#it’s…less about selling her because we didn’t ever truly click and more about. i am losing such a CORE facet of myself.

[onlyhereforangst]

WWR

Alright y’all a likely final WWR coming at you, you know 3 months late the day of the dreaded s19 premiere. This definitely gets ranty and emotional, if you’re a Gibbs stan scroll the fuck away & don’t send me hate anon. This is bittersweet and it hurts and I’ve been living in denial for months but I needed this little bit of closure before the writer’s absolutely fuck it up in less than 6 hours. I hope you enjoy my emotional ramblings & I’ve absolutely loved writing these for the past two years, i’ll miss it & your reactions to it dearly ❤️

Badass Ellie is allllllways a treat, and protective nick contrasted to her making albeit slightly reckless decisions is top tier. And then followed up by him being impressed as hell??? He’s like damn my girl just did that and I am not turned on, no way, we are working I am not turned on, nope. Nick sitting at Ellie’s desk in the beginning PLS. Feet kicked up feeling mighty comfortable for someone who hates sitting at a desk 👀 only ok with it when it’s Ellie’s, huh Nick? Also I love that he’s sticking with the nonchalant approach like he did when he found her looking up Eastern Europe locations. He knows if he pushes too hard it won’t go well, but he is still concerned for her well-being. Those pieces slowly clicking into place that something isn’t just off- it’s worrisome off. Because while yes he’s still nonchalant he’s a touch more serious this time, ignoring her attempt at a brush off and claiming “he wants answers.” It’s a subtle step up from 18x14, but it’s there. His spidey senses are tingling and he’s getting less and less able to hide his concern for her 🥺 even if he tries to play it off as flirty banter because yes he’s still gd impressed with her moves and even tells Vance as such essentially. 

Flash forward to at the stash house and they find the files plus the mini debrief back in the bullpen…I truly am inclined to believe Ellie doesn’t know here. I mean sure she realizes that the timing fits to a certain extent—she was at NSA when this happened, but I don’t think she knows this is the beginning of her end. She’s like “oh they’re selling secrets too” and “my contacts are all gone” like…I just, she seems too casual and not at all on edge. Idk so far I’m just not getting that vibe. She even brushed off McGee with the whole that was ten years ago almost like she didn’t remember it? But then at the same time she did bring up the whole legal vs ethical- she hedged, but she did mention it. She was not super gung-ho about OMG THIS WAS SO UNETHICAL WTF HOW COULD THEY DO THIS so still……..idk lets continue haha

Ok her knowledge of guns is slightly concerning but also Nick finds it concerning AND hot, boy can’t help himself lets be honest. That “damn” that slips out please, so many sirens going off in that head but also you’re just like well fuck talk dirty to me some more babe. Aaaaand here we go, here’s why I know Ellie didn’t know that odette was going to plant that shit right now. “Whoever took them from the NSA’s code-level servers risked a lot more than their career” with a little like duh face from Ellie SCREAMS that she did not, would not, EVER do that. The leak was fabricated by Odette and the fact that it would be planted during this case was all Odette unbeknownst to Ellie. Or why the fuck would Ellie so casually and somewhat judgmentally be like “who TF would leak something like that, man they stupid, committing treason and whatnot.” And Ellie is SHOOK when Vance tells her it was her. Like shook as in, blinks several times, shifts her weight back, glances at McGee with a flash of surprise in her eyes. That body language screeeeeams being caught off guard. If she had leaked those documents and if she had known this was a plant, she wouldn’t be caught off guard. And no matter how well you can try and play the part, that body language is legit. She’s shocked someone would even think about that and oh man, Nick. Nick’s face hurts me (and I know this is just the beginning). Because a man who has always seen himself as the bad egg, the criminal so to speak, the one who would do something shady before any of the others. He is shook and angry that Vance could even consider accusing Ellie of this. And then there’s the genuine concern etched on his face (and I’d know, the screen is currently paused on his face staring at Ellie with a worried furrowed brow and pain clenched in his jaw) because he knows logical Ellie wouldn’t do this but also he knows he’s been seeing little puzzle pieces fall into place of suspicious behavior and this is just one more thing that doesn’t sit right with him- doesn’t fit the woman he’s come to know and love. And while I know he truly believes she didn’t leak the files, I would bet right here he’s concerned about what the fuck she’s gotten herself wrapped up in. 

And she continues to be adamantly against this, like Eleanor Raye Bishop would NOT ever leak intel, not as a baby NSA analyst who believed she was doing the right thing always in her role. Never once bringing up questionable ethics, she thought it was the greater good, that little patriot. She’s so adamantly against it and then Vance asks if she was framed, and I think that’s the point where Ellie realizes this is Odette. The word framed all of a sudden clicks it all into place and she picks up it might be “go time” for her. Her glances over at Vance have changed, they’re more cautious, calculating. She hears they’ve been leaked over ten years ago and she knows that she didn’t do it 10 years ago so this very well may be the notice of eviction from Odette. The “we’re coming for you, Agent Bishop” and her little look, oooooh Ellie is fired up. Her switch flipped and she’s now gotta hunker down and defend herself until she can confirm with Odette. Vance doesn’t even let her get a word in to “fight” for her innocence. But the fact that she’s getting sent home pisses her off, she wants to be close to the investigation, know what’s happening, and I’m sure a part of her still resists being dubbed that traitor of the state. Who knows, Odette may have never told her how she would become a disgraced NCIS agent, and this may have pissed Ellie off because her integrity is something she prides herself on. Her line, “I’m not Gibbs […] I’m innocent line” is like a tiny bright spot to chuckle in during this dismal finale. Gibbs hate train right hereeeee

Love that Kasie is immediately on the Ellie defense side, not looking forward to her reaction to Ellie leaving IF they even decide to show us. 

Gibbs telling Ellie “sometimes there’s nothing left to be said” when he fucking up and left the team without so much as a goodbye or sorry for committing police brutality like fuck outta here Gibbs. Ellie is CLEARLY vulnerable right now, she’s been accused of leaking classified documents aka committing treason, she’s suspended, she’s on the brink of going on some dumbass undercover op and is begging, pleading, for any sign from you- her boss and father figure- not to do it. That he shows remorse for leaving the team without a word, that he regrets his decision to just disappear on them, that he wishes he hadn’t or he had done it differently. ANY kind of sign to tell her not to go through with what she’s about to go through. Literally any sign, and instead Gibbs gets defensive and bites back that she’s picking the wrong time in her life (LIKE HELLO YOU JUST SAID IT RIGHT THERE IDIOT, SHE’S GOING THROUGH SHIT MAYBE YOU SHOULD FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS BUT NO YOU’RE WRAPPED UP IN GIBBS LA-LA-LAND AND HAVE SAID FUCK YOU TO YOUR SUPPOSED KIDS), so now Ellie is even more pissed and gets defensive back telling him he doesn’t even know what’s going on in her life and if that’s not a desperate cry for help I don’t know what is. like she is begging you Gibbs to pick up on it and figure it out, begging you to do your job that’s you’re supposedly so good at and save her from going through with this stupid mission. And then Ellie realizes that he stopped caring about them. He’d gotten so wrapped up in what he was doing, he stopped caring about their lives, the problems they were facing, anything. Him *not* realizing something was happening??? This is Gibbs, this is the man that always knows what’s happening before you even know what’s happening. So the words “I’m starting to realize that” hit like a fucking dump truck. He’s too preoccupied with his own boat-making nonsense that he can’t be bothered to have even an inkling of an idea of what’s going on in their lives. And he doesn’t seem to care that he’s dropped them from his life. And that’s when it hits Ellie, he’s never coming back. He’s cut the team out of his life and he doesn’t care. He has no regrets, he can’t even be bothered to have a single regret. And I think that, right there, is when Ellie decides she’s all in. I think there was always a small part of her that was hesitant to go along with odette. Hesitant to just upend her career and her relationships (aka Nick, but we’ll get to this), all of it. But hearing that the man she looked up to even though he’d made some mistakes, the man she viewed as a father, the one person who’d taken a chance on the nerdy analyst long ago, the one constant through all the turmoil she’d had, just left? Just left without a goodbye, without remorse, without even a parting thought for her? That was it for her. Whatever brainwashing Odette had fed her that she’d pushed back against from fully taking over finally broke free. And with it, Ellie grieves, she’s tearing up from knowing what she’s about to lose. Lose the man she viewed as a father, the coworkers that were like a family, the partner she’d found herself loving like she’d never loved before. 

Ugh poor hurt Nick, he’s willing to do all the grunt work that he abhors in order to free up McGee so he can save Ellie. Nick knows he doesn’t have the skills and I think that’s killing him even more so. He can’t just do it himself, he has to rely on someone else to clear her name (to which he bumped back to last name in a last ditch attempt to maintain distance and keep some semblance of emotions in check, which is failing miserably), and that is killing the doer we know and love. LOL “so you’re both wrong” this poor man I love him, I can’t wait for the tears that will come from me later 🥲 nick immediately taking Jessica’s help, I love it. He’s like I don’t give AF who will help us but I am clearing this woman’s name if it’s the last thing I do. And then she walks in and he’s frozen. All these emotions running through him and then she’s there?? And she ignores him??? Ignores all of them?? Rushes past and storms up to the director on a suicide mission??? Yeah this is why I said that conversation with Gibbs was her last nail in the coffin. She hadn’t decided to go through with it (hence why she hedged earlier with Vance) and then he went and was a piece of shit so she said the hell with it and went all in. She can’t even bring herself to speak at Nick, barely looks at him, because she knows, she knows if she speaks to him, if he gets a chance to try and talk her down in the heightened emotional state she’s in after talking to Gibbs, she won’t be able to hold it in. She won’t be able to deal with seeing emotionally charged and hurt Nick. So she ignores him and McGee and does what she thinks she has to do. How hard did it have to be for Ellie to tell Vance not to defend her, and that their intel was correct? 🥺🥺 it goes against everything she’s ever stood for and she just went and did it. She hates liars and yet she lied. She loves her country and yet she claimed she committed treason. Her body language once again screams uncomfortable but trying to play it off. She’d nodding and repeating it over and over because she needs to convince herself of the words. They leave a bitter taste in her mouth and she can’t stop it. All she can do is clench her jaw a little tighter and get it over with and convince herself. 

Nick is in disbelief, obviously. McGee looks like he’s five seconds from breaking down because his little sister is supposedly a traitor??? Like he can’t believe it. He’s hurt she would do something like this even though he still knows in his gut that it can’t possibly be true. And oh FUCK the part where Nick’s voice cracks asking if Vance fired Ellie. Fuuuuuuuck me. This man’s heart is breaking for what’s happening to Ellie and being completely in the dark about it. Sure they weren’t really clear on what “they” were after The Talk but still. He thought she was open with him. Ever since the jail cell, things had shifted and he thought she’d been honest with him. He’d picked up on those little things, but maybe it was just training or something, NOT committing alleged treason and quitting the one career she loved. Not leaving him in the dark and vanishing without so much as a word. Not that. Because she KNOWS his past, she knows how much shit he’s been through with people in his life leaving without so much as a goodbye. And his voice continues to crack asking about what’s going on because he’s literally in shock. McGee is desperately trying to keep it together, keep some sort of figurehead for the team. Nick is in shambles ok, just like I’m in shambles. He’s adamant she didn’t do it because he KNOWS her. He knows she would never in a million years leak classified intel and now he’s just confused like a lost and kicked puppy. She didn’t DO IT, and she’s not answering her PHONE. He just wants to talk to her, he just wants to know she’s ok, wants to comfort her, wants to convince her to stop and it’ll be alright and he’ll take care of her and he’ll save her because that’s all he wants to do and always has, right? Save her. Save her from everything in this world that could hurt her. Protect her from life’s dangers. Protect her because he can’t bear the thought of losing her. And that all is crumbling down around him. All of it, crashing down like an avalanche, ready to bury him alive in grief and guilt and despair and anger. How am I supposed to TALK to her, he just wants to fucking be with her. He just wants to be there. With her. For the rest of their lives.

Ellie looking at the hat, please. That’s a lifetime of regret packed into one facial expression right there. She’s looking at that hat, the one she cherishes from the moment Gibbs hands it to her, and knows it’ll be the last time she ever sees it again. It’s not something she can take with her, and it’s full of fond memories—most happy, some sad, a few bittersweet—but memories that have made her life whole the past 8 years. And there’s officially no going back, she’s admitted to treason, there’s no way out of that. She’s having to say goodbye to all of her career without saying goodbye to any of them, all of that is wrapped up in that hat. A hat that’s so simple but signifies so much to her. She definitely was not expecting McGee to come out and so her rebuttals to him are exasperated and grasping at straws initially. She tries sarcasm and then she tries to brush it off “it doesn’t matter, it’s done […] I get that, I don’t want to talk about it” when McGee voices that he’s hurt over this and her reputation matters to him. Because he’s like another brother to you dammit Ellie. Yeah he’s grown since he said Ziva was like a sister to him and just stomped on your heart, he didn’t say it then but you’re like a sister to him too Ellie. I love that he fights her on it, and Ellie is like shit I have to come up with something. I don’t think she expected McGee of all people to fight her on this and I’m so glad he did. A little bit of growth because he is not going to see another person he views as family leave him again. And Ellie’s half assed excuses please, all of it is just such BULLSHIT because when they first debriefed she was just like “ethical? Hmmm” nothing more, nothing about being a vigilante and being up in arms over this like she claims she was. Bullshit Ellie, bullshit. And the PARALLELS TO FUCKING GIBBS. THIS IS WHAT YOU DID GIBBS, THIS IS YOU. LOOK WHERE YOU FUCKING PUSHED ELEANOR BISHOP TO STOOP TO. McGee begging her to regret it and Ellie pulls a Gibbs and is like NOPE. WONDER WHERE THE FUCK SHE LEARNED THAT FROM HUH. Gibbs you are singlehandedly responsible for this shit and how Ellie broke Nick’s heart and whatever happens to her on this stupid mission. I’m glad your dumb boat blew up, you deserve it. 

“I don’t want protection” because I can’t have you all following me. 

“It kills me that I lied to the people I was closest to” not about what you think I’m lying about but what I’ve been hiding. It kills me that I can’t tell you the real reason for this. It kills me.

“It wasn’t years ago for us” McGee rip my heart out please it will hurt less. And Ellie just playing into all of it. Knowing that she needs him and everyone else to hate her and not trust her. Her entire livelihood and backstory rely on them hating her and not following her, believing she’s the enemy and she’s hid these kinds of secrets for so long. Believing she’s a criminal and it was all a farce. She has to play into it. She has to. It’s the only way she will survive, they’ll survive. Odette likely fed her this shit, cut all ties, make sure no one follows, make sure no one is attached, burn all bridges. 

Ah and we’re back to pissed Nick. Nick who doesn’t like to be left in the dark ever, let alone when it deals with Bishop. Getting his edgy self being rude to Kasie but Kasie doesn’t even bat an eyelash. She knows Nick is hurting and she reaches out to him, she doesn’t take his tone to heart because she knows. Nick saying he wouldn’t know how she’s doing is just like a knife to the heart. He wants to know, desperately. He once thought he was the person she would go to in times like these but now all he’s getting is radio silence, a cold shoulder, and screened phone calls. He’s in visceral pain from the thought of her going through this alone, pain from everything he once thought true and good being destroyed in a day’s time. And Kasie is shocked that Nick hasn’t spoken to her. If that doesn’t tell you she knows that they are a thing and the gravity of all this, I don’t know what will. Nick should have spoken to her, clearly he wants to, in every other situation he would have already. But Kasie (and Jessica) just realized Ellie is shutting Nick out and that is Not Good. 

Back to Gibbs. Fucking asshole he is. McGee comes to you desperate to help his sister, Gibbs’ “daughter” and he goes “I think she’s at a crossroads” ???? Acting like he didn’t fucking encourage her at this so-called crossroads???? Like ???? The fuck???? Her crossroads was painfully obvious when she came to talk to you and YOU basically treated her like you couldn’t care less about her. That you had no clue what she was dealing with in her life and said as much. So yeah, she WAS at a fucking crossroads until you SHOVED her into oncoming traffic and said have a nice fucking life. AND THEN. McGee wants to help her and Gibbs tells him he can’t??? “Not this time” bitch this is YOUR FAULT. YOU COULD HAVE HELPED HER. COULD HAVE TALKED TO HER AT LEAST SOMEWHAT AND YOU DIDN’T. YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T REALIZE SHE WAS SPIRALING AND THAT YOU DIDN’T REGRET LEAVING YOUR SO-CALLED FOUND FAMILY IN THE DUST AND GUESS WHAT. SHE WENT AND PARROTED YOUR WORDS RIGHT BACK AT MCGEE SO FUCK YOU GIBBS. 

Ooooh Nick looks lethal, love that look, hate why he has that look though. Lol Nick getting ready to go murder the dude in interrogation because he set up Ellie and he’s just ignoring the fact that she claims she committed treason because he already knows there is literally no way on earth that she did it. And Vance realizing that Nick needs to stand down like fiiiiiiinally someone realized it. Obviously he isn’t gonna listen and poor Nick, this boy has it bad and he’s truly just SO WORRIED for what Ellie is about to do. Because right there, the confirmation that the file was a plant, that was the final puzzle piece falling into its perfect place. Every single thing he questioned, every little moment he’d replayed in his head, it all made sense. And he was so very pissed she hadn’t come to him- and honestly I think part of him is trying to ignore the WHY that’s behind that because he truly wouldn’t be able to think straight if he went there. I think that would be his end, going into the why she didn’t trust him, why she lied, why it hurts him so much. It would be the end, and yet…we’re just beginning here. And of course he knows exactly who is manipulating Ellie, he hadn’t trusted that scum from the start. So of course he goes straight to Odette’s cabin and lays in wait, probably pouring over all the documents and things Ellie did or didn’t leave behind there. 

Ellie pulling up in the truck and that heavy sigh? Yeah, she’s still not convinced this is a good idea. She’s running on emotions but that logical part of her (and deep down, her heart, knowing what she’s about to do- who she’s about to cut out of her life) is whispering of how very bad an idea this is. She still has to gather her willpower to get out of that car but when it’s Gibbs calling her? The same Gibbs that basically just kicked her out the door without so much as a wave goodbye? Yeah, the emotion just came rushing back, pushing the logic aside. She claims she can’t tell Nick because no shit if she has to look him in the face and lie and still say goodbye, it’ll kill her. She’s honestly not sure if she can go through with it. 

OH we back to a Gibbs hate novel, hold on. “I’M REALLY PROUD OF YOU BISHOP” WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. I’M REALLY PROUD YOU’RE THROWING EVERYTHING YOU EVER WORKED FOR AWAY, PUSHING THE ONES YOU LOVE THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LIFE, SACRIFICING YOUR ONE SHOT OF LOVE THAT YOU OF ALL PEOPLE DESERVE THE MOST. I’M SO PROUD OF YOU. Oh fuck OFF Gibbs. “Following your gut” oh shut UP. I just don’t understand this part. I don’t understand it, and I’m trying so hard for it to make sense, for it to be in character. Like does Gibbs have any clue?? I’m sure he recognizes the signs, I’m sure he has an inkling at this point. So how would he be proud? How the FUCK would he say he’s learned some stuff from her. Does he mistakenly trust Odette because of what she did for Ziva? Is he just so self-absorbed he doesn’t completely comprehend what Ellie is doing leaving Nick behind??? And Rule 91 is a load of shit. “When you decide to walk away, don’t look back” how FUCKING STUPID. Like Gibbs of all people, you should understand that is a SHIT rule. You’ve lost the people you loved dearly and you think she should just never look back? Like are you saying this so that Ellie has a clear head for the undercover op? Are you hoping she doesn’t get herself killed by being wrapped up in what she left behind??? What the actual fuck. Stupid ass rule honestly. It’s what you live by Gibbs and look how well that turned out for you. Look at the family you ditched. Nice fucking job. 

“It’s done” and “what are you talking about I did everything you asked” ok she’s 100% being manipulated and almost blackmailed somehow. There’s no other explanation. Eleanor Raye Bishop wouldn’t do this shit. Not willingly, not if she knew how much Nick loved her and how much she loved him (which if her words in just a minute are any indication, yeah she had a fucking clue). Odette calling Nick a loose end just SCREAMS how she purposefully fucking chose the moment Ellie and Nick started to get close to decide it was time for Ellie to go undercover. I just KNOW it. She’s a manipulative bitch and there is no limit to the rock bottom she will stoop to. 

Ellie knows who she’s talking about and the just look of fuck I have to actually tell him to his face. The doubt and grief and guilt and all of it, flashing across her face as she realizes she has to do this. She has to face this, she has to lie. She has to break his trust (not that she hasn’t already) something SHE made so painstakingly clear she needed from Nick. Nick is rightfully *pissed* I mean who can blame him. Ellie with her, “I have nothing to be sorry for.” I know Ellie is just doing her best to burn bridges, the hesitation and avoidance leading up to this lends itself to no other interpretation. She is going to say anything and everything to make sure Nick does not follow her. Make sure he stays as far away as possible from her. She can’t bear the thought of him getting hurt in some way from all this. Even though he may not get physically hurt, I don’t think she realizes the heart break is going to be worse. The painful part is Nick understands, he understands why she wants to do undercover. He had seen that glimmer in her eye when they were Charlie and Luis, he gets it, he’s been there. And he wishes so desperately he could impress every lesson he’s learned on her right then and there but at the same time he knows it won’t change a thing. He just wishes in vain that their love would change her mind, even if logic wouldn’t, their love surely could. I think Ellie starts to realize just how much Nick can see through her and that’s why she owns up to the fact that Odette planted the files, and also why I believe the leak was all an elaborate hack that Ellie didn’t know about. 

Then we get to the even more painful part of Nick giving us a glimpse of his raw heart. The why now with a voice crack and Ellie’s hedge at now wasn’t her choice with her own voice cracking, just is so so so telling. She could lie, she could really work at burning this relationship in a blaze of glory but she doesn’t, she owns up to the fact that she didn’t purposefully choose now (aka right when they were starting to figure things out between them), she’s not pulling the strings. Nick coming back with so you had a choice is like the little 5 year old boy whose dad is walking out on him again and it just HURTS. And at the same time Ellie is also the young, insecure agent right now who just wants to prove herself. She wants to be viewed as “ready” and the man whose opinion she bases way too much of her self-worth in didn’t say he was proud of her until she was upending her career to go on some deep cover op where she ditches everyone important in her life. 

“How long?” “Too long.” Yeah ok FUCK ME. They both know exactly what they’re talking about without even saying the actual words. Ellie’s voice cracks once again because of the emotion in Nick’s voice and what he’s implying. It pains her to leave him and what they’re becoming behind. It viscerally hurts her, you can see it on her face. She doesn’t want it to be too long, but she knows it will be. She can’t fathom that he’d stay or wait for her, she doesn’t think she even deserves that. 

Tbh it’s so hard to put this all into words. To fully convey to you how angry and hurt I am over this shit. Ellie’s being manipulated and hurt that she has to burn this bridge and push Nick as far away from her as possible. She thinks its her only out and what should be expected of her based off her conversation with Gibbs because then she parrots his exact words back at Nick when he begs, literally begs her to say something after she was willing to leave without saying goodbye (which we know is because she didn’t think she was going to be able to look Nick in the eye and still go through with it all), “sometimes there’s nothing left to be said” like fuck you Gibbs for planting that in her head. There’s PLENTY left to be said. Clearly Nick was not pleased you blew him off Ellie, he wants you to say anything that would make this make sense (we all are tbh) and she says you know my *favorite* line, “I didn’t mean for us to happen.” Nick is all of us with his “something else” because WHAT THE FUCK. This is how I know Ellie was going full throttle with her strategy of pushing Nick away. This was the one thing she could say that would hit hardest for Nick. The man who is insecure about anyone truly loving him and him being a person deserving of a love that “stays” and for Ellie to say she didn’t mean to fall in love and even though they did she’s still going to leave because it was never in the plan, just damn, stab him in the back and twist that knife Ellie. And just like her body language this WHOLE TIME 💀💀💀 she’s just shaking her head because she doesn’t even believe her own words, she doesn’t want to confront this, she doesn’t want to end this. There’s tears in her eyes because everything she’s saying is a lie and it hurts it hurts so damn much but she has to. She’s been manipulated into believing she has to do this, has to say these things. And his body language too, I mean he is tight. He is standing so rigid, hands clasped behind his back because he’s trying to convey openness and vulnerability and it’s so much growth for Nick, so much growth and Ellie is still ripping his heart out and stomping on it. And when she chokes out that goodbye you can hear and feel how final she believes it to be. She doesn’t think he’ll stick around or even want to. In this vein I think she underestimates his love for her here. And if the show goes a different way with it, they’re little bitches. It is in character for Nick to do everything in his power and outside of the rules to find & save Ellie. I will riot if I don’t see unhinged Nick some point early in s19 (I say like I’m going to watch religiously), because that is the only logical reaction to her leaving like this. 

The kiss. It’s a beautiful fucking kiss and it’s ruined by context. It’s an emotional kiss, Ellie throws her body behind it, gripping his face with both hands because she doesn’t want to let him go (even though she’s going to), she clutches to this memory like she clutches to his face. Nick’s clenched expression because he doesn’t want to open his heart up to more heartbreak but when he leans into the kiss and gives the kiss back you know he’s a goner. And maybe a part of him doesn’t care because this may be his last memory of her for a long time and he’s going to burn it into his memory too. It’s why he keeps his eyes shut after she’s left for so long, he doesn’t want to open them and the reality of her retreating back be the last thing he sees of Ellie. He wants the kiss to be the last thing, he doesn’t want to face his reality. His hands had even come out from behind his back, reaching out to her subconsciously willing her not to leave. Meanwhile, Ellie opens her eyes for that last kiss on the cheek to get one last long look at Nick, one last look that will hold her over for who knows how long. A look at his vulnerable face, a face she loves. A look that she hopes will keep her warm at night even though she knows she’ll never get it this close to her again because there’s no way in hell that Nick would entertain the thought of them together again after what she’s done. She doesn’t look back because she can’t. She can’t see Nick’s wounded face just standing there, broken or she won’t go. And Nick tries to stand resolute, the anger and pain flashing across his face before he grits his teeth together and *hopefully* resolves to find Odette and kill her I mean save Ellie I mean kill Odette 🙊

Anyways, there’s only a very specific way this entire finale makes sense. And I know Emily’s pregnancy threw it for a loop, but they can still SOMEWHAT fix this. Do I think they will? Hell fucking no. I have zero expectations, in fact negative expectations. I have a feeling what we were supposed to see is Nick going on an absolute swan rampage to find Ellie and clear her name throughout the first couple episodes of s19 and with Emily leaving the show, I’m not sure how they’ll twist this. I can see why they thought this was a fun cliffhanger because it would eventually be resolved and I do believe they would’ve eventually gotten ellick together after Nick found her. But unless Emily comes back at the end of the show, that won’t happen, at least not on screen. And with that I just 🥲 I’m still mad, I’m still broken inside but yeah. I’m a masochist before anything else apparently and so I made myself rewatch and write this out. A bittersweet pissed off adieu to the WWR. maybe one day i’ll find another ship & show that gets this level of meta out of me, but it’s been real ellick, it’s been really real ❤️

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[kurowrites]

The Live-In Boyfriend - Chapter 1

Looking for live-in boyfriend, the title read.

It had only been put up the day before.

Well, well, Wei Ying thought to himself. Isn’t that exactly what I was looking for?

He clicked on the link and quickly read through the text of the advert.

Since you all enabled me yesterday - have a chapter of Wei Ying being supremely stupid. Link to AO3.

(Note that this fic is going to get mature later on. Also don’t try this at home pls.)

---

Wei Ying usually wasn’t the kind of person that eavesdropped on the conversations of people he didn’t know. Most of the time, it wasn’t worth the effort of spying, anyway.

(Too many boring people in this world.)

But something about the day he’d had so far, and the way the two girls seated next to him kept giggling and exclaiming in (pretended?) shock, made him listen in. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. He was just sitting there, sipping on his depression coffee, trying to decide what he was supposed to do next.

“A website?” the girl with a truly impressive set of pink lacquered nails exclaimed. “Isn’t that super sketchy?”

She emphasised ‘sketchy’ by tapping her long, sharp nails onto the tabletop.

“Noo, not at aaaall,” the other girl, dressed in a figure-hugging dress the colour of a ripe banana, replied. “You have to provide identification and they do a background check on you, to make sure you’re not a criminal or something. The sugar daddies too, of course.”

“Oh really?” Pink Nails asked, and immediately looked a lot more interested in the topic.

Well, Wei Ying had to agree with Pink Nail’s interest – he could use one of those sugar daddies himself. Someone willing to pay for his expenses, that would be nice. A lot better than being homeless, at any rate.

“Yeah, and you can even chat with them before meeting them,” Banana said, twirling her hair around her finger coquettishly. “It’s not like I’m going to go out with just any guy.”

“And that’s where you met him?”

“Yeah,” Banana said, leaning back a little, clearly satisfied to have the undivided attention of her companion. “You have lots of choices, and you can put in your preferences, too.”

She leaned forward again, and lowered her voice to a fake whisper that did nothing to make her voice less audible over the soft café music.

“I was really lucky with my current sugar daddy. He’s really generous because he has an established career and a lot of money. He likes kinky sex, but that’s fine, because he also kinda gets off on me sleeping with other guys, so it’s not like I can’t still go out and do whatever I want. I’m just providing him with company and a pretty thing to hang off his arm whenever he goes to a party or something.”

The two women laughed, and returned to the discussion of the advantages of this website.

Wei Ying’s attention was caught. He looked down at the sad little weekend bag next to his chair that contained nearly all of Wei Ying’s worldly possessions, discounting the boxes of books he had managed to stow away in Jiang Yanli’s attic. He’d had to sell all his furniture because he had no space where he could put it anymore. The landlord had kicked him out despite Wei Ying’s best attempts at negotiation (curse his entire bloodline), and now Wei Ying was, essentially, homeless. He had no idea how to weather the next few weeks. He had no stable address, and he needed to look for a new job. Things weren’t looking good for him.

So, he sipped on his possibly last coffee for a long time and pretended not to listen in to the conversation of the two women next to him. And when Banana finally mentioned the name of website she had been using, he felt compelled to casually unpack his own laptop, make use of the café’s free Wi-Fi, and enter the name of the website into his browser.

He was just curious, that was all.

His search returned with the result that this website was in fact the equivalent of a dating website, only for sugar babies and other forms of… special companionship. The company claimed to be classy and strict with their background checks, made assertions of quality and high customer satisfaction. And the registration as a potential sugar baby, companion, or whatever else they wanted to call it, was free.

Wei Ying paused for a moment, wondering if he really should do such a thing. All assertions from the provider aside, it was still a risky thing.

He took another look at the bag at his feet. It couldn’t get much worse than it already was, could it?

He clicked the ‘new account’ button and filled out the application without a second thought.

---

Looking for the right sugar-person wasn’t exactly a simple thing to do, Wei Ying realised about three pages in. He had decided early on that the gender of this potential sugar person didn’t actually matter, but that had the simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of increasing his possible matches considerably. He wasn’t sure how to make a choice in this wild new world that had suddenly opened himself up to him.

He was a bit nervous about the having sex part, too. He tried to imagine having sex with someone he didn’t really know and maybe didn’t find very attractive, but he drew a complete blank. It might be better to stay on the safe side and choose someone who didn’t have sex as a prerequisite. That might work out better for everyone involved.

God, with all these options and decisions, it was as complicated as looking for a job.

Well, technically, if he did it right, it might be a job. Well, not really, but he might get enough money to keep him afloat for a little bit. And with enough money, he might be able to both afford a decent apartment and find a well-paying new job.

He absent-mindedly scrolled past adverts looking for highly specific… qualifications that Wei Ying definitely didn’t have, and was considering giving up when he saw an advert for the same city he was living in.

Looking for live-in boyfriend, the title read.

It had only been put up the day before.

Well, well, Wei Ying thought to himself. Isn’t that exactly what I was looking for?

He clicked on the link and quickly read through the text of the advert.

Looking for live-in boyfriend

The ideal candidate must be clean, quiet, obedient, and sophisticated. Must be able to play his part convincingly around relatives, business associates, and friends. Good table manners and skilful socialising are required.

Physical relations are not required, but negotiable if so desired. Strictly no romantic entanglements. Affairs during the duration of the contract will lead to immediate termination.

I offer a large apartment with own private room. All ensuing costs (rent, food, clothing, allowance etc.) are covered.

The advert didn’t reveal much about the writer and his personality, so it was difficult to say anything about how well they’d fit together. But the man offered a room! Without the prerequisite of sex!

He clicked on the profile of this potential sugar daddy to find out more about him. The man, who went by L. Z., was the same age as Wei Ying, and had been working in his family’s company ever since he graduated university. Someone who had been born into wealth, probably.

He lived alone and was openly gay, so his family would expect him to bring a man to public events and family dinners. His hobbies included music, reading and tea ceremony. All in all, Wei Ying started to wonder if he was being catfished, because the age and occupation said successful young man, but the rest of it said boring middle-aged uncle with a receding hairline.

But what did Wei Ying care about boring when such a perfect opportunity presented itself to him? He didn’t want some kind of old, kinky dude. He simply wanted a place to stay, and if that stay came with an allowance and some social contact, it would be perfect for him. He had good table manners. And he did well at socialising. Most of the time.

He decided that ‘quiet’ and ‘obedient’ were relative things. He could be quiet! Sometimes! If he was reading interesting things!

He was going to contact this person, worries and fears be damned. What use was it to wait around? If this man was actually for real, he might get snatched up by someone else quickly.

He clicked on the 💌 button on the sidebar of the profile, and typed out a quick message.

Hi L. Z.!

My name is Wei Ying. I live in the same city as you and as coincidence would have it, I’m currently looking to be a live-in boyfriend! We’re the same age, too, so I think we would work very well as a couple!

I also like reading (if you have a library, I’d be all over that) and I think I can safely promise not to have any affairs while we’re dating. As for the rest, I think it would be best to judge for yourself. I’m free the next few days, so I have time for a personal meeting!

I’m a little curious though – why are you looking for a live-in boyfriend? Not to judge you, since I’m obviously responding to your advert, but you seem like a man that’s very put together. You probably could choose anyone you wanted, so why an advert?

Best, Wei Ying

He didn’t really think that he would get an answer soon, and half expected his message to go ignored, but it took barely an hour until a notification pinged on his phone, indicating that he’d received a reply.

He eagerly clicked the ‘view message’ button.

Dear Wei Ying

Thank you for your message.

I agree with you. Someone from the same city and of the same age would be a good potential partner. If you do not mind, I would like to invite you to my apartment for a personal meeting. We can meet in a café if you are more comfortable meeting on neutral ground, but you should know where you would live before you make any decisions.

To answer your question: I am not interested in a romantic relationship, but my family has been concerned about my happiness ever since I came out as gay. They want to see me in a fulfilling relationship. I want to make them stop worrying. A contractual arrangement will take care of these issues. Once we terminate the relationship, it would also provide me with a good reason not to date for some time.

Best regards,

Lan Zhan

Wei Ying gaped a little. That was a… very decisive statement. This Lan Zhan certainly didn’t beat around the bush.

Oh god, was he really catfished? Human trafficking, perhaps? But then…

He had no time to lose, and getting a home and money as a package deal was very tempting. If Jiang Yanli ever got wind of this, she might strangle him with her own bare hands. But well. She never would get wind of it. Wei Ying would make sure of that.

He pulled out his laptop again, and typed out a second answer.

Hi Lan Zhan!

Nice to meet you again. 😊

Meeting you at the apartment is fine, just know that I’m going to inform a friend of my whereabouts and check in with them to make sure everything is fine.

Tell me your address and a time that works for you!

Best,

Wei Ying

He sent the message and within a few minutes, he had an address and a time – the next day, at 5.30 pm. Lan Zhan also assured him that he was perfectly fine with Wei Ying telling a friend where he was. So maybe not a catfish, after all?

Wei Ying immediately looked for the address online, and it was a nice, modern building in the centre of town. Not some kind of seedy warehouse or an abandoned house. If he ended up disappearing in that part of town, there would probably be witnesses.  

He sent a short confirmation to Lan Zhan, telling him that he would be there at the desired time. And then, he spent the rest of the evening panicking about what he had done.

He just barely remembered that he needed to contact Nie Huaisang and use him as security. Nie Huaisang was the only one he could think of right now that wouldn’t try to talk him out of this. Jiang Cheng would just straight up murder him.

He had committed now. There was no way back.

---

His internet search had already informed him that the apartment was in the better part of town, so Wei Ying had expected a rather classy apartment building. What he hadn’t expected was that said apartment building came with an actual concierge. He’d never had to go through a concierge to meet any of his friends so far. The entrance hall almost looked like a hotel.  

Good gracious, this might all be an elaborate prank.

On the other hand, if he disappeared, now he had another witness.

He walked up to the concierge’s desk and smiled at the man behind the desk winningly.

“Hi, my name is Wei Ying. I’m here to meet Lan Zhan.”

The man gave him a critical look, from his ponytail down to the thick black leather boots he always wore, and picked up the phone in front of him.

He entered a number and let it ring a few times.

“Good evening, Mr. Lan,” the concierge said when someone picked up on the other end of the line. “A Mr. Wei is here to see you. Yes, understood. I will send him up immediately.”

The concierge came out from behind his desk and directed Wei Ying to the elevator. He held the door open for Wei Ying and pushed the button for the right floor, then bid him goodbye.

“Thank you!” Wei Ying called through the closing elevator doors, but the concierge was already out of sight.

Oh well.

He was going to meet Lan Zhan. Right now.

He quickly pulled out his mobile phone and tapped out a message to Nie Huaisang.

[Wei Ying, 05:29 pm] I’m going up to the apartment now. IT COMES WITH A CONCIERGE. 😱

The door pinged and opened onto an empty hallway with elegantly tiled floor and a tasteful but abstract mural on the wall. Wei Ying stepped out of the elevator and looked around curiously. Which way was he supposed to go?

“Wei Ying?”

There, at the end of the hallway, a man stood in the frame of an opened door.

This must definitely be a catfish, Wei Ying decided then and there.

There was no way that a man this beautiful needed his help.

[seokjinsdisciple]

You’re On, Doll

requested!

You and Jaehyun are CEO’s of rival companies, hating each other for as long as you can remember. Will you be able to find common ground after an important file goes missing, or will the two of you never quite see eye to eye?

enemies to lovers! jaehyun x reader

warnings: degradation, oral fem recieving, they have sex in an office so, one thigh slap (i really held myself back ok), finger sucking, i think thats it?

word count: 2.6k 

There was truly only one person on this planet that you hated with your whole being. It’s not like you made it a habit to argue with your other business competitors, but something about the way Jung Jaehyun carried himself left a bitter taste in your mouth.

So, you tried to ignore all possible encounters with him, something that was much harder when all of your friends were the same. That was one of the downsides of running a successful programming company, your world was small. 

The situation you were currently in didn’t surprise you at all, your mind drifting from the girl beside you who hadn’t stopped trying to sell herself to your company, towards where Jaehyun sat. A smirk formed on his lips at your obvious disgust. This is one of the games he played, bring someone who either loved or hated your company and let them run wild during what was supposed to be a relaxing party. 

“I don’t currently have any open positions,” you said to the girl, never breaking your gaze from Jaehyun’s. He wanted you to crack first and be the one to approach him, but you weren’t that weak, “please excuse me while I grab a drink.”

You made your way over to the drink table, smiling and chatting with a few people who lingered near it. You knew exactly who was approaching as their smiles dropped and weary glances came your way. You finished your drink, grabbing another before rolling your eyes and turning around.

“What do you want?” You asked, taking in the appearance of the man stood before you. It was no secret that Jaehyun was attractive, he always had been, but tonight it seemed to be worse. His suit was embroidered in gold, as if he were some sort of Mafia boss. The smirk that painted his face was only amplified by the way his hair was pushed back. His hands were stuffed casually in his pockets and if you hadn’t been so focused on what he looked like, you might’ve heard him respond, and then repeat himself, and then laugh. 

“Am I that distracting?” He smiled as his hand wrapped around your wrist, tightly enough to spark a feeling of lust in your belly but not enough to hurt. Jaehyun knew you had a thing for his hands wrapped around your various body parts. He let out another laugh at your gaze, pulling you through the ballroom and into the hall. 

“You aren’t distracting, you just look like you’re trying too hard,” you snapped, following behind him into a smaller living room. 

“Is that why you were fucking me with your eyes?”

“I was not,” you hissed, a moan slipping from your lips as he attached his lips to your neck, hands drifting across your waist and across your open back, “Jae, I told you that we aren’t doing this anymore.”

He let out a little sigh, his forehead resting against your collarbone. 

“You’re right, I know,” he muttered, hands still on your hips as he took a step away, “I’m sorry.”

You grabbed his hand lightly, leading him to sit on the couch next to you, “What's with the girl?”

“What girl?” Jaehyun asked, confusion crossing his face for only a minute before realization dawned on him, “Ah, she’s one of my interns, and I caught her looking up open positions in your company.”

“So you thought you would torture me as a punishment?” You asked, finishing your martini before resting your head against the back of the couch. 

“What can I say, I hate disloyal employees,” he shrugged, finishing off his own whiskey before copying your position and turning his head to look at you, “Plus it was a win-win situation, I get to annoy the hell out of you and my mother doesn’t badger me to bring a date.”

“I don’t understand why people find you so charming,” you rolled your eyes, glancing at him, “and I really don’t understand how so many women end up in your bed.”

At this Jaehyun laughed, “Don’t forget you’ve been in my bed,” he smirked.

“Shut up,” you slapped his arm lightly, “That was a lapse of judgment.”

“It was several lapses of judgment,” he smirked, “Unless you aren’t counting the times we weren’t in bed.”

“I’m only counting the times that you made me cum. So yes, it was a lapse of judgment,” you said, emphasizing the endings of the words. You were working him up now, and you knew it. You felt him before you even had a chance to process your assumed victory. His hand was on your thigh, his grip light, and barely-there as he spread your legs open. You held your breath, eyes fluttering closed as his finger ghosted over your core. His touch was gone in a second, a laugh in its stead as your eyes shot open. 

“We both know that that’s a lie, doll,” Jaehyun smirked at the way you slightly squirmed in your seat, “See ya around, YN.”

Jaehyun smirked as your jaw dropped, waving with a smile as he left you in that room, turned on and frustrated. As much as you hated to admit it, you and Jaehyun had been fucking around for years now, and you just recently cut it off. If you were being honest, you missed him, but you would never admit that to anyone, let alone him. You just groaned at your luck, standing up and hurrying out of the room and back into the ballroom to retrieve your things. 

You should have been suspicious then, the way he had led you out and distracted you. You didn’t notice though, at least not until a few days later that your file was missing and the only person who would want it had distracted you while his evil little minion had stolen the file from your purse. You were angry. Very angry. That file had a list of investors in it, and you’d be damned if Jung Jaehyun stole them from you. 

So here you were, strutting through the lobby of his office. You pushed past security officers, most of them knowing who you were and glancing quizzically at their partners. ITs not like this was the first time you had been to his company if anything you had been there several times for peace meetings and just overall business. So you knew where you were going. 

You made it to his office first, grunting in annoyance when it was empty. You strode around the corner, anger completely blinding you as you stormed into the middle of his conference room. Everyone stopped in their tracks, looking from Jaehyun to you. You nodded briefly at the CFO, your close friend Johnny, before speaking. 

“Get your ass in your office, right now,” you growled, storming out of the board room and back into his office, praying that he would follow you. You breathed out a sigh of relief as you heard the lock click. 

“What the hell is this all about?” Jaehyun asked, and you turned to look at him. Damn him. His hands were on his hips, his tie crooked and face flushed with anger. 

“I want my file back.”

“I don’t have your file,” he said easily, the only indicator of his lie the small movement of his index finger against his hip.

“Jaehyun, I don’t have time for this. You’re lying. I know you’re lying. We both know you’re lying so give me my goddamn investor file before I lose my shit.”

He glanced out of the windows of his office, and you followed his gaze. A small crowd had gathered. They pretended to not look as our eyes fell onto them. Jaehyun let out an almost inaudible curse as he made his way to the window and hastily closed the blinds. 

“You fucking ruin everything, you know that?” he asked, his voice much less angry than it had been before. 

“I ruin everything?” you asked incredulously, “I ruin everything? Jaehyun you’re the one who stole my file! Since when have you ever done business this way, I mean Jesus! You’re acting like a-”

“Just shut up, and listen to me,” He raised his voice slamming his hand against the window, making you jump a little where you stood. 

He turned to look at you then, his eyes glassy and cheeks redder than before, “I’m in love with you.”

You stood there for a moment, looking for his tell, looking for any sign that he was lying. You didn’t see anything, and suddenly your heart was beating at two times the speed, breath caught in your throat and nerves twisting your belly into knots. 

“I’ve been talking to your dad, about merging the companies and being co-CEOs. I knew you’d never give your company up and I don't want you to. But Jesus, I can’t go on any more dates that my mother sets up for me because I don't want to marry any of them. I want to marry you. And I know that’s insane, and I know you hate me. But its the truth. It’s the truth,” he finished, his breathing ragged and refusing to meet your eyes. 

“Jaehyun,” you paused, taking a deep breath, “I think I love you too.”

“You- you do?” he asked, eyes snapping to where you stood, your anger completely melted and your eyes just as teary as his, “Say it again. God, please say it again.”

“I love you,” you muttered, your grin growing, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He rushed towards you then, lips finding yours messily, the two of you grinning too much to actually care. The force of the kiss pushed you back against his desk, the two of you exploring each other's bodies with your hands as if this was the first time. You melted into him, his fingers finding the zipper of your dress and tugging at it. When it was unzipped he pulled it off, never once breaking the kiss. 

You tugged at his tie, bringing him as close to you as possible. You whined as he broke the kiss, arms leaving your body as he hastily cleared off a spot for you on his desk.

“Patience, princess,” he muttered as he kissed the side of your head, guiding you onto his desk, “Spread your legs for me, doll, let me take care of you.”

You wasted no time, complying easily to his command as he knelt before you. He was slow at first, kissing up the side of your leg as he gently eased your heels off of your feet. He paused his mouth as he reached the crux of your thigh and your core. 

“Baby, you’re sure?” he asked, pressing a light kiss to your thigh, eyes locked onto yours as you nodded. You hissed when a lap landed on your inner thigh, “Tsk, you know the rules doll. Or has it been that long that I need to train you again, you filthy whore? Been too busy fucking other people that you forget my rules?”

“No sir,” you muttered out, the hint of a smile teasing Jaehyun’s lips, “haven’t had anyone but you. Want you to touch me now, please,” you babbled, willing to do and say anything to get him to finally touch you. 

“My dirty girl hasn’t had anyone but me?” Jaehyun asked, an eyebrow raised and a shit-eating grin unable to be hidden on his face. You let out a needy whine, scooting your hips closer to his face,  “Is my princess needy? Does she want a reward for being such a little slut for my cock and my cock only?”

“Please, sir,” you nodded desperately, not wanting to beg but getting to the point where you didn’t care anymore. 

Jaehyun placed a soothing kiss to your core over your panties, hooking his finger underneath the hem as he spoke, “It’s ok, doll. Be nice and quiet for me, hm?”

You nodded again desperately, Jaehyun forgiving your lack of words just this once as he shimmied your underwear down. You tried your best to hold in your moans as he devoured you. The closer you came to your climax the harder it was to keep quiet. Having mercy on you, Jaehyun slid his hand up your body and pushed two fingers into your mouth. Letting you suck and drool on them as he continued to pleasure you. You were so so close, bucking and grinding your hips into his mouth as you came. You tried to be quiet, you really did. But if you were being honest, you couldn’t help the moan that left your body. Jaehyun’s tongue retreating but your body still shaking as you raked in deep breaths. He pulled you calmingly into his chest, whispering praises and pressing kisses to your hair as you calmed down. 

He tucked a piece of your hair behind your ear as he cupped your face, “Can you take more?” he asked, eyes searching yours for any sort of hesitation. 

“Please Jae, I can take more, I promise,” you whispered, hands finding his tie and loosening it as he kissed your forehead. He undid his belt buckle quickly, shuffling his pants and boxers off quickly. He slid himself inside you, bottoming out with a small groan. He rested his forehead against yours as he waited for you to let him move. A small moan leaving your mouth as you bucked your hips. 

He lost it then, all of his usual calm and cool composure was out the window as he thrusts into you. His pace was steady, but it was much faster than usual, something that had you biting your lip in order to ensure your moans were quieted. As he hit the sensitive spot deep within you, you let out a guttural moan, slapping a hand over your mouth as Jaehyun laughed. 

“I thought I told you to be quiet?” he smiled, his previous dominance out the window as he pulled you into him. His thrusts are still powerful, but his actions are more loving and intimate than they were before. He kissed you gently as he thrusted, his pace faltering as you clenched around him. 

“Jae-,” You whined, almost running away from him as his fingers found your sensitive and swollen clit, “I’m close.”

“Me too, love,” he whispered, rubbing more vigorously as you spasmed around him one more time. His lips met yours as your moans grew less discreet again, his mouth absorbing as much of them as he could. He was cumming swiftly after you, his fingers digging into your hips as he twitched inside you. 

“I love you,” you spoke, wrapping your arms around him tightly and resting your chin on his broad shoulder. 

“God, I love you too,” he whispered, pressing a gentle kiss as he eased himself out of you, “What do you say we skip the rest of our work today and spend the day in my bed, together?”

“That sounds like a dream,” you added, your limbs cooperating with his hands that were guiding you back into your clothes, “If you can make me squirt I’ll sign the merge papers.”

At this Jaehyun laughed, “Oh, you’re on, doll.”

You followed him out of his office, too happy to care about his employees' embarrassed faces and awkward stances. Jaehyun was finally yours, and you were finally his.

[alittlewhump]

Unbidden - Act 5, chapter 3

Masterlist | Previous | Next

Content warnings: fantasy religion, death mention

Morgan's golem eventually warned him of people approaching. He didn't need to look to guess it would be Blaise and Icharion. It had not been an especially dignified departure. Blaise would have questions, and would have dragged him along with her to satisfy the sentry. Morgan took a steadying breath and raised his head. This conversation might as well happen now. He made a cursory effort to wipe the tears from his cheeks, not that it would make it any less obvious that he'd been weeping.

Icharion was the first to speak once they had rounded the corner and spotted him. "It was cruel of Master Ordan to lie to you as he did," he said stiffly. That didn't sound right at all. Morgan hadn't known Icharion especially well, but he hadn't been one for that sort of reflection. It was the sort of sentiment he would expect from Blaise, though. He glanced over and saw her watching him intently.

"We both know that cruelty was not the Master's intention," he said, addressing Icharion. "And we both know he was in the right."

Icharion exhaled. "I told you," he said to Blaise. She elbowed him.

"There's nothing right about what he did. Don't sell yourself short," she said to Morgan. "You've gotten so much stronger since we met. Just look at everything we've done together."

"That has nothing to do with it," Morgan replied.

"I told her, she wouldn't listen-" Icharion was silenced by another elbow to the ribs.

"Explain it to me, then," Blaise said, crouching in front of Morgan to look him in the face. "Because it sounds like this Ordan just sent you out to die without even telling you what you did to deserve it, and I really don't understand how the two of you seem to think that's justified."

"You know we don't perceive death the same way you do," Morgan reminded her. She nodded grudgingly. "Master Ordan's primary concern is the maintenance of our Order. Our numbers are few enough, but even a small tree can benefit from pruning its weakest branches." That had been one of the master's favourite metaphors. He'd usually used it in the context of seeking out weakness within oneself, but it seemed apt enough here too.

"Yeah, that's pretty much what he said, but you aren't weak." Her voice was rising, the frustration clear on her face.

"I am weak in the ways that matter to the Order," Morgan explained. The heat of shame prickled at his neck. He had no desire to enumerate his failings to her here, in front of someone who could verify the precise degree of his inadequacy. But Blaise was a force to be reckoned with, and he couldn't let her focus her anger on the Order. They were important, even if he was not, so he tried to explain. He started reluctantly with the most fundamental issue, the lowest bar he'd failed to surpass.

"In order to uphold the Balance, we must be objective in our judgment. And we cannot do that if we are beholden to emotions. It's some of our most basic and essential training, and I have never been able to master it properly." He could hear the bitterness creeping into his voice, feel the familiar weight curling in his gut. Even now he was failing.

"So, let me get this straight. You have feelings, like a regular person, and for some reason you think that's so bad you deserve to die for it." Blaise cocked an eyebrow at him. "It's not like that's something you can just turn off."

"I should be able to. It's one of our central tenets. We must be able to separate ourselves from our emotions so we can remain clear-headed. I truly thought I had myself under control when I set out, but... oh." He trailed off as the pieces finally clicked into place, tracing an unmistakable pattern back to its origin. It had felt like it had finally started getting easier by the time he'd left on his quest. The doubt he'd had in himself had been erased by the Master's assurance that he was ready. And he had found it to be possible, if not exactly easy, right up to a very specific point.

Proper control had been impossible ever since the fight against Andariel. Whose venom had caused a lasting change in his sense of pain, lingering even after all physical traces of the wound were gone. Permanent, Jamella had said. And Cain had also mentioned that Andariel could cause emotional sensitivity. So this, too, would be permanent. A heavy feeling settled over Morgan, coming to rest behind his ribs. The rest of his shortcomings were insignificant in comparison to this. There was no hope of redemption. It would take years more dedicated training to overcome this weakness, if it was even possible. And he had nowhere to train, no mentor to correct him when he inevitably strayed. He couldn't return to the Order, not after the story Ordan had woven. Icharion's reaction would be amplified a hundredfold. Why had he-

"Speak, Morgan. You're inside your own head." Icharion's voice was not unkind, but Blaise shot him a dirty look.

"I was clearly mistaken. I just don't understand why Master Ordan lied about the request," Morgan said, voice so low it was nearly a whisper. "He only had to ask. I would have gone willingly." If the goal had simply been to remove him, that could have easily been accomplished in a number of simpler ways. Everything else made sense. Morgan looked up at Icharion, half hoping to find an answer, half dreading what it might be.

"Politics, most likely. Any expulsion from within the Necropolis must be approved by the council, and Jostan is too troubled by our numbers to let anyone go, no matter the reason. No one would have believed you decided to go of your own volition, and Ordan has too many eyes on him to stage a convincing accident."

"Ah." Morgan looked back down. That explanation made sense enough, he supposed. He had simply been so intolerable, so far from adequate that it had forced the Master's hand. The man was fiercely loyal to the brotherhood, if rather unyielding in his views. His decisions were unswayable, and clearly he'd decided - he'd seen - that there could be no place for someone as weak as Morgan in the priesthood, no matter how earnest his devotion.

"Hang on," Blaise said, "when you talk about 'going', do you actually mean-"

"Dying, yes," Icharion interrupted. "It is an honour to lay down one's life in service to the Order." It was an honour he would never know, Morgan realized suddenly. That twisted like a knife.

"You're really not convincing me that any of this is okay," Blaise said.

"You don't need to believe the truth," Icharion replied. "It will be true all the same, with or without your approval."

"Blaise," Morgan said quickly, "wait." She looked ready to explode, glaring murderously at Icharion. Morgan tried to find the right words, ones she might take heed of. "Master Ordan was right. I cannot serve the Order of Rathma. I am not capable of meeting their standards. He saw that and acted in their best interest because that is his duty. The only fault here is mine. I should have seen it too." Should have recognized the truth and gone long ago, saved them all the trouble.

"That's stupid. The whole time I've known you, everything you've done has been in the name of the Balance. I've watched you work yourself nearly to death for it, and you're telling me that's not good enough? Bullshit."

"I've no doubt his intentions are pure," Icharion said with surprising gentleness, "but effort alone cannot overcome inability. Not all people are capable of all things. Few are suited to our work, fewer still are able to carry it out."

"Bullshit," Blaise repeated, but it was quieter this time. "That's not fair."

"It is important work," Morgan said. "It cannot be entrusted to those unfit to do it."

"And you really believe that includes you? Even after all the shit you've been through for it? After how hard you've worked?"

"I do." Morgan closed his eyes against the surge of emotions that swelled up at the finality of that admission. He had no choice but to accept the truth. It was nothing new, after all. Hardly the first time his best efforts had proven to be insufficient. That didn't do much to soften the blow. At least his ineptitude was likely to have prevented him from doing any real damage to anything in his efforts, he thought dully.

"I could witness your departure," Icharion offered after a time, breaking the silence. "We are far from home. The rules would allow it." It was an unexpected gesture, permitted but not necessary by the laws of the Order. Morgan studied his face for a moment. He found nothing; of course Icharion could make himself unreadable, like a priest ought to be able to do. There was an undeniable thread of kindness in the offer, though. At least it could be done properly. That would be a small comfort.

"I would appreciate that very much," Morgan said, getting to his feet. Blaise sprang up as well as Icharion drew his sword.

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a second here. Somebody tell me what's happening. I'm not going to let-"

"It's not that kind of departure," Icharion interrupted her. "Sit back down." Blaise bristled.

"It's just a ceremony," Morgan reassured her. "An oath. Nobody dies." She seemed slightly mollified but did not sit down, instead crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes. She would let them proceed, then.

Morgan fished out a vial of oil from his chest pocket. Uncorking it, he pinched the tip of Icharion's proffered blade with his thumb and forefinger and squeezed several drops of blood in to mingle with the oil. Then he poured out the contents in a rough circle around himself. The circle glowed faintly as he imbued it with intent. He had never seen this particular ceremony, but the steps were as familiar as all the others he'd ever committed to memory.

"On my heart's blood I swear I shall never again interfere in the Order of Rathma, nor in the affairs of the dead." The words left a heavy feeling in his chest, but it was a little better than the jagged hurt that already sat there.

"On your heart's blood it is witnessed," Icharion replied, "and so are you bound." He traced a line under the circle with the bloodied tip of his blade. It drew in the light from the circle, which faded to nothing as he dismissed the magic with his free hand. Morgan wiped his fingers on the hem of his shirt.

"Thank you for that," he said quietly. Icharion nodded an acknowledgement as Morgan handed over the rest of his ceremonial oils. He no longer had a use for them. A thick, protective numbness was starting to settle in, blunting the world's edges.

"So that's it? You're just... done?" Blaise hadn't moved, still regarding them suspiciously.

"It is a very straightforward oath," Icharion pointed out as he wiped his blade clean and returned it to its sheath.

"Oh, fuck off."

"I will continue to do my part in the effort against Baal," Morgan clarified, the words feeling far away and hazy. "But on my own behalf, now. I think I'd like to join you in battle tomorrow." He could still work toward a purpose, still make himself useful. He needed that. To hold him together.

Blaise slung an arm around his shoulders. "I'll be glad to have you by my side." Morgan leaned into her gratefully. "And I think the barbarians are going to like your golems. If you're still..." she broke off, glancing over at the one still standing watch.

"He cannot raise the dead, but the earth is still fair game," Icharion confirmed. "Now if you're quite finished, I'm going back inside." He turned and left without further comment.

"You should go back with him," Morgan said. He pulled away from Blaise, but her hand lingered on his shoulder.

"Hey," she said softly, "are you... okay? I mean, fuck, obviously not, this is... I know the Order is important to you. Can I help? Somehow?" Once again, she was looking at him with earnest concern. He should have felt something about that, probably, but the numbness was there instead.

"I don't know," Morgan replied. "I'm going to finish checking the wall for damage," he found himself saying, "and then I think I'm going to meditate." Being fully rested would be a good idea. He'd been getting so much sleep recently, he didn't need any more and he certainly didn't want to risk the nightmares. But he found he didn't want to be conscious either. Though the specific techniques had been developed by the Order, the act of meditation was hardly exclusive to them. It wouldn't interfere with anything. He could still have that little peace, at least.

Blaise squeezed him gently. "Think about eating something too." That was probably also a good idea, but less appealing. He nodded anyway. "I'll leave you to it, then," she said, then followed Icharion's path back toward the gates.

There was still more to do, Morgan reminded himself as he walked slowly around the wall. Tyrael had bidden them to slay Baal. He still had a purpose, for now. Between that and the numbness, it was enough to propel him through the rest of the day's actions. His body patched a few more damaged spots in the wall, and put some food into itself, and found a bed to lay itself in, and then it rested as his mind drifted in meditation, carefully focused on absolutely nothing at all.

[pufflyhallows]

Picks & Pens (I)

Hi! This is a brand new series for our boy Sirius Black. It’s a rockstar!au in modern days. I really hope you like it, I had the idea over a year ago and had a little something in my drafts but only now got to write it the way it deserves. Enjoy!

Chapter One: Press

Warnings: language

Word count: 1,7k

a/n: I know nothing about press or the music industry, so forgive me for any mistakes lol

Sirius Black. What a perfect name for the typical arrogant and condescending rockstar who had just been declared artist of the decade by the magazine you worked for. Unfortunately for you, he also happened to be your ex-boyfriend.

You two had met in high school, way before he got famous. He already wrote music back then, you being one of the very first people to ever listen to it. Some of those songs were quite big hits today and you genuinely liked them, but that didn’t mean you liked him. At least, not anymore. Your relationship had ceased to exist seven years ago. What is it that people say about fame? Oh yes, it changes you.

As you walked past the countless desks in that white-walled office with tall windows, the latest edition of the magazine in hands, you thought about your boss’ proposition. She wanted you to interview the “artist of the decade” for the February issue – it was coming out on Valentine’s Day and she wanted an article about Sirius Black’s muse and writing process. According to her, it was impossible that there wasn’t a girl behind the lyrics of his songs, even though the man had been single for years now. You had told her you’d think about it and answer the next day. Well, today was the next day.

Brenda, your boss’ assistant, was on the phone when you approached her desk. She raised a finger at you as if to say “hold on” and kept talking to the person at the other end of that call. You knew better than to interrupt her, so you patiently waited.

“No freaking way, Rebecca! I told you he was going to the party regardless of what Charlie said! Now, don’t get me wrong, I think you’re much smarter than Mackenzie, but she’s got a point.”

You inhaled deeply, fighting the urge to roll your eyes. Was it naive of you to assume that people only took business calls during business hours?

“I’m wheezing! Literally dying! Oh God...” Brenda giggled. “Well, I gotta go. I’m at work. What? Bitch, you called.”

You watched as she hung up the phone and gathered some loose sheets of paper from her desk, organizing them in a pile.

“Brenda?” you said, catching her attention. “I’m here to see Mrs. Lennox. Could you announce me?”

“She’s busy.”

“Uhh… She asked me to come by her office at ten and it’s… ten.”

Brenda sighed and picked up the phone again, pressing the interphone button. “Mrs. Lennox? Sorry to bother, but Y/N says she’s here to see you. Yes. Not a problem. Okay.”

She hung up and went back to putting her sheets into piles. You raised an eyebrow at her before she finally looked at you and spoke as if it was obvious. “Go in!”

Was it unprofessional to flip off a coworker?

You opened the door slowly and found Mrs. Lennox sitting by her desk with her eyes focused on her computer screen. She looked at you and smiled, gesturing for you to come see what she was working on.

“These photos just came in. Look at him! Isn’t he just so handsome?!”

And there he was. His signature guitar lazily laying between his legs as he had one hand resting on it and the other supporting his weight. He was sitting on a white… box-shaped stool? The background was also white, contrasting to his all-black outfit.

“I think I want these in black and white, what do you think?”

“There isn’t much color in them anyways,” you though out loud.

“Oh…” Mrs. Lennox eyed the entire picture. “You’re right. Black and white it is,” she wrote it down on her notepad.

You kept looking at the photo displayed across the large computer screen. The little shit was handsome, there was no denying that. The problem was what was behind that smirk – arrogance, selfishness and a big big sense of self-importance.

“So?!” your boss’ voice snapped you out of your memories. “Have you thought about our conversation yesterday?”

“I have,” you walked around the desk and sat in front of the older woman as she took off her red cat-eye glasses. “But I need to ask you something first.”

“Go ahead.”

“Will it bring attention to the fact that I am his ex-girlfriend?”

“What do you mean, sweetie? Everyone already knows.”

“I know, but… will it be focused on that? Yesterday you mentioned that it’d be great to have some sort of reunion and that the public would love it. Your idea is an intimate interview, just the two of us in the room and all.”

“Yes...”

“I understand it. I agree that the conversation flows better that way, because the interviewees usually feel more comfortable with less people around and no cameras. However, this is my job. Just my job. I don’t want it to be publicized as a reunion with my ex-boyfriend. This is me, a journalist, interviewing him, a musician.”

Mrs. Lennox looked at you for a while, as if she was trying to read your thoughts. She placed her hands together on the desk and took a deep breath.

“Listen, Y/N. I’ve got to be honest with you. The subject that will be discussed in this interview is interesting, yes. A lot of people are curious about his lyrics. Myself included. But frankly? Anyone can ask him questions about that and put it on a website or a magazine. Anyone. Would it sell? Of course! He’s the artist of the decade, everyone adores him. Now, imagine if the person interviewing him is actually a former girlfriend. And not any girlfriend, but his high school sweetheart. The girlfriend from the very beginning of his career. The person who was there when some of the biggest songs of this entire decade were being written. It will sell like water in the desert, Y/N! This is really good for press.”

“So this is why you picked me, of all people. Press,” you looked down and bit your inner cheek. “I’m a journalist, Mrs. Lennox.” You looked back at her, “I am part of the press. And I know how they will eat me alive after this interview. They will chase me around, paps will hunt me everywhere. The whole nightmare will start all over again. Even after seven years, I still get the occasional question about him. After this interview, though? There will be no peace. And, as a matter of fact, I’m not quite sure if I like the idea of having my personal life used as marketing. God, I’m not even sure if I do want to ‘reunite’ with him.”

“I see,” Mrs. Lennox leaned back on her chair. “What is your answer, then?”

You looked in her eyes, thinking about the last three years you worked for her magazine. She was by far the best boss you’ve ever had. She took you under her wing and gave you enough space to explore your full potential and truly shine. She bent backwards for you several times in the past, helping you build your name in journalism. There was nothing in this world that she could ask that would make you think twice before attending. Nothing, except this.

However, there was a side of you that wanted to see him again. To speak to him again. Hear him talk again. A very curious side of you, that needed to see how he would act around you after so many years of no contact. Would he treat you like every other interviewer? Would he be as self-absorbed and pompous? Would he answer to your questions truthfully? That side of you would die to find out.

And that side won. Along with all the respect you had for your boss and the extra payment she offered the day before, of course.

“My answer is yes. I will interview him.”

Mrs. Lennox smiled widely, but before she could say anything, you added. “Under one condition.”

“Oh, Y/N. What is it?”

“It won’t get publicized as a reunion. Please, Mrs. Lennox, don’t publish it with something like ‘Sirius Black interviewed by former girlfriend’. Just put my name in there and let the press do their thing around it. That’s all I ask. Please.”

Mrs. Lennox eyed you for a while, just like before. She always seemed to crave the power to read minds, maybe even control them. She bit her lower lip and adjusted her wedding ring, looking down at her notepad now.

“Well, it does look good to treat it like it’s so casual. Like you’re still friends and it’s no big deal. You did end things amicably, after all.”

Right…

“Okay, Y/N,” she nodded. “It will be just your name, no mentions of the relationship.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lennox.”

“Right. Look, Y/N, this interview is very important for us. Please, keep that in mind. I expect a really good show of professionalism on your part. The subject might be delicate to deal with, given your past, but I trust that you won’t leave out any details pertinent to the writing of this article.”

“You have nothing to worry about. The subject won’t be delicate at all.”

You hoped you didn’t sound insulted, because you did feel your ears burn slightly with the insinuation that you might care if he wrote songs about some other girl. You absolutely did not. It’s been seven fucking years.

“Great. That settles it, then. I will look into scheduling this interview now,” she clicked on her mouse and put her red cat-eye glasses back on. “I am predicting it will take place within two weeks from now, so no trips out of town during this time!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You can go back to work now, sweetie. If anything comes up, I’ll e-mail you.”

“Okay,” you stood up and grabbed your latest edition of the magazine, remembering why you had brought it in the first place. “Oh! By the way, there’s a typo on page forty-five of the January issue. Printing started this morning, so I think there’s still time to fix it before we lose too much material.”

“Y/N! What would I do without you?! Page forty-five, you say?” she immediately wrote it down on her notepad. “I knew I couldn’t trust Henry on this.”

“He’s a good kid,” you shrugged. “He’ll get the hang of it.”

“Right, right… Ask Brenda to call him on your way out, will you?”

“Of course,” you nodded, already feeling bad for Henry’s ears.

The next couple of weeks were going to be interesting, though.

********

[rosecoloredkay]

Something To Believe In

Hey there friends! I decided to give my hand at writing a Jack Kelly x David Jacobs one shot fanfic. Sorry if it’s OOC or anything. It was my first shot in a very long time writing this.  

So all of this goes down after the rally between Jack and Davey.

David was so stunned and hurt by what just happened. He just ran off entirely after the whole debacle at Medda’s theatre. Jack Kelly, the leader of the strike and his best friend! Just betrayed all of the newsies and himself. Punching a brick wall with his fist David cried out in frustration on the verge of tears recalling everything that just happened minutes ago. Sinking against the brick wall he took off his cap and squeezed it with all of his might. “Heya Davey? I was just going to take Les back to ya place for ya. If that’s a’ight with you. You look like you might need some space to think about things alone. You can head up to Jacks penthouse.” Race gestured at the fire escape near where David was slumped against the brick wall. “I doubt Jack would go there with everything that just happened at the rally.” Wes walked up to his brother and touched his shoulder. “Don’t worry Davey. I’m sure Jack will come around! I’m sure of it. He wouldn’t leave us alone like this.” David reached up and squeezed Les’s hand and smiled at him sadly. “Yeah bud, I’m sure there must be some kind of explanation. Hurry along with Race okay? Tell Mom I’ll be back soon. I just need some time to think about some stuff.” He shifted his attention towards Race and stared at him with a sad smile. “Race, thank you. I’ll head up there and try to clear my head. I owe you one for taking care of Les.” Race shifted on his feet with a big smirk on his face and smacked Davey on his other free shoulder. “Oh, trust me I’ll collect when the time comes.” David rolled his eyes and let out a small chuckle. “Got it. Just don’t bleed me dry now.” “Come on Les lets get ya back to ya place.” Les and Race walked side by side as Race held his hand up in a goodbye gesture and kept walking forward until they were both out of sight.

Climbing up the ladder David had so many thoughts going through his head he didn’t even know where to start. Once David was in Jack's “Penthouse” He saw the appeal the place where his friend liked to hang out. “The view is gorgeous. I wonder if Jack ever painted this view from here or sketched it.” Sitting down he let his legs hang through the railing of the balcony he was on and just leaned against the bars and sighed looking into the distance and started talking to himself. “Jack has put so much into this strike. He cares about his friends and these boys so much. Why would he do this? It doesn’t make any sense! What about Crutchie? What about everyone else!” Rubbing his forehead he started to tear up again but he wasn’t too sure why. His chest was hurting. He felt betrayed that must of been why right? “All I was doing was going to sell papes with my brother to help feed my family. That’s it. Then he just popped up out of nowhere.” David rarely felt so frustrated with himself and the current situation he was in was driving him crazy. “Damn it Jack! You and your beautiful blue eyes and stupid-” David stiffened and he felt his heart pounding and like the world just froze. Shaking his head he tried to calm down. “No, I did not just say beautiful. That’s illegal Davey! Oh god, that and the nickname he gave me I love when he calls me that.” His eyes widened and everything just slowly pieced themselves together in front of him like a puzzle and Jack Kelly was that missing puzzle piece. “I’m supposed to be angry with him right now! I’m hurt!” Shaking he stood up and stared at the New York skyline as the sun began to set. “Well, I guess that’s that Jacobs. You’re screwed.” He chuckled to himself and noticed some papers sticking out and decided to look at them and noticed they were Jacks drawings.

Walking back to his penthouse Jack felt like screaming. “I did the right thing. I know I did. No one can get hurt because of me.” Jack recalled how badly Davey reacted to what he said at the rally and he felt his heart break looking at his dear friend like that. Sure, they just met not too long ago but it felt like forever for him. They just clicked and got along so well. But at Medda’s that all changed. “Davey..” Jack whispered under his breath. “Shit.” He got so angry he started to climb the fire escape to his penthouse and was swearing under his breath. When he got to the top he saw a tall figure wearing a newsboy cap. His heart stopped as he said in a whisper. “What are you doing here?” David turned around staring at Jack with sad eyes. “Race showed me the way here. It’s a beautiful view. I needed a place to think about things.” Jack walked up to Davey and seen he was holding his drawings and ripped it out his hands impulsively. “Hasn’t anyone taught ya not to touch other people's things!” David flinched and straightened himself up and stared at Jack. “You have skills Jack truly. Is that the Refuge? I can’t believe our friends and other newsies are staying in those conditions! We have to expose that!” Jack laughed and shook his head and walked closer to Davey. “Dave, no one cares about us and how we live!” David touched Jacks shoulder. “We can talk with Katherine I’m sure she can get your drawings published. She has to have something else we can use against Pulitzer she’s talented and witty.” Jack pushed Davey away and leaned against the railing and sighed. “Why aren’t you mad at me?” David walked towards Jack once more but stopped himself and looked at his friends form sadly. “I came to a few realizations Jack about things. But first can you please explain to me why you did it? It hurts yes. But I’m not mad.” Turning around Jack looked at Davey in the eyes and bit his lip then looked at the ground. “Pulitzer...he gave me an ultimatum he said to either A; Take the money and go to Santa Fe and disband the union or B; He was going to throw You and Les and the rest of the newsies in the Refuge and I couldn’t.” Jack focused his attention solely on Davey and stared into his eyes with tears in his own. “ I couldn’t let him do that to you. Not you. You’ve given me so much Davey. You’ve given me something to believe in.” David moved closer to Jack and took his hand in his trying to calm Jack. Jack’s eyes never left Daveys. He squeezed his hand gently. “We made this union together and I just don’t know what to do Davey. Please tell me what to do.” David took his other hand and touched Jacks cheek and rubbed it with his thumb. “Jack we can do this together. Like we have from the beginning.” David was nervous but his heart was pounding he was scared that he was going to mess this up. But at the current moment it was like time has frozen once more. Getting closer to Jack he leaned in and closed the gap between them. It was a soft chaste kiss but messy. Heart pounding he realized that Jack Kelly, His best friend. Was reciprocating the kiss he was actually kissing him back. Stunned Jack pulled away and leaned his forehead against Daveys. “Woah...I-I didn’t expect that out of you Davey.” Jack whispered and squeezed Davey’s hand. David looking through his thick eyelashes he made eye contact with Jack and whispered back. “I didn’t mess this up did I? When you said that you did it for me, I kind of just lost control.” Jack pulled away and shook his head. “No, not at all. I felt something between us since I first saw you.” Jack awkwardly took off his hat and rubbed the back of his head blushing. “What about Katherine?” David sadly looked up at Jack and Jack rushed towards Davey and grabbed both of his hands in his. “Katherine is beautiful, kind, smart, witty and beyond. But Davey she isn’t you- Wait, am I kidding myself here Dave? A guy like you can’t be with someone like me. It just doesn’t happen. You have a family, A home, Somewhere safe to stay. Here I am living meal to meal on pennies. I never know where I’ll sleep next. You know I’m a rule breaker Davey. So I could care less about being in trouble about being with you even if it means legal trouble.” Davey hugged Jack tightly against him and whispered in his ear. “I’ll always be here for you Jack. No matter what kind of situation you’re in, I'll always be by your side to help you. Now please stop rambling Jackie.” Pulling apart once more he kissed Jack once more with more passion before pulling apart at the sound of someone climbing up the ladder. Katherine looked like she interrupted something important as she looked at the disheveled boys but just brushed it off. “Guys! There you are! I wrote and article that we could use to take down Pulitzer once and for all.” She handed the paper over to David who scanned the paper and chuckled and smiled at Katherine brightly. “This is great Kath!” He handed the paper over to Jack as he started to read it. “Hey, Katherine can we use some of Jack's drawings to the paper?” He picked up the discarded drawings of Jacks and squealed. “This is perfect! A nail to put in the metaphorical coffin!” Jack drew his attention to both of his friends and spoke up. “But no pape is going to print this!” Katherine folded her arms and paced back and forth thinking. “There has to be at least one printing press that my father doesn’t control.” Jack scoffed “Oh, this is good. I know the perfect place. The printing press in the cellar of The World.” Katherine jumped up and clapped. “Perfect! You guys meet me there as soon as you can!” Katherine quickly scaled down the ladder as she had some important things to do! When they were sure they were alone Jack and Davey started laughing and held each other close. “Jackie, you gave me something to believe in too.” Jack gave him a toothy grin and kissed him once more and grabbed his hand. “I don’t know what this is but I want to give this shot. But right now, we have more important things to do. Let's go take down Pulitzer! David smiled and thought to himself. ‘I’m so glad I met this man. He makes me a better person.’ “Right after you Jackie!” Chuckling to himself, he held his hands out in a gesturing manner to the ladder. “What a gentleman! I may have been swooned!” Jack winked at him and started down the ladder. “Back at you Partner!” He winked back at him and followed him. Time to seize the day and take down Pulitzer together.

“An angel come to save me but didn’t even know he gave me something to believe in.”

[vael]

2019 Annual Review

Each year, I look back at the previous year’s annual review and note that things didn’t go as planned. For some reason I am always surprised, but this time it’s a little painful, too. From 2018′s Annual Review:

“2019 outlook? Sunny! I hope it will be my best year yet.“

Oh, Vael. You built your house, you moved to the promised land. But your year did not go as planned. You are not even close to the zen you craved.

It has been a wild year. This will run long. All I can do is stick to the format and hope my memory and average writing skill will do the year justice. So, as usual, we start with the positive.

What went well this year?

We like our house. We do. The builder was no good, resulting in some warped walls and a lot of headache getting them to finish everything properly, but the layout is very suitable for us. My office is exactly what I needed, our TV room has just the right space for us. We finally have a respectable kitchen. Since I’m living and working in the house 24 hours a day, it’s important to have a comfortable space.

Game development. For the past five years, I’ve put in some serious work. A lot of it was within my game engine, GAM3, and tinydark’s gaming network, The Orbium. While I put in a lot of work, not much came in the way of actual games produced. I finally rallied in 2018 and put out Bean Grower. It was designed to be a supplemental game, not a main driver, so it will not bring in sustainable income. I went on to think that I should open GAM3 up to other developers, license the engine out and collect a share of what they make.

I resolved to refactor GAM3: a word which means to rewrite and modernize many parts of it so that it’s easier to work in, and for it to present better. I would come to realize this desire to share GAM3 was due to a lack of confidence in myself to produce something great, and financially sustainable. Around the time I was realizing that multiplayer was the answer, I discovered Marosia.

Then we moved, I took on contract work, and things generally slowed for me for a few months, eking out what development I could. I played Marosia throughout and in August, it died. I wrote a teardown for it. The stars had aligned: though I had a lot of prelim work to be done, I would make a successor to Marosia. I managed to hype a few people in the community with a demo of GAM3 and I spent the next few months coding a chat prototype and generally organizing myself, and finally mid-November began the refactoring. It would end there, but just this morning (seriously) we learned Marosia was coming back. I had a momentary freakout but it’s ultimately a good thing for my own game.

I haven’t been more excited for a project in a long time. I never thought I’d be so excited to create a standard fantasy world, but it’s a ton of fun, with intricacies I never considered. The game’s design lends itself to a sustainable monetization model: I’m thinking $3/mo for quality-of-life upgrades, with a discount for buying in bulk. I would have paid double for Marosia, so I think this is fair. (6 months of die2nite is currently priced at $69, 6 months of Hattrick is $90!) And most important of all, I can do it ethically, with a game that truly means something to people.

Web development. I’ve learned quite a bit this year! I am so grateful for svelte. I liked but never loved React.js. It always felt ponderous to me. I have no doubt The Orbium’s refactoring would have taken me half the time it did if I were learning svelte vs. React, simply because React is so much more convoluted than svelte, and all in the name of uglier syntax. Svelte seamlessly integrates style and functionality into UI components, which means that if I’m working with a button that clicks to open a modal, everything I need for that button is in that one file.

Due to my contract work (with Harley Davidson, I can reveal) I also got some experience with Symfony and other modern development practices in PHP. PHP doesn’t really excite me these days, loathing having to produce views with it, but it is at least comfy.

My job. “Yeah, yeah.” I got a raise, most of which was contributed to getting Eve and my son onto my badass healthcare plan. We’re developing like it’s 2012, which is frustrating and makes even simple tasks take forever, but I can’t complain about the pay nor the stability of the company and my position there. I also work mostly remotely.

What didn’t go so well?

2019 was dominated by the bad. Eve’s not putting out an Annual Review, but our pain is shared.

The move. 11 months after the contract was signed, our builder was finally ready to let us move in. The house was not finished, just livable. So we rushed out of Rhode Island. We packed my car with everything we could fit, even removing the spare tire, but we got almost all of it. Me, Eve, our son, and our two cats.

At around 7:30 PM, we were driving on a dark highway when we were struck by a muffler that had fallen out from the truck in front of us. It destroyed the front-end, spilling radiator fluid onto the road. I had no idea what was going on, but it so happened that a mechanic had broken down right near us and was able to help. The engine barely carried us to the nearest motel, and I was in shock. I carried all our stuff to our second-floor room, it was even lightly raining. And I was defeated. Eve reports she had never seen me so bad. I had no idea how long we’d be in this ghetto-ass motel, what it would cost us during this time of great financial need, and mostly: I was just miserable. We could have died. If it had hit one of our tires, we could have spun out at 70+ MPH. All I wanted to do was get to our house the next day, and here we were.

I won’t detail the rest here, but I do want to thank my friends for their support and appreciate the good fortune that we got through this time.

We got to the house at 11PM on a Sunday; I still appreciate our builder taking the time to show us around so late. And... it was not at all what we were expecting. We had no driveway, and it had rained. We were tracking in some mud but that didn’t even matter because the entire house had to be cleaned. There was dirt all over the floors, they’d forgotten I didn’t want a chandelier over the dining room table, and the feeling was that we’d gone through Hell (and austure financial practices) to get here and this was it. So much wasn’t done. We knew that, but we didn’t think we’d be sweeping and wetting the floor with paper towel just to have a place to put our stuff. Shoutout to my friend Cody for setting us up with a supply drop.

We spent a lot of time buying furniture, aided by our rental SUV, all the while worrying about our newly purchased things sitting around the house without our protection as workers came in and out. I had to go back to Virginia to pick up the car and through exhaustion, caffeine, stupidity, and anxiety, managed to go 88 MPH and get myself a ticket: a misdemeanor, even. I spent the entire day picking up that damn car (5 hours up and down) and returned home in the worse state I’d ever felt. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically depleted.

But there was no stopping for me: I took on contract work and I had to get it done just to stay afloat. And then we got a fucking dog.

The dog. At some point in 2018 we determined that our son could use a companion and that a dog really completes the family. Leading up to the move, we put a down payment on a rough collie: the “Lassie” breed. They usually run around $800 and we got her for $500. I was a fan of the breed and Eve had done research that proves it’s a great breed. (it is) Even after the accident, we thought we should pay the rest for her and bring some joy into our life.

We named her Esme, and getting a dog was definitely one of the worst macro decisions I’ve made for the family yet. I couldn’t last more than a month with her. It was my decision to get rid of her, which made my wife and son sad but we were getting so little out of the experience. The cats beat her up, she was afraid of everything, and all she wanted to do was run around but we kept her cooped up in the house because we had no fence. I hated that there was still a dog smell, and I hated that it farted during Game of Thrones. It was over when we went grocery shopping and came back to a poop-filled crate, which the circumstances of the night dictated I must clean.

Young Living. Eve was supposed to sell essential oils for some side money. We knew it wasn’t going to be big money, unless she got lucky or turned out to be a natural-born saleswoman, but it was something to do and we believe in the products. I really trust in Young Living and I personally have seen the benefits of their oils and products.

So she went to the YL convention in Utah to learn to sell and, hey, have some fun. She returned feeling even less confident: they’d changed some numbers, and the truth that we always knew was that the market’s highly saturated. There are memes trivializing the effects of oils and there’s no denying the company’s an MLM. A lot of the big earners made their sales early on. Coinciding with the bad feels of Autumn, we decided to put the oil dream aside and focus on mental and physical health.

Eve mental/physical health. The muffler changed a lot for us. It morphed what should have been a very happy time in our lives into a very stressful one. Eve felt fatigued and broken down, and I wasn’t much better off. One day before her planned back-to-action, pick ourselves up and get ready to enjoy Summer, she sprained and tore a ligament in her ankle while coming down the stairs. We hoped it was just a sprain and did everything we could to avoid going to the doctor, but a week later she hadn’t gotten better and so began the PT and bullshit regimen. Our plans of hiking the blue ridge mountains were crushed.

But she recovered, and I shit you not, the very day before she planned to return to action, it was Father’s Day. She was making me my special breakfast and was using a hand-blender to blend pumpkin french toast mix when she went to clean some gunk out of the blender with her finger. It was a split-second decision to help make breakfast faster. Her finger twitched, caught the irresponsibly sensitive power button and tore her finger up. Immediately took her to Urgent Care and then the Emergency Room. $3,000 and some luck later, she kept her finger, but has permanently lost some feeling in it.

That was a bad time for us. I was overworked, she was miserable, and yet she still managed to get to Utah to learn how to sell. To salvage our year. In Autumn, all the anxiety, stress, and the damage from her upbringing finally culminated and she broke. 

Her physical health tanked in tandem with her mental. She suffered frequent menstrual issues and her EDS (a joint disorder) flaring up. It is hard to detail all the pain and frustration, and it really is beyond the scope of what needs to be said. My wife is depressed, prone to feeling overwhelmed, and I’m happy to say that we are getting her professional help soon.

What’s remarkable is that I can’t recall a period of time that she didn’t try her best to recover. Every month, most weeks, she would constantly express that the next day or month was her time. She’s done it for this month and 2020 as well. And I don’t think she’s lazy or unmotivated. She is just defeated and I am a poor comforter. Honestly, I am just shit at helping people if the solution isn’t “well just force yourself to do the thing.” That’s how I get through my problems and it doesn’t work for everyone, not even always myself. Still she is strong. I think writing this out has helped me remember that.

Relationship with my son. I had hoped my increased efficiency and happiness would improve our relationship. I planned for more structure: things like “once we’re upstairs for bedtime rituals, no going back down.” Each night I make a point to spend a minimum of 30 focused minutes with him. But I have only succeeded in making our relationship worse. I don’t think he needs professional help, but there is something within him, from when he was three years old, that just prevents him from being a hard worker. Respect is important to me and I don’t respect him. He is a frustrated child, often not understanding the world, often forgetting things he was supposed to do. I’m not doing a good job of helping.

I think I could have done better, but there were simply too many fronts to fight.

Mental performance. I haven’t gotten any better from last year. I am still not as sharp as 2017-Vael. It is a matter of stress and lifestyle.

What did I learn?

How to be a homeowner! Generally how to manage a home. I got my tools, all cute with my little leaf blower.

SLOWWWW DOWWWWN. The outside of the house needs some work. We need to extend our driveway, clear an acre, and put up a fence. I could take a loan out to do this and be fine, but I could also just slow down. Take a deep breath. Enjoy what we have for the Summer. It sucks I won’t be able to use that acre for farming, but I think I have a good place to plant a single apple tree this year. And hey, less mowing.

A shit ton of web development.

Probably became more cynical. But I think The Good Place has helped remind me to be a good person.

To just accept Eve needs help. And that I really suck at helping her.

Future Outlook

All that bad stuff that happened? Pfft. Shitty year. 2020′s here, it’s a brand new decade. I’ve got a cool game I want to make, we’re gonna get Eve some help, and...

Get pregnant! Yeah! Right now we definitely aren’t ready for kids. We need to use our new health insurance to make a bunch of appointments, recover  financially, mentally, physically. But we very badly want more children. I feel it all the time. I have begun to suspect that genetics do matter, and I wonder if Abel’s laziness mirrors his biological father’s laziness. My dad loved to work and I do too. It might be possible to pass these traits on.

Better office. I need to get some furniture and improve my work environment.

Vacation! We desperately need a vacation. We’re going to Disney this year, either May or June.

Zen Vael. I will attempt to be “the person I want to be” as detailed last year. My soft goal for this is March 15th, as I set last year. I will undoubtedly fail that date. There is no way I’m wrangling my sleep and attitude in the next two months, but surely by the end of the year?

Thanks for reading.

Vael

[ourceliumnetwork]

So I’m running off of like...6 hours of sleep for 48 hours. I’m doing real well.

I’ve got some shit to unpack here so like...hang in there.

Friend of mine introduced me to V-pop tonight and I’m obsessed. So like...be aware of that in case I start posting pretty vietnamese boys all over the place. Blame my friend, it’s his fault.

I’ve decided that this is going to end up a lot like my anime obsession where I end up learning bits and pieces of a language so I can better enjoy the media i’m consuming. So I’ve picked vietnamese because that’s super easy.

I’m so smart.

Anyway we ended up on the topic because I think he was trying to distract me from being a fucking mess and crying all over the place because i finally went through my social media and removed almost all my pictures of my time with the ex and put them on a backup drive.

The images i saved were 95% cat pictures. 

It’s hard to look at them. I miss them a fucking lot and I don’t think I realized how much this really and truly has broken my heart. Not only have I lost my children but I’m never allowed to see them again and I didn’t do anything to deserve that. And it fucking sucks. 

I’m being punished in the worst way possible. Like...it would have been easier if they were dead and that’s a horrible thought. because it’s so fucking painful that I can’t even see them ever again. Not on facebook, not on instagram, i don’t get updates, no one is letting me know how they are, i can’t go and see them or anything. 

If his goal was to break me inside, mission fucking accomplished. I was already fragile thanks to all the shit he put me through, this was uncalled for and unnecessary and I’m a fucking wreck emotionally over it. And I’m not addressing that because it hurts and I don’t want to hurt. 

It would be a lot easier if people understood how much it fucking tears me up inside to talk about the boys, to see people happy with their fur babies, to know I’m never going to see those furry little faces or their particular toebeans ever again. like. fucking sucks, man. 

fuck I thought I was done with tears, welp....alright then.

Among the cat pictures were a lot of memories from when things were good. Because it wasn’t all shite all the time. If it had been I wouldn’t have stuck around. And I’m so FUCKING angry that I’ve gone through all of this. I want to blame him completely for all of it, and maybe I should. But I won’t because I feel partially responsible for it all too.

IDK if that’s healthy or true or not. It’s just kinda where I am with it all. 

My date thursday night stayed over and yesterday morning he and I were out in front of my apartment and we were talking about family animals, he’d brought up the boys the night before and I gave him the cliffs notes of the situation, and one of my neighbor’s dog decided i was her new favorite person which was sweet. Date teased me saying I’d now want a dog, or a new cat or something and I get where he’s coming from but like...that’s where the statement from before comes up. I wish people could just...inherently understand how much that thought hurts. I can’t replace my babies. I can have a new baby, one day. I can love other peoples’ babies. but it’s never going to be *my boys*. And that’s hard to explain. 

I literally lost my children and I do not ever want to hear any of you telling any mother that it’s something she can get over because that’s not fucking true. I’m having a hard enough time with my boys and they were cats. Not to say that I loved them less than a human child, but i did not birth those babies. They were placed in my care as an adopted mommy and I did my fucking best. It’s not my fucking fault. It’s not my fault and I shouldn’t have to be punished because I value my safety and my happiness over trying to save a relationship that should have ended before we even got the boys. 

It’s not my fault. 

okay...okay i’m moving on because i’m angry and I can’t do this right now.

positive things. we’ll try talking about my forays into the dating world again.

I’m probably out in society again too early but I cannot stand being single and not taking advantage of my ability to see all my options out there. I tried that and I was bored and depressed. I require social interaction to survive because apparently I’m an extrovert and I had no idea. So i’ve been talking to a few guys and have gone on dates. Thursday date was a new contender on the field. Hes hella pretty, little dumb, very privileged and there are some flashes of red that might be flags coming up but like...it was the first time we’d met in person? we were both on first date best behavior trying to sell our personalities to one another. He was relatively respectful which was nice. He’s not looking for serious and that’s super nice. 

Then there’s the good conversationalist I was speaking to previously and he’s still very nice but I think...he’s more domestic than I’m looking for right now. Does that even make sense? He’s definitely long-term relationship material but I do NOT want an LTR. not now, possibly not ever. He’s super sweet but I just...i’d rather just be his friend, and not ever anything more than that. 

Thursday date was more along the type I usually go for - kind of an asshole, kinda dumb in a almost smart way, and as a new added bonus he’s also conventionally attractive which is a change. I have very low standards for physical attractiveness, and it shows lol. 

idk

I’ve got a date set up with another new guy this evening after i’m done hanging out with my mom and sister. I haven’t had a lot of conversation with him, but like...that’s kind of the point of the date i guess. 

A lot of the reason I’m even back out in the dating scene is because there is a lot of safety and security in the idea of a relationship. Especially since I tend to lean towards wanting to be taken care of. Being provided for is a huuuge thing for me and I just...I know that’s a lot of what drives my interest in certain guys. That’s why Thursdate was actually a break from the norm. The fact that the most he could possibly want from me right now is a FWB situation and he’s openly dating around too, that’s refreshing and super pressure-free. I tend to attract either complete dickheads or people who want to have someone come in as a surrogate mother. I picked a real winner with my ex and got both at once so that was...an experience. I’m trying to stay safe, trying to keep my distance and look at things objectively while also keeping an open mind that you really cannot predict when shit’s gonna just click. 

That’s part of the problem with conversationalist. We click really well but I have...no interest in him outside of being a friend. oh damn...i don’t want anything from him but friendship. Nothing wrong with that, but I literally just put that together properly and realized what it was that was feeling weird with him lol. I’m so smart. 

The major problem is that a lot of guys my age, and in the age bracket i’m looking for potential partners in, are looking for long term relationships. They want a settle-down partner. I’m...not a settle down partner right now. I’m a lets go on dates and have fun and be friendly and maybe we have sex but that’s like not the point?? because right now it’s just getting me out of the house. Plus it’s free dinner most of the time and that’s super nice. Plus sides to presenting as female and dating cishet dudes, they think they’re supposed to pay for everything so i get to eat and drink on someone elses’ dollar. 

also it’s extremely difficult to find potential partners who don’t have kids or who don’t want kids at all. i have zero interest in doing the pregnancy baby thing. I don’t even think i’d adopt, but none of it is on the table. And dudes all want to eventually have kids. it’s so weird. idk that’s more of an observation than anythign else. i just think it’s weird.

anyway...idk where i’m going with any of this. mostly this is just a thoughts-ramble and i’ve successfully calmed down from the angry-sads I was having earlier. I’ll freak out some more later I’m sure but until then I’ll probably just...social media until 9 or so.

hope y’all have a good saturday.

[twitchesandstitches]

The Great Library was a vast enough eldritch realm that there were enough room for smaller pockets for magic to carve out enclaves of spirit sanctuaries within them, and establish little pocket realms loosely tethered to the rest of the Library; close enough, so to speak, that you could walk through a door in the Library and into someone’s personal realm with ease and comfort, but distinct enough that the all seeing eyes of the spirit that commanded the Library had no actual influence or power there.

He probably didn’t care what anyone did, as long as it was not misusing his knowledge or stealing it, but it paid to be cautious around spirits… divorced from understanding of humans, or so Raven understood. Magnus had taught her this with some urgency when she was young; she knew that spirits were more direct than mortals. They were a purpose and domain given its own form, and did not understand the complexities and changes that a human did. Some dealt with this magnanimously, such as spirits of righteous concepts like Valor or Honor. Some, like the great knowledge spirit of this Library, regarded mortals as hopelessly treacherous and insane, as lost as the tides upon the ocean. And he had told her scary bedtime stories about entities like Koh the Face Stealer, and those like him altogether too interested in mortal weakness, taking the faces and perspectives of mortals to experience it for themselves.

Ever since she was small, long before she had ever towered over him and everyone else, Raven had always listened closely to him. One day, a red giant with one eye had taken in a half-demon girl, on perhaps a whim or a stirring of compassion within his heart, and a longing for a father who had long since left into the ether.

To Raven, the demon Trigon was a monster. A nightmare that even the great demonic Who’s Who tomes refused to talk about in detail. Talking grimoires clammed up, stifling their screaming voices, and would say nothing of him. He was many things in her mind; a looming inevitability, something she would have to take care of, a reminder that she had been born wrong. But he was not Father to her.

When Raven thought ‘Father’, she saw a giant of a man, with a great mane of feathered red hair, a single shifting eye. Always a word for the curious, sarcastic snarking for the unwise, and moments of childish pique… but always kind with her, patient and encouraging her talents no matter how they might frighten her, or she frighten others.

The sanctuary of Magnus the Red, his students, and those he had named sons and daughters, they lived within a realm partially modeled after many worlds he had taken a liking to, an ever shifting magical wonderland of infinite possibilities, and the multiverse’s most complicated antique shop. Buildings lay within this realm at odd angles to one another, streets sticking out around invisible trajectories to create mountains of buildings all twisting around one another, and talking raven-spirits flapping about to make sarcastic comments at people.

Presently she and Magnus were within his own sanctum, a place of power to preserve his incorporeal form and make him properly solid for a while and stabilize his powers a bit. It pleased him to follow her whim to make it look like a giant T-letter. Within it, they were having a meeting.

“Sit, my child,” he said, squatting down upon a heavy mat in the fashion of his homeworld from lost antiquity, Prospero. Raven sat in precisely the same way, her gargantuan backside serving the role of a chair. Awkwardly, she pulled her heavy cloak over herself, trying to wear it like he did and she had some trouble. Her chest was getting in the way. Granted, he was quite broad in the chest but not quite in the same way she was.

She was, in every way, a loving daughter who wanted nothing more than to be like her father. Not Trigon. Magnus.

He looked fondly at her, but also sadly.

“There is…” he started, and stopped. He fumbled for the words. “Ah. ...You are well, today? My child?”

Raven nodded demurely. “Yes, father. I am well. The nightmares of…” she shifted anxiously. “Well, you know. I am not dreaming of that anymore. I suppose the medicine worked?”

“That’s good to hear. Yes, good. Er…” he looked awkward again. “I think I know what was causing those nightmares.”

“You do? I thought the general idea was that… he… was growing in power and was attempting to contact me through my dreams.”

“I had thought so too, and that is indeed the case. However… I may have unintentionally given him a route, of sorts.”

Raven’s face, as red as his own, paled into a grayish horror. “You, you what?”

“Not on purpose!” He waved a great hand anxiously. “I was studying a summoning spell for him!”

“Oh dear lord…”

“Not to summon him, not at all! I was simply trying to find out his name!” He sighed. “I don’t want to have to wait for him to make the first move. When we face him, and we will, I swear to you, I want it on our terms. But I needed more information; his name, something to use to track his realms of power or fiendish armies, a way to figure out his cults in the material realm. So I was decoding his summoning spell, working out the programming in it, so to speak.”

Raven calmed down, a bit. A summoning spell ,of the classic ‘call up something into a circle’, was effectively the magical version of messaging someone with the bonus of making them materialize under certain controls. What he was talking about was theoretically possible, and she had no doubt he could do it.

“Then, you have his name?”

Magnus bowed his head. “Yes. I have a name, of great importance to him. The seed of his existence.”

“You do!? What is it?”

He hesitated. “Raven… this is… ah. Look, I called you here to tell you this because we both know the day will soon come when you will have to face him. Sooner or later, he will press that matter, and I intend to see you slay him and take his power for your own. But… now, there is something else. I have to fight him. Not just because I want to, for your sake.”

Raven frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. Do you not have his name?”

“I do. And that is what worries me.” He sighed. “Daughter, you understand that many ages ago, I was… very, very badly hurt.”

She recalled her history lessons. “The Thousand Sons teach that in ages past, your essence was shattered into many shards. Each one containing a portion of yourself.”

“Yes. And in order to retain me, my shards sought each other ought and enough recombined to allow me to keep my mind. And I was badly weakened, as most of my power was scattered. And over time, I found more of them, becoming more whole and powerful… but I never did find them all.”

“The best of you remained as the core aspect, and over time, you found more pieces of yourself,” she said.

“Yes! Very good. Now tell me, how many shards do you think a soul would break into? Bearing in mind that the soul is, by its nature, indivisible and infinite.”

She considered this riddle. “I would think that there is no limit. You could have any number of shards, and since the soul encompasses all you are and COULD be, you might have many, each comprising a minute facet of your being. Is that not so?”

“Indeed. And as I embody the magical potential of humanity as a whole, and therefore multitudes, I could be stretched farther than mortals would be.” Magnus tapped his chest, a nail clicking against one of the spike/horns growing from his chest. “So how many do you think I was reduced to?”

Raven took a guess. “Hrm. A few hundred?”

He winced. “Selling me a bit short there.”

“...A thousand?”

“I wish. More manageable and I enjoy the theming. But no.”

“Father, I don’t know. How many did you break into.”

He looked up, his face weary with an ancient ache. “Trillions. More.”

“Trillions!?”

“I broke apart into so many pieces, each one aware, if barely. Some larger and more powerful. Others less so, but each one an aspect of me. When some of these shards found one another, they fused into what I am now; myself, if not quite whole at least stable. And there were still vast gaps in my being, for eons I searched but never found them all.”

Raven leaned forward, eyes wide and fearful. “Father… do you mean that… oh, are you alright? Are you hurting, even now?!”

“Don’t worry, dear child. I have become whole, over time. The soul is a growing thing, and experience, understanding, growth? I have found all that. I have changed, and so my soul has healed itself. My power is weaker, yes, I would have to fuse with my shards to truly regain my full power, but my being, the essence of what makes me who I am? I have grown into a new Magnus, and made myself whole. I fixed myself, you see.”

Raven sighed, looking relieved. “I was worried there, Father. And, why do you tell me this?”

His single eye narrowed gravely. “You must know that, therefore, many of these shards are still out there. Most are just pockets of raw potentiality, unlikely to do more than exercise random magic. No mind there, just a sense of will. But some, with more essential aspects in the beginning, took on their own life.”

“And, if you grew back into someone…” Raven pondered this. “Then perhaps they have grown into something else as well?”

“You have it! And for the most part, this is not so bad. Some of them are harmless. Others, mutated into dangerous monsters that I must find and slay. But others embodied… terrible aspects of who I was. Spiteful tendencies, vindictiveness, thoughts of wanting to be extremely important, and overwhelming arrogance.”

Raven loved her adoptive father, but she was also realistic. “Thank goodness you left all that behind,” she said sarcastically.

“Yes, it’s rather a good job, isn’t it?” Magnus replied proudly, quite blind to it. “But those parts of myself are still out there. They are still in existence, and over time… I believe they found one another. All the worst in me, coming together without a single aspect of the parts of me that knew compassion… trust, love, the need for other people and a desire to help. Everything, in short, that makes me human.”

Raven frowned. “And those shards might have grown, as you have.”

Magnus’ expression was terribly blank. “This is no hypothetical situation. I can prove it.” He pulled out a roll of parchment, and upon it were many things, but at the bottom:

A summon spell, decoded in messy script, and below it, was the name of Magnus.

“Father?” Raven took it and studied it. “This spell… your name is the central part of it? What is it?”

“A summoning spell for the demon who sired you,” Magnus said grimly. “This is what I’ve been studying, and he used that to try to pinpoint your location. I’ve created wards so he cannot do that now, but I’ve learned his origin.”

Raven tried to work this out. “Okay, but what do you have to do with-”

The shards of myself can grow…

Pieces of myself, the very worst in me, without any shred of humanity or compassion…

Father’s name, on the parchment. On a summoning spell for Trigon.

Evil pieced together, without any room for goodness in there, evolving… growing… and demons, fiends, were just what happened when evil took on a face and a will.

And Trigon looked so very much like Magnus the Red.

Raven paled again. “Oh dear, sweet Primus.”

Magnus shuffled away from her. “Please… Raven. Understand, I am not Trigon! And he is not me! I-”

“But he was made from a piece of you,” she said, understanding dawning. She forced herself to calm down.

This is Father. It has always been Father.

He is not the monster you fear.

She remembered a great red hand, always at her shoulder. Giving her treats. A warm voice, making snide comments at the more fussy Thousand Sons. Always standing up for her, and so kind to her mother…

Father.

Raven tried not to think about the terrible feelings welling up, the confusion and random surges of fear, and silenced them. Deal with them later, she told herself. She wiped away tears. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said meekly. “I.. I don’t… this, this isn’t your fault…!”

What have I done to Father? He must think so terribly of himself…!

Magnus’ face curled in horror. “My fault!? I, no! This isn’t about me, this is about you! The demon that plagues you, he is my fault! Now, more than ever, it is my responsibility to help you end him.”

“Does that mean… you can become more whole by making him fuse with you? Will that help you?”

Magnus shook his head. “No. We’ve been apart for so long that I haven’t the faintest idea what he has become. A fiend, yes, but apart from that? He’s certainly far less human that I ever was, and I suspect he’s evolved into something else entirely. I’m more interested in how you can help yourself by… hrm, how do i put this delicately… ‘absorbing him’, I suppose?”

“You, you really think that’s a good idea?”

“I trust you, daughter. And whatever power he has, I’d rather have you claim it, and make yourself the best you can be.”

“But, it’s your power!”

He didn’t look at her. Just saying ‘I don’t trust myself to stay me after absorbing him’ was out of the question.

Magnus trusted Raven. He did not trust himself.

“We can end him,” he promised. “Whatever happens after that. We are the key to undoing that monster’s evil. I, the remnant of what he once was a part of. You, the person he made as a vessel. We are in a perfect position to ruin his plans, and for you to become something even greater than you already are!”

Raven bowed her head. “I am willing to try, at least.”

Sometime later…

“And that is the situation,” Magnus said to the assembled Thousand Sons, the Blood Ravens, his other orders, and the human wizards and witches that were allied to him. “Are there any questions?”

A Blood Raven raised his hand.

“Yes? Gabriel Angelos!”

“The plan is still to kill this wretched fiend,” Angelos said. “So apart from a technicality, that the fiend was born from pieces of you, has much actually changed?”

“A lot has changed! It’s a lot more personal than it already was, and it was really damn personal to begin with!”

“Doesn’t sound like much has changed.”

“Oh, shut up and let someone else ask something. You! Tall wizard, the one with red hair.”

A human wizard, red-haired and peeking out of the copious masses of Hermione Granger’s hair, had his hand raised. He was called Ron Weasley, and he had a point to make. “So does this make Lady Raven your actual daughter, or what?”

“She already was,” Magnus said flatly. “Next question.”

“No, no! I mean, adopted, yes, but… biologically! Is she your actual daughter!?”

“We have different meanings of ‘actual’. She is my daughter, end of story. Next question?”

“But if she’s Trigon’s daughter, and Trigon is a part of you, is there some kinda, what’s the word, transitive property that make her your kid too?”

“For pity’s sake! No one actually cares!”

Raven raised a hand. “I care, Father.” She smiled at that.

“Oh come on! Don’t tell me you believe that biological parentage is more ‘legitimate’ than adoption!”

“Well, no… but it’s still a nice notion, all the same.”

Magnus sighed. A Thousand Son - Ahriman, perhaps - piped up. “This, I think, makes the Lady Raven Lord Magnus’ first heir!”

“SHE ALREADY WAS!” Magnus bellowed. “It’s even in my completely pointless will!”

“I recommend a grand celebration!” Ahriman continued, ignoring him. “Let us celebrate the downfall of our eldest enemy, and the discovery of a true scion to lead us all!”

“How is he an eldest enemy?” asked a witch; Luna Lovegood, Raven thought. “You’ve only known of his nature for a short while.”

“He is retroactively a greatest enemy,” sad a Blood Raven, with a straight face somehow. “And he was at one point part of Lord Magnus. Everyone knows that Lord Magnus’ greatest enemy is himself.”

“Hey now!” Magnus complained.

“I’m sorry, Father, but they’ve a point,” Raven said.

“Oh gods not you too.”

[rexscelestus]

I’ll Keep Coming

Kingpin 02/16/2019

Your name, for today, is Malik Kingsley, and you have a very important appointment this day. One that will have major influence over the business of this city and your plans. A meeting with, and you admit that with only the greatest disdain, the mayor of this city. You have followed the elections with the greatest scepticism.

At least it is a Dersite sitting in this office. How much power he really has, especially with the queen of eggs being right around the corner, is yet to be seen. But you would be a fool to miss out on the chance to get your foot in now while you can.

You have arranged an appointment with the mayor a good while in advance. A good hour to talk, just the two of you, if you even need that much. You arrive more than timely. Dressed in a flashy white, with a black shirt and Derse-purple tie, reasonably large and commanding all the respect you need, you wait for the secretary to notify him of your arrival and be let in.

WV 02/16/2019

It’s been a slow day. Most days have been relatively quiet so far, settling into your new office, your new building, your new secretary, your new duties and responsibilities and the paperwork that needs doing, permits to sign, orders to give, public works to plan. Today, though, you have an Appointment.

You are admittedly apprehensive about this. Your appointments thus far have primarily been with your subordinates in City Hall, the secretaries and council undersecretaries that are learning how to most effectively communicate with you. This is the first outside force to actively seek an appointment with you, rather than the other way around; this is new territory.

You adjust your tie. You adjust your hat. You mutter under your breath, “keeping customers content creates kingly profits, feel free to follow that fellow, Susie’s sister sewed socks for soldiers” until you are certain you won’t stumble over or halt your words while speaking. You straighten your spine, you motion to Serenity to sit quietly under the desk, you press the button alerting your secretary to send in your appointment, you are fine.

Kingpin 02/18/2019

You're finally let in. You eye the mayor thoroughly as you enter. You think you might remember him, but there's been a lot of faces during the war and not enough time to memorize all of them. You realize how rare it is to see a Dersite without glamour these days - on their own planet. Truly a shame. You already admire him for this choice, while a part of you can't help but be jealous as you can't afford that. Maybe never again.

"Greetings. Thank you for making time for me." You offer your hand for a firm handshake, then take a seat.

WV 02/18/2019

You're already a little intimidated. The man in your office is easily the size of a brute by Dersite standards. Still, you take the offered handshake, even as his hand dwarfs yours, and somehow manage minimal stiltedness in your speech. "It was no trouble. I'm afraid our office doesn't see a lot of visitors." You smile a bit as you take a seat in your chair, the side of your shoe brushing against Serenity, and straighten up a bit. "You did not mention to my secretary when making this appointment why you wished to meet...?" You hope the question is obvious enough.

Kingpin 02/19/2019

"What a shame, it's a wonderful office." Well, it's alright. Not quite something you'd be satisfied with, but apparently the mayor of Midnight City has to make due with this.

"Hah, straight to the point. Well.." you begin, "I'd like discuss the possibilities of future collaborations. I believe we both only want the best for the city, and I think we can reach our goals if we help each other."

WV 02/19/2019

You do like your office. It's not huge, but then, it doesn't have to be; you have a nice big window with a view of the city, and you even put a picture of yourself and Serenity the day you got her on the desk.

Somehow you thought a businessman might not have been so impressed with it. But if he's not, at least he's being polite.

"Future collaborations?" This is nice. This is going well. Your voice is steady. "Perhaps it is on me for not doing my research, but--you are a businessman, yes? What exactly is it that you, well, do?" There's a faint thought in the back of your mind that this is a little embarrassing, that perhaps you should have found out a bit more about the man, been more prepared--but you shut that down, you can go over every detail of the conversation later. At home.

Kingpin 02/20/2019

You're torn between being offended because he didn't find you important enough to put more preparation into this meeting and glad because it's giving you so much more control and leverage in this conversation. A mix of emotions flashes over your face before you settle on a polite smile.

"A business man I am, yes. I deal with real estate, for the most part. Usually buying and selling existing houses, at times building new or improving on old property." You did your researching, of course, and it wasn't too hard to finding out that the new mayor may have a strong interest in these things as well.

"This city needs development, desperately. But it is dying under crime and poverty." You click your tongue and grumble with lower voice. "And the Prospitian restrictions have the economy in a choke hold."

WV 02/20/2019

Huh. How convenient, that a real estate mogul has walked into your office just as you're drafting proposals for the various old properties in town. You smile, a little easier. "Of course. I will not speak as to Prospitian restrictions--" partially because you're not sure what to think about them, but also "Partially because it is so early into my term, and that is the sort of long-term change that will require more time, but I have been drafting proposals for development--public services, that sort of thing." You're relaxing, a little. This conversation is easier than you thought it would be.

Kingpin 02/21/2019

You feign pleasant surprise. "That is great to hear. Can you share any of your plans?"

Of course he got plans. He'd be incredibly ill-suited for the position if he didn't. But plans alone don't bring change. This planet needs idealistic people, but it more so needs people that can accomplish them.

"It is just important to think about the big picture. It's true, these things take time, but they need to be addressed now so that proposals and reforms can worked out with the necessary care, else you'll find yours scrambling for time."

WV 02/23/2019

You're beginning to get the impression that you're out of your depth here.

You try not to let it show, instead handing over the folder of one-page proposal summaries--a new library, soup kitchens, community gardens. "Of course. But going too fast could upset the monarchy and lose what little democratic process we have here. It's a--a balance." You stumble only briefly, collect yourself, smile.

Kingpin 02/28/2019

You take the folder and look through it. Interesting proposals. None that can replace and fix all that has been lost, but it's a start.

You continue speaking without looking up from the files. "Ah, that blasted monarchy." Prospitian monarchy, mind you. "Right, can't hurt their sensitive feelings after they just waltzed all over this planet like it's theirs. I don't envy you for your position. Any ambitious idea stifled between invaders and gangs. A hard place to be. You'll be needing strong allies if you want to get anywhere."

WV 03/02/2019

It's not what you'd call a subtle question. "You consider yourself a good candidate for a strong ally?" The answer's going to be yes. Of course it will. Real estate moguls don't just come to the mayor's office for a friendly chat, no matter how much you'd like a friendly chat these days.

What he says is true, though. You hadn't thought this would be easy--far from it--but it's proving so much more than you had expected. Endless red tape. You've been in office for two months and have managed half a step of one of the public works proposals.

Kingpin 03/03/2019

"I dare say so." Your next words have to be carefully chosen. "I have influence - contacts, finances -and I have plentiful security staff at hand. You know.. You never know when someone may get tired of an overly ambitious politician. Which would be a pity.. I quite like the gardens."

You put the file down on the desk and lean back, eyes on the mayor, watching his every reaction. "But there's plenty of things still out of my reach. I'm sure there's some room for collaboration here. You scratch mine and I scratch yours, you know."

WV 03/03/2019

You work to keep your face blank and pleasant as ever, but you’re not certain that the trepidation doesn’t show.

On the one hand; this is a mistake. Kingsley is choosing his words so carefully that you have no guarantee he’s not—and wouldn’t be surprised if he was—involved with the less savory aspects of the city. He’s given no indication of how much he expects from you. The humans call it a Faustian deal; and if that was all there was to it you’d be very foolish indeed to try.

But he’s also right. You’re polite and quiet, but you have plans. Plans that will take multiple terms, plans that might carry on past you—plans that could easily be shut down in their early stages if the Prospit monarchy decides they don’t like what you’re doing. He has what you need.

You wish you’d asked the dear Inspector to dig up anything possible on him before this meeting. Lesson learned. Too late for this round.

After a moment, you nod. “I....certainly could use the assistance of the private sector. At least while starting out. I’d prefer to start small, and learn how we work together, but collaboration is....certainly agreeable, and not out of reach.”

Kingpin 03/04/2019

The mayor may seem like a dunce, but he's much sharper and cleverer than he looks.

"Definitely. There'll be enough time to get to know each other. I don't intend to disappoint you." You give him the most friendly smile an old sour man like you can manage.

Certainly, you're aware that winning an ally like that means playing nice. It's a worthy investment all things considered. "Do you have any ideas how I can be of service yet?"

WV 03/04/2019

You think that was the right answer. Certainly, he seems to have taken it well.

"Ah...." You take the folder back, shuffling through, and remove a two page briefing. "A trial run, perhaps. The City Council's been very eager to renovate the old factory." You point to the photo. "It's been unused for years, but whenever someone gets the time to try and track down the current owner, they get tied up in red tape; it swapped hands several times, frequently less legally. Do you have any, er, contacts, who might have ways to find out who owns the building at the moment?"

Kingpin 03/05/2019

You pick the folder up to take a closer look at the photo and address. The spot seems familiar, but you honestly can't claim to know every spot of the city inside out. "Not off the top of my head, but I'm sure I can figure it out pretty easily."

You hum. "The building is in a shambles, but unless the property is rotting away in someone's forgotten heritage, it might be that the plot of land is still pretty valuable. A good investment for whoever is holding onto it. You got the funds for it?"

WV 03/08/2019

"We have a portion of the budget set aside for projects like this. That portion was apparently pocketed by the last few mayors, but it's not insignificant. Unless the property is unusually valuable, we should be able to purchase it."

You fold your hands over the desk, watching Kingsley. There's probably a not-insignificant chance that somewhere along the line, illegal methods will be used; it's just the nature of Midnight City at this point. You wonder if your Inspector could assign someone to finding out exactly how far along the transaction will get before passing into mob hands.

Kingpin 03/08/2019

Bold of the mayor to assume that the transaction isn't already long in mob hands.

"That is good to hear. The budget, I mean. The pocketing not so much. Glad to see an fine upstanding man in this position now. I will see what I can find out and, if possible, help you strike a good deal." You'll definitely need to make sure that whatever you do here is absolutely clean and waterproof. Can't have the mayor's people or anyone else notice something off and start snooping around.

WV 03/12/2019

"Then I look forward to doing business with you." You set the folder back in the drawer of your desk and hold out your hand for Kingsley to shake. A second later, you realize that his hand is much larger than your own, but, well, too late to take it back now.

Kingpin 03/13/2019

You give him a satisfied smile before slowly leaning forward to return the handshake with firm grasp. "It is settled then," you nod. Never expected any other outcome anyway. You didn't intend to leave this office without some kind of deal. It may be that the city won't ever accept you as their ruler again, but you're going to make sure that you're still pulling the strings.

WV 03/16/2019

You hold for a socially appropriate amount of time before releasing and falling back. "Is there anything else I might assist you with today, Mr. Kingsley?"

Kingpin 03/17/2019

"Not in particular. I'm quite satisfied with the progress we made. I'm sure we can handle the next on our next meeting, unless you're dying to tell me more about some of the plans you made. Ah, speaking of plans. Any events worth noting in the foreseeable future? I love mingling with the people and meeting old and new faces. I'd hate to miss out due to scheduling conflicts."

WV 03/24/2019

"We have a newsletter; if you give your address to my secretary, she'll have it sent to you. Though I'm afraid that we're still settling in; you'll have plenty of advance notice for any events." You smile slightly. "Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Kingsley. I hope this is the beginning of a wonderful partnership."

Kingpin 03/25/2019

A newsletter. Who does this worm think he is that he considers you insignificant to put you on a list for a newsletter. Anything less than a personal invite is an insult. But fine, you're not about to make a scene (yet).

"Likewise" you smile as you raise from your seat. "It was a pleasure. Hope we can repeat this sometime soon."

WV Last Friday at 6:58 PM

“I hope so as well.” You kind of don’t, but hey, this is what you signed up for. You knew what you were getting into. Probably. Hopefully.

“Do have a safe journey out there,” you call as he exits.

Kingpin Today at 9:30 AM

"Will do" you nod as you grab your hat on your way out the door. "My assisstant will be in contact." So much more work to be done, but it this is a start.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

My thoughts on Infinity War and Spider-Man’s role within it.

Yeah obviously SPOILERS

tl:dr version: It’s great but there are some problems, mostly in regards to it as an adaptation but there are some problems even taken on it’s own. Spider-Man’s better than he was in Homecoming but there are still fundamentally broken aspects to his character

Longer version:

Brolin and Saldana’s performances were utterly stellar. Like everyone did a great job but they were on another level. The Thanos/Gamora relationship was just perfect, closely followed by Wanda and Vision’s romance (WHY won’t Marvel just let them be together again in the comics!).

 The action was also just great with my personal favourite being Captain America and his team’s first appearance.

 I don’t think the action scenes were up there with the best stuff from Avengers Assemble or Civil War, but there was nothing wrong with it...well....except maybe one thing but I’ll get there in a minute.

 The Russo’s also, much like in Civil War and as Whedon did with both prior Avengers films, performed a master class in balancing out a truly MASSIVE amount of characters.

 Yes some characters got a lot more play and focus than others (Iron Man edged out Captain America, small wonder since this movie was kind of celebrating the 10th anniversary of his movie) but the amount of play each character got felt appropriate to the story being told. Like T’Challa wasn’t as focussed upon and didn’t really have a big moment in comparison to Iron Man but then again Iron Man was the guy who literally had PTSD due to the Battle of New York and that was Thanos’ fault. Also it’s appropriate given how Thanos was originally an Iron Man villain.

 There was also plenty of laugh out loud moments, especially when it came to the Guardians. In fact credit to the Russo’s they did a wonderful job of keeping the Guardians consistent with Gunn’s portrayals of them.

 Now...that cannot be said of every character. Tony Stark I felt was consistent with their take on him from Civil War but along with that movie’s rendition of him leant more towards the serious side of things than Whedon’s portrayals of him or his characterization in his solo trilogy.

But I also do not regard that as a bad thing. One of my frustrations with the MCU, especially in Phase 3 has been that they don’t take things seriously enough and undermine the characters and drama with too much humour at times.

 This is the root of my profoundly mixed feelings on Thor: Ragnarok. It IS hilarious. It’s funny and fun. But also extremely inconsistent with the other Thor films and to be blunt a downright insulting portrayal of the rich almost Lord of the Rings level high fantasy world of the Asgardians. Thor is far from devoid of humour of course but primarily he’s a high fantasy noble warrior and that’s tonally played straight. So when you have him bumbling around or facing off against Jeff Goldblum playing a character practically designed to be an internet meme it’s really going against the spirit of the character.

 As far as I am concerned MCU Thor, whilst likable enough in his own right, has yet to really nail the character. However Infinity War at least course corrected this somewhat following Ragnarok. Infinity War’s Thor is still comedic but he is also somewhat tortured and a real bad ass at various moments. However the price of this was essentially entirely undermining Ragnarok’s ending. It reads as though the Russo’s were blowing a raspberry at Waititi, much as Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi did to Abrams’ Force Awakens movie. I’m less upset about it though because all the Asgardians I gave a damn about were casually killed off in Ragnarok anyway and that movie screwed over Thor’s mythos anyway.

 I’m hoping this clean slate approach could maybe lead to a second attempt at getting Thor right but I dunno if that’s likely.

 Another character who was treated with more respect and was just over all more on point than in their solo movie was Doctor Strange.

 THIS was the Doctor Strange we were promised in his 2016 movie. The MASTER of the Mystic Arts and the dude in CHARGE of the magical stuff on Earth. Along with his absolute lack of slapstick bullshit this more competent portrayal of Doctor Strange was an infinitely better reflection of the classic Ditko character than his own movie.

 Finally as I touched on above Thanos himself needs to be lauded. He is easily one of the three best MCu villains ever. Loki, Killmonger and him compete for the top spot. His motivation is interesting unto itself and in a perverse way even sympathetic. His character has actual layers (not to the level of other great comic book villains admittedly but they exist) and in a very real sense this is HIS movie moreso than anyone else.

 Okay that’s all the good stuff that comes to mind...what about the stuff I didn’t like.

 Well whilst the humour was more finely balanced with everything else in this movie in comparison to say Ragnarok (which was a comedic action movie, not an action movie with comedic moments in it) or the slapstick bullshit that was Homecoming and Doctor Strange, there was still a little too much in there at least for me.

 I laughed for sure but it still felt a bit too ‘this is a Marvel movie so we need to have humour moments because that’s part of our brand don’t ya know!’. In particular Wong and Doctor Strange mentioning talking about ice cream in the middle of the discussion about Thanos’ impending invasion of Earth was way too far. Even if it wasn’t specifically Doctor Strange in that scene it was just stupid that we needed to cram a joke like that in a scene that realistically shouldn’t be there.

 Another of the admittedly few problems with the movie was that the Infinity Stones’ abilities were rather vaguely defined. Like...what exactly DOES the power stone do? What are the limits of the Time Stone? Because in Doctor Strange it seemed to be able to turn back all of time but in this movie Wanda kills Vision by destroying his Infinity Stone and then Thanos beats her up. He proceeds to reverse time so HE can get Vision’s stone but Wanda remains beaten. So...can he localize the effects of the Time Stone...apparently.

 This becomes kind of a plot hole considering a major point of the movie was his need to kill Gamora in order to attain the Soul Stone. But if he can reverse Time...why couldn’t he just go back in time and save her?

 Things get even more screwy because the Reality Stone enables him to apparently WARP reality. At first it seems like he can just cast convincing illusions. But no...he literally turns Drax into stone and makes Star-Lord’s gun shoot bubbles.

 He can warp reality.

 But if he can do that...why does he need the other Stones at all? Why is Gamora’s death a big deal because he could just warp reality in order to bring her back couldn’t he? Hell why did he struggle at all in ANY of his battles with the Avengers/Guardians?

 I’m not saying there is no way to explain this stuff (e.g. that he needs a certain degree of concentration to maintain his alterations to reality) but the movie needs to GIVE them to us.

 My final bone of contention would be the changes to Thanos’ character. I’m no Thanos expert but even I know the character’s drive is his romantic feelings for Death. If you didn’t know in the Marvel Universe Death is literally a sentient Cosmic entity that can adopt various forms, most commonly that of a woman.

That is how Thanos sees her and he is literally in love with her. He kills people to please her. THAT is the reason he is known as Thanos the MAD Titan.

In this movie though his motivation is to kill half of the universe’s population because the universe only has a finite amount of resources thus less people, the more people can live happily off those resources.

Like I said it’s an interesting and in a warped way sympathetic motivation.

He doesn’t hate anyone, he isn’t evil he has looked at the problem and come up with a coldly pragmatic solution...Kinda...

I guess you could just handwave this on him being so deranged as to honestly commit to murdering half of everyone alive but when you think about it his plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I mean for starters killing half of everyone is a temporary solution at best. Once upon a time there were less people alive then there are today so those numbers will go BACK up given time?

Was his plan to just keep the numbers down whenever they get too big?

Secondly if his argument is that resources are finite so there needs to be less people in order to consume those resources well...that doesn’t really fix the problem. Because those finite resources are still going to be consumed, it will just take twice as long.

And what about places for whom those resources are already mostly depleted so the half who have survived can’t make that much use of them anyway?

How about those planets that are actually SO over populated that their resources are still not enough to support even half the population?

Then you have the fact that if Thanos can warp reality to the point where clicking his fingers kills half of everyone in the universe couldn’t he just snap his fingers and DOUBLE the resources for everyone?

Couldn’t he just create like more planets with more resources and more space for everyone?

See the ‘half of everyone alive are gone’ thing IS directly from the original Infinity Gauntlet storyline but in that story it didn’t raise these questions because the entire reason he killed half of everyone was because he was trying to impress Death.

I know, I know. The movie’s motivation is an easier concept to grasp and easier to sell to a mass audience than ‘Death literally looks like a woman to him and he wants to make sweet love with her’.

At the same time...it’s SUCH a bold and strong idea that it’s honestly far more original and striking than the motive this movie gave him.

More importantly though in removing that motive they kind of...eviscerated the foundation of Thanos.

Like if you are doing an adaptation of Thanos the ONE thing you need to do is have him be in love with Death.

That is literally the thing his whole character revolves around.

To not do that is to essentially just do an uber powerful purple alien who can take down whole hordes of super heroes and has the trappings of Thanos.

Like I said I like the move and I liked Thanos in it but at the same time it was a really bad portrayal of him.

Speaking of which...

Let’s talk Spider-Man

...Sigh...god dammit...

Look not much new to say.

Spider-Man in this movie much like his other MCU appearances is defined by his youth and his relationship to Stark.

The character can be summed up as ‘the young inexperienced kid hero who’s a pseudo son to Tony Stark’.

THAT is who MCU Peter Parker is.

That is also fundamentally NOTHING like who Peter Parker is!

How badly did they lean on this take on him though?

They leaned on this take on him so badly that Doctor Strange LITERALLY asked if he was Tony Stark’s ward. The film makers LITERALLY referenced how they’ve turned Spider-Man into a pseudo Robin to Iron Man’s Batman.

They also had Spidey cry and wimper at the prospect of dying.

This is something I’m conflicted over.

On the one hand if Spider-Man is the everyman, the hero who could be you, his ability to feel fear, especially over his own demise, should make such an portrayal of him permissible right?

Well...yes and no.

First of all the overwhelming majority of the time whenever Spider-Man truly believes himself to be facing what seems to be inevitable death he’s NOT acted that way. In ASM #40 he was at the mercy of the Goblin and even stated he wasn’t afraid to die. YES he was older than MCu Spider-Man but he was 19 vs 15. It’s not that big of a difference frankly.

But okay even if we ignore that we have Ultimate Peter Parker, whom MCU Spidey is clearly more based upon than the 616 version, definitely NOT acting that way during the Death of Spider-man story arc.

But honestly I think my problem with the scene (apart from him dying in Stark’s arms to further beat you over the head with the fact that he is Tony’s ‘son’) was kind of my problem with Superman murdering Zod in Man of Steel.

It’s not that you can’t have that happen but it’s when you are having it happen.

In Man of Steel it was an origin movie and the first movie to establish that version of Superman.

What this means is that we needed to see Clark become Superman but also have Superman be as definitively Superman and do the usual Superman stuff as much as possible. This is also why the Dawn of Justice version of Batman didn’t work. You can say it’s Batman at the end of his rope all you want but that doesn’t mean anything if we haven’t seen what Batman is NORMALLY like.

You need to establish the default setting for the characters, what their typical personalities are like and then you can push the envelope with stuff like that.

With Spider-Man because they’ve leant so hard on the ‘HE’S YOUNG’ thing and had him cry and whimper in Homecoming’s climax as well as this movie’s climax (which are 2 of his 3 appearances so far) it’s served to push that this is part of the ‘default’ setting for MCU Spider-Man.

MCU Spider-Man cries and whimpers as a child would. Which is not something that’s wrong  to do with Spider-Man’s character especially in context of these movies...but it IS wrong to do them at such significant moments so early in his existence to the point where it is essentially the default setting.

Spider-Man does not TYPICALLY act that way but MCU Spider-Man now DOES. It also undermines Homecoming’s climax as wasn’t that moment supposed to show Peter growing beyond that?

Hell as the trailer revealed he becomes an Avenger in this movie the very thing he REJECTED as part of his character arc at the end of Homecoming. WTF?

One some positive notes though he was not AS bad as he was in Homecoming, he had a clever plan at one point, was a FAR more competent fighter than in his own movie and the Iron Spider Suit’s inclusion surprisingly didn’t undermine the ending of Homecoming. I and everyone else suspected he would go against his decision at the end of Homecoming and accept the new suit Stark made for him in light of Thanos’ threat. But what actually happened was that Stark essentially forced him into the suit to save his life. And whilst that again undermines Spidey by making him Tony’s child, it at least avoids invalidating his rejection of the suit in Homecoming.

Over all I give the movie a solid A as a movie and like a solid B as an adaptation...except for the Spider-Man parts. Fuck those they get a D.

P.S. I feel my inner nerd needs to point out that this movie as an adaptation is actually a fusion (to varying degrees) of mostly FOUR different stories.

It takes the name from the Infinity War storyline but (much like Age of Ultron) the name is the only thing it really takes.

As most people know the movie is based upon the 1990s crossover event (back when those were less common and usually less atrociously awful) Infinity Gauntlet.

However since a significant chunk of the movie is spent upon Thanos’ acquisition of the infinity stones the movie is actually also a (very, very loose) adaptation of the Thanos Quest storyline which was the lead in story to Infinity Gauntlet.

It also took a not insignificant amount of inspiration from Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity storyline, which was Marvel’s annual event story for 2013.

At the time it’s likely that story was done to merely capitalize upon Thanos’ tease from the post-credits scene in Avengers Assemble the previous year.

Now though I’m wondering if it might have been used to generate prototype concepts for the Infinity War movie to play with.

Thanos invading Wakanda is straight out of Infinity as are (unless I am mistaken) ALL of Thanos’ henchmen. Proxima Midnight, Black Maw, Supergiant, Korvus Glaive, his foot soldiers. They’re all specifically from that story. Also fun fact I essentially had to skim that entire event for my first day and my new job in 2016.

Obviously there are other little aspects taken from other Marvel stories too, like the new Spider suit is inspired by the Iron Spider suit that originally had nothing to do with any given Thanos story.

[marvelousbirthdays]

Happy Birthday, ureeber!

September 25 - Bruce/Darcy, Smutty or fluffy, author's choice, and any prompt you want, for @ureeber

Written by @iamartemisday

A/N: Going with: You’re really sexy when you’re angry.

 Bruce Banner was not a stupid man. Given his degrees and experience, that should go without saying, but what some might not know was that he was intelligent not just in books. He had a pretty good grasp of people as well.

This was how he knew, weeks after first being introduced to Darcy Lewis, that the younger girl had a crush on him. She was kind of incredibly obvious about it.

“Hey Bruce, brought you some coffee,” she said one day as she placed a steaming mug of decaf in front of his face. It was one of those ‘Hulk is Love’ mugs his online fan club sold. He didn’t own one mostly because he still didn’t completely believe he had fans.

“Thanks,” he said, pushing it to the side away from his laptop. “You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, but of course I did. It’s my job as an assistant,” she said grinning a little too wide.

“But you’re Jane’s assistant,” Bruce said, nodding at the woman in question who, along with Tony, watched them from their lab stations. “I didn’t see you get them coffee.”

“They have legs. Anyway, whatcha working on?”

It went on like that for a few months. Darcy would slide into the lab with Chinese take out or freshly baked cookies (“Grandma’s special recipe,” she boasted.), She’d toss whatever Jane needed her way and spend the rest of the afternoon ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ over Bruce’s work. If he were a little less aware, he might not have noticed anything wrong. Except Jane was building a wormhole generator while Tony created new upgrades for his suits. Bruce mostly just took up space. Since the whole gamma ray incident, progress with his research had been pretty stagnant.

And yet, he was the coolest guy around in Darcy Lewis’s eyes. Go figure.

After a while, she grew bolder. She came at him with tight midriff tops and short skirts, and if Bruce said his eyes never strayed appreciatively over her curvaceous form, he’d be a bigger liar than Loki. At the same time, conversation veered in a more… M rated direction.

“So…” she leaned over his desk, her cleavage covering his notes, “anyone ever tell you you’re sexy when you’re angry?”

Bruce blinked. “I uh… I turn into a green giant when I’m angry.”

Darcy’s elbow slid off the table, and she barely caught herself before her chin hit the metal. “Well, you know, green is my favorite color so…”

Tony and Jane snickered in the background, though Jane at least had the decency to hide behind a monitor. Tony looked ready to break out the popcorn.

The next day, the three of them went out to eat, bored with the same old five star cuisine from the in house restaurant. They found a mostly empty sandwich shop in the center of the nearest town.

“So, Bruce, when are you and Lewis hooking up?” Tony asked this difficult question like he was asking for the time of day.

“Ah…” Bruce stumbled for a proper response.

“Not gonna lie, I’ve been wondering the same thing,” said Jane. “You know she’s been dropping hints, right?”

Bruce nodded. “She’s kind of obvious.”

Tony grinned. “So, when are you going for it?”

“When I de-age twenty years and the Other Guy stops existing. Around then.”

“Ah, don’t be like that.” Tony clapped Bruce on the shoulder. “She’s a beautiful woman who knows what she wants, and she wants you. Jane, back me up on this!”

“I did mention the age difference to Darcy,” said Jane. “She told me she’s always preferred older men.”

“See? She likes older men,” Tony said excitedly. “Age isn’t an obstacle, it’s a selling point. Go get her!”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Bruce asked as his sandwich continued to get cold. “Do you care that much about me getting a date?”

“I care about you being happy,” Tony said. “We both do, and one of the happiest things in the world is having great sex. Now go for it before we make you.”

Exactly what constituted at ‘making him’, Bruce didn’t discover until a week later, when he walked into the lab to find the emergency lockdown alarm blaring. Reinforced metal cages descended from the ceiling, trapping him in a twenty by twenty enclosed space. It would’ve been bad enough without Darcy in front of his desk, holding a pan of fresh brownies and also trapped in the cage.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Emergency protocol in case of an attack,” Bruce said. “But I don’t think there are any bad guys around today.”

“That’s because this is a different kind of emergency,” Tony’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “This is a love emergency! The two of you are staying in there until you confess your feelings and share your big damn kiss. I have musical accompaniment set up for the big moment so take your time. Not too much time, though.”

“Sorry Bruce,” Jane interjected. “It was Tony’s idea and well, I’m getting tired of all the sappy love poetry Darcy writes about you.”

Bruce looked at Darcy. “You write poetry about me?”

Darcy turned beet red. “No… maybe…”

“Okay, you two crazy kids have fun and we’ll send Vision in an hour with some food. Take care!”

The audio clicked off, leaving them in silence. Bruce flopped down in his desk chair. Darcy sat on an empty table behind him, her brownies cooling next to her as she awkwardly picked at her nails. “So… you can’t just break out of here or…”

“I probably could,” he admitted. “Tony knows I won’t though. He’s counting on it.”

“That’s okay,” Darcy said. “I mean, it’s not okay, but… I mean, we can wait this out. He can’t really keep us locked in here forever. That’s illegal and I could sue him. We’ll just hang out and chat and… whatever else you might want to do. I’m game…”

While she probably didn’t intend for that suggestion to be dirty, Bruce couldn’t help taking it that way. Maybe it was just because he knew what she truly thought of him. Maybe it was because something deep down, he felt the same way. Maybe he wanted a beautiful woman’s touch after so many long years starved for affection.

Or maybe he just had indigestion.

“Darcy, look, I know why you’ve been coming around, and I’m flattered. I really am, but it’s not a good idea for me to be in a relationship. I’m not the kind of guy you want to stick your neck out for, and you’re an amazing, talented, intelligent woman who could have anyone you wanted. You don’t need someone like me when you could have-”

She kissed him, and he was glad she did. He was even gladder when she didn’t stop. He was less glad when You Shook Me All Night Long blasted over the speakers, followed by fumbling and a curse from Tony.  

“Dammit! That was supposed to be Whitney. What happened? Jane, did I cross the wires? Help me!”

“Don’t mind us,” Jane shouted. “We’re good up here. Go back to what you were doing.”

They hadn’t stopped to begin with. Bruce didn’t know if they ever would. Deep in his chest, the Other Guy purred with contentment. Maybe this could work after all.

[emoselenas]

my first tour.

i’m currently sitting in a ford e350 riding down I-95 back to new jersey, to hurriedly clean out the rental van we took for my band’s first tour ever and drop it off at bandago. we’ve been up since 8:30 am, not an unusual time for us, but we’re running on about 5-6 hours of sleep. that’s the average amount of sleep we’ve been able to squeeze in every night of tour. nine nights straight away from home, a gig almost every night. and of course, as physically exhausting as it was, it was a week that changed us and challenged ourselves as musicians.

8/12 - asbury park, nj

day one was our jersey hometown show in asbury. boy it was stressful at first, and absolutely sweltering outside from the humidity. i was so stressed because i was in a panic (when aren’t i lol) dealing with a sinus infection. anyone who knows me knows i’m a nervous wreck. i am a perfectionist, and i loathe not performing at my best; i try really hard to be perfect. i was flushing out my sinuses every hour and inhaling my humidifier that resembles a mini-nutri bullet if they came in white and also had a vaporizer tank inside. i looked pretty ridiculous sitting behind merch like this but i wasn’t taking any chances. i needed to take whatever measures i could possible to avoid a poor performance. there were a good amount of friends and people who came out to support us and i didn’t want to let them down. i was also really excited to see funeral attire, the band we went on tour with, and for people to see the progress we made in the month and a half we took to rigorously prepare for tour.

the asbury show ended up being really great, and a couple people said it was the best they’ve ever seen us. i felt overjoyed to hear such awesome feedback. i was also just really happy i could get our tourmates and close friends in funeral attire a show in asbury park. we sold out of pretty much all of our ramen shirts, which i was hoping to save for the rest of tour, but we ended up having enough to sell at least one ramen shirt a day to somebody. it was also really cool seeing like five people walking around the venue with ramen shirts on lmao

8/13 - long island, ny

and so our week of tour began- my sinus infection lessened but it persisted. the next day was long island, and we were looking forward to reuniting with our friends in i dreamt the sea who graciously put the show together for us. all of tour, whenever we played a bar with a juke box i spent $2 to play “smooth” by carlos santana featuring rob thomas and it was worth the allocated cost of $4 for all of tour. the show was a ton of fun. however i strangely sang worse than i did the day before- which was weird, and frustrating, since i felt the symptoms of my sinus infection less than i had in asbury. i was extremely upset. but i was surrounded by friends and i tried really hard to put on a brave face. all the bands we played with were super nice and liked us a lot, we made new friends and people who came out to the show dug us a lot too. we finally got to gig with u blue who are also a blue swan-eque band. so i guess even though i sucked, we did something right.

as we were getting ready to leave to go crash at my close friend jenni’s house in bellimore, our van’s battery died. bandago mentioned when we picked up our van earlier in the day that the battery had died the day before, but all they advised was that we drive the van around for a half hour or more once we began our rental. they didn’t mention anything about being wary of the battery beyond that. kelly and cassidy straight up saved us and gave us a super quick jump, and we were on our way finally. jenni was the first friend we crashed with and she really treated us to a nice sleep and some delicious bagels. so glad i could get to see her for the first time in a while too.

8/14 - nazareth, pa

the next day we headed out as quickly as possible to make our way to PA. something i feared on this tour was that we would lose our personal belongings, or have something stolen from us. this did happen - our tour photographer julie’s power strip was stolen in long island. fortunately, we were able to help her replace it. what had happened as we arrived to PA and stopped at walmart, was that i magically lost my phone somewhere between holding it in my hand walking out of the store, and sitting down to leave for our hotel. i was pretty much convinced it was gone or stolen. we ripped apart the entire van to try to find it, ran back inside walmart to see if i put it down somewhere, and even walked back to a spot we had the van parked in for a few minutes. i was convinced i was going to spend all of tour without a goddamn phone. and then, it occurred to me- maybe check… the garbage? and christ almighty. in a swath of basura juice, there was my phone. i ran back inside walmart to scrub the SHIT out of the case and carefully wash the phone itself and we finally made our way to check in at the days hotel in allentown, PA.

seriously- if you have a band of 5+ people, and/or if you are willing to spare the expense, buy hotel rooms for whatever nights you don’t have somewhere to crash for free any night of tour. i realize this isn’t feasible for 2+ week stints, or for people who literally do this for a living, but it was amazing to have beds to sleep in and free breakfast every morning for about $12-$15 a person. i actually don’t know if we would have been as healthy and happy without having that convenience. hotwire was how chris donis from funeral attire and i booked rooms, and the rates started at about $60 plus fees and tax per night. and it was fun crashing in hotels.

we met up with our friends in funeral attire and ethan from whittled down who was doing merch for most of the tour for a quick swim before the show in nazareth. we love hanging out with those guys. my obnoxious laugh is probably amplified by 10 dB just being around them. seriously almost pissed myself laughing in the pool because the guys were playing chicken and then ethan was doing kick flips into the pool with the life-saving device hanging by the pool the size of a massive surfboard. but POOL TIME was over around 3:30 pm because we had to get ready to head to the next venue, which was stehly’s bakery in nazareth a town over.

playing stehly’s was sick. small place, but they give each band member at least one free treat of some sort. i got a couple kiffles- little pastry dough roll-ups filled with fruit jellies- they were soooo cute and so good. i also caved to a helping of six potato and onion pierogies after the show. the only concerning thing was that after the first band jetsam played - awesome instrumental prog doom band - we soon realized that the show didn’t have a sound guy. there was a small PA set up, and we had mics and mic stands missing. the confusion pushed us quite a bit behind schedule but enough people at the show were resourceful and helpful enough to keep the show moving. i felt like i didn’t play an awesome set, and we also had some technical difficulties with our click track/Interlude mixer, but the funeral attire guys still had very nice things to say about us, so i trust them haha.

i was frustrated with how i totally blew my performance in long island, when we had a decent amount of people watching us, and then had a great show the next day. i actually don’t care about playing to a room of few people; i consider any opportunity to play to any amount of people of equal worth to another. so when i blow one show but not the other, i feel regret for not winning over potential fans we could have had, had i just been a better vocalist.

8/15 - philadelphia, pa

so then imagine my absolute blind rage, when we played the barbary in philly the next day, and we played our worst show all of tour. we were truly looking forward to this show and we were so devastated afterwards. my top most anticipated three shows were asbury, philly and cambridge. we love playing philly, we had some great bands on this bill we like a lot, and we actually had people coming out for us.

we were just making sure that the band on before us had almost all their gear off before we could load on, it was a really small stage. but the sound guy beckoned for us over the PA to start loading on regardless. we barely got a line check and it set the precedent for the whole set. ryan was starting to have volume issues with the volume levels on the mixer, and then because our individual levels were out of whack one of us would be louder than the other, or too loud to hear the drums. it was a straight up mess. and i didn’t know if we would win over anyone at the show anyways, but i just wanted to play well enough to have their respect. i put a lot of pressure on ourselves. i put a lot of pressure on myself.

when i have a bad set and i can’t deal with the disappointment i tend to shut down. even if i try my absolute best, even if people tell us we were still good - i just, i don’t believe them. it feels like they’re just being polite or i’m being lied to. it’s pretty pathetic of myself and sad; it’s something i need to work on. i actually wrote the small verse of lyrics in the intro of this tour about that. i just don’t think with all the experience of singing and performing i have that error is excusable anymore. after taking my best friend laura to her car i started chugging alcohol. i told myself before tour i wouldn’t drink until the last day to keep my throat in a healthy condition - whoops. i was so pissed i didn’t care and we had the next day off anyways; figured if i chugged water before bed i’d be fine. and i was right.

even when we had bad shows, my favorite perk each night was just getting to see funeral attire play every night. their song “joy” is one of my favorite all-time songs. the drowned god, blueroom and flowercrown were awesome too. oh! and a super fun thing we did was place enormous orders for cheesesteaks and had them delivered to the venue. we got guest lists this show and two free drink tickets each too. not gonna lie, it felt cool haha. we also explored a bit and FINALLY did our nine month-overdue interview with our friend brandon from audio addiction.

8/16 - day off at delaware water gap, days hotel in allentown, pa 

the next day, our day off, marked the halfway point for our tour. the original plan was hershey, but we did delaware water gap instead. it was a much better plan. we started the day with the whole tour together at cracker barrel. we then started to head up to delaware water gap, specifically milford, PA to check out hackers falls and milford beach. this day started out as absolute dog shit for me because i was dealing with a kinda heavy personal issue at home. didn’t anticipate i’d have anything to worry about in this regard, and my mental health has been worsening over the course of this year. so imagine at this point how hard it was for me to hide behind my hair and not be upset the whole morning. i’m also a horrible liar so i was fucked if i wanted to lie and say it was seasonal allergies fucking up my face lmfao

on top of that, we were super behind schedule for del water gap. we were all supposed to go jump in the waterfalls together, but we couldn’t find the specific waterfall we wanted to jump in. and the one we did find, the one i sort of swam in, it turned out that the trail to the bottom of the waterfall was closed off- which i believe had a more ideal swimming hole-type area. oh! and the worst part! we kept forgetting funeral attire had a commercial van for this tour. and one of the roads linked to where we were, PA-209, doesn’t allow commercial vehicles to travel through. so on top of me dealing with shit at home and now feeling like i was immensely inconveniencing my friends, i felt like an asshole. on my fucking day off lmao

but to my pleasant surprise it ended up being fine, and insanely fun. funeral attire didn’t get to chill at the waterfall with us but we made our way to milford beach and hung out there for the remainder of the day. thank god it was still open we didn’t get there until 5:30 pm. a bunch of us were swimming, couple of the guys just read or laid in the grass, and a few of the guys were throwing around a baseball. some of them swam across the river and back, the other side of the river was new jersey haha.

that night we got together to drink VERY heavily and hang out. that was probably one of my favorite highlights of the tour. at this point i was feeling much better. i shared a fat bottle of some pink moscato with julie. by the way, it was so sick having another girl on tour. not just because julie is talented but is also a great friend and was just an awesome presence to have for the week. her and donis helped me a lot on this day, if it wasn’t for them i don’t know i would have gotten through it.

my band partied hard for the first night all tour. funeral attire has the absolute strength and stomachs to drink most nights and then still play amazing sets every day- we’re not there at least not yet haha. holy fuck i made it halfway through this post and haven’t mentioned TIKI TIME??? TIKI TIM???

so funeral attire kept a couple sweet luau decorations from the long island venue hahaha and one of them said tiki time- can’t say i can truly encapsulate what tiki time is in a short explanation. tiki time was when we drank, but tiki time was also sort of the entire tour??? so i might be beat for explaining it well haha.

so we got super drunk and sang to old fueled by ramen/myspace emo bands, and my bandmate jaime and i played a four-way battle of magic the gathering with frankie and fez from funeral attire. i had my ass handed to me but i’m still learning anyways, it was fun regardless. it was really cool getting to know the guys in funeral attire better, i was already pretty close with donis but i feel like i got the chance to actually talk and hang with everyone.

arguably one of the funniest moments on tour - my bandmate joe got absolutely TRASHED. he somehow managed to get lost lmao or jaime had to escort him back to our hotel room late in the night. and even after joe was safe with us he woke up at 6 in the morning when housekeeping came walking in so he got up to shoo them away hahaha and THEN- he PANICKED because he realized he didn’t take a room key when he walked out the room and shut the door HAHA so he called ALL of us SEVEN times, he also accidentally called the jam room in howelll LMAO and finally as he’s on the phone with our friend ed, ed was just like “ask for help” so joe pulled aside an employee. and as that employee was approaching to help and joe turned the door knob, the door OPENED. the poor kid was sooo hung over the entire next day.

8/17 - brooklyn, ny

the second half of tour began with our drive out to brooklyn and nursing poor joe back to health. both bands arrived to brooklyn around the same time. we briefly went to a dog park, and then went to a big thrift shop where bren bought the sickest light pink leather jacket. after about an hour or so of walking around, we realized we were out of ideas of shit to do until showtime in about eight hours. we were all hungry as hell, but half of us wanted ramen or pizza. so we split up - my bandmates went to pizza, and julie and i went to ramen with funeral attire and ethan. we went to zamurai ramen which was absolutely fantastic. the prices were reasonable, too.

muchmore’s was a cool spot- a handful of my good friends came out too, it was awesome to see them and have some comfort from familiar faces. bartees cox jr was one of my most anticipated artists we were to play with on tour, and just, wow. originally his whole band stay inside was to play, but when he could only play solo i knew in my gut i still needed him on the show. what an exemplary musician of genuine talent, he truly stole the show. his voice, god. some people just sing, and some people make you feel by way of singing- i truly felt what he was singing. it’s people like him that inspire me.

well UNFORTUNATELY, i blew it at this show again too. and it felt horrible for me, considering my bandmates still played well and we promised we wouldn’t let the philly set happen again. i hate when i encourage everyone to play their best but can’t even set a good precedent for everyone. i was insanely upset, but i suppressed the urge to despair. 

after the show we crashed with jaime’s friends tim and erica who - holy shit - really pulled out all the stops for us. we had to pay $79 to park the van in the city, but even in a small lower manhattan apartment they were able to make us feel so goddamn comfortable. beds for everyone, a dinner table set for all of us and incredibly nice wine. i wasn’t going to eat but holy shit i COULD NOT turn down what tim made for us - this like, primavera white wine bowtie pasta and some DUMB thicc succulent pork. holy shit it was some of the best pork i have ever had. they also gave us breakfast for the next morning. what ANGELS

8/18 - manchester, nh

as we awoke we geared up for what would be our longest drive all tour - manhattan to manchester, new hampshire. we had at least six hours of driving to kill in time for load in at 5. we took this opportunity to watch selena- aka one of the best movies ever. the rain all day was real inconvenient, but we were excited to now be in funeral attire’s neck of the woods- new england that is. this also meant we were in the final stretch of tour; the dread was starting to set in.

this show ended up being one of our favorites. we had an enormous stage! it was fun to perform on and i felt like i personally had a great performance. it was cool to look around and see my bandmates looking super content and as into it as i was. the bands we played with were all awesome, we also played with a cool touring package (glass half empty and crafter). i was so excited to check out pinnacle, i really love their sound and their vocalist is so sick. damnit i just remembered i forgot to buy a shirt from pinnacle. I DIGRESS-

so funeral attire showed us mr. mac’s in manchester, a spot with over a dozen kinds of mac and cheese. i wanted to get the lobster one but i ended up getting jalapeño cheddar. woooOOOOOOOW it was GOOD - but of course i could only eat a little bit due to the fact i had to sing and also, milk products and my body are not a good mix anymore :—–) so i saved the rest for later and ate some while watching funeral attire’s set hahaha. julie got the carbonara which had like three different white cheeses and bacon, i almost got that one originally but we both just swapped bites. hiiiighly recommend going if you’re ever playing bungalow bar and grill or going to a show there!

8/19 - cambridge, ma

our second-to-last show was in cambridge, MA- it’s like boston’s brooklyn. rob kindly put us up for the night in his basement, and after we packed up we went to explore cambridge. to my very nice and pleasant surprise there was a GODDAMN H MART - an asian supermarket - with a food court. so we ate lunch there! i got a poké bowl, couple of the guys got ramen and sushi, and julie had this amazing dark curry. we also tried café nero, really great coffee/espresso spot that is also a chain and i straight up just had no idea. there was a bao place (super soft dumplings, kinda look like lil sandwiches) next door that julie and i grabbed baos to eat at. i got the MIT and- oh christ i forget the name of the other one- but the MIT had lamb, lettuce, sesame seeds, pickled onions and spicy mayo, and the other had most of the same ingredients but with crispy tofu. soooo delicious. the guys also bought a couple records at a shop across the street from the venue.

the venue we played was out of the blue too art gallery, an art gallery that hosts shows. AND THEY HAD AN ALASKAN MALAMUTE WALKING AROUND NAMED XO. the biggest malamute i’ve ever seen, xo was so cute. had colored feathers in her fur too. this show was funeral attire’s hometown show, so we met a lot of the musicians they’re most friendly with and they were all so kind. i wanted to get oldsoul on the show so badly and donis and jess from oldsoul made it happen, just such a wonderful band. i got hooked on em from their litter box sessions, jess has such an incredible voice. and the best part was they were all so nice, ugh. rainsound and newfield were awesome too, we got to talk to the rainsound guys a good amount. i didn’t do so hot this night - i hit a difficult note but still botched a bunch of other things - but honestly i was having such a great night so it didn’t even matter. and it was cool to see people who love funeral attire as much as i do singing the words.

8/20 - attleboro, ma

for the last night of tour frankie put us up, we left his place around noon to go back to café nero and get coffee and breakfast before checking in to our last hotel. by chance, hotelwire’s best deal was the holiday inn in mansfield, MA and holy SHIT- they upgraded our room so that we had a sofa with a pull out bed AND THE ROOM WAS MASSIVE. it was bigger than my boyfriend’s apartment in asbury park. two fluffy queen sized beds, that sofa bed, huge flat screen TV, spacious bathroom AND the sliding door in the room gave access right to the pool and jacuzzi area. we went for a quick dip in the jacuzzi and swam before we each had to quickly take real actually showers for the first time in two days. we managed to all somehow get ready within less than two hours and make it in time for load in at 5 pm, doors were at 6 pm

the last venue was cool - it was another art gallery, patterson creations. it was really nice and brand new inside. after both us and funeral attire loaded in we still didn’t have set time info, but going by the event page we assumed we at least were going on third - so minus jaime and ryan who already grabbed pizza across the street from the venue, we drove to north providence quickly to get hot dogs at olneyville new york system. it’s funeral attire’s favorite place to get hot dogs. we all pretty much ordered the way they do which is two hot dogs all the way, that comes with ground beef, mustard, celery salt and onions. i was hesitant to get two hot dogs but i was glad i did, because the one definitely wouldn’t have been enough. well, i WAS glad i did, until i got a very unpleasant phone call ha ha ha

jaime calls me as everyone is still finishing their food, and he says- “the door guy just approached me and said that… you guys need to get back here because we’re supposed to go on second.” holy shit i YELLED lmao. somehow, every other band but us and funeral attire got schedules, and we were supposed to go on at 7:05!!! it was 6:25 when jaime called me and we were twenty minutes away!!!

we quickly settled our bills and donis took me, my bandmates and julie back to the venue right away. we tried to get bands to switch but they couldn’t. thankfully the promoter was able to swap us with another band, so we had some additional time to get ready. i knew the promoter wouldn’t have done that to us out of malice, super nice guy. i had just wished we had the info prior to doors. we never go out for food if we know we have to play extremely soon. i don’t even eat less than three hours before i sing. i was losing my goddamn mind afraid of blowing our set on the last day of tour.

and i diiiiid ha ha ha as great as we started out, i blew almost the entire set. everyone also lost each other a couple times. because of the fear of fucking up royally we also completely abandoned the mixer for the interlude tracks, which we had to do several times over the course of tour. however usually we’d keep it hooked up so that ryan could hear the clicks, this time we didn’t use them at all but ryan’s tempo was still fine.

i was devastated our last set of tour went the way it did and i just couldn’t suppress the disappointment this time. i immediately inhaled a glass of wine at the bar and disappeared for a bit. as grateful and proud i was that we had just finished our first tour ever, i felt an overwhelming sense of failure. if i’m not consistently performing every night, am i fit to do this long term? am i costing the progress of our band? i worked so hard to be the best i could before we left. extra band practices and singing lessons. i did my best to proactively be aware of breathing technique while singing. is this just not in the cards for me? am i wasting my time and my bandmates time? it’s not a waste of time if it’s something i love, but am i an idiot to keep going? i know change doesn’t happen overnight, but i’ve been at this for so goddamn long now. even if i had confidence on stage to mask any evidence of error, my imperfect performance is still up for criticism. and that’s fair. i’m just afraid i’m sabotaging my own band.

after i was done cradling a box of tissues and watching newfield, i gathered my bandmates and my friend ben (we actually met on this site years ago lmfao he’s from worcester nearby the venue) to go get shit to mix alcohol with for after the show. i was also insanely depressed that funeral attire had to go home right after the show for work early the next day, so no post-show celebratory hangs. we had this stupid huge hotel room to have tiki time in and no funeral attire, we could have fit all twelve of us so comfortably.

but the saving grace of the night was singing flowers with funeral attire. what a FUn number but in all seriousness, my second favorite funeral attire song. their split with i dreamt the sea, the split that song is from, is sooo great. that perked me up a lot. 

after we parted ways with funeral attire we picked up a fat order of taco bell and went back to the hotel to eat, sad drink and watch the lion king. we spent the night sitting around in our new funeral attire merch just shooting the shit, and drinking until we fell asleep. we were easily dreading going back home, but hopeful for what the fall will bring for us as a band and to get back to EP 3 planning.

i know we’ll get to do this again. i just hate that i don’t know when right now. had some pretty bad financial scares on the road, and felt so tired i passed out in the van constantly, but i could sincerely do this forever.

i guess i also should maybe attribute some credit to the fact that chris donis and i booked this tour without any help from any booking company. no guarantees but we at least got something every night. i really don’t know what i would have done without him. i also realized maybe i have more ability as someone in the industry than i think. i feel slightly more knowledgeable now.

now that we know what it’s like to be on the road gigging every night, we can be sooo much more prepared next time. and i’m hoping to redeem myself, and i hope i can be better than ever. jeremiah was right when i called him last night crying - i’m an infinitely better vocalist than i was a year ago. i just hope our progress as a band now is enough to show people we have what it takes.

[midwifemilktrails]

The Power of Suggestion

“Women deliver their own babies alone on the floor of small living rooms everyday...I felt like if they can do that why couldn't I?” In the months leading up to giving birth, Paula practiced Hypnobirthing affirmations and listened to guided visualizations to help her stay calm and focused during labor. She also planned to deliver in a hospital with midwives. As her due date approached, Paula’s skepticism of her achieving her desired birth experience in a hospital setting grew. After following her doula’s suggestion of switching to a birth center, Paula had almost exactly the birth experience she had known was possible - supported yet unassisted on the floor (at the birth center).

What had you known about childbirth prior to your own experience?

I was born and raised in the UK where mostly midwifery care and assisted births is the norm. Even in a hospital, the set up feels slightly less "medical" than it does in the US.

Oddly, in my teens I was very much of the mindset that giving birth sounded horrific and if I ever had a child I wanted all the drugs. But I think that was mostly due to the experience of my one 16-year-old friend who ended up with what seemed like a million stitches and a lot of screaming similar to what I had seen in the Hollywood films.

What was important to you in having a natural birth?

Once I was pregnant I became a crazed, birth research, junky and the more and more I learned the more an un-medicated birth seemed like the most stress-free, healthy and in terms of recovery (perhaps this sounds insane) the most likely pain-free option for both myself and the baby.

Talking to my mother who had both my sister and I naturally, it seemed obvious I would be able have a natural birth. By the third trimester there was no question of my capability and in my mind, an epidural or C-section was truly reserved for a medical emergency.

If I am being honest, I think this persistence of wanting a natural birth was mostly out of stubbornness. I felt like the more I learned about it all the more I perceived this pervasive fear of birth as really some crazy construct aimed at up-selling women's anxiety – and well I was like, ‘No, no, no!’

You were planning on giving birth at UCLA hospital with the midwives up until 35 weeks pregnant, what made you decide to have your baby outside of the hospital 'last minute'?

As I mentioned previously, in the U.K. hospital births tend to be a little less intense than those in the U.S. And in my opinion, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact the U.S system is for profit and the U.K. wants to keep costs down as it's part of universal healthcare.

So with this in mind, I felt like the hospital system would be fine. While I had great prenatal care with the UCLA midwives, as my due date loomed and I found out I couldn't give birth in water, I would need an IV (just because) and would be constantly monitored I felt more and more uneasy that I would be able to have anything close to the birth I wanted.

The last straw came when the suggestion was presented to schedule an induction at 39 weeks seemly for convenience. This made me high tail it outta' there and thankfully to Del Mar on the suggestion of my doula, Emma!

You chose to do Hypnobirthing for childbirth preparation. What was inspiring to you about a specific childbirth method like Hypnobirthing?

Hypnobirthing just seemed to make the most sense to me given that really most of labor (from what I had read) is about managing your anxiety and your breathing – two things at the core of Hypnobirthing.

Did you utilize the Hypnobirthing techniques in your labor and birth?

I'm not sure I managed to disappear into ‘a changing colored cloud of love’ [Hypnobirthing’s guided visualization of the colors of the rainbow to help with relaxation and calm], but as soon as my water broke I was very calm, and at no point was I scared.

Did you have any fears around giving birth?

Yes – the obvious fear of the unknown and the slight fear that something might go medically wrong. I was also a little scared of tearing, which reflecting back on it now, once the time came to do the repair after the birth I didn't really care about the stitches in my vagina at all!

You are originally from England and as a writer, you have traveled around the world quite a bit. Do you feel that fear around childbirth is a country specific cultural issue or deeply systemic to human kind – this fear of the great unknown?

I think being from the UK certainly gave me an advantage in trusting midwives and natural birth overall. I also think traveling to developing nations helped me gain some perspective of different cultural practices depending on what’s available to them.

Women deliver their own babies alone on the floor of small living rooms everyday and then pick up and go feed the family. I felt like if they can do that why couldn't I in the ideal environment?

We are very lucky in the Western world but I also think that birth is over-medicalized in many ways. A pregnant woman isn’t sick – she is giving life!

Can you tell me about your birth?

Haha! My birth was a little surreal. Before I gave birth, I read on some dumb blog if you stood naked under a full moon and rubbed your belly it would induce labor.

At 38 weeks there was a full moon, so I decided to give it a go. Afterwards, I went to bed to read a book and 10 minutes later my water broke. I called Del Mar and at that time, around 12:30 am, I was having mild cramping every 10 minutes or so. Jen, the midwife, told me to call back when the contractions were strong and coming every 4 minutes for at least an hour.

Within 30 minutes the contractions felt pretty intense. I wasn't sure if I was just being wimpy, but all I could do was ball up every time a contraction came on. An hour later, the contractions were every 3-5 minutes and I felt I needed to go in.

I arrived at Del Mar around 3:30 am. Jen checked my cervix (I was 6 cm dilated), ran me a bath and checked the baby’s heart rate. My boyfriend turned on my Hawaiian lullaby music and a few minutes later Emma, my doula, arrived.

If I'm honest, once Emma got there everyone but her disappeared from my consciousness. I was in the tub at that point, but then had to get out as the baby's heart rate was a little high, possibly from me overheating. So I moved to the floor with my elbows leaning on the edge of the bed.

At this point, I had a little gas and air [nitrous oxide] to cope with the contractions and was feeling pretty hazy. I just remember Emma in front of me, holding my hand, reminding me of my breathing. At this point, all was very calm. 

Jen checked in with me about what I was feeling and how I was doing and popped out for a minute to check in on another mother. My boyfriend went to the car to warm up as the birth room was freezing (apparently) as everyone thought I had hours to go before birth as I hadn't even started to feel the urge to push yet.

However, as everyone left Emma looked at me and gently said, “It's just us now. You can relax.” As she said this, I can only liken the feeling to suddenly needing to poop. So I just followed my body and one push was the baby’s head and the second was her body and ta da! Emma ran around behind me and picked up this naked human – my newborn baby – off the floor. (It was certainly a bonding experience as she is also a close friend and the first person our daughter, Luna, ever saw!)

On hearing my baby cry, Jen raced in and she and another midwife moved me onto the bed and placed Luna on my chest. Emma went outside and knocked on the car window to let my boyfriend know he was now a father!

That is a very fast labor (under 5 hours) and to go to from 6 cm to birth in less than 2 hours! What was your mental state like in labor?

I was just super internal.

I apparently thanked everybody for coming and asked if they were hungry, but I really didn't have a sense of time or what was happening outside of my body. I was just breathing through each new contraction.

How did you best cope with the contractions?

Really deep, low breathing. Once I arrived at Del Mar and Jen suggested I hum to keep my breathing sounds low everything just seemed to click into place. I literally hummed through my whole labor.

There were a few times I slightly panicked and caught my breath but Emma just helped me through the next breath and then I'd be back on track.

What do you think contributed to your fast labor and birth?

I followed ALL of the advice: raspberry leaf tea, 6 dates a day, walked and walked. I also went to a chiropractor to make sure the baby and I were in the best possible alignment.

You basically had the most natural birth one can have - hands off and unassisted except with the help of your friend/doula who scooped your baby up moments after she was born. How do you feel after experiencing something like that?

It was sort of magical! It was the most accomplished I think I've ever felt and the most at peace – like everything was where it was meant to be.

What can you compare the experience of giving birth to?

Um, it's hard. But I guess similar to period cramps in so much as you know it hurts but it's not bad for you. But it was also euphoric and spiritual in a way I hadn't quite expected it to be.

Do you feel there were other events in your life that properly prepared you for the journey that is giving birth?

I'd say on the whole I'm pretty fearless of the big stuff (I'll worry about the small things, like saying the right thing or not being perceived in the right way.) But I lost my dad when I was 20-years-old and had quite a turbulent childhood – I moved to different countries, lived in 5 different cities and got married and divorced before 30. So I feel I'm ready for what the universe wants to throw at me!

Has your birth experience been influential within your community of women and expectant mothers?

Yes! I feel like I'm a little evangelical now in so much as I want to encourage all my peers to be less fearful and more positive in anticipating their experience giving birth. I've also become a resource on natural birth for lots of friends of friends and that feels really special to be able to help them make informed choices.

Some would say that giving birth is also a rebirth for the woman. How has giving birth changed or affected you?

It's made me feel stronger and braver for sure. Also, more in touch with my body as a thing rather than just for looks!

What would be your sage advice or wisdom to impart on other women and mothers?

We are made to do this and you are so much more powerful than you give yourself credit for.

[awed-frog]

Stuck in the Middle (with You)/Awesome Crowley

[For a meta about Reservoir Dogs and Tarantino’s use of gay subtext, click here.]

I don’t want to be the person who ruins everyone’s fun, so I’m saving my one big criticism of this episode for last. This meta is completely positive, even saccharine, until the very last paragraph. Also, I’m borrowing one of my favourite AO3 tags as a title because, let’s face it, Crowley was the real hero of this episode and where the action was, and that’s perfectly okay and long overdue. Crowley’s been around for years now, and he’s gone through huge bouts of character development, and yet we still know next to nothing about him and he’s often treated like an afterthought, both by our heroes and by the writers. This episode finally (finally!) corrected that, because no matter how intriguing and plain beautiful everyone was, Crowley was magnificent - as I fully expected him to be.

After all, they’re good - but he’s Crowley.

Like anyone with eyes, I loved everything about this episode, and especially how it was filmed. I have to say - this is the first episode in a long time that actually had me in tenterhooks about a possible character death, because you never know, right? Theoretically, Crowley could die, and so could Cas. Theoretically. And also the music, did I mention the music? I think that scene of Cas crawling away from Ramiel and the shot of Ramiel stabbing him - that’s just become my favourite Supernatural scene ever, bar none. It was so powerful and dramatic and visually magnificent and that damn music - wow. 

I adored that symbolism, because Cas’ been a Christ figure for a while now, and seeing him like that, on his back, defeated and stabbed by a lance - you can’t get more Golgotha than that. Beautiful stuff.

I also loved that this episode was, in a way - off-centre. Sam and Dean were there, of course, but the story was not focused around them. The real protagonist was the supernatural world itself - Cas, Crowley, Ramiel; even Lucifer, to me, was more present than he’s been in a while, what with this vague threat of his child hanging over the world, and him taunting Crowley and flashing his red eyes at this most undemonic demon in the very last scene. The truth is, I love everything about Sam and Dean, and that includes the incredibly talented actors who play them, but I feel the show could benefit greatly from approaching their story from a different perspective every once in a while. I’d love to know more about their childhood, for instance, or about this world of monsters and hunters around them; and a completely Outsider POV episode is, at this point, something I’d probably sell half my soul for.

Anyway - lately, this show reads like very good fanfiction, and considering how engaged, loving and talented this fandom is, this is high praise. I particularly appreciate the fact they’re going back to important plot points and filling them in with completely new details - after all, we’ve been wondering for years what’s up with demonic eyes, or how Crowley became king in the first place (or, at least, I know I did). This new class of demons appearing out of nowhere - creatures powerful enough to wield an archangel’s weapon - that’s incredible stuff. I’m guessing we’ll see more about them, and I can’t freaking wait.

So, yes - Ramiel was spot-on. Jerry Trimble managed just the right mixture of underwhelmingly normal and terrifyingly amoral - so much so I’m sort of sad we didn’t get to see more of this character, even if everything about him, including his death, was handled just right - there was no room for anything more.

My one slight criticism there would be the fizzling nature of Cas’ abilities. For instance, didn’t we establish that Cas can smell lies? So why couldn’t he guess Mary was hiding something? And what about demons’ true forms? I always assumed Cas could see that (was it ever stated in canon? it must have been), and I was therefore almost disappointed that Cas couldn’t recognize Ramiel for what he was. Maybe it can be explained away by him slowly becoming closer and closer to a human being - I don’t know. In any case, I’m truly appreciating how obsessed everyone seems to be with him lately. After years of taking angels for granted, we’ve got two characters in short succession fangirling over angels (in a creepy, murderous and definitely non-con way, but still) - and, yeah, I know that basically everyone spent the entirety of Supernatural pointing out how different and unique Cas is, and I’m grateful for that, but it’s also nice to get a reminder that angels are awesome (in the other sense of the word) in and of themselves.

(I’m still loving Mr Ketch, by the way. Aaaaaw.)

Let’s now come to our unsung hero: Mr Crowley.

Crowley was magnificent in all this. And we’ve now learned he never seriously planned to become King of Hell - my headcanon, which I’m considering confirmed, is that Crowley simply wants control. He’s been tortured for a century or more as some demon tore his human soul out of him, and he’s never putting himself in that position again, which is very sensible of him, and also very Scarlett O’Hara.

(Then again, he is his mother’s son.)

So, well, there he was, sort of loyal, licking the right boots, quietly ammassing a fortune in paintings and cursed objects and rumours and secrets on the side, when suddenly one of his craziest schemes actually works and Lucifer disappears and Ramiel doesn’t want the throne and Crowley realizes he’ll probably be safer sitting on it than he would be taking orders from some mindless, blood-thirsty underling who doesn’t know the first thing about governing a kingdom.

It breaks my heart, really.

And this is why I’m guessing, really, that the reason that demon was so gleeful about the possibility of killing Sam - I mean, sure, he’s Sam Winchester and all, but she had to know, because everyone does, that Sam and Dean are under Crowley’s protection. That no matter what he says, he considers them friends. And since he basically stole the throne from her (sort of), I’m thinking she was careless because this was a kill she was really relishing.

(Sigh.)

Also - look, as happy as I am with Cas finding his place - with his speech, with Dean’s soul-shattering Let’s go home, this dark side of the mirror is now hurting more than ever, because Crowley keeps risking everything so that Dean can live, and can keep choosing someone else over him. And I don’t think Dean is rude and obnoxious because he doesn’t notice - I think he’s rude and obnoxious because he does notice, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. Like Cas, Crowley sees right through him and loves him for who he is, and that’s something Dean just can’t accept.  

(“Your problem is that nobody hates you more than you hate yourself.”)

This doesn’t mean Crowley’s love isn’t skewered, borderline toxic and an enabling mess, but it’s still love, and it’s still directed at Dean’s true self, and it’s still - this is now definitely confirmed - completely selfless, like human love is supposed to be.

(Breaking the Lance of Michael to save Cas - that was -

Also: recognizing Dean’s impatience and anger for what they were, and choosing to do the right thing even against his own interests -

- because, of course, Dean’s got a history of saying the wrong thing when he can’t deal with reality and other people’s feelings. That We don’t have time for your - for you was Nobody cares you’re broken all over again, and Crowley already gave his answer to that when he pointed out the Winchesters - and especially Sam, of course - have got plenty of faults of their own: And yet, I endure.)

And maybe Lucifer’s still got it, or maybe he simply watches the show, because he knows exactly where it hurts: “Do you really think they care about you? I mean, think about it, Crowley. They kill your kind. And you know... you know...it's only a matter of time before they come for you.”

(What worries me the most about this statement is that there’s no traditional happy ending in sight for Crowley; there never was. The only question at this point is which way this is going to go. Will Dean be forced to kill Crowley? Will Crowley sacrifice himself for Dean? Or will he, finally, become human? After all, Lucifer’s right: no matter what Crowley does or doesn’t do - and saving Cas’ life by destroying the most powerful weapon left on Earth, that’s a big favour to pay back - as long as he’s a demon, the Winchesters will never fully trust him, or even accept him. But if he were to become human...

It’s a big gamble, sure. Then again, Crowley’s much less calculating than he’d like people to think.)

From a Destiel point of view, someone should probably look at that diner scene again and check how it was shot - because I’ve got this feeling that the first time, it was from Cas’ perspective, and we spent a lot of time learning about what Dean wants in his sexual partners - but the second time, we saw it from Mary’s perspective, which means we spent more time actually noticing the way Dean looked at Cas. Also hearing Dean describe Cas as ‘shy, but devastatingly handsome’. Mh.

Again, all the kudos to the title, which basically refers to everyone except Sam and Dean, because, as I said, this wasn’t about them and yay!

The weapons and the gadgets and the special effects! Heart-eyes and grabby hands over here. More, please.

(Though I’m slightly disappointed that the Lance didn’t break the shovel’s handle on impact, but whatever.)

Immortal creatures collecting paintings instead of repeating high school for all eternity - much love for that.

Crowley calling everyone out on their shit, including the screenwriters’ indulgence in silly rhymes - aaaaw. You do you, sweetheart.

(The fact Crowley was genuinely saddened by the prospect of Cas dying - *cries forever*.)

“I don’t have friends.”

Mary - Mary continues to be an interesting character and also someone I wouldn’t invite over for dinner, which is perfectly fine and much better than the alternative. Though I am slightly disappointed by the fact she didn’t even try to come clean about the Colt. Guess her brand of unhinged is the same as John’s, after all - birds of a feather and all that.

Finally: the big Destiel moment. Look, I have to say - I’m as excited as anyone that Cas was fully recognized as family (because, yeah, no matter what Dean said, this was like the first time they don’t leave Cas out somewhere to die?) and I’m ecstatic by this confirmation that Cas understands what love is and feels it himself -

- but one, I’m worried about the effect this will have on Dean and two, I’m getting really tired of the ambiguity.

Because, well - this is the first time Dean hears it flat-out: he changed Cas, he destroyed Cas in almost every way that matters, in fact, and Cas is grateful for it and considers him family. Will this lessen the guilt Dean’s been experiencing for years, or will it increase it? Knowing Dean, I’m not optimistic.

And as for the other thing - look, no way that I love you was a singular, and directed at Dean. I’m just thinking from a translator’s point of view here - if I had to dub or sub something like this in a language with normal pronouns, I’d never use a singular - not in a million years. Cas’ never said anything like this before, he wasn’t looking at anyone when he said it, the sentence was preceded and followed by plural yous, and imo the only reason they included it at all (instead of going directly from You’re my family - which was clearly a plural - to I love all of you) was the usual subtextual bs they’ve been having fun with for eight seasons. Because this episode, like so many other Supernatural episodes, could have been 10/10 TV instead of the 9.6 it got on IMDb if they’d only stopped being weird about this. Don’t get me wrong - I love the uncertainty and the drama and the UST and this classic I’m not good enough for you so I won’t even try trope - love them - but they could still make it textual without ruining any of that. One conversation between Sam and Mary would be plenty enough. Two sentences and a half, and it’s canon, and Dean and Cas are still oblivious, and we’ve still got everything - but BAM - it’s not possible or probable queerbaiting anymore, it’s not this thing that mostly makes me bitter and gives me anxiety - no, now it’s a beautiful love story and everything’s alright with the world. 

At this point, it’s incredible how little it would take, really. Or, well - not incredible: supernatural.