#i’ve banged out more complex stuff since then but i was very proud of this and still am just a little

[ducktracy]

i don’t believe i ever posted this on its own—back in 2022 i did a quick little cover of the song from Eatin’ on the Cuff/The Moth Who Came to Dinner since i am SOOOO ENDEARED BY IT! i wanted to complete all three versions of it but got intimidated for some reason.. maybe now’s the time to pick it back up

[iffeelscouldkill]

say what we wanna do, make it all come true (chapter 1)

A/N: It is! My fic for the Fiction Podcast Big Bang @podcastbigbang! I am a bit terrified to be posting this after working on it for so long! Also this is in the running for the Longest TSCOSI Fic I’ve Written So Far (not sure if it’s the longest because I don’t remember where my wordcount is up to for Adjusting, but like... it’s long, guys). This is Chapter 1 of 3, and the remaining chapters will be posted weekly!

You can read this on AO3 where the formatting is honestly much better, but here it is on Tumblr anyway. Also, please check out the FANTASTIC artwork made for this fic by the wonderful @bluereadingdolphin and @demonic-kitkats, who are my artists for this fic and their artwork is so good, you guys, I’m in love and they did such a phenomenal job with the honestly pretty vague info they got from me 😂 

bluereadingdolphin’s piece

demonic-kitkat’s piece (from Chapter 2!)

Please give them all the love!

Content warnings: There is a relatively brief physical altercation described in this chapter, but it isn’t graphic or bloody.

Also, I play a little fast and loose with POV in this; the first section is told from Sana’s perspective, the rest from Arkady’s.

---

“Hello and welcome back to Radio Indie, Folk and Techno, also known as RIFT, where we play all the bands that matter outside of the mainstream! I’m Piper Tanaka, and I’m your co-host for this programme! I’m joined as usual by the lovely Kestrel Colvin, with Reina Sakamachi in the booth! Now – where were we?”

“You were introducing our guests for this next section,” Kestrel replied in a slightly despairing tone.

“Right! Indie fans, I am joined today by two members of the fabulous up-and-coming indie band Rumor! With me in the studio are frontwoman and lead guitarist Sana Tripathi—”

“Hey! It’s a pleasure to be here.”

“—and bad girl bassist Arkady Patel.”

“Bad girl?” Arkady repeated, sounding halfway between taken aback and annoyed. Kestrel just shook her head.

“Ignore her. She’s got a thing for a certain… aesthetic.”

Next to Arkady, Sana was doing an incredibly poor job of hiding her laughter. “It’s the combat boots,” she whispered to Arkady.

“These are practical,” Arkady told her in a tone that suggested they’d had this conversation a few times. Sana said nothing, but straightened back up with a smirk.

“Sana — or should I call you ‘Captain’?” Piper began playfully. Sana grimaced.

“In hindsight, it was a poor choice to share that nickname in an interview.”

“You know, I think it suits you,” said Piper. “There’s something commanding about your aura. Sana, you and the band — which I understand you and Arkady originally started as a duo a few years ago—”

“That’s right,” Sana confirmed.

“You’ve always had a dedicated and loyal following, even from your early days — and we’re proud to have been playing your music here on this station for almost as long — but I think it’s fair to say the past few months have seen that rocket to a whole new level,” Piper said. “You got signed to a record label belonging to the mysterious but notoriously discerning Red Gregor, are working on your second album, and played a major gig at the CUI stadium just a few weeks ago. And we are definitely going to talk later about what went down at that gig, which is already the stuff of online legend — but first I want to backtrack a little, because I think the moment that everything started happening for you was when you added a new member to your band. In the middle of a gig, if the rumours are true. Can you tell us how that happened?”

Sana and Arkady exchanged a sidelong glance, and Arkady gave Sana a tiny nod. Sana took a deep breath, and began to tell the story.

---

“Jeeter, for the last time, put the keytar away,” Arkady said irritably as she and Sana entered the draughty, abandoned warehouse that the band was using as their current rehearsal space. The acoustics were pretty weird, probably due to all the broken windows, but it was otherwise hard to beat a free place to rehearse — especially a free place with no asshole neighbours who would yell at them to turn it down and threaten to call the cops.

Admittedly, it was in kind of a rough area, but Arkady had only needed to knock someone unconscious with her bass once.

In retaliation, Brian played another bright riff on his beloved instrument, accompanied by some jazzy keyboard chords from Krejjh. The two had been jamming together before Arkady and Sana arrived. “Dude, c’mon, can’t you hear how good this sounds?” Brian wheedled. “How many other indie bands do you know that have a keytar?”

“None. For good reason,” Arkady said, unzipping her case and slinging her bass around her neck. Sana, unpacking the sound equipment, smiled in fond amusement at their well-worn argument.

“It would give us such a great edge! Totally unique. And Krejjh and I have so many ideas that would sound great with both instruments—”

“Okay, Jeeter,” Arkady interrupted him, twiddling one of her tuning pegs. “You can play the keytar. Just as soon as you find us someone else who can play the drums.” She stooped to plug her bass into the portable amplifier that Sana had just unpacked. “Or are you planning to grow an extra pair of hands so you can play both at once?”

“Oooh! No, I should have an extra pair of hands!” Krejjh immediately (and predictably) enthused. “Then I’d sound four times as awesome! Four hands, all rockin’ out!”

“I think you mean ‘twice as awesome’,” Sana told them, as Brian reluctantly put away his keytar and picked up his neglected drumsticks.

“With me, twice the hands equals four times the awesome,” Krejjh replied with irrefutable logic. Brian laughed and held up a hand.

“Dude, high five.”

Sana waited for the two of them to finish their congratulatory high-five before she called the band to order. “Okay, guys — remember that we’re only a few days out from our gig at the IGR Corp function, so we need to have our crowd-pleasers up to standard.”

Arkady immediately wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, corporates. Why are we taking money from them again?”

“Because we need to pay for rent and food,” Sana said, bluntly. “And they’re giving us a lot for it. I know none of us love playing corporate gigs—”

“Understatement.”

“—but we are living a hand to mouth existence at this point, and if I can guarantee our survival as a band by relieving some corporates of their excess funds, then I’m going to do just that,” Sana continued. She waited a beat, and then added, “Also, we’re gonna let them get really drunk and then start playing our best anti-capitalist anthems, and see how long it takes for them to notice.”

Arkady broke into a shit-eating grin. “That’s more like it.” Krejjh cheered, and Brian did a little run-down on his drumkit, hitting each of the drums in turn.

“All right, let’s start with ‘Fear for the Storm’? One, two, three, four…” Sana started strumming the intro on her guitar, joined after a few beats by Krejjh’s melody on the keyboard.

“So long, can’t dodge the dawn, red light shines on and on and on and on and on…”

---

Arkady had been on edge ever since the band set foot in the agonisingly hipster office complex — excuse me, ‘headquarters’ — belonging to IGR Corp.

It wasn’t just the fact that these guys were extremely corporate corporates, or that the whole place radiated an almost aggressively minimalist aesthetic, or that the walls were covered in bullshit, chipper slogans that were all fancy ways of saying, ‘Work should be your existence – if isn’t, you’re dead to us’ — although those things sure as hell didn’t help, reminding her of the absolute worst parts of every soul-sucking corporate job she’d worked before Sana mercifully re-entered her life and suggested they form a band.

No, there was just this weird vibe, like everyone was super on edge and trying to hide it — the higher-ups were stone-faced, muttering into earpieces or barking orders at underlings, who scurried, terrified, to carry out their wishes. And everyone else, from the tech types in plain white T-shirts and jeans to the smartly-dressed sales reps in suits, looked like they were there on pain of death. Wasn’t this supposed to be a party?

The atmosphere didn’t go unnoticed by the other band members. “Kind of a weird feel to this place,” Jeeter remarked as he unpacked his drumkit on the raised platform at the front of the ‘rec center’ where they would be performing. Normally, setting up was a noisy, clumsy affair, with the band elbowing each other, tripping over wires, and getting in each other’s way in the tiny space they were afforded in bars and nightclubs. Here, the platform that would be their makeshift stage was huge and extremely visible — but everyone was completely ignoring them. There was also very little background noise for a room packed with people, and the band found themselves speaking in hushed murmurs, almost tiptoeing around. “You’d think there would be a bit more… chatter?”

“Maybe the alcohol just isn’t flowing yet,” Sana speculated, but she sounded uneasy as she looked out over the tense crowd. Even Krejjh, with their signature hot pink, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on top of their dyed-lavender hair, dressed in a clashing, flamboyant jumble of clothes and accessories, seemed subdued.

Arkady plugged in her bass with a burst of static, and deliberately played a loud riff. Brian startled and dropped his drumstick, but not a single member of the sea of blandly-dressed IGR Corp employees flinched.

Weird.

The sound equipment was all set up, sound check performed and instruments tuned by half past, but the set wasn’t due to start until o’clock. Normally, Arkady would be making a beeline for the bar, but she didn’t really feel like rubbing shoulders with any of these weird drones. She found herself reflexively checking the exits, mentally charting their fastest route out of there in case something really fucked up started going down. Sana half-jokingly called it paranoia; Arkady called it long, hard experience.

It was on one of her scans of the room that she noticed the woman with the septum piercing. Arkady chalked it up to professional interest — as a kid, she’d picked up some extra money working as an assistant in a tattoo and piercing shop, The Landing. She’d first met Sana there when the other woman came in on several occasions to have work done on an amazingly intricate floral sleeve tattoo �� her own design. Later, Sana had led a campaign to save The Landing from being shut down over a bunch of bullshit health code violations so that the billionaire Cresswin family — who owned the property — could sell it off to a shitty corporation.

The campaign hadn’t worked, and there was now a high rise office block where Arkady’s home from home had once stood. But Arkady had never forgotten Sana.

Anyway, it was definitely the woman’s piercing and not anything else about her appearance that caught Arkady’s attention first. But then she noticed that there was something off about her body language and the way she was moving — something that Arkady recognised. She wasn’t scurrying about in a panic or affecting bored disinterest; her eyes were flickering around the room, carefully monitoring the comings and goings of the other employees while seeming not to do so. There were little devices studded around the room that Arkady had clocked as security cameras the moment they entered (it was the kind of thing she made a habit of noticing), and she saw the woman glancing up at them.

She was dressed like an employee – white blouse, dark rinse blue jeans – so why was she acting like she was casing the joint? Of course, Arkady reasoned, the outfit could easily have been chosen to blend in. It didn’t necessarily mean she worked there.

“Seen something interesting, ‘Kady?” Sana asked playfully. Arkady didn’t startle, but it was a near thing; she’d been so focused on watching this woman.

Unfortunately, Sana saw where she’d been looking. “You know, we’ve still got close to half an hour before we start our first set,” she said. “You can go and mingle.”

“I’m not here to socialise,” Arkady said witheringly. “Least of all with corporate drones.” She tore her eyes away from the woman to meet Sana’s amused look.

“I’m just saying, you seemed pretty absorbed there…” Sana said, and Arkady rolled her eyes, determined not to respond to her best friend’s teasing. She glanced back at the spot where the woman had been standing and found it empty.

A second later, Arkady had found her again, weaving through the crowd with her head ducked down. She was taking an odd route across the room that Arkady realised must have been calculated to avoid the security cameras. Occasionally she disappeared, behind people or objects (like a huge, obviously fake ficus plant), but it wasn’t hard for Arkady to spot her again. Clearly there was some kind of purpose to what she was doing, but the woman wasn’t a professional.

There was an elevator against the far wall, and as Arkady watched, the doors opened and a small group of people in suits – latecomers to the party – walked out of it. The woman mingled with them briefly, and then disappeared inside the elevator. The doors closed.

Well, that had been a way to kill five minutes, but now Arkady was stuck with nothing to do again. Krejjh and Jeeter had pulled out a pack of cards, and were playing one of their weird games on top of Krejjh’s keyboard. Arkady turned to Sana, about to make another comment about how much this place creeped her out, when she caught sight of the other person moving across the room.

Judging by the expensive suit, they were a higher-up, and were taking none of the precautions the woman had when making their way across the room, which suggested that they were confident about being allowed to do whatever it was they were doing. And to Arkady, it looked an awful lot like they were following the woman she’d seen. Based on the way the suit jacket fell, she’d also bet even money that they were armed.

Sure enough, the suit called the elevator, and disappeared into it a second later. Arkady swore under her breath.

It was none of her goddamn business whether a person she didn’t even know might be in danger, Arkady told herself. She was here to play music, not to get in the middle of whatever might be going down at this godawful corporation. Which again, was none of her business anyway.

Her resolve lasted all of ten seconds.

“I’m going to get a drink,” she told Sana, and placed her bass onto its stand.

“Oooh! Bring me a cocktail – no, a mocktail!” Krejjh said. Sana just looked at her quizzically.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Arkady nodded briefly. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and jumped down off the platform.

She wasn’t under any illusions that Sana wouldn’t notice where she was going, and just hoped that her best friend would trust her to be back in time for the set. She slipped through the crowd, following the same path that the woman had taken to avoid the watchful eyes of the security cameras.

This worked right up until she entered the elevator, where sure enough, a security camera was embedded into the top corner. How had this woman planned to avoid getting caught?

Arkady pulled out her smartphone, and began to quickly and expertly worm her way into the closed network that IGR Corp was using for its security systems. After just a few moments, she’d managed to identify the IP address that the lift camera was using, and wow, whoever had set up this system was either incredibly lazy or was trying to lay out a welcome mat for hackers. They hadn’t bothered to change the default access password.

Arkady wound back the last few minutes of recorded video, and watched as the woman with the septum piercing pressed the button for the top floor. Arkady did the same, and as the elevator moved upwards, she introduced a glitch that would cause the security camera to loop footage of an empty elevator instead of showing who was actually inside. Then she worked to edit out the archive footage of the woman riding up in the elevator, and of herself getting in.

If it turned out that there was nothing weird going on here after all, well, she’d had some fun exploiting the corporates’ shitty security system.

But Arkady was pretty sure there was something weird going on.

The elevator came to a silent stop, and Arkady silently thanked the deities she didn’t really believe in for the fact that this place was too hipster to have an elevator that made a noise when it arrived at the right floor. The doors slid open, and Arkady immediately spotted another security camera on exiting the elevator. God, these corporates were paranoid. But apparently not paranoid enough to pay their security person to do their job properly.

Annoyingly, the security cameras for this floor seemed to be on a separate network, and Arkady started another hack as she crept down the corridor, straining her ears for the sounds of a confrontation. Further down, she saw an office door swinging open, as if someone had gone through it in a hurry. Arkady approached it, being careful to stay out of sight of the doorway. Closer to, she could hear a voice coming from inside – the suit’s, if she had to guess.

“…sure CEO Golding-Frederick will be very interested to hear just what you’re doing in her office, Ms. Liu.”

“Seiders, I can explain,” the woman – Liu – replied, her voice high with tension. “Project ADVANCE – it’s not what we’ve been told. The company is using it to-”

“What the company may or may not be doing with Project ADVANCE is not your concern,” Seiders said smoothly, over her, “and is a long way above your pay grade. But I’d be very interested to learn where you got your information from.”

“Do you know what’s going on at this company?” Liu demanded, outraged. “And that’s – you have no problems with what they’re doing?”

The closed network for the top floor of the building was much less of a pushover than the elevator, and Arkady kept half of her attention on the conversation inside the room as she worked to find a flaw in the system. Finally, she made it in, and began trying different password combinations for the camera in the hallway.

“It’s not my job to ask questions, Ms. Liu,” Seiders had been saying. “Neither is it yours. And if you value your job – not to mention the safety and security of your loved ones – you’ll step away from that computer, and go back downstairs to the party.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you threatening my family?” Liu demanded. “No, I’m not going to stay silent about this. Someone has to take a stand against what this company is doing. And if anything happens to me, that’ll only raise more questions.”

“We’re very good at making those questions go away,” said Seiders, and Arkady heard Liu suck in a breath. She moved so that she could see inside the room and shit, that was a gun. Arkady rapidly began calculating her angle of attack. “Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to Connors from Engineering?”

“That’s not – you can’t just make a person disappear,” Liu said, desperately. “I – I have insurance! Documents that I’ve sent to a friend of mine. If I don’t check in with them in two hours, they’re going to send them to a journalist contact, and it’ll be all over the press in the morning.”

Arkady could hear the lie in her voice so clearly, and she knew Seiders could, too. “If you had enough evidence to be worth a damn, you wouldn’t have broken into this office,” they replied. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Step away from the-”

Arkady slammed into the room, deliberately making as much noise as she could to draw Seiders’ attention. She took two, three steps towards them and grabbed their gun hand, forcing it down and towards the floor. She managed to hook one arm around their throat, pulling back and applying pressure. Seiders choked, struggling and jerking against Arkady’s grip. With the hand that was holding their gun hand, Arkady twisted and pulled their fingers open, causing the weapon to drop to the floor.

“Liu, grab the gun!” Arkady ordered. She saw the other woman yank something out of the computer that looked like a flash drive, stowing it inside her blouse. She dove for the gun at the same time that Seiders managed to thrust an elbow back, driving it into Arkady’s midsection.

All the air left Arkady’s lungs and as she struggled to draw a breath in, Seiders took advantage of her loosened grip to twist free. They grappled with Liu for the gun, but Liu succeeded in kicking it away, where it spun underneath a nearby cabinet. Then Arkady was on Seiders again, jumping onto their back and choking them.

She heard the sound of running footsteps, and someone else burst into the room. Arkady didn’t get a chance to see who it was before Seiders slammed their head back, knocking into Arkady’s and making bright white lights explode across her vision. She dropped to the floor and staggered, trying to clear her head.

She heard an oof and a thud, and blinked rapidly, sure that she would open her eyes to see Seiders bearing down on Liu – or worse, standing over her unconscious body.

Instead, she was greeted with the sight of Seiders crumpling like a sack of potatoes as Sana flexed her fist, having delivered a powerful uppercut that knocked them out cold.

Silence reigned for a few seconds, broken only by Liu’s sharp, panicked breaths. Rubbing her head, Arkady said, “Hey, Sana.”

“The next time you decide to go off on a rescue mission,” Sana said, wryly, “you could at least tell me where you’re going.” She frowned as she took in Arkady’s dishevelled state. “Is your head all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Arkady. She was more concerned with Liu, who looked like she might be on the verge of a panic attack. “Hey, uh, it’s okay. We took care of them.”

“Who-” Liu managed, taking deep breaths in and out, clearly trying to steady her breathing. “Who are you?”

Sana smiled at her, warm and reassuring. “My name is Sana Tripathi, and this is Arkady Patel. We’re-”

There was a noise that sounded not unlike a herd of elephants storming down the corridor, and Arkady closed her eyes. She had a bad feeling she knew what was about to happen. Sure enough, in the next second Krejjh and Jeeter clattered through the door in all their clashing multicoloured glory: Jeeter in his signature loud paid shirt and those stupid khakis, and Krejjh with their… everything. Most of the clattering was coming from Krejjh’s many bangles.

“Cap’n Tripathi!” Krejjh said. “We’re here to assist you with – oh my god, are they dead?” They stared at the unconscious form of Seiders on the floor.

“They’re not dead, they’re just unconscious,” Arkady said, irritated. “Did you two really take off without anyone to watch the equipment?”

Sana turned back to Liu like nothing had happened. “We’re the band,” she finished succinctly. “I’m the guitarist and lead singer, Arkady here plays the bass, and Krejjh and Brian are our keyboardist and drummer.” She indicated each of them in turn. Jeeter waved, and Krejjh saluted for some reason. “And who are you?”

Liu blinked at her. “You… you just saved my life, and you don’t even know who I am?” she said. “Why would you do that?”

“For one thing, because you’d probably be dead if we hadn’t,” Arkady said. “You’re welcome for that, by the way.” She pulled out the phone to finish the hack on the security cameras that she’d started before she entered the room.

“I – no, I know that. I’m not ungrateful,” Liu said, sounding a little stung. “I’m just a little… in shock. My name is Violet Liu,” she added to Sana. “I, uh, work in IGR Corp’s neuroresearch division.”

“Good to meet you, Violet Liu,” Sana said, sounding like they were old friends catching up at the bar instead of total strangers talking to each other over an unconscious body. “’Kady, are you erasing the security footage?”

Arkady nodded.

“Good; Brian and I will carry our friend here,” Sana indicated Seiders with her foot, “into the hallway. I think I noticed a closet there we can hide them in.”

“Uh… are you guys really the band?” Liu asked, as Sana and Jeeter – who was much stronger than he looked – bent down to pick up Seiders. “You seem very…” She struggled to find the right words. “…good at this.”

“We have some unorthodox skillsets,” Sana said, beaming and dimpling at her. “We don’t normally make a habit of rescuing people in the middle of a gig, but Arkady has a soft spot for damsels in distress.”

Arkady fumbled her phone, and nearly dropped it. “Sana,” she hissed, mortified. Sana, who was already partway out of the door, winked and disappeared into the hallway.

After a moment, Arkady realised that she and Liu were the only ones in the room, Krejjh evidently having decided to go along and supervise, or something. She refocused her attention on the hack she was carrying out; she’d managed to hack the hallway security camera, and was erasing the footage from that, but she still needed to do the one in the office.

“Uh…” Liu awkwardly broke the silence. “Is there anything that you need me to…”

“Is anyone likely to be monitoring the security cameras in real-time?” Arkady asked her. The question came out sounding a little harsher than she’d intended, but it was hard to be diplomatic when she was focused on trying to break into a security system. Also, it was a little annoying that Liu apparently hadn’t thought about security cameras beyond the ones on the ground floor.

“N-no, the system is all automated,” Liu replied. Well, that was something, at least. “I, uh, I do have a virus that I was planning to use on the security system that would corrupt the footage. I just needed to find an access point.”

Fine, so there had been a plan of sorts. “This is quicker,” Arkady told her. “And the way I’m doing it, it won’t be so obvious that someone has tampered with the footage.”

“Thank you for that,” Liu said, quietly. “And thank you for – I mean, you don’t even know me, but you came up here to help me. Why?”

Arkady shrugged, keeping her shoulders hunched and avoiding Liu’s gaze. “You looked like you were in trouble,” she said shortly. And that was the office camera done. Arkady resisted the urge to change the password to something rude, and withdrew from the network. “And I don’t like corporations. What were you trying to do, blow the whistle on them or something?”

“Um, I-”

Before she could explain, Sana poked her head back into the room. “Arkady, are you done? Because I don’t think we should be hanging around up here.”

“I’m done,” Arkady said with a nod, pocketing her phone. The two of them joined Sana, Krejjh and Jeeter in the hallway.

“We need a plan to get Violet back downstairs and out of the building without her being seen,” Sana said quickly. “’Kady, do you think you two can make it out in fifteen minutes?”

Arkady huffed. “I can hack the security cams, but I can’t actually make us invisible,” she pointed out. “People are gonna notice us. If we waited until you guys started the set, then we might have a better chance, while everyone’s attention is on the band.”

“Listen – it’s not that I don’t really appreciate the help,” Liu cut in. Her face was set, like she was preparing to go to the gallows. “But none of this needs to be your problem. It’s my mess, and I can get myself out of it. You guys should go and start your set.”

“Oh, pshaw!” said Krejjh. “We’re not just gonna leave you to the bears!”

Jeeter smiled. “To the wolves,” he corrected Krejjh.

“Are y’sure? Because bears can be pretty terrifying.”

“We’re not about to abandon you now,” Sana said to Liu, gently. “Between the five of us, I’m sure we can figure out a pretty good plan.”

“Can’t we just pretend to be loading something into the truck?” Jeeter suggested. “And Violet can help us? We could give her a band jacket – make her look like she’s with us-”

“It’s too bad you don’t play!” Krejjh said to Violet. “We could add you into the set. The ultimate entourage!”

“Uh…” Violet said (at the same time as Arkady said, “Camouflage.”) “I mean, I do play something? But you guys already have a drummer.”

“Wait, you’re a drummer?” Jeeter said delightedly, as Krejjh straightened up so fast that Arkady thought they’d pull a muscle. Even Sana looked interested. “Are you good?”

“Have you ever played with a band before?” added Sana.

Liu smiled and shrugged awkwardly. “Well, drums aren’t really a solo instrument, so yeah. I used to jam with some friends in high school, and played some underground rock concerts in college. I was never really with a band – we just sort of used to form collectives based on who was around and wanted to play. It was fun, though.”

She’d avoided answering the question about how good she was, Arkady noticed, which probably meant she was good and was being modest about it. Goddamn it.

“So if, hypothetically speaking,” Sana said, “you joined a set without having rehearsed any of the music beforehand, would you be able to figure out a drum part?”

“Okay, hold on,” said Arkady, before Violet could respond. “Don’t you think IGR Corp is going to notice that one of their employees has just… joined the band?”

“We’ll swear up and down that it isn’t her,” Jeeter said. “And even if someone figures it out, what are they gonna do about it in front of everyone?”

“But wait, what about you?” Liu asked Jeeter. “Wouldn’t I be putting you out of a role in the band?”

“Nah,” Jeeter said happily. “I brought my keytar!”

“Oh my god,” Arkady groaned. She could tell when she was fighting a losing battle, but it didn’t stop her from making one last, token protest. “This is going to sound really goddamn weird.”

Sana grinned at her. “Well, you wanted to annoy some corporates,” she pointed out. “What better way to do it?”

---

The problem was, the new line-up didn’t sound weird at all.

It sounded good.

Liu, hastily disguised with an old band jacket and a spare pare of Krejjh’s sunglasses, fitted in with their set like she’d been rehearsing with them for weeks – months even. They did a quick sound check, Jeeter looking far too delighted as he amped up his keytar. Sana gave her usual cheerful introduction into the microphone, introducing the band as Renegade, the name they adopted for corporate gigs (Arkady was even more glad of it now, since it would make them harder to track down later). After a lukewarm reception from the assembled employees (none of whom seemed to notice, or care, that the band had grown an extra member), they launched into their first number, a reimagined cover of ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor’.

It started off with Sana singing alone, before Krejjh joined in, their voices singing in close harmony, and then Arkady and finally Jeeter, the harmonies becoming increasingly layered as they went. The addition of the keytar made the song sound futuristic, almost the kind of thing you could imagine crews of space explorers singing together as they made their way into the unknown.

Liu picked up the beat easily, and as the song unfolded Arkady suddenly realised she could hear a fifth strand to the harmony, weaving in and out of the other voices, soft but distinctive: Liu was singing.

They moved on from the conventional crowd-pleasing openers to a more eclectic mix of songs, including some punk and anarchist numbers. Each time, Arkady was sure that the choice was going to throw Liu off, but she adapted smoothly to each one, altering her style to fit the vibe of the song. In one of the louder, heavier songs she even threw in an impromptu drum solo that had Krejjh whooping at the keyboard and Sana laughing as she riffed on her guitar.

Sana threw Arkady a look as the song ended, and there was a light in her eyes that Arkady knew far, far too well. It was the same light that Arkady had seen when Sana tracked her down at her latest deadbeat job and persuaded her to quit and start playing music with her; the same light that she’d had when they met Brian and Krejjh a year later and Sana had decided to turn their duo into a band.

Sana wanted Liu to join Rumor. And Arkady couldn’t even think of a good argument against it, apart from the fact that they barely knew anything about the woman other than that she could play the drums. And that she was a corporate, which Arkady thought was important not to lose sight of, even if Liu wasn’t on the greatest terms with her employer any more.

Speaking of which. Arkady was on high alert throughout the whole set, constantly scanning the crowd for signs of trouble, anyone who might be looking too closely at Liu or showed signs of moving towards the elevator. As they’d been setting up, Liu had told them that Seiders was middle management: someone who outranked her, but not someone who held a position of particular influence within the company or had the ear of the CEO. Someone who had ambitions above their station. It didn’t mean no-one would notice them missing, of course; but it meant that they might be someone who, for instance, would go after a rogue employee without notifying their superior, hoping to reap all of the credit.

The band moved into their final number, ‘Landers Never Stand Down’ – one of Sana and Arkady’s early compositions, whose lyrics Sana had written as a tribute to The Landing, and her and Arkady’s shared history. Normally, Arkady would object to wasting it on a corporate audience, but tonight, it felt like the right kind of ‘fuck you’.

“Landers never stand down,

Landers never bow,

Landers never stand down,

We don’t know how…”

They wound up the song in their usual fashion, repeating the chorus and getting fiercer and more defiant with each repetition, before ending in a final blaze of guitar chords.

“Thank you, everyone, you’ve been a wonder to perform for!” Sana said into the microphone as the chords faded away. She said the same thing at the end of every gig, but it had never felt more like a colossal understatement. “We’ve been Renegade, and we hope you have a great night!”

There was a small scattering of applause. Sana beamed out into the audience again, and then turned away from the microphone, sliding the power to ‘off’. “Well, that was-”

“Attention, all IGR Corp employees,” came a voice over the loudspeaker system. Sana froze, and Liu, who’d been leaning over to say something to Krejjh, paled visibly. “Please stay where you are. We will be carrying out a routine attendance check. Please do not exit the building.”

“Attendance check?” Arkady repeated.

“It’s a standard employee procedure,” Liu explained. “To make sure everyone’s… accounted for at corporate functions. Supposedly they’re optional, but it looks really bad if you’re not there and you don’t have a reason.”

“Do we think there’s a chance this is linked to…” Sana gestured towards the elevator. Liu shrugged helplessly.

“It could be, but even if it’s not, they’re gonna discover that Seiders is missing pretty quickly. And that I’m… unaccounted for.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jeeter, reassuringly. “We’ll figure out a way to get you out before that happens.”

“Dashing escapes are our speciality!” Krejjh contributed. This was true; the band hadn’t always played at the most above-the-board venues, and there’d been more than a few times they’d needed to get the hell out of Dodge before things got ugly. Well, uglier.

Sana nodded. “For now, just keep packing down, like nothing’s wrong,” she said.

As Krejjh packed down their keyboard and Jeeter helped Liu to disassemble the drumkit, Arkady said to Sana, “I’ll go with Liu, and we can sneak out a back entrance-”

Sana shook her head. “It’ll be more suspicious if we’re not seen leaving as a group.”

“We’ll just say we’re going to the bathroom,” Arkady said. “We’re allowed to do that, aren’t we?”

Sana started to reply, but then stopped, squinting at something on the other side of the room. Arkady tried to follow her gaze, but couldn’t see what she was looking at. “What is it?”

“I thought I saw…” Sana shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s try the front way first, and if they won’t let us leave, we’ll get creative.”

Unsurprisingly, when they carried the first load of equipment over to the rec room entrance, two stoic-looking IGR employees blocked their path, bouncer-style. Arkady eyed one of them, pretty sure she could take her in a one-to-one fight.

“Sorry, we can’t let you leave while an attendance check is ongoing,” said the employee, with a bland detachment. “Company policy.”

“It should only take about an hour,” the other added. “You can enjoy the free refreshments while you wait.”

An hour? Even if they hadn’t had a very pressing reason to get the hell out of there, Arkady would have been looking for the nearest fire escape to break out of. They were just supposed to cool their heels at IGR headquarters for an hour?

“Can we not at least load our equipment into the van in the meantime?” Sana asked reasonably. “This is a very heavy amplifier…” She made a show of struggling with the amp she’d been lifting with ease a few seconds ago, and Arkady suppressed a snort.

One of the corporates had opened their mouth, looking like they were about to object, when a friendly voice spoke from behind them. “Is there a problem here?”

They all turned to look at the person who’d spoken, and Arkady carefully masked her surprise: the tall, dark-skinned man dressed in an expensive-looking suit jacket, T-shirt and jeans combination was none other than Red Gregor, a close friend of Campbell’s. They’d met him once or twice, but what was he doing here?

“Who are you?” asked Corporate One, audibly unimpressed.

“Theodore Gregor; I’m the band’s executive producer,” Gregor introduced himself smoothly, handing Corporate Two a business card. Their eyes widened at whatever was written on it. “My clients have another engagement to get to tonight, so you can understand why it’s very important they be allowed to leave promptly. Additionally, their contract stipulates that they’re only obliged to perform for your company until-” he made a show of checking a gold watch, “-nine-thirty P.M., after which time we’ll need to bill you for every additional half-hour. Will your supervisors be signing off on the additional expenses?”

Corporates One and Two were visibly thrown by the torrent of information. Krejjh made a noise that was hastily stifled, while Arkady did her best to look bored and important.

“I… no, let me just contact my superior to get you the all-clear,” said Corporate One, reluctantly. “Johnson will help you to load your equipment into your…” She eyed the band’s battered van, visibly out of place in the parking lot full of sleek cars. “…vehicle.”

“Great!” Sana said brightly, handing the amplifier to Corporate Two, who took it and staggered slightly. As Corporate One spoke into a walkie-talkie, Sana and Red Gregor strode quickly ahead, the rest of the band trailing behind. Arkady lengthened her steps to catch up with them so that she could hear their quiet exchange.

“…doing here? Did Campbell send you?” Sana was asking Red Gregor.

“In a manner of speaking,” Red Gregor said. “He talks about you so much, I wanted to come and hear what all the fuss was about. Love the new line-up – you guys sound completely different to when I last heard you play.”

“It’s kind of a new thing,” Sana admitted. “New as of… today. I can fill you in, it’s just a long story.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Red Gregor said, and Arkady remembered that she’d liked him, the couple of times that they’d met. She could see why he and Campbell were good friends. “But let’s focus on getting you out of here. I’m guessing you need an exit?”

“And fast,” Sana agreed.

“Well, fast’s your speciality,” Red Gregor said with a grin. Sana smiled back at him, and Arkady wondered if Red was basing this off stories from Campbell, or if he and Sana knew each other better than Arkady had realised. It was a strange thought to have in the middle of everything.

Sana unlocked the van and slid open the back door. While Krejjh, Jeeter and Liu loaded their items into the trunk, overseen by Corporate Two, Red Gregor pretended to help Arkady and Sana with their instruments.

“So what now?” Arkady asked Sana. “I think I can probably take Johnson.”

“Arkady, you’ve already been in one fight today,” Sana said, disapproving.

“What’s your point?”

“I have a more bloodless suggestion,” Red Gregor said. “You’ve got a few pieces of equipment left in the venue, right? I’ll go back inside with Johnson to ‘collect’ them, say we’re going to check their supervisor has given you the go-ahead, and you guys make a break for it. I’ll bring the equipment in my car and meet you at the dive bar, half a mile down the road.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get away? What happens when they realise we’re gone?” Sana asked.

“I’ll come up with something,” Red Gregor assured her. “Just focus on getting yourselves out of here.”

He walked over to Johnson, who was slightly bemusedly watching Jeeter and Liu (who were clearly stalling for time) rearrange pieces of the drumkit in the trunk, and took him by the arm, steering him back towards the building and talking rapidly all the while.

“As soon as they’re out of sight, everyone needs to get in the van quickly,” Sana instructed. “And hang onto something. Okay? Now!”

Krejjh slammed the trunk of the van shut and everyone piled into the back without a word of protest. Arkady jumped into the front as Sana slid into the driver’s seat, reversing out of the parking space like a shot and executing an alarming hairpin turn to get them onto the road. Liu cried out in alarm, not used to Sana’s driving, and Arkady hung grimly onto the handle on the inside of her door.

“Everyone okay back there?” Sana asked, peering into the rearview mirror.

Arkady looked back to see Jeeter and Krejjh scrambling to put on their seatbelts, each of them having thrown an arm over Liu to keep her in place. “Oops, sorry, I forgot we don’t have a seatbelt for the middle!” Sana said cheerfully as they thudded over a speedbump. Liu closed her eyes. “There’s normally only four of us.”

“It’s not far to where we’re going, right, Captain?” asked Jeeter.

“Just a half mile down the road,” said Sana. “Red Gregor’s going to meet us there with the rest of the equipment, as soon as he can get away.”

“What was he doing at the gig? Did Campbell tell him where we were?”

“I think so. He said that he wanted to come and hear us play,” Arkady said, watching buildings blur past on either side of them. “I guess it was lucky he did.”

“We would’ve figured something out,” Krejjh said confidently.

“Uh, who’s Campbell?” Liu asked, cautiously opening her eyes again.

“He’s our… manager? Kinda?” Krejjh replied. “He doesn’t tell us what to do or anything, but he has a lot of contacts, so he gets us most of our gigs.”

“Contacts in the music industry? Or contacts in like… events venues, bars and clubs?”

“Yes,” Krejjh said helpfully.

“He just has a lot of contacts,” Jeeter said with a smile. Arkady smirked at Liu’s look of consternation.

“Tonight’s gig did not come through Campbell,” said Sana, spotting the dive bar Red Gregor had specified and indicating to turn off the road. “We got it through an agency, Fowleys. I guess that’ll teach us not to go outside Campbell’s network.”

“Hey, it worked out!” Krejjh said. “We got a new drummer out of the deal.”

“Well, for tonight, at least,” Sana said, now reversing into a parking space. “I gotta say, Violet, the way you fitted in with our sound? That was amazing. Our set sounded better than I could’ve imagined.”

Liu blushed. “They were great songs,” she demurred, as the van came to a stop.

“Too bad it was wasted on IGR Corp,” Arkady remarked, undoing her seat belt as they all climbed out of the van.

They got a table in the corner of the dive bar, which was pretty full and made it easy to blend in. As Sana went to get them all drinks, Krejjh and Jeeter started up some kind of nonsensical word game. Arkady and Liu glanced at each other occasionally, but otherwise sat in awkward silence.

Finally, Arkady asked something that had been on her mind since she intervened in the confrontation between Liu and Seiders, though it had taken a back seat to more pressing concerns. “What was it you were trying to get from that computer, anyway?”

“Sorry?” Liu asked, looking away from Krejjh and Jeeter, where she’d been listening in on the game with a slightly baffled expression.

“In the CEO’s office,” Arkady clarified. “I saw you take a flash drive out of the computer. What were you trying to get?”

“Oh,” Liu said, drawing out the little drive from inside her blouse. “Yeah, I was… trying to copy some files onto it. I’m not sure how much I got, though – I had to pull it out before the transfer was complete, and I think they’re encrypted.”

“What kind of files are they?” Arkady asked, thinking that she could probably break the encryption in an afternoon. Maybe less.

Liu hesitated, and Arkady narrowed her eyes. “You’re not still trying to protect your company, are you? In case you don’t remember-”

“No, no,” Liu said quickly. “I just – I’m not sure if it would be safe to tell you. Safe for you,” she added. “Right now, you have plausible deniability if anyone questions you. You genuinely don’t know what’s on this flash drive. So maybe it would be better to keep it that way.”

Arkady was a little bit pacified by that, but still – “Considering I’ve already aided and abetted you, I think that ship has sailed,” she pointed out. “No-one is going to believe I did it without having any idea what you were up to. Which I’m fine with,” she added, as a guilt-stricken look crossed Liu’s face. “I made a choice to help you, and so did the others. But I may as well know what the stakes are.”

“Yeah, that’s… fair,” admitted Liu. Next to her, Krejjh was doing a fairly poor job of pretending not to listen in. “They’re blueprints. My company – the company – has been developing… do you know what IGR Corp does? What kind of a company it is?”

“Some kind of a tech company?” Arkady said. She vaguely remembered Sana saying something about that when they got the gig. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the details.

Liu nodded. “Smart technology – specifically, smart home technology. We produce – I mean, they produce things like smart security systems, smart doorbells, systems that can detect when someone has a medical emergency. Systems that are designed to help keep people safe.”

Arkady had to work to keep from grimacing. She wasn’t sure that being monitored by a computer 24/7 fitted everyone’s definition of ‘safety’, but maybe Liu had never had cause to doubt that the people with power had her best interests at heart. Lucky her.

“But then,” Liu went on, her voice bitter, “I found out that the latest product we were developing – the one that was supposed to make everyone’s lives so much easier, so much better – is being created as a surveillance device. To eavesdrop on people and send their data back to the company. And I know that a lot of smart devices have audio capabilities, but – this was hardwired in. Impossible to disable. And this weird, secretive new division of the company has been set up to process the data.”

“What are they gonna do with it?” Arkady asked.

“Who knows,” Liu said. “They could be collecting it for the government, but – I think it’s more likely they’re just planning to sell it on to the highest bidder.”

Arkady’s eyes narrowed, and she wished that Sana had brought the drinks already so that she’d have something to down.

“You know,” Liu said, her voice suddenly much softer. “I, uh. I still haven’t thanked you properly for, uh, well-”

“O-kay!” came Sana’s voice, loudly, as she finally arrived at their table carrying a small tray laden with glasses. “Sorry for the delay, guys, there was a heck of a crowd up at the bar. Also, the bartender was really interested in talking to me while he pulled these drinks.” She made a wry expression, her dimple deepening in one cheek. “Cheer up, ‘Kady, I’ve got your favourite-” She slid a pint glass of raspberry ale in front of Arkady.

“Thanks,” Arkady mumbled, not looking at Liu.

Red Gregor arrived not long after, having apparently evaded IGR Corp by pretending that he was going outside to look for the band, and then driving off with the equipment before anyone realised what was happening. Sana passed him a drink from the tray; no-one asked how she already knew his preferred drink order.

“So look,” said Arkady, after they’d done some small talk and toasted to a successful getaway (Sana’s idea, of course). “Not that we didn’t appreciate the save earlier – you had pretty good timing – but why’d you go to all the trouble of coming to an IGR Corp function just to hear us play? How did you even get in?”

“I know a lot of people,” Red Gregor said mysteriously, with a fluid shrug. “As for why I came – you probably don’t know this, but I’ve been getting into the music biz lately.”

Arkady tried to remember what ‘biz’ Red Gregor had been in before, and couldn’t. He was one of those people who seemed to do a bit of everything.

“That’s awesome!” said Krejjh, looking delighted. “Are you going to start a band? Or manage one?”

Red Gregor smiled. “Actually, neither. I’m starting a record label,” he said. “And I want to sign you guys to it.”

Liu choked on her drink; Jeeter said, “Wow, really?” and even Sana looked taken aback. Clearly this hadn’t been the answer she was expecting.

“Us?” she said, as if Gregor could have meant anyone else. “As in…” She gestured around the table, including Liu.

Red Gregor nodded. “Look, your new sound is like nothing I’ve ever heard from a band before,” he said. “Campbell has always spoken highly of you guys, and I really liked your originals the last time I heard you perform. But with this new line-up? I think you could become really big. If that’s something that you want, of course.”

Sana sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful, while Krejjh looked practically ready to vibrate out of theirs with excitement. “That would be a pretty big step for us,” she said. “Not that we wouldn’t love – more exposure, better opportunities-”

“Gigs in legal venues?” put in Jeeter.

“More above-the-board performances,” agreed Sana. “But we’ve only played once with this new line-up. We don’t know for sure if we can replicate that – and I mean, we’d be asking Violet to just drop everything and join us full-time-”

Red Gregor held up his hands. “Like I said, it’s completely up to you,” he said. “I’m not here to pressure you into something you’re not ready for. But don’t underestimate yourselves. I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t have faith in you guys.”

Sana looked around the table, taking in the mixture of expressions, ranging from Krejjh’s eagerness to Liu’s uncertainty to Arkady’s… Arkady didn’t know what her face was doing. “We’ll have to put it to a vote,” she said, predictably. “And if any of you need more time to think this over-”

“I’m in!” Krejjh said instantly. “We rocked tonight! I want to keep on rocking that hard. And we should totally record an album.”

Jeeter smiled fondly. “I’m on board with anything that will let me keep playing the keytar,” he admitted. “And I thought we sounded pretty awesome, as well.”

Sana looked at Liu. “Violet, you’re the one who this would be the biggest change for,” she said. “The rest of us are already playing in a band full-time. Well, with the odd side gig,” she added, because yeah, they did not yet make enough money from performing to cover the bills. “You barely know us, and you’re not under any obligation to stick around – or to switch careers.”

Liu gave a slightly broken laugh. “Well, I don’t really think I can go back to my old one,” she said. “That option evaporated as soon as one of my colleagues pulled a gun on me. Not… sure I’ve really had time to process that yet.”

Sana nodded. “If it’s too soon-”

“But no amount of processing is going to make my situation any different,” Liu went on. “I could try to get another job in my field, but… IGR Corp is a pretty well-known company. Word’s going to get around that I’m untrustworthy, especially if they put it about that I tried to steal corporate secrets.”

“They can’t do that,” Sana said immediately. “I used to do some union work; whistleblowing is a protected activity, and it’s against the law for them to blacklist you – to make it more difficult for you to obtain future employment.”

Liu smiled slightly. “I don’t think IGR Corp are too concerned with breaking the law,” she pointed out. “I appreciate it, but… this isn’t my first experience with a hostile work environment.”

Okay, so maybe Arkady should take back her earlier thought about Liu never having had cause to distrust the people in power.

“Besides, I haven’t even blown the whistle on them yet – I’m not sure if the information I have is worth anything,” Liu said, a little grimly. “And anyway… I think it’s time for a clean slate. So, if you’ll have me… I’m in.”

Which just left Arkady. She could see how pleased Sana was that Liu was willing to join the band full-time, even though she was trying to hide it. Krejjh and Jeeter, too, were excited – and not just at the prospect of getting better gigs and earning more money (though that was a very appealing prospect).

The fact was, Red Gregor was right – they’d sounded like a completely new band during their performance. Arkady had always liked their stuff (of course she did; she’d even co-written some of it) but the new sound gave it a flair she hadn’t even realised it had been missing. As much as she couldn’t help thinking of the dozens of ways this could go wrong, she wanted them to keep sounding like that. She wanted to see what else they could do.

“‘Kady?” asked Sana.

Arkady took a deep breath. “Sure. Let’s do this.”

[tsukidrama]

i’m glad you could have your weekend off! i hope you had some rest :)

i’m really happy we agree so much on yelena! but also thank you for making me discover her more it’s been really interesting to talk about her!

same for zeke, season 4 managed to make me forget about what he did to erwin but it still happened and i never thought i’d cry for a man until he died. i was very sad but also kinda mad for feeling so devastated about a man lmao.

i’ve seen more lara tybur works lately, even a nsfw alphabet and honestly she DESERVES, if you ever write for her again i’ll gladly read it!!

i (re)read some of your annie fics today and she really is one of the best aot characters, i can’t believe i didn’t care about her at first. i thought she was so cold (partly because of the dub version of my country) and before knowing more about her and how marley works i really was mad at her for killing all these people but context is very important in her story. anyways i read your post rumbling headcanons and it’s so SOFT, annie really deserves it after everything she had to go through, especially since she thought she was gonna die at a really young age, she can fully enjoy her life now. i am also a big supporter of lesbian annie, i don’t like her with men and annie x armin makes me uncomfortable for some reason, people ship it because armin kept visiting her when she was in her crystal but it was him being obsessed while she couldn’t do anything and i don’t really see how it’s supposed to be romantic? so yeah i really don’t like that ship but if i have to be honest i don’t really like either of armin, eren or mikasa. all the side characters are so great and so interesting that the main ones can seem boring at times.

i’ve also read the great hair massacre of 857 and please it was so sweet and funny!! the whole conversation was already funny but then “There you go saying that gay shit again…” actually made me laugh out loud askljldfijdf. the dialogue in this fic was really great, it seemed so natural!! i really love seeing that side of annie, thank you for blessing us with that content! she was so in character too, the reference to her relationship with her dad was subtle but very welcomed, her tearing up after saying “i left” made my heart clench, her relationship with her father is very complex and you wrote it well!

after reading i got curious and wanted to see annie with actual bangs (apart from that flashback we got in season 4) and i couldn’t find anything, i really wish i could draw rn. oh and both the headcanons and the fic being in canon made me so happy too!! i know i’ve already said it but it’s so rare reading aot stuff in canon i really cherish canon fics when i find them! (that being said, I absolutely love your AUs, i guess i’m just a big fan of your writing!!)

annie kinda feels underrated sometimes which is weird because she seems present in a lot of fics and fanart but she doesn’t seem to have that many fans? especially compared to some others. she 100% deserves more love.

-j

you're so sweet 🥺 thank you. i've been a bit sick lately (chronic illness so nothing out of the ordinary unfortunately) so i'm definitely getting lots of rest!

of course! like i said it is ALWAYS my pleasure to spread the love for yelena. i told you i could make you like her 👀 i didn't even mean to get into her as much as i have but she's so interesting and hot. i'm glad you leaded up liking her!

I WILL NEVER FORGET AND I WILL NEVER FORGIVE! i cry about Erwin on a regular basis. i've always felt really strongly about his character and i feel his loss all the time in the final arcs of the story, every time hanji and levi are without him 💔 if there's any man worth making an exception for it's Erwin, that man chugs his respect women juice.

oh fuck yeah! good, it definitely is what she deserves. now i'm gonna go scour the lara tybur tag...

pppffft i was in the opposite situation - i loved her before i knew shit about her character and then felt like a traitor when i pieced together who she was and what she had done.... not sure when you got into snk but i watched season 1 the year it came out and kept up with it so i've really felt every cliffhanger in my bones. i started reading the manga after season 2 aired. my point is that i loved her through Annie all along with her flaws from the beginning, and i've never thought she was "good" per se but it's also obvious that she's affected by what she's done. i always figured there was more to her story than we knew; her reactions, the way she cries over the dead, and the fact that she gives up on her mission that's literally her purpose in life all indicate remorse beyond just regretting being caught. even way back in the day i was like: SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE DOING THIS!! IM TELLING YOU! my brother would constantly be telling me to shut up slksajdfkj but in the end i was right! i just didn't realize that pretty much ALL of the warriors didn't want to be doing what they did, or how complex it all was. she really does deserve a peaceful life being able to do what she wants. i used to cry about her having to die at age 24 a lot, so the ending taking away the titan curse is just about the only part of the ending i vibe with.

yep, same. i absolutely despise that ship-that-must-not-be-named, in my opinion it's a disgrace for both of their characters, but especially hers. it's really creepy, i agree. i don't blame Annie, being in a crystal with only annoying ass people talking to you for 4 years just left her a little confused. armin is gay anyway, i literally just block ppl who post about the ship. i love Mikasa but the other two i agree are pretty crap characters overall.

heheh well there are the manga caps from 139 but it'll be a while before we have her bangs animated. i'm actually so proud of how the great hair massacre turned out, it was such a sweet and goofy story that shows the lighter part of Annie's personality. eee thank you as always and i'm especially happy you mentioned the dialogue! and how it felt natural, that's such a reassuring compliment ❤ and for the bit about her dad. i feel like i'm the only person who likes him alkjdfalksjd i know he's an asshole and he messed up bad but he does really care about Annie and he's important to her therefore her is important to me. can u tell that i have parents-in-law?

i agree! a lot of people seem to either have the attitude of "o yea she's pretty cool i guess" or the full on EVIL MALICIOUS BITCH!! SHE KILLED LEVI SQUAD REMEMBER THE YOYO! i will eternally point out the hypocrisy - Reiner and Zeke do just as bad and worse as she does but the fandom doesn't hate on them. whatever, i'm happy in my bubble over here!

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

So, It’s been awhile. There’s a reason. The last week or so has been... a week. jesus christ. I shall regale you of my tale, not in chronological order necessarily because that’s how I roll. BUT if you suffer through it, you shall be rewarded with an outdoor plant update post after. Bribery. 

So. Early last week, The Spawn sat down with me and presented a proposal, a well researched proposal, advocating for her starting her own residential cleaning business because she finds it incredibly satisfying and relaxing to clean stuff and she does quite well. So we sat and brainstormed, researched, and talked about how she planned to advertise. She needed a business gmail (and all the tools that come with that), logo, business social media, website, and flyers. 

Being her age, she doesn’t have the skill or knowledge to do these things. So, I volunteered to help with these things so that she didn’t have to spend money hiring someone. I created the email account, put all the brainstorm stuff into a google doc that saved to the biz drive, which included a to do list and the basic info needed. I created a logo. (At which point, she called me a wizard while watching me do so.) I helped her try to create a biz facebook account, but facebook immediately flagged it as breaking the rules. like literally as soon as I created it. So I appealed it & The Spawn wanted to wait to see what came of that before I went further. So she took me with her to shop for the things on her supply list, and we decided to go grab some of the smaller stuff still needed for J’s appt at the same time. This was Friday. 

Saturday, I got a text from J in the early afternoon saying that he needed me. I quickly packed a ‘just in case’ bag, since I didn’t know what to expect or how long I would be there. Now, you have to understand that in the 7 years we’ve been friends, while he has discussed things with me via phone or text, in person he is like me, incredibly stoic. Hell even via text or phone, he always insists that he’s fine and responds to my reminders that i’m here if he needs someone, and to just let me know, he responds “I appreciate it, but I won’t”. So him reaching out like that is a MASSIVE thing. I showed up, let myself in, and he just walked up to me, wrapped his arms around me and started sobbing. I stayed the night, alternating between being comforting and being distracting. It was extremely disarming to see such raw emotion from him repeatedly over the course of the night and to hear him say the things that he is usually uncomfortable articulating. 

The next morning he seemed better, thanked me for coming (to which I responded “Of course I came. I’ve not ever been lying when I’ve said that I’d come if you needed me, day or night, but you have to let me know.”) and apologized for ‘being a mess’. I told him every time he apologized (which happened quite a bit over the course of the night) that there was no need for an apology because this wasn’t something to be sorry for. He was struggling, as people do, and rather than embrace the darkness or fight it alone, he asked for help from someone he trusts and loves that he knows reciprocates. That i know how hard it is for him to do that and that I am proud of him. 

Sunday afternoon the kids (The Spawn and The Bf) picked me up because she needed to take him home but didn’t want to leave the dogs alone. I got in the car after The Bf got into the back, insisting I take the front seat. We hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot of the apartment complex when The Spawn casually asked “So are ya’ll fucking?” 

that’s how I learned that I was the subject of a bet. Apparently, The Bf asked where I was when he came over and out of convenience, not wanting to really explain the relationship, The Spawn said I was at my boyfriend’s. I guess he went on about how how come I’m never hanging out with him, etc, so The Spawn explained the actual nature of our relationship. At the end The Bf said “Nah, they fuckin’ but your mom isn’t telling you.” The Spawn said, “No, she’d tell me because when I started high school I asked her about her past encounters and asked about what stuff was, if she’d done it, and if she enjoyed it, and she was always honest with me. That’s how I know she likes it up the butt.” He insisted that J and I were banging so The Spawn, knowing the truth, took advantage of this and made a bet. It was an easy win for her. SO...

I get asked this question & I look at her, eyebrows raised because she knows how our relationship is (granted if I were physically able and he was willing, I would definitely jump back up on that horse) and said, “No. Mom is no longer physically capable of fucking without risk of severe injury. Plus, despite having ridden that horse previously, I’m not into endangering our besties status. I would go into further detail and commentary but I don’t want to make The Bf uncomfortable. These are things you know, so why do you ask?” She told me of the bet, Then i promptly text J about it because I knew he’d get a laugh out of it. And I was right. 

By the end of Sunday, she recieved an email stating that facebook was upholding the ban, so she and I talked and decided to make a webpage via WIX and after getting a few clients, she could upgrade her account with them to get extras that are offered, including her own domain (rather than the name.wix address) and a lack of wix ads on her page.  And then it all went downhill from there.

Monday through Wednesday (yesterday) had The Spawn breathing down my neck more than any boss I’ve ever fucking had about when her business shit would be done. On top of what I’d already done, between Monday and Wednesday I:   set up her google voice account for a business number, wrote her a “first time client” script, created a google sheets quick reference client database, created a google forms for detailed client records (all in a folder together that is searchable by client name, which would be the title of the form), set up the calendar, downloaded and edited/collaged her before and after photos she took via cleaning some of our spaces, and built her a 7 page website including the photos, facts, and little blurbs that go along with it. It went live at the end of yesterday. 

Throughout this process, rather than just checking in and thanking me for doing it all to save her money, she asked me every couple hours what still needed to be done. When I was not as far along as she felt I should be, she got progressively more hostile. Yesterday morning she had the balls to text me “What all do we still need to do before I can get rolling?” I responded with “ ‘We’? hahahahaha *I* still need to [list].” 

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Am I missing something? Did you forget to list something in the list of stuff you did between Monday and Wednesday? You mentioned flyers....” You are correct. But yesterday while I was being driven to my 2nd vax appointment by my father, I basically told him that I’m fried. If a flyer just included facts, I’d be fine, but the part where I need the potential customers to be drawn in and want to learn more is not happening. The creative well has run dry to the point that it is reminiscent of the dust bowl. And I reminded him that there is a reason I no longer do this type of shit for a living. I mentioned that thinking about The Spawn’s company is making me stress puke and that any time The Spawn approaches me to talk about anything, I immediately feel incredibly nauseated. 

Now it should be noted that when I mentioned this in a multi paragraph text earlier, he responded with “Just take a step back from it for awhile, then go back to it.”    

and everyone wonders why on earth I don’t speak up when I hit my limits and why I just push onward despite the damage it does to me. THIS. THIS IS WHY. Everyone is all for me not pushing myself too hard... until it is inconvenient for them. So I basically screamed in the car. On the way back he said he’d help. Ok. cool. 

Except that every fucking idea he had legit just tripled the amount of work I was going to have to do. I mentioned being burned enough that I was considering just paying a freelancer to do it. This motherfucker chimes in with “Oh! [Cool Ex Employee Who Left to be a Stay at Home Mom with her First Baby] does stuff like that. Let me reach out to see if she’d be willing to.” BRUH. That should have been the first thing out of your mouth after my original texts! Jesus Christ. I agreed but with the caveat that HE had to tell The Spawn and say it was his idea because he sees me getting overly stressed and has put his foot down. And he had to do it that night because I knew that if he didn’t, the first thing I’d hear today was “So when are my flyers going to be done?” and I am absolutely not dealing with that shit. The only thing I am doing from this point forward is showing her how to use her database/client files/calendar and I will be happy to answer questions or give advice, but that’s it. This isn’t my company and I’m not employed by her, so I’ve already put in far more work than should have been expected of me, with very little thanks outside of after I finished her logo and a couple times she came down and watched, then told me I’m a fucking wizard. 

Really It was good in a way because I had been doing that thing lately where I wonder if I’m just being dramatic because admin type stuff isn’t that hard and if I could do it from home, I should be able to manage... but this put me back down on earth, where I absolutely am not being dramatic and I cannot fucking do that shit 40 hrs a week for some random asshole. Shit, this was for my own child and I was ready to give up, stab her, then tell her to go fuck herself.

so...that’s been my last week and a half for so. Also, my only side effects from Vax 2 (pfizer) is feeling more tired/run down than usual and a bit of extra joint pain... but those might actually be related to the stress and hell I just went through. who knows. 

as always, don’t steal my shitshow. get your own shitshow. suffer through your own crap. 

[the-little-prophet]

BDRP Questionnaire 2019

Posting this on Charlie since I actually talked about him quite a bit! Let’s gooooo

Characters: Berlioz, Hades, Kiara, Nala, Andrina, Merida, Charlie, Apollo, John, Su, Ashleigh, Nemo, Jun

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth (we recommend choosing an older character, but it’s up to you!) What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?

This one goes out to Charlie. I pitched Charlie very deceptively-- claiming he was a prophet, aligning him, at first, with Calliope, making it look like Charlie’s magic was of the classical, Cassandra-inspired kind. But all along, I knew that what I wanted Charlie to be was more of this sci-fi/fantasy blend as an homage to his movie’s sci-fi bend too. This year, I got to actually reveal that Charlie is a time traveler after two years!! This is very exciting for me! I’ve enjoyed being able to lean into Charlie’s new image systems with this reveal, even though I’m out of my depth and breaking like 67 different time travel rules, probably lol. Still, it’s been great to take him to that place, and to invent Future-Charlie as both a deux ex machina and an expression of identity/choice/free will etc etc. I did not have Future-Charlie in mind when I created Charlie, so that was something I was proud of coming up with!

Pick another character and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year?

I’m going to talk about Nemo if only because everyone else feels like a spoiler lol. Nemo, as a relatively new character though, is still full-speed-ahead on his initial goals that I outlined for him in his application. Now that Nemo’s been established in the school and he has this little group of buddies, I want:

To focus on his wing. I want Nemo to push himself, get himself in a spot of trouble, potentially injure himself.

Reveal his wings to at least one mundus friend

Continuing to infuse his posts with body image issues. This is a slow build kind of plot that really is like...the broth of Nemo’s plot-soup, lol, while training for his placement is the chicken and belonging at school is the noodles….it needs to be this throughline more than like, para a, para b, para c. at least for now.

Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it.

I could pick a lot of threads here lol it’s honestly so HARD. But I think I want to shout-out to the Charlie/Jim first kiss thread because it surprised even me and Hannah. We initially planned for the first kiss to be just that-- one kiss, then we done, Jim and Charlie go on to be friends. But like in the best of cases, Jim and Charlie’s palpable chemistry actually informed more of Charlie’s arc and opened up avenues previously closed to me/Charlie since Charlie had been so SHUT to the idea of love. So! I really loved that thread. Also because like, I literally made Charlie experience the big bang after his first kiss. And THAT’S the BEST way to use magic in my opinion. Like when you can infuse magic with an emotional catharsis-- I think the other time I did that super well was similar actually, when Herc kissed Kiki’s cheek and she grew a tree in his room lol. So yeah! Some of my best writing in that thread, amazing chemistry, big surprises. It was an absolute pleasure.

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

-Image systems. I dragged myself for this, but I think it’s something that really helps me find a character’s voice and make myself excited to RP them! Also, I think it’s what people like about my writing sometimes. Maybe. IDK, lol. -Complex Emotion: I’m stealing this from my mentor who said I’m good at creating complex emotion and so you know its true. My most introverted characters get the bulk of this naturally--they are introspective and feely and give themselves the space to think and feel. But I really want to try to inject more into my extroverted characters. I think I’m doing well for Nemo, who had undiagnosed anxiety and so that informs a lot of his personality in very interesting-- very OPPOSITE-- ways as Berlioz; Nemo struggles with being alone because ‘alone’ means he gets too in his head. That’s been really fun for me and why he’s quickly become one of my fave voices to write (I know, u all thought it was because I am in love with Jimin (true), but no its bc Nemo is an anxious, big feeling baby and he’s always so Alive to me, plus i was made to write a fairy it was always my destiny.)

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

-Dialogue: PERSONALLY I feel like I’m not great at dialogue. Some posts are better than others and I think I’m good at like…..texting dialogue? IDK. I feel like I struggle in paras though to craft good dialogue. It’s just, rn, average dialogue. Of course not every post needs to have hilarious, punchy, great dialogue. But do my characters sound different? Am I doing all I can to create rhythm and speech patterns? -Filtering: Im being very picky rn, because actually I don’t do this too much, but I do it enough where I’m like, I gotta go read some really stellar writers adn ban myself from using “Feel” and “think” for like a whole month. What I’m talkinga bout is like: Ber realized/ Ber thought / Ber knew. That kind of writing is totally fine, but that’s about it. I need to come up with more creative ways to talk about feelings and abstract concepts!!!

-Character: I know everyone is probably like………….how dare lauryl put this here. But listen. I don’t think I struggle with character on RP. But outside of RP? Oh boy! The THING about RP is you MUST create a character, that’s your vessel for writing here, and so you do all that development plus u got the four years of worldbuilding informing that character, and literally EVERYTHING CHARACTER DRIVEN ITS...THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.  Outside of RP though I think I have struggled because my natural affinity is worldbuilding and shit like that. I’m type 5 baby, I am attracted to characters who let me poke at things I don’t know anything about, like even Jun, part of it really is like, petitions and grocery store management lmfadsofij. SOOOo idk I just need to be able to focus on crafting characters that are compelling vessels for the cool shit I like to do outside of RP.

Pick one of your plots, or even just a character, and come up with a list of 3-5 “mentor texts” where you can look for inspiration or research, then write a short (2-4 sentences) why you picked those texts. JOHN DARLING BREAKS INTO FAERYLAND 1. Call Down the Hawk/Raven Cycle: It’s no coincidence that my reread of Raven Cycle last winter played a pretty big part in inspiring this new version of John. The descriptions of the magical forest Cabeswater and the hunt for Glendower have the same kind of contemporary fantasy vibe that I really like for John. And of course, Ronan’s dream magic is very much intertwined with the faery realm feeling like a dream (and Ashleigh, obviously, as a dark faery who can manipulate them). More than that though, the attention paid to the psyches of each character and how they drive the plot forward is just… /chefs kiss. 2. The Mabinogian: I want to draw from these classic Welsh/British stories and incorporate them in creative ways! Or just as, like, motifs are something. :) I have tried to do this but would like to be a lot more intentional, instead of just being like lmao let me look up some random shit for this one reply~ 3. The Hazel Wood: This book deals with characters coming into the real world from a book world! This kind of goes along with the Mabinogian as I kind of ish want to do something similar, only treating the Mabinogian as a historical, cultural text as opposed to a fiction. This book also focuses a lot on fairy tale tropes (like numbers) which I really want to incorporate in John’s stuff. I want to ideally write some of my own fairy tales-- I have one in mind actually through Ashleigh but it’s related to John too since he’d the scholar of said stories.  

And now, a wishlist!

-Exploring Nemo’s disability. This is slightly challenging for me since we don’t have many fairies, but I’m brainstorming some ideas and hope to really kick it off in January, leading up to his Talent Placement Test.   -I really want to have a lot of town-centric plots for Jun. Would love to rp with the police officers! I want to have Jun try to get some ppl arrested tbh ahah, like, Fflew for loitering, or maybe reporting Mitte. I would love some arch nemeses tbh-- Mitte does seem like a good one. AND I want to submit at least three petitions next semester!! Maybe i should make that two!! Still!! -Do some Bonfamille plots. I already have something I’m really excited about and have already planned here so this is a teaser… -Keep writing essays. The fairies have been great, getting me really inspired to do these.What’s been an amazing mental exercise, and why I cannot stop writing these, is thinking about how the political philosophy of Pixie Hollow informs how it functions: technically, socioculturally etc. It’s really fun for me to basically build a communist thought project and then enact it for real. I feel like I’m learning a lot about...well, societies, lol, and how the material factors endlessly bleed into, and shape, ideas and beliefs (and vice versa). Also, I literally have to do these because when Nemo is IN the Hollow and I want to write him getting a glass of water, I’m faced with a lot of technical questions: do fairies have running water? Does he have to get it from a stream? How do they keep things cool? Etc etc. And that’s why I go off on these, and I’m excited to keep doing them, as many as I can, with feedback from my fellow fairies. Also, do want to do ones that are NOT fairy related, so we’ll see about that. -Write John backstory. He’s gone on a few other adventures and I’d like to actually one-shot those maybe lol. -Alternate Charlie Timeline: This is something that’s bopping around in my head and I haven’t found the perfect way to make it happen, but I want Charlie to travel to an alternate version of his life and get stuck. When I figure out the right way to do this, my partners will also get to rp alternate versions of their characters lol. That’s fun right!! Of course it is, we do it all the time with AUs, but this one obvi be more personal and more closely tied to canon.

OPTIONAL: Why do you RP? First and foremost, I RP because it’s writing for the sake of writing-- joy for joy. I think this is even more important this year as I’ve had to focus on mentorship writing outside of RP. RP became the place where I didn’t have to think so hard about making everything make sense, lol. It gave my brain a break so I could be less judgmental of myself and just have fun and do the most ridiculous stuff...and some of my fave stuff iS ridiculous because of that...like Nemo and Sindri making flower crowns or the ASC nonsense. It’s this kind of light, fluffy, low-stake (but still High Stake) stuff that provided me endless joy when I needed it the most. Second of all, I RP because I really want to invest in people’s creative energy. I think doing so gives back to myself. Building canon, helping people brainstorm, seeing people grow-- I feel like a proud mom when I get to have this kind of mentorship role myself. I talked to MK about this, but even though Sam left to go off and do greater things, that’s like-- to me, it was a lot like he was graduating from this weird BDRP school I’ve helped create. I felt nothing but pride and happiness for him and really felt like, if BDRP was to explode tomorrow, I ACHIEVED the thing I set out to do when, four years ago, I sat on my computer and drafted BDRP’s mission and vision and committed myself to this admin role. And THAT’S what I want ideally-- for BDRP to be this collaborative place that doesn’t focus too much on what makes sense, on sitewide plots that force people into roles. I have always wanted plots like ASC and John’s search for Excalibur to be able to exist side by side, and I think we’ve done that. Now we just have to tend this garden, don’t we, haha? May BDRP bear many delicious fruit.

[themagiciansreccenter]

Author Spotlight: greywash

Every week we are going to be interviewing a writer from The Magicians fandom. If you would like to be interviewed or you want to nominate a writer, get in touch via our ask box.

First things first, tell us a little about yourself.

Hi, I'm greywash! I usually go by Gins, I'm 37, I'm an engineer, and I live with my beta/writing and queerplatonic life partner HBBO (havingbeenbreathedout) in the cheap(er) seats outside San Francisco.

How long have you been writing for?

I apparently "wrote" and "illustrated" a story for my mom about a dragon who forgets his best friend's birthday when I was three, so. It's been a minute. I kill fewer crayons these days.

What inspired you to start writing for The Magicians?

Well... basically, I followed @longnationalnightmare in from another fandom, and a few people on my Tumblr dash were reblogging gifsets, so I originally watched the show basically just for more context. (The threeway. By "more context," I mean "the threeway.") Anyway, it took me about 0.3 episodes to be completely hooked: I had read the books a few years back and was ambivalent about a lot of things in them, so when I started watching the show I was expecting a lot less than I got? I'd expected a sort of silly B-show with lousy acting, and, I mean... it is frequently *very* silly, but then it turned out that the cast ranges from 'very good' to 'incredible', and the interpersonal dynamics are *fantastic*, and those are both pure fannish bait for me. The show's not perfect, but they fixed a lot of my problems with the books, a lot of which lived on a character development level... I think the show really has done some incredible work with Quentin, especially; and also with depictions of complex, liminally-sexual queer friendships, like the relationship between Margo and Eliot, which I feel like I've never encountered represented this well in any other visual media source, ever.

Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? What it is about them that makes them your favourite?

Ooh, that's hard. Eliot is just my hands-down full-stop favorite character, but there's always that tricky question of "who is your favorite character to write *in the point of view of*" versus "who is your favorite character to write *about*," especially when you have a relationship or relationships you're really invested in (for me, the asymmetrical Quentin/Eliot/Margo triad). When I want to write stories that are love letters to Eliot Waugh, which is often, then I want to write from Quentin or Margo's point of view, because when I write Eliot's point of view, I am inevitably writing love letters to one or the both of them.

Do you have a preference for a particular season/point in time to write about?

Well, since I came into the fandom during the post-S3 hiatus—I started watching the show in October—just by default that's where most of my work is grounded, so far.

Are you working on anything right now? Care to give us an idea about it?

Oh boy, I sure am! I have a lot of work to do on my 39 Graves fic, and then I still have, hm, probably another... twenty or thirty thousand words, ish? On "The Marriage Plot," which is the sequel (...sort of) to "Firebird" and also my sort of... emotional raison d'fanfic, for The Magicians. It's sort of a, uhh... well, let's call it an un-arranged-marriage fic, is the best way I can think of to put it.

How long is your “to do list”?

Oh gosh. It's atrocious, but it's also not all for /The Magicians/. There's "The Marriage Plot," but I also have a long-running /Sherlock/ WIP that got toootally hijacked by me suddenly desperately needing to write hundreds of thousands of words about Eliot and Quentin not getting married, and so I'm just getting back into that; and then I have 39 Graves. I also still owe my partner a /Sneaky Pete/ storylet and have two other outstanding prompts from the summer, one for /Lewis/ and the other for... I.... totally don't remember! /The Good Place/, I think? I saved it around here somewhere. On top of that, I'm doing fan_flashworks bingo over on Dreamwidth, and I don't want my entire bingo card to be "The Magicians," though so far that's been somewhat difficult to resist. And I love the weekly prompt idea that the Rec Center and the Neitherlands Library are running for S4! I had a blast writing for the "Identity" prompt and am looking forward to this week's as well. Well, at least I write fast.

What is your favourite fic that you’ve written for The Magicians? Why?

I think I have to say "Firebird," because I haven't finished "The Marriage Plot," and who knows how that'll go; but they're so inextricably linked in my mind it's hard for me to think of "Firebird" as like—its own separate thing? I guess I can say that "Firebird" was really uncomfortable in places to write, so I'm proud of myself for getting it done without flinching away from all the, like, body horror and murder and super dubious consent; and I think it does what I want it to do. We'll see how I feel when I finish "The Marriage Plot."

Many writers have a fic that they are passionate about that doesn’t get the reception from the fandom that they hoped for. Do you have a fic you would like more people to read and appreciate?

Well, I definitely haven't been here long enough or written enough stuff to have that feeling, but—let's say "The Get Down," which is just a little bonbon about Margo and Eliot being best friends and banging a psychic. I love themmmmm~ ~ ~

What is your writing process like? Do you have any traditions or superstitions that you like to stick to when you’re writing?

I'm not particularly superstitious about writing, but I am hugely invested in my writing routine—I'm a write-every-day person, and I do mean 'every day'; I'm on a 2,179 day streak on 750words.com—that's a little shy of six years. People are usually horrified when I admit this, but: I get up at 5:15 in the morning seven days a week so that I can put on headphones and write for at least an hour and often more like two before work, or whatever it is that I'm doing that day. (I also go to bed at like.... eight forty-five. I am a party animal.) I also very frequently write on my lunch breaks and have the excellent fortune to live with my writing partner, so we spend loads of time writing on the weekends and talking about fiction. This is literally the life of my dreams, but you have to be a very specific kind of obsessive weirdo to feel that way, I think.

Do you write while the seasons are airing or do you prefer to wait for hiatus? How does the ongoing development of the canon influence and inspire your writing process?

I am too much of an egg in this fandom to have an answer to this one yet, I think. :) I probably wouldn't start a longfic during the season, but shortfic, sure, why not?

What has been the most challenging fic for you to write?

"Firebird," because of all the aforementioned body horror and murder and super dubious consent. I am a delicate flower, who happens to be fascinated with narrative about people confronting their personal monstrousness. It's a tough row to hoe, man.

Are there any themes or tropes that you like particularly like to explore in your writing?

For /The Magicians/, the particular dead horse that I love to flog is Fillorian marriage, and the implications that forced fidelity have for consent; and also just for how intimacy *works*, within a marriage or a long-term relationship where that sense of choice, of choosing and being chosen, is so much of what lends richness to the relationship.

Are there any writers that inspire your work? Fanfiction or otherwise?

Nonfannishly: Georgette Heyer, Sarah Waters, Herman Melville, Miranda July. Fannishly.... whoo boy. In /The Magicians/, I'm still catching up on all the great stuff that people have written! @longnationalnightmare , @adjovi , @achray , @shmazarov, @numinousnumbat , and @ohmarqueliot are some of my favorites so far... in other fandoms: gosh, where to even start, I've been in fandom for 20+ years, we could be here a while. I guess since we're on the subject (sort of) of the monstrous, I reread @1001cranes ' "disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage" the other day and was just as floored by it now as I was... gosh, was that really seven years ago? Well, it's evergreen, go read it again. @septembriseur for fiction about altered consciousness. @drawsaurus for the interplay between warmth and brittleness and humor and darkness. @helenish for her endings. @havingbeenbreathedout for the interplay between sex and story, and basically everything else as well.

What are you currently reading? Fanfiction or otherwise?

Right now, I have open on my laptop: (1) @astolat 's "And I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You [which I've read before], (2) @ohmarqueliot 's "Reaching in the Dark" [which I haven't started], and (3) what is, in context, the most ironic thing *ever*: a handbook on strategies for managing ADHD. What? Don't judge me.

What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Basically that learning to write is just figuring out how to ask yourself "What are you trying to do with this _______?" (comma, word, line, paragraph, chapter, story), and then figuring out how to answer. (Thanks, Dad!)

Are there any words or phrases you worry about over using in your work?

Oh, I mean—I'm pretty okay with even the totally predictable bits of my narrative voice, I don't stress about it too hard anymore, but yes, there are a bunch of words I *know* I overuse. Especially since I'm a little bit blind to repeated words if I'm reading and not listening to my work read aloud, which—I try to do at least one pass where I get my computer to read to me when I'm editing, but I need to have both time and focus to make that work, both of which, I find, are often in short supply. "Tells"—he tells her, she told him—is *the worst*; I'm always looking for it my brain just skips over completely, it's like it's not even a word for me anymore.

What was the first fanfic that you wrote? Do you still have access to it?

Oh dear. I'd been in fandom for several years before I started writing, but as I recall, the first thing I actually wrote was an exceptionally overwrought and tragic Snape POV Remus/Sirius story. I have no idea what happened to it and I'm almost certainly happiest that way.

Self-edit or Beta?

Both!

Comments or Kudos/Reblogs or Likes?

All are delicious.

Smut, Fluff or Angst?

Smut.

Quick & Dirty or Slow Burn?

Quick and dirty on the sex and slow burn on the feelings.

Favourite season?

Season Two

Favourite Episode?

Cheat Day

Favourite book?

The Magicians

Three favourite words?

lovely, devastating, yearning

Want to be interviewed for our author spotlight? Get in touch here.

[catsundercherryblossoms]

A Christmas Kiss// HFP special ❣️🎄

Summary: The 104th cadets have a little celebration… a little too much celebration.

*Note: You don’t have to read my series/fic to understand this. It can be read as a stand-alone Eren x OC imagine. For those of you who have read HFP, this takes place somewhere between chapters 2-3* 

And of course, I’m late for everything, so I do apologize that its already been 3 days after Christmas... oops!

Happy reading (:

//Christmas morning//

“So… what do you want for Christmas, Jo?” Reiner asked.

We were sat at the lunchroom, in the middle of breakfast. I looked up from my porridge and raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it too late to be asking that?”

Reiner shrugged. “Eh, I can still pull some strings. Just tell me what you want.”

“Some peace of mind.” I put simply. The idea of people getting me a gift was… weird. This has got to be the first time someone proposed getting me something for a special occasion. Jean is the only person to have made such a gesture like that in the past. Usually for Christmas or Valentine’s day, he’d make me a flower crown out of random wildflowers he’d find around town. Back then we were kids and we couldn’t afford anything better. I loved each and every one he made for me, though. Then, of course, we signed up for the cadet corps, and he hasn’t done it ever since.

Point is, I don’t know how to accept kind gestures from people.

Reiner waved me off and turned to Annie. The kind of wave that hints he’s not ready to give up yet. “What about you, Annie?”

She didn’t even look at him. “For Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to stop being a—“

BANG! The doors flew open, slamming against the walls.

“Ho, ho, ho!” A woman I’d never seen before in my life strolled in. Everyone’s eyes were on her, confused. She wore glasses, carried a large red sack over her shoulder, and walked forwards with a bounce in her step.

I didn’t know who she was. I just knew it was too early for someone to be this cheerful.

“Hello, cadets! Wow, good turnout this year. Lots of fresh faces!” She said loudly, “I’m Hanji Zoe, a squad leader in the brave and mighty Survey Corps! I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”

“We’ve heard the death rates.” Someone— probably Jean— mumbled a few tables away.

She either didn’t hear him or decided to ignore it. She continued like nothing, “Anyway, I’ll be Santa Claus this year. I’ve got hand-knitted gifts for each of you to keep you warm! But first, I’ll be introducing you to my elves!”

“Elves?” I muttered. No offense to this lady, but it doesn’t take an idiot to know this was all a publicity stunt to promote the Survey Corps and get us interested in joining them. It’s like luring a baby with candy. Except the candy is death. And babies don’t like death.

“C’mon!” She beckoned to a presence outside, which turned out to be four people. They were dressed in elf costumes, the tips of their floppy hats jingling with a shiny gold bell. What was priceless was their faces. It was blatantly obvious that they didn’t want to be here.

Snickers spread across room. I heard Jean wheezing and banging his fist on the table.

“This is Eld, Gunther, Oluo, and Petra.” The lady, Hanji, indicated to each as she said their name. She then turned to us with an exaggerated pout. “Humanity’s Strongest, also known as Corporal Levi, was supposed to be here today but I’m afraid he couldn’t show up because of unexpected paperwork—“

“He didn’t come cause he didn’t care.” Oluo interrupted dryly.

“Shhh, you sourpuss! They don’t need to know tha—“

“Hanji,” Gunther said, nodding towards us as a whole. “They’re waiting.”

“Oh, right.” She set down the red sack and opened it. “Presents!”

Hanji and her four elves went around the lunchroom giving out presents, which consisted of mittens, scarves, and sweaters. Oh and you could tell they were hand-knitted, alright. They were lumpy, deformed, and the sweaters were especially scratchy. Some thought the gesture was cute, others held their items awkwardly like they didn’t know what to do with them, and others excused themselves from the table before the elves could get to them.

Hey, I’m not one to let myself be buttered up this way, but I at least pretended to be listening while Hanji listed out the “benefits” of joining the Survey Corps. Stuff like “you’ll be fighting for humanity” and “helping create a better future”, completely skidding around the fact that you’re most likely going to die while doing it.

Needless to say, Eren was the first to put his sweater on. What a tool...

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Reiner said once I had received my sweater, wrapping his own blue scarf around his brawny neck. He obviously thought this was very funny.

“Not a chance.” I said, holding the sweater in my lap. It was three sizes too big and a blinding red, with gold accents. I’d look like a ridiculous ornament in it.

“Oh, don’t be like that. Pleeaaasee? For me? Look, Bert’s got his mittens on.”

I looked at Bert, who was currently —and nervously— trying to free a finger he had gotten caught in the stitching.

“Annie, where’s your scarf?” Reiner asked, trying to find a good example.

“I fed it to Sasha.”

“What? Sasha doesn’t eat— you know what, never mind. I wouldn’t be surprised...” Reiner shook his head, turning to me again. “C’mon Jo. Have a little Christmas spirit.”

“I think that’s asking for too much. We both sold our souls.” Annie said, giving me a subtle wink.

I looked at Reiner helplessly. “She’s not wrong.”

“Heh.” Someone scoffed behind me.

Ugh, what now? I turned around and saw none other than Eren Jaeger, looking down at me in disapproval. He folded his arms over his chest stuffily. “I can’t believe someone can be so arrogant as to not accept a gift.“

By now, Hanji and her Survey Corps elves had packed up and left unnoticed.

“Who says I’m rejecting it? I just don’t want to wear it right now.” I said irritatedly. God, he had a talent for getting on my nerves.

He wasn’t buying it. “Oh please,” he said exasperatedly, “there’s no need for charades. Just admit you and Jeanie-boy have a superiority complex.”

“Hey!” Jean perked up.

That’s it. I slammed my hands on the table, getting up. “You got a problem, Jaeger?”

“Only with stuck-up people who worship the military police!” He fired back.

I stepped closer, not fazed by the fact that he was a foot taller. “I’ll beat up your ass one more time, suicidal blockhead.”

“Is that so, egotistical midget?”

“What will it take for you to believe me?”

“I don’t know— prove it!”

“Fine!” I took the damn sweater and pulled it over my head, letting it drape down to my knees. By now the whole lunchroom was watching as I angrily stepped onto my chair to gain some height, facing him smugly, itchy and with hair all ruffled from static. “There. Happy now?”

One giggle. Two giggles. Next thing I know everyone is gushing, saying stuff like awwww and so cute! I looked around in disgust. Do they think this is amusing? What the fuck am I, some kind of baby zoo animal?

Eren just stared at me in surprise, mouth agape. Strangely enough... a blush tinted his cheeks.

Don’t tell me... ugh, not him too.

I rolled my eyes and took off the sweater, balling it up and throwing it back on the table. How embarrassing.

The doors flew open again. “Alright, you maggots!” Instructor Shadis said, “Out on the courtyard! FIFTY LAPS!”

Everyone started streaming out the door, making noises of complaint. Eren walked away without another word and I did too, heading out with Annie by my side.

“Say goodbye to people taking you seriously as a soldier.” Annie smirked.

I groaned, knowing she was right.

*

*

*

//Later that night//

We waited anxiously for Sasha to come back. Connie chewed his nails, probably planning out his eulogy for his friend’s funeral, which was sure to happen if she got caught.

We didn’t think it was possible, but Sasha actually managed to come up with her stupidest idea yet. This exceeded all her other stupid moments, including eating a potato in front of the Instructor’s face. The girl manages to beat her own record every day.

Sasha proposed we stay up past curfew and have a festive gathering in the girls dormitory. Oh, and steal a liquor bottle from Instructor Shadis’s office. Everyone tried to convince her to calm down, but she was dead set on us having some holiday fun, so she went ahead and left on a mission to get that liquor.

It’s been fifteen minutes since then. And here we are, already mourning.

The boys were here too. Those who were invited made the brave journey and, surprisingly, did not get caught by the Instructor’s nightly patrol. Who were they exactly? Bertholdt, Reiner, Marco, Connie, Jean, Armin, and... Eren freaking Jaeger.

I didn’t look at him and he didn’t look at me. It was better that way.

We heard footsteps and a light knock on the door. If it’s the Instructor... we’re all in deep shit. Nobody moved, nobody breathed. Mikasa carefully pushed aside the curtain and peered through the window. “She’s back.”

Connie and Krista scrambled towards the door, unlocking it and opening it wide for Sasha. The brunette walked in casually as though she had just gotten back from a midnight stroll. She smirked and raised the liquor bottle high and proud for us all to see. Several people whooped and cheered. Annie and I just shared glances. Well... at least she was safe.

Sasha popped the cork off the bottle. “Who’s up for a round of truth or dare?”

//One Hour Later//

What started out as one round turned into seven rounds. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the game. Me, not so much. Watching other people enjoy the game was good enough entertainment for me, but I refused to participate and get dared to lick the bottom of my shoe, or worse, lick somebody. So I remained comfortably nearby with Annie and Mikasa, watching people make fools of themselves, taking a swig of the raunchy liquor whenever the bottle was passed around.

“Truth or Dare, Ymir.”

“Truth.”

“Is it true you like girls?”

“... Do ya’ll hear sumthin?”

That night was the night I discovered I could handle alcohol with no problem.

It was also the night I discovered Eren is a lightweight.

“My turn,” He hiccuped. “Truth or dare.”

“No, Eren. We ask you truth or dare.”

“Oh yeah.”  

Eventually, we moved on to a game of spin the bottle, seeing as some people kept mixing up truths and dares. This one I was forced to sit through. Literally. Sasha forced me to sit in a circle with them and we spun the bottle. Fifteen minutes in, and everyone had kissed or slapped pretty much everyone. Except me. Luck appeared to be on my side because the bottle hadn’t landed on me once. Thank goodness...

“There it goes...” Connie said as he spun the bottle.

The bottle slowed down to a stop, pointing towards Eren and Jean.

“Alright, Jean.” Connie yawned. We were all getting tired. “You have to slap Eren. Or kiss... you know, whatever you’re into.”

“Gladly.” Jean said and he pulled back his sleeve, about to swing.

Realizing he was a little too enthusiastic, it took a few of us to hold him back, and so we skipped them and spun the bottle again. This time it landed....

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

“Ooooh, now thats the kind of stuff I wanna see!” Connie said deviously. “Eren! You have to kiss or slap Johanna!”

Such a proposition made Eren snap out of his drunken reverie and look sober again. “What? I can’t slap—“

“Hell no. Don’t even try it, hotshot.” I said, trying to sound tough despite feeling my face heat up.

“Oh pleeeaaaseee?” Krista said, putting on puppy eyes. “Just one little kiss, it won’t mean anything!”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing this.” Annie said with a shrug. Mikasa nodded in agreement.

The peer pressure surmounted and next thing I know, people were pushing us closer together. I’m sure my face must’ve looked like a tomato at this point. Maybe if it were anyone else it would be easier. But its Eren loud-mouth suicidal blockhead Jaeger…

Things were getting out of hand. If the commotion got any louder we would get found out for sure, and Instructor Shadis would make us run until our legs snapped in half.

“Fine, fine!” I huffed and looked at Eren, who seemed ready to shit himself. “Just get it over with.”

He leaned in. My stomach fluttered and I closed my eyes.

WHUMP!

A loud noise startled us all. Eren and I jumped apart, the moment officially ruined.

Sasha was on the floor face-down. We looked at her and then at the bunk beds, absolutely bewildered. Did she…

“Sasha, what the hell?” Ymir said. Her and Krista helped the brunette get up. “Did you dive off the top bunk?”

“I wanted to see if I could fly…” she whined, leaning on them for support. Looks like Eren wasn’t the only lightweight here.

Connie sighed. “Well, the party animal has been defeated. I think its time we call it a night, guys.”

Everyone agreed and in a manner of minutes, all the boys had said their goodbyes and Merry Christmas’s, filing quietly and stealthily out of the dormitory. I pretended not to notice, but I could’ve sworn I saw Eren steal one last glance at me before closing the door. Whatever… I tried not to think about it too much.

“Oh, well. Looks like the perfect Christmas kiss was between Sasha and the floor.” A ginger-haired girl, Hannah, said and stretched. We were all exhausted and eager to go to sleep.

“Yeah.” I said with a little smile, slipping into bed. Thanks to Sasha, I guess tonight was kind of fun.

The second my head hit the pillow, I felt an odd lump. That’s weird… I sat up and lifted my pillow, confused, only to find an unexpected surprise.

It was a flower crown. Adorned with baby’s breath, poppies, and daisies. My heart melted a bit, knowing exactly who it was from. He must’ve slipped it under my pillow sometime during the game. I unfolded the note besides it.

Its been a while...

Merry Christmas,

-Jean

[cassandraclare]

Q&A TDA

thedarkmarvels said:

hi cassie! will we find learn who kits mother is in qoaad, or will that have to wait until twp? geniusherondale said: hello Cassie!! can you tell us a clue about kit's mother? uriecookie12 said: Hi, Cassie. :) I really love your books and I fell in love with Ty and Kit. Will we see Kit’s mother in QOAAD or is she set to show up in TWP? Lots of love.

A very popular question! Obviously the identity of Kit’s mother is a mystery right now, and a significant one. Kit only knows the story his father told him, which isn’t true. A great deal of the details of this mystery are shown in Ghosts of the Shadow Market: we will meet her, as part of Jem and Tessa’s search for the Lost Herondale. If you don’t read Ghosts, you’ll get the answer to Kit’s mother’s identity in Queen and TWP.

It’s a fairly significant part of Kit’s story, and part of the reason Jem and Tessa were so keen to find him.

history-maker-viktuuri said:

Hello Cassie!! Can you tell us more about the dynamic of the friendship between Ty and Kit in QoAaD?? I’m looking forward to reading more about them.

Obviously the dynamic between Kit and Ty is going to be significantly affected by Livvy’s death. It’s a crushing occurrence for Ty, and the way he responds to it is going to affect his future and his relationship with Kit. Kit is desperate to make sure Ty is okay in the moment, so much so that it may blind him to longer-term issues.

feyreismeiamfeyre said:

Hi, Cassie! So, I love Julian very very much, along with a bunch of other characters, but with him I feel the most in common what with him being almost like a parent figure to his younger siblings and taking care of them... My question is, will Julian get a happy moment in QoAaD (he truly deserves many many of them)? Like a chill and joyous moment with no drama, maybe a beach day or a moment of enjoying his favourite sandwich with lots of pickles and mayo... I just want him happy!

——

In a strange turn, there is a scene where Julian eats a sandwich. BUT IT CONTAINS THE BLOOD OF HIS ENEMIES.

Okay, it doesn’t really. It contains lettuce.

Maggie Stiefvater has a really interesting post about downtimes for characters, and why we want to see them be happy and relax, because it’s a release of tension, but also the way you buy that relaxation at the expense of plot. I think it’s an interesting piece about how writers calibrate tension and catharsis carefully in books, since too much of one or the other ruins your pacing. She calls scenes where people, say, happily eat a sandwich Ice Cream Cake scenes, which is funny in the sense I’ve always called them frosting scenes — as in, frosting on cake is great but an entire cake made out of frosting is disgusting. So I guess I would say that if you look at my books you can see that characters are usually happy and bantering and doing cute stuff in small moments between bigger ones, or at the end of the book where we sigh, sit back, and allow ourselves to relax.

lilyherondale13 said: Hi Cassie! I love your work, you are such a wonderful writer! May I ask you something: could you tell us something on we don't know yet on Rayan Maduabuchi? I love him in Lord of Shadows! Ps: I love the Centurions, but only the good ones as Diego says! (Sorry for my english, I'm French). Xoxo!

Merci! ;)  I’m fond of Rayan too — along with Divya Joshi he forms a sort of power triad with Diego at the Scholomance, in terms of the Centurions who aren’t assholes. He helps Diego hide Kieran, and rescues Kieran from a specific and unusual torment set up by the Cohort. He also runs afoul of Horace Dearborn . . .

alessandra-lightwood said:

Hi Cassie! I'm very anxious for QoAaD, and I would like to know if Jamie has a big role in this book? And if we meet more Rosales, like Cristina's mom?

You might well meet Cristina’s mom ;) Jaime has a role in this book, but it is not huge — Diego has a much much bigger role, because Jaime is one of the main characters of TWP and so this series is meant to serve as an introduction to him, not a telling of his story. This is Cristina and Diego’s time (as far as Rosaleses go) and Jaime’s comes later. Jaime’s a lot of fun, so I’m definitely excited for his place at the forefront.

helen-blackthorn said:

Hey Cassie, will we be seeing a lot of Dru & Helen bonding now that she’s back and Livvy is gone? I’d love to see more sisterly bonding in TDA especially after what happened in lord of shadows!

I think it’s natural to look at Dru’s situation (and Helen’s) and think they each just lost a sister, so here’s a sister restored to them, and clearly they would be joyous. And they are, but people are more complex than that. Dru worries Helen has been away so long that they won’t understand each other, and resents Helen for doing the things Julian usually does because it feels to her as if he’s being replaced. Helen worries that Dru won’t love and accept her, and worries she has no idea how to deal with kids or raise them. Aline makes a frittata. It’s not as if they don’t bond, but it’s a complicated path!

ailecstuff said: Is Kieran ok? Do they take care of him in the Scholomance? Are they giving him good food?

Diego is the one who takes care of Kieran in the Scholomance (along with Divya and Rayan) and it’s all from his POV. The Scholomance experience really changes Kieran, in the way he looks at the world, at Shadowhunters and even at his own responsibilities to his people. In the meantime he annoys Diego by sleeping under his bed, and Diego feeds him juice, berries, meat, and anything else unprocessed. :P

carolinagain said:

Hi Cassie. i absolutely loved kieran! his redemption, his flaws, his strength, his relationship with christina. i have made some awful mistakes, and seeing characters like kieran who have too but then overcome them is so comforting and inspiring, in a way. i am wondering if we will see more of kieran as a character in himself? not just mark's ex, but as the exiled faerie prince? we did a little LM, and i loved it sm! thank u for such a wonderful, diverse cast of characters. much love to you! <3

I’m glad you like Kieran! Of course Kieran’s relationships with other characters, including Cristina and Mark, are extremely significant to him — they are an enormous part of how he has changed, and overcome his past mistakes. All characters are defined in part by their relationships with other characters, as Emma and Julian’s relationship is significant to them, as Emma’s relationship to Malcolm defines her, as Julian’s relationship with Ty changes him, as Mark’s relationships with Kieran, Cristina and Julian define him  — we are all an interconnected web of love and friendship and enmity and forgiveness. No man is an island, etc. ;)

That said, Kieran being an exiled Faerie prince has always been significant, from his ability to gather information that would save Tavvy in LM, to his summoning of his father and meeting with Adaon in LoS. It is even more significant in Queen, where we start to see how the politics of faerie are falling apart and building back up again, and what role Kieran has in all of that. Who will sit the Unseelie Throne if not the King we know is a big piece of the QUAAD puzzle, and Kieran is integral to that — with Mark, or Cristina, or both, by his side. ;)

takemy-hxnd said: Hi Cassie, I was wondering if you could tell us more about Helen and Aline in tec and tda. Thank you

I always love to see love for Helen and Aline! Helen and Aline are back in Queen of Air and Darkness with a bang, and we see how they work with the established dynamic of the LA Institute. Everyone is thrilled to have them back, but it is also weird when a disruption comes to one's life, even if it is a joyful disruption. Aline is always standing up for her lady, and sometimes Helen really needs it.

And in The Eldest Curses, we see Helen and Aline fall in love, and before they are united, they are at odds--Aline wants to protect Alec, and Helen is investigating Magnus and Alec for crimes they may well have committed. Helen feels like she needs to be a great Shadowhunter, to prove her faerie blood doesn't make her prejudiced in favor of Downworlders... and part of why she wants that is that she doesn't want to be an obstacle for any of her little brothers and sisters, who she loves so much. She wants to make her dad and her family proud of her, and to honor the memory of Eleanor Blackthorn, the human mother who took her and Mark in, and raised them as her own. So Helen and Aline's mutual attraction is very complicated. Particularly as Aline isn't out quite yet.

yourfavoritetumor said:

Will we see Jace and clary in Qoaad, and if so will we get their POVs?

You will see them. POVs are pretty unlikely, but there is a special additional story about them in the first edition of Queen!

[maxlowes]

hello all, it’s pepper with my new son Maxwell, who unlike Isa, actually displays a range of emotions (it’s fucked up i know, but sometimes it be like that) i don’t know what else to say so without further ado, bellow is some basic info about your boy.

MAX EOIN LOWE;

Max is the third child of a total of a total of seven siblings. He is however the eldest brother, and he takes that responsibility very seriously. Taking care of his family is pretty much all he’s thinking about 70% of the time, they’re a big priority for him.

Max is the son of the town drunk. He’s not particularly proud of it or anything, but it’s what he is and what most of the town knows him as. He and his siblings were always the kids who had to patiently wait while the fire department got their father down from roof of the Trio on Christmas day, or the ones who had to sit quietly at the bar whenever it was their father’s day to watch them. 

Max’s mother on the other hand, was an angel. After she and his father split, she did everything she could to keep food on the table, and to keep clothes on her children's’ backs. Overall, she did a good job. After all, neither Max or any of his siblings are dead, or in jail. Some of them even turned out pretty alright. Max’s mother was a different story though. She had a breakdown about three years ago that made it abruptly time for Max and his siblings to start taking care of her instead of the other way around. Currently she is on bed rest, and Max and his siblings have to pitch in all they can for her medication.

Max currently works about three jobs to help out his family. When he isn’t at the Undrgrnd at night (he works there as a bouncer), he’s at the his mechanic job during the day, and when he’s not at either of those places he can occasionally be found fixing up stuff around town, and when he’s not doing any of that, as of recently, he is playing music.

Max really doesn’t care what kind of music he plays. When he initially started playing music around the age of twelve, it was kind of just something he stumbled upon. One of the douchebags his older sister was dating worked at the local instrument shop, and let Max mess around with the merchandise in an attempt to impress his sister. Max was right in the thick of his rebellious ‘I hate everything’ phase and he was actually startled at how good it felt to use his hands to make something, whether that be music, or just noise, it didn’t matter. While Max has always felt good fixing things (hence the handyman and mechanic job) he never really had a knack for creating anything. So banging on those drums and making the world echo with all his sound was really therapeutic to him, and even though his sister and that douche broke up, he still went back to the outlet that was music when things really went to shit three years ago.

That being said, Max has still yet to have a proper lesson. It’s been a lot of youtube tutorials, library books, and instinct to this point and for the most part Max has pretty much taught himself.

His younger siblings range from the age of seven to seventeen, and his second eldest sister also has a young baby to take care of, so a lot of his money tends to go to just trying to make sure they all survive. They all live in a trailer park just on the edge of town.

A lot of Max’s clothes are second hand, honestly, I don’t think this kid has ever had something brand new? He used to get his sisters hand me downs once upon a time. He’s never really been on the other side of the income bracket, and he doesn’t really ever expect to be considering he didn’t even graduate from high school.

Max actually found out about Trinity through working at The Undrgrnd. One day he just saw them up onstage, and okay, it wasn’t an, ‘aha this is the thing i’ve been missing in my life moment’, in all honesty he was a bit confused by the vibe they were putting out but they needed a drummer and he needed to drum, so it worked out. After he punched his sister’s gross baby daddy in the face she pretty much demanded that he get his act together if he ever wanted to see his niece again, so Max now uses the drumming he does for them as a reason to force himself to drum a few times a week and use that outlet for his pent up emotion. To be honest, it really helps. Now he only gets into about two physical  fights a week which is a vast improvement.

Max can come across as a bit of a grumpy guy sometimes, and that’s because he is. 99% of the time he’s overworked and tired as all fuck, so Irritated has just become a part of his personality to a certain extent. He has quick temper, and he can be a bit quick to use his fists to solve his problems, which he hates because it really reminds him of his father, but he’s trying to make an active attempt to change. He tends to soften the hell up whenever he’s around most of his family, or small children though, so there’s that.

Max actually has synesthesia, that is linked to sound, so whenever he let say hits a cymbal he sees the colour mustard yellow, and whenever he hits a snare drum it’s a lot of turquoise. Whenever he and the band make music  he sees a kaleidoscope of of colours that take his breath away enough to keep him coming back.

Bi curious tbh (or should I say,,,, bi furious). He’s more in that ‘pretty sure I was attracted to that one guy but nothing came of it and also I’m not sure’(MILES)/’mistaking crushes for irritation’ (JESSE) limbo so, he’s not completely settled in his bisexuality but he’s on his way there so by all means hit him with that gay shit

CONNECTION STUFF I GUESS ;

I am always the worst at this because I love hella messy complex connections but I’m going to try and do something I really am. Before that though if you want some inspo hit up Max’s connection tag here cause I’ve got one of those now and I’ll probably be adding more stuff to it. 

a ‘hey my sibling is best friends with your sibling and I always have to come pick them up for playdates’ kinda connection where like the siblings are always off again and on again with their friendship and these two older siblings are just stuck in the drama. Also, a ‘your/my sibling is bullying my/your sibling’ connection I guess or a ‘your sibling is dating my sibling’ connection like I just think this could be fun. (LORELAI)

A FWB connection! Max occasionally has to let off some steam, he usually does so by going home with someone random from the Undrgrnd so if not an FWB connection a one night stand connection could also work. (JUNE)

A childhood friends connection! Honestly, I just love the idea of people knowing each other all their lives because of a small town so if anyone is done for this let me know. (LORELAI)

Speaking of blowing off steam, a fight friends kinda connection? Like?? Most of the foundation of their friendship is that they physically fight each other whenever they need to relieve stress??? Only true friends let other friends try to punch them in the face. (CLARK)

A ‘you keep breaking things’ connection where Max is just at your muses house every other week fixing their radiator or their sink or their air conditioning like they just have shit luck and Max doesn’t understand how they afford it? We could do the same thing with a car since Max is a mechanic like?? How is your car in here every other week??? What are you doing??? (nAOMI)

A half sibling connection or like I guess step sibling connection if anyone wants it? Cause tbh Max’s dad is a bit of a hoe so he’s been around and he’s probably shacking up with someone’s single mother frank gallagher style. 

a tutor ! At some point Max is going to actually attempt to try to get his diploma, and he’s a Fool so he’s going to need help with that. (JAMIE)

[officialmaleclibrary]

This month we’re showcasing an author in the fandom who has written popular works such as be my light in the dark  and never again left unsaid . Francy is on ao3 as hufflebee and tumblr also as @hufflebee, and we’d like to thank her once again for taking part in the OML author showcase!

1. When did you start writing fics? Tell us a little of your journey as a fic writer.

I wrote a bit years ago, but I fully got into it after joining the Shadowhunters fandom and I posted my first fic towards the end of 2016. For a while I only wrote short, fluffy Malec oneshots, sometimes relating to the episodes and sometimes not, but my style and type of fic I wrote hasn’t changed much over my time as a writer. I think my writing has improved the more I wrote and as I got a better understanding of the characters, either from talking about them with other fans or just seeing more of them on the show. I recently got into writing longer fics which has been a completely new, but wonderful experience and something I’m hoping to do more of.

2. What fic of yours are you most proud of and why?

The solitary fic that I’m very proud of is be my light in the dark  which is a demigod AU I wrote for the Sh Big Bang this year. As I said, I usually wrote just shorter, canon or easy AU stuff, and this was the first time I wrote a fic this length in a more complex AU setting and it took a while, but I am very happy with the result. Another fic I am really proud of is actually a series, and that is my queerizzy!verse. It’s been a very wonderful thing for me for personal reasons, but also the response on those fics have been some of the most heartwarming I’ve received.

3. Who is your favorite character to write and why? Which character do you find the most challenging to write?

My favourite is Magnus, and he’s also the most challenging in a way because he has such a rich and long history which makes him very complex character. But I’ve been writing him and Alec for the longest and the most, so I feel I’m more familiar with them by now, which makes writing easier. Same with Maia and Izzy, but all the other characters are still fairly new to me, writing vise, and it’s always challenging getting their voices right, along with their dynamic with all the other characters in the story.

4. What is the hardest part about being a fic author? The easiest?

The hardest part is finding inspiration for more original works, because writing a lot of fluff is what most people do so it’s sometimes hard to find something unique. The easiest is actually writing, because I am the kind of writer who, once I have an idea and inspiration, can write a lot in one sitting.

5. What inspires you? Where do you find your muse?

Songs tend to be inspiration a lot of the times, as well as just brainstorming headcanons with other people in the fandom. Sometimes it’s other books or shows, even little moments in real life that grow into an idea. And of course, there are countless lists of short prompts which can be a great basis for fics.

6. How do you power through writer’s block?

I don’t really, I usually just wait it out or turn to sentence prompts for easy, quick ideas that will get me back in the writing mood. I tried forcing it at times but it really doesn’t work that way, at least not for me, so I just wait it out until an idea strikes me. 

7. Do you have a favorite fic from another author?

I don’t read a lot of longer fics, at least I I hadn’t until recently, but then I got into Days Of Dark and absolutely fell in love with it. Also two fics I am eagerly awaiting continuations to are Flint To Flame and With Galaxies Inside Us. I have many more I still need to read that I’m sure I’ll love, but for now those are my top two.

8. What’s something you’re looking forward to in the upcoming season of Shadowhunters?

I am looking forward to seeing more of Maia since she is now a main character, as well as more exploration of the politics of the world. Of course, I am extremely excited for all the Malec content because I feel this season is very much them against the world which is something I love seeing and think is going to be very interesting to watch.

9. Can you give us a sneak peek to what you’re writing next? Or at least any hints to what’s to come?

Apart from whatever fluffy oneshots sneak in there, I was encouraged by the first longer AU I wrote, and immediately wanted to write another one. It’s very much in the beginning stages so I can’t give you a sneak peek, but it is a Malec AU inspired by one of my favourite books that recently was also made into a movie involving two boys falling in love over email.

10. Do you have advice for anyone who might be interested in writing fan fiction?

 Just do it, just write. It’s very easy, especially in a fandom with so many creators, especially so many writers, to get caught up in comparing yourself with people in one way or another and that can be really discouraging. But every writer is unique in their own way and each story is different because of it. If you love to do it, if it makes you happy, go for it, and you’ll get better and find your style the more you write, so don’t worry about that, just start.

11. Which queer literature books would you recommend?

I have so many queer books I love, and while some of them are fairly popular, like Simon Vs The Homosapiens Agenda, We Are The Ants and Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe, there are some that I think deserve more love, such as How To Make A Wish, All Out, Queens Of Geek, They Both Die At The End, Dress Codes For Small Towns. Of course, I also have to mention my favourite series, the Six Of Crows duology, that also features multiple queer characters.

[namj00m]

Chapter 8: Reality Check

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Lee Yoo Mi ( You )

Genre: Smut, Fluff, Angst

Word Count: 1.9k

Masterlist 

Wattpad

A/N: I wrote this chapter in like 5 hours and I think it came out okay. There was supposed to be some smut towards the end but I’ll save it for chapter 9 ;)

Previous Chapter |  Next Chapter

Somehow making it work on time, we walked into the building, Jungkook went straight to the practice sending me a quick wink before disappearing through the doors. Making my way to the staff room, only the stylist and makeup artist were present in the large conference room. Sitting next to Sooyoung, I quietly asked her what was going on.

"Apparently some of us are switching companies. I don't really know but according to Jaemin, he said that JYP Entertainment and Pledis made a deal with us and are transferring some of their employees to us and vice versa. I'm so nervous Yoo Mi, I've worked here since the beginning and I don't know who I would be without BigHit."

I placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder giving it a light squeeze, "How could be get rid of you Sooyoung? You're the best or the best, I ever learned from you how to do makeup properly on the boys! There is no way in hell they're getting rid of you. And if Bang PD gets rid of you, just know I'm right behind you, okay?" She sent me a tight lip smile but placed a hand on my thigh give it a squeeze. "This is why I'm so happy I took you in as my apprentice. Thank Yoo Mi."

The doors of the conference room opened, Bang Shi Hyuk walked in with a smile on his face. " Hello everyone, it's nice to see you all today." Walking to the head of the table, he sat down placing a stack of papers and folders down before pulling another stack of folders. Handing that pile to the person next to him, he asked to pass it around making sure you grabbed your own name. "Some of you look very nervous. I can only assume you heard the rumors and I wish they weren't true but sadly they are. I love each of you with all my heart," the folders landed in my hand next as I searched for my name, the black ink contrasting the beige folder, "and I'm doing this for your own good. JYP Entertainment and Pledis Entertainment are wonderful companies and have just as great opportunities for you few that I have selected to go. I and the other companies have chosen ten of our own stylist and makeup artist to transfer either permanently or temporarily, debating on your performance and skill." Before he opened the largest of the 25 folders laying the table, he made sure everyone had their files before continuing. "Sooyoung," her eyes darted to Bang PD with fear in them, "you have been with me from the very start and I couldn't ask for a more accomplished and radiate person by my side. I have high hopes for you and I couldn't part ways with you. Your input on everything this company does is greatly appreciated and I'm happy with the work you do."

The praise he was sending her made me a little hopeful that I wouldn't be leaving. Sooyoung has always requested me on her team because everything I did according to her was "up to my standards". Listening as he continued with the praises and apologies for letting certain team members stay and leave was terrifying. His words almost seemed uncaring towards the ones who were being tossed aside. Still, about 10 more folders left and only 3 more spots for the transfer team, my name was called next.

"Yoo Mi, you were a huge help with the past come back for the boys and I am forever indebted to you. Your keen eye for fashion has undoubtedly made Bangtan look more complex and a force to be reckoned with." He let out a deep sigh and that was when my heart broke, he was transferring me. "As much as I love you and everything you have done, you still have so much more growth to do and I think letting you go to JYP Entertainment will be a huge opportunity for you. Park Jin Young personally told me he loved your work and would make sure you get nothing but the highest ranks among his team. I'm so sorry about this Yoo Mi." My tears stung as I tried to hold them back. I only nodded my head, too afraid to hear my weak voice, to tell him to thank you.

Sooyoung wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to her. Everything was so numb right now. I couldn't feel Sooyoung's hand rubbing my body to help comfort me, I couldn't hear anything Bang PD was saying anymore, and I was starting to lose myself. I hated this. I hated feeling so weak and powerless in something I didn't want. My hearing was slowly coming listening to Bang PD talk again. "Like I said, some of these transfers may only be temporary for growth purposes. It all depends on you and your work. I am so proud to have all of you on my team and channeling your creative energy for not only me but for Bangtan and our other trainees. The transfer will start next week so make sure you are prepared. Anyone who is being transferred you can look into your folders and see where you will be assigned, the addresses of important places you will probably travel to when working, and contact information. Anyone who isn't being transferred, you will be going about your daily routines as usual obviously with the exception of the new staff members. Please treat them as nicely and as fairly as you would to the ones leaving. Now that that is over, we'll continue the jacket shooting here today and add final touches to the outfits and makeup looks."

He stood at the end of the table and crossed to the door, "And we'll have a nice staff dinner tonight to congratulate the transfers. I will you see all later, have a great day." And with that, he was no longer in the conference room. My eyes scanned the conference room looking at the other nine transfers. We all looked the same, eyes either red or glossy from crying, our noses red, hands on our laps trying to keep ourselves pieced together, and just looking absolutely broken. I was the first to stand up and leave. Rushing out of the room, I made my way to the nearest bathroom, locking myself in the stall. How could this happen? I loved BigHit so much, it was my first real job in the profession I was passionate about. It was the place of my all happy memories. How could Bang Shi Hyuk do this to us? My sadness was slowly becoming hatred for the man but my thoughts were disturbed when I felt the vibration of my phone in my pocket tickle against my thigh.

Jungkook, just great. How would I tell him I'm leaving? Maybe it didn't have to, I would just disappear and he wouldn't notice. Or would he? Of course, he would Yoo Mi, he confessed to you. You knew his feelings and you were slowly feeling the same. This was going to hurt. Looking at the message, he asked me if I wanted anything to eat and when I was coming down to the dance room to watch him. I smiled fondly at my phone thinking of how sweet he was. I really didn't want to tell him. Texting him back, I told him I wasn't hungry and that I would see him an in a little while. Getting up from the toilet seat, I let myself out of the stall and washed my hands and face. Staring at my face, I couldn't help but look at how sad and pathetic I looked. Who knows, maybe this will be a good thing. Leaving the bathroom, Sooyoung was leaning on the wall outside.

"Are you okay Yoo Mi? You must be so heartbroken about this." Shifting her weight off the wall, she wrapped her slim frame around me, crushing me in a tight hug. "Just let me know if you need anything, okay? I have friends that work for JYP and I'll make sure they keep an eye on you." She released herself off of me and grabbed my arm, locking ours governing heading down the hallway. I let out a muffled okay and nodded my head. Stepping in front of the practice room doors, she spun me around and wiped away some of my eyeliner that was messed up. "Gosh I hate seeing you cry," she said more to herself than me. "Come on, let's try to cheer up and watch the boys practice." Her smile was hard to say no to so I accepted her little "treat" she had offered. Making sure to smile as I walked in, we moved to the corner of the room watching the guys practice their new choreography. Jungkook was in the center moving his body effortlessly. The was his body rolled and the sophisticated way his feet moved enticed me. Watching him from the mirror, his eyes flickered over to my reflection and smirked at me. He obviously loved that I had my eyes only on him. Sooyoung whispered that she was going to get us something to eat before leaving my side, she not hearing my words of not being hungry, left the room anyway.

"ALRIGHT! That was great guys! We'll take another five-minute break and start again." The choreographer praised the guys once more before they all fell to the floor, minus Jungkook. He made he was over to me saying a shy hello. "What did you think of that, noona? Did you think we looked cool." His voice was in a normal tone but soon all the other guys swarmed around me, the smell of sweat and hard work saturating my nose, asking for my opinion. My heart hurt knowing was I wasn't going to be by their side this comeback and an evident shift in my persona changed, at least to Jungkook. "I think this is why you'll guys will always be number one. With moves like that no wonder why you're on top." My voice was somewhat frail but it didn't waver. The guys thanked me and moved back to the center of the studio, Hoseok, Seokjin, and Jimin practicing a certain part of the dance while Yoongi, Namjoon, and Taehyung laid on the floor trying to catch their breaths. Jungkook moved in front of me, scanning my face,"What's wrong?" His tone was that of worry and his eyes were holding the same emotion. "Why did you wash your makeup off? And your eyes are red, were you crying?"

I lightly tapped his foot and avoid his worrying gaze,"I'm okay I just found some stuff out that made me a little sad and I cried a little. But it's okay I'm fine now." I managed to let out a plastic smile and the younger and tapped my fingers again on his foot. He obviously wasn't buying because the next thing I knew he stated he was coming over tonight so that we can talk about it before running back to the other members. Letting out a sigh of defeat, I continued watching the group perfect their dance. Sooyoung brought back some sandwiches and juice and nagged me to eat. Picking at the food, Sooyoung and I's phone both vibrated letting us know we had to get back to work. Walking out, I glimpsed over at Jungkook who was watching me leave before he got scolded by the choreographer.

[uclaradio]

Interview with Vasudeva @ ArcTanGent Festival 2017

Interview by Layla Moheimani 

Photos by Ed Sprake

August 19, 2017 - Fernhill Farm, Bristol, UK

In previous decades of rock music, the term “power trio” would refer to acts like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience; a tight rhythm section supporting a superstar guitarist frontman. These days, and especially within the realm of what some might refer to as math or progressive rock, the most exciting three-piece bands are those in which all the instruments are perfectly balanced whilst still maintaining their individual complexities (see also my writings on Town Portal and Alpha Male Tea Party). Niche music festivals can often run the risk of redundancies within the lineups, but during both of my years at ArcTanGent Festival Vasudeva has always been a standout. Two-guitar bands are certainly not a new revelation but Vasudeva holds a high distinction in that each part truly carries its own voice. There is no lead or rhythm guitar between the two, just lyrical lines that flow seamlessly into one another without ever losing their distinct personalities. The musical chemistry which all three members of Vasudeva share stems largely from the fact that they are friends first and bandmates second. I sat down with guitarist Grant Mayer and drummer Derek Broomhead in their mansion-tent at ArcTanGent Festival in Bristol over the summer to discuss the band’s early development, their love of Blink-182 and the release of their new album.

Layla: When did you guys first start playing together and at what point did it become what it is now?

Derek: I was playing in a band with Corey [Mastrangelo, Vasudeva guitarist]. We were playing post-hardcore when we were fifteen years old. And we knew of Grant and we asked him to join the band. He played one rehearsal and was like “Nah,” he just dipped. Then three years later we all realized we were playing music alone. So we [decided] “Let’s do this together.” And it turned into something that we were proud of.

L: It’s just a band of three people playing alone in a room together.

D: Yeah. Before we had our bass player it was just me, Grant and Corey figuring things out. Grant was just learning how to tap. But because of his piano background [he] was able to figure it out really quickly and in a unique way.

L: What were some of the bands you were listening to early on?

D: Obviously, Minus the Bear. We were big into Maps & Atlases -

Grant: toe.

D: Yeah, we were listening to a lot of toe. Just music that makes you feel good, nothing too techy or thrashy. Although we were listening to Veil of Maya a lot and that is like the heaviest band ever.

L: You were like, “Okay, that’s the threshold we are not crossing.”

D: laughter Yeah, it’s just something we’d always throw on and have a laugh to.

G: That’s the fucking breakdown kings right there. Those breakdowns are the best I’ve ever heard.

D: Yeah, totally.

L: Your live setup is unique in that the bass lines in your music are very prominent but you don’t actually have a bassist onstage. How did that come about?

D: My good buddy Chris Ratay, we’d always played together but never started a band. There was this one day, the three of us were jamming and I invited [Chris] over and he was like, “I think this is sick.” He was actually a guitar player but he picked up the bass to fill the slot. We were with him for two and a half years and when he was leaving the band, we still had a lot of opportunities and were like, “What are we gonna do? We can’t replace -” Because when you’re in a band, it’s really hard to find someone that fits the mold because you have to live with those people essentially.

L: Yeah, especially because your band isn’t a standard operation either. You can’t just hold an audition and have some dude show up.

G: Yeah, I’ve known Corey since I was seven. We’re not even friends, we’re fucking brothers. It’s such a deeper level of relationship that I can’t even describe.

L: How did you guys first meet at age seven?

G: First day of school on the bus. Classic suburban shit. Bonded on Blink [182].

L: Were either of you even really into music at that age?

G: Yeah, we loved Blink.

D: We all grew up on pop-punk. We were all skater shitheads to the core. Grant and Corey have known each other since they were children and I’ve known Corey since I was maybe 13. I was starting a band and we were pretty into the emo thing and my friend Mark was buddies with Corey. He brought him in and we instantly clicked. I think when I was 13 or 14 he stayed at my house for two months. We never separated. We were that close right off the bat.

L: Wow. And it’s actually sustained since then.

D: Yeah, absolutely. And then I met Grant. The thing about me and Grant is we’re the exact same person but in a strange, different way.

L: What instruments did you guys start on that led you to what you play in the band now? 

D: My dad always wanted me to play guitar. I learned a bunch of blues tunes on guitar when I was 5 or 6 and liked it a lot but I was the kid just banging out rhythm from Day 1. I asked my dad for years to get a drum kit and it got to the point where [I decided to] save up money so I had to work and basically do things for him to show I was dedicated to playing drums. I bought my first drum kit when I was 10 and it was a piece of shit. We bought it on eBay for maybe $300 but I was proud of that thing. I just remember jamming out to Blink when I was 10, trying to learn what Travis Barker was all about. That was a serious learning experience for me. Just to be on your own doing exactly what you want and figuring it out without anyone telling you what to do.

L: It has a very organic feel to it.

D: Yeah, I guess. I don’t think I ever wanted to be in a band. It was just something I had to do. I never looked up to rock stars aside from Blink. I never [thought], “I want to be a sick drummer.” I just kept playing. I guess I was 14 when I decided I wanted to do this for a living. It just made the most sense and it’s been the most fun. Seriously, I could be doing bullshit but I’m out here having the best time. To Grant What about you? You started on piano, right?

G: Yeah, it was a similar thing. My dad played guitar but he didn’t want me to play guitar. He pushed piano and saxophone onto me but I always wanted to play guitar. So I ended up teaching myself guitar while [taking] more strictly regimented lessons for the other two instruments. I gave up sax earlier, then gave up piano and focused on guitar and just taught myself how to play that with the tools I’d learned from the other mediums.

L: You guys have toured extensively over the past seven years. Would you consider that to be more of your [focus] while releasing records intermittently or do you want to spend more time as a recording band as well?

G: I think it’s 50/50, honestly. They are both so necessary and I see them as such fundamental parts of what we’re doing. At this point it’s cut even down the board. The more we tour the more I feel like we’re neglecting recording. And the more we’re recording [the more] I feel like we’re neglecting touring.

D: Yeah. Trying to find that balance is hard.

G: But we’re definitely eager to get back in[to the studio] because it was a long time coming for [No Clearance, the new album].

L: Yeah, it was like three or four years.

G: Exactly. So we’re not trying to push that again.

D: The thing is, we always have music. We sit on our music for so long. We could record a lot right now. It’s just about finding the structure and the time to get to business.

L: Were the songs on No Clearance ones that had been piling up over time?

D: Yeah. I feel like with a lot of those songs, we reworked them to where you can’t even recognize them.

G: We definitely had a cohesive idea towards the whole thing. We picked and chose what we thought would be a good album together, you know? We wanted an album [where] each song would speak for itself. We didn’t want an album of a couple singles. We struggled even choosing the singles as we released them. It was arbitrary. Like, that’s what you have to do but the whole album’s a goddamn single for us.

L: Did you guys have a different intention going into this one over the previous one?

D: I feel like we learned a lot from our first release in terms of structure and songwriting. We really wanted to write songs that made sense and never lost a vibe, but could just keep it going.

L: So Grant, why did you want to start tapping in the first place? What brought that on?

G: Definitely just listening to the bands we mentioned before. Like, Minus and Maps. And I was like, “Yeah that’s cool. I could definitely do that for sure.” and I just [started doing] it.

D: Every[day at] 5:45 in the morning you’d just be ripping a waterfall with Corey, learning how to tap.

G: Yeah, we were teaching ourselves together, the two of us.

L: How do you and Corey put those two parts together?

G: It’s a lot of back and forth. The more we’ve grown, we’ve learned to really sit and complement each other. That’s always a growing concern of ours. We’re always trying to push the limits of that, just playing your place in the song. I feel like [with] some of our earlier stuff, people almost put the math rock connotation to it because it’s two intricate guitar parts going over one another. But at the same time, it’s all 4/4. It’s all verse chorus verse, traditional song-structure. It’s just intricate. We’ve really tried to hone the songwriting process and complement each other rather than compete.

L: I feel like with two-guitar bands it can be all across the spectrum as far as that balance is concerned. But you two actually have your own really distinct voices within the music, which is super cool.

D: Yeah, I would agree. These are the most unique players that I’ve hung out with. It’s really cool to be in a band with someone that you actually love as a person [who] can also blow your mind every single time. It’s always fucking sick.

You can read my review of Vasudeva’s set at last year’s ArcTanGent Festival here and watch video from the London show of their 2017 UK tour here. Keep up with music and upcoming tour dates from Vasudeva here.

[artificialqueens]

My Scented Candle (Part 1/??) (trixya)- Maureen

AN: Hey guys! This took me 2 and a half days to write this, and I’m somewhat proud of it. I enjoyed writing this and I hope you enjoy reading this! Constructive criticism is appreciated, too!

Summary: Trixie and Kim are going to there first session of a yoga class, and she seems more interested in the yoga teacher than she is with actually doing yoga.

Kim has somehow managed to talk Trixie into taking a yoga class with her. The one thing that she’s been dreading to do since this new place opened up nearby. She doesn’t want to be bending down in front of people and have the instructor constantly critique her every move. Maybe the instructor is a huge pedo or something. Kim keeps trying to convince me otherwise, but she’s still not sure.

“Awe come on Trix, you’ve never attended a single yoga class in your life. It could be fun, and I’m pretty sure if they have an instructor at that place, it would be a person other than a pervert going after a dyke’s ass.”

Kim giggled at the end of her statement. She was making a valid point. The instructor would’ve obviously gone through a background check beforehand.

“- and I’ve met the instructor already when I went to sign us up for the first lesson. She seemed very laid back, and definitely not a 50-year-old man looking for hot ass. So, I think you’re safe to go for this first lesson.”

“Fine Kim. Fine. I’ll go to the first lesson and see how it is, then I’ll think about continuing to go with you. But! That only depends on if I enjoyed it or not.”

Trixie couldn’t help but develop a smile as she heard a fainting cheer over the phone.

Unfortunately, the thought continued the stick in her brain. She’s probably going to be uncomfortable the whole time, and she doesn’t like to be stared at by complete strangers. But, if it means making Kim happy, then she’ll stick to her promise.

“Hey, and make sure to be ready when I pick you up tomorrow! It starts at 12:00 PM and I want to make sure that we have spots next to each other.” Trixie sighs “Kim, you sound like you’re 10 years old, and gees really? That was the only session open? Didn’t this place just open?”

“Ya I know it’s ridiculous! But, I promise you it’ll be worth it…” there was a moment of silence. “Hey, I gotta go girl. Make sure set your alarm, back a gym bag, and wear yoga pants, not shorts.” Trixie could sense Kim winking on the other side of the phone. She was about to ask why the yoga backs and not shorts, but her friend had already hung up. I guess she’ll find out when they get there. -

The next morning, Trixie popped up from her mid-dream fantasy. She gazed at the clock as it read 9 AM. With a groan, she got up from her bed to look in the mirror of her bathroom.

Trixie stared at herself for a good 3 minutes, until she began splashing her face with cold water to wake up a little, then positioning her eyes over to the shower next to her. There isn’t any reason to shower because she’s going to be sweating an ocean at the yoga studio. Looking back at the mirror in front of her, grabbing one of her heavy-duty hair bands and yanked her curls.

Now that her hair was out of her face, she took a good look at her own reflection. With much contemplation, Trixie finally decided to at least do her eyebrows and put on mascara so she’ll at least feel cleaned up a bit.

Being done with her face, she went over to her clothing drawer to pick out something to wear. Paying no attention to what she was grabbing, she ended up with a light pink V-neck tee-shirt, a pair of black yoga pants, a boring thong, and a plan sports bra.

Forgetting about the time, gazed back at the clock, 11 AM. An hour left to spare. She went to grab a quick something to eat from her tiny kitchen and sat down on the sofa in her loft, switched on the cooking channel, and began the wait till it was time to go.

——————–

After an episode of Cupcake Wars, Kim had finally arrived at Trixie’s apartment complex. As soon as she got the text that she was here, she grabbed her gym bag and headed out the door towards Kim’s car.

Trixie got into the car, “Hi Trix!” a very positive greeting coming from Kim. “Hey bitch,” responding nonchalantly seeming much more relaxed than yesterday.

She buckled her seatbelt and jolted her hand right towards the aux cord. “Awe, come on Trixie, please don’t start playing your Dolly Parton playlist, I’ve heard it a million times already,” Kim groaned. “Fine, but I still get to choose the playlist, and I promise it will be anything but Dolly.”

They continued to argue about the playlist, until they got to the yoga studio.Trixie was surprised on how quick it took them to get there. “Why couldn’t we have just walked here? This took like 2 minutes by car,” Trixie asked. “We didn’t walk because I didn’t feel like walking in the summer heat.” They both sighed in unison.

Kim parked in the first available parking spot they could find, which it didn’t seem like a problem to them.

They got out of the car and started towards the entrance doors of the studio. As soon as they walked in, both Kim and Trixie were tickled in the nose with the scent of eucalyptus, and maybe a bit of jasmine. It was calming.

There were two spots in the second of the 5 rows there was. They both began to lie out there stuff and sat there waiting for the instructor to arrive.

Eventually, it started to get too hot, so Trixie didn’t bother with the V-neck, so she just peeled it off. Kim stared at her while she was taking off her shirt, “What? Are one of my tits falling out?” Trixie asked looking down the make sure everything was in place “Nope, seems like they’re both intact.” Kim said looking away.

Trixie was wearing one of her push up compacting sports bras, so more than likely there are going to be some eyes making contact with her chest. She didn’t do this purposely because she only had so many sports bras to wear.

They’ve been sitting there for about 20 minutes until the instructor finally walked in, she looked happy to be here, but she also looked extremely focused on what she needs to do.

Trixie started to observe her. She was definitely shorter than Trixie, her body looked lean and skinny, but her arms looked strong, and her hair was blonde with bangs and pulled back into a bun. She wore a sports bra, a loose-fitting black tank top, and dark grey yoga pants. Her face had a strong jawline, light blue eyes, and her nose ended in a point.

The instructor got into her position on her mat and began to speak. “Hello, everyone! I’m Katya Zamolodchikova, but you can call me Katya, and I-” Trixie zoned out after she told her name, and began thinking to herself.

She was easily mesmerised by the way Katya spoke and moved, she had a big white smile, and she spoke a lot with her hands, too. Katya had a fading Russian accent that Trixie could pick up on.

Trixie continued to daydream until Kim snapped her back into reality. She looked over at her friend confused. “Trixie what the heck?” Kim whispered, “You blanked out for a good 30 seconds.”

She wasn’t even looking at Kim anymore, her eyes were facing the front of the room. Then, her eyes met Katya’s. Her cheeks started to heat up when Katya looked away smiling.

Thoughts began to race through her head. Then, she leaned in towards her friend and whispered, “You know what? This class isn’t half bad. I’m willing to continue.” she said smiling.

~

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Houston police officer Jack Caine will not let police procedure prevent him from pursuing his mission to wipe out the White Boys, a gang of white collar drug dealers who killed his partner while Caine was stopping a convenience store robbery.

The White Boys disguise their narcotics trafficking behind rows of expensive luxury sports cars, executive level jobs, and flashy designer suits. Led by the vicious but urbane Victor Manning, the White Boys operate above accusation but not suspicion. When the White Boys steal a shipment of heroin from a federal evidence warehouse, they hide evidence of their involvement by blowing up the facility, killing or injuring numerous people. This brings in the FBI, and Caine is partnered with a by-the-book agent Arwood “Larry” Smith. They investigate the drug theft and the later murder of several key White Boys soldiers by a hyper fast spinning disk. At the same time, Caine is made aware – via his girlfriend, coroner Diane Pallone – of a series of drug-related deaths. The corpses are full of heroin, but the cause of death is a puncture wound to the forehead. Unknown to Caine and the police officers, the deaths are caused by an alien who is extracting something from the victims, but is being pursued by Azeck, a similar alien to himself.

Azeck soon tracks Talec to a supermarket where a battle ensues. After being severely injured in the fight, Azeck is able to sneak into Caine’s car as Caine and Smith investigate the bloody scene left at the super market. After Cane and Smith are ordered off the investigation by their superiors, they discover the mortally wounded Azeck. Azeck explains that he is a police officer from his own home planet, and that Talec shoots his victims full of synthetic heroin and then uses alien technology to extract the resulting endorphins from their brains, synthesizing them into a drug called “Barsi” to be used by addicts on his home planet. He warns Caine and Smith that if Talec is not stopped, thousands of intergalactic drug dealers will start to come to Earth to slaughter its population, as Earth is a cheap source of Barsi which is extremely rare in the rest of the galaxy. Azeck dies and his body cremates itself – but Smith has retained Azeck’s powerful hand-gun and intends to pass it onto his FBI superior to prove that the aliens exist. Cain warns that Switzer should not be trusted and wants to give the gun to his own Chief Malone. The two disagree and separate.

Smith gives the weapon to Inspector Switzer, who reveals that they already know about the aliens and intend on opening dialogue with Talec in order to gain technological and weapon advantages. He then attempts to shoot Smith, but Caine saves him at the last moment. Thanks to information from Azeck, they track Talec down to an industrial complex but are waylaid by the White Boys who believe Caine to be behind the deaths of their soldiers. Talec arrives in the middle of the standoff and kills the remaining White Boys before being forced to retreat after Smith uses Azeck’s weapon against him.

At the complex, Azeck’s weapon runs out of charge and Talec attempts to kill Caine using his drug harpoon. While fending off the harpoon Caine grabs a vial of the synthesized Barsi drug and the two engage in hand-to-hand combat over the vial, resulting in Talec being impaled on a steel spar. Cain retrieves Talecs gun – a similar weapon to Azeck’s – and shoots nearby drums of fuel, killing Talec in the resulting explosion.

With Talec dead, Caine and Smith realize that they have completed Azeck’s mission: Talec won’t return to his home planet, so no one from his home planet knows about Earth.

BEHIND THE SCENES “When we wrap here, I’ll go back to New York for a couple of months, where I’m studying acting under Warren Robertson,” said Lundgren. “All I want to do is keep making enough movies so that I get to work with good people … not that I haven’t already.” How much acting talent Lundgren has remains to be seen, but he’s clearly extremely intelligent, and has already beaten the Arnold Schwarzenegger problem-though Swedish, he speaks accent less, vernacular English with no effort.

The final confrontation occurs in a deserted cement fac tory, filmed near Houston’s Ship Channel, with Caine pursuing Talec, who has kidnapped Dr. Pallone. Talec gets impaled on a rusty pipe and goes out with a bang, literally. His species doesn’t just expire. They melt and explode when they die.

Bruno Van Zeebroeck, DARK ANGEL’s special effects chief, was easily the most direct, un-Hollywood-like personality encountered on the set. He gave Lundgren, who was a European and Australian karate champion in the early 80s, high marks for his physical efforts. “He’s not lazy,” said Van Zeebroeck. “He likes to do his own stunts, and that makes the whole thing go easier, especially in special effects. Instead of having to shoot with tricky camera angles and stand-ins, we can go full-tilt.”

Van Zeebroeck has a rich history in special effects, having worked in various capacities in television and on films including DIE HARD, PREDATOR, DUNE, and RETURN OF THE JEDI. DARK ANGEL is his first feature film as special effects supervisor. Van Zeebroeck said he has been pleased with the effects they have achieved. “We did a lot of spectacular pyrotechnics,” he said. “This is going to be a good special effects movie. In the abandoned cement factory, we set off 14 fireball explosions in sequence. One mistake, and somebody would have fried. But we haven’t had a single injury on this movie. I’m proud of that.”

Another major effect was filmed when the crew blew up Houston’s condemned Franklin Bank Building, doubling for the film’s Federal Building. “My department would be exactly on budget except for that one,” said Van Zeebroeck. Normally, a building scheduled for demolition would be stripped of reusable materials. For movie purposes, however, the building had to stay intact, at least on the outside. “When it came down,” said Van Zeebroeck, “I got charged $47,000 for the glass alone.’

Van Zeebroeck’s crew of eight was enthusiastic about working with him. “He’s a good guy,” one said, while Van Zeebroeck was out of earshot. “He treats you right and he teaches you stuff. You’re not just a flunky to him.”

This was important to the crew, since half were Houston locals, aspiring to the big time while learning their craft in Houston’s gradually growing film industry. ROBOCOP 2 began shooting in Houston two months after DARK ANGEL wrapped. Young said that producing Hemdale’s COHEN AND TATE in Houston is what brought him back for DARK ANGEL. “The city is incredibly cooperative, you can make a movie for much less here, and the technical help is thoroughly professional.” There do seem to be limits, though. About half the crew of 160 were locals, but all the crew supervisors were imported from Los Angeles.

Most of the special FX were of the on-set variety. “There were a lot of second unit effects.” Irwin adds. “that involved this weird tube that extracted endorphins from unsuspecting human heads, but as far as opticals go, there were very few. It was mostly explosions, gunfire, a lot of exciting car chases. I don’t think anyone is disappointed-it’s like Lethal Weapon or Die Hard, another test-tube adventure. Put all the ingredients in, shake it up, and hey, it explodes, makes millions.”

Craig Baxley, the director of I Come in Peace, was put together with Irwin by Baxley’s father, stunt coordinator Paul Baxley. Irwin had a good time working with “Bax,” whose only previous film was Action Jackson. The director Irwin claims, “has a good visual style toward action, and I have a good visual style toward lighting, and we just clicked on that script.”

Irwin has a realistic view of his craft. “The mechanics of filmmaking have nothing to do with art. You’re given a call sheet, and see the call time is 6:30, first setup is by 7. and the sun goes down by 7:45, and you have to do this many shots because we’re not coming back here, and so on. It’s funny to stand back and say, ‘Well, artistically here. we intended to… It’s impossible. You have to think on your feet and go.

“That was the great thing about Craig. He would go on a technical scout of all the locations, get a floor plan of the location or a constructed set, and would map out all the angles and all the coverage. He gave everyone a shot list and this floor plan, with all the numbered angles. He had it written down two weeks in advance, and it was great.”

Pre-planning is a big help for the cinematographer, because it enables him and his crew of focus pullers, grips and gaffers to get the lights, camera tracks, cables, etc. laid more quickly. There are even directors who are very specific about such things, but those aren’t necessarily the kind Irwin likes. “I prefer,” he explains. “to work with a director who says, ‘Here’s what I want to feel when I’m watching this footage after we’ve shot it,’ instead of the guy who says, 35 mil [lens] right here, [camera] 2 feet off the deck.’ Then I’m just filling in the blanks, and there aren’t that many blanks.”

But, says Irwin, he can work with directors who are very rigid about their technical demands, because that gives him more time to light the set. David Cronenberg is quite the opposite. “He will not prep anything,” Irwin remarks. “He doesn’t want storyboards, doesn’t want to rehearse in empty rehearsal halls, or anything like that. He wants to be on the set and work it out with the actors, and the blocking comes from there. I’ve gotten used to that.”

How Irwin chooses to set up and light his shots is often dictated by the location-literally. “As soon as I see a location, it tells me, ‘Here’s how I’m waiting to be lit. If there’s a window, that becomes a light source; if I have neon lights, I have to light it like that.” In the case of an opening nightclub scene in I Come in Peace, when the bad alien smashes it up in his search for drugs, “the street outside was kind of seedy and run-down. Inside the nightclub, it was all very slick and colorful in a different way. The counterpoint there was great for me. It took two days to light and shoot it. There were neon lights hidden in walls”-much of it purple-“and valance lights and strip lights everywhere.”

Matthias Hues Interview

Okay, but then you got cast in Dark Angel, which is probably your biggest role. How did that role come about? Did you audition, or did Dolph Lundgren recommend you? Matthias Hues: I auditioned. I got a call saying that the producers were looking for a basketball player, or track and field champion. I was track and field, so I walked into the production office and saw all these massive basketball players and professional athletes. I walked in to meet the director, Craig R. Baxley, and he took one look at me and said, “This is your job, but you’re going to have to do everything I say. You’re going to have to be willing to die for it. You’ll have to do every stunt because I want to see your face. That’s why we need an athlete, because we need someone that can actually do what the character can do.’ I said, ‘No worries! I’ll do anything!’

Did Dolph remember you at all from when you first moved to Los Angeles? Matthias Hues: He was the first person in Hollywood that I walked up to and asked for a job. At the time, he just made fun of me and put me down, but I was just one of the many people who come up to him every day, so he didn’t take me seriously.

Was there any on-set payback? Matthias Hues: I didn’t have to say anything, because Dolph came up to the director and said he wanted to take his shirt off in the final fight scene with me. The director said, ‘No Dolph. If anyone’s taking their shirt off, it’s Matthias, not you!’

I had more then one challenge on a daily basis, mainly to stay alive where the explosive team and stunt coordinator argued with the director if it be smart to have me to this or that as it might kill me. All I kept overhearing is the director saying, he just has to be faster or jump higher. No worries he can outrun all explosions. Mind you I was nearly blind in the film, more or less. Wearing the white contacts I only could see shadows, I was let around the set most of the time by an assistant once I had the contacts in so I wouldn’t run into things. Once we ran through the shot, I simply remembered the steps I had to take, like running over the cars. I rehearsed this all morning and when the take came I put on the contacts and did it all by memory while the last thing I overheard is the explosive guy saying that if I miss this or that car or stand still on them while running I will be blown up. But the race wasn’t over there. I needed to clear a jump through the window, on fire and land on a small rig built 70 feet in the air, which was packed with a camera and someone to catch me. I arrived with so much speed it was a miracle I didn’t take us all down. Your adrenaline is so high, but if I would look at it now and have someone explain it to me and say this is now what you are going to do, I would say, do it yourself..!

Azeck and Talec (the good and the bad aliens, respectively; they’re both the ugly, what with white eyes and Twisted Sister hair and weird viscous blood-“cream of snot,” says special effects man Tony Gardner, come to Planet Earth armed to the teeth, and everyone on the production is sure their lethal frisbee will be an audience pleaser. “It’s about the size of a compact disk,” says Van Zeebroeck. “It’s ejected from a gauntlet the alien wears on his hand and goes right for the throat. It can slice through steel beams and everything.

“The idea of doing something different with the weaponry intrigued me,” continues Baxley, “but we were working from the knowledge that everything has been done. All you can do is put a new twist on things. So we looked for a different photographic treatment; what we wound up with was a point-of-view that puts you right on board as it flies.”

Like Phantasm’s flying spheres, the disks were a technical challenge. “There was a scene where it slices through a wall,” explains Van Zeebroeck, “and Craig was looking for an effect like what you get when you take a power saw and draw it across the wall-sparking, fire, chunks of stuff being torn out. We tried about eight different ways of doing it-sparklers, igniters, primer cord; you name it, we tried it-before coming up with the solution.

We used these teeny, tiny bullet hits called D-80 quarter loads. We stacked them side by side it took 54 hits-cut them into this wall, set up the disk and the result was great.”

Although the basic alien make-ups were straightforward-little more than contact lenses and hair extensions—their death throes kept Gardner busy. “When the aliens die, their whole bodies kind of internally combust like flash paper,” he says. “Azeck dies in the back seat of Caine’s car, and we did some appliances on the actor (Jay Bilas), making his face look as though it was splitting open. We lined the cracks with tiny, rice-sized bulbs, about 15 per crack, so it looked as though light was escaping. We also made a mouth plate with a bunch of larger bulbs emitting red light. As Jay’s lips part, it looks as though something is building up inside.

“He reaches up, as though he wants to tell Caine something or give him something, and we built a false arm rigged on a rheostat so we could control the intensity of light, gradually increasing it. All of this happens within seconds, then you cut to outside the car and see this huge, red fireball engulf it. When we cut back to the interior, all you see are the police officers scrambling to get out of the front seat of the car and some smoldering clothes in the back.” Talec’s demise is even nastier. “He gets blasted repeatedly by a shotgun in an old factory building. The blast knocks him backwards and he’s impaled on a pipe; the director compared the effect he wanted to a spider pinned to a card, writhing and unable to get away. Once he’s impaled he drops his own weapon; Caine picks it up, shoots him, and he explodes.

“The first rig we used was designed so we could show Talec being propelled backwards and up into the air. It was kind of like a teeter-totter on wheels. In effect, we had Matthias Hues on a large, mobile slant board with a false body extending from waist to neck. Inside that false chest there was a ram with a length of pipe about three feet long on it. The whole platform was moved backwards as the shotgun hits went off, and on the last hit the ram released so you get the sense he had been slammed into the pipe with tremendous force. It was also rigged with tubes that oozed alien blood. Once Talec was impaled, Matthias was slung in a harness.

“For the explosion we did a full-body cast; the head and hands were detailed, but the body was cast in non-fire-resistant, rigid foam dyed a kind of pinkish-white. The clothing covered it and it was wrapped in detonation cord. The idea was for the body to explode into a cloud of pinkish whitish dust, but what’s nice is that because it isn’t flame resistant it actually turns into a fireball. When audiences see that, they’ll know Talec is really dead he’s not coming back.”

Van Zeebroeck’s expertise was in nonstop demand. “This was a very heavy pyrotechnics show,” he comments. “We’re doing some of the most complicated stuff I’ve ever seen. Lots of stuntmen, lots of actors, cars exploding and flipping over, fireballs everywhere. In one scene we have Talec running over the hoods of cars while explosions go off in the cars, around the cars, parts of the cars fly off… it’s quite something.

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“We did an explosion at the Franklin Bank, a historical building that’s 80 years old,” he relates. “Craig wanted to see a wall of fire six stories high all across this six-lane boulevard and that’s what I gave him. It was awesome. We built fire hoods around the windows to hold the initial source of the explosion. We used napthaline bombs inside the building and put gasoline borders outside so that the fire would progress from inside to outside. We had mortars behind cars blowing gas on the fire at ground level and the whole thing climbed about ten stories high. There were 29 different explosions, 29 different wires to multiple detonators at the other end, and they had to be fired in sequence. It took eight of us about 12 hours to rig that effect. I like to see things blow up right—it’s a science.”

The film wrapped its principal photography in Houston the last week of April 1989, two weeks over schedule and over budget by an undisclosed amount. Producer Jeff Young was unwilling to reveal the budget figures (the Houston Chronicle pegged it at $8 million).

Several cast and crew members gave Baxley credit for maintaining an amiable work atmosphere despite setbacks and a grueling dusk-to-dawn night shooting schedule. “Usually, by now, everybody would be growling and snapping at each other,” said one crew member. “But he’s not a yeller. He stays calm even when everything is coming apart. That helps a lot.” Perhaps helping former stuntman Baxley stay relaxed was the fact that DARK ANGEL is a high-action, stunt laden film, and the stunt coordinator was his father, Paul Baxley Jr., an experienced director himself.

Dark Angel/I Come in Peace (1990) Soundtrack/Score

CAST/CREW Directed Craig R. Baxley

Produced Jeff Young Jon Turtle Rafael Eisenman

Written Jonathan Tydor David Koepp

Starring Dolph Lundgren Brian Benben Betsy Brantley Matthias Hues Jay Bilas

Music Jan Hammer

Cinematography Mark Irwin

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY thewitteringnerd Cinefantastique v21n01 Fangoria#97 Horrorfan#04

Dark Angel/I Come in Peace (1990) SUMMARY Houston police officer Jack Caine will not let police procedure prevent him from pursuing his mission to wipe out the White Boys, a gang of white collar drug dealers who killed his partner while Caine was stopping a convenience store robbery.

[personalcoachingcenter]

BEST Ways to START Affiliate Marketing for Beginners!

In this video I'm gonna share with you the absolute best ways to get started with affiliate marketing, no matter what budget you're at. So whether you have $0 and you wanna get started for free, I'll teach you the best way to do that today. Whether you have $100, I'll tell you the best way to invest that Benjamin, to get the most bang for the buck. And if you have up to $1,000 I will teach you the best way to invest that money, so that you have the right tools to get started with affiliate marketing. Stay tuned. Hey, what is up guys? ODi Productions here, I am back, it's been over a week, and I wanna just let you guys know why I took a very short hiatus and where I've been. Life has been crazy lately, I've been super busy, and there's two big major life updates that's happened to me that I wanted to share with you guys today. So the first life update is just my surroundings. If you guys look around, let me just do a quick pan, I just moved into a brand new apartment. I'm the first person to ever live in this unit and it is as you guys can see, a corner unit. Still living in Chicago, best city in the world, I'm from San Diego originally for you guys who don't know my background or my story. I was born and raised in San Diego and I went to UCLA for a few years, actually until I was a fourth year where I had a three five GPA my senior year. Dropped out of UCLA to pursue online business and entrepreneurship, and it's been about two or three years since then, and honestly, can't complain. So basically my channel, if you guys are brand new, if you're a new visitor or subscriber, basically I'm a full-time entrepreneur. I'm 24 years old, my name is Odi, go by ODi Productions, and this channel is all about teaching people how to get into online business entrepreneurship and make passive income through affiliate marketing. So if you guys don't know what affiliate marketing is watch all my other videos because you know, I'm gonna get more in depth with this video. However if you're brand new, you never heard about it, basically affiliate marketing is just referrals. You refer people to products and services, and you get commission if they purchase through your links. So that's as simple as I can make it, but basically to get on with this video, that first life update is the apartment and I'll give you guys a quick, quick tour because you guys deserve one. But the second life update, which I'm so happy, so proud to share with you guys, is this guy right here. Check him out. Taco, Taco, hi! Hi Taco, say hi! This guy right here, his name is Taco, he's 10 weeks old. He is a French Bulldog also known as a Frenchie. He is cream-colored and he is absolutely adorable, and he is just so amazing honestly. You know aside from the new apartment and everything, he's brought me so much joy in such a short period of time. He's so great but he's still a puppy, so you know he's still learning a lot of things, but you'll see him in a few of my future videos from now on. He'll probably make guest appearances, but he's officially gonna be the mascot for my channel. But to give you guys that quick, quick apartment tour, if you guys wanna check this out we'll start here. We'll start with the front door and then we'll move in. So walking into the apartment, I got all my stuff right now, it's a little messy but if we take a quick left right here, guys check out this bathroom. Got some of Taco's stuff right here but basically you got this white marble on the shower, this mirror you know, I'm not trying to flex on you guys, but this mirror is a couple racks right here, no joke. This, like literally this mirror is, I don't know how much it cost but it's pretty, pretty pricey. But it is the nicest mirror I've ever seen. I am a mess right now cause I just moved in today. I literally just moved into my place today. It's been so crazy but I wanted to make this video for you guys cause I'm dedicated and I want to share this with you guys because honestly, you guys are you know, a lot of my success comes from helping other people and basically I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all the customers and the people who I've helped. So anyways as you guys can see, pretty epic view right there. I mean corner unit, floor to ceiling windows everywhere. Here's the kitchen, super dope. I mean you got the Gordon Ramsey stove top right here with the range. I mean I'm not chef but looking pretty official right now. Here's the balcony, I'm gonna step out real quick, it's getting a little chilly here as we head into winter, but actually it's not too bad, it's about 50, 50 degrees. So this is my balcony look out below, check it out, it's nice to get some fresh air. Especially cause never really got too much fresh air in my old place. But let's go back in here, so yeah this is the living room. Pretty large, it's a lot bigger than my old place, if you guys have seen my other videos. Now the view is amazing, but my view at my old place is the best in Chicago, in my humble opinion. I've toured over a dozen of these apartment complexes. But here is where the magic happens. Just kidding, here's the bedroom. I got my queen bed, got the bed frame, waking up to that it's gonna be pretty nice, lots of sunlight. And here is my closet, which is way bigger than... Way bigger than my old closet. This one's actually walk in, my old closet wasn't, but you've got so much room here, it's crazy. Someone could literally sleep here honestly, if they wanted to. Anyways, that's the quick apartment tour. I'm sure I'll get into more of the apartment later in future videos. Maybe I'll do an official tour once all the furniture is set up. I mean everything's a mess right now, I literally just moved in this morning. So anyways that's it as far as life updates goes. I just wanna to keep you guys informed cause a lot of people, if you're interested in my personal life, and you wanna know what's going on, you wanna see my lifestyle, this is it right here guys. And 100% funded by affiliate marketing, which is all I do. I don't do any sort of other online business other than affiliate marketing. I don't do drop shipping, or Amazon FBA, or stocks, or anything like that. I really just chose one thing and I stuck to it and honestly if you just focus on one thing, you specialize, you become a master, you become an expert, then stuff like this can happen to you with time. Anyways, let's move on the actual advice. Let's move on to the meat and potatoes of this video, which is, "What is the best way "to get started with affiliate marketing?" Alright guys, so I get this question literally every day. Every day, every day, it's every day bro, I get this question, people messaging me, "Hey man, I like your videos, blah blah blah. "I just wanna know, what's the best way "to get started with affiliate marketing?" Well, first of all, sarcastically what I wanna say is, "If you've watched any of my videos I give you so many ways "to get started with affiliate marketing "and I literally have videos where I teach people "how to get started with affiliate marketing." However, this video had to be made because the question's gonna keep coming up, so this will be my definitive answer for anyone who asks me, "What is the best way to get started with affiliate marketing". I'll tell you right now, and I'm gonna tell you guys three ways actually, because I'm a generous guy. No I'm just kidding, I'm gonna tell you three ways because people have different budgets, and people come to me all the time and they have different budgets. The most common one is probably people who are broke or they say they're broke, and they either don't have a job, they're a college student they don't have much money, and they wanna get started though. And the good news for you is unlike a lot of other online business models, such as drop shipping, such as Amazon FBA, where you do need to invest up front to get some product, to get your Shopify website up or whatever; you can get started with affiliate marketing for free. Free, $0, free 99, it doesn't get better than that. There's no other online business model where you can get started completely free, as in nothing, nata. So yeah, there is that. So I'm gonna tell you guys the best way to get started with that and then after that I'll teach you the best way if you have about $100, if you have a Benjamin. I'll teach you the best way to invest that. And if you have up to $1,000, so let's say $500 to $1,000, I will give you the absolute best way to get started if I were to get started literally today. Alright, let's get it. Alright method number one for people who are dead broke. You have $0 or you don't wanna spend anything. This is how you get started with affiliate marketing. Step one, start a YouTube channel. There you go. Step two, upload videos on that channel, that are related to affiliate products and content. So this can be reviews, it can be comparisons, it can be tutorials, but basically you wanna create content that is going to promote these products, whether directly or indirectly, and then you're gonna promote them through your YouTube channel because YouTube is completely free to start. Now, what are the benefits of starting a YouTube channel? Alright so, people ask me, "What's the best way?" This is the best way guys, this is the best way. You need to start a YouTube channel because the other methods, using stuff like ClickFunnels, which does cost $97 a month after your free trial runs out. You can get started with YouTube for free today. You have no excuses and for people who are like, "Ah, you know I'm shy, I don't wanna make videos." Suck it up, cause you're asking the best way to get started with affiliate marketing. I'm telling you the best way, it's YouTube, why? One, it's free, two, it's a video advertising, which is the most effective form of marketing these days and it is the future of advertising. It's video guys. So everything is headed this way, YouTube's completely free, and then on top of that, number three, for YouTube the thing is, you can sell people so much easier through video and YouTube will actually get you views for free, depending on the quality of your video. But YouTube will actually drive people and get traffic to your videos. So you know, if you do videos, you'd do like a review on an Apple MacBook Pro, you could have zero subscribers, but if your video happens to be good, they could make it a suggested video and over time you can gain some organic traffic, and start getting views over time if you keep making this good content, promoting it through whatever free methods you want to, or paid, and basically over time, you're gonna be getting views for every single video for free. Cause you'll get subscribers, you'll get people who watch the suggested video who are just browsing on YouTube, so many ways. But basically you get a lot of organic traffic so it's pretty crazy, and honestly YouTube for me has been such a huge component of affiliate marketing because video sells people so much easier than sending them to an advertisement and to a landing page. So I'm a big proponent of YouTube and if you're getting started today, start a YouTube channel. You can do so many different ways. So I already mentioned that you can do reviews, you can do comparisons, you can do tutorials. Now another way you can do it is through personal brand. Now, I'm seeing a lot of these channels pop up lately, but they're very effective. Basically if you are an entrepreneur and you're getting into this to basically go full time into entrepreneurship and online business, you can start a personal brand YouTube. Now this is a YouTube where you actually showcase your highlights, your failures, your journey, and your successes with entrepreneurship, and online business. And through this, you can actually become an affiliate marketer for many different entrepreneurship tools, such as Click Funnels, Shopify, all sorts of different things. Jungle Scout is an example for anyone who's familiar with Amazon FBA. You can promote any of these tools as an affiliate through your YouTube channel. So that right there, great, great, great way honestly. You can honestly take this to so many heights and you can earn so much this way, if you do it the right way. If you invest and you make quality videos like this and you know, you invest in your camera, you practice, you practice your video editing, you make it better, then you can really, really earn a full-time income with affiliate marketing if you work hard. So anyways that's number one. So start a YouTube channel if you have no money. You have no money, for anyone who's complaining that they don't wanna make videos or whatever, suck it up. Beggars can't be choosers. You asked for the best way if you're broke, YouTube, done. Let's move on to number two. So number two, if you have $100. Now I already made a video on this and what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna direct you to that video, but I'll give you a quick synopsis right here. So number two is you're gonna start an affiliate marketing website, and the type of website that we're gonna create is called a niche authority website. Now these days it's possible to make a website for less than $100, much less, probably closer to $70. You can have a full, functional, custom website that looks good, it's ran on WordPress, and it's basically, it has a custom domain so it doesn't say .wordpress.com, or .blogger.com, or .teachable.com, or anything like that. It literally just says blah blah blah dot com, that you choose. So this right here is the best way to get started if you have some money, because when you have a website it opens up so many doors in the world of affiliate marketing. When you have a website you can get approved into the affiliate networks. Much easier when you have an actual, legit website. Now if you only have a YouTube channel chances are you might not get into certain affiliate networks. So that's something that you have to watch out for. So that is my advice, now the video, I actually have a video on my channel. You guys are so lucky, I just made a video I think two uploads ago, where I walked a college student, I walked her step by step, my friend Sam, how to start an affiliate marketing website, an affiliate marketing business for less than $100. I actually show that step by step, by step. So I'll link it right here, you guys can watch that. If you wanna invest a little bit, and I honestly recommend that you do if you have at least $70 to spend, create an affiliate marketing website. Create a YouTube, combine them, boom. Honestly that is a great, great method right there, and that is the best way to get started today if you have little to no money. Whether you have no money at all, you have $0, or you have $70, start a YouTube channel, start an affiliate marketing website, combine them, boom. Alright guys, the third method for how to get started with affiliate marketing. This right here is for if you have, let's say between $500 to up to $1,000 to invest in affiliate marketing. Now I think that there really is diminishing returns if you surpass the $1,000 investment, because with affiliate marketing one of the biggest benefits of this business model, is you don't have to pay for products or services. So there's almost no expenses. The only thing you do spend for is a little thing called advertising, and maybe for certain online tools such as ClickFunnels, whatever. But basically if you go past the $1,000 there's not much to really buy other than more ads, which is good or bad depending if you know how to actually run profitable campaigns. If you don't know how to run profitable campaigns you could spend $10,000 and lose money, or make no money, break even. But basically if you have up to $1,000 this is what I would do. I would, if I were starting from zero, if I were starting from scratch today, and I knew nothing, 'ope sorry Taco. I accidentally bumped into the little guy. What's up Taco, how's it going? Hi! Guys, real quick take a look outside, look how epic this sunset is, look at all those colors. It's getting dark right now, starting to get nighttime, but just gonna show you guys a little bit of the view. I mean my last view from my last place is the best in Chicago but I am not complaining at all today. But anyways, back to the video, okay. So the third method, this is what I would do if I had between $500 to $1,000. So the first things I would do is, I would do the first two things, I would start the YouTube channel, I would do either a personal brand page or I would do sort of focusing on reviews in a certain niche, such as let's say tech, which is actually my first company for anyone who's new. You guys don't know that I started recordingnow.com, that was my first affiliate marketing website and company, and that specialized in home recording, and I actually eventually landed on the niche of doing headphones, and doing professional headphone reviews, which you guys can watch on my channel to get an example of that. So yeah, I would start a YouTube channel focusing on a certain niche, so that you can promote certain affiliate products and services in that niche. Now number two is I would create the website. So another example, recordingnow.com, I actually made the website for that and I combined it with my YouTube channel. I would send people from my YouTube videos to my website, so they can look at other content, other reviews, and hopefully make other purchases or clicks on my Amazon Associates links through my website. So I would do those two things first. I would get the YouTube down, I would get the website down, I would get the branding down and everything. Now the third step that's gonna take you one step ahead or further away from all the other people who are just starting out, is you need to invest in a mentor. You know, I've said this in so many videos. So many videos and I keep coming back to it because it's true, because it's real. If you have the money you need to just pay someone else to teach you their methods, their ways, their plan, the blueprint basically; because you'll be spinning your tires if you just try and do things on your own. Because the way it works is it's kinda like an engine. So if you have all the parts for an engine, let's say you have everything, you got all of the parts, you got the best parts in the world. You got a 2.3 liter Supercharger and you got this v8, and I don't really wanna get too much into cars in this video, but basically, let's say you have the best components in the world to make an engine that produces 1,000 horsepower. Alright, you have all the ingredients, so this is basically what people do, is they go and try and find the parts. They try and find the parts online. And now this is what people try and do when they look for all that free info, is they look for all the parts, alright? And they're like, "Oh okay you need to have a landing page, "okay you need to run paid traffic, "okay your paid traffic needs to have retargeting, "you need to have an email list, okay blah blah blah." So people are like, "Okay I have all the parts, "now I should see the success", but it doesn't work like that. Because you could have all the best parts for the engine, but if you don't know how to put it together you're gonna make zero horsepower. So you could have all the parts for 1,000 horsepower engine but if you don't know how to put it all together, you don't know how to work a wrench, you don't know the plan, you aren't an expert mechanic, then your engine's gonna produce zero horsepower. It doesn't matter what parts you have. It doesn't matter if you have a Supercharger or a huge turbo, basically, if you don't know how to slap it on the engine, it's not gonna benefit you. So basically if you can invest in a mentor, whether that is investing in their course, investing in their mentorship, investing in one on one calls with them, investing in buying them lunch so that you can pick their brain for 30 minutes, investing in books, books like Kindle books, books on Amazon, books from the library to learn more about marketing, learn more about business. There aren't really any books on affiliate marketing specifically because it's such a new thing, that they're not-- Everything that's read in books is usually kind of old to be honest with you guys, cause books are on the way out. But you can still read books that are generally about business, marketing, because affiliate marketing, keyword, marketing. So if you know marketing you know how to do affiliate marketing. It's simple as that, it's just taken online. So that's my advice right there. If you can find a mentor and I'm not saying me, I'm pretty busy guys. I already have dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of students who I am already helping out, and mentoring, and teaching my method. So I don't need more students and plus, I make money from affiliate marketing guys. I'll be real with you guys, I do affiliate marketing, and that's why you don't see me desperate to sell courses or anything like that. In fact I actually turn people away from taking my course because I've gotten a good sense now when I message people, and I respond to comments, messages. I get a good sense if someone's looking for a get rich quick, and the second that I realize that they're looking for some sort of get rich quick, done for you type thing, where they don't have to work, and $1,000 will just appear in their bank account, I say, "Hey you know what? "This isn't for you, please carry on." Honestly, I do that because I don't really... You know I'm not hurting for the money cause I already do affiliate marketing full-time, I don't rely on it, but yeah. So that would be my advice, use someone else. Leverage an expert or a mentor's expertise, his experiences, his mistakes, his failures; leverage all that. Because if you're gonna do it on your own it's gonna take you five years. It took me five years to get from zero to this point. It's gonna take you probably the same amount of time, if not more. Because if you have no skills, I actually had skills when I got started. I had skills when I got into it. I had web development skills, I already knew about sales, I was reading all about business, and it still took me a while. So if you have zero skills today and you don't have a blueprint, you don't have the recipe, you don't know how to put the engine together; it's gonna take you years just to get to a full-time income. Just to get to that point. And if we're talking excess or doing extremely well, then it's gonna take you even longer than that. So anyways, that is my honest, honest answer. I'm telling you guys, you don't need to spend over $1,000. If you have more money don't spend it on buying all sorts of different tools and running all these campaigns, cause if you don't know how to run the right campaign, or you don't know how to run paid traffic correctly, you're gonna waste all your money. You're gonna be spinning your tires and you're not gonna get any sales, or you're gonna get a very minuscule amount of sales for the amount of money you spent, which means a negative ROI. So that is my honest answer, you guys asked it, you wanted to know the best way. Most people who ask me this are broke and they wanna get started for free, start a YouTube channel. People who have about 100 bucks to spend, start a YouTube channel and an affiliate marketing website. And if you have $500 to $1,000 invest in a mentor, and start the YouTube channel, and make a website. Get your bases covered and yeah, that's a pretty good foundation for affiliate marketing in 2017 and beyond, alright. Alright guys that wraps up this video, I hope you enjoyed it. If you found it useful please drop a thumbs up and a comment letting me know, because it means so much to me. I personally read and respond to as many comments as I can every single day. So if you guys really, you know if you enjoyed this video, please, please drop a thumbs up in the comment, it takes two seconds and I appreciate you so, so much. If you guys have any questions or comments for me, definitely leave in the comments below. So before I used to tell people to DM me on Instagram, which you can still do today if you have a private question, or you wanna ask privately at ODi Productions, odi_productions, you can contact me. But the thing is my Instagram is getting super backed up so if I haven't gotten back to you I'm sorry, it's not because I don't like you or anything, but it's because I'm just super, super, super busy lately with my personal students who are my number one priority, and then you know, life in general. Just moving and creating content for YouTube, improving my course, adding new lessons, and everything. So if I haven't gotten back to you, leave the comment below, that's where I'll probably see it and respond to you more quickly. So last but not least, for anyone who's interested in the course, I got some good news and I got some bad news. So the good news is the course has been extremely, extremely, extremely well. It's been doing extremely well, been getting so many new students, and I've been seeing so much success. I've been seeing people start their affiliate marketing businesses right before my eyes. I have students who literally within two days have an affiliate marketing website, business, and brand all created, and done up, and online within just like, two days. And it's just blown my mind that these students who, they're getting these results, and they're taking this action, they're getting these results. It used to take me months to get to the point that they're at, that would take them just one week after taking my course. So it's pretty crazy but the bad news is the price of the course is going up for the second time this Friday. I already warned you guys that I would be increasing the price of the course for a second time. I've already increased it one time, but I'm actually increasing it for the second time this Friday. And I don't know how much longer the course is gonna be open because once I get a certain amount of students I'm gonna cap it, because I wanna focus on those students and actually help them achieve results and their success. So if you're interested in the course, if you've been looking at it, you've been on the fence, you've been thinking about it, then I would suggest you hop on that immediately because the price is not only going up, but it may close in the near future. So that's just the truth, I hope you guys enjoy it, figured I'd give you guys a heads up anyways. Hope you enjoyed the video, I'll catch you guys on the next one. Take it easy, peace.

[mousedetective]

Forgot to ask last night and didn't get a chance to go on tumblr until now, but could you answer all the questions on the fanfic ask? There's too many good questions, I love asking people these :)

Dude, you seriously should have seen the veeeeeeery wide grin on my face when I got this ask. I squealed and nearly woke my mom up. So here are all the answers my lovely anon didn’t ask (most are behind a cut because it’s long):

1. things that inspire you Oh, wow. A lot of what inspires me are actual prompts. Some of them are very detailed (specific characters/pairings, specific events) and some of them are very vague (a color, a sentence, and maybe a ship). Sometimes I’ll see something like an aesthetic list for a fandom (like I did with Star Trek AOS) and all it will be is a character and a thing associated with them and I’ll write a fic out of that. Sometimes it’s a picture that someone will say “Hey, that makes me think of so-and-so character/ship.” And it doesn’t always come from other people; I collect prompts for myself. Quotes, sentence starter lists, AU lists, pictures…you name it, I’ve got tons of them stashed on my hard drive. That’s what’s going to make my New Year’s resolution so much fun, clearing out my prompts list. I’m hoping to at LEAST get the fandom ones done…2. things that motivate you Music. Feedback. Kudos. Reblogs. People needing to be cheered up. Fandom wank. A bad case of mania. 3. name three favorite writers Professionally, I would say David Eddings, Neil Gaiman and Jayne Ann Krentz. For fanfic, @moonstone1520, @majesticlolipop and @doctor-molly-hooper-holmes4. name three authors that were influential to your work and tell why David Eddings was one of the biggest. I had been writing for a long time before I started to read his work (off and on for about eleven years), but when I read The Elenium and The Tamuli I was all “That’s it. That’s how I want to write. I want my work to sound like THAT.” I also wanted to be able to tell stories that are as vivid and poetic and beautiful as Amy Tan. I’ve been in love with her work ever since I read “The Joy Luck Club,” and I admire the way she paints beautiful images with words and I try my best to do that. I also love being able to move between genres and styles and things like Neil Gaiman does (though he’s much better than I am), and I love the sense of…wonder, I think is how I would phrase it, that he seems to infuse in everything. He’s been a favorite of mine for a long time in a lot of mediums and genres and he’s someone I aspire to be like.5. since how long do you write? I started writing when I was four years old, so…since 1985, give or take? But I’ve been writing fanfiction since June 15th, 1998.

6. how did writing change you? I think because I started so long it never changed me so much as it made me. But writing fanfic changed me, in that it gave me a sense of voice? I mean, I had written stuff for years, but mostly for my own pleasure, aside from school projects. Once I started writing fanfiction, I started sharing my writing, and I also gained confidence. I gained a sense of worth, that I was GOOD at something. I’d been missing that for most of my childhood so that was nice. It wavers sometimes, but for the most part, it’s still there.7. early influences on your writing My mother was my biggest one. She wrote when she could and she was so good at it and she always made sure we had books around and we were read to. I also had teachers who made sure if I wanted to write, I could write. They didn’t try and kill my love of both reading and writing.9. do you set yourself deadlines? Sometimes? Mostly I have deadlines imposed on my when I join big bangs on LiveJournal, and I’m usually reeeeeally bad at those.10. how do you do your researches? Mostly online, though on certain subjects I have a ton of books (mythology, astrology, magic & fairy tales are the big ones)11. do you listen to music when writing? Most of the time. However, it’s more to tune out other stuff; I usually regard it as white noise.12. favorite place to write On my bed.13. hardest character to write For different reasons, Elementary!Sherlock, BBC!Moriarty and Montgomery Scott. Sherlock and Moriarty because I just marvel at how complex they are and I think I can’t POSSIBLY match the writer’s brilliance, and Scotty because of his damn accent.14. easiest character to write Molly Hooper. Also AOS!Leonard McCoy and James Kirk.15. hardest verse to write Elementary, to be honest. Even though I love and adore that show, it’s so well written and the characters are so multi-faceted I’m terrified I will screw each and every one of them up.16. easiest verse to write Sherlock. I mean, I have almost 800 fics with those characters, so…18. favorite pairing to write Hmm…toss-up between McCoy/Molly, Sherlock/Molly and Irene/Molly. 19. favorite fandom to write Sherlock, though the rare times I get asked to I adore getting to write my girls from St. Trinian’s. Especially when playing with the Sherlock peeps in my “Where The Wild Ones Are” series because I love that series to itty bitty teeny tiny pieces. Star Trek AOS is also a blast.20. favorite character to write Molly Hooper. She is my Little Black Dress character, not just for ships but just to write. I like to put her in everything.21. least favorite character to write I really don’t like writing BBC!Moriarty. I love Andrew Scott, but he’s a complex character I don’t like very much. It’s probably why I kill him most of the time. I also stopped liking writing John Watson long before this season. I probably will write him very little from here on out.22. favorite story you’ve ever written “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence.” I am super super proud of that story, and the fact I actually finished it, and that it doesn’t veer off course too often and isn’t horribly OOC, and that it’s still read and people still like it.23. least favorite story you’ve ever written Either of the ones I’ve orphaned at AO3 (the genderswap Johnlock story and The Angsty Fic O'Doom in which I brutalized Sherlock and Molly and killed Molly and nope nope we don’t talk about that one)24. favorite scene you’ve ever written Oh wow. I mean, I’ve written at least three thousand stories over the years, so this is hard. Um…in the CSI: NY fic “Five People Who Never Died (And One Who Did)” the whole part about Flack’s funeral. I think that’s probably one of the best things I wrote and probably the one thing I’ve written that I’ve gotten the most “I HATE YOU I’M CRYING HOW DARE YOU!!!” comments about.25. favorite line you’ve ever written It’s a few lines in a Bleach fic I wrote called “The One I’m Most Proud Of,” based on a headcanon that Hitsugaya was one of the children that Ukitake and Kyoraku had rescued in the Districts outside the Seireiti:

“Why do you shower me with gifts and candy even though I don’t need them?” he asked, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“Because of all the children I’ve helped rescue, you’re the one I’m most proud of,” he said gently. “You’re a Captain at such a young age, and…perhaps I felt guilty that we did not spend time with you as a child, Kyoraku and Unohana and myself. It is my wa of feeling less guilty.”

“There is no need,” he said gruffly, trying to cover up the other emotions he felt at the moment.

“Well, then I will cease to do so,” he said. “You’ve probably outgrown it all now, at any rate.”

Hitsugaya was quiet. “Perhaps not so much candy. I hate sweets, unless they are watermelon flavored.And…I would like books, if you feel the need to shower me with gifts,” he said slowly. “Books and other things more suitable for adults.”

“With the occasional toy to remind you to have your childlike moments?” Ukitake asked, smiling a little more.

“Fine, fine,” he said. Just…no stuffed animals. I’ve been giving them to children in the Rukongai because I can’t stand them.“

"Then no more stuffed animals,” he said with a nod. He held out his hand, and Hitsugaya shook it once before letting go.

26. story you’re most proud of “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence,” because it’s literally the length of three novels and I didn’t think I could do it.28. worst review you ever got When I posted the story “love is a battle, love is a war” there was a long gap before I finished it, and I almost didn’t. For those curious why, you can check out this review, because I’m pretty sure I left it up, but someone basically read me the riot act over the story that Molly tells Sherlock about the stupid decision the younger sister makes that curses the village. The whole point of the story was to show it was a foolish, selfish decision, but literally I had been walking home from my job at Legoland to the bus stop to get me away from the park and I almost threw my cell phone onto the freeway because I was so pissed (though keep in mind, earlier in the day this person had shat on “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence,” too, so I shouldn’t have given them any mind because they skipped ahead and didn’t bother to read 2/3rds of the story at the time).29. favorite story/poem of another author It’s not finished yet, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE “Penny Drop” by @moonstone1520. I have been bad and not commented in forever but it’s an amazing Sherlolly story and everyone should read it. As for professional work, I will always love “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It’s seriously one of the best books in existence.30. hardest part of writing Coming up with titles and getting motivated.31. easiest part of writing Once I get into a groove? Getting the words to come out.32. alternate title for “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” There never was one. I saw the quote and fell in love with it.33. alternate ending for “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” There actually was one! I was actually going to go all the way through to the end of him getting his Master’s (yes, I was going to make it longer) and end with just the engagement. But then I was all “Eff it, this is already long, let’s wrap it up.”34. alternate pairing for “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” I never had one. This was always planned to be a Sherlolly fic.35. single story or multi-part story? Both. I love writing one-shots and series, though I will admit I have a slight bias for series.36. one-shot or multi-chaptered story? I love the IDEA of multi-chaptered stories more than I love writing them, as my WIP folder shows…but I’ll continue to write both.37. canon or AU? AU. Oh, AUs are fun. But my real true love is UAs.38. do you reread your own stories? Quite often, actually, usually because they’re part of a WIP or a series and I’m updating after forever and I forgot what the hell happened. ::sheepish grin:: The rest of the time, though, it’s usually because someone left it a kudos and I’m scratching my head because I’m all “I wrote this?” It happens when you have 1.2K stories on AO3 and the titles all start blending together…39. do you want to be published some day? I do but I don’t? I’m not sure I have a thick enough skin to be a published author.41. one song that captures “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” “Paper Heart (종이 심장)” by f(x). If you read the English translation it fits the two of them pretty well.42. do you plan or do you write whatever comes to your mind? Depends on what I’m writing for. If it’s a Big Bang, I do some planning but not much. If I have something I’m trying to do for a milestone, I may plan a specific order of fics to write. But generally I just write whatever I want or whatever my Tumblr users would like to see most that I feel like writing.43. would you ever write a sequel for “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” I actually just turned it into a series last month because I’ve been asked to write filler fic within the story itself as well as a sequel set around the time Molly’s going to have the baby, so yes.44. do you write linear or do you write future scenes if you feel like it? For multi-chaptered fic, I mostly write linear. For most of my series it’s the same but some I’ve had to write out of order for various reasons.45. share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet Without too many details, Character A knows he shouldn’t sit on the throne of the Almighty Allfather, but he can’t resist. What he sees is a beautiful maiden who captures his heart. He’ll do anything to woo her, despite their differences, and sends Character B to speak for him. But things don’t turn out quite as planned…46. share a scene of a story that you haven’t published yet I actually don’t have any yet! Sorry.47. how many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time? Shit…I have the ones claimed by my fellow Sherlollians that I’m thinking about (I think that’s about fifteen to eighteen there? Maybe twenty or so), and I have a crapton of WIPs that are both commissioned and not commissioned that are around…thirty? And then I have a folder of big bang ideas that I tool with from time to time and there’s ten of those, plus my series, and I’m actively writing a lot of those, and that’s not counting that posterofamyth andgreenskyoverme  constantly give me prompts because I owe them so much fic, so…let’s just say 100+ and leave it at that. 48. three spoilers for “The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence” I’m going to do it for the sequel since that story is finished. ( 1 ) It will be a Sherlock POV story this time. ( 2 ) It’s going to start when Molly is about five months pregnant, right about the time they can find out the sex of the baby (and there will be only one, I promise). ( 3 ) Molly’s going to have the baby at an inconvenient time.49. writing advice Always write shit down. Always.