his hopes were true. She turned, facing his direction, and immediately he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. There, on the corner of the collar, was a red star that matched the one from his old arm. She’d insisted on getting it to symbolize that she wasn’t scared of that part of his past. Everyone teased her about it, but she never seemed to care.

And she kept it.

That had to mean something, right?

“Y/N!” 

She looked at him, that familiar surprise flashing across her features for only a brief moment before she smiled. They had been making progress in their friendship, but it never seemed to go farther than morning coffee or running into each other in the hall. They were friendly, but he wouldn’t exactly call them friends. Now? He had a chance to spend time with her. He had a chance to actually be her friend.

Glancing from one side of the street to the other, he quickly jogged across and joined her side. He noticed the canvas tucked under her arm, neatly packaged away so as to protect it from the weather. A part of him wanted to ask, but he knew better. Y/N was still painfully private, still guarded. He had to show her that she could trust him again.

“What are you doing here?” She was curious, brow furrowed and a breathy laugh escaping her. The last person either of them expected to run into was obviously the person standing before them. 

Bucky gestured to the building he had just left, shrugging. “Therapy. What about you? Since when are you an art fanatic?” He grinned, unable to help himself as he gestured to the rather large piece she held close to her side.

She glanced down at the package, her ears turning a light pink. Looking at him, a sheepish smile and small shrug were her only form of explanation before she finally elaborated. “I was sick of looking at blank walls. Tony didn’t exactly pick the prettiest shade of white to paint the whole damn place. I swear, I was starting to feel like I was in some sort of mental ward.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.” 

Joining her side, the two started walking down the street. Neither seemed to be entirely sure where they were headed or aware of the fact that the rain was giving its best attempts at soaking them to the bone. Instead, they simply enjoyed each other’s presence, as if it were a gift. 

“I can carry that for you,” he offered, finally breaking the silence that had seemingly settled between them. He’d noticed her shift the awkward thing a few times, trying to find a way to carry it. It seemed there was no way.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s not heavy. Just awkward, you know?”

“I figured, but I really don’t mind helping. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Y/N rolled her eyes and begrudgingly let him take the canvas. He tucked it under his metal arm, his free hand brushing against hers as it dropped back to his side. Every instinct in him wanted to reach out, to touch her. Even when they were friends, she always let him touch her. It was his way of staying grounded when he first went through losing Steve. He had relied on it, rarely ever letting her stray far because he craved the physical contact. The feeling, that connection, was what bonded them for so long.

But that was then and this is now.

Now, that urge didn’t feel quite the same. He wanted to touch her, but it wasn’t so desperate. There wasn’t a need or desperation to touch her, to drink her in as if she was the very water he needed to live. Instead, the feeling was subtle, reminding him of the small breeze that would come in when summer transitioned to fall. It was cool, calming — something to be appreciated. When did that feeling change? When did that carnal, overwhelming craving shift into something far sweeter?

“Bucky?”

He looked up, surprised to see Y/N waving a hand in his face. She laughed at the doe-eyed look of bewilderment that came with those bright blue eyes and parted lips. He looked like a child hearing their mother call their name for the fifth time, middle name and all creating that look of a deer caught in the headlights. 

“You alright?”

Clearing his throat, Bucky nodded and the two kept walking. “Yeah, just —“

“Thinking? Was it about your session?”

No. “Yeah.” Really, is lying the best way to get their friendship going? He hesitated. “No,” he corrected.

“So which is it?”

Bucky laughed at the way she raised her eyebrow, knowing if she drew it up any further it would get lost in her hairline. “No, I wasn’t thinking about my session.”

“Then…penny for your thoughts?”

He looked away from her, shrugging. How could he voice how he was feeling? The thoughts in his head? How could he tell her that a part of him missed what they were, but understood her wishes?

Just tell her, Buck. You won’t get very far with someone like Y/N if you aren’t honest. The familiar sound of Sam’s voice reminded him that the birdbrain was basically the angel on his shoulder. He might drive Bucky crazy, but his intentions were true and good, always looking out for Bucky’s best interests. 

You lost her once. Tell her that bullshit in your head and she won’t be sticking around much longer. There it was. The Winter Soldier, a reminder of what he had been. Working with Doc had muddled that voice for the most part, but he and Doc both knew they could never fully rid him of the devil in his head.

It seemed he was always fighting, always trying to figure who was best to listen to. Why couldn’t he ever listen to himself? 

His silence left an impression that perhaps Y/N had overstepped. She ducked her head, rubbing the back of her head as she told him, “You don’t have to share. Sorry for —“

“No!” His panicked voice came out a little higher, a little squeakier, and left a bright pink hue on his cheeks. She looked up, biting her lip to keep herself from laughing. “I — You don’t have to apologize, Y/N.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” He nudged her gently and was happy to see her shoulders relax. She even knocked into him playfully, something he hadn’t expected. That was a good sign, right? He bit the inside of his cheek before finally telling her, “I was thinking about how much I missed this.”

Confusion. That was the look that greeted him.

Genius. Fuck that birdbrain. Fuck the fact that he could hear the damn guy in his head all the time.

 “Missed what?”

Bucky gestured between them as he elaborated. “This. Us. I missed having my best friend around. I mean, the ‘why’ you’re here sucks, that’s for sure, but I’m really glad you’re back. Does that make sense?”

She smiled. It was brilliant and as bright as the one she offered to everyone else. Slowly, she was letting him back in. Slowly, but just as surely as he was letting her. They needed baby steps and time. Moments like this would certainly help. “I am too. Don’t tell Fury I said this, but I’m glad he found me.”

“Knowing Fury, I think it’s safe to say it was never a matter of finding. He always knew where you were.”

She snorted and he grinned. Y/N never let herself laugh so openly. Not before. Not with him. “Fair enough. You’re probably right.”

“Probably?”

“Okay, you’re completely and utterly right. Is that what you want to hear?”

Bucky laughed, his grin spreading from ear to ear. “Was that so hard?”

Y/N rolled her eyes, shoving her shivering hands in her pockets. It was the only thing keeping her from holding his hand, borrowing his warmth. She didn’t want to repeat history. In fact, she refused to. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. “You’re utterly ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but then again, you’re the one letting me walk you home.”

She gaped at him. “We live in the same compound, Barnes!”

—

The sound of the door opening and closing caught the attention of one SHIELD agent and one superhero, pulling their focus from the news on the television. The squelch of a pair of shoes and soft thud of a pair of heels signaled exactly who had come back. When did they even run into each other?

Sam exhaled sharply through his nose, earning a look from Sharon. He didn’t seem to notice, instead watching through the doorway as Bucky and Y/N passed through the kitchen. They were laughing and smiling, a level of ease around one another that hadn’t been there before. Neither stopped to check if anyone was home, instead continuing on their way to the dorms. It was then he noticed a particular detail that left him more than a little curious. Both were utterly drenched. “Did they walk the whole way?” he asked, looking back at Sharon. When he noticed her look, he raised his hands in defense. “What, what’d I do?”

“You’re worried.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Oh, I am. I’m just curious what it is you’re worried about.”

Sam frowned, looking away. The arm that was propped on the couch held the weight of his cheek as he tried to find a way to explain this. He didn’t want to come off like an ass after all. “He’s doing good, Sharon. He’s better than he was the last time she was here.”

“She’s better too.”

“I know! And I’m happy for both of them.”

“But?”

Sam’s brow furrowed as he rubbed his forehead. “I’m concerned that they’ll take steps back.”

“What, now that they’re around each other again?”

“It happened before. They were doing good, going strong, then everything got worse.”

“They’ve grown a lot since then,” Sharon reminded him. She shifted, turning her body to face him as she tucked a leg into her chest. “Fury debated bringing her in for a long time because he knew they were doing so good. He doesn’t want anyone backtracking. Especially not Y/N. She means as much to him as Nat did.”

“I know, I know.”

“You’re going soft for Barnes,” she teased, grinning and earning a glare from her teammate.

“I am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not, Carter.”

“Prove it, Wilson.”

Sam groaned, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling. The woman was utterly infuriating and usually right. He knew he’d developed a friendship with Bucky after Steve left. And after Y/N left, that friendship grew stronger. He helped Bucky with a lot of his PTSD, brought him to VA meetings, and helped him find a therapist. Everything he could possibly do to help Bucky in the right direction, he was there for. The last thing he wanted was to see his friend spiral again. To lose all that progress over one girl? It didn’t make sense to him. “I can’t.”

“I know.”

“Your smugness is not appreciated.”

“Look,” Sharon told him, earning his attention and pulling it away from the bland ceiling. “They don’t need each other anymore, Sam. Both of them have grown on their own. They aren’t the same people they were and maybe…maybe they just want each other now.”

“They were wrong for each other then. Why not now?”

“The right person at the wrong time is still the wrong person, Sam. Maybe that’s all it was. The wrong time.”

Sam huffed, shaking his head. “I don’t like when you’re right.”

“But I’m always right.” He smacked her with a pillow, earning a squeal and laugh from her. She grabbed the popcorn bowl from the table, tossing it in his lap. “For that, you get to grab the popcorn while I pick a movie!”

He groaned, loud enough for anyone in the compound to hear his clear irritation. “Oh, come on!”

[welllpthisishappening]

The Fine Art of Going Viral

Listen, hockey children are my greatest weakness. Cute hockey children who do not know how to actually skate are, somehow, even worse. Better? It doesn’t matter. Several different people sent me this video (heyo @optomisticgirl @shireness-says and @peglegsjones and...my husband) and @distant-rose listened to me plot this and I wrote 4.5 K of Matt Jones mic’ing up his younger brother at practice and turning him into a social media sensation. Emma and Killian are not pleased. 

The Rangers keep losing in OT and it’s going to ruin our draft pick, so I’m going to keep writing hockey fic to make myself feel better. 

“Let me get this straight, you mic’ed up your brother?”

Matt didn’t answer, which was, honestly, even more of an answer than actually responding to the question and Killian was only a little frustrated that he was kind of impressed by the whole thing.

“While he was at practice?”

More silence.

Killian lifted his eyebrows, a move that usually worked better than it had in the last five minutes of, mostly, one-sided conversation and the video was everywhere. It had thousand of hits and even more retweets and reblogs and Emma had already seen it picked up by several different news outlets and more than one Rangers blog.

David had sent him a link.

He hadn’t actually watched it yet.

“Matthew. I asked you a question, kid.”

“Yeah, I know,” Matt mumbled, the words barely that when he didn’t actually open his mouth very wide. “And I mean…we did it before practice. Technically.”

Gravity made sure Killian couldn’t shift his eyebrows anymore, but his mind latched onto we and it didn’t really surprise him that this was a group effort. The whole lot of them – next-gen Rangers as the tabs liked to proclaim them when they made it in the tabs and they’d all done a very good job of trying to keep them out of the tabs as much as possible – were impossibly close, even if they weren’t all that close in age.

Killian was dimly aware of a group text that was almost constantly dinging, updates and plans and he had been a little worried that Matt and Peggy’s phones were going to explode when Roland set up that game-winner in overtime earlier in the week.

He should have expected that Matt had cohorts.

He just needed to figure out who.  

“How?”

“What do you mean how?”

“I mean, how, Matthew,” Killian said, hooking his foot around the nearest chair in the kitchen and crooking his finger. “Get off the counter.”

Matt sighed – although if that was from the demand to get off the counter or the use of his full name again, Killian wasn’t entirely sure. As it were though, he was mostly focused on figuring out where his oldest kid had gotten enough video equipment to tape his youngest kid at hockey practice and how his middle kid inevitably fit into all of it.

And possibly Roland Locksley.

Or Lizzie Vankald-Jones.

He was fairly sure Henry didn’t have anything to do with it.

That was why they let him take Chris to practice. And pick Matt up from school. He was responsible. An adult. Some kind of quasi-cousin, almost-uncle, thing. He was, at least, some type of authority figure.

He wouldn’t have gone along with this.

“Now,” Killian said, voice low and decidedly paternal when Matt didn’t move quickly enough. He huffed, sliding off the counter with more drama than a thirteen-year-old should have possessed and his eyes widened when he heard the footsteps coming around the corner. “You might want to sit down,” Killian suggested, nodding towards the chair on the other side of the table as Emma moved into the kitchen with a phone in her hand. “This could take awhile.”

Matt winced.

“Mom—“ He started, shifting his weight between his feet and waving his arms slightly and his eyes still hadn’t returned to their correct size yet.

Emma shook her head. Matt’s jaw snapped shut almost audibly. “Where’d you get the microphone?” she asked, stopping next to Killian and he didn’t think she tried to lean into his hand when it moved to the small of her back, but it happened anyway and that was kind of nice.

Matt flushed.

“Matthew,” Killian muttered, working another disgruntled groan out of his kid and a soft laugh out of his wife. HIs eyes flickered up towards hers, a smile tugging at the end of her mouth. “Answers, kid.”

“It’s really not bad. It was just...well, we thought it’d be kind of funny. Did you—did you watch the video?”

“How’d you get the microphone, Matthew David?”

He’d never actually sat down, so it was incredible when Matt’s whole body seemed to just fold into itself, slumped shoulders and hanging arms and Killian was fairly positive his hair actually got longer, just so it could fall across his forehead. “You’re going to get mad.”

“We’re already a little mad,” Killian said, and it could not have been good for Matt’s teeth if he kept clacking them like that. The video was already all over the internet. “Chris is four. He should not be on the internet.”

Something, something gone viral or some other phrase that was absolutely horrible and disgusting-sounding and the whole video had lasted for nearly five minutes. They must have edited it, somehow.

God, he was really getting frustrated with how impressive the whole operation was.

“But—“

Killian shook his head deftly, Emma hissing when his fingers gripped hers too tightly and he mumbled a quick apology into the bend of her elbow. “I just—I don’t understand what would even go through your mind to do this,” Emma said. “And, seriously, how.”

Matt’s neck appeared to have given up on trying to support his head. “You keep asking the same question.”

“That’s because you’re doing a very good job of avoiding answering it.”

“If I say media training are you going to ground me?”

“Oh, you’re going to get grounded no matter what you say,” Killian muttered, Matt’s face paling slightly. “But if you want to dig yourself into an even deeper hole by making poorly-timed jokes, be my guest.”

Matt yanked his lips behind his teeth, eyes falling to his feet and Killian was fairly certain he heard him mumbled captain voice under his breath. It was difficult to hear when his shoulders were so slumped, though.

“So,” Killian continued, “it’d probably be in your best interest at this point to tell us several things. Why you did what you did. Why you thought it was even remotely a good idea after Mom and I have spent half a lifetime trying to keep you guys off the internet—“

“—Ru already yelled at me for that.”

“God, when did she find time for that?” Emma mumbled, half to herself and the scope of this entire project was drifting dangerously close to epic. “How are we coming in second in the disciplining our kid race?”

Killian’s laugh lacked a distinct bit of humor – mostly because he couldn’t get the phrase viral video out of his head. “Nothing about this entire thing makes any sense, that’s why. Lucas didn’t tell me about it yet.”

“Probably because she was too busy chastising Matt.”

“Well, all her hard work about media training-related jokes has clearly been for naught.”

Matt hadn’t gotten much of the color back in his cheeks yet, but there were bits of pink on his skin and he had one eye squeezed shut when he lifted his head up. There wasn’t an actual word for whatever noise it made. It sounded uncomfortable, like it was scratching at the sides of his throat. “And she’s really mad at Rol,” he mumbled, Emma’s shoulders rolling back quickly like she’d been shocked.

Killian was very glad he was sitting down.

They should have made some kind of flow chart for all of this. And named it Kids are the Worst or something.

“Oh my God, what does Roland have to do with it?”

“He’s the one that posted it. More followers.”

Killian cursed, Emma rolling her whole head back so she could stare at the ceiling like that would help. “Of course, of course,” she grumbled, starting to pace a small semi-circle and glancing at Killian. “Should we be getting updates from Roland Lockley’s social media pages?”

He rolled his eyes. “If that’s what it comes to, then I think we’ve crossed a line we can’t retreat from, love. I’ll give you very good odds that he’s getting glared at by Gina now, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a very good point.”

Matt was silent again.  

“Ok,” Killian sighed, dragging his hand across his face. Matt hadn’t blinked in hours. “You’ve still got questions to answer, kid. And how did you get Chris to agree to it? I’m very curious about that.”

“Incredibly,” Emma amended. She moved half an inch to her right, letting his fingers tug lightly on the back of her shirt and Matt made a noise that was distinctly un-human when she perched on Killian’s thigh.

He hooked his chin over her shoulder.

“That’s not even fair,” Matt grumbled. “You’re double-teaming me.”

Killian didn’t have to see Emma’s smile to know it was there. “Must be because you’re such a scoring threat. Dad’s going to keep using your full name if you don’t tell us the truth, kid. Who got the microphone? Roland’s on the road, so…Dylan? Lizzie…somehow? Leo? Was it Leo?”

“Mom, Leo is eleven. That’s like asking if it was Mar.”

“Was it your sister?” Killian asked.

“Henry,” Matt mumbled.

Emma nearly fell off Killian’s leg. He tightened his arm. “No!”

“Swan,” Killian muttered, a soft reprimand because they were being authorities and he wasn’t all that pleased he was wrong. He hadn’t actually watched the video yet.

Emma clicked her tongue, the ends of her hair brushing over his cheek when she rolled her head. “Ok, ok, I’m—just, honestly, Henry? Really?”

Matt nodded seriously, suddenly looking a bit more confident than he had now that he’d given up a 27-year-old for getting sound equipment to mic up Chris during hockey practice. Chris was four. Chris could not really skate.

It was probably a fairly hysterical video.

“Henry,” Matt promised. “He—I don’t know, he knows someone who works somewhere and it was—you’ve really got to watch the video. C is—he’s so bad at skating. And he talks all the time.”

“Matthew.”

“It’s true!”

Killian narrowed his eyes. “Did you take the video?”

“No.”

He couldn’t wave his hands when he was trying to keep Emma from falling onto the kitchen floor and Matt couldn’t seem to stop moving and the whole thing had dissolved into farce much quicker than Killian expected it to. They should have brought Peggy into the kitchen too.

Maybe Chris.

Chris really was not the best skater in the world.

“Matthew.”

“Ok, that part was actually Leo, but that’s only because he’s got really good hand-eye coordination and he could hold his arm steadier than me and—” He cut himself off when he noticed the look on Killian’s face. And, presumably, Emma’s face. She was better at the face thing than him. “He met us at the rink.”

Killian had no idea what to do with that.

“Leo Nolan, who, as previously discussed, is eleven years old met you at Chelsea Piers because you what? Asked him to help film your brother on the ice? Why?”

Matt blinked, eyes darting between Emma and Killian more than once. “I just…I just explained. His arm is better, but don’t tell him that, he never shuts up about it anyway.”

“That’s not an answer, Matthew David.”

Emma groaned, letting her head fall back until her hair was everywhere. Killian didn’t tell her to move. He was too busy trying to temper his frustration and control his breathing and—

“We spent a very long time trying to make sure you guys didn’t get headlines. Tried to keep you out of the spotlight and that’s obviously going to change some now with you playing, but Chris isn’t there yet. He’s a little kid, Matthew. He gets what you got. He gets to be…” Killian bit his tongue when he tried to say the word normal because it had never really been normal, road trips and tabloid-invented nicknames and Roland Locksley was setting up game-winning goals in OT now, so the headlines seemed inevitable, but none of them had ever gone viral before and he assumed Mary Margaret had not appreciated her eleven-year-old kid taking the 7-line crosstown to get to the Piers.

Some of the texts he’d been ignoring on his phone were probably from her.

And David.

“Your brother is four,” Killian repeated, voice dropping low and fingers curling around Emma’s hip. “What was the point, Matthew? To play him as a joke? He shouldn’t be the best skater in the world yet.”

Matt got paler. That was, honestly, also impressive. His jaw dropped and his eyebrows furrowed and he almost had the gall to look annoyed, which was actually more surprising than the Henry thing or the fact that this had been a group effort and his eyes were barely more than slits when he looked at Killian.

He looked exactly like Killian.

A few seconds before checking someone.

“I wouldn’t ever do that to C,” Matt whispered, but with an intensity that left little room for doubt even from a slightly angst-filled teenager who turned his younger brother into an online sensation. “Never.”

Killian tilted his head – and he couldn’t actually glance at Emma when she was still sitting on his leg, but he felt her tense and they both knew that voice. That wasn’t a lie.

“I wouldn’t,” Matt repeated. “Not to C. And it wasn’t—it wasn’t a joke, it was—you really should watch the video, Dad.”

Killian opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, but his head snapped to the sound at the front door and the slightly nervous knock and it had only been a matter of time. Emma’s shoulders shook when she laughed.

“It’s open, Henry,” she called, not bothering to look away from Matt and it took a few seconds for the footsteps to make their way into the kitchen.

He’d taken his shoes off.

“Hey,” Henry said, dragging out the word until it felt like an official statement from front office. Matt was very preoccupied with the floor again. “So, uh…Gina called me.”

Emma laughed again.

“And how’d that work out for you, exactly?” Killian asked knowingly. Henry gritted his teeth.

“Not great, honestly. So, uh…I’m here to apologize. In person. Like a grown up.”

“A grown up, huh?”

“Something like that. Did you watch the video?”

“No,” Matt answered despondently, and Killian clicked his tongue at the sound.

“We didn’t,” he said. “It’s been a little hectic here, you see?”

Henry hummed, taking half a step closer to Matt like there was strength in numbers or extensive video plans. “I’m sorry you guys didn’t know before Rol posted it. That’s—well, apparently there’s been some discussion about that too, but, uh…you should really watch the video. It’s not heinous.”

“High praise.”

“It’s not, Killian. It’s—“ He took a deep breath, exhaling it with enough drama that Killian wondered if, maybe, they’d overreacted slightly. He needed to cal Robin. And answer David’s texts. And ground his kid. “It’s really actually pretty nice, but Matt and I didn’t think Rol would be some kind of social media celebrity, so really it’s his fault and—“

“—It’s because he’s so popular on Instagram,” Matt grumbled, eyes widening when he realized he’d rejoined the conversation.

Killian’s eyebrows were going to be stuck in the middle of his forehead.

“No practice,” he said, waving the hand not still wrapped around Emma’s middle when Matt opened his mouth to object. “I can’t do anything about yours because the United States will probably kill me if you don’t show up, but nothing with me. Nothing with the team. No going to Tarrytown, no film. If I see a tablet in your room in the next two weeks, I’m pulling sticks out of there, got it?”

Silence.

Except Henry breathing. He sounded very nervous. Gina must have yelled very loudly.

“Got it?”

Matt nodded.

“Good,” Killian said, turning his attention back to Henry. “I can’t do anything about you, you’re not actually our kid.”

“And I get the very strong impression you’ve already been reprimanded enough,” Emma added.

Henry rolled his eyes. “I’m going home after this. That’s—well, that wasn’t really up for debate. I think she and Robin want to talk to me and Rol together.”

“How’s it feel to be thirteen years old again?”

“As weird as you’d expect it to be.” Emma hummed, and Killian didn’t have to move to know her lips had quirked up slightly. Matt was still frozen to the kitchen floor. “And,” Henry continued, “you should really watch the video at some point. It’s…well, I doubt it’s going to go anywhere now, but it’s not as bad as you think it might be.”

Henry’s phone buzzed, as if it had been waiting for a lull in the conversation and he snapped his jaw when he saw the name on the screen. “I’ve got to go,” he muttered, clapping Matt on the shoulder. “Listen, I know we messed up, but it’s…seriously, Toph is pretty entertaining on the ice. You know he never really stops talking.”

“So we’ve heard,” Killian said.

“Right. Well, he got McDonald’s out of the deal after practice, so, trust me, his psyche hasn’t been messed up or anything.”

“Sure.”

Henry sighed – and Killian knew he resisted rolling his eyes again, but his phone was also ringing incessantly now and it was suspiciously quiet in the rest of the house. He was fairly certain Peggy was eavesdropping at the other end of the hall. “Am I allowed to see your kids again?” Henry quipped.

“Obviously,” Emma muttered. “Plus, you’re the only one who ever actually volunteers to babysit.”

“We do this again, though, and we’ll actually ground you,” Killian warned.

Henry grinned. That felt wrong. And…not.

What a weird day.

Peggy ran into the kitchen, colliding with Killian’s side and yanking on Emma’s hair, a mess of limbs and words and Henry’s smile got louder when she jumped towards him. He lifted her up. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Henry promised, pressing a quick kiss to Peggy’s hair. “I got to go, kid, but I’ll see you day after tomorrow, right?”

“What’s the day after tomorrow?”

“We’re going to take pictures on the High Line,” Peggy cried. Directly into Henry’s ear.

“If I don’t go deaf before then, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Killian echoed. “Alright. Go, before you lose practice privileges too.”

“I don’t think that’s really an option.”

“You want to test it?”

“I mean…”

Killian laughed. “Exactly.”

And he had every intention of watching the video, he did, but life was life and Chris had another hockey practice and Matt had made the U14 team and they couldn’t keep him from that practice even if Emma was very quick to point out that maybe suggesting the United States was going to kill was us wasn’t the best move and Peggy had some book report due that, apparently, required glitter.

And a trip to the High Line.

And, suddenly, it was a two days later and Chris was still an internet star and Killian hadn’t seen the video, jogging on a treadmill with Ariel a few feet away and several TVs on and he had to grip the sides of the stupid thing to make sure he didn’t fall off.

Because his kid was on the TV in front of him – speaking words that were incredibly familiar.

“How is this still being talked about?” Killian asked, Ariel laughing from her own treadmill and she didn’t slow down when she wiped the sweat away from her face.

“Cap, are you kidding me? It’s the cutest thing in the world.”

“What?”

Ariel stopped running. She nearly fell on the floor. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, did you not watch it yet? Killian, this has been not he internet for a millennia!”

“Ok, that’s not true at all.”

“Days! Actual days!”

He rolled his eyes, hitting a few buttons until the machine under him slowed and the video was still playing.

“One, two, one, two, one, two.”

The mantra echoed in Killian’s ears and his brain and, possibly, his heart because Chris was counting every time he skated and it wasn’t really skating. His blades came off the ice whenever he moved, more steps than gliding anywhere and he’d taught him that, and told him to count when you move so it’s easier the very first time he’d gotten on the ice and the realization that it had stuck made his breath catch audibly.

Ariel laughed. She was sitting on the treadmill now.

“Told you,” she muttered, eyes flitting back to the screen when Chris kept talking. He really never stopped.

“I’m going to have a nap.”

“No, Chris, you can’t just lay down on the ice.”

He laid down anyway, stick still clutched in his hand and head flat on the ice with his legs splayed out wide. Killian refused to be held accountable for whatever sound he made.

God, he hoped he wasn’t as close to crying as he felt.

“One, two, one, two, one, two.” He bobbled slightly, keeping his balance with the blade of his stick. But he didn’t fall down. “One, two, one, two, I did it! I did it!”

“Oh, I didn’t hear that part before,” Ariel mumbled, glancing at Killian with slightly glossy eyes. “Did you tell him that?”

Killian nodded numbly. He wasn’t sure if he was still breathing anymore, only a little frustrated when the video cut off, but that was the nature of TV and he jumped when he heard Emma’s sneakers behind him.

She was holding her phone.

“Reese’s finally wore me down and got me to watch the video,” she explained with a shrug. “You know he falls over at one point and just decides to…crawl on the ice?”

Killian’s laugh flew out of him, smile stretching across his face on instinct and—“Ah, shit we’re going to have to apologize to Matt, huh?”

“Eh, I mean…there was still the filming thing and Rol’s incredible social media presence.”

“It’s because of his Instagram and Scarlet’s dog,” Ariel reasoned. “Also, don’t tell Scarlet that.”

Emma saluted. “I think we’ve established a solid parental base for turning our kids into internet celebrities while also acknowledging that it’s pretty goddamn cute. Here,” she added, pushing her phone towards Killian, “look at this.”

“Watch out everyone!” He didn’t even try to stop. He crashed over, approximately, three kids, two sticks and collided directly with the boards. “I win!”

“Oh my God,” Killian muttered.

There were more footsteps. Of course there were. “That was my favorite part,” Ruby said, leaning against the open door of the gym and Ariel rolled her eyes at their disregard for the workout schedule. “Did I apologize yet for not instructing any of your kids on how to use the internet?”

“I don’t think that’s really your fault, Lucas.”

“Eh, Scarlet’s been a dick about it.”

“That’s doesn’t surprise me either,” Emma muttered. Chris was still running into the boards in the video.

“Seriously, do not tell him about the dog,” Ariel said again. Chris mumbled something else, a string of words Killian was fairly sure he understood, but desperately needed to hear again and maybe they should really apologize to Matt. “Oh, no, what was that part?” Ariel asked. “Was that what I thought it was?”

Emma rewound the video.

That was a very old sentence.

“I’m going to go so fast. Matt fast. Like Matt.”

“God damn,” Ruby said, a catch in her voice and Emma’s head fell onto Killian’s shoulder. “That’s the cutest thing i’ve ever heard. I mean he shouldn’t have put it on the internet, but—“

“—He’s thirteen,” Emma reasoned.

“Yeah, yeah, young and whatever. Cap, you’ve got to teach that kid how to go fast.”

Killian wrapped his arm around Emma’s waist. “It’s a work in progress, Lucas.”

And it was – two weeks later, after the grounding and the lack of film and there hadn’t been a single tablet sighting in Matt’s room the entire time because the video was cute, but it was also agains the rules, all four of them standing on the ice in Tarrytown with sticks in their hands and one, two on their lips.

Peggy refused to be kept off the ice.

“You’ve got to keep your feet on the ice, C,” Matt called from the other side of the rink, standing in front of the goal with his weight resting on the front of his skates. “You’re going to fall over otherwise.”

Chris, very promptly, did just that.

Killian rolled his eyes, ignoring the shouts from the peanut gallery of cell-phone sporting family members in the stands. He looked at Emma instead, a smile tugging at the ends of her mouth.

“One, two,” she yelled.

Killian skated forward, tugging Chris up by the jersey with his name and number on it because that was just how it worked and it took them a moment to get him back on his skates. “Alright,” he said, crouching down and brushing some of the ice off the fabric. “Matt’s right. You’ve got to keep your blades on the ice. Here,” he added, holding his hand out, “move your hands down your stick. Try and follow Pegs because she’s got the right rhythm, ok?”

Chris nodded – as if he understood the word rhythm in regard to skating – and Peggy beamed at the compliment. “I can do it, Dad.”

“I know you can. Just…if you fall, don’t lay on the ice, ok?”

“It’s cold.”

“I know that too, kid. That’s what I’m saying.”

Killian ducked his head, a quick kiss to his son’s cheek and squeeze of his shoulder and Chris didn’t seem to appreciate either of those things.

“C’mon,” Matt groaned, swinging his stick like he actually played goalie. None of them were wearing pads. “You’ve got to take the shot, C!”

“Just follow me, Toph,” Peggy said, the smile lingering on her face as she started drifting towards the blue line and Chris only stumbled a little.

They moved slowly, Killian still crouched at center ice, and it was far from the best goal he’d ever seen. It wasn’t even really a shot, Peggy mock-screening the net and getting in Matt’s way and he didn’t try to move. He stood stock-still with his legs wide open and a five-hole that was more like a twenty-hole at that point.

Chris pulled his stick back though, just enough power to get the puck to move and Killian had a very strong suspicion that he saw Peggy’s wrists move. She knocked in.

Directly through Matt’s legs.

And it didn’t matter.

The cry they both let out as soon as the puck crossed the goal line made it seem like they’d won a gold medal or a Cup or something better than both of those things combined, tossing sticks in the air and jumping up and Chris kept yelling I did it over and over again.

Matt moved quickly – far quicker than Chris ever would, honestly – bending his knees and catching his brother around the middle, all limbs and shouts and—“What a shot, C,” Matt grinned. “You did great!”

It took them awhile to get off the ice, all three kids complaining and whining and that probably shouldn’t have been a good thing, but the video had been deceptively cute and it wasn’t trending anymore, so that was probably for the best. And Killian knew Emma had recorded the whole moment as well, but that video never saw the light of internet day, something that was just theirs and them and a collective unit that was better than hits or social media presence and eventually, years later, when Chris had hung up his skates and Matt had gotten even faster on the ice, he flicked his wrists right in front of the net at the Garden, tipping the puck in five-hole against a goalie Killian never knew the name of.

And Chris had shouted, the phone in his pocket buzzing because they’d never gotten rid of the group text.

[glamrockmonarch]

Domestic ace!Deaky Headcanons #3

Part 1 | Part 2

A/N: so I might get the timeline a bit wrong but oh well… I love this couple, hopefully, I won’t get carried away (but I think I will), enjoy!

Edit: I went back and edit. I will, however (and I had already planned this, so nobody feel stuff, thanks!), be posting a one-shot about having kids with Deaky.

So, we’ve established that you are an animal lover, more specifically a cat lover; so when you move in together and leave your apartment you are sad to have to spend nights alone while Deaky is away on band duty.

You adopt a kitten much to John’s displeasure, he would have preferred a puppy, but you found cats to be more appealing and in need of less care than dogs.

You name her Bean, a name that Freddie strongly disapproves of.

“What kind of name it that?” He argues the first time he sees her.

You have moved in with John a few weeks before and the boys helped with your stuff but now it is the first time they have all been to your apartment since then.

Bean was walking around the men’s legs in an attempt at figuring out which one of them was most likely to feed her something yummy.

“Bean is a perfectly good name! And she likes it too!” You said, going to pick her up, which she allowed with a meow.

Deaky rolled his eyes as you brought the cat to Roger, who simply dragged his hand over the kitten’s head, making her purr.

“What can I say? I’ve always known my way around a p-“

“Don’t.” You warn him and take your kitten with you as Rog sticks his tongue out half laughing.

Deaky ends up loving your pet.

He wakes up first most mornings and plays with her while making breakfast. Sometimes when he is sitting down crunching numbers Bean rubs herself on his legs and meows at him until he pays attention to her.

You love your kitten, always letting her sleep in bed with you and sitting to watch the tv at night together. She loves to throw herself on either yours or John’s belly and nap on top of you.

When Deaky’s away on tour you find it hard to fall asleep, but with Bean purring by your side you manage to.

Although Bean is an angel, which is odd for cats, she does have a flaw which seems to bother Deaky more than it should. She won’t eat cat food. You don’t want to admit it, but you ran out of cat food once while John was stuck in rehearsals and you opened a can of tuna for her. Ever since, Bean won’t eat dry cat food.

“I don’t get it!” Deaky complains some mornings. “She doesn’t like it anymore! Why doesn’t she like it?” He brings a hand full of cat food up to Bean’s nose and watches her turn away, leaving him lying face down on the floor in defeat.

You have been so busy with moving in and training your cat that you forget your anniversary is coming up!

This happened before you even introduced him to your family.

It’s the first year you’ve spent together as an official couple, so even though you have little time to prepare something for Deaky, you find a way to make it special.

On your first anniversary, you prepare a wonderful dinner, you make John’s favorite dish and bake a cake with both of your names on it, you play your favorite record and “out in the street” starts blasting through John’s homemade speakers.

When Deaky comes through the door you have changed into a cute dress he had given you as a birthday present - a piece of good advice from Freddie, - you love that dress and wear it whenever you miss your boyfriend.

He smiles at the music and follows the smell of delicious food into your small kitchen. He finds you dancing in front of the stove.

Seeing you like this makes his heart swell; he is almost incredibly and disgustingly happy with the life he has since he met you and you got together.

You turn and go to wrap your arms around his middle as he does the same, both of you stare into each other’s eyes until he finally breaks the silence.

“Happy anniversary, Y/N!” He kisses your nose and you giggle.

“Happy anniversary, Deaky.” You push his hair away from his face.

The two of you eat dinner and talk about the things you hope to do together in the future.

It’s clear that you and Deaky will be getting married soon.

Your gift to John is a ring, the one you give him has a big stone, it barely fits his pinky finger.

“I’m sorry,” you start to apologize and he shakes his head, “I didn’t know what size to get you!”

“It’s perfect!” He gives you an enormous grin, “this way I can wear it when I play! Thank you, love!”

John had to be creative because he had already spent some money on an engagement ring he planned on giving you soon, of course, savings were aimed at wedding related stuff.

John gives you something you were not expecting, he takes your hand and pulls you toward the living room to play a record you did not recognize. He finds a spot he wanted to play and then lets the needle run through the track.

You smile at the upbeat music, an acoustic guitar being the first thing you hear, and then the lyrics, “don’t you misfire, fill me up with the desire to carry on”, you sway to the song and laugh at Deaky’s joyful expression.

“What’s this song?” You smile up at him, unable to ignore Freddie’s voice.

“It’s my song!” His eyes shrunken from the size of his smile, and he corrects himself, “your song…” he admits sheepishly, “I wrote it for you.

”You turn to the record player and notice the song is already coming to an end. Jumping you grab John’s hand and kiss his knuckles with affection. “I love it, thank you!!”

You change the record one more time and go back to Deaky, the two of you start dancing and laughing, staring at each other until a slow song comes up and you dance with his forehead pressed against yours, both of you enjoying the moment in the comfortable company of the person you love. Once the song ends, replaced by a faster one, the two of you stay like that.

You are married before your second anniversary.

The first big trip you make is to Spain, you keep it simple, split the bills - seeing as you work as well and have some savings-, and spend your summer vacation there together as a couple.

Although things are far from okay with your family, you do go back home on your parents’ birthdays and during the holidays to at least wish them a Merry Christmas every year, you don’t bring Deaky with you to avoid fighting.

The visits to your family stop a little before you try to have a baby with Deaky, the relationship with your mother is too tense and both of you consider it to be beyond repair so Deaky insists you still have his family to turn to whenever you might need them.

John always takes you out for Valentine’s Day, you walk around the city for a bit and then go into a café, or some years you watch a movie instead. You spend the afternoon together and in the evening, you play a game of scrabble while sitting on your bed. The whole day is usually like this, both of you clear your schedules for it.

Christmas used to be a lazy day for you. In the morning you stay in bed for an extra hour and eat homemade cookies for breakfast. In the evening you go out to visit John’s parents and having dinner with them before heading home.

Although of course after a year of being married and with the arrival of your first child, which then you topped with a second and third, and then impressed Roger by filling up a house with a fabulous 4 children, your holiday season got hectic.

“You are pregnant?” Roger had observed and examined your body shamelessly when you broke the news to Deaky’s bandmates the first time. “How?”

Deaky giggled turning to you while holding your hand in his sweaty one.

Freddie hit Roger in the back of the head.

“We’re adopting, you silly boy!” You told Rog, squeezing your husband’s hand.

“Wonderful news, darling!” Freddie had kissed your cheeks and held you in a warm and familiar embrace, he winked at you too, whispering “I’m happy for you. Congratulations!”

Brian was still holding your eldest and giving her a quick lesson on what space was, but he held you with a single arm and congratulated you.

Deaky has been worried about you since the disastrous first time you tried to get intimate. You had ended up pulling away from him, almost shaking, he hated seeing you like that so you stopped and didn’t try again for weeks, but the next time it had been him who stopped the whole thing aware of your discomfort.

You have been too anxious, sort of stuck in your head, so when Deaky comes home with a pamphlet about adoption you struggle not to have a breakdown. In a way, you felt disappointed with yourself for not being able to have kids of your own, but you were so relieved to know that Deaky didn’t mind as long as you were okay and sure of the decision you are making.

“We’re making this decision together,” he promises, “I think this is our best option, but if you disagree…”

“No!” You interrupt your husband, “I want to do it! I just...are you sure you don’t mind that they won’t be... ours?”

“Oh, but they will be!” Deaky holds your hands in his, young as he is, he is always finding the right words to say “we will raise them right, give them the best we can! Love them the same, teach them all we know! How would that be any different with a child we conceive?”

You cry, but not because you feel guilty or anxious or mad. You cry because Deaky’s words are encouraging, heartfelt and honest.

So all four of your little ones are adopted, happy and proud.

After Emma came along, you would cook dinner with Deaky and one of you would be holding your baby girl in your arms, but after the second baby things got tricky.

Throughout the years you trusted Freddie to be your confidant with delicate topics you did not feel comfortable dumping on Deaky, one big example of this were the many conversations you had with the singer when Deaky asked you if you would consider trying to have children.

Freddie was always supportive of your choices, but he also made you see things from the most objective point of view.

You now put up a small wooden bench in front of the counter so your little ones can reach up and help you make cookies in the morning.

While you bake and cook dinner with Emma and Stevie, both 5 and 3 years old; Deaky plays with your youngest in the living room. Joey and Harvey are only 6 years old, and a shocking 9 months old - when you adopted Harvey he had been barely a few months old, -supposedly given up for adoption by an underage mother- making him the youngest kid you have received in your home.

You hold a small Christmas party at your house every year, the boys come with their partners and the house seems to be impossibly loud.

You are the only ones with children at the moment, although you can sense that this will change soon from the way Dominique holds Harvey.

You cannot help but feel as if you are destined to be surrounded by men all your life; Emma is your only daughter.

When the men come over your children go wild, Freddie is playful and has a nice way around them, surprisingly so does Roger.

You all sit in the living room before dinner. You drink hot cocoa with Emma and Stevie, same as John, Brian, and Chrissie. Roger, Dominique, Mary, and Freddie have a glass of wine. Your children eat cookies and you sit next to Deaky, while he lets Emma and Joey sit on his lap. You have put Harvey to sleep and watch Stevie sit in between Roger and Dominique with Bean on his lap, questioning him about what he does in the band.

“And is that important?” your son asks, making Dominique giggle at Roger’s horrified expression.

“Of course!” Roger sounds almost offended.

The guys only ever say it to John but they all think you and John have a wonderful thing going with your already large family.

Freddie does constantly let you know how much he admires you two for overcoming so much to build a home from scratch. Knowing how badly you struggled with who you are when you were younger he looks up to you and Deaky for being strong and confident and always being there for each other.

For the actual Christmas dinner, you have the whole family sit together in your dining room and watch Deaky joke around with his kids. After eating you have a traditional gift exchange with the children, a perfect opportunity for John to snap pictures.

At the end of the night you’re knackered but go to bed with smiles on your faces in hopes you will be able to see some more joy in your little ones’ faces the next morning.

Deaky thanks you every year at around Christmas for the home you built him.

You always reassure him that it has been built by both of you and he insists he hasn’t done as much.

“But you made this a home, from day one. From the second you walked through the door…”

“I think you mean Bean, she’s the real hero here…” you joke, to which John rolls his eyes.

“I mean it. You make us a family, always bring us together” he pauses, both of you laying face to face in bed. “I love you.”

Every year it feels like it’s the first time you’ve heard him say all of this.

“And I love you.”

Back when it had been only the two of you; after coming home with a full stomach courtesy of John’s parents, he would pull you into a hug and you used to fall asleep with your head on his chest, wishing each other a Happy Christmas.

I had to include some babies - it’s where my head goes when you mention Christmas (I’m sorry?), ahhh, I still hope you enjoy this one!!

Requests are still open!

[fadedtoblue]

Ive seen a lot of meta saying Elektra is toxic for Matt, she brings out the darkness inside him...Like Matt didnt have his fair share of problems before Elektra shows up—the dude runs at night and beats up bad guys. Elektra had nothing to do with that & Matt’s a grown ass white man, he can make his own decisions. What am I gonna ask is whats ur opinion on what Elektra needs? People worry about Matt’s mental health & happiness but nobody takes time to analyse El, so what’s ur hot take on that?

Oh this is a GOOD one. I already see myself spending too much time working out my thoughts on it (I apologize!!!) – this is what you get when you actually ask me for my hot take lol. 

(Edited while writing to add: yeah, this took way too long! I’m so sorry, it was the damn holiday week. Between cooking, shopping, and entertaining guests at my home most of the week, I maybe spent a total of 10 minutes on Tumblr in the last few days! Basically not much time for thoughtful writing, only quick answers and mindless likes!)

As anyone who follows my blog should know, I have a lot of Feelings™ about Elektra Natchios but even so, I probably tend to deconstruct her character and behaviors more often within the context of her relationship with Matt. Which isn’t wrong or unusual b/c she’s a supporting character in his universe, but damn it, I sure love her enough that I really should write more metas focusing on her needs and perspective, so…thanks for giving me an opportunity to do that Anon :). 

Back to El, my darling El. When you hang out around fandom long enough, you’ll inevitably hear the argument pop up that not all bad / villainous characters are meant to be good*. That not every character needs (or deserves) to be redeemed. That some characters are just bad. Are toxic. Are no damn good. And maybe that means I read too much into Elektra’s character and her backstory and how that affects her personality and motivations and relationships. To which I say, nope, I think I read just enough, in fact, maybe even not enough? Maybe it’s because I spent 13 hours last week watching a show about an extremely morally grey anti-hero who racks up a body count that should read as horrifying and see him engage over and over and over again in violence as a way of life but damn it, they make us feel for him. They give us a sense of uneasy hope that he’ll find a way out of it. And even though it’s unlikely he’ll leave the Punisher mantle behind for long, we know that he has people in his circle who will continue to be fiercely loyal to him – Karen, Micro, Curtis, and to a lesser degree, Dinah. I go off on this minor tangent because if someone like that, with such a black and white view of the world can be considered in so many shades of grey but still found to be redeemable in the face of all their sins, why the hell not Elektra Natchios. 

*Sure, some characters. I just don’t think Elektra qualifies as one of those characters, like…at all.

I’ll try to not go into too much extra detail on why Elektra is the way she is (I also wrote about that here if you want more of my thoughts) but let’s talk about what she needs, or what I think she needs. To start, I always go back to the scene where Elektra finds out she’s Black Sky and has that heartbreakingly honest moment with Matt:

When you consider the upbringing she’s had – raised as a child soldier, conditioned for violence, then being embedded into a rich and influential family and experiencing the opposite lifestyle? but knowing that it’s not really her home, not really her family, that it’s just another training ground to build up skills she’ll need to better serve the Chaste – is it any surprise that she views love and affection as something conditional? Not something given without strings attached? Or perhaps, even, something that she doesn’t truly deserve? Stick gave her encouragement and affection whenever she was sufficiently vicious and unyielding in a fight. The Natchios’ probably gave her love and affection when she put on the face of an obedient daughter. I’m sure that in a life of being a diplomat’s daughter and debutante, she roped in many a unsuspecting young man into her orbit – for fun, or whatever else, and I’d guess that “love” was empty too. 

And then Matthew comes along, and I’m willing to bet he was the first person who didn’t pre-judge her based on her background, her looks, etc. They may have appeared to be opposites on the surface, but it was clear that he knew her and she knew him, in a way that was strangely honest and real? And against all expectations, they could stand as equals – I’m sure it was a feeling that was marvelously new for both of them. Yes, Elektra had a mission, but her mission had nothing to do with her love for him, nor his love for her. If the mission had never existed, I think she would have been perfectly content continuing the way they were, and it was clear she’d allowed herself to revel in it…their future together. Of course, it comes crashing down when she gives him Roscoe Sweeney on a platter and he refuses to kill. For Elektra, there is once again a conditional line drawn in the sand. Elektra the killer cannot have real love, doesn’t deserve real love. And I think this is why she runs away from Matthew, because it validates, yet again, this awful view of herself that she has inside – that being the person she is, she doesn’t deserve real love, much less from him. 

So fast forward to closer to present day Elektra. This is a woman who has spent years of her life fighting. Fighting for a mission she thought she believed in. Fighting for respect. For love. For devotion. But the fight has always been in the context of someone else’s war, someone else’s mission. It’s no surprise she always finds herself lacking when the fight is never for her benefit, never on her terms. I imagine she always believed that as long as she did as she was told, she would find what she was looking for…but obviously she learns a hard lesson about this, not just once, but twice. It makes sense that she so violently disavows her connections to both Chaste and Hand – no, it’s not conventional response, but nothing about her life has been conventional. The language she is most familiar with is violence, and therefore it makes sense that her grab at retaking her agency is told through violent action.

But where does this leave her now? I think that for all of shit she’s gone through between DDS2 and Defenders, all of which have undoubtedly left her changed, at her very core she is still looking for the same things. Love. Acceptance. Understanding. It’s not entirely clear where her head is going to be at in a post-Defenders world. She’s spent so much of her life being told what to do and given no choices so I imagine there’s an urge to explore what life looks like on her own terms. Sure, it’s possible she might choose bad over good or whatever, but Elektra has never been a character beyond redemption. Canonically, she isn’t. And so I think she’s still going to be looking for someone who is willing to believe in her her, willing to love her despite all of her flaws, her mistakes, her sins. And I honestly think that even with all the drama and angst they’ve put each other through, the person who can give her that is still Matthew. Matt has his own issues to deal with, yes, but I think in the context of his relationship to Elektra, they’ve consistently proven that even when they are at odds, there is still a bond of love and understanding that can’t be broken and ignored, and given the work he put in to better understand and accept her for who she is by the end of S2 (and still, by the end of Defenders), I think there is a lot of possibility for their future that may not have been there before. 

And this is why I always have and always will believe that Matt and Elektra work uniquely well for one another. In their dark, unhealthy moments, it’s a mutually destructive force in both of their lives, but if that same force were channeled into good, into accepting the things about the other that can’t be changed but helping each other be better in the ways that can be fixed, it could be quite freeing for them both. The Defenders proved that they still love each other fiercely and at this point Matt is probably her only tie left to any kind of family, not to mention the only person she knows who would encourage a positive view of life and humanity. And this may be wishful thinking on my part, but I hope he can play a part in supporting her through this new stage of her life because I think what she really needs is not to go through it alone. She deserves to have loyalty and friendship and support, even if it’s just one person to start. 

So…yeah. That’s what I think she needs :).

[mercurialtraveller-blog]

Clear Sky, 7°C

Mezhdunarodnoye sh., вл1, Moskva, Russia, 141425

Day 1 London > Japan Woke up hungover as fuck. Don’t think I slept properly, really. The previous day’s exploits at Hospitality in the Park had taken their toll, but certainly were worthwhile. Such a nice send off with Toby, Kris and Emma, and in smaller doses Coops and Lucy. Dragged my arse out of bed at 6:30am, having gone to bed a little bit worse for wear at around 12:45. Thankfully mum had cooked me dinner before I slept so after a nice hot shower and some ibu + codeine I started to feel better. I quickly gathered my gadgets which had been left charging and slipped them into the bottom of my bag. Some concern around having them close to the edge - I hope they don’t get broken by a cackhanded, angry bag handler like the crazy guy in Croatia who literally launched mine and Katie’s (and everyone else’s!) bags into the luggage storage space for our bus from Pula to Zagreb. Decided to leave my 3DS, in favour of spending my time more productively – reading, journalling, and hopefully finding an app to edit my Go Pro footage on are on the agenda. Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare despite mum faffing for about 10 minutes whilst I waited at the door. In truth we had left ample time, anyway, and there was no need to worry at all. So thankful to have had mum look after me the last few days, it’s been really nice. And obviously very appreciative of the lift to the airport! No queue for check-in. Minor hiccup at oversized baggage as the belt wasn’t working (I was sent there because my backpack had straps?!), but that was resolved within 2-3 mins. Security was rapid… Unsure why but my shoulder flagged up on the body scanner. He also swabbed my shoes. Bizzarre. Why do they make you get to an airport two hours before your flight if you can pass all of the above within 10 minutes? Still feeling a bit worse for wear I head to the pub (duhhh). This time I’m feeling well enough to have my usual pint 📷 before take off, along with some smashed avocado on a muffin. Tasty. I kill some time talking to Boj about (amongst other things) how aeroplane toilets work. Tho asks me if I remembered my booster seat for the plane. Hilarious. Vicki sends me some Japan tips: -Good luck being veggie outside of Tokyo, but try to use ‘niku wa tabemasen’ (I don’t eat meat). -'Sumimasen’ is 'excuse me’ and can be used when asking for directions in conjunction with a map. -Hyperdia is the best app for trains She also tells me she has friends in Kyoto who we can link up with, and that I should defo go to The Phillipines - specifically El Nido on Palawan. After a quick look on the observation deck 📷 and I’m finally boarding the plane. It’s the most empty plane I’ve ever been on! Almost everyone (with exception of families who are seated together) has 3 seats to themselves 📷 . I get through a fair chunk of my book and listen to some music; I notably listened to The 68’s first album which is decent - raw rock 'n’ roll/indie vibes. Ended up sitting in the middle seat of my three with the seatbelt super loose and lying down across them, with three blankets stacked under my head as a makeshift pillow. Living the dream! Unfortunately the dream did not extend to my vegetarian meal, which was rice, boiled veg and what i presume to be pumpkin? Not. Great. Still, manage to get two glasses of wine, so it’s not all bad. Arrive in Moscow and have quite a few messages to get through… Realise I am being charged £1.50 per mb for data and quickly switch to WiFi. Astrid had messaged me to wish me well for my travels, which I thought was really kind of her, given the conversations we have had recently. Pass the time by having some chats with Iona and Katie as well, with Iona telling me about some sort of Scottish swingers island? Odd, but amusing. I order nachos at the TGI Friday bar, and a pint and get charged the equivalent of £13📷! Board the next plane, thinking it’s gonna be a 5 hour flight but it’s actually more like 9 or so? Not 100% sure. Unfortunately it’s also fully booked, by the looks of things. Sleep a bit, watch Trainspotting 2 -disappointing, frankly. Not much happens, and it has one of those lame endings where it turns out one of the characters wrote the book. Food again. Same meal again. Blegh. Another glass of wine though. Presumably my last of the journey, but hopefully not! The guy next to me says 'cheers!’ and we have a bit of a chat about the purposes of our journeys, and the advantages of eBooks over real books - he says he uses a Netflix style service which costs the price of two books per month, but that he and his wife get through 100 (!!!) books per year. Seems a really nice guy but we both go back to our films. It’s at this point I’m writing this first entry of my journal, which I intend to update every day. It strikes me that Ive written a lot about a relatively boring day. Waffling on, as usual! Hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to add tomorrow, as I’ll be in Toyko! I’m a little bit excited, but it still seems surreal to me. I am a bit nervous about getting public transport to the hotel, but Maddy has sent me instructions of how to do so, and I’ll be picking up my data sim and have airport WiFi to help me navigate, also. Hope I can sleep some more on this flight, but I feel wide awake, and John Wick 2 awaits.

Powered by Journey Diary.

[endenogatai]

Extra Crunch Friday roundup: Edtech funding surges, Poland VC survey, inside Shift’s SPAC plan, more

I live in San Francisco, but I work an East Coast schedule to get a jump on the news day. So I’d already been at my desk for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning when I looked up and saw this:

What color is the sky this morning pic.twitter.com/nt5dZp5wWc

— Walter Thompson (@YourProtagonist) September 9, 2020

As unsettling as it was to see the natural environment so transformed, I still got my work done. This is not to boast: I have a desk job and a working air filter. (People who make deliveries in the toxic air or are homeschooling their children while working from home during a global pandemic, however, impress the hell out of me.)

Not coincidentally, two of the Extra Crunch stories that ran since our Tuesday newsletter tie directly into what’s going on outside my window:

As this guest post predicted, a suboptimal attempt I made to track a delayed package using interactive voice response (IVR) indeed poisoned my customer experience, and;

Sheltering in place to avoid the novel coronavirus — and wildfire smoke — is fueling growth in the video-game industry, perhaps one factor in Unity Software Inc.’s plan to go public ahead of competitor Epic Games. In a two-part series, we looked at how the company has expanded beyond games and shared a detailed financial breakdown.

We covered a lot of ground this week, so scroll down or visit the recently redesigned Extra Crunch home page. If you’d like to receive this roundup via email each Tuesday and Friday, please click here.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have a relaxing and safe weekend.

Walter Thompson Senior Editor @yourprotagonist

Bear and bull cases for Unity’s IPO

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

In a two-part series that ran on TechCrunch and Extra Crunch, former media columnist Eric Peckham returned to share his analysis of Unity Software Inc.’s S-1 filing.

Part one is a deep dive that explains how the company has grown beyond gaming to develop multiple revenue streams and where it’s headed.

For part two on Extra Crunch, he studied the company’s numbers to offer some context for its approximately $11 billion valuation.

10 Poland-based investors discuss trends, opportunities and the road ahead

Image Credits: Edwin Remsberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

As we’ve covered previously, the COVID-19 pandemic is making the world a lot smaller.

Investors who focus on their own backyards still have an advantage, but the ability to set up a quick coffee meeting with a promising investor is no longer one of them.

Even though some VCs are cutting first checks after Zoom calls, regional investors’ personal networks are still a trump card. Tourists will always rely on guide books, however, which is why we continue to survey investors around the world.

A Dealroom report issued this summer determined that 97 VC funds backed more than 1,600 funding rounds in Poland last year. With over 2,400 early- and late-stage startups and 400,000 engineers in the country, it’s easy to see why foreign investors are taking notice.

Editor-at-large Mike Butcher reached out to several investors who focus on Warsaw and Poland in general to learn more about the startups fueling their interest across fintech, gaming, security and other sectors:

Bryony Cooper, managing partner, Arkley Brinc VC

Anna Wnuk-Błażejczyk, investor relations manager, Experior.vc

Rafał Roszak, investment director, YouNick Mint

Michal Mroczkowski, partner, Market One Capital

Marcus Erken, partner, Sunfish Partners

Borys Musielak, partner, SMOK Ventures

Mathias Åsberg, partner, Nextgrid

Kuba Dudek, SpeedUp Venture Capital Group

Marcin Laczynski, partner, Next Road Ventures

Michał Rokosz, partner, Inovo Venture Partners

We’ll run the conclusion of his survey next Tuesday.

Brands that hyper-personalize will win the next decade

Image Credits: cnythzl (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Even for fledgling startups, creating a robust customer service channel — or at least one that doesn’t annoy people — is a reliable way to keep users in the sales funnel.

Using AI and automation is fine, but now that consumers have grown used to asking phones and smart speakers to predict the weather and read recipe instructions, their expectations are higher than ever.

If you’re trying to figure out what people want from hyper-personalized customer experiences and how you can operationalize AI to give them what they’re after, start here.

VCs pour funding into edtech startups as COVID-19 shakes up the market

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

For today’s edition of The Exchange, Natasha Mascarenhas joined Alex Wilhelm to examine how the pandemic-fueled surge of interest in edtech is manifesting on the funding front.

The numbers suggest that funding will far surpass the sector’s high-water mark set in 2018, so the duo studied the numbers through August 31, which included a number of mega-rounds that exceeded $100 million.

“Now the challenge for the sector will be keeping its growth alive in 2021, showing investors that their 2020 bets were not merely wagers made during a single, overheated year,” they conclude.

How to respond to a data breach

Image Credits: WhataWin (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The odds are low that someone’s going to enter my home and steal my belongings. I still lock my door when I leave the house, however, and my valuables are insured. I’m an optimist, not a fool.

Similarly: Is your startup’s cybersecurity strategy based on optimism, or do you have an actual response plan in case of a data breach?

Security reporter Zack Whittaker has seen some shambolic reactions to security lapses, which is why he turned in a post-mortem about a corporation that got it right.

“Once in a while, a company’s response almost makes up for the daily deluge of hypocrisy, obfuscation and downright lies,” says Zack.

Shift’s George Arison shares 6 tips for taking your company public via a SPAC

Image Credits: Eric Burger/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

There’s a lot of buzz about special purpose acquisition companies these days.

Used-car marketplace Shift announced its SPAC in June 2020, and is on track to complete the process in the next few months, so co-founder/co-CEO George Arison wrote an Extra Crunch guest post to share what he has learned.

Step one: “If you go the SPAC route, you’ll need to become an expert at financial engineering.”

Dear Sophie: What is a J-1 visa and how can we use it?

Image Credits: Sophie Alcorn

Dear Sophie:

I am a software engineer and have been looking at job postings in the U.S. I’ve heard from my friends about J-1 Visa Training or J-1 Research.

What is a J-1 status? What are the requirements to qualify? Do I need to find a U.S. employer willing to sponsor me before I apply for one? Can I get a visa? How long could I stay?

— Determined in Delhi

As direct listing looms, Palantir insiders are accelerating stock sales

Image Credits: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

While we count down to the September 23 premiere of NYSE: PLTR, Danny Crichton looked at the “robust secondary market” that has allowed some investors to acquire shares early.

“Given the number of people involved and the number of shares bought and sold over the past 18 months, we can get some insight regarding how insiders perceive Palantir’s value,” he writes.

Use ‘productive paranoia’ to build cybersecurity culture at your startup

Image Credits: JakeOlimb / Getty Images

Zack Whittaker interviewed Bugcrowd CTO, founder and chairman Casey Ellis about the best practices he recommends for creating a startup culture that takes security seriously.

“It’s an everyone problem,” said Ellis, who encouraged founders to promote the notion of “productive paranoia.”

Now that the threat envelope includes everyone from marketing to engineering, employees need to “internalize the fact that bad stuff can and does happen if you do it wrong,” Ellis said.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2DSWeXb via IFTTT

[snowdice]

Little Kestrel (Part 4)[Birds of Different Feathers Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan & Patton & Virgil (future Virgil/Patton but not in this story)

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton, Virgil

Appear: Thomas

Mentioned: Janus

Summary:

It was supposed to be a quick job either way. Either Virgil would assassinate King Thomas of Prijaznia or he’d be caught and get executed. Yet, when Virgil gets the wrong bedroom and gets caught by Prince Logan and his future royal advisor, Patton, the job ends up getting way more complicated for the 14-year-old. He also ends up sleeping in a (actually pretty comfortable) closet for a few weeks…

Notes: Implied/referenced child abuse, assassination attempt, knives, torture mentioned, captivity, teenagers being really dumb

This is a prequel to Kill Dear. I wrote it 100 words at a time on my blog, but this is the edited version. If you want to see how it was crafted, look at the tag proofread stories.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Logan’s statement did not appear to go over well with the small assassin. He went still and curled over into himself as though to protect his more vulnerable areas. Honestly, Logan thought agitated, Logan hadn’t threatened any bodily harm. He’d even prefaced the statement with an apology even though he didn’t feel as though he had anything to apologize for! Just like father had taught him!

Patton shot him a glare, telling him he was somehow in the wrong despite the fact that he’d been the one who was almost assassinated. Logan grumbled and returned to quietly sulking in the background while Patton cooed at the assassin, trying to cajole him out of the ball he’d wrapped himself into.

Logan did have to admit the situation was odd. He was young. He didn’t even know anyone trained assassins so young. His kingdom did have a guild of trained assassins/spies, but one couldn’t even join the military until one was of age (though they could start training at 16 with special permission) and all assassins must have at least a year of military training before being considered. It would be years more before they were sent out on actual missions.

So, where had this young boy came from? Surely, he wasn’t acting of his own volition, especially considering his age and temperament. What was his or whoever had sent him’s greater purpose? One didn’t attempt the risky act of regicide without some reasoning. Why did he only have one weapon? Most hired killers would be provided with a backup at the very least and more than likely an arsenal. Why was he acting so skittish? It was a strange attitude for a trained killer.

He had piqued Logan’s curiosity and Logan wanted answers.

“There, see?” Patton was saying. He was hand feeding more of the cookie to the assassin who looked just as startled by this fact the second time around as the first. “How about a compromise?”

Logan eyed him suspiciously. He was willing to let Patton lead since Logan was well aware of his own shortcomings when it came to tact, but his friend also had a bit of a bleeding heart. Logan refused to let him put himself at risk.

Ironically, the assassin seemed to be on the same page as Logan. His eyes tracked Patton distrustfully. “Compromise?” he echoed.

“Yes!” Patton said, unconcerned with the blatant discomfort in the room.

“We’ll ask you a question and you answer it,” Patton said. “Then you can ask a question and we’ll answer that. Then we can keep going back and forth like that.”

The assassin seemed unsure about this, but he slowly nodded. “What’s your question?” he asked.

Patton looked back at Logan and inclined his head. Logan took a step forward. “Who are you?” Logan asked. The assassin hesitated.

“Maybe a more specific question,” Patton suggested. “We’ve got plenty of time and ‘who are you?’ is a bit of a big question. There are so many different answers!”

“Very well,” Logan agreed. “Let���s start with, what’s your name?”

The assassin considered him, looking overly cautious for such a mundane question. “It’s Virgil,” he said after a moment.

“Last name?” Logan prompted.

“I-” he hesitated, looking distressed. “I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one?” Logan asked.

And… he was curling up into a ball again. “Sorry,” he said softly. He started to cry again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, hey,” Patton soothed. “That was good.”

Logan frowned. It was not ‘good’. It had given them basically no information. “Why-”

“It’s Virgil’s turn to ask a question, Logan,” Patton said. Logan almost groaned. This was going to take forever, wasn’t it?

Virgil’s eyes bounced between them. “Why haven’t you called someone to take me away yet?” he asked.

“We wanted to ask you a few questions ourselves before getting the castle guards involved,” Logan answered.

“Are…” he shut his mouth, likely realizing he’d have to wait for his next question.

Logan considered him. “Why do you have no last name?” Logan asked.

Virgil looked away. “I’m an orphan. I don’t know who my parents were, and no one bothered to give me one.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Logan acknowledged. “And your question?”

“Are…” Virgil said. “Are you going to torture me if I don’t answer something right?”

Patton let out a little pained exhale.

“Why would we do that?” Logan asked.

“Why wouldn’t you do that?” he replied.

“Where the hell are you from where that’s a question?”

“Why the hell should I tell you?”

“Why the hell would you be defending a place that makes you think that’s a normal question?”

“What the fuck are you even on about?”

“Okay,” Patton cut Logan off before he retorted in kind. “I think that’s enough of the question game at the moment.” He stood up and walked back over to the plate of cookies.

“He-” Logan started to grouse and got a sugar cookie pushed into his mouth to silence him.

Logan frowned around the cookie as Patton went back and offered the other cookie to Virgil. Virgil turned his head away from it. Logan’s eyes watched the assassin as Patton thought for a moment and then tore a bit of the cookie off. He ate the bite himself before offering the cookie again. This Virgil was a suspicious thing, Logan thought as the boy slowly ate a bite of cookie.

It made Logan’s curiosity itch even more, but at this rate he wasn’t going to get any answers. He polished off the sugar cookie and then walked over to sit on the floor next to where Patton was kneeling.

Virgil watched him move and Logan met his eyes. “No, by the way,” Logan thought to answer. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

Logan tried not to bristle at the disbelieving look on his face. Logically that distrust had nothing to do with Logan personally, but with whatever his experiences were before this.

Logan tilted his head at him. “Why the one knife?”

Virgil blinked at that. “What?”

“The knife,” Logan reiterated. “You were clearly here to use it, but you only have one. It seems odd.”

“Uh…” Virgil said. “I don’t know. That’s all they gave me.”

Logan nodded. “Me or my dad?” he asked. “Or both?”

Virgil clearly didn’t want to answer. “The king,” he said.

Logan nodded, and it suddenly hit him exactly what would have occurred if he and Patton hadn’t happened to be awake. Virgil seemed to see the realization on his face. He braced himself as though expecting to be struck. Logan felt suddenly nauseous, the idea of a dead father hitting a bit too close to home after…

“And the guards?” Logan asked.

“I didn’t,” Virgil rushed to say. “Just a light sleeping potion. They probably didn’t even notice anything happen.”

“Okay,” Logan said. “Good.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Virgil asked.

“We’ll hand you over to the guards,” Logan said. “They’ll figure out what to do with you from there.”

He nodded, looking small, and Logan refused to feel guilty for it. Virgil had come here with the intention of killing Logan’s dad! Logan had no reason to feel guilty about turning him in. Besides, it wasn’t as though any of them were going to hurt or kill a literal child. Dad would never let them anyway. He’d be fine! There was no reason for his sad eyes that seemed almost too big for his face to make Logan want to squirm uncomfortably.

Logan sighed. “Are you still hungry?” he asked. “We do actually have more than just cookies in spite of Patton’s efforts.”

“We don’t have any more jam though because of Logan’s efforts earlier,” Patton said sweetly. Logan pursed his lips but didn’t deny it. Instead he just walked over to where they’d stored their extra snacks.

“How about some cheese?” Logan suggested, “and perhaps some milk to drink?”

“Why are you trying to feed me?” Virgil asked.

“Because you look hungry. Are you?”

He bit his lip and nodded. They split up the cheese between the three of them which seemed to soothe Virgil’s worry of poison. He ate what they offered him without complaint and drank most of the milk.

Logan managed to squeeze a few more answers out of the boy, but nowhere near enough to satiate his curiosity. Eventually, morning came, and Logan sighed. “We should probably…” he said, “turn you in.”

The boy looked like he might burst into sobs, but he just hung his head. Another stab of that unfounded guilt shot through Logan and the frown on Patton’s face just made it worse.

“I’ll talk to my father first,” Logan promised. “He’s a kind man. Nothing bad will happen to you.”

Virgil clearly didn’t believe him, but Logan knew it would be okay in the end.

“We should probably hide him before we leave though,” Logan told Patton. “Just in case.”

Patton nodded and looked around. “Closet?”

“That will be adequate,” Logan agreed. He turned to Virgil. “Those bracelets make your arms stay in place as you have seen, but I can move them at will. I’ll take your arms and guide you to the closet. You walk behind me. Understand?”

Virgil nodded and Logan picked up both of his wrists, pulling his arms in front of him and then using his grip to help the boy stand. He didn’t resist being pulled to his feet or led to the closet.

“Alright, let’s go,” Logan said. Patton had on his unhappy face, but Logan did his best to ignore it. This was the correct decision. He and Patton left his bedroom and crossed to his dad’s room. Logan knocked. He’d expected that he’d have to wake his father since it was still very early in the morning, so he was surprised when the door opened before Logan had even finished knocking.

“Logan,” Father said. “I was just coming to see you.” He was already dressed, and Logan raked his brain for any early morning appointments for today and came up blank.

“What about?” Logan asked.

“There’s been word that Lamir’s new Queen may be considering an alliance with Mocnejsi. Seeing as I knew her mother fairly well, I’m hoping I can talk her out of it,” he said.

“What should I do?” Logan asked.

Father turned back into the room. “You’ll stay here and oversee things while I’m gone,” he told Logan over his shoulder. “I’ll only be gone for three weeks and there is nothing major that will need to happen. Just make sure everything runs like usual.”

“You’re going to be gone for three weeks?” Logan asked.

“Yes,” Father confirmed.

Logan glanced at Patton who had turned to him, hands clasped and was shooting him his best pleading expression. “Okay,” Logan said, “have a nice trip.”

Want to read more? Click below!

Part 5

[johnmuffus]

Passion 2 Profit Accelerator Review

Passion 2 Profit Accelerator Review (Samir Chibane Course)

eCommerce in general has revolutionized the way people do their shopping and the overall commerce and stores landscape, moving it into the internet. Furthermore, dropshipping has allowed people to start stores without having to run any stock or initial inventory investments.

The only problem with this fast growth is its trending nature, and how trends always attract people wanting to make a quick buck from newcomers and naïve individuals.

That’s what leads us to eCommerce and dropshipping course. While there are great products out there like eCom Elites, there are many classes offering shallow content that you can find for free on YouTube, but being sold as your gateway to making hundreds of thousands every month.

Is Passion 2 Profit Accelerator one of these courses? Let’s find out.

Who’s the author?

I actually wrote this a while ago, but I refrained from posting it earlier because Samir’s videos kept telling me no one would really buy the hype built by him to market the course.

However, I recently stumbled upon a few comments in different forums and Facebook about his course, so here it is.

This course is usually opening and closing to new members, supposedly as the current members finish the lessons. Its price varies sometimes when it opens, but it’s usually either $997 or $1,997.

There are actually 2 people behind this course: Samir and Juan Valdez (yes, like the coffee brand). They claim to have started being door-to-door salesmen, and they apparently sold $20 million in solar items before they stumbled upon Shopify.

Now, they seem to live off their dropshipping and using Versace robes to sit and tell people how they can make money.

Other than that, they seem to enjoy spending their free time taking pictures with sports cars and even helicopters. So yeah, he’s nothing special.

Reviewing Passion 2 Profit Accelerator

Despite the overhype presented on Samir’s social media and videos, his sales page is noticeably more discreet. I’ll give them props for using Teachables and integrating it with ClickFunnels for their membership.

After you sign into the course, they receive you with a few videos about what you’re going to see and learn from the course.

The videos are just the two “instructors” either sitting in front of their webcam or showing their screens and a pretty neat PowerPoint presentation.

Here comes my first complaint about the actual content: the videos are horrible. When you go into Teachables, you expect good image and sound quality, and to be fair, most courses (even the worst ones I’ve taken) stay faithful to this approach.

Well, that’s not the case here. This feels like it was recorded with an old cellphone’s (think about the first BlackBerries) camera, and they really spent way more on their robes than into actually making this an enjoyable experience.

Seeing even the worst, made-up courses was at least made bearable by the video quality and how I can smirk at their expressions, but this is just painful.

Now, into the content.

Mindset

These videos are your standard mindset module about setting your goals and habits. However, as entertaining as I usually find these sections, it’s obvious that they’re making everything up.

You can even hear them pause to think about what they’re saying, and the videos are somehow disorganized. The last video is fairly entertaining, though, using Einstein as an example of how failure is the best teacher.

Shopify

Next up, you have a basic store setup module, including hours’ worth of videos covering nearly everything about how to design your store, as well as payments and checkouts, shipping, etc.

It’s just basic content, and you can learn most of it with a few online searches. Even YouTube is more professional since you can still see them making everything up and even making mistakes and not noticing.

The rest is about familiarizing yourself with the dashboard and sending a CSV with your orders to your supplier –nothing about Dropified or Oberlo.

Sourcing products

You get 4 videos here and 2 recorded live streams. First videos are about products on Shopify, and you can see Juan’s store, which strangely had zero products available last time I checked.

The 4th video goes into offer types, free + shipping, and using retail before another video explaining how you can find products. The last video is just a recommendation of an upsell you can use for spying on people.

Facebook Ads

Next up, we have the first actually-quite-good module in this course: 7 videos plus 2 recorded streams on marketing with Facebook. It starts off with your basics: explanations and setting up your accounts.

There’s also content on the differences between general and passion pages, and you also learn how to test ideas with Facebook insights.

There’s an amusing video where Samir invites a friend to his chat, and the guy just keeps swearing like they were on Discord while playing Fortnite. That’s one of my course highlights for sure.

Finally, there’s stuff on some tips and hints for your FB page, using creatives and proper ad placement, analyzing campaigns, and when you should scale or kill your campaigns based on performance.

Email marketing

This goes back to being extremely basic, and you learn about marketing through you’re a MailChimp free account in 5 videos. Note that you need to upgrade as your mails list grows.

The first 3 lessons go into setting up your account, some templates, and getting everything ready. It’s kind of all over, but you can download the swipes for abandoned carts.

Live videos

Speaking of all over the place, the 6th module is a conglomerate of different recorded live streams speaking about pretty much everything related to the course.

There are some recommended apps, how to research products, FB targeting, increasing conversions, some recommended FB tools increasing your AOV (average order value), and how to launch your first add. There’s also a couple of Q&A’s and more mindset stuff.

Instagram marketing

The last module focuses on Instagram, and it’s just here so they can say this course offers Instagram-related content. It briefly touches on using influencers for your marketing, and that’s it.

Facebook group

Like usual, you have access to a private Facebook group, and after finishing this course I didn’t even care about checking it out. It’s surely either empty or filled with post from people trying to solve all the doubts left by these classes.

I’m prone to believe the first case, though, since I seriously doubt anyone fell for their marketing hype.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

If you haven’t figured it out already, this course definitely isn’t worth half its asking price, and I’m talking about the occasional $997. There’s no way you should pay $2,000 for this course, and if you did and still can ask for a refund, then just do it and don’t bother finish this course.

Even comparing it with free YouTube videos, it pales in comparison with the amount of content and value you can get for much less money.

I can’t even congratulate them on their video quality since they barely did any editing, and again, the quality is horrendous. They didn’t even spend any time preparing a proper script for this course, and you can clearly see the doubt in their faces as they pause to think about what to say next.

Finally, there’s no proof regarding the claims they’re making about this course or their own success, and while I had a good laugh at the swearing-filled Facebook Ads live stream, it’s definitely a reflection of how professional they actually are.

For the money they’re asking, you’re much better off getting eCom Elites, buying the eCom Turbo theme, and spend the rest on your marketing. $1,700 is an outstanding budget.

However, given the actual content here, even training yourself with YouTube and spending the $2,000 on trial and error campaigns gives you better odds.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my Passion 2 Profit Accelerator Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post Passion 2 Profit Accelerator Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

source https://www.onlygenuinereviews.com/passion-2-profit-accelerator-review/ source https://onlygenuinereviews.tumblr.com/post/190170824152

[gwynnew]

Dana Carvey goes deep inside his controversial sketch show deemed 'Too Funny to Fail'

Dana Carvey in the documentary Too Funny to Fail (Image: Hulu)

Dana Carvey hasn’t pursued many high-profile projects in the past 20 years, but make no mistake — he’s still a dazzling comedic mind. To wit, here is a list of all the voice impressions that the former SNL star casually slipped in and out of during a 30-minute phone conversation with Yahoo Entertainment:  Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Trump, John Cleese, the Church Lady, Rich Little impersonating Groucho Marx impersonating Jesus, Alex Trebek, a snooty British intellectual, a cranky grandpa, Garth Algar, a generic Beatle, the “Chopping Broccoli” singer, Jimmy Carter, Kim Jong Un, George H. W. Bush, Jeff Bridges, and both Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond.

In his latest project, however, Carvey is just himself. The comedian is a central subject of Too Funny to Fail (now streaming on Hulu), Josh Greenbaum’s feature-length documentary about the short-lived ABC sketch comedy series The Dana Carvey Show. Carvey’s 1996 show has become legendary among comedy buffs for its cast and crew of then-unknown stars, including Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman, and creator Robert Smigel. It’s also legendary in the television industry for losing 6 million viewers in the first five minutes, thanks to a notorious opening sketch in which Bill Clinton, played by Carvey, reveals that he has six lactating nipples and breastfeeds a litter of puppies. The doc follows the trajectory of The Dana Carvey Show over eight episodes, during which time its weird, brainy humor developed a serious cult following, even as it was completely at odds with the network’s target audience. (ABC’s No. 1 show at the time was the family-friendly Home Improvement.)

Carvey has no regrets, having made exactly the show he wanted to make. He’s also quite content with his present level of fame. In a conversation with Yahoo Entertainment (edited for length), Carvey, who laughs easily and maintains an active stand-up career, shared his perspective on where The Dana Carvey Show failed and succeeded, how SNL characters like the Church Lady were more subversive than they seemed, the Wayne’s World moment that he wishes he could do over, the role of politics in his comedy, and the one sketch he’s sure people will still be quoting in 50 years.

Watch a trailer for ‘Too Funny to Fail’ 

Yahoo Entertainment: This documentary is so fun to watch is because everyone who worked on The Dana Carvey Show is so honest, and remembered details so well. Which doesn’t always happen. Dana Carvey: It’s very interesting how your brain stores stuff. You go, “God, I barely remember it,” and then you start looking at the sketches and go, “Oh yeah, oh yeah.” I was doing the coffees in a car with Jerry Seinfeld — comedians inside a coffee car? — but I met him in ’81, he was recounting a conversation to me, like, “Remember when you said you were doing this church lady woman character in your stand-up?” I go, “You remember that?” He goes [Seinfeld voice], “Of course! Everybody remembers it! Why wouldn’t you?”

One moment that really seemed to capture the situation with the show was that Ted Harbert from ABC is describing your Church Lady character as “acceptable naughty,” and the film cuts to you saying, “I don’t know if ABC realized how subversive the Church Lady was.” How was their vision of the character different from yours? When I first was doing it, I remember I wrote the first sketch and Church Lady said “penis” about a guy. And then Mr. Clotworthy with the bow tie — that was really his name — was the [NBC] censor guy, he goes, “You can’t say that word.” So then I went back and rewrote it and I made it “naughty bulbous part” or “engorged bulbous part,” and it became pornographic. But nobody really noticed it!

But I have a feeling like I could say anything, because I have a weak chin and a harmless face or something. So I think they just thought I was sweet and angelic, but I had a more subversive side underneath that was a little miscommunicated. But ABC did say “Do whatever you guys want,” pretty much. So we did.

But some of the articles [about the documentary] are kind of funny. It’s funny to see your name applied to such negative, you know, “The spectacular failure of Dana Carvey” — so if you take off “Show,” it’s just like, boom. Or, “The reason Dana Carvey was doomed,” and you take off “Show.” So as long as “show” is there it’s OK! But if you take that away it’s just like, “Dana Carvey is doomed.”

Dana Carvey returning to SNL for a cameo as the Church Lady in 2016 (Image: NBC Universal)

In the documentary you say of your SNL years, “I felt there was too much heat on me.” Did you hope to change anything about your career or how you were perceived with The Dana Carvey Show? No, I loved doing SNL and loved doing Wayne’s World, especially the first one. Yeah, I was being offered so many things, I just didn’t know what to do. It was kind of overwhelming: do I do a talk show, do I do this, do I do that? And after a while, I said,“The movie game just wasn’t [for me] — unless I have control.” I turned down Bad Boys with Will Smith. A lot of stuff I turned down, Will Smith took over. [laughs] No, but I did do that. And I’d written a movie with Bob Odenkirk called Tucson, that was for millions of dollars, and I said no thank you. And also I’d written a movie with Robert Smigel, Conan O’Brien, and Kevin Nealon called Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma, and I turned that down. So I cleared the deck of all this money [laughs] and all this stuff, did a stand-up special, and said, “Wow, it would be fun to do a sketch show.” And Robert was looking to do something with a different kind of flavor from SNL.

So I just did not have a long-term career plan. I think the assumption of people in show business is, bigger and better is always the best. More money, more fame. I don’t know if you ever saw Mickey Rooney in The Twilight Zone, but he’s really small and he wishes he was big, and then he can’t get out of the room? I always wanted to be able to get out of the room.

Because the level I’m at in the last 25 years, the amount of attention and affirmation I would get on a given daily basis or weekly basis is already distorted. And I’m a minimalist. I have a Honda Pilot. I shop at The Gap. I don’t need a lot of things. But I love my health insurance. And I have one great guitar, a Taylor, and a keyboard and a virtual drum set. I’m set financially, so I can be whatever I want. But if the goal is to be famous, I blew it.

But I could start tonight! I could tell you I hate somebody, or tell you I have some disease, and we would be, “Let’s call up Us Magazine! Hey, In Touch, we got a cover story for ya!”

Speaking with Bob Odenkirk, his series Mr. Show was on HBO at the same time The Dana Carvey Show was on. The State and Kids in the Hall were also similar in some ways to the kind of humor you were doing, though neither of them was a network show. Were you thinking of those shows in any way — like, if they can get away with it, so can we? We really weren’t. That sensibility represented itself to a small degree on SNL, but the more rock-‘n’-roll sketches and repetitive sketches kind of made it to the front of the show. I think it was a little bit Letterman’s sort of anti-humor, and saying uncomfortable things. Like the beginning of The Dana Carvey Show where you see me age and then you see my tombstone. It’s like OK, is this a popular thing to do? But it’s so funny! If I saw someone do that about themselves, I’d be just a big fan. Like SCTV, Monty Python, and then all the people you mentioned — god, how do you describe it? Smart, silly, counterculture?

You used the phrase “counterculture humor” in the film. Yeah, sometimes there’s a joke inside a joke. It’s almost like some kind of magic trick in a way. Like there’s no ba-dum-bum when you see that opening sequence — like oh, there’s that joke, and there’s the rim shot. It’s conceptual. But for me the stuff that I remembered was Monty Python and stuff. [Does some of John Cleese’s lines from Monty Python’s “Architect” sketch.] That’s the kind of stuff I like. So I did it, and it was a big failure. A spectacular failure!

Steve Carell shares his memories of starring in The Dana Carvey Show in Too Funny to Fail (Image: Hulu)

The doc talks a little about how the standards and practices department reacted to the show — for example, they wanted the car from “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” [an animated sketch that originated on The Dana Carvey Show before moving to SNL] to be painted a different color so it looked less like a penis. Are there other wacky notes you remember getting? Oh boy, not really. I think Smigel was keeping some of that away from me so I would just be fresh. You know, after the Clinton teat, it was pretty clear that there was a cultural war going on. Obviously, Ted Harbert speaks to it: they didn’t know what they were getting into, the train has left the station. But the bad reviews, we started wearing certain people down. They were like, these sketches are kind of smart — like “Oliver Stone’s Revolutionary War.” They’re not in any sense naughty, really. It was kind of a clean show. Like “The Rich Little Easter Special,” which I love, where I play Rich Little playing every character including Jesus. [Does quick impression of Rich Little playing Groucho Marx as Jesus.] But yeah, I don’t think we had a lot of standards and practices. “Ambiguously Gay Duo” was one. And obviously the teat thing was a big kahuna. “The Food Network After Dark,” I remember getting some notes about that, where the food looked like anatomical sexual parts. I remember they were not happy about that. But as far as the dry, weird stuff, there was nothing they could do. [laughs] I still to this day feel a little sorry for them, but Ted Harbert’s a millionaire, so if I went on celebrity worth he’s doing well.

Basically everyone who worked on the show has gone on to a rewarding career. It’s not like the experience destroyed anybody. In a different era, it would have been an eight-episode arc on Netflix or something. And then we would have all just scattered in different directions. I wasn’t thinking, what’s the show that I need to do to last 20 years? That would have been different thinking. But it was spectacular in that it was in a place it never belonged. It’s like a grenade in a nursery school or something — well, that’d be too dark. [laughs] “Things that don’t belong for $20” — “Uh, Dana Carvey’s sketch show after Home Improvement?” [Alex Trebek voice] “We have a winner tonight, ladies and gentlemen!”

So yes, it didn’t belong where it was. It’s seen as a failure because there were only eight episodes and it definitely has 20 really good sketches. That means we were doing close to three sketches a show that were really good, and that’s a very high ratio for sketch. So the show was a success; it’s just where it didn’t belong. It’s like we went into the desert and forgot to bring water.

What did Charlie Kaufman do on the show? He’s not in the film so I’m wondering if you remember anything of what he contributed. I remember he had a desk in the corner and he was writing stuff like — our show was pretty weird. His stuff was even weirder. But I didn’t know he was a genius, I just thought he was really smart.

Yeah, I made sure through my manager just to tell everyone that doesn’t want to be interviewed [for Too Funny to Fail], “Just do it if you feel like it.” Because I hate when they go, “It’s a personal favor to Dana.” I didn’t care at all.  I was convinced over a month. Josh Greenbaum, he’s like a dog with a bone, as Wayne would say. He was tenacious and such a fan, so he ended up doing a nice job with it. Carrell and Colbert, since they wouldn’t have a career without me, they wanted to do it. No, I’m just kidding. They would have done just fine. But I was glad, because I felt bad that maybe they would stay away. That made me happy.

What was your first reaction when he brought this idea to you for a documentary? “Uhh, no, I don’t think so.” You know, “what’s your angle?” You could do it a at thousand different ways. And he kept saying he’s just a huge fan, and that he wanted the documentary to be funny, rather than sort of self-serious, like me with a pipe. [Serious British voice] “Yes, there we were, counter-culture comedy, they were too sophisticated for the demographic that the corporate men wanted. So we led with the teats, as a metaphor for hyper-empathy, and the way Bill Clinton interacted sexually and asexually with the nation at the time.” You know, we didn’t want to do that. So he made it kind of funny, just wore us down, and eventually Smigel and I said OK.

Stephen Colbert shares his memories of starring in The Dana Carvey Show in Too Funny to Fail (Image: Hulu)

The big takeaway from it is just that the show was really funny, and maybe people didn’t have the opportunity to appreciate it at the time. The sketches shown in the documentary are hilarious. I was watching a rough cut when Josh was over at my place, on the computer. My oldest son just kind of had a vague idea of it — he’s 25 — and he sees the singers singing about what happened with the show in three-part harmony, in their little goofy 70s sweaters: [sings] “Lost ratings!” Or the one where they’re singing about Mountain Dew: [sings] “It’s full of all these chemicals!” And he goes, “It’s punk rock, man.”

And it would be fun to do a show like that again. I mean, I could executive produce it or just play the grandpa comedian over in the corner. [Grandpa voice] “All right, you youngsters!” But, you know, The Birthday Boys did some cool stuff, there’s been little sketch improv groups doing stuff, and you know what? It never really explodes. It’s probably for more of a niche audience, that style of humor.

And yet when it hits, it can have very broad appeal. I’ve spent so much of my life quoting Waynes World. Like when Garth does that amazing drum solo, then as soon as he’s done he very shyly says, “I like to play.” I think about that all the time. Well that’s high praise. That’s all I’m looking for. If I had a style, it’s all rhythms that extenuate into the decade as they go forward. Because why is that so funny? It operates on a lot of levels. It’s like Grandma the Clown. Because the cadence of him —  [Garth voice] “Thanks. I like to play.” – is so infectious. I used to do it in my stand-up before SNL. I took the rhythm from my brother Brad. That rhythm is always funny no matter what you say.

Unfortunately, that f***ing drum solo — if you want to look at a better one, Church Lady has a drum solo, it might be online. It’s more organic because it was a smaller set. I practice on a small set and they gave me a giant set, because of Yamaha. We were supposed to be making fun of corporate sponsors. And I show up and the little tight jazz set I’d had said Yamaha, but it was smaller drums all around me. I practiced on that. I show up, they’ve got this behemoth drum set so I’d have to be reaching. But thanks. You made my day.

Dana Carvey (right) and Mike Myers in the 1992 film ‘Wayne’s World’ (Image: Paramount/Everett Collection)

Too Funny to Fail shows your SNL audition, the “Chopping Broccoli” song, which makes me laugh every single time I see it. Do you have a feeling when a sketch is going to hit like that? Sometimes, but only after I got going on SNL. For that “Chopping Broccoli” thing, the only time I did it on SNL, it was kind of like the last sketch on the first show. And I had done that in my stand-up. I improvised it at the Hollywood Improv about pretentious singers.

But damn, I’ll tell you what: I eat a lot of broccoli. [laughs] I’m not kidding, my wife and I sauté it with olive oil and garlic. So at least three or four nights a week, I s*** you not, I am chopping broccoli, and every time I do it that song goes through my head. So I think, unintentionally, that piece of comedy will never go away, as long as broccoli is chopped in America.

That might be your legacy: the song everybody in America sings while they’re chopping broccoli. Well my dream is always to put stuff out into the future. Like, who cares if something kills this week – what if it could be funny 50 years from now? So, that’s why a lot of people go, “Well he’s just being silly and stupid.” No, I’m trying to have something be funny in 2060. [laughs] And therefore it has to be nonsensical and rhythmical, so it’s timeless. [Sings the chorus of “Chopping Broccoli.”] You can’t get that out of your head, can you? I wrote a Beatles knock-off song that I did it on Leno in the 90s, but it was called “The World’s Catchiest Song.” [Sings a verse.]  It was a song that’s taunting you while it does what it does.

Music is still the best art form. I would never have done comedy if I’d had the talent. “Dana Carvey is sad he’s not a musician” — that’ll trend! What can I say to get this f***er to trend? I never met Harvey Weinstein, I’ve got nothing there.

You could always talk about Donald Trump. You do impersonate him in the end credits. Do I? What did I say? [Trump voice] “This show. Terrible. Many people are saying: a spectacular failure!” [laughs]  I do him kind of effeminate. Here’s my latest thing that I think is funny: there’s a lot of asymmetrical comedy if you think about not just Trump, but the fact that Jimmy Carter has volunteered to go to North Korea. So it’s funny if Jimmy Carter at age 93 goes back but he takes Trump’s rhetoric with him. [Jimmy Carter voice] “I have to say, Little Rocket Man, we’d like you to stand down with your missile program.”

Are you a political comedian? You’re so well known for your presidential impressions but like Carrell says in the doc, The Dana Carvey Show didn’t have an axe to grind. It didn’t have a platform. Well no, we were just trying to make things that were funny, that were evergreen and human. But as far as the political argument of the day, yeah, I have a lot of political points of view. But I’m old-fashioned. If I’m with the people on the left I want to pull them to the right; if I’m with people on the right I want to pull them to the left, but not have them know it. So that’s just the way Johnny Carson did it, and SNL when I was on. George Bush Sr., imagine if he had had Twitter! [George H.W. Bush voice] “Dana Carvey. Making fun of me on Saturday Night Live. Hashtag dick. Hashtag spastic monkey arm waver. Hashtag bad syntax.” So I’m not a proselytizing comic. I like to make my point — like in my stand-up special, I talked to Millennials and they love Bernie, and I said, “Just so you know, socialism is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Capitalism is the Apple Store. Where do you want to live?” But I’m a liberal Democrat from the ‘90s, so I don’t know what that means now.

Can I do my latest impression? Jeff Bridges, he always sounds like he’s eaten too much? [Jeff Bridges voice] “Well this is old Jeff Bridges here, I had myself a foot-long subway. Should have had the six-inch but I sure do love that jingle.” That’s my latest! But I can only do it for you. I have no platform. Unless I do a YouTube video.

It seems to me that you have a lot of platforms. You’re still doing stand-up, right? That’s true. I’ve always done stand-up, all the way through. There’s so much stuff that I’m in development working on. There’s so much show business now, it’s amazing. And no one will see it. Like this documentary. You know, seventeen hundred people will see this documentary! [laughs] But it will exist in cyberspace for all eternity, right next to Gone with the Wind and Sound of Music: Too Funny to Fail. It’ll be a little chip in the sky. It’s there.

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A Mindset "Revolution" Sweeping Britain's Classrooms May Be Based On Shaky Science

Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team in 1978. He went on to become the greatest player in the game’s history. This is what he says about failure: “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

According to a theory that has swept education in the last few years, Jordan has what psychologists call a “growth mindset”. He believes that even if you can’t do something initially, you can improve your abilities, whether they involve basketball or maths or playing the oboe, through hard work. “I can accept failure,” he said. “Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Psychologists say the growth mindset is contrasted to a “fixed mindset” – the belief that your skills are innate, genetically endowed and fixed. Someone with a fixed mindset, according to the theory, would look at a maths problem they couldn’t do, and think, I can’t do that, I’m not gifted at maths. They might give up. But someone with a growth mindset might apparently think, I just haven’t learnt enough maths to do that; I’ll learn some more and try again. They will keep trying in the face of difficulty – believing they can improve to meet challenges.

These ideas, known as mindset theory, have been described as a “revolution which is reshaping education”. Proponents say you can instil a growth mindset in a child through simple measures – notably, by praising them for how hard they work to achieve something, rather than for what they achieve – with impressive results.

It has garnered an enthusiastic following, with techniques marketed by a variety of training companies. Children in British schools make “mindset” posters to show the difference between the two states of mind, and hundreds of schools in the UK and US offer mindset programmes. NASA looks for, and tries to instil, a growth mindset in its top engineers, saying that fixed-mindset people feel “threatened by the success of others” and “plateau early and achieve less than their full potential”, while growth-mindset people “find inspiration” in others’ success and reach “ever higher levels of achievement”. Google looks for a growth mindset in new hires. The Harvard Business Review offers tips for how companies “can profit from a growth mindset”.

Michael Jordan (centre), who – according to Carol Dweck – is an example of a sportsperson with a "growth mindset".

Brent Smith

The concept is largely based on the research of Stanford professor Carol Dweck, whose book Mindset has sold over a million copies. A new edition was out on 12 January.

Dweck said in a talk to Google that she has worked with a US baseball team, asking them, for example, what they’d have to change about their approach if they became more successful. Some answered that they'd have to get used to playing in front of larger crowds. But others said they'd have to “take all my skills to a new level”, thus showing the growth mindset, according to Dweck.

She has made some eye-catching claims for the effects of the theory. Her website claims that a fixed mindset caused the Enron scandal, while a growth mindset can encourage cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. “Almost every truly great athlete – Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm, Pete Sampras – has had a growth mindset,” she believes.

Dweck says that people with a fixed mindset “are so concerned with being and looking talented that they never realise their full potential” and “when faced with setbacks, run away … make excuses, they blame others, they make themselves feel better by looking down on those who have done worse”. By contrast, a growth mindset “fosters a healthier attitude toward practice and learning, a hunger for feedback, a greater ability to deal with setbacks”.

But some statisticians and psychologists are increasingly worried that mindset theory is not all it claims to be. The findings of Dweck’s key study have never been replicated in a published paper, which is noteworthy in so high-profile a work. One scientist told BuzzFeed News that his attempt to reproduce the findings has so far failed. An investigation found several small but revealing errors in the study that may require a correction.

Dweck has been quick to explain and correct the mistakes – earning praise from the scientist who pointed them out – and denies that a failure to replicate her work is an indicator that the findings are shaky.

One of her first and most influential studies on the subject, authored with Claudia Mueller in 1998, claimed to find that teaching a growth mindset made children more likely to take on difficult challenges. One hundred and twenty-eight children took an intelligence test. They were all told that they had scored more than 80%, and that this was a high score. A third of them were then told “You must have worked hard at these problems” - to supposedly instil a growth mindset - another third were told “You must be smart at these problems”, and the rest were left as a control and given no further feedback.

All were then given a choice of further tests to do: either ones described as “problems that are pretty easy, so I’ll do well” or “problems that I’ll learn a lot from, even if I won’t look so smart”. Children who were praised as “smart” overwhelmingly opted for the easy problems; children praised as hard-working overwhelmingly chose the harder ones; the control group was evenly split. Similarly, when children were given another, harder test, those who had been praised as smart reported enjoying the challenging questions less than the children praised as hard-working.

The study has been hugely influential in social psychology – it has been cited by more than 1,200 other papers – and mindset theory has had a profound impact on business hiring practices and educational policy. A blog post on the British government website recommends hiring for growth mindset. Bill Gates has reviewed Dweck’s book in glowing terms. The University of Portsmouth got a £300,000 grant to carry out a mindset study on 6,000 British pupils this year, while educational bodies across Britain – including in Camden, Scotland, and Essex – want teachers to encourage a growth mindset in their children.

But the striking effects in Dweck’s findings have surprised psychologists. Timothy Bates, a professor of psychology at the University of Edinburgh, told BuzzFeed News that the “big effects, monstrous effects” that Dweck has found in the 1998 study and others are “strange – it’s an odd one to me”.

Scott Alexander, the pseudonymous psychiatrist behind the blog Slate Star Codex, described Dweck’s findings as “really weird”, saying “either something is really wrong here, or [the growth mindset intervention] produces the strongest effects in all of psychology”.

He asks: “Is growth mindset the one concept in psychology which throws up gigantic effect sizes … Or did Carol Dweck really, honest-to-goodness, make a pact with the Devil in which she offered her eternal soul in exchange for spectacular study results?”

Recently, other high-profile social psychology findings have come into question. The most prominent is the “power pose”, the idea that adopting assertive poses can make you more willing to take risks and even change your hormone levels. A TED talk on the subject by one of the study’s authors has been viewed 37 million times. But Andrew Gelman, a professor at the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University and one of the most highly respected statisticians in the field, pointed out last year that the study was riddled with poor statistical practice, and one of its co-authors has recently admitted that she doesn’t think the supposed effects are real. In 2012, Daniel Kahneman, one of the pioneers of social psychology, wrote an open letter to his colleagues warning of a “train wreck” approaching the field if they didn’t improve its statistical practice.

Bates told BuzzFeed News that he has been trying to replicate Dweck’s findings in that key mindset study for several years. “We’re running a third study in China now,” he said. “With 200 12-year-olds. And the results are just null.

“People with a growth mindset don’t cope any better with failure. If we give them the mindset intervention, it doesn’t make them behave better. Kids with the growth mindset aren’t getting better grades, either before or after our intervention study.”

Carol Dweck's TED talk, "The power of believing that you can improve".

youtube.com

Dweck told BuzzFeed News that attempts to replicate can fail because the scientists haven’t created the right conditions. “Not anyone can do a replication,” she said. “We put so much thought into creating an environment; we spend hours and days on each question, on creating a context in which the phenomenon could plausibly emerge.

“Replication is very important, but they have to be genuine replications and thoughtful replications done by skilled people. Very few studies will replicate done by an amateur in a willy-nilly way.”

Nick Brown, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is sceptical of this: “The question I have is: If your effect is so fragile that it can only be reproduced [under strictly controlled conditions], then why do you think it can be reproduced by schoolteachers?”

Using a statistical method he developed called Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means or GRIM, Brown has tested whether means (averages) given for data in the 1998 study were mathematically possible.

It works like this: Imagine you have three children, and want to find how many siblings they have, on average. Finding an average, or mean, will always involve adding up the total number of siblings and dividing by the number of children – three. So the answer will always either be a whole number, or will end in .33 (a third) or .67 (two thirds). If there was a study that looked at three children and found they had, on average, 1.25 siblings, it would be wrong – because you can’t get that answer from the mean of three whole numbers.

Google has included "mindset" thinking in its hiring practices.

Mark Blinch / Reuters