#it's such a blank slate like okay jane doe

[brionysea]

I still have no idea if karen wheeler is even aware of el's existence as mike's girlfriend. do they think her name is el or jane?

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Hey! Is it alright if you can also do Riddle reaction to Jane Doe Y/N? (Ignore this if you want)

Jane Doe Reader (4) | Yandere Twisted Wonderland

Riddle Rosehearts

“According to Rule 84 you must identify yourself if asked. So tell me (Y/n) who are you, if someone were to ask?”

“Who am I? I find myself wondering that as well.”

“T-the proper answer is Riddle’s partner..”

“Is that who I am?”

“Y-y-yes!”

“Okay I think I can remember that.”

He’s like a doe

Stumbling over himself with how infatuated he is with you

And lashing out anyone other than you as he figures out his feelings

As oblivious as you are a blank slate you don’t seem to mind his concerning advances

Because without prior instruction on proper courting methods, blood covered roses are a fine gift 

Or a feverish letter spelling out the intricacies of Riddle’s obsession

he will have to come to terms with his newfound feelings 

He can’t keep actually beheading students after all

“I’ll figure out your identity but I know its beside me!”

[unordinary-diary]

I’ve gotten no asks yet so thank you @coldinfluencerbeliever for volunteering! I’m not entirely sure if you meant to participate in the ask game because this is a statement and not a question, but you’re the only one with your hand up so you’ve been called on.

You’re absolutely right! Jane never being captured totally changes John’s entire story. That is the basis for this au:

Jane Was Never Captured AU

Okay so, we don’t know much about Jane, but I’m certain she wouldn’t have tolerated her son being bullied. At this point, there’s no telling whether Jane is above beating up middle-schoolers or not, but even if she is, she’d have gone to the school’s administration, or even the bullies’ parents, and raised hell. Unlike William, Jane has the power and influence to actually do something about the bullying.

This means that while I imagine John still got bullied, and his friends probably more so, John wouldn’t be completely helpless to stop it since he has his mom backing him. His mistreatment would be lessened, and his resentment and anger wouldn’t have built up nearly as badly. While his ability developed, Jane would be giving him guidance that William couldn’t, including teaching him to use his power responsibly. And even if he still went down the same dark path, Jane would be there to smack some sense into him like Seraphina was in mid- season 2. (It’s entirely possible that Jane is too gentle for that, but regardless, I highly doubt that the New Bostin Massacre would have happened in this AU.)

Therefore, in the Jane Was Never Captured AU, John doesn’t go full reign-of-terror, doesn’t get expelled from New Bostin, doesn’t go to readjustment, doesn’t go to Wellston, isn’t involved with the main plot at all, and most importantly: UnOrdinary by W. H. Doe never gets written.

So... it’s possible that Rei never became a superhero. However, I actually prefer the idea that he did anyway, and he was just the first/one of the first/one of very few. But with superheroes being pretty much unheard of (either just Rei or Rei and very few others), EMBER wouldn’t have been created.

So, yeah. The Jane Was Never Captured AU intertwines with the Rei Never Dies AU. It’s basically an add-on, I suppose. Or a branch of it? They’re not really the same AU, but Rei also lives in the JWNCAU.

But uhhh, yeah! John with Jane in his life is basically just a much healthier John. Which, if you think about it, is essentially just Blyke but better at lying, worse at school, plus some hair dye. (These two are so fucking similar it’s been EATING my brain)

The JWNCAU is essentially a catch-all fix-it au, but not entirely, because it means John never gets involved with Wellston. John was also responsible for a lot of the good that happens in the story— without him, the other main characters don’t get their character development. Remi, Blyke and Isen could probably get theirs some other way, but Arlo and Seraphina needed John in order to grow.

This au tears down the whole story and files it down to a blank slate. The parameters for what gets built on that slate is basically: find another way for John and Seraphina to meet, and find some other way for Arlo, Remi, Blyke and Isen to get their character development. That’s the sandbox we’re playing in.

When I was brainstorming this au with my brother, he basically said that “The problem with this au is that it changes so much, I don’t even know where to go with it.” Which... true. But there are SO. MANY. Directions to take this au into. I’m thinking of them as I’m typing.

Anyway, my ask box is open if you want more.

[falllpoutboy]

What went wrong with Zendaya's MJ: How pandering to racist fans and lazy writing contributed to a travesty of a character

Before this post even begins, I just want to preface by stating that making up original characters for comic book movies is absolutely okay. Michelle Jones absolutely could’ve been a strong, fully fleshed out supporting character and love interest had they actually taken the time within the films to develop her character and her relationship with Peter. But did that actually happen???

When Zendaya, a young biracial black woman, was reportedly cast as Mary Jane Watson in 2016, racist fans went into an immediate uproar and decried it immediately (and are still mad about it). However after Homecoming was released and Zendaya’s MJ was nothing more than just a background character who only spoke quippy lines and never shared dialogue with her future love interest, it was clear to see this was not the MJW comic fans know and love. Kevin Fiege went on to confirm that when Zendaya was cast, they never planned for her to play Mary-Jane Watson, only Michelle, who was supposed to be a homage to her…?

So not only has this new generation of spiderman adaptation movies erased his most iconic love interest but they also created an OC who resembles nothing like MJW? Okay fine, thats fair (not really) but with an oc like Michelle, there’s flexibility and room in crafting stories for her. Who is Michelle Jones, what does she want, what does she need without realizing it, what’s her family like, does she actually like Peter, etc etc etc. Homecoming and Far From Home answered absolutely none of these questions (and when they do film the littlest scene to add to her character, its a deleted scene), and I sincerely doubt that No Way Home will either. (EDIT Post No way Home release: it did not)

Let’s be clear here, Zendaya’s MJ doesn’t exist outside of being Peters girlfriend. She is a part of his support system, a steady companion and a rock for him to lean on. It’s a cute and devoted relationship on paper but the narrative completely ignores who MJ is outside of him. Michelle Jones isn’t a character, she’s Peters shoulder to cry on, the object of his desire and his support blanket. MCU MJ is a blank slate outside of the vicinity of Peter Parker. It’s an incredibly unbalanced relationship and while Tom and Z have great chemistry, that's all there is holding them together. Their characters didn’t interact in Homecoming beyond her speaking at him in the last 10 minutes, she wasn’t in or mentioned in Infinity War or Endgame and then all of a sudden, Peter is now head over heels in love with MJ in FFH and wants to spend time with her on their European school trip and wants to be in a relationship with her. What the actual fuck just happened??

(It’s worth mentioning that pretty much almost every heterosexual relationship in the MCU is under developed and is overly beneficial to the male in its scenario, so at least MCU petermj isn’t that much of an outlier 🤷🏾‍♀️. )

Mary-Jane Watson is a beautiful, feisty, witty and smart girl who outwardly portrays an outgoing personality because of the abuse she suffers in her household so that people won’t see how sad she really is on the inside. More importantly, she isn’t solely defined as being a white redhead love interest as many racist spiderman fans think she is. MJW is a complex female character that isn’t a stereotypical female archetype and one I personally think Emmy award winner Zendaya has the acting chops to eat up if she were given the chance to. Instead of Mary-Janes feistiness, we got Michelle’s dry and awkward wit. Instead of beautiful fashionista Mary-Jane, we got frumpy Michelle. Instead of Mary-Jane’s tragic, character building backstory, we got Error 404 Page not Found Michelle. It’s safe to say which character I’d rather see on screen and which character I’d have preferred Zendaya portray. I place the blame solely on Jon Watts, The writers for Homecoming, FFH AND NWH, Kevin Fiege and Amy Pascal.

[queer-and-dear-books]

Title: One Last Stop

Author: Casey McQuiston

Genre: Fiction | Drama | Romance | Friendship | Sci-fi | Mystery | LGBTQ+

Content Warnings: Implied Homophobia/Racism

Overall Rating: 10/10

Personal Opinion: I love this book. I don’t read a lot of WLW stories (which needs to change) but I love all the unique personalities and the humor and the mystery surrounding Jane Su. I expected this to be a very slice of life story but it turned out to be so much more than that. August Landry had an unusual upbringing that made her feel like she couldn’t trust others. But then she ends up rooming together with the nicest, coolest people on Earth. And on the Q train, she meets the nicest, coolest girl on Earth. And as August opens up over the course of the book, you will end up falling in love like she does.

Couple Classification: August Landry X Biyu “Jane” Su = Nerd X Punk

Do I Own This Book? No but it’s definitely on my wishlist.

Spoilers Below For My Likes & Dislikes:

Likes:

- First and foremost, Jane is legit the coolest person ever. I love her. I mean, she was out there fighting for civil rights in the 70s! She was in the thick of it! She protested against the Vietnam War, she beat up anti-semites, and she gave one of her pride pins to a 15 year old boy that just came out. She is so cool and the true meaning of punk. I’m not even sexually attracted to women and I kid you not, I am in love with her. August hit the jackpot is what I’m saying. Plus, Jane is Asian! That appeals to me directly. I love her.

- Second, August is a nerd and she’s adorable. She’s relatable too. Well, not her childhood of searching for a long-lost uncle but the part about her being alone and not knowing where she wants to go with her life is. She was anxious about graduating college because it meant she would lose that structure. Before New York, she never had people that she considered friends. I felt all of that in my soul. But she’s a truly nice person despite her loneliness. She helped Jane try to get unstuck from the Q line, she encouraged Wes to go for Isaiah, and she went with Myla to meet Gabe, just in case, to protect her. She also takes notes on everything, including the things Jane likes in sex, and that is also somehow adorable? I don’t know, August just felt like the perfect blank slate protagonist while also having enough personality to separate herself from the reader. It was just really well done and I respect it.

- August called her New York friends her family! Niko is a legit psychic—which, so cool. He’s also trans and Hispanic and he’s got tattoos and he’s overall super chill and cool. He didn’t get jealous when Myla was fake-flirting with Gabe and he always seemed to know things he shouldn't, which I thought was super cool. I’ve described him as cool three times but that’s honestly the best descriptor for him. Then we got his Black girlfriend Myla who graduated as an engineer from Columbia but is actually an artist who welds a bunch of random shit together to create giant nerves. She is just so impressive and again, I think she is so cool. Finally, we have the third roommate, Wes! He’s a disaster gay but he bakes for his roommates and he has a dog. That in itself makes him cool in my book. Plus, his little romance with Isaiah is so cute. I’m sure I would’ve been really frustrated with him had he been the protagonist but since he’s not, I get to enjoy their love story for what it is. When he said, “I am in love with you,” at the party, I was screaming.

- Outside of their apartment, we have Isaiah who is also a drag queen named Annie Depressant. Firstly, that name is brilliant and I imagine she lives up to it. The way he just easily went along with August’s perceived weirdness concerning Jane was so cool of him. Okay, honestly, there’s no other way to describe him than cool. Legit, I’m being vague and all but it’s because there’s so much context that I can’t just put into these sections. He is just so cool! 

- Lucie is cool too! And she’s with a pansexual drag queen, Winfield, and it is adorable! And Winfield is cool too! And Jerry is cool too! Everyone who works at Billy’s Pancakes is so cool! That includes Jane!

- Listen, there are just so many unique personalities in this book but the fact that they’re all so cool means something. It probably means McQuiston is a great writer. I just, ugh, I’m at a loss for words for how cool everyone is and how enjoyable this book is.

- The mystery of Jane is part of the allure of the book. The first hint that she wasn’t normal was their very first meeting. The lights flickered and she just vanished. As someone who lives in New York, people do not vanish on the subway. It doesn’t matter how crowded it is. And then there’s the fact that she said she “can’t” when August asked her out. It was right after the train had stalled so in my mind, it felt like she had a free schedule. To me, that meant the only reason she “can’t” go is because she literally can’t leave the train. I don’t know how my brain went there but it did. And then in the following chapter, there was a Craigslist missed connection post dated 10-12 years ago. That would’ve made Jane 13 or so which makes no sense. Which means, she was on the train for years! Oh my god, it was just so fascinating and I loved learning new things about Jane. And I love that she stayed! Oh my god, I would’ve been fine with either outcome. Whether she went back to 1977 or stayed in 2020. But the fact that she stayed and wrote about the UpStairs Lounge arson attack (something I knew about already because I researched it for a poem I wrote) so that queer youth can know about it is just inspiring. She stayed and she meshed with everyone in the apartment so well and she’s the record holder of Rolly Bangs and she works at Billy’s again and I love her.

- A lot of this is very much a stream of consciousness rambling and that is because I love these characters. I love this book. I love that they live above a Popeyes and August says she trusts chicken. I want to live above a Popeyes and have cool queer roommates and meet the hot love of my life on the subway. She is living my dream.

- They had sex on the train! That’s not the important part though. The actual important part was everything leading up to it. August brought Jane a feast and she found music that would appeal to Jane and she made it so romantic even though they’re on a subway! I felt my heartbeat quicken with every word in that chapter.

- The comedy in this book is on point. Everything from their reactions to Gabe to Jane saying she befriended a train rat. I loved it. But the best joke, to me, when August met Jane again and her brain went for “Hi” while her mouth went for “Morning” and out came “Horny.” Like, that is, exactly my kind of humor.

Dislikes:

- Nothing comes to mind. I was originally going to be upset that Jane never reconnected with her family but then August went and found her family. It’s crazy. And also really sweet. And I’m glad Jane will have a chance at some closure with them. And she also has a gay nephew and that just makes me so happy because, as we all know, at this point, I love Gaysian men.

- Actually, one thing does bother me. The POV choice. It’s third person limited omniscient. It’s not a bad choice. I just wondered half the time why it wasn’t in first person when the narratorial voice had so much personality. And it felt like August’s personality. Sometimes, I’d see August’s name and I’d be momentarily confused because I would forget this wasn’t in first person. Again, it’s not a bad thing that this is in third person. I just wonder why first person couldn’t do the job just as well if not better.

[magniloquent-raven]

as a kali stan first and a stranger things fan like....fourth, i have a lot to say about el's s4 plotline. and most of it is not complimentary 😅

i loved s2 ep7 okay. i know it's been criticized to hell and back, and i get that people think it killed the pacing of the season or whatever, but i fucking adore it. and the complaint i will never understand about it, is that it didn't have a point. or that kali was a superfluous character. because that's bullshit and i will not stand for it.

put simply, the lost sister was about el, someone who's been stripped of her identity since birth, trying to figure out who she is. it's the resolution to a personal arc that they did, in fact, set up earlier.

she literally. spends the episode travelling through her own past trying to find answers. starting with her birth family. she tries to see where she fits there, and finds that she doesn't. she's been hurt too much, she's been shaped by the trauma she's endured, she isn't the blank slate idea of a missing child that her mother went looking for. so she moves on. she isn't jane ives, so who is she.

the lab is where she was raised, so she goes to someone who understands that. who understands eleven. her anger. the pain she's felt. and kali teaches her to embrace that. but as much as kali wants to connect with her, loves her like her mother loved her, they run into the same problem, in reverse. because kali has made her pain her whole life, and el doesn't want to let go of her friends. she doesn't want eleven to define her future. so she leaves kali too. goes back to hawkins, and the family she chose for herself.

and she needed to make that journey. she needed to know who she was to know that she's grown. it's important to her as a character. not to mention the utilitarian plot purpose of her using kali's advice when she closes the gate at the end of the season.

but what does this have to do with s4? everything, babes. everything.

because not only did they do a weird retcon where el gets the "use anger to fuel your powers" advice when she was like, six, from some crusty white boy, but they framed it like her being angry was a bad thing. using anger causes harm to others, using anger made her lash out violently. it's only when, at the end of the flashbacks, she uses a memory of love instead that she's able to tap into a greater power.

which.

okay.

okay......her learning to harness the power of love is all well and good, i think it could've actually been used really well, but. it's a flashback? it's not part of her growing past the person she was in captivity, it's a fucking flashback. like. i cannot stress enough how much it bothers me that the entire drawn out flashback subplot is basically just "well no one liked that episode in s2 so we're just gonna....give them a re-do. but worse."

it either ignores kali's part in the story completely or reframes her as a villain, because her ideology is being paralleled in this guy who gets his jollies torturing animals. and i don't know which option i hate more.

and i cannot get over how much better it could have been if el had consciously run into a roadblock trying to continue using kali's advice while building the kind of life that kali rejected for herself. she keeps trying to use her anger, but finds she can't reach it anymore because she's not the scared little girl she was when it first made her feel powerful. OR it starts to conflict with the quiet life she wants to have. either way it's building off of a lesson she's already learned, and adapting to fit her trajectory as a character. she starts to struggle with her anger, not because kali's advice was bad but because she's grown past it.

like, it wouldn't have even required that much change to the season? el getting bullied and then lashing out violently, because it's what she knows? yeah. and then it starts to ruin her life. not because her anger in the past was unjustified, but because it's incompatible with her attempts to let go and be a healthy well-adjusted person.

i know that canonically el didn't remember any of the shit that happened with 001 so her receiving the same advice twice and not realizing it isn't like, a plot hole or anything, i just think it's sloppy storytelling.

[marypsue]

house rule #3

So Darcy Lewis' new roommate might secretly be a supervillain. At least she always takes out the trash.

I timewarped in from 2012 to bring you this silly fic. Canon divergent(...ish? If anything contradicts canon pretend it's an AU) after Thor. I've never kept a timeline straight in my life and I don't intend to start now.

Happy New Year or whatever.

[on AO3]

...

Darcy goes back to school after New Mexico, and her roommate is gone.

Not, like, vanished by the government the way Darcy nearly was (thanks, Jane), probably, because apparently Melissa stopped and had a nice long chat with the landlady about why she was suddenly packing up and moving out mid-school-year. Oh, and took back the damage deposit that Darcy paid half of. Thanks, Melissa.

Darcy pays up for the damage deposit, goes back up to the apartment, puts on some angry music, and drafts an ad for a new roommate. She posts it online, then makes herself some noodles, eats them while watching Jenna Marbles videos on Youtube, and then goes to bed.

The next morning, there’s exactly one email response to her ad sitting in her inbox.

That’s how Darcy meets Lucy Walker.

Lucy’s an exchange student, over from England for a single semester. Her accent is as charmingly Mary Poppins-ish as her extremely convenient arrival. Darcy’s so relieved to have somebody to pick up the other half of the rent that she thinks she doesn’t even care if Lucy’s Single-White-Female-ing her right now. She says as much, and Lucy just gives her a good-naturedly baffled look before changing the subject to utilities.

Lucy’s good with Darcy’s 50/50 arrangement for utilities, isn’t horrified that Darcy doesn’t have cable and expects Lucy to pay for it if she absolutely can’t live without it (though she is horrified that Darcy doesn’t have an electric kettle, and by Darcy’s suggestion that she microwave the water for her tea), and seems satisfied with the smaller bedroom. She signs the lease before she leaves the viewing, and by the end of the week, she’s fully moved in.

The first night that Lucy stays at the apartment, Darcy orders in Thai and makes them both Long Island iced teas. It’s got tea in the name, she figures. The Brit will probably like it. Also maybe get drunk enough to let slip if she’s planning to wear Darcy’s skin like a suit.

But the alcohol barely seems to touch Lucy. If anything, she gets quieter, moodier. This was the opposite of what Darcy was going for, so she turns on some music to bring the mood back up.

“Oh, house rule number one,” she says, as she hits shuffle on her dance-pop playlist. “Stereo’s mine. I control the music. Unless you have, like, really good taste in music, and even then, ask first.”

Lucy smiles at her, slowly, over her novelty tiki mug of extremely powerful booze. “I find it better by far to beg forgiveness than ask permission. How will I know if I have, ‘like, really good taste in music’?”

“Oh, I’ll let you know,” Darcy says. “Here, gimme your iPod, let’s take a look.” She holds out a hand, wiggling her fingers. Lucy shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

“I don’t…have one of those,” she says, warily, and Darcy draws her hand back.

“Yeah? No big. I almost didn’t either, after the government stole it.” She shakes her head. “What bands do you like?”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with many American bands,” Lucy says, and Darcy beams.

“Even better! You’re a blank slate.”

“Yes, I certainly am that,” Lucy says, into her tiki mug, her eyebrows rising.

“Okay, cryptic,” Darcy says, and skips to Party Rock Anthem. “Hey, do you need more booze?”

Lucy, it turns out, is in the States studying business, though if the way she talks about her one Shakespeare-focused lit class is anything to go by, her true love is drama. She’s here because her older brother did the exchange program and got so much out of it, though so far she seems pretty unimpressed with the States.

“Well, I mean,” Darcy says. “We are barbarians who microwave our tea.”

Lucy laughs so hard at that that Darcy suspects she’s not as unaffected by the Long Island iced teas as she’d like to pretend.

 …

 Darcy ends up using the electric kettle almost as much as Lucy does. She doesn’t convert from coffee, though. Starbucks still owns her ass. She should really invest in shares.

Lucy makes herself incredibly easy to get along with. Sure, she takes forever in the bathroom every morning – probably making her hair do that thing it does, Darcy’s got no idea how she keeps it in place, she’s starting to suspect witchcraft - but she wakes up at hours that Darcy’s only ever seen from the other side, so it’s not really an issue. Lucy pulls long (and slightly odd) hours in the library, doesn’t bitch about Darcy’s music, always washes her dishes and takes out the trash and replaces the toilet paper roll. She doesn’t throw wild parties or steal Darcy’s jackets or leave clumps of hair in the shower or perishable food out on the counter for hours or invite her boyfriend to basically move in rent-free like some roommates Darcy could name.

But she also…doesn’t seem to have any…friends.

Lucy never brings anybody to the apartment, which is a point in her favour as far as Darcy’s concerned. But she also never talks about meeting anybody at the library or for coffee. She doesn’t have people over, but she also doesn’t go out. She’s not bad-looking - pretty, even, in a pointy kind of way, with those dark Snow White curls and pale skin and big sad-puppy green eyes – but as far as Darcy can tell, there’s no boyfriend in the picture, not even a long-distance one.

And she doesn’t call her family.

At first, Darcy thought it was a time zone thing, but after some of the things Lucy’s said in passing about her dad – well, it sounds like things between her and her family are kind of…strained. Darcy isn’t sure, but she thinks Lucy might actually be adopted. Maybe. Lucy seems to live for cryptic answers to straightforward questions.

Ordinarily, Darcy would consider all of this not her problem. But ordinarily, Darcy would also not be coming home after classes on a Friday to find her practically-perfect-in-every-way new roommate curled up on the couch hugging Darcy’s pug pillow to her chest and staring blankly at the wall. Lucy’s not crying, but her cheeks are suspiciously shiny.

She doesn’t seem to notice Darcy’s come in until Darcy says her name twice, and then she jumps up with a guilty expression, like Darcy’d just walked in and caught her jerkin’ it. Wanking? She is British, after all.

“Don’t mind me,” Lucy says, scrubbing a hand under each of her eyes in turn, an extremely bright and extremely fake smile settling over her face. “I was just heading back to the library – how was your class?”

“Not interesting enough to distract me into changing the subject?” Darcy says. “And don’t try to tell me you’re fine, because you’re obviously not. What gives?”

Lucy’s smile takes a turn for the embarrassed. “I’d really prefer not to discuss it.”

Darcy shrugs, dropping her satchel on the coffee table. “Sure. But – house rule number two. I’m like Dolly Parton. Nobody cries alone in my presence.”

Lucy rubs the sleeve of her dark blazer across her cheek. “Well, no one’s crying here,” she says.

“Yeah,” Darcy says, rolling her eyes as she unwinds her scarf from around her neck. “Anymore.”

“Really,” Lucy says, but her fake smile looks a little less fake. “Please don’t concern yourself. It’s not anything – not anything you can help.”

“Okay,” Darcy says, tossing her scarf over the hook by the door, her hat on top of it. “Wanna eat our feelings and make fun of ANTM highlights?”

Lucy gives her a blink that Darcy’s starting to recognize as her ‘I-don’t-get-that-pop-culture-reference-but-I-don’t-want-to-look-like-I-don’t-get-that-pop-culture-reference’ look.

“America’s Next Top Model?” Darcy says. “Tyra Banks? We were all rooting for you?” Lucy still looks blank, so Darcy grabs her satchel and pulls out her laptop. “Oh, this is happening. Reality television is everything that’s wrong with society today, which is what I love about it.”

She plops down on the couch, propping her feet up on the coffee table and her laptop on her knees. When she looks up, Lucy still hasn’t moved. Darcy pats the seat beside her. “C’mon, you’re not gonna be able to see anything from up there.”

Lucy does her best impression of a spooked horse ready to bolt, staring at the cushion next to Darcy like it’s a coiled viper.

“I should get to the library,” she says, half-heartedly. “Study…”

“No, what you should get is that pint of Cherry Garcia out of the fridge and bring it over here,” Darcy says. “Oh, and two spoons.”

 …

 Bad Reality TV Night quickly becomes an apartment tradition. If by ‘tradition’ you mean ‘whenever we feel like it’, which Darcy does.

They catch up on the highlights of the Bachelor, Jersey Shore, and Survivor, though Lucy also seems to like ANTM best. It’s a good excuse to spend time together that doesn’t involve chores or schoolwork. And Darcy’s never been one for standing on ceremony, but a good icebreaker is a good icebreaker.

Better than a taser, at least.

 …

 “What on earth is that smell?”

Darcy looks up from the choking clouds of smoke billowing out of the oven, waving an arm to try to waft it out of the way. Lucy’s standing in the doorway with her scarf pulled up over her mouth and nose and both of her eyebrows raised in a look that somehow manages to convey a whole range of emotions, from ‘disappointed and only a little surprised’ all the way to ‘looks into the camera like she’s on The Office’.

“Bread,” Darcy says, in the face of all the evidence. And then, with a last mournful glance into the depths of the oven, “Okay, the artist formerly known as bread. But, I put the fire out.”

“The oven was on fire?!” Lucy asks, her expression going straight to ‘alarmed’, and Darcy coughs into her hand.

“Key word was. Oh, and by the way, we need more baking soda.”

“Do I want to know?”

“You use it to smother oven fires? C’mon, even I knew that.”

Lucy pauses, her expression going carefully blank for a moment. “I don’t…bake at all. Never have.”

“What? Like you don’t even stress bake?”

Lucy’s expression stays blank. “It wasn’t something I was ever encouraged to learn.”

Darcy slams the oven door shut on the last few sad poofs of smoke, straightening up. Forget the aftermath of her bread. This is way more important. “You seriously don’t stress bake? What do you do when somebody makes you so mad you just wanna stab them?”

“Usually, I stab them,” Lucy says, in a voice so dry that Darcy honestly can’t tell if she’s joking.

“Okay,” Darcy says, with a shrug. “But you usually get way less arrested if you take it out on some dough instead.”

“Was that what you were trying to do here?” Lucy asks, waving a hand in front of her face like she can just shoo the smoke away. Funny, for a second it almost seems to be actually working, but then she snorks up a lungful and almost doubles over coughing.

“Oh yeah,” Darcy says. “Professor Doucheface was on his A game today, so I needed something to knead.”

Lucy looks slightly stunned, coming down from her coughing fit, but the ghost of a smile makes its way across her face. “I gather that ‘Professor Doucheface’ is not his given name.”

“Oh, it’s his given name all right. I gave it to him. At the beginning of the semester when he circlejerked about Machiavelli with these two fratbros in the front row for twenty minutes.” Darcy rolls her eyes. One of these days she’s going to figure out how to roll them right back so all you can see are the whites. It’s gonna look so badass. “It was all downhill from there.”

Lucy hums a little in the back of her throat. “Machiavelli made some interesting points.”

“Not you too.” Darcy tries to wave some of the smoke towards the open window. It very much does not work. “I keep forgetting you’re a business student. Is your whole degree just learning how to be an evil mastermind?”

Lucy taps a finger against her chin, thoughtfully. “…it rather is, now that I consider it. But I suppose there are worse things one could be.”

“No offense, but, like what.”

Lucy laughs at that, but it doesn’t escape Darcy’s notice that she doesn’t actually have an answer. Which is not actually surprising. Because seriously.

“All right,” Darcy says, peeking inside the oven and coughing when she gets a faceful of smoke. “I’m gonna clean this out, and then – we’re making chocolate chip cookies.”

 …

 Introducing Lucy to stress baking is probably the best idea Darcy’s ever had, ever. After the first couple of oven fires and garbage batches, there are always freshly-baked sweet treats around the apartment, and it constantly smells delicious. Darcy would worry about Lucy’s mental state if all that baking hadn’t led her to master the chocolate-chip-to-cookie ratio in all its ooey gooey goodness. She’s since moved on to cupcakes, and Darcy has high hopes for Lucy’s buttercream technique.

It’s a couple of weeks later that Darcy comes home and finds the kitchen full of racks upon racks of cookies and cupcakes both. She only pauses long enough to stuff a chocolate-chip cookie in her face before she asks, “Okay, is it your own Professor Doucheface, or something else?”

Lucy doesn’t answer right away, and doesn’t take her eyes off her dough.

After what feels like an entire ice age, she says, “I tried. To recreate a pastry that I remembered from home.” She shakes her head, a long, dark curl falling out of her messy braid. “And I couldn’t.”

Darcy chews on that for a moment as she chews on cookie. “You’re homesick?”

Lucy pauses, tucking the stray lock of hair behind one ear and smearing a white streak of flour along one Morticia Addams cheekbone. She flashes a rueful grin in Darcy’s direction, before going back to almost angrily kneading the ball of dough on the countertop in front of her. “You must think it’s silly. It was my choice to leave, after all, and yet here I am, wallowing.”

Darcy shrugs, leaning over to snag another cookie from the cooling rack. They’re still warm, the chocolate all melty and goopy inside. Heaven. “I dunno. Like, you’re halfway across the world all on your own.” She turns her full attention to separating a particularly sticky chocolate chip from her teeth before saying, “Mostly I’m just surprised because your home sounds like it sucks a fat one.”

Lucy gives a sharp, brittle laugh, and shoves the heels of both hands into the dough with surprising viciousness. She doesn’t talk for a long moment after that, just kneading and kneading and kneading until Darcy has to look away or risk getting hypnotized.

“I get it, though,” she says, ignoring the flat, disbelieving glance Lucy shoots in her direction. “I mean, the farthest I’ve ever been from home was New Mexico, and no offense to Jane or Puente Antigua, but that place sucked.” She demolishes the last bite of cookie, and licks the remnants of chocolate chip from her fingers. Hey, waste not, want not, right? “Although that was at least fifty percent the government’s fault. But! The other half was not having anybody to just hang out with. Jane’s great, don’t get me wrong, but can you say obsessive. Okay, and the internet connection made dialup look like the wave of the future, and you couldn’t get Starbucks without driving three hours, and -”

Lucy’s giving her a blank look. Darcy snags another cookie and waves it dismissively, barely managing to catch the top piece when it unexpectedly breaks in half in her hand. “Point is, we gotta get you out and meet some people. And I guess maybe some decent fish and chips.”

Lucy snorts dismissively at that, her hands rolling back into motion. That bread’s gonna be way overworked, but Darcy figures that’s one she’ll let Lucy figure out for herself.

“Also, it probably wouldn’t kill you to call your mom once in a while,” she says, chomping down on her cookie. How many is that now? Better question, does it matter. They’re best right out of the oven anyway. “I know shit’s weird with your dad and everything, but it sounds like your mom wouldn’t mind knowing you haven’t been eaten by a bald eagle or fallen off Mount Rushmore or whatever. And it sounds like your brother cares about you a lot. Even if he is a doofus.”

Lucy’s face cracks in a big, surprised, unamused grin, and she shakes her head, turning away with a soft huff of laughter.

“My brother cares about the person he wishes me to be,” she says at last, giving the dough another vicious shove.

“You don’t have to talk to him. Just let your mom know you’re not dead, she can pass it on.”

Lucy doesn’t look up from the dough. “I’m not certain it’s a good idea for me to try to contact my family.”

“Really? ‘cause I am,” Darcy says. “Are you worried about the long-distance charges? I know tuition’s higher for international students, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

Lucy glares down the dough. “You have no idea what price I paid to be here.”

“I mean, I have some idea,” Darcy says. “You do give me your half of the rent every month.”

Lucy looks up, and then bursts out laughing.

“I like you, Darcy Lewis,” she says, once she’s got herself back under control. “Do you want to apply your flawlessly straightforward logic to every aspect of my life?”

Darcy shrugs. “Point me at the problem. I guarantee you that in twenty-four hours, either the problem’ll be gone, or you’ll have a way bigger, different problem to worry about instead.”

 …

 Lucy still demurs every time Darcy tries to invite her along any time she’s meeting friends, though. By the third or fourth time she makes up some bullshit excuse, Darcy’s starting to get fed up.

So she invites everybody over to the apartment instead.

Lucy comes back from the library somewhere between pizza and wine. She freezes in the doorway with one arm outstretched, overcoat and houndstooth scarf arrested halfway to the hook on the wall. A brief flicker of panic races across her face before she smooths her expression out, hanging up her coat and shaking out her hair.

“Darcy?” she calls, breaking into a broad smile when she catches Darcy’s eye. “Having a few friends over?”

“Yeah, come grab a glass of wine,” Darcy calls back from the living room. “We could use one more for Cards Against Humanity.”

“Cards against…” Lucy echoes, hovering in the entryway. Obviously she’s not going to take the initiative, so Darcy gets up and makes for the kitchen.

“Do they not have Cards Against Humanity in the UK?” Jared asks from the floor beside the coffee table, as Darcy pours out the dregs of a bottle of red into one of the only clean glasses. After a moment’s thought, she tops it off with white. Hey, that’s all rosé is, right?

“Yeah, and actually, what is the difference between the UK, England, and Britain?” Ayesha asks. “I’ve never been able to get it right.”

“Rude,” Darcy says, making her way back into the living room. Lucy’s still standing in the entryway, but her posture doesn’t look quite so stiff anymore, and her shoulders are creeping down from around her ears. Still, she looks awfully relieved when Darcy hands her the novelty plastic cactus-shaped cup of wine. “Nosy here is Ayesha, that’s Jared, strong and silent in the recliner is Vince, and half-passed-out-on-the-couch-already is Rachel. Guys, say hi to Lucy.”

“The practically perfect in every way?” Rachel asks, lifting her head from the hilarious pillow with a picture of a pug in a bedazzled tiara. Lucy’s cheekbones and the tips of her ears go brightly pink, but her grin is wicked.

“Ooh, Darcy. What have you been saying about me.” She takes a sip of her wine, makes a face at it, and then settles herself down on one of the cushions Darcy’s tossed around the coffee table, carefully arranging her pencil skirt. “How do you play this game, then?”

 …

 They add ‘Cards Against Humanity night’ to the roster of apartment traditions. Nobody really seems to mind that Lucy wins almost every time. Beating her is an interesting challenge. Like Rachel says, she makes them get creative.

 …

 They’re catching up on Big Brother highlights when Lucy asks Darcy, “Would you ever audition for one of these shows?”

Darcy snorts. “Thanks, but no thanks. You?”

Lucy narrows her eyes, smiling thoughtfully at the screen. “I think I could win one. The only thing would be convincing the producers I’d be interesting enough to watch.” She turns that grin on Darcy. “You have an advantage there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Darcy asks, crossing her arms with a good-natured glare.

Lucy flicks her eyes ceilingward with an expression of affected innocence. “Only that these shows seem to reward distinctive and outsized personalities.”

Darcy mentally translates that into English, then shrugs. “Hey, I’ve been accused of worse. I think.”

Lucy smiles, and says nothing.

“You’d need a gimmick,” Darcy says, watching one of the Big Brother girls hitting another with an inflatable palm tree. “Like…always referring to yourself in the third person, or insisting people call you ‘princess’, or something.”

Lucy’s smile goes a little tight around the edges, but she doesn’t comment.

“No. I don’t think I could stoop to that for any length of time,” she says, at last. “I suppose that’s another plan to cross off the list for once I complete my degree.”

“Do you know what you’re gonna do once you get outta here?” Darcy asks, with a glance over at Lucy. The inflatable palm tree fight got old fast.

Lucy doesn’t take her eyes from the laptop screen. “I thought I did.”

She really knows how to torpedo a mood, Darcy decides.

“Maybe I should audition for a reality show,” she says. “At least you know stuff about running a business. Probably. I mean, I don’t know, you could be failing out.”

Lucy huffs something that’s halfway to a laugh. “I assure you, I’m not failing out.”

“That’s what they all say,” Darcy says, reaching for a handful of popcorn.

Lucy glances in her direction, waiting until Darcy’s got her handful of popcorn before stealing the bowl and settling it into her lap. “What about that – Jane you worked for? Would she hire you back?”

Darcy snorts. Again. “Yeah, sure. If she couldn’t get anybody else.”

Lucy hums in the back of her throat. “Oh, never underestimate the power of being the only option. What were you doing for her, anyway?”

Darcy grimaces. “Making coffee, mostly. She’s an astrophysicist and I…am not.”

“Astrophysics?” Lucy asks, raising an eyebrow, a handful of popcorn apparently forgotten halfway to her mouth. “Now that sounds interesting.”

“Most of it went over my head,” Darcy says. “The wormhole stuff was pretty cool, though.”

Lucy doesn’t say anything, but her face is like a big flashing neon sign saying ‘tell me more’. Darcy’s not sure how much she’s actually allowed to say without a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. guys rolling up, smashing through all her windows, and whisking her off to some top-secret torture pit, though, so she just says, “Let’s just say science fiction didn’t get it totally wrong, for once.” She takes a sip of her coffee, staring Lucy down. “So what were you planning to do before whatever, and why aren’t you anymore?”

Lucy shakes her head. “Oh, no. Not if you get to leave me on that kind of a cliffhanger.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Okay. Guess we’re just gonna watch Big Brother, then.”

They watch Big Brother.

It’s about seven and a half minutes before Lucy says, slowly, “There is a…family business. My brother is the eldest, we always knew he would inherit, but -” She shakes her head again, tucking a lock of hair back behind her ear. “He’s never had much of a head for business. I had assumed I’d be – taken on in a managerial capacity, but with the state of things between me and my family now…”

“See, I’ve never got that,” Darcy says. “Why not just let the person who’s actually good at the thing do the thing?”

“Our father is, unfortunately, something of a traditionalist,” Lucy says.

Darcy rolls her eyes.

“But perhaps it’s all for the best,” Lucy continues, darting a smile in Darcy’s direction. “I’m finding that this really is the land of opportunity. Even if you occasionally have to make your own.”

It’d be a little unfair to leave her hanging after that – even that much of a confession is a lot, coming from tight-lipped Lucy – so Darcy does end up telling her a little about New Mexico. Leaving out the bits about the Men in Black and the buff space aliens, of course.

Lucy’s a good listener – she makes all the right faces at all the right times, and asks relevant questions without interrupting. Darcy actually ends up telling her a little more than she strictly meant to. Although, to be fair to Lucy, Darcy usually ends up telling everybody a little more about everything than she strictly means to. One of these days, she’s gotta get herself a brain-to-mouth filter.

“It sounds as though you enjoyed yourself,” Lucy says, when Darcy finally runs herself out.

“I guess,” Darcy says. “I mean, it kinda stank at the time – literally, it’s hot in New Mexico and Jane’s trailer had the shittiest shower hookup. But it was also kinda an adventure.” She shrugs. “Except the parts where we all nearly died. Jane really needs to learn not to hijack vans to drive directly at tornados.”

Lucy leans forward, setting the popcorn bowl back on the coffee table. “Is Jane still researching these Einstein-Rosen bridges?”

“Think so. She wants to make her own, eventually, but it didn’t sound like that was gonna happen anytime soon. Sounded like she’d need her own nuclear reactor to get enough oomph behind it.”

Lucy nods consideringly. “Well, if she’s still working in that area, you might reach out and see if she needs an assistant.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, sure. She’s got a couple articles published now. And funding. If she needs an assistant, she’s gonna pick somebody who knows the difference between a quark and a quasar.”

Lucy pouts dramatically at her. “Now, that doesn’t sound like the Darcy I know. Where’s that boundless confidence?”

“Taking a backseat to realism for five minutes? Like I said, I was the only applicant last time.”

“You only need an edge,” Lucy says, like it’s so super easy. “Make yourself stand out from the competition, demonstrate how you are the best candidate. You already have Jane’s confidence, that’s half the battle.” She winks at Darcy before adding, “Of course, you could always simply eliminate the other candidates, but I know your feelings on poison.”

“I’m never totally sure you’re joking when you talk about murder,” Darcy says.

“Because I’m not,” Lucy says, perfectly deadpan. “I am entirely sincere at all times.”

“Whatever. I’m gonna blame the accent.”

“What did you do when you applied the first time?” Lucy asks, going for another handful of popcorn and neatly sidestepping the conversation about her honestly worrying tendency to default to ‘when in doubt, stab them’. No wonder she likes Shakespeare.

“I just emailed Jane with the names and numbers of a bunch of my references,” Darcy says, going for her coffee again. “Like I said. Only applicant.”

The look Lucy gives her is probably the same look she gives to, like, baby animals that trip on their own tails. Like Darcy’s adorable, but only because she’s so pathetic.

“If there’s one thing you learn in business school,” she says, “it’s how to ace a job interview.”

“Excuse you,” Darcy says. “I interview great.”

Lucy says nothing, just looks Darcy up and down and then looks to her left with her eyebrows raised, like there’s a whole lot she could say but she’s politely restraining herself.

“Oh, what,” Darcy says, wiggling back further into the couch and re-crossing her arms. “Don’t give me that discreetly, Britishly rude shit. Spit it.”

A grin slowly sneaks its way across Lucy’s face, and she shakes her head with a laugh. “So forthright. And yet, so perceptive.”

“Well, you were broadcasting…pretty loud and clear,” Darcy points out.

“You’d be amazed what some people fail to pick up on,” Lucy says, half to herself.

“Whatever,” Darcy says. “Lay your wisdom on me, o business major. What’m I doing so obviously wrong?”

Lucy gives her a smile that only turns pitying a little at the end.

“Well, no one could doubt your confidence,” she says. “My only question is how you choose to channel it. I’m sure it’s admirable not to care about the impression one leaves upon others, but when one attempts to take on a new role, that impression is everything.”

Darcy waits, and when no more follows, shrugs.

“You don’t – ah – dress for success,” Lucy says, settling back on the couch with her back against the armrest, so she can look Darcy full in the face as she counts points off on her fingers. “You tend to treat punctuality as though it’s optional. Your forthrightness, while refreshing, could be seen to evidence a lack of tact or forethought – a tendency to charge in without thinking. Which, while a quality many seem to value in their leaders, is not in fact a strategy that frequently yields great success.”

“Unless you’re super buff and hot,” Darcy points out, thinking of Thor.

Lucy rolls her eyes, with a long-suffering sigh. “Yes. As your reality television proves quite handily, a great many rules have their exceptions if you are, as you say, ‘super buff and hot’.”

“Well, I’m already hot,” Darcy says. “So all I gotta do is hit the gym.”

Lucy gives her a flat, disbelieving look. Darcy makes direct eye contact, and flexes one arm, duckfacing before she leans over to kiss her nonexistent bicep.

She’s not sure which of them cracks up first, but she hopes it’s Lucy.

“Is that why you always dress like you’re just stopping in to the office to finish up the Johnson contract?” Darcy asks, when she gets her breath back. “Like, I know suits are required wearing for the business school, but you are allowed to wear, like, jeans or leggings or stuff on Saturdays.”

“I think it’s wise, to require a certain degree of presentation,” Lucy says, primly. “In many cases, the trappings of authority wield as much power as the authority itself. Others’ perception of you, of your legitimacy, is critical to exercising that authority.” She grins, wickedly. “Just ask Macbeth. Or any of the fools demanding your president’s birth video.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Please. Don’t remind me.” She very quickly seizes on the flaw in that logic, though. “But you’re not royalty - no, I know you’re not related to Queen Liz, don’t try that one on me again,” she adds, firmly, and Lucy rolls her eyes ceilingward with an innocent expression. “Or a president, or any other kind of leader of a country. You can get away with wearing jeans every once in a while, it’s not like nobody will ever take you seriously again.”

“So says the woman who wears nothing but jeans,” Lucy says, and then, her eyes crinkling up in a smile, “And has never once in her life been taken seriously.”

Darcy throws the pug pillow at her.

Lucy catches it with the ease of long practice, settling it behind her and making a big show of getting comfortable.

“Only a tiny fraction of a job interview – or, really, of any interaction - is its content. Like it or not, others draw conclusions from how you present yourself,” she says. “You want to present yourself in such a way that they draw the conclusions you wish them to draw.”

She looks at Darcy’s face, and sighs. “You need to learn to smize. But with your clothing, your body language, your choice of words. Smile without your mouth, speak without your words.”

Darcy blinks at her.

“Actually,” she says, “when you put it like that…that makes way more sense than just ‘you’re wearing that?’.”

Lucy gives her a broad, triumphant grin.

“Well,” she says. “If all it takes is a translation into Tyra Banks, there may be hope for you yet.”

Darcy looks around for something else to throw, but there’s nothing close to hand. Instead, she bobs her head in Lucy’s direction with a sarcastic glare. Lucy smiles back angelically.

“Don’t you ever get, like, tired of it, though?” Darcy asks, and Lucy’s smile suddenly goes blank behind the eyes. “I mean, always being on your best behaviour. Always overthinking what other people think of you -”

The smile drops off Lucy’s face so fast Darcy thinks it breaks the sound barrier. She could swear the temperature in the room drops ten degrees in ten seconds.

Lucy glares at the laptop for a long, chilly moment before she turns a haughty, challenging look on Darcy. “I do not have the luxury of airing my dirty laundry for the world to see.”

“So you’re just gonna fake it, forever?” Darcy asks, feeling a little sideswiped. This conversation has taken a turn, and she’s not totally sure she likes the direction it’s going now. “That’s stupid.”

“You may try that flawless line of reasoning on my father,” Lucy says coldly.

Darcy shrugs. “I mean, if you’ll pay for my plane ticket. Or, like, call him, ever.”

“You have no idea what it’s been like, the kind of pressure -” Lucy starts, her voice low, her stare intense under lowered brows, but Darcy cuts her off.

“What, you think just because I don’t care what other people think about me, that I don’t notice it? Yeah, I know most people don’t absolutely love it when you just say whatever and never shut up. Total shocker.”

“All the more reason to have a care what face you present to the world.”

Suddenly, Darcy’s irritated, with Lucy, with Lucy’s whole Hamlet act, with the whole stupid world. “Oh, get over yourself. Like I’ve never tried. Do you really think I wouldn’t love to just always know what I’m doing wrong before I do it and be able to turn it off?”

Lucy’s expression softens, subtly, at that. “Believe me when I say I do understand. You’re far from the only one who’s unacceptable to the world the way they are.”

“Who gets to decide what’s ‘acceptable’, anyway? Because I feel like we should find them and like, gag them and toss them in a basement somewhere.” Darcy shakes her head. “I don’t want to pretend I’m something I’m not just to impress some randos. Sooner or later, they always find out I’m, well, me, and then I’ve wasted a bunch of time I could’ve spent watching cat videos. With people who actually like me.”

Darcy’s aware that Lucy’s watching her, very intently, and shrugs again, suddenly embarrassed by how much personal garbage she’s just spewed at a near-stranger. Darcy Lewis’ Lack of Filter strikes again.

“So like…yeah,” she concludes, lamely.

The smile Lucy gives her is a weak imitation of her usual confidence.

“An admirable philosophy, Polonius,” she says, sounding just a little too wistful for the sarcasm to really bite.

“Oh, fuck you,” Darcy sighs, flopping back against the arm of the couch with her arms akimbo, huffing a stray curl out of her face. “Sorry we can’t all be practically perfect in every way.”

There’s a moment of unbelievably glassy silence.

“I’m far from perfect,” Lucy says, quietly, at last.

“Sure,” Darcy says. “I just don’t know it, because I’ve never seen the ‘real’ you. Because you won’t chill out around anybody. And then you’ll get mad and resentful that I don’t get the ‘real’ you and it’ll all end in tears.” She bobs her head back up so she can look Lucy in the face. “Or, you could stop treating your life like it’s a job interview, follow my lead, and dump all your messy, complicated feelings on somebody you’ve known for like a month with no warning.”

Lucy’s face doesn’t change, and Darcy, unable to stop her face from saying words even under the best of circumstances, adds, “Y’know. Like we’re friends.”

The look Lucy gives her is entirely unreadable. Darcy gives it her best effort for maybe ten seconds anyway, then gives up trying.

“Just a suggestion,” she says, as Lucy rises from the couch.

“It’s been a long day,” Lucy says, avoiding eye contact. “And tomorrow will be as well. I’d best turn in.”

“Coward,” Darcy calls after her, as she starts down the hall. “Don’t be afraid of the overshare!”

She considers getting up and grabbing the pug pillow to throw at Lucy again, but decides it seems like too much effort.

 …

 The next morning, Darcy catches Lucy in the kitchen before she leaves for class, which is unusual. Still, Darcy Lewis has never been one to look the proverbial gift horse in its proverbial gift mouth.

“Hey, I’m sorry about last night,” she says, as she pours coffee into her cocoa puffs. “If I was outta line, or stepped over some boundaries…you know.”

Lucy blinks at the bowl of bobbing pale-brown cereal in dark-brown coffee, but says nothing, just passes Darcy the milk so she can add it to her creation.

“I apologise, as well,” she says, at last, with a brief, bright, not-entirely-convincing smile. “Some measure of what you said…touched a nerve.”

“I figured,” Darcy says. “It’s what I do best. Touch nerves, get jobs I’m not qualified for, make killer playlists.”

She meets Lucy’s eyes, and they share a smile.

“I’m not… I don’t share myself the way you do,” Lucy says, at last, turning to the cupboards for a spoon to stir her coffee. “I don’t believe I could, or that I’d wish to. But…”

She pauses to take a long sip of her coffee, the spoon still in it. “This past year, I’ve learned a few things about myself that I…am having difficulty coming to terms with. Things I’m afraid have not provoked a positive response from those I’ve chosen or been obliged to share with. I – it helps, to present myself carefully, to know I have some choice in how others perceive me. To have some measure of control.” Lucy gives the coffee another stir, staring into its spiral. “To be certain they aren’t seeing – certain aspects of myself that I’d prefer not to exist.”

“Wait,” Darcy says, trying to shuffle all of those pieces into order in her mind. “You’re insecure about your appearance?”

Over the top of her coffee mug, Lucy skewers her with a glare.

“Yeah, okay, fair. I guess it was a shitty thing to say anyway.”

Lucy turns her stare down into her coffee. “Perhaps this does make me a coward.”

“What? No way,” Darcy says. “It’s smart. Just, like, as a sometimes thing. Did you miss the part where I said if I could pretend to be a normal person, I would?”

“You shouldn’t,” Lucy says. “If you could, you wouldn’t be Darcy.”

Darcy bites her bottom lip.

“Thanks,” she says. “I think.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Lucy says, smoothly, a mischievous smile starting to play around her lips. “Take it as a compliment.”

Darcy aims a kick in her direction, which misses by a mile, then settles down to eat her cereal experiment.

“Well, this is terrible,” she says, a few bites in.

“I honestly don’t know what you expected,” Lucy says.

 …

 Professor Doucheface isn’t at the front of the class one afternoon not long after that. The smiling woman who’s taken his place explains that he’s taken a leave of absence and will be back when he’s back, which might not be before the end of the semester.

Darcy cracks a bottle of wine as soon as she gets home and hauls Lucy out of her room to do a toast with her. And then do karaoke with her. She’s pretty sure Lucy’s big, smug grin is just her being happy for Darcy, but still. It’s nice to see her smile.

She sucks at karaoke, though. Doesn’t know any of the words.

 …

  When Jane turns up at the apartment, it’s Lucy who answers the door. Darcy’s in her room working very hard, thank you, on a presentation about the Euro crisis using ‘Call Me Maybe’ as a learning aid. So she can’t really be blamed if she doesn’t hear the first time Lucy knocks on her door. Or the second. Or the third.

When Darcy finally ventures forth on a quest for snackage, Jane and Lucy are both sitting in the living room, Jane holding forth about some science-y thing, complete with hand gestures, while Lucy looks fascinated and occasionally nods encouragingly. She’s either the best polite listener in the history of polite listeners, or she’s actually interested in this wormhole stuff.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were into astrophysics,” Darcy says, when Jane pauses for breath, and both Jane and Lucy turn to look at her with identical guilty expressions. Darcy can’t help but laugh. “Oh my god, you guys should see yourselves. You look like my mom’s dog when she shredded the cat’s catnip mouse. The cat loved it, though. She was trippin’ for hours.”

Now they’re both kind of looking blank. Jane shakes it off first. “I do actually need to talk to you, Darcy.”

“Hit me,” Darcy says, collapsing onto the couch beside her.

Jane doesn’t move, but her eyes dart in Lucy’s direction. “Do you want to go grab a coffee or something?”

“Ah,” Lucy says, looking from Jane to Darcy and back again. “I have plenty of studying to do. I’ll be in my room.” She pushes herself up from the armchair, smoothing down her skirt – a super cute A-line that Darcy would never wear but that totally works on somebody as tall and bony as Lucy. “Thank you, Dr. Foster, I found our conversation most…enlightening.”

“Oh, please, call me Jane,” Jane says, standing up herself and sticking out her right hand. Lucy blinks at it for half a second before taking it and giving it a very professional shake, with a brilliant smile. Darcy can’t help but notice that the height difference between them is hilarious. She always forgets how tiny Jane is. “Always a pleasure to meet young people with an actual interest in my field.” The look Jane gives Darcy is a little too fond to be a glare.

“Hey, I have an actual interest in your field,” Darcy argues. “I’m very interested in the easy science credits it bagged me.”

“ ‘Easy’ science credits?” Jane says, in mock disbelief, as Lucy heads down the hallway. “I seem to recall somebody saying she refused to die for six college credits…”

Lucy’s bedroom door shuts with a solid thunk, and Jane waits a couple of minutes before turning back to Darcy. Minutes? Probably seconds. Minutes are always longer than Darcy thinks. Or shorter, depending on the day and whether people are talking. “I know I only met her once, but I thought your roommate was…shorter. And less British.”

“Oh yeah. Melissa. She totally flaked on me while you and I were out playing X-Files in the desert,” Darcy says. “Lucy’s doing an exchange…thing. So what’s up?”

“Do you have something lined up for after graduation?” Jane asks.

“Depends. Do you still want to pay me in college credits?”

Jane rolls her eyes. “No. I actually have a budget now, thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D., but it’s been hell on wheels trying to get somebody cleared to come work for me. They want it to be all ‘need-to-know’. But they need to know!”

“What about Selvig?” Darcy asks. Her stomach chooses this unfortunate moment to remind her why she came out of her room in the first place, and she furiously thinks at it to be cool. She might have an actual job lined up if she plays her cards right, here. One where she can goof off for money and gorgeous men literally rain from the sky. No way she’s letting a little Oreo craving get between her and that.

Jane shakes her head. “There’s some mystery project the director’s apparently been courting him for. Even if he’d want to, he doesn’t have time to run around after me chasing storms.”

“Ooh, mystery project,” Darcy says. “That sounds prestigious. And expensive. D’you think he’s hiring?”

Jane gives her a flat look. “They won’t even tell me what it is. No way they’re letting you within a hundred feet of it.”

Darcy shrugs. “Hey, it was worth a shot. Just wanna know what my options are, in case I decide to play hardball.” She considers it a moment. Not so long ago, Darcy would’ve jumped – well, okay, not jumped, casually agreed to, nobody who’s built like Darcy does much jumping – at the opportunity. But not so long ago, Darcy had not had a business major for a roommate. Lucy’s taught her a thing or two about negotiating and knowing her worth. Pretty much all of which she’s throwing out the window right now, but hey, it’s the thought that counts. “How much can you pay me, anyway?”

Jane names a figure. Darcy chokes on her own spit.

“Do you need me to drop out and start now?” she asks, when she can breathe like a normal person again. “ ‘cause I can drop out and start now.”

Jane huffs a soft laugh. “Finish your degree. I’m sure I’ll burn through the last few S.H.I.E.L.D. lab techs who’re willing to put up with me, and the spot’ll be open for you to step into before you even take off the cap and gown.”

“How sure?” Darcy asks, because, well, she doesn’t want Lucy to have had to break her best job interview tips down into pieces of Tyra’s advice for nothing. “Do I get, like, something to sign? Anything in writing?”

Jane actually laughs this time. “Yes. That’s why I didn’t just call. Well, that and the possibility of wiretaps.” She reaches down by her feet for the brown canvas messenger bag Darcy hadn’t really paid much attention to. “There’s, uh, a formal offer…”

Her smile turns apologetic, and Darcy just has time to feel a wave of the ominouses build over her before Jane pulls out a stack of printer paper an inch and a half thick. “And, uh, a couple of non-disclosure agreements. Oh, and a background check. And another background check, except this one’s off the record, because it’s being done technically illegally by a defected Soviet spy.”

“You’re joking, right,” Darcy says.

Jane gives her a smile that’s half a wince, and a pen.

 …

 By the time Lucy pops back out of her room in search of dinner, Darcy’s wrist aches something fierce, to match the throb behind her eyes from all the tiny, tiny, extremely important print, and she’s pretty sure the index finger on her right hand is never going to be the same again. But none of that matters, because Darcy Lewis Has A Job.

“Right out of school!” she crows, shaking out her hand. “How about that, Mom? Oh, and, there’s science in poli-sci, so, like, it’s even using my major. Using half my major. Does that count?”

Lucy looks at her over the mug of tea she’s just poured herself. “For purposes of proving your parent wrong? Oh, absolutely.”

“What?” Darcy says, and then remembers Lucy’s life across the pond is a soap opera. “Oh, no, my mom just – she was worried. Poli-sci was my…third? Third major in two years. She really wanted me to make my mind up, or at least pick something that would guarantee I wouldn’t be moving back in with her after graduation. She’ll be so super proud.”

Lucy doesn’t say anything, just blows softly across the surface of her tea and kind of stares into the middle distance.

“You know what this calls for?” Darcy says, before the buzz can get any more killed. “Champagne. Lots of champagne.”

Lucy focuses back on her, quirking an eyebrow up with a hint of a smirk. “Job offer or not, you still can’t afford champagne.”

“Nope,” Darcy says, popping the ‘p’. “But I can afford fizzy wine, and I can’t tell the difference.”

 …

 “Gotta ask,” Darcy says, as they stand in the walk-in cooler, staring at the bottles of prosecco, “does your family really suck that much? Because I’m gonna feel like a real asshole for trying to make you phone your mom.”

Lucy doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just studying the glass bottles on the shelf in front of her. Maybe it’s the coat (it’s a nice coat, really thick and heavy, as Darcy learned when she had to pick it up every time it fell off the hooks by the door), or the scarf, or maybe Lucy’s just naturally cold-blooded, but she hasn’t shivered yet. Darcy, on the other hand, wore a spring jacket and is regretting it.

“I wouldn’t say, ‘suck’,” Lucy says, at last, slowly.

“No, you’d say, like, ‘bollocks’ or something,” Darcy says, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Lucy’s face unfreezes, and she darts a bright grin in Darcy’s direction, though there’s still something sad around her eyes.

“I like you, Darcy,” she says. “But unfortunately, not everything is so simple as you like to think.”

Darcy shrugs, without taking her hands out of her pockets. “I dunno. Sometimes people just make things complicated for themselves.”

They spend another quiet moment studying the fizzy wine, before Darcy shakes out her hands with a puff of breath. “Okay, do you actually have an opinion on what we drink, or are you just trying to avoid talking to me? Because if it’s the second one, I’m picking the cheapest bottle and getting out of here. I’m freezing.”

“Oh,” Lucy says, like she forgot they were standing in a refrigerator, and then reaches up and grabs a bottle of prosecco that is pretty clearly not the cheapest bottle on the shelf. “Here. I’ll treat.”

Darcy watches her suspiciously. “I thought you were broke.”

“Not so broke that I’ll drink that barely-alcoholic swill you call fizzy wine, thank you,” Lucy says primly, and Darcy can’t help but laugh.

“Thanks,” she says, once they’re through the checkout and back out on the sidewalk, Lucy pressing the bag holding their prosecco into her hands. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Lucy gives her a smile that’s just a little unsettling. “I should be thanking you, Darcy. You’ve done more for me than you know.”

Darcy squirms internally under the attention. “We’re roommates. We do roommate stuff. Nothing special.”

Lucy bobs her head back and forth, like she doesn’t agree but she won’t come right out and object. “You opened your home to me. You’ve shown me hospitality above and beyond what was required of you. I won’t forget it.”

Darcy shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, don’t mention it. But if I’m ever in London and need a place to crash -”

Lucy’s smile is brilliant. “Oh, I expect that if you’re ever in London, you’ll look me up. I’ll take you out for fish and chips and we can tour the Tower.”

“Haunted murder prison. Sounds like a blast,” Darcy says. “You better take me on that giant Ferris wheel, too. I promise not to barf on anybody this time.”

Lucy blinks at her. “ ‘This time’?”

 …

 Exam season hits them both hard. Darcy spends a lot of time in the coffee shop, loading up on espressos in a desperate bid to keep herself awake after the string of all-nighters she’s pulled. Lucy practically moves into the library. Darcy doesn’t see her except in the apartment doorway, once, when she’s grabbing some books for class, and even then it’s only for long enough to say ‘hi’ and then ‘bye’ again.

Jane calls about a week and a half, maybe two weeks after Darcy signs the unbearable stack of documents. For one horrifying second, Darcy thinks the ex-Soviet spy turned up some dreadful, sordid thing in her family history and she’s not getting the job after all. But Jane doesn’t even mention the job. She barely even says hello. “Have you heard from Erik? I’ve been trying to get in touch, but he’s not answering his phone. Or his emails.”

“You did say he’s working on some top-secret classified mystery thing,” Darcy points out. “If I had to sign that many NDAs, I bet they’re taking no chances on him blabbing.”

“I know, it’s just – it’s not like him,” Jane says, and her worry’s a little bit contagious, even through the phone. “Wouldn’t he have warned somebody if he was going to have to go dark? Warned me?”

“Jane. C’mon,” Darcy says. “He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself.”

“Darcy,” Jane says, shortly. “You were there when he told us about his friend.”

“Yeah, but S.H.I.E.L.D. did that,” Darcy counters. “The people who hired him. Who vanishes their own employees?”

“People like S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Jane says grimly. “Let me know if you hear from him, all right?”

“Well, if he’s not talking to you, the chances of him friending me on Facebook or whatever are pretty low.”

“Darcy,” Jane sighs, “just say, ‘Yes, Jane’.”

“Yes, Jane,” Darcy parrots into the phone.

 …

 It’s been almost another week, almost a week since the last time she saw Lucy. Darcy’s holed up in her favourite campus coffeeshop, nursing her fourth – fifth? – latte of the afternoon, when the TV silently playing old episodes of Friends cuts to a news break.

It’s a short clip, repeating over and over. Some dude who looks more like an extremely glam pop star in a ridiculous costume than anything, and at first, with the sound off, that’s what Darcy thinks it is. Some dude trying to get in on the Gaga-Katy Perry weird costume trend. Looks like he might be singing to a big crowd in an outdoor arena. He’s really givin’ it, if the face he’s making is anything to go by. Probably a high E or something. The blue spotlight they’ve got on him is not flattering.

It’s about time the weird costume trend took off for dudes, if you ask Darcy. If she has to see another candy-shaped bra, she’s gonna throw up in her mouth.

She’s turning back to her textbooks when something makes her look back up. Some nagging feeling in the back of her head, like there’s something she should be remembering. She’s seen a tacky horned helmet like that before. Somewhere.

The dude in the costume doesn’t really look like he’s singing anymore, either. The camera zooms shakily towards his face, and Darcy’s forced to admit that most pop stars don’t glower at their audiences quite so much. It’s a crappy, glitchy feed, and the moment the guy makes eye contact with the camera, it washes out in a haze of electric blue. But it’s still long enough for Darcy to get an eyeful of pale, pretty, and pointy.

She’s seen a face like that somewhere, too. Recently.

“Oh,” Darcy mutters into her latte, and finally settles on, “shit.”

 …

 “Hi, this is Dr. Jane Foster -”

“Jane?” Darcy tries not to yell into the phone. “Listen, I need to know how far you are into getting this bridge thing working -”

“I’m unable to come to the phone right now,” Jane’s voice continues, blithely, “but leave your name and number at the tone and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.”

“Dammit, Jane, are you screening your calls? That’s a new level of paranoia, even for you,” Darcy says, over the beep. “Come on! It’s me! It’s Darcy! Pick up!”

Jane does not pick up. All Darcy gets is a dirty look from everyone within earshot. Including the librarian.

“Is there something I can help you find?” she asks, pointedly. Obviously she’s just trying to embarrass Darcy into shutting up and going away, because she looks a little startled when Darcy hangs up her phone and pockets it, stomping up to the desk like a woman on a mission. Which she is.

“Yeah, actually, there is,” Darcy says, leaning heavily against the counter and making aggressive eye contact with the librarian. “I need everything you’ve got on Norse mythology.”

The librarian looks startled for a moment, before her expression turns professional again. She turns to her computer, taps a few keys on her keyboard, glancing briefly up at Darcy. “Okay, so all our translations of the Eddas are checked out right now, but there are a few interpretive texts available, and some articles -”

“Don’t you have, like, a ‘Norse Mythology for Dummies’?” Darcy asks, and the librarian gives her a look that clearly says she, the librarian, knows Darcy is going to fail whatever class this is for.

“Try the education library,” she says.

 …

 The education library is full of children’s books. Darcy would be insulted, except that she finds the exact book Selvig had brought back to show her and Jane, wedged on a shelf between a fat picture book on Greek mythology and the gold spine of Egyptology. Darcy pauses a moment to let a flood of fond memories pass over her – hey, any book that was shiny gold and had a big plastic gem stuck in the front cover was the coolest ever when you were, like, twelve – before pulling out the book on Norse mythology and finding herself a table. Thankfully, the furniture is all scaled for adult-sized people.

Darcy slams the book open, flipping past the sections on Yggdrasil and the nine realms, pausing briefly on the pages about Thor, before she finally finds what she was looking for. The illustration’s…weasellier-looking than she remembers, the face way pointier, but that is definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the helmet she’d just seen on TV.

Darcy shakes her head, turning her attention to the text that goes with the image. The book’s laid out more like an encyclopedia than a storybook, which is good, because right now Darcy just needs as much information as possible in as little time as possible.

She’s just about finished reading the section when her phone rings. It’s Jane, sounding almost frantic. “Darcy! What’s going on, are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine,” Darcy says, and Jane lets out a sigh that’s one part relief, two parts frustration.

“Then what was the panicky phone message about?”

“Panicky? On what planet?”

“Darcy, you were already talking when the recording started, and you just kept yelling at me to pick up. I thought you were being abducted.”

Darcy thinks back to the phone call, and is forced to admit Jane has a point. “I’m okay,” she says. “Aside from the part where I might be sharing an apartment with a homicidal Norse god.”

Jane’s end of the line goes dead silent.

“Jane?” Darcy asks.

“No,” Jane says, and then, like she’s warming up, “No, the bridge still isn’t working, they couldn’t -”

“Jane,” Darcy repeats, interrupting before Jane can really get going. “Checked the news lately?”

She can almost hear Jane deflate through the phone.

“Why wouldn’t he have contacted me?” she says, in this terrible small voice that Darcy feels a wash of secondhand embarrassment just listening to. “If he could get through, why not -”

“Jane,” Darcy says, a third time. “Focus.”

Jane seems to remember she has an audience. She clears her throat, dropping the pitch of her voice. Darcy can picture her, easily, shutting her eyes and shaking her head as she pulls herself together. “What do you mean, sharing an apartment?”

“I mean, how much did you tell Lucy about generating Einstein-Rosen bridges?” Darcy says. “Also, how loud were we talking about Selvig’s big break?”

“Not – I mostly kept to the theory, you know I signed a few non-disclosures of my own – Darcy, what -”

“I’m just asking,” Darcy says, drumming her fingers against the little weaselly illustration. “Because from what I’ve been reading, people tend to just, like, tell Loki stuff if he asks while he’s shapeshifted into a woman.”

There’s another, longer pause.

“No,” Jane says, again.

Darcy nods, before remembering Jane can’t see her. “Kinda think so. I know I should’ve been worried when she turned up so conveniently after Melissa flaked, but I just thought she was gonna skin me and wear my face over her face or something like that.”

Jane pauses again before she speaks, but it doesn’t somehow sound so heavy. “Did I know how graphic your imagination was when I first hired you?”

“Only applicant, remember?” Darcy says. “Look, it all lines up. The family drama, the my brother spent some time here and he believes it did him a world of good, the accent, the way she keeps just disappearing at really weird times for hours or days at a time – I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen her in a classroom or with a textbook – and she doesn’t know anything about music. Or get cold like a normal person, and there’s something here about…frost giants? Also, one of his nicknames is ‘Sky-Walker’, and apparently, in like Norwegian, that ‘oh’ in his name should be an ‘oo’ -”

“Darcy,” Jane says, firmly. “Breathe.”

“I am totally breathing,” Darcy protests. “Look, after you offered me the job, she bought us a bottle of sparkling wine and thanked me really cryptically and I basically haven’t seen her since. And in that time, Selvig’s dropped off the map, and a supervillain calling himself Loki who could be her fraternal twin pops up and starts chewing German scenery in a helmet that looks exactly like the one in this book.” Darcy sits back in her chair, bouncing off the back. “Also, I told her about this professor who was a total pain in my ass, and like two weeks later he was on leave for ‘undisclosed reasons’ and he still hasn’t come back.”

“This…could all be a coincidence,” Jane says, lamely.

“Oh yeah. Same way that weird homeless guy you kept hitting with your car showing up inside that storm was all a coincidence,” Darcy says. “Oh, my god. I’ve been watching ANTM highlights with a supervillain.”

“Okay, stay calm,” Jane says, in a voice that does absolutely nothing to make Darcy feel any more calm. “Does she know you know?”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t even put it together until, like, twenty minutes ago. God! I ate her chocolate-chip cookies!”

“Is she with you? Do you think you’re in any immediate danger?” Jane asks, being infuriatingly reasonable for somebody who was helpless with heartbreak not five minutes ago.

“No,” Darcy admits. “I don’t think so. Oh, shit!”

“What?” Jane gasps.

Darcy groans. “Left my taser at the apartment.”

 …

 Darcy stays late at the coffee shop, reluctant to go back to the apartment. Sure, she hasn’t seen Lucy in weeks and has no reason to think that’s going to suddenly change. And sure, nothing she’s read makes it sound like the god who might be her roommate can read minds. There’s no way, even if she did run into Lucy, that Lucy would be able to tell that Darcy knows.

Except for the part where she’s the literal god (goddess?) of lies and Darcy’s a mediocre actress at best. Yep. No way she’s gonna notice anything’s different. Or anything.

Fuck. Darcy is so, so screwed.

When the coffee shop closes and kicks her out, Darcy migrates to the library. When the library closes and kicks her out, Darcy complains very loudly that they aren’t staying open 24/7 for exam season. Her one-woman protest has absolutely no effect whatsoever.

Darcy stands on the sidewalk outside the library doors, shivering in the chilly night air, and wonders if one of her friends would let her crash at their place overnight. She considers it for a minute before realizing that just figuring out how to ask would probably end up making things even more complicated than they already are.

Finally, Darcy decides she’s cold enough, tired enough, and grumpy enough to take her chances heading back to the apartment. So what if Lucy’s there? So is her taser.

“Tased a Norse god once,” Darcy mutters, under her breath, as she slouches determinedly towards the bus depot, hoping they haven’t stopped running for the night as well. “Can do it again.”

By the time she gets back to the apartment, Darcy’s so wound up that she jumps involuntarily when she opens the door. But there’s nothing to freak out about. Lucy’s coat isn’t hanging on the hooks by the door, which is a sure sign that she’s still out. Darcy wonders, for half a second, where she is if the library’s closed, and then feels incredibly stupid.

“Supervillainy. Right,” she says, into the empty apartment, tossing her coat in the general direction of the hooks. She double-checks the lock on the apartment door, brushes her teeth and washes her face, and then very carefully locks herself in her bedroom. After a moment’s consideration, she wedges her deskchair under the handle, too.

It takes Darcy a very long time to fall asleep.

 …

 She’s woken at some ungodly hour by a crash that has her leaping up out of bed, half-convinced somebody’s trying to break down her door. It takes Darcy a moment to boot her brain up out of sleep mode and realise it was just the chair falling over.

 …

 It takes another panicked phone call from Jane before Darcy remembers she was supposed to check in when she got home last night. She only just manages to talk Jane down from calling in S.H.I.E.L.D., which might seem a little crazy at first blush, but makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Yeah, okay, so maybe Darcy’s been living with the Big Bad of the week, but she doesn’t actually know that for sure, and it’s not like she has any useful information about any nefarious plans, and said Big Bad hasn’t even been around lately, and – look, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Darcy’s keeping an eye on the news, and it looks like they’ve got it under control. They don’t need Jane and Darcy butting in. They’re handling it.

Plus, she really, really doesn’t want her iPod confiscated again.

Darcy’s been walking on eggshells all day, jumping at every little noise, before she finally decides she’s done. She’s over it. Either her roommate is a homicidal extraterrestrial, or she isn’t. Either she’s going to totally murder Darcy and wear her skin like a – okay, she’s overusing that one. Either she’s going to totally murder Darcy and use her skull as a drinking horn or whatever, or she isn’t. And either way, there’s not a whole lot Darcy can do about it. So worrying about it like this is pointless.

What would be less pointless would be finding out 1) whether Lucy really is secretly an evil alien god, and 2) if she is, what to do about it.

 …

 To: lucy

From: darcy

house rule #3: if ur a supervillian u have 2 tell me.

 Read at 5:47 PM

 …

 It isn’t even a full day later that the Chitauri attack New York.

 …

 Darcy gets home from the library late, on purpose, though she doesn’t really expect to find Lucy there after the day’s top news stories. The apartment’s dark when she swings the door open, and gets darker when she slams the door behind her, blocking out the light from the hall.

Darcy slouches into the kitchen without turning on a light, throwing open the fridge instead. After staring blankly into its cold white glow for what feels like half an hour but is most likely less than five minutes, and still not having the secrets of the universe or of what she wants to eat revealed unto her, she shuts the door again and turns toward the hall and her bedroom.

“Darcy.”

Darcy is not too ashamed to admit that she screams like a little girl. She jumps backwards, fumbling for her taser, at the sound of a voice from the pitch-dark mouth of the hall.

The hall light blooms to life, revealing Lucy standing by the lightswitch. Under the circumstances, this is not actually a reassuring sight.

“Holy shit, you scared the pee out of me,” Darcy gasps, and Lucy’s eyes crinkle up at the corners in an apologetic smile. “Don’t lurk dramatically in the shadows like that, you’re gonna give somebody a heart attack.”

“I was waiting for you,” Lucy says, which is also not very reassuring, under the circumstances. Darcy’s questing fingers find her taser tucked into the pocket of her jacket, and close over it. “I wanted to talk.”

“You could’ve just texted me back,” Darcy points out.

“In person,” Lucy says.

“Great,” Darcy’s traitor mouth says. “Great, nothing about that sounds unnecessarily ominous, or anything.”

Lucy huffs a soft laugh, turning her face away from Darcy for a moment. Darcy can’t read her expression through the shadows the hall light casts over her eyes and the curtain of dark hair that falls in front of her face.

“I have the feeling,” she says, her eyes flicking in Darcy’s direction, bright even in shadow, “that you suspect I’m keeping something from you.”

“What?” Darcy laughs, nervously. “Why would you think that?”

“Possibly the fact that you’re right.” Lucy’s voice is wry, her mouth twisted in a smile, but all Darcy can see in her eyes is fear. “Darcy…I’ve lied to you.”

So this is happening. Darcy makes herself breathe at a normal human person rate. All things considered, she feels like she’s doing pretty good keeping her cool here. Like, sure, okay, she was totally chill around Thor, but she also never really got the vibe that he might stab her if she looked at him funny. And, as far as Darcy knows, he never actually has stabbed anybody for looking at him funny. So there’s that.

Lucy takes a deep breath, meeting Darcy’s eyes with an expression half steely resolve, half unspoken regret. “I’m not really a business student.”

“Yeah,” Darcy says, her heart hammering in her throat, fingers curling tighter around the reassuring shape of the taser in her pocket. “I know.”

Lucy’s head snaps up, eyes going wide. “You know? But – I was so careful -”

Darcy makes a face. “Were you, though?”

Lucy – Loki? - looks away again, with a soft huff that’s almost a laugh. “No. I suppose I wasn’t.” There’s that strange wistfulness in her voice again as she says, “I did everything – everything – to try to impress my father, became everything he wanted, and it was never enough. I suppose…deep down, I wanted someone to see through the lie. To know. And not to care. Who – and what – I truly am.”

She turns back to Darcy, her smile wide and white and, for once, purely and genuinely happy.

“I’m a thespian,” she says.

Darcy blinks at her.

“Sorry, run that one by me again,” she says, sticking her pinkie into her ear and giving it a good wiggle.

Lucy’s still grinning ear to ear. “I’ve changed my major. You were right, Darcy. ‘To thine own self be true’. I’ve spent my life living for other people, but I have to live with the choices I make. It’s time I did something for myself.”

“So you’re…going into theatre,” Darcy says, slowly, still trying to catch up.

“Have gone into theatre,” Lucy says. “I changed my major after that night, when we talked. I’m in theatre arts now. I’m going to be an actress.”

“I,” Darcy says, and realizes that, for the first time in a very long time, she, Darcy Lewis, is at a loss for words. “Uh.”

Lucy’s expression doesn’t really change, but her jaw sets in trembling defiance. “You think I’m foolish.”

“What? No, I was just expecting something a little more mythological.”

Lucy frowns at her, Darcy’s perceived rejection apparently forgotten in confusion. “Sorry?”

“Nothing. Forget I said that.” Darcy blinks a few more times, and then manages, “Congratulations, though. You’re the most dramatic person I know, it’s a perfect fit.”

“Well, that’s still a more positive response than my father had when he learned of my intentions to drop business school,” Lucy says, her eyes shining, but some genuine humour in the quirk of her mouth. “Thank you. I don’t know if I’d’ve found the courage without you. I wanted you to be the first to know.”

“Wow,” Darcy says, suddenly feeling extremely guilty about suspecting her of being an alien supervillain. “Uh, thanks.”

Lucy’s smile falters, and she looks down at her feet. “Now, though, I suppose I shall have to break the news to my family. With the semester over, at least they can’t threaten to cut me off again.”

“Well,” Darcy manages, mentally shoving her thoughts off the rail they’d been on and onto a parallel set of tracks. “You already seem happier. If your family really cares about you, they’ll see that and be happy for you too.”

“My theatre final is a one-act stageplay,” Lucy says. “It’s tomorrow night at the campus theatre. I’d like for you to come.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Darcy says.

  …

 The play is…all right. As plays go. It’s all about adults having Serious Conversations, which is so not Darcy’s scene. Give her elaborate costumes and musical numbers any day.

Lucy’s good, though. Especially compared to some of the other actors on the stage. She has a real talent, able to go from weepy to icy on a dime.

Darcy tells her as much after the curtain closes, when she brings a bundle of grocery-store chrysanthemums up to the stage in congratulations. Lucy’s smile practically glows. She’s totally in her element, and Darcy kind of feels like anybody’d be stupid to try to keep her away from the stage.

She goes with Lucy to the airport, when Lucy leaves a few days later. It’s kind of bittersweet, and Darcy can’t totally deny getting a little misty as they swap contact details outside of the lineup for international security.

“You better mail me a London Bridge keychain,” Darcy says, and Lucy laughs.

“Done.” She looks over towards the line winding slowly through the security checkpoint, then glances at the time on her phone, before turning back to Darcy. “Darcy, I need to thank you again.” She musters up a watery smile. “I know I was something of a handful. But you took me as I came, tried to make me feel welcome in an unfamiliar place, drew me out of myself, treated me as a friend… I won’t forget that. I won’t forget you.”

“Hey, I’m not going to forget you either,” Darcy says, with 100% unpasteurized honesty. “You definitely made my last semester interesting.” She pauses to give it 0.2 seconds of thought, and then decides, yeah. “It was fun.”

Lucy’s smile grows wider, more confident. “ ‘Interesting’ is certainly the word. But…yes. It was fun.”

She casts one more glance over at the security lineup, before she says, “You know, you’ll probably laugh. But for a short while there, I was afraid that you might be involved in the attack on New York.”

Darcy manages not to choke on her own spit, but it’s a near miss. “Say what?”

Lucy shrugs. “You’d always make these cryptic comments about aliens and how terribly the government treated you and whatnot, and then hastily change the subject if I pressed you. And you and your Dr. Foster were both so secretive about her work, but I knew it was in regards to wormholes to other galaxies – and that your Dr. Foster apparently regularly broke the law and had little to no regard for human life, if the stories about the van were anything to go by. What was I meant to think when I didn’t see you for a week and then the news was suddenly full of reports of a wormhole opened in New York to let an alien invasion force through?”

Darcy considers this for a moment.

“Also,” Lucy adds, “you put coffee in your cocoa puffs, which is not the act of a sane and rational human being.”

“Okay, that was one time,” Darcy says.

Lucy does that extremely irritating eyebrow thing that means she doesn’t believe that for a minute.

Darcy decides to let it slide. “You actually thought I helped organize an alien invasion? I can’t even organize my iTunes library.”

Lucy shrugs. “Every good mad scientist needs an Igor.”

Darcy shoves her, hard, in the arm, and Lucy bursts into laughter.

They push back and forth for a bit before Lucy looks at her phone again, and grimaces. “I’ve only got an hour. I should go.”

“Right,” Darcy says. “Well, if I’m ever in London…”

Lucy nods. “If you’re ever in London.”

Darcy’s not sure who starts it. All she knows is that all of a sudden she and Lucy are hugging, her face kind of awkwardly mashed against Lucy’s chest. Good grief, she’s tall.

The hug only lasts a second or two, and then Lucy is off, dragging her rolling carry-on behind her, glancing back only once to wave goodbye.

Darcy flashes her the peace sign, and watches her as she goes through a few turns of the slow-moving security line.

Then she feels like it’s getting kind of weird, and wanders off to find a Starbucks.

 …

 …

 some time later

 “Darcy, you don’t – I can’t afford for you to have your own intern! I can barely afford you!”

“It’s okay,” Darcy says, for like the fourteen millionth time. “Ian’s working for experience. Besides, he’s a friend. Friend of a friend.”

Jane sighs, shaking her head.

“So long as I don’t have to pay him,” she says. “And so long as he’s not – I don’t know, secretly a spy or a supervillain in disguise trying to steal or sabotage my research.”

Darcy snorts.

“Please,” she says. “If one of my friends was secretly a supervillain, I would definitely know.”

[amandajoyce118]

Agents of SHIELD S6E06 “Inescapable” Easter Eggs And References

In this week’s episode, Fitz and Simmons find themselves reunited, but sharing a mindspace while the Chronocoms want them to work out time travel. It leads to some unexpectedly therapeutic tracking through old memories.

As usual, there are spoilers. Again, SPOILERS if you haven’t yet watched the episode. You’ve been warned.

Spoilers.

Seriously.

Last warning.

The White Room

This is probably unintentional, and the white room they end up in is likely just meant to look like the blank slate it is, but… it made me think of another white room from Marvel Comics. Specifically, the White Hot Room. That’s the name of the Purgatory like space that the Phoenix Force inhabits pretty often. It’s also where Jean Grey recharges and accesses all of her memories when she and the Phoenix re-merge. It’s just a very striking similarity since Dark Phoenix was just in theaters (and the movie doesn’t use that comic book aspect at all).

Fitz’s Proposal

If Fitz’s proposal sounds familiar, that’s because we’ve heard it before. Last season, when he found Jemma, she couldn’t hear him, but he gave her nearly the exact same speech. (Edited to add: She also answered him the same way he answered her when she proposed last season. Nice. And she knew exactly how his speech would end, which means she must have asked him at some point last season how he proposed when she couldn’t hear him. Also, right before Fitz proposes, you’ll spot his bad hand twitching a bit, a nervous tick Iain has kept using since his season two injury. Love the character consistency.)

Alice In Wonderland

A hole appearing in the white room that Jemma escapes through and Fitz following her into her own childhood bedroom feels like a very intentional nod to going “down the rabbit holt” and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Jemma’s Room

I know I’m going to miss some things in Jemma’s room, but there is so much going on in here. Obviously, the book about her and Fitz, but there’s more. We see she’s a Jane Goodall fan because that photograph features prominently. There are stars on her ceiling, likely a nod to the times she spent studying the stars while recovering from surgery as a kid. She has so many samples on her shelves that I wish I could actually see what they all are. There’s a Winnie the Pooh which doubles as a nod to the Disney parent company and it being one of those very English animated properties (edited to add it is technically Canadian) for kids. Not to mention fellow MCU alum Hayley Atwell starred in Christopher Robin. Right next to Winnie is a Paddington Bear, which is a nice touch. Also, the butterfly painting on her wall that looks like it’s a little mixed media with butterfly pieces on the bottom? That was in Jemma’s Hydra apartment in season two. (I remember that odd detail because I used it in a fic.)

Edited to add that Jemma has a serious thing for butterflies that makes me curious. In addition to the butterfly print from season two, there are framed butterflies on shelves, and sample vials of other butterflies in her collection, and even butterflies on the tea set that she and Fitz have in the white room. I wonder if it’s because they were easy for her to study as a kid, or if she was fascinated by their transformation, or something else. Is that something else, perchance, something to do with Sarge’s Snowflake? She does like to go on about how people become beautiful butterflies after she stabs them. Is this just a weird bit of foreshadowing? Showing a connection between them? Is Snowflake another’s world’s version of Jemma? Oh, that would be weird. But food for thought.

Also edited to add: the book doesn’t just feature Fitz as the prince in the stars and Simmons as the princess looking for him. It also features Mack as a strong bear and Daisy as a quick rabbit, which are interesting choices. I’m assuming it’s them only because they’re the friends they call later in the episode. I mean, it could be that the animals are Daisy and Piper since they went to space together, but that would make Davis the monkey? lol

Cuttlefish

Okay, I’m editing this one in because it struck me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to include it until I looked up the sea creature. So, I initially thought this was a nod to Jemma talking about fish in the pod at the bottom of the ocean in season one. And maybe it is. But, the cuttlefish is actually from the same taxonomic class as squids... like the symbol for Hydra. Nice nod either way.

Fitz’s Academy Dorm

Hey, Bonus mention of Anne Weaver! I enjoy her. The show should try to get her back for a cameo or two.

Okay, I’ll admit I was too focused on them processing the memory to focus on everything in Fitz’s room, but I did spot that massive Manchester banner. Just a reminder that’s Fitz’s team and Hunter is not a fan, as we learned last season. I might catch more on a rewatch, but feel free to tell me what I missed in both of their rooms.

Edited to add: Fitz is wearing the “same” dark blue hoodie that Jemma wears around the base in season three when she returns from Maveth. It’s not actually the same, but we’re clearly meant to think it’s the same one that fits her because it is far too small for Iain to be wearing it over two more layers of clothing. Also, even before Jemma mentions Fitz being manic, you can actually seen hand drawn monkeys on the wall like what Fitz did in the prison cell. Only a few before they start discussing his state of mind and then show Jemma looking at them on the wall. Also, the tie that Fitz wears when they meet Coulson is hanging on his coat rack.

Side note: I found it interesting, though I loathe the term, that Jemma says she friendzoned Fitz in that scene. That means that Jemma at the Academy must have had some inkling that Fitz had a crush on her. Or, this is just Jemma looking back on it with the benefit of over a decade of experience with Fitz and realizing it. Either way, it confirms that Fitz always thought she was the coolest, even while he was busy arguing with her.

Jemma Needs Therapy

I love that Jemma’s problems locked in a box are an amalgam of all her traumas. (Also, it’s funny to me that she has a little pink safe on her dresser that she could have locked her troubles away in, but instead, it’s the easy to open jewelry box.) This version of Jemma looks like a monster, but she’s wearing her shirt from Maveth and shreds of her Kree-slave attire, carrying the shiv from Maveth, has gold paint on her forehead from her time in the future. (Edited to add: she’s also covered in dirt with a hoarse voice, and I’ve noticed some people think that’s a nod to her emerging from a grave in the Framework, which is a good catch. I thought it was simply to make her look more like a monster, but it makes sense that it’s a nod to what she discovered in the Framework now that I’ve watched the episode again, and this “monster” only emerges after they’re faced with the Doctor.) She’s the embodiment of all the bad things Jemma has gone through, and Fitz is right that she’d be better off with therapy instead of keeping the English stiff upper lip.

Meeting Coulson

The scene where the two of them meet and get recruited by Coulson makes me wonder if it happened immediately before we meet them in the pilot episode. Why? Because they’re wearing their pilot episode clothes, though the hair, of course, is not exactly accurate. (Edited to add: Simmons telling Fitz, “yes, I’ve heard the stories, don’t be weird” is a nod to Coulson’s death being on record. They weren’t at a high enough clearance level to actual know he was alive.)

Edited to add: can we talk about how significant it is that Fitz “fights” the demon version of Jemma on the part of the quinjet where he first thought he was going to lose Jemma? It’s where he couldn’t get his parachute on in “FZZT” and Ward went to save her instead. I just found that location choice interesting. It’s not the bus from season one. It’s definitely an updated quinjet, probably because they don’t have the same exact set pieces anymore, but it looks strikingly similar. Demon-demon asking Fitz if his lungs or bones will go first? That’s a nod to the scene of she and Daisy torturing an alien this season when they were looking for Fitz. Clearly, though she saw the intimidation and torture as necessary, it left it’s mark on her.

Also, I didn’t mention in when I initially posted this, but I think them choosing Daisy and Mack to save them speaks more to how they view them than just what cast was available. We’ve seen Hunter literally pull Fitz out of prison, yet he chooses Mack to save him from Jemma. Why? I feel like he might trust Mack with Jemma’s trauma more than he trusts Hunter. Because Mack was there for most of it, and because Mack was there for his own recovery in season two before he became closer to Hunter. Likewise, Jemma calling Daisy and not May, or Elena? That’s because Daisy has had her back for a year in space. She’s seen Daisy literally take out an entire room of badguys while drugged up on puffies, so of course, Daisy is her first choice. Daisy has also already had the Doctor in her own head when Fitz had his psychotic break last season, so it’s a bit of symmetry there too.

Trapped In A Pod

Okay, so it’s sweet that they realize they don’t just have to rely on one another and call Daisy and Mack for backup against the dark parts of their minds. I enjoy that, as well as the symmetry of them both getting to see each other’s worst parts. What I really love here though is that this is the angrier version of the season one pod scene. The two of them run away from their troubles only to be trapped together in an enclosed space, yet again, to yell at one another about all the things they haven’t had the chance to argue about before. Watching the scene, I literally said that the only thing that would make it better would be if it was actually at the bottom of the ocean. Of course, they realized that and it filled with water. Of course. The arguing in the middle of the water, just as it did in season one, leads to their confessing their feelings. It’s a lovely, symmetrical, story of their relationship, this episode.

That Makeout

Leopold and Demon Jemma going at it while Fitz and Simmons argue? This just further proves that all that bantering in the early seasons was really foreplay, right?

That’s all I’ve got, for now. I’m sure I missed some things just because of the nature of the episode. It’s taking us on a walk through memories, some we’ve seen, so there are likely more that are harder to spot. Let me know what I missed!

[carelessgraces]

🔥 drastoria

TILTING PRETTY SHARPLY BITCHWARD ( NOT ACCEPTING )

i am a very firm believer that drastoria is the superior draco ship of all the draco ships, but we already knew that, so –

     i think that some of the uh more virulent anti-drastoria sentiment tends to have its roots in a lack of creativity over anything else? there has been some spectacular nastiness regarding the ship, and astoria in particular – astoria’s a mary sue ( honestly, how sexist, how foolish ), astoria’s a self-insert ( and so what if she is? if it’s good enough for jane austen, it should be good enough for you, and besides, what’s wrong with a little wish fulfillment? ), astoria is somehow damaged by the ship ( astoria being damaged by tcc? sure. astoria being damaged because she’s included strictly as a name in draco’s post-canon life, when she wasn’t relevant to the story that centered around harry, because draco was a secondary character? not so much ). and in my experience, whenever someone tries to couch their hatred of astoria / drastoria in pseudo-enlightenment ( “having astoria built around a ship is sexist” no, it’s not, astoria had no narrative value to harry and so she didn’t appear, and narrative works in that characters rely on one another to be developed, that’s literally how it goes ) it comes down to “the specific incarnation of this ship does not work to fulfill my personal desires.”

     which is fine? there are plenty of ships i can’t stand. but the thing is that astoria is a blank slate, really. with the exception of tcc, which isn’t part of the harry potter canon except in the most technical of terms, she doesn’t really have a personality. you can develop her in any direction. if you want a good girl / bad boy dynamic, if you want astoria corrupting draco further, if you want them healing each other, if you want enemies to lovers, you can do pretty much anything with them and because there’s so little true canonical material on astoria, it’s pretty hard to do something with her that is objectively wrong. i’ve been writing her for seven years, i’ve been in indie for five, there’s absolutely no one right astoria, and i’ve seen at least a dozen. all wildly different, all beautiful in their own ways – some were like ginny, some were like luna, some were like pansy, some were like hermione, some weren’t like anyone else in canon. 

     so to suggest that all drastoria is ‘sexist’ or ‘mary sue-ish’ or ‘self-insert shipping’ is to paint all astoria as one singular character with one singular personality, and then to denigrate that personality as being unworthy. and it always reads to me like a fear of creativity. like the knowledge that someone else is having fun and exploring something new just stirs a fear in them that’s rooted in the creeping wonder that maybe i couldn’t do something good with this character. and to try and root that in anything but a simple ‘i’m not a fan, i’d prefer something else,’ because it’s perfectly okay to just dislike things without trying to justify that dislike through claims that the thing is somehow Deeply Harmful To Society As A Whole, is overly defensive and just confirms my suspicions. 

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 13 - Candy Page 23

==>

This is going well, despite all the weirdness... it might not be so bad by the time I get to the end of all this.  Maybe my stomach can stop clenching as much from the Meat poisoning.

Then again, that’s what I thought when I was up to four-fifths through Meat and thought things were going to be resolved before the end.

So.

Anyway.  Reading.

In fact, all she did was tip her head at him and blink a few times, her long eyelashes catching the light, making her eyes look like mirrors. It was disconcerting for reasons that he couldn’t put his finger on. It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

God damnit... hypnotized, basically dead Roxy is worst Roxy.  I need that fucking explanation soon.

If she doesn’t get upset after what he’s about to pull today, then...

John doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Gosh that’s horrible.  I wish I didn’t have to go back to Meat if I ever wanted any more Real Roxy again... please, PLEASE, if NOTHING ELSE gets fixed in this stupid fucking Candy arc, PLEASE HAVE ROXY BACK TO NORMAL BEFORE THE END

That... that would be just the fucking icing on the cake, wouldn’t it?  I was already upset about Dirk not getting his due.  I was traumatized over how Jane, Jade, and Rose were left.  But ROXY was fine.  Roxy, pretty much my favorite character next to maybe Jade, or a good number of the others.  If this timeline gives me an alternate cliffhanger to lean on that spares the others to leave HER to shit, then I’d basically be left with nothing to stand on!  It’d be fucking worthless almost.

My stomach isn’t clenching YET, but I’m starting to fill with dread.

JOHN: harry anderson, don’t tell your mother but... JOHN: we’re getting a new addition to the family today!

Pfffff

serious kidnapping

And who said John was just a blank slate with no will of his own?? Fuck you, Dirk.  You knew about this timeline and you STILL said it.

Dave and Jade materialize behind everyone, he in a pressed red suit, she in a glittering Space dress. They’re both holding gifts wrapped in spare printer paper.

Look, you two looking cute is just rubbing salt in the wound of the relationship you fucked over, Jade.  You should have waited to make sure Dave and Karkat FINALLY ACCEPTED THEIR FUCKING RELATIONSHIP before moving in and potentially pushing one of them out, WHICH HAPPENED.

Oooh, smart human babby Tavvy.  ...He isn’t going to want to leave his family situation, is he.  John’s off the mark isn’t he.

Dave ruffles Harry Anderson’s hair. It’s nice that Dave is so woke and great with kids, but that really does invite the question of why he and Jade don’t have any yet. There’s still something sad and wistful about Dave at the moment, as he pointedly avoids letting Jade take his hand while they’re led into the game room.

GAAAAHHHHH

Could we at least BE ALLOWED TO PRETEND THERE’S A POSSIBLE FUTURE WHERE THESE PEOPLE’S RELATIONSHIPS ARENT THOROUGHLY FUCKING MESSED UP?????

I KNOW THESE CHARACTERS ARE MESSED UP BUT YOU HAVE TO AT LEAST GIVE US HOPE

AND WHERE’S THE HAPPY POTENTIAL PAIRING FOR JADE??? IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S NO POTENTIAL FOR REAL MUTUAL HAPPINESS FOR HER BESIDES JADE X COMA!!!!!!!!!!

X(

God damn it Jane can be creepy.

She gained his affection the same way she gains everyone’s affection: she fucking bought it.

UUuuuuuuggghhhhh

...pff stars vs enemies of the state

John, stop making this so stranger-danger.

JOHN: are you ACTUALLY happy about it? JOHN: about... everything going on here? TAVROS: I suppose,,, TAVROS: My mother tends to get displeased when i’m unhappy, so,,,

uuuugughghghuhh

TAVROS: It just seems like a thing that would eventually happen to me, does it not?

D:

Oh wow, callback to Dirkbro abuse.  THAT’S gonna set John off.

Oh wow, Tavros knows his situation is bad enough that he’s willing to GO for it. All he’s worried about is the security.  YEAH John!!  Do your Breathy thing and get him out of here!!!

Tavros takes in a sharp breath before spinning on his heel and stumbling toward his closet. John catches the ghost of a smile on his face before he turns and that’s all it takes to turn the pounding of his heart from terrified to thrilled.

AAaaaaAAAAAH THIS IS ADORABLE SOMEHOW

She twitches her dog-ears and raises her face. Her mouth is a neutral line, but her eyes are burning furiously.

OH NOOOOOOO

FUCK, Jade don’t stop it!!! She’s... she’s gonna put her foot down and stop this just so everything can be all candy-coated and good on the SURFACE without hurting people OPENLY even if she and Jane and all the others are DEEPLY hurting everyone else under the surface!!!! D:

JOHN: jade, i don’t know where you’ve been these past few years, but i don’t think things CAN get any worse!

Yes exactly

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

Hmmmmmm

JOHN: well, you’re nothing like the jade i used to know either!

D:

Alright, huge blowup. Let’s air out some feelings.

JANE: I let go! I was actually RELIEVED to hear he died!!! ROXY: uhh ROXY: janey wut

HAhahahaah YES let’s get all that dirty laundry OUT IN THE OPEN

......Okay that didn’t end as well as expected.  Or... well I guess I KNEW it wouldn’t end well, but I’d hoped otherwise.

==>

Wait, so Terezi and John’s conversation is “in the dream bubbles”? Is that just because he’s talking to her while she’s skirting the edge of the storm in the Void rocketways, or because John’s from a somehow doomed/irrelevant/side timeline?

(Why does Terezi always have to be dying.  She figured herself out and how awesome she is.  Stop dying.  And I don’t mean like the sad walking off in Meat, though I guess that kind of counts.)

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever.

YES JOHN

LAY

ON

THE

TRUTH

(Ghost!Vriska is the only one who really deserves to matter anymore.  This “alpha” Vriska just sank deeper into her problems and delusions beyond being able to really redeem herself or recognize them.  That diatribe she gave her ghost self was horrible back when.)

Wait, wait hold on

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever. JOHN: driving you crazy with doubt and uncertainty, making you chase her through infinite nothingness until you almost starve to death... JOHN: she would have at least given you the courtesy of closure!

Is... is Andrew talking about the comic here and his relationship with the readers

is this some sort of apology for not giving this closure, like, as if he were the vriska that launched himself into the sun over his own artistic ideals or

hmm

JADE: doomed is not a word i would use to describe the condition of those on this world. JADE: even if my work is unsuccessful, the stakes for everyone here have nothing to do with the issue of mortality. JADE: to frame the matter that way would be misleading. JADE: to the extent that it is my naturally endowed duty to defend the innocent from wanton acts of destruction, from degradation and dissolution, JADE: it is also my duty to tell the truth to those i protect. JADE: and the simplest statement of truth for all of you to know is this: JADE: we are the lucky ones.

Calliope lets out a long, thin sigh from between the teeth of Jade’s corpse. It’s more for effect than anything, as corpses don’t actually need to breathe.

JADE: we are the ones fortunate enough to live in a reality that is beyond the influence of the prince.

Geez, it’s like escape from Lord English’s influence all over again.

They won only for everything to just fucking start over, everything they struggled to stop?  That sucks!!!  >:(

Anyway, still reading... god damnit Terezi don’t fly off and die for no fucking reason.

JOHN: then what DID you want?! TEREZI: L3TS S4Y... TEREZI: 1 JUST W4NT3D TO G1V3 YOU TH3 COURT3SY OF CLOSUR3

Fuck.  Yeah, let’s just keep fucking over Terezi, another one of my favorite characters.  Yes she lives and goes to fuck off somewhere in Meat with the villain of the week, but FUCK, couldn’t we get a SLIGHTLY clearer picture of her potential happiness than just THAT?????

It’s like the whole purpose of these epilogues was just to remind us that these characters were too fucked up to ever be happy!!!!

Couldn’t we have at least been left to IMAGINE OTHERWISE?!?????

JADE: not until i am able to deal with the prince myself. ARADIA: and when will that be

The meteor is passing beyond the fall of night. Dead-Jade, standing half in light, half in darkness, looks up at the sky.

JADE: not soon enough.

Ahh.  I’m getting an idea of the Postscript’s circumstances, then.  That was alt!Callie in this black-hole-powered Jade body going from THIS Candy timeline to go chase after Dirk and help stop him like everyone else, giving her a more powerful card to play than just the adult Jade she was having guide the others. (Maybe she could have that adult Jade FUCKING WAKE UP AND ABLE TO HELP instead of keeping her in a coma. That would be a pretty fucking nice change of pace.  Too bad we have to just IMAGINE IT without any reassurance that she’ll be awake or okay for YEARS TO COME, HUH.)

Also that means that resistance fighting is gonna break out with artillery and stuff because Jane is apparently a dunpass in both timelines.  Fuck.

==>

Swifer, can you stop swifing?

KARKAT: HOW THE HELL DO YOU TWO TOLERATE EACH OTHER? KANAYA: Quite Thoroughly Enthusiastically And Often

Pffffff :D

...Oh my God MEENAH landed here???  All ring-of-lifeways from the other timeline?  I guess the Furthest Ring was outside the scope of those timeilnes so she could’ve fallen in any of them... huh.  Heck, maybe the same Terezi who experienced those conversations eventually met the John from the Meat side of the timeline too.  And she said John smelled younger than she thought he was, oh my GOD, it WAS that.  It was that exactly.  The Terezi we’re hearing was the same across both Epilogue-halves.  That’s actually fucking fantastic!!!

MEENAH: capisces?

Fuck that pun

(Also Meenah is talking about how they lost, but she was knocked away before she saw the conclusion of the fight, so.)

...Holy SHIT Meenah is really taking to this!!! This is adorable.  :D

==>

John’s having some canon/existential ditherthoughts, hm.

He’s been contemplating this melodramatically for maybe ten minutes when the sky rips opens above him and flashes violent waves of red and green across the landscape.

Hm.  So do the black hole wormholes have some tie to the cherubic portal device from Hiveswap?

It’s his father’s car.

Mhmm, that confirms all of it, really.  Same Terezi in both stories.

A vast cry of sorts.  :(

Heading out for a while; gonna start from Page 27 in the next post.  I feel pretty good, somehow.  The way these two timelines tied together with Terezi outside them makes it feel like it all may have ultimately meant something.

[aemiron-main]

GOD. GODDDD now I’m thinking about how performative/terrible so much of mike’s relationship with El is.

he tries to comfort El publicly in front of people at the rink, instead of going up to her privately to provide genuine comfort- to his credit, he DOES try and find her in Italy (but so does Will), but then ends up giving his whole little “you were moping,” speech instead. he’s so much more focused on will + rather than wanting to comfort El, he just wants to find her (separation issues/abandonment issues beginning to show). he doesn’t talk to will very much about how upset El must be and how they need to find her and help her, or about how awful Angela is. and while I know that it’s very likely not mike’s intent for his actions to come across so performative, they do- just like how he said he loves El in front of a group of people in s3, just like how he wanted to get her a material apology gift that everyone could see, instead of just apologizing to her.

and like!! when he goes up to the bedroom the next morning, it’s not “oh El are you okay, that was awful,” it’s not anything comforting, it’s just a passive aggressive “so are we not gonna talk about what happened last night?” like imagine if in the “crazy together,” scene, mike callously hit Will with a “so are we just not gonna talk about what happened back there?” instead of doing what he ACTUALLY does and giving Will the space and reassurance and safety to open up to him.

meanwhile, throughout the seasons, we have Mike freaking out every time Will seems even vaguely upset (see: halloween scene, Mike didn’t even know that Will was upset abt the mindflayer at first, he just started freaking out because he couldn’t find Will + Will was crying), we have Mike pushing Troy after he talked shit about Will (and yet he was giving El shit for smacking Angela???)

God this sort of just turned into a ramble, but like. It’s interesting to me how Mike is okay with El doing things with her powers that benefit him (breaking troy’s arm in s1, making Troy pee, etc), but the moment El does it in her own terms, to defend herself, Mike suddenly isn’t okay with it?? Mike wants her to be a superhero, but then gets upset when she goes to NINA to do it on her own terms + thinks he should have taken her with him?? Like, Michael, come on!! she is capable of making her own choices and decisions!!

And I think a large part of WHY mike seems so controlling with his behaviour regarding El/her identity is not solely due to his fixation with superheroes, but rather, because he’s projecting his feelings for Will onto El and that becomes more and more difficult the more and more that El becomes her own person. It’s harder to project onto someone when they begin to develop their own unique personality traits and interests- and the “romantic” moments we DO see between mike and el (s1 and s2 moments although even those are debatable and filled with weird familial parallels), are at a point before el even knew she could have her own likes/interests (the mall scene with max in s3), making her much, much easier for mike to project onto, and therefore, there’s less conflict in their relationship because Mike is easily able to project his love for Will onto her. I actually think that’s WHY he pushes the superhero thing so hard- not necessarily solely due to a fixation with superheroes and saving people, which IS part of it, but also because that “blank slate,” identity of “eleven, the superhero” is WAY WAY easier for mike to project onto. because unlike el hopper/jane hopper, eleven doesn’t have unique interests or personality traits- shes that same almost “blank slate,” that mike had to teach about privacy. And I think that while yes the familial parallels w hopper and Brenner Are there in regards to lots of mike’s interactions when teaching things to El, I think that rather than mike trying to be a father figure, it’s more that he wants to be able to project his feelings for Will onto El, and that’s MUCH easier to do when he can mold her worldview (ie, things like friends don’t lie, teaching her the definition of friends and privacy)

This would also explain why we hear mike calling her “Superman,” instead of “super girl,” or “Wonder Woman,”- because el’s superhero persona is tied to mike’s ability to project his feelings for Will onto her, and therefore, he associated her with men/Superman/a more hollow superhero identity/the identity of Eleven, rather than the rich and vibrant and unique personality of El/Jane Hopper.

I don’t necessarily think that mike is doing all this on purpose. I do NOT think that he’s consciously trying to “manipulate” El or intentionally hurt her- rather, I think that he misses the more blank persona of Eleven that he could project his feelings onto Will more easily, because it made his feelings for Will easier to handle. But now that he’s losing that outlet, now that el’s developing more and more independence, it becomes mroe difficult for him to project and therefore more difficult for him to handle those emotions.

This would also explain why we see the almost possessiveness/things like wanting to “go with her” to Nina that he kind of has with Will (ie, his “guard dog mode” with Will is very similar), but the difference is that the care that he has with Will isn’t there with El. He does not comfort her in the same way. He ends up hurting her instead. (see: gaslight gatekeep girlboss mike I’m the milkvan bedroom fight scene) and like how Will hates people fussing over him/going guard dog mode except for mike, El is the opposite- she specifically doesn’t want mike acting that way around her anyway because it stifles her independence. Basically, mike’s guard dog mode/“possessiveness” towards Will is welcomed by Will and makes Will happy and allows him to have the stability he needs in order to grow as a person- but it’s the opposite for El, because mike’s possessiveness is subconsciously rooted in keeping her as a previous, easier-to-project onto version of herself, which prevents her from growing as a person.

long story short: Mike calls El “eleven,” and fixates on her superhero persona because it’s a blank slate for him to project his feelings for Will onto, since the persona of “Eleven,” unlike El/Jane”, does not have nearly as much of a unique personality or interests. This is also why he refers to her as “Superman,” or “superhero,” rather than “supergirl,” or “wonder woman,” since his fixation on her superhero persona is rooted in his (gay) feelings for Will and ability to try and project those onto her.

this relationship is not good for either of them, we need to get mike and el out of there ASAP!!!!!!!

“you were moping, you basically sabotaged the whole day!” your girlfriend just collapsed in front of everyone and is now sobbing her eyes out

[sarcasticfina]

pampered - 1/1

for: @laurenlikesstuff for her donation prompt: Darcy gets the love and respect she deserves/acknowledgement from the team/SHIELD/whoever

Exhausted did not begin to cover how Darcy was feeling. Don’t get her wrong, she loved working for Pepper and the Avengers, but there were days that she seriously regretted not still being the lab monkey that trailed behind Jane, trying to keep a cap on her crazy and encouraging her to meet basic hygiene requirements. She still managed to visit her friend in the labs, and she checked in with Ingrid, Jane’s new flunky, to make sure Jane was being taken care of, but Darcy’s primary job was acting as the ringleader to the Avengers media interactions. That meant keeping an eye on the social networking sites (or, in Tony’s case, locking him out of his Twitter account whenever he was on a 3+ day brain binge). It also meant setting Steve and Barnes up with someone who could fill in the blanks on history and social media. Steve was a quick learner, and had done much of the work before Darcy had been hired on, but Barnes a blank slate in a lot of (very sad) ways.

For a lot of reasons, Darcy loved her job. The people she worked with, while frustrating, were good people, and she considered most of them her friends. It was hectic, though. Corralling a group of people that were used to being independent, often working in the shadows and far from the glare of public opinion, was no easy job. There was a lot of arguing, and sometimes she felt they disagreed just for the sake of it. Or, when it came to Tony, pushed her buttons just to see how long it took to make her blow up.

She got it. They didn’t want to spend what little down time they had playing nice for the cameras. Even Steve, who wanted to do what he could to positively influence the younger generation, put up a fight after a while. Then again, those high school PSA’s were terrible and the forced smile he fed the camera after the first handful only became more and more obvious. But, this was her job, and there was a reason for it. 

If they wanted to keep doing what they were doing, then they had to work on their public image, but when there wasn’t an intergalactic war happening in the middle of downtown, people were quick to wonder if the Avengers were all that useful. And considering the history that some of them had racked up, between brainwashing and both on-the-book and off-the-book assassinations, having the public on their side helped to keep the government off their backs. Telling them that eventually got old, but it was the truth.

As much as Darcy wanted them to keep operating in the capacity they were, strings had to be pulled and palms needed to be greased. Which was where she came in. Only, she was tired. She was always tired these days. In a lot of ways, her job was thankless. She appreciated the paycheck; Pepper made sure she was paid handsomely for her work. But being on top of the team was a 24/7 job and not in a fun way. She was only getting five hours of sleep on a good night, she was always eating on the go—literally, she ate take-out while going over her schedule with one of her three assistants last night— and any chances of a social life were laughable. Her phone was constantly going off with the latest fire she had to put out and what little time she did have that wasn’t spent trying to sleep, she ended up in Jane’s lab, listening to her babble about her latest act of genius. Not that she hated that, she was proud of Jane and everything she’d accomplished. She was just getting… Well, lonely. The team were good people, but ninety perfect of her interactions with them ended with complaints and a compromise.

When she walked into her apartment, she had her shoes in one hand while the other rubbed at her shoulder, where a knot was quickly forming. She wanted to shower, but with her eyes quickly closing, she figured she might have to put it off until she woke up. Just as the door closed behind her, her phone started buzzing demandingly. Darcy wasn’t too proud to say that her eyes watered. She was so, so tired. Turning her phone over, she squinted at the screen, and found Pepper’s name staring back.

Sighing, she answered it. “Pep, hey. Any chance you’re calling to read me a bedtime story?”

“Not quite. Listen, I’m going to be in town tomorrow and I’d like to meet. My office? 8 am. Does that work?”

Darcy checked the time. That gave her six hours to sleep, shower, and get her ass across the facility. “I can do that.”

“Great. And sorry for calling so late, Darcy. Get some sleep.”

“On it. See you tomorrow!”

After hanging up, she dragged her feet on her way to her room. Falling face first on her mattress, she sighed. Eventually, she would have to crawl up her bed, plug in her phone, and, if she wanted a good sleep, change out of her clothes. But ‘eventually’ would be eat least five minutes of her arguing with herself over how much energy that would take.

Darcy drank her morning coffee in the shower. She also brushed her teeth and shaved her armpit at the same time; no lie, she was a little proud of that skill. By the time she was out of the shower and dressed, she was ready to face whatever monumental fuck up had her being called to Pepper’s office. As much as she could blame, and thank, Pepper for her job, they didn’t often get a chance to interact. Pepper was a busy woman and, obviously, so was Darcy. Which meant that there was either some grenade-sized scandal she needed to throw herself on or she’d fucked up somehow and Pepper was firing her.

In either case, Darcy planned to go in with her head held high and her best heels on display. She’d put her blood, sweat, and tears into this job. She was proud of the work she had done. And she was willing to fight for her position, or the team, whichever outcome was waiting for her.

Making her way into Pepper’s office, she found her standing at the window, her hair down and her clothes far more casual than Darcy was used to.

“Hey…” Darcy’s brow furrowed, hesitation coloring her voice and expression. “You wanted to see me?”

“I did. Yes.” Dropping a file on her desk, Pepper smiled and crossed the room toward her. “I’ve set you up for an appointment at The Surrey. The works. Anything you want or need, it’s on me. After that, I thought we could get lunch. I already okay’d it with Natasha, Maria, and Helen; they’re all on board. And Ingrid said that she would make sure Jane gets there, fully showered. I also set up an appointment with Joseph, he’s my personal stylist. You have an appointment at a salon for three o’clock and then he’ll be taking you to some of the best shops New York has to offer. I thought we could cap the day off with drinks and dinner. Tony’s renting out a restaurant for the night, which means the team can come and everyone can relax.” She calmly folded her hands together. “How does that sound?”

Darcy blinked at her. “I… I think I had a stroke in the elevator and I’m hallucinating this as my final moments.”

Pepper smothered her amusement. “I know we don’t get to see each other often, but I’ve noticed all the hard work you put in. And not just from your weekly emails, which are a lot more… colorful than most employees would send me. That’s not a bad thing, either. I hired you because you speak your mind. You’re smart and capable and you’ve managed to do something not a lot of people could. We work with a lot of wonderful people, but they also have huge personalities, which can make our jobs…difficult. To say the least.”

Clearing her throat, Darcy nodded. “I get that. And I appreciate what you’re saying. But… a spa day, shopping, all of it is a little… much, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it is.” Pepper shook her head. “Darcy, you work your ass off, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we deserve a break sometimes. So, let me do this for you. Let me show you how much I appreciate all your hard work.”

Chewing her lip, Darcy nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Pepper grinned then. “There’s only one caveat.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Which is…?”

“You give up your phone until the end of the day. No work, no calls, no texts, nothing. If something happens and we absolutely need to reach you, we’ll find you. But today is supposed to be about resting.”

Darcy looked down at her phone, her brow knit. Very slowly, she reached out, and dropped it into Pepper’s hand. “Fine. But take care of her. My whole life is in that phone.”

“I will.”

The doors opened then and Pepper’s assistant stepped inside. “Happy is waiting outside.”

“Great.” Pepper motioned to Darcy. “Happy will stick with you for the day. He’ll take you everywhere you need to go.”

“Uh, okay. Thanks.”

Pepper nodded. “You’re welcome.”

Awkwardly, Darcy turned on her heel to leave, following the assistant out. But a tiny bloom of excitement formed in her stomach. As strange as it felt not to have her phone, it was a little freeing, too. The weight of her job and whatever impending problem it came with was no longer on her plate, at least for today. As she crossed the facility to the front, excitement slowly started to fill her. Stepping outside, she smiled at Happy, his sunglasses on and his hands stacked in front of him.

“Looks like I’m along for the ride, Lewis.” He moved to the back of the car to open her door. “Hope you don’t mind my shadow.”

“If you’re nice, I’ll set you up with a premium pedicure.”

He snorted. “Hot-rod red with gold trim?”

Climbing into the car, she settled back against the buttery leather seat, and winked at him. “Anything for you, Hap.”

Pampered was not a word Darcy considered part of her vocabulary. Pampering herself usually consisted of a cheap facial mask, painting her toenails, and a Netflix binge. None of which had been part of her day-to-day life since signing on with Pepper. There just wasn’t time for that. But after a day of luxury, she was starting to think that maybe pampering herself from time to time was necessary. Maybe she needed a fourth assistant and a regular day off so she could actually enjoy her downtime. It probably wouldn’t involve the best luxury spa in New York, but something a little closer to her budget wouldn’t be terrible.

After a morning of spa treatments, she’d met up with the ladies for lunch, and she… loved it. Most of her interactions with Natasha, Helen, and Maria involved work, but there was none of that. They’d put their phones away too and the meal was spent just talking. Getting to know each other, finding common ground, and occasionally making fun of the boys. Jane was occasionally distracted with writing her thoughts out on napkins here or there, but for the most part, she stayed focused on enjoying her lunch.

After eating, Darcy was ready for a nap, but then Joseph was there, ushering her out of the restaurant and back into the car. She was on time for her hair appointment and, while it took a while, when she walked out of the salon, she felt lighter. Apparently, she had more split ends than she thought, so she had a few inches taken off, added some color, and while it wasn’t a dramatic change, it left her feeling new.

Shopping was unexpectedly fun. With Darcy’s figure, she often struggled to find something that fit properly, but Joseph helped her find outfits that flattered her figure, and whatever she liked that wasn’t perfect, he sent to the tailors to have them done right. She even picked out a new dress and shoes for that evening’s dinner.

In the end, Darcy felt good. Happy helped her out of the car in front of the restaurant and Darcy fiddled with the end of her dress and stroked her fingers through her hair nervously. She felt like she’d just been on one of those cheesy makeover shows and was about to have the reveal in front of her closest friends and family and a live audience. But as Happy led her inside, she calmed down. Her stomach stopped twisting and turning and the familiarity of the faces surrounding the table were a comfort.

Today, she wouldn’t have to steal Tony’s phone or tell Sam to stop posting candid pictures of Barnes glaring at him with the tag lines like ‘freezer burn,’ ‘elsa,’ and ‘ice, ice, Bucky.’ She wouldn’t have to explain whatever slang word Steve had heard Tony purposely say in front of him in the hopes that he would Google it. And she wouldn’t have to convince Natasha to go on any early morning TV shows where she would no doubt terrify the hosts with her cryptic answers to every question. Today, she could just relax and talk to them and be a part of instead of feeling like a nagging parent with too many children that didn’t like the word ‘no.’

Sam noticed her first. “Hey…” He raised his glass and the others followed. “If it isn’t the reason we all got a night off. Nice work, Darce.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Hardly.” She made her way down the table and took a seat between Helen and Jane. “I’m surprised you all made it.”

“Pep made it mandatory.” Tony was buttering a bun from a nearby bread basket; he waved the knife around absently. “I was in the middle of a stunning piece of engineering brilliance, so if my genius flags later, it’s all on you, Shortstack.”

“It was only mandatory for you,” Pepper said. “Everyone else was happy to come.”

“I never turn down free food.” Clint winked. “It’s good to see you without the extra luggage under your eyes, Kid.”

“The wonders of make-up,” Darcy joked.

A waiter stopped next to her then to get her drink order and when Darcy turned back, she found her phone sitting on the table, next to her napkin. Picking it up, she hesitated. Rather than checking her messages and immediately immersing herself in what she’d missed during the day, Darcy pressed her thumb down on the power button and shut her phone down completely. It could wait for tomorrow.

Placing her phone in her purse, she relaxed and listened to the table as an argument broke out over which appetizers they wanted to get and what end of the table they should go to. It was a pointless discussion, considering they could order multiples, but sometimes she thought Tony and Steve just looked for a way to bicker.

“Well?” Jane shifted in her seat to face her. “How was it?”

Darcy smiled slowly. “Pretty amazing.”

“Good.” Jane bumped her shoulder. “You deserve it.”

Feeling as good as she did, surrounded by the people she worked with and for, by her closest and dearest friends, Darcy agreed. Tomorrow, her day would be just as busy as ever. But, she also knew how much it was appreciated. Plus, she had a feeling that Pepper would ‘okay’ a fourth assistant and, with a new motivation to make sure she was taking care of herself and not just flagging under the weight of her job and responsibilities, she felt better about life and what it was going to look like.

[thunderheadfred]

For the OC Asks, and since I'm always curious about your Red Streak universe: Hannah 10, 4 Albacus 14, 18 Jane 19 Nihlus 1 Garrus 8

Oooh thank you so much as always for your wonderful questions! :D

10. (Hannah) If they have an LI, how much of their character is tailored to be compatible to that person?Exactly zero. I had originally planned for Hannah and Albacus to exit the war with intense mutual feelings of… something, never to be admitted aloud. So I didn’t expect either of them would be getting past the interspecies barrier at all, and certainly not as quickly and wholeheartedly as they did. They did that shit totally on their own, right around the time Jane got sick. 

Hannah’s initial character development was pretty basic; I knew whatever memories she imprinted on Jane would have to come from raw, instinctual personality traits (the type of behavior you can pick up at a young age) so Hannah’s relationship with her daughter and her struggles as a single mother were the biggest influences on her personality, as well as just having her react to the chaos around her. She’s very reactionary; more on that in the next Q. 

Anyway, It has been seriously incredible to write Hannah’s interactions with Albacus, because I get to watch them fall in love without me. Like, when characters take the reins, that is the BEST. FEELING. Especially when that autonomy ends in high romance, haha. I wanted them to get along, sure. To sympathize with one another, absolutely. But to become this goddamn Power Couple rising from the ashes??? Oh man. I didn’t have any idea when I started. They earned that in spite of me, haha.

4. (Hannah) In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? Well, I mean all of it. Hannah is probably my most reactionary character. Everything she does is a response to Shanxi, or to Jane, or to some other disaster, haha. I didn’t sit down and determine much of Hannah’s backstory in advance because she’s a very straightforward and “simple” person in the sense that she’s mostly driven to action, not introspection. So she’s much more shaped by her present circumstance than by her own history, which was lonely and not terrifically interesting. She lives moment-to-moment, doesn’t mull things over. She acts. Charon was discovered? BOOM. She joined the military so she could fly out and see it for herself. That’s her: practical and immediate. This is the way she and Jane are the most similar - and the way in which she and Albacus are the most different.

14. (Albacus) If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?Integrity and maturity. Integrity determines how he behaves (honorable and idealistic to a fault), and maturity describes how he is written on the page. He’s the hardest of my POV characters to write because I find it tricky to strike a balance between “well-spoken yet believable” and “Jane Austen in space”

18. (Albacus) What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?Hmm. Good question. It doesn’t FEEL recent because this happened months ago, but I didn’t know he was going to be an amputee in the beginning. I don’t know if that’s even a “discovery” since it’s definitely something I DID TO HIM DELIBERATELY because I’m MEAN, but the idea to take his arm came to me all of the sudden, like a discovery, so? It counts, right? haha. Also, less miserably, that he likes Frank Sinatra songs.

19. (Jane) What is your favorite fact about your OC?Her resolve. That single trait manifests in a lot of ways: stubbornness, fortitude, even willful self-ignorance. She’s an iron girder because she has to be. Originally, I thought that strength was deliberate, born of self-control and discipline - now I understand it’s reactionary, as much self-deception as strength. I admit it took me a long time to figure Jane out.  Maybe longer than anybody else in the story, since Shepard is such a nebulous, halfway blank slate, onto which the player is meant to project themselves. Jane was never meant to reflect my playstyle or RPG choices, so the experience of developing her as a written character was pretty challenging, and I only really nailed her down in the latter half of what I have published. (fixing that now)

1. (Nihlus) What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? For Nihlus, we got so very little of him in the game, that I really tried to listen to his delivery and his characterization in that short intro and just… expand on those clues. His dialogue is diplomatic but the slightest bit cold, like he’s got a lot of wheels turning all the time. And he runs off on his own (hooray…) because he’s got a lone-gun complex. I wanted to know why Nihlus thinks he moves faster on his own (turns out it’s because everyone important in his life has been a horrible abandoning shithead). I also wanted to write him as older and more mature than Shepard, somewhere in his world-weary 40s. A lot of fics write him as a contemporary or a partner to Shepard (and that’s great!) but I wanted to explore a mentor relationship that would force Shepard to face down a lot of her repressed feelings about her father. I love writing any scene with the two of them together because of all that mutual character development hhhhnnngg.

8. (Garrus) What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? HI. HELLO. YES. ALL OF IT?? Okay, but to answer this with a modicum of seriousness, I really relate to Garrus. Garrus in the game was already pretty relatable. The unrepentant snark mixed with startling one-to-one honesty, and this feeling that he’s the most Joe Normal blue-collar guy on the crew. Relatable.

But Garrus in Red Streak is like a whole other level of self-identification, haha. His written voice most closely resembles my own. His knee-jerk jealousy and self-aware pettiness, his defensive humor and the tendency to overthink himself into a pit… All of that is just… me. Up down and sideways. I think the biggest single characteristic I contributed to Garrus’ characterization in Red Streak was his immature romantic idolization of Jane. When I like somebody, I LOVE SOMEBODY. They are flawless, they are stunning. They are the wisest and bravest and smartest and most amazing human being to ever walk the earth. And it hurts like HELLLLLLL when they fall off that pedestal, if only because it’s a reminder of how complicated relationships are, how difficult to maintain, how lost we all are, and that there are no easy answers. Just more work.

Sorry Garrus. 

[mercerislandbooks]

Kelleen Tries It: Doing Nothing

This month’s “Kelleen Tries It” was a tiny bit foiled. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing appealed to me by its cover, title, and back cover summary about “all that we’ve been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world.” I assumed this book was going to be some sort of self-help on mindfulness and disconnecting from social media (it has “How to” in the title), but I was pleasantly surprised. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing is a theory book, brilliant and well-written one, but not an instruction manual.

She offers a guide of sorts by writing thought experiments and commentaries of her own meditations, but a reader might end the book thinking well, now what? Part of this has to do with the disjointed narrative between chapters. She starts the book by discussing her impetus for writing it, the artistic inspiration and social change that motivated her talk about the poison of the attention economy. Then she transitions to discussing times in history when people have tried to retreat from society and failing, follows that up with explorations of artists who played with the idea of “refusal in place,” and ends the book with deliberations on communities, ecological and interpersonal. In the first paragraph she states, “In a world where value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily” and the last page ends with a meditation on the power of existence in the 30 million-year-old design of pelicans.

There’s a lot going on in this book.

Ultimately, I could not take direction from someone who would not give it to me, but she did open doors for challenging my perspective. What I loved most about the book is that after all the academic discussion and block quotes, she is simply inviting readers to take the time to sit in stillness in a park and say hello to our neighbors. She doesn’t think of technology in itself as evil, instead condemning the way social media sites suck us into a never-ending slough of stimuli. She openly claims to be anti-capitalist looking for existence outside of economic and material success, but she never suggests escaping or rejecting it completely. Do I agree with everything she said? Just about — it’s hard not to see her points, to feel the wear of the everyday grind in your body and to see the change in climate around the world.

Here is a picture from when I did nothing last weekend, sitting on a bench on Marsh Island, watching dragonflies and lily pads, and getting a sunburn.

One of the ways she introduces her position is through fourth-century Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou’s “The Useless Tree” to readers:

The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree ... of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large? ... What’s the point of this — things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die — how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”

Points of view in the social world are what she identifies as paradoxes. Good for one being is bad for another, and the tree resists in place by challenging the carpenter’s definition of usefulness.

Odell explains how taking steps to acknowledge all living things and systems as actors of their own accord can decentralize our goals from human progress to earth’s progress. She suggests paying attention through apps that identify plants by their names, by following rivers to their origins, by learning about the place we live in the physical world we share rather than the altered one online. Not only does she talk about the way nature gives her sacred spaces of peace but also how close attention to physical reality deregulates the constant desire to be plugged-in and competitive.

Where we can pay attention, we can act in something she calls “manifest dismantling,” undoing the damaging effects of attitudes like Manifest Destiny that thought of earth as a blank slate for human progress and a resource to build upon. The urgency for change comes from climate crisis but also from internal desires to escape politics and social media we all experience at some point. Resisting in place, looking away from the screen, staring at the birds, are ways to enact a passive kind of change that decentralizes our focus.

This is my childhood backyard, my mother’s garden. It should not be a wonder to me that looking towards nature stroke a note with me.

For me, this book’s usefulness materialized in putting language to struggles I’ve always had with my understanding of living in the moment as a synonym to laziness. The concept of productivity is something that has long haunted me. My personal mental health struggles with my perfectionist anxieties and the pressure and competition to be at the top of my class in college has made me think intensely about my relationship with productivity. The compulsions to be the most productive me possible may create results in the immediate but in the long term I suffered. I see people close to me suffer from the same type of anxieties, as if their free time must be used in the most productive way possible – taking on projects and mastering new skills with fervor and determination as if they have to prove they are worthy of having free time that they can show all these results from. As if their existence needed to be productive to be justified. This bothered me for reasons I couldn’t explain.

Last weekend when I chose to read and nap on a hammock. It felt like the right setting for the book.

Lucky for me, Jenny Odell’s book spoke to the issues I have been struggling with. Doing the majority of my work for the book store and tackling other freelance contracts from home has been a struggle with boundaries. Jenny discusses disappearing job stability and labor unions in the context of the modern work force when she says:

The removal of economic security for working people dissolves those boundaries – eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will – so that we are left with twenty-four potentially monetizable hours that are sometimes not even restricted to our time zones or our sleep cycles.

The phrase “twenty-four potentially monetizable hours” stuck with me as the source of much of my concern, frustration, and anxiety over the past year since graduating from college. Every second is time that I could be productive, since I can work from anywhere at any time. In fact, I do work most everywhere, out with friends, at family gatherings. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about it. Now, I am not comparing the stress of my work to anyone else’s (I mean I get to write and go on Instagram and take pictures for work), but the stress of constantly feeling available to work is a growing cultural disquietude within the rise of freelance work and the gig economy. It’s even aesthetic to work as hard as possible for as long as possible, to be “always on the grind.”

Odell doesn’t have direct answers for any of these problems. In fact, she distinctly talks about finding a third option from the “yes or no but you have to say yes or else you will be fired” culture of the job market. She looks for an “I would prefer not to” response taken directly from Meville’s Bartleby and more loosely from Zhuang Zhou’s tree. In this arena, she looks to environmentalism, bioregionalism, and spaces of appearance between people. Places where context can give you a bigger picture, and the bigger picture can calm the crazy.

The trifecta of recent mind-bending.

Reading this book in harmony with Forest Bathing (see the post here) and more recently Conscious by Annaka Harris has been a trip in decentering my point of view. If literary theory and the work of Derrida and Lacan disrupted my internal and static identity in college, Li, Odell, and Harris challenged my external identity in my post-college exploration for meaning. I question what I spend my time on, when I am happy doing what I am doing, and why I become overwhelmed by tasks and time. Forest Bathing made me think of nature, not as a resource but a necessity. How to Do Nothing forced me to confront my anthropocentric point of view and remember there is an existence outside of capitalism, and that it is okay to spend some time there. Conscious lead to an upheaval of my understanding of non-human things, making me look at my external world with wonder. Together I have been re-thinking what’s most important to me and trying to put it those ideas alongside what is most important for the planet.

As I said, the best thing about How to Do Nothing is that all she suggests are small steps to looking at our world with context outside the human systems. Stop to look at a flower. Dedicate an afternoon to stillness. Take a detour on your roadtrip to stop at a reserve, a park, and remember that life will go on on Earth whether or not you make that deadline.

I’m continuing this theme next month when I post my interview with the author of the forthcoming Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton. We will be discussing Buxton’s take on the holocene, the endurance of life, and how language frames our points of view.

– Kelleen

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Interview: Screenwriter David Magee on Bringing Iconic Characters Back to Life in ‘Mary Poppins Returns’

Now an adult with three children, bank teller Michael Banks learns that his house will be repossessed in five days unless he can pay back a loan. His only hope is to find a missing certificate that shows proof of valuable shares that his father left him years earlier. Just as all seems lost, Michael and his sister receive the surprise of a lifetime when Mary Poppins — the beloved nanny from their childhood — arrives to save the day and take the Banks family on a magical, fun-filled adventure.

Disney’s original Mary Poppins was one of the most important films of my childhood. When I first learned that they were making a sequel, I was terrified that it wouldn’t live up to the previous film, so I was delighted to discover that Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns retains  much of the charming, magical nature of the original. Emily Blunt is just perfect as the nanny who returns to Cherry Tree Lane once again to help a desperate family. The rest of the cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Wishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, and Meryl Streep add to the fun. I so enjoyed sitting down with Oscar-nominated screenwriter David Magee (Finding Neverland, Life of Pi) talk about the process of revisiting these characters.

Danny Miller: The original Mary Poppinswas truly a seminal part of my childhood. So much so that I went into this film a little skeptical, thinking they better not fuck this up! So I was delighted at how moved I was by this story.

David Magee: (Laughs) I know a lot of people felt that way! People like you, who saw it in the theater when they were kids, and also young people who have watched it through the years on video.

I know it’s widely available now but I do think it’s different for those of us who saw it when it first came out. I remember dressing up to go to the big movie palace in downtown Chicago and just letting the film wash over me. It made such a huge imprint!

I felt the same way. Those early movies — there wasn’t as much distinction between what was real and what wasn’t and it all became part of the bigger conversation about what life was about.

Totally. What kid didn’t want Julie Andrews to be their nanny? And the very first movie I ever saw in a theater wasThe Three Lives of Thomasina the year before, also starring Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber, so I practically saw them as my brother and sister at that point. What a thrilling opportunity it must have been to bring these characters back to life. Were you at all terrified about tackling something this iconic?

You know, it’s funny, I really wasn’t scared, I was just excited at the chance to work with Rob Marshall. I had worked with Ang Lee on Life of Pi which everyone said was a really difficult film to adapt so I was up for the challenge. And from the moment I began working with Rob, I felt like we were having the same conversation.

By the way, I loved Finding Neverland and if I was thinking about making a sequel to Mary Poppins, I would have said, “Get me that Finding Neverland guy!” When you started writing, how blank was your slate in terms of what the story should be? I assume you already knew that the film would be set a certain time in the future?

No, we didn’t actually start with that question. We began by talking about the feelings from the first film that we wanted to capture. And the very first question we had to wrestle with was why does Mary Poppins come back? I mean, if she did such a wonderful job saving these people’s lives and teaching the parents the value of family and all of that, why does she return? We struggled with that for a while. We had all sorts of different scenarios in which she came back to the original family. We read all of the P.L. Travers books and talked about how the first book was written during the Depression, or the “slump” as it was called in London. One of the first descriptions in the book of the Banks’ home on Cherry Tree Lane was that it was one of the shabbiest houses on the street. Disney moved the story back to the Edwardian era because they wanted to show a lighter time period so we thought it would make sense to set our film in the 1930s since these were written as contemporary stories.

Ah, I just assumed that you were always going to have it revolve around a grown-up Michael and Jane.

That was our big revelation that came later, after we’d been working on it for a while.

Definitely the right decision, in my opinion. It’s one thing to have the wonderful Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins, but I don’t think I could have handled new actors replacing all of the Banks family members!

Yeah, that was part of it, too. We wanted a new story, not just to see what happened the next day after the first film ended. The real turning point came when we decided on setting the film during the Depression with Jane and Michael as adults. There’s a wonderful line in one of the books, “Grownups forget, they always do.” As soon as we connected that idea to Jane and Michael, we knew we had a story.

And it was such an important time in England when so much was changing. My wife and I always joke before we see a Disney movie, “Okay, which parent dies?” Was there ever a version in your head in which Michael’s wife was still alive?

We did have versions in which Michael’s wife was alive and also one showing them losing her, but then we decided we didn’t want to do that. We didn’t think this should be a film about the wife dying at the end of the first act, we wanted to start later than that, when the joy had gone of Michael’s life, when he’d gotten lost along the way, and when he was reaching that crisis point where he didn’t know what to do next or where to turn.

The perfect time for Mary Poppins to return!

Exactly! And the threat of losing the house became a kind of metaphor for all of the loss the family had experienced.

Right, not only memories of Michael’s late wife, but also of his parents and Jane and Michael’s magical childhood with Mary Poppins.

That’s it. And while Mary Poppins comes back to help the young Banks children, she’s also coming back for Michael who has lost what he had as a child.

Just like her real mission in the first film was helping George Banks.

Absolutely.

And again, as much as I worship Julie Andrews, Emily Blunt did such a fabulous job as Mary. Was she in your head as you were writing the script?

She was in Rob’s head from the beginning, for sure. But she wasn’t cast yet. We weren’t about to approach her or anyone else until we knew we had a story we wanted to tell. It took three or four months of sitting in a room with Rob, John DeLuca, Marc Shaiman, and a few other people to come up with a story that we could show Disney.

Were there ever any moments where Disney objected to what you wanted to do with these beloved characters?

Actually, no, they were remarkably hands-off, but, of course, they have an immense amount of trust in Rob and John who’ve done several films there. So, we ended up working on it for months and polishing it up and we came up with a 35-page treatment of the film.

One that included specific holes where the songs would be inserted?

Yes, for sure. And then as I wrote the screenplay, we’d work in a very collaborative way throwing out ideas for what each character had to express and if they could do that through a song. I’d go off and write the scene up to the point where I thought the song began and a little past that to show what emotions lead up to it.

As a fanatic of the original film, I found myself combing through every image on the screen and every word of dialogue to find links to that world of my childhood. I love how those links were there, but sometimes very subtly. For example, going in I was desperate to see Mrs. Banks’ “Votes for Women” suffragette banner and I just loved how it showed up in the new film in such a prominent way without ever mentioning it directly. It made me wonder how much of your source material was the original Disney film as opposed to the P.L. Travers books.

Both, actually. From the beginning, we were determined that this had to work as a standalone film, but we also knew that many of our viewers will have seen and loved the original and we wanted to respect and do justice to that as well without constantly winking and pointing and going, “Remember how great that movie was?”

You really nailed it — it’s almost more satisfying to see all those connections without beating us over the head with them. Like seeing the Michael and Jane’s snow globe without any water in it.

Exactly. We wanted to be part of that world, but also acknowledge that the world of the original film had changed in many ways. We talked a lot about the kite from the first movie. Michael finds the kite in the attic and throws it out. I had the idea of having it blow away on its own and then serving a different purpose in the film. Someone along the way said it nicely: “It’s not the same film, but it rhymes!” We wanted to feel that we earned all of our comparisons to that world.

I hate when people label such films as schmaltzy but was that something you worried about? I thought you did a great job of balancing the pathos in the film like when Michael sits down and cries late in the film. Again, that was earned. And, of course Mary Poppins is the opposite of sweetness and light.

That’s it, I think you’re answering the question! To me, Mary Poppins is not sentimental, she’s not gushy, not lachrymose. We didn’t want to, beg our audience to feel sorry for our characters. So when Michael, played by Ben Whishaw, says to the lawyers in the opening scene that his wife passed away recently and one of the lawyers says, “I’m so sorry,” he just moves on and says “Thank you, so what’s going on?” It’s only when he’s in the privacy of the attic, frankly, that he remembers for a moment how much he’s going through. And that’s just real. I know many people who have lost spouses and loved ones who don’t wear their hearts on their sleeve.

I guess the biggest risk of schmaltz comes when you have very young actors bursting into song. But those kids were so talented and never overdid it on the sweetness.

Yes, they did an amazing job. And again, remember that the children don’t mention their mother until almost halfway into the film when the youngest says, “I miss Mother.” That’s all they ever say about her.

As great as all of the actors were — Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Wishaw, Meryl Streep, and so on — my favorite might be Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks. I thought she was absolutely perfect in that part. Did you create backstories for all the characters so you could know what happened in their lives between the first one and this? It made total sense that she was the daughter of a suffragette!

Yes, we absolutely talked about what the impact would be of having those parents. We decided that Jane would pick up her mother’s love of good causes so that became our starting point for her. And with Michael, we decided he wasn’t a banker by nature, but we liked the idea that at a certain point he would have to become one, which was an interesting kind of reversal so that he was an artist at heart who had to become a banker.

Well, thank you so much for bringing all these people back into life and, as I’ve said, for not fucking it up!

Haha, let’s put that on the poster. Thank you, this was fun!

Mary Poppins Returns opens on December 19, 2018.