#jeri is too actually

[aparticularbandit]

"They should've left me. After what I did. Don't they know that? I don't deserve to be here."

[itsdefinitely]

you're the one that entered my clown car and now you complain that it's crowded

hey don't cry. the jeri/rys will never be able to share simple human intimacy. they'll never get to hold hands. why are you crying louder

[quasi-normalcy]

Star Trek series rated by horniness (as rated by me, an asexual, so you know its objective):

Star Trek: The Original Series - what is there to say for the series that invented slashfic, fuck-or-die, and Thiess's theory of titillation in costuming? The universe is full of greased-up pecs and scantily clad women wondering what is this thing you call...love? It's easier to mention the episodes that *aren't* horny. 10/10, for how could it be otherwise?

Star Trek: The Animated Series - It's a Saturday morning cartoon series from the 70s, and yet... 3/10, for the surprising number of scantily clad muscular guys

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Oh, we *start* quite horny; Roddenberry is keen to let us know that the android has a penis in the second episode; but then Roddenberry dies, and by the final season even Troi is wearing a sensible duty uniform. 6/10 for Will Riker, though

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - We've got Quark's, where the women are scantily clad, the holosuites are for fucking, and the waiters give themselves ear infections from doing too much oo-mox on themselves. We've got Jadzia Dax, who has three hundred years worth of sexcapades in two genders and will tell you about them at the drop of a hat. We've got Bashir and his sad blue balls for the first two seasons. We've got Klingons breaking each other's clavicles to initiate coitus. And we've got an enemy power led by the perpetual mind-melting gangbang that canonically is the Great Link. 9/10

Star Trek: Voyager - Weirdly conservative in its sexual politics. I mean, it goes out of its way to stick poor Jeri Ryan in that body condom, and there's a whole episode about space whales wanting to fuck the ship, and another one about Janeway wanting to fuck an Irishman, and *two* episodes about Pon Farr...actually, you know what? 6/10.

Star Trek: Enterprise - You know what, let me tell you about this series; this series is like a 14-year-old asexual boy boasting about his supposed sexual conquests in the hopes that it will endear him to the cool kids. It doesn't work; there's nothing genuine about it and everyone knows it; no matter how many innuendos he throws in, it's clear that there's no joy in it for him and he'd be happier if he could just go off and read comic books. Secretly, he wishes his friends still wanted to play with action figures. -1/10

Star Trek: Discovery - The show presents us with wall-to-wall gays who just...never seem to shtup each other. Like, I of all people know that sex doesn't define queerness, but...really? I guess maybe they're afraid of being less than wholesome? Anyways, 2/10 for that time that the Emperor went off to fuck a couple of Orions in the middle of a dangerous secret mission on the Klingon homeworld.

Star Trek: Picard - A series so sexless that it can't even show its main canonical couple enjoying each other's company for more than 5 seconds each season. And yet the chaste Jurati/Borg Queen pairing manages to be the hottest thing ever in the history of fiction. Anyway, I guess they technically had Agnes sleep with Rios in the first season, so 1/10.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Oooh boy, we're at the heavy hitter now, my god. Completely, unashamedly horny. Gene Roddenberry *wishes* he could have done that orgy scene that people on Twitter were freaking out about. 11/10

Star Trek: Prodigy- They're *kids*. 0/10

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Not really a lot, surprisingly given their TOS pastiche. Still, we get some stuff with Spock. 3/10.

[syrusinthedust]

Au where all of the characters played by Kim Whalen in the Hatchetfield Series are all supernatural and connected.

Like, Holloway we know is a witch and yeah some of them already have some supernatural connection, but like, I want more.

Becky Barnes is absolutely some kind of guardian Angel given she’s a warrior of light. She, along with Holloway, is the person who the others go to for help relating to supernatural stuff and injuries.

Girl Jeri gave birth to a hairy creature that lives in the woods, she’s a werewolf. The lumber-axe man has just lost his mind fully into the wolf, even when in human form, and now Jeri goes wolf to try to protect the kids at camp.

Stacy is that one friend who has like a sixth sense for people but it’s literally a sixth sense. She somehow hasn’t realized she’s psychic despite multiple other people directly telling her.

Karen Chasity is Also a werewolf and is related to Girl Jeri (And has a bad track record with controlling herself on the full moon, thus the cannibalism claim in hatchet town).

Miss Mullberry is theater teacher who goes “caw-caw” at some point. Make her into a half bird. Like a crow person, but nighthawk. She’s been banned from running the lost and found because she keeps on just taking the shiny stuff in it.

Liz Cunnigham we don’t know too much about other than helping charities and that she was once from clivesdale. So, since she was once a chemist, let’s make her into an actual Chemist who sells her products as a small company and that’s why they’re big enough to help charities and be in the honey festival.

Now I just need to figure out Sylvia, Jenny, Reese, and Miss Tessburger.

[jben073]

Grace Chasity headcanon rambles!

Some silly Grace hcs for @nighthaterfrfr!! I tried to mostly avoid any of mine that you mentioned something similar to in yours bc we had a good deal of overlap! :D

(Just to preface, one of my biggest headcanons is that Grace is autistic so there’s a good chance that some of these may be influenced by that! I did try to pick ones that are more applicable to canon though! [But if anyone wants any of those, I have about a million :3])

When Grace was a young child in elementary school (or Sunday school), she very innocently kissed Alice Woodward and felt something™. (She entirely represses this memory for YEARS.)

^ During her eventual sexuality crisis, despite not having talked to Alice for years outside of polite conversation if they ran into one another, Grace reaches out to her for support/to ask questions because she was the only out queer person that Grace knew and trusted enough not to out her. (Alice big sister mode activated.) 

^ (They’re so silly, they’ve literally never interacted outside of a throwaway line about them knowing and possibly disliking each other but to me they're friends who fell apart and eventually find each other again when they're both more grown as people.)

^ Also, ignore me indulging my other biggest hc which is that Grace is a lesbian.

Grace took piano lessons as a child and is actually quite good because she wanted to be the pianist for her church’s masses when she got older! She stopped taking lessons in high school, but she keeps up with playing in her free time to maintain the skill and occasionally help out with music at her church.

^ Richie constantly tries to convince her to learn anime openings and music from games that he plays for him (he begged her to learn Megalovania for weeks until she finally gave in).

She has never celebrated Halloween because her parents think it’s satanic so Ruth and Richie (who definitely still go trick-or-treating in high school) make a point to bring her some of their candy on the following school day.

^ She definitely doesn’t cry about this gesture later when she goes home!!

She is an absolute monster while playing board games, like she gets REALLY aggressive about them.

^ (definitely influenced by Angela's chaos on smosh games, especially the “be a little more gentle!! >:(” clip)

She can’t go to sleep (intentionally) without getting a kiss goodnight. At home, her parents kiss her on the forehead before bed and if she’s at camp, she has to get a kiss on the head from Girl Jeri if she wants to sleep well.

^ It disrupts her routine which makes it harder for her to wind down!!

^ I like to think that before the events of Abstinence Camp, she thought of Boy Jerry and Girl Jeri as older sibling figures.

She has never been to a sleepover because she’s never had good enough friends to be invited to one :(

^ The nerds + Steph very quickly remedy this!!

^ (quick ramble related to the last hc) During the first group sleepover, Steph wakes up in the middle of the night to get a drink, realizes Grace is still up, and after Grace sheepishly admits her dilemma following Steph’s prompting for an explanation, Steph very casually plants a kiss on her forehead and then goes back to sleep. Grace’s face is beet red after this and now she can’t sleep for an entirely different reason.

^ They're in love to me!!!

LIB related

(Based almost entirely on Blinky’s line about watching Grace and the nightmare about Max/Richie that implies she has the gift.) 

^ Grace has been connected to the Lords in Black since long before we see her, Steph, and Pete summon them in NPMD.

^ Much like Lex was friends with Webby as a child and forgot, Grace was friends with the LIB when she was young but grew out of it.

^ (I have a whole little overanalysis/hc set of things for this hc if anyone wants to hear :3)

After she starts using the Black Book, her appearance starts to very slightly change so that she always looks just a tiny bit off.

^ Her teeth are just a touch too sharp, her ears have the slightest point to them, and her eyes almost seem to shift in colour (depending on which LIB is influencing her).

^ But hey, it must just be a trick of the light!! She's so normal!! Dw about it!!!

She will occasionally feel the sudden compulsion to bite others (Nibbly is feeling silly!!)

^ She does not act on this… most of the time :3

One more silly one to end on

She once owned a Tamagotchi and became so deeply stressed over the state of this virtual creature that she made herself sick from anxiety. 

^ Karen and Mark confiscated the toy very shortly after this.

Anyway ramble's over now but my 45 page google doc of Grace hcs continues to grow every day bc I am fixated hard on this silly little show :3

edit: had to add the '^' thing because the bullets didn't indent properly for some reason!! every one that has that is attached to the previous one without it!

also idk why on mobile the sleepover hc and the Alice hc got cut short?? The sleepover one is supposed to say that now she can't sleep for an entirely different reason and the end of the second bullet says (Alice big sister mode activated).

[sophiaforevs]

Between the early cancellation of Discovery, Seven/Raffi and Mariner/Jenn being erased in their respective shows, and SNW having queer coded characters but not confirming anything on screen, I'm really afraid that we're entering another "No Gays in Trek" era.

For those who don't know, 90s era star trek featured so few queer characters b/c Rick Berman largely held a policy of not wanting any homosexuality in his shows. And yes, we all remember the handful of episodes that slipped through that addressed it but the fact remains that there were no canonically queer main cast members before Into Darkness in 2016 gave us a five second shot that could be cut when whoever was showing the movie found the idea of two men in a loving relationship disgusting.

Then we got Discovery with multiple queer characters that allowed people to feel seen. And people never stopped bitching about them. The amount of times that I've had to listen to people complain that Adira's only character trait is that they're non-binary despite that literally being a single thirty second scene and never brought up again makes me understand that they very likely don't want to like the queer characters in that show. And it's not that there aren't criticisms to be made about the queer representation in Disco: Discovery Buries it's Gays before the end of the first season. Making your trans characters aliens who already have a history of gender fuckery is problematic b/c it somewhat plays into the idea that queerness is unnatural for human beings. But I never hear those complaints. Only the pronouns. Only the "We get it you're gay but don't shove it down our throats." But I don't want to get too off topic.

Now Discovery is being canceled early. And by early I mean, the writers weren't given proper notice that their show was ending. They were halfway through production and allowed to adjust the end episodes of the season to try to give a satisfying ending.

In Picard and Lower Decks, we got two sapphic relationships ("sapphic" meaning a romantic or sexual relationship between two women who aren't necessarily strictly lesbians) and they were pretty good. People had been asking for Seven to be queer and Jeri Ryan had been playing her as such since her introduction (see again: Rick Berman) and to see her finally get to express that was really healing. Mariner got off to rocky feet when the creators tried to pull a "Dumbledore is gay" where they said she was bi but didn't commit to it, but they she actually got a fairly satisfying relationship in season 3.

But in their most recent seasons, both were completely written out. Seven/Raffi gave us no explanation beyond that they "broke up." They went out of their way to keep them from being on screen together for most of the season. Mattis said in a Reddit AMA that he wanted Seven to be captain and Raffi to be first officer at the end of the season and that Starfleet would have regulations against relationships between the two despite the biggest reason Seven was promoted to captain was that she was a rule breaker. We didn't even get that much for Mariner/Jennifer. Jenn just wasn't in this season except for two background appearances.

And in Strange New Worlds there's just… nothing. SNW is the most recent new show and there's no queer representation. They code Ortegas as gay but don't actually confirm it on screen. There's just… nothing.

And this is how you loose the culture war. The bigots make enough noise that the show that is supposed to be a beacon of diversity doesn't necessarily side with them but they just kinda bow out of the conversation. They decide that it's easier to not bother than to take a stand. And so I and many many queer star trek fans are left wondering:

Does the franchise even want us any more?

[justarandombrit]

I did the thing again. If you missed the livestream but want to know what happened, I wrote down some notes again. (Spoiler warning, obviously, as I will mention who won the death match)

. The Nightmare Time theme is so fucking good

. Xander murdered Grace last death match and won

. James and Matt like wrestling (not each other - the sport)

. BOTTLE IMPS!!!!!!!!!!!!

. WORKIN BOYS GETS RELEASED ON YOUTUBE AT 425,000

. Lmao the backing music is Jane's A Car

. We are the Lords In Black

. HARMONY AND BARRY!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE HARMONY SO MUCH

. Ted and Hidgens are a duo lmaoooooo

. Melissa and w o m a n

. Mariah really loved w o m a n

. CCRP set up a water filtration system that pissed people off

. USE IT OR LOSE IT

. Harmony and Barry are just so annoying that Paul and Emma want to fight them

. Paul is the first to die

. Coffee makes Barry stronger

. Jon is the only one who thought Paulkins would win

. Rip Harmony :(

. Paul throws spare change at Harmony and Barry, summoning the Homeless Man, who wins the fight for them

. Bill and Alice get an easybake oven stolen from them by Sherman

. Love Vs Crazy

. Frank and Bill get mistaken for eachother mid-fight

. Sherman is vicious

. Frank wants Sherman to die

. Alice eats Sherman's soul and becomes a little kid again

. Ruth has a crush on Hidgens

. Ted and Hidgens have a dead body???????

. The dead body is a Frankenstein amalgamation of all the Workin Boys

. Frankenruth?????????

. RICHIE HAS THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON HIS SIDE

. Ted and Hidgens win with help from the Workin Boy

. “w o m a n is here!”

“I'm fucking here, bitches���

. Shapiro + Bailey are looking for Roman

. Dog…

. Oh no

. Roman is the dog.

. Melissa and w o m a n die

. MISS HOLLOWEEN!!!!!!!

. Bottle Imps was supposed to be between Forever and Always and Time Bastard

. Bill meets the founder of CCRP

. CHARLES IS IN IT

. CHARLES FOUNDED CCRP

. HARVARD LAW SCHOOL COMMUNITY ORGANISING PRICK?!?!?!?!?

. HOWIE?!?!?!?!?!?

. Bill's been at CCRP 13 years

. Coven’s Communication Research and Power

. Charles wants… ALL the money

. If it's actually Billted oh my god…

. Jane didn't die, but their dog did so she divorced him

. THEY'VE COVERED THE PROTESTS LIVE AT THE HATCHETFIELD KENNEL

. THE PROBLEMATIC PUPPY BIT SOLOMON LAUTER

. DONNA WANTS THE DOG TO DIE

. THE DOG IS IN THE CAR

. THE DOG CAR RUNS OVER DAN AND DONNA

. GOT MY PAW ON THE GAS

. Everyone is cheating on each other

. Ethan used to bully Pete

. Pete and Steph don't tip

. Lex flips out

. Lex suddenly develops a gluten intolerance????

. Jason and Kyle save Steph and Pete

. Max breaks into Camp Idontwannabang, Grace reads him Bible stories, they're about to kiss, then Boy Jerry and Girl Jeri burst in to kill them

. Grace is so Jesus loving that Lumberaxe kills the Jerries

. MISS HOLLOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

. Excorcism???

. “Christ’s in hell with your mother”

Riley

. Miss Holloway has a witch hat!!!!!

. Evil mask??

. Riley's in hell smh

. “You basic bitch”

. MISS HOLLOWAY THROWS HERSELF INTO A WOOD CHIPPER

. Joey is Ted again

. YELLOW JACKET

. Alice and Bill get pissed about Paulkins trash talking Mamma Mia

. Joey: “This is the future the libs want”

. General MacNamara drops in from a helicopter and shoots Bill and Alice in the head

. James will murder Paul and Emma himself if they survive again

. Ted accidentally confesses to murdering Ruth and Richie

. Joey: “Here's the thing, ACAB”

. Thrash murders Shapiro for being a cop lmaooooooo

. Sam’s a dick to Tim at Pizza Pete’s

. Hannah straight up murders Charlotte and Sam

. I have to go to bed :( (Stopped right before Holyghost v Lautity)

. I'm baaaa-aaaaaack! It's the next day, I have pancakes, and I'm just realising I accidentally wrote Lautity instead of Lautski… I just love them too much

. I haven't checked Tumblr cause I don't want to be spoiled for who wins

. OH SHIT WORKIN BOYS IS ON YOUTUBE

. I'm back on the livestream, I'll check that out later

. They're at Perky's Buds, Grace has dragged Max there for a protest, Steph dragged Pete there for weed

. Grace wants Steph to go to heaven

. Five minutes for A THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?!?!?

. THEY DID IT IN ONE MINUTE

. Joey: “You horny little fucks”

. Max just murders Steph and Pete

. Max wouldn't want to hit a girl, Ziggs comes out, fails to land a single shot on them, but attracts the nighthawks which peck out Steph and Pete’s eyes

. Nicole Rodriguez is so fucking talented damnnnnnnnn, also I love Cool As I Think I Am (Reprise)

. This song will always destroy me emotionally :(

. Why is Joey doing a British accent lmaoooo

. This isn't the next scene, but is after it chronologically

. BRENDA!!!!!!!!!!

. BRENDA WORKS AT MISS RETRO'S

. If only it was a real werewolf… Wayward Guide, anyone?

. “Shit-eating grin” is my favourite Americanism. It's so funny I love it

. I kinda love Tucker

. More skidoos???

. Kyle's in college?????????????? Damn

. Even Stacy's in college

. Miss Holloway: “Cause the 80’s were bitchin’ ”

. Oh nooooo :(

. Miss Holloway: “The intranet”

. Oh god

. Oh shit

. Oh fuck

. Even though I knew this was going to happen I'm still devastated

. Oh god :((((((((

. God we need NMT3

. Joey: “Is this a bad time to announce Curt and Kim are getting divorced?”

. VIRGINITY ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

. Tedgens are stealing from CCRP, Paulkins are about to go on a date, they find them, and Hidgens goes all murder-crazy

. Corey: “Some of us are wrong and many of us are right”

. Joey: “Jon, Ted is gooning all over this office”

. Jon: “Great job everybody, all the food is gonna be poisoned next week”

. Goddamnit I just got spoiled for it :(

. Tedgens manage to find the Bastard's Box and trap Paul and Emma in it

. Hidgens hears Workin Boys coming from the box, but Ted stops him from touching it

. Tom and Becky want to buy the Waylon Place, and find Grace and Max burying Pete and Steph

. Tom coaches the Hatchetfield Nighthawks??????????

. Gen Z Vs Millennials

. Someone pulled $800 from the Kickstarter :(

. Will arrived literally as soon as Max died

. Grace and Max are ghosts now

. Meg Lloyd is also insanely talented

. Will loves Tom and Becky

. Sauce Saturday

. RUN AWAY WITH MEEEEEEE

. They're in the Starlight theatre, Wilbur is there for some reason

. “He was driving the car that killed your dog”

. NOOOOOOO JENNY

. LAUREN!!!!!

. Wilbur just straight up cheats so Tedgens win

. OHHHHHHH TED VS HIDGENS

. Ted always dies though :/

. A girl Miss Holloway saved has died

. MISS HOLLOWAY IS RENEGOTIATING HER DEAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

. Lore….

. Miss Holloway chops off her toes?????

. AND DIPS THEM IN CHOCOLATE?????????

. AN OLD POP STAR THE WORLD’S FORGOTTEN

. That's what that tune is called?

. OH MY GOD THE LORDS

. I NEED TO DRAW THIS

. Why do the Lords eat toes

. Blinky has a mouth???????

. Nibbly lmao

. Mariah: “Lauren, you're muted, baby”

Lauren (muted): “FUCK”

. Blinky, my love

. This is so fanfiction coded I love it

. Tinky likes Miss Holloway????? Duke really was right about everyone being in love with her

. I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY

. Lmao Tinky

. Double calculators, and an abacus????

. Blinky (covering his ears): That's a bad word!

. BLINKY HAS EARS??????

. HER NAME

. BE A PALLY WAL

. OH MY GOD MISS HOLLOWAY

. Ted wins!!!

. THEY'RE GONNA DO DND

. Well.

. Nightmare Time Cover!!!!!!!! Needy Beast, my love

. Oh god that was amazing

[trillscienceofficer]

Tom and B'Elanna seemed to have an adversarial-almost relationship. You know, they didn't bump each other the right way, which was fine, but I started thinking that, often, that kind of conflict is because it's covering inner feelings that are not acknowledged by either participant. They may be feeling something else, don't want to face that, and so it comes out in conflict. So, it seemed like that was, for me, a natural outgrowth for what had gone on with them before. (Jeri Taylor, from “Braving the Unknown: Season 4”, Star Trek: Voyager season 4 DVDs)

it's interesting to me that this is the "official" reason that Jeri Taylor mentions for Tom and B'Elanna developing feeling for each other, for two reasons:

1. well he's not the only one B'Elanna has an almost adversarial relationship with.......... I guess the other ones, especially after she gets together with Tom, don't count huh? Cowards

2. even besides considerations on how old-fashioned this type of thinking is, if not outright sexist (I won't go into it here), I have a very contentious relationship with this kind of narrative because I know it can be true at times (it's how my parents always tell the story of how they got together, and they've been married for almost fifty years) but also... it caused me no end of grief as a baby closeted lesbian. Every time (often) there was a boy making fun of me and/or making me angry, deliberately or not, I always ended up thinking that I must actually have some sort of feelings for him. I cannot tell you how fucked up that was (can you gaslight yourself into being straight? because that was essentially it), and I think I only came out relatively early as I did because I was too much of a weirdo for any of my peers to actually pay any real attention to me. Given what I think about B'Elanna and her maybe being closeted, hearing that this rationale was behind her getting together with Tom obviously raises some questions for me! Is there a chance that she believes she must be in love with him because he irritates her? And the fact that even with Maxwell Burke she had this extremely competitive relationship and ultimately he was an asshole... it makes me wonder. B'Elanna has no particular reason to doubt that this is how being in love works either, since she's very beautiful and smart and gets plenty of attention from men. Even if the irritation and anger remain, she still is in relationships, so she is ostensibly succeeding in pursuing those feeling she (thinks she) has. I know at least I would've thought that way. While my experiences are singular and not all lesbians go through this, and I'm very different from B'Elanna in many respects, I still can't help but wonder. Is this how it works for her? Because if it is, it's no wonder she's so miserable. I was for sure as a teen.

[isagrimorie]

In 'Scorpion Part I' [Janeway] was becoming a little more risk-taking, and edgy, and frankly, a little bit more like Kate Mulgrew. I've always said, even Jeri Taylor used to always say, 'If Captain Janeway were only more like Kate, we would have a much better captain on our hands.' For whatever reason, our writing and Kate's kind of freewheeling personality seemed to come together a bit more, at the end of the [third] season -Joe Menosky, Star Trek Monthly, issue 33

--

We realized we were going too far and too fast and pulled back. It’s a real strange feedback phenomenon. You’ll do an episode, see what works, and adjust with a new character accordingly if you feel as though you’ve gone off track. It’s also true of characters that we felt weren’t working entirely successfully; you find new directions for them based on feedback. Jeri Taylor would say, “If Captain Janeway was only half as cool as Kate Mulgrew, we’d be better off.” So in the third season I specifically remember doing some dialogue for Janeway with Brannon, and Kate just played the hell out of it. We realized we should do it more, because we had done something that allowed Kate to inject her personality even more into it. So we gave her more of those kinds of moments, like in “Scorpion” where she’s making her deal with the devil, actually the Borg.

JOE MENOSKY, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From the Next Generation to J. J. Abrams

Even Kate Mulgrew felt she played Janeway better when the writers allowed a little more of her personality to inhabit Janeway:

"And when they finally allowed Mulgrew to inhabit Janeway, she took off. I'd say that was about the end of the second/beginning of the third season. Every nuance that I could give to her, all those subtle endowments that were mine, that Mulgrew brought to Janeway. That's when you fall in love. I couldn't do it without her, and she couldn't do it without me." : – Kate Mulgrew

The Voyager writers are so funny.

If Jeri Taylor's been saying: "if Captain Janeway were only more like Kate, we would have a much better captain on our hands."

WHY DIDN'T YOU GUYS WRITE JANEWAY LIKE THAT EARLIER?

The moment they finally wrote towards their instincts with Janeway, Janeway began to really sing.

[aparticularbandit]

for 10/02/24

@kallisto-k - made progress on DR Femslash, and here are your additional words from Tamers post-canon!

They sit through a horrible movie, but that’s the only kind of movie Jeri can actually watch anymore.  Dramas remind her of the threat she caused, romances tend to end horribly (or make fun of everything, which isn’t her style), horror is the same as drama but worse – and in everything, there is so much tension that she feels herself winding like a spring but shoved into a box – a Jack ready to pop out when the crank goes just too far.

Horrible movies may be horrible, but they’re relaxing.  There’s no tension when she already knows what’s going to happen (or doesn’t get so invested in the characters that it matters).  Of course, Jeri’s worried that Rika is bored, which is its own sort of tension, but Rika shares popcorn with her, props her shoes up on the empty seat in front of her, and seems to enjoy things just as much as Jeri does.

(It’s the darkness and the cool that Jeri likes best, the taste of buttery popcorn on her tongue, the crisp pop of carbonated soda as it burns down her throat.  There was nothing like this in the Digital World, and there was nothing at all in the grip of the D-Reaper.  She should have starved in that bubble.  She still doesn’t know why she didn’t.)

[x0x0josephinex0x0]

The Hope in the Fault Lines, Part 2

I was expecting this part to take much longer to write.............but here it is!! part 2 of 5 in the series. Go read Part 1 if you haven't already!! Warnings: implied sexual behavior, sick child, one scene takes place in a hospital, implied PTSD (it's never said but she has it), death of sibling, this part is a bit of a rooooooooooough time but bear with me Word count: 5.6 k for part 2

par t 1 | part 3 | part 4

Before

You bit your lip as you looked at Jeri in the mirror. “You look beautiful,” you had told her, your voice hesitant.

“You sound so convincing,” she said sarcastically, adjusting her veil and smoothing her hands over the sleek bodice of her minimalist-chic wedding dress. “What’s your deal?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” you had asked her. “Get married? I mean, that means you’re stuck with him.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Not everyone is a workaholic and commitmentphobe,” she reminded you. “I’m in love with Jisung, sweetheart. We’ve been together for two years.”

“Is that long enough?” you had wondered out loud. “I mean, what if there’s something bad you don’t know about him? What if he committed a crime or something?”

Jeri gave you her best “you’re being ridiculous” look. “You remember who we’re talking about, right?” she asked you. “Jisung gets stressed out if he accidentally forgets to signal when he changes lanes. There’s no way he could commit a whole crime.”

You had to admit that was fair. She took your hands in hers. “I know what this is really about,” she said. “And I’m not making the mistake that mom made. I know what I’m doing.”

You had smiled at the confidence in her tone. In that moment, she seemed so mature and self-assured that you forgot she was your younger sister. Somewhere in this beautiful house, you knew Jisung was coming apart at the seams, and the thought of how the man must be panicking over every single detail of the day while your sister waited calmly to walk down the aisle was suddenly very funny to you. Downstairs, the music started, and you squeezed Jeri’s hands before tucking one of them into the crook of your elbow. 

“Ready?” you asked, feeling a whirlwind of emotions -- pride, worry, joy -- but giving your sister a smile.

“Ready,” she confirmed, and together you had headed down the stairs, where everyone in the wide chapel room had stood and turned their heads to gaze open-mouthed as you, Jeri’s only sibling, walked her down the aisle.

***

“Thanks for texting,” you say as you arrive home and Mingyu hands Sara into your outstretched arms. “The updates are really great. And thanks for grabbing the books! I’ll read to her tonight.”

The first two weeks of Mingyu’s employment have seen a drastic improvement in your mental state. For one thing, Mingyu keeps the house clean, so there isn’t the added weight of messiness and clutter. For another, you are able to work without the mental load of being away from Sara because you receive regular updates throughout the day. And finally, though it’s a bit embarrassing to admit, Mingyu is just a soothing presence. You only see him for a few minutes before work and after work every day, but it’s always so easy and pleasant to talk to him that you genuinely look forward to it. 

Your weekend time with Sara seems to be improving, too -- perhaps she can sense you’re breathing easier, which makes her less fussy, or maybe she’s just gotten used to you. Either way, she’s becoming more like she was before the accident, which does your heart a lot of good. And you love holding her, talking to her, and hearing her little babbles and shrieks. Obviously the circumstances of your parenthood are shit, but the actual parenthood part is turning out to be better than you thought.

“Just a heads-up -- I think she might be a little under the weather. She’s been fussy and low-energy today.” Mingyu looks between you and Sara, a little worry tinging his voice.

You look down at Sara’s flushed pink cheeks in worry. “Oh no,” you say. “Um, thanks for letting me know.”

“I got baby cough medicine,” he tells you. “So if she does come down with something, it’s in the cupboard where you keep your vitamins.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” you breathe. “Thank you.” You stroke Sara’s head, which she’s buried in the crook of your neck in exhaustion. “Don’t wanna say bye to Mingyu?” you ask her softly.

He brushes a broad hand over her black curls. “Bye, Sara. See you tomorrow.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” you say suddenly. “I have to leave Thursday night for a short day trip for the magazine. It’s nothing major -- I’m only staying overnight because the city is a couple hours away and I don’t love driving at night. Would you be alright staying with her?”

He nods. “As long as you’re paying me, I’ll be here,” he jokes.

“You’re a star,” you say, and he chuckles. “I’ll pay you time and a half for overnight stuff.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll let you get her to bed, then.”

He gives you a smile that would make anyone weak in the knees, and you can’t help but smile back as he leaves. Turning your attention to Sara, you inspect her face. “Hmm,” you say, your brow creasing in worry at her dull eyes and ruddy cheeks. She does look ill, and this thought seems to hover uncomfortably in the back of your mind as you sit her in the bathtub. She fusses and cries during her bath, which is uncommon -- she loves splashing around, and usually bathtime is full of giggles and smiles. You bite the inside of your cheek and wash her off, toweling her dry a bit more thoroughly than usual to make sure she doesn’t go to bed with any part of her still wet.

You bring her to bed with you instead of putting her in her crib. You used to do this because you were so exhausted during nighttime feedings, and falling asleep in the rocking chair meant an aching neck in the morning. You still remember how terrified you were that you would roll over Sara and suffocate her. But gradually you learned that you woke with any small noise of Sara’s, and your fear had subsided. Now, she slept in your bedroom more nights than she slept in her crib -- and tonight, it felt extra necessary to keep a close eye on her.

Sure enough, around four in the morning you wake to sniffles punctuated by soft coughs. Sleepily, you lift Sara into your arms. She nuzzles into you, and you relax a bit -- clearly she is well enough to at least be aware of you. Allowing yourself to doze off, you wake up just before 5:30 and decide to actually get ready before Mingyu arrived.

You lay Sara back on the bed with a small kiss on her cheek, noting that it isn’t much warmer than it usually is (which means no fever), and take an open-door, open-curtain shower -- one where you could still see Sara’s little figure swaddled in the bed. You don’t get your hair wet, and you curl it once you get out. Finally, you actually put on makeup for the first time since your sister died. 

Looking at yourself in the mirror, you realize that you barely recognize this creature staring back at you. Her hollow cheeks and dark under-eyes have been concealed by an artful hand, but the colors in her gaze betray her. Perhaps it was just because you knew everything you’d gone through, but it is obvious to you that the eyes tell all -- the crushing nothingness of grief, the bitter rage, the dimness of despair. You remind yourself to avoid looking at the mirror too closely from now on.

Sara is still fast asleep when you finish around 6:45. You decide it’s best if she stays asleep for the sake of her health, so you carefully move her to her crib just as Mingyu’s knock sounds at the door. You tip-toe down the stairs to get it. “Hi,” you whisper to him as you open the door.

He seems taken aback for a moment, but recovers quickly. “Hey,” he says at a normal volume as he strides over the threshold and removes his shoes. “You look really nice, boss.”

“Oh!” you say, still whispering, remembering the makeup and the woman you couldn’t say was you in the mirror. “Um, thanks. Uh, Sara’s still asleep.”

He nods, looking a bit sheepish at how loud he’d been, and that little pinch of worry reappeared between his eyebrows. “Did she sleep okay?” he whispers back.

“She slept through the night, actually,” you tell him. “I’m thinking we should just let her sleep as long as she wants -- her body needs rest.”

Mingyu nodded. “That sounds like a good idea. How did you sleep?” he asks you, eyeing you carefully.

“Not too bad,” you say, feeling a little anxious under the weight of his gaze. “I woke up a little earlier than normal, but I got enough.” You give him a small smile. “How did you sleep, now that we’re at it?”

He grins. “I slept great. Thanks for asking.”

“Good to hear,” you say. 

You just stand there in the kitchen, smiling awkwardly at each other, before Mingyu says, “so...have you eaten yet?”

“Oh! Um, no,” you say, wondering why you’re always surprised whenever he chooses to speak to you even though you’re literally the only one in the room.

“Let me make you something,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of time until you need to leave, and I’ve never seen you eat breakfast.”

“I’m surprised you noticed that,” you say quietly. 

He winks at you. “I notice everything,” he says. “So, do you like eggs?”

He goes to the fridge and starts removing things. “Yes, I do,” you say, sincerely hoping he was just teasing and he doesn’t notice how you’re blushing. 

You only realize you’re staring him down when he looks at you with one eyebrow raised. “You in there?”

“Oh,” you say, yet again. You’re flustered today -- for some reason, it feels like your thoughts are taking a longer time than is average to come out of your mouth in any way that makes sense. You fixate on his broad hands chopping some garlic, and suddenly you’re speaking. “Yeah, sorry. It’s just...it’s a little stupid, but Jeri -- my sister, you know -- she was the one who always made me breakfast when we lived together in college. Even...even years later, she’d still text me occasionally to make sure I’d eaten.”

Where had that come from? Sure, it was all true -- the hard lump in your throat that made it difficult to say was evidence of that -- but why had you suddenly confessed such a thing to your nanny? You sigh. “Sorry, I don’t -- don’t really know why I just...told you that. Out of nowhere.” You look down at your hands, embarrassed.

He nods slowly, and his smile is tinged with sadness. “It’s okay,” he tells you. “I don’t mind.” He begins cracking eggs into the pan, stirring them with a pair of chopsticks to scramble them up. “What was your sister like?”

You raise your eyebrows at him. “What?” he says. “I’m curious. You don’t have to tell me, but I do genuinely want to know.”

Your mouth twists into a half-smile. “Well, she and I were like two sides of the same coin,” you say, going to sit at the island in the middle of the wide kitchen so he can hear you over the sizzling vegetables and eggs in the pan. “Inseparable since childhood, you know. She’s two years younger than I am, but it always felt like we were twins, somehow. She was...” 

You trail off, thinking. Mingyu is glancing between you and the eggs on the stove, but you can tell he’s listening. Maybe it’s the quiet of the morning, and maybe it’s just him, but the dam breaks, and words spill out. “She was just as stubborn as me, but she didn’t have the ambition I have, or maybe the better word is ‘hubris’. I wanted to build something that would outlast me, but she just wanted to live somewhere quiet with her husband and a houseful of kids. But neither of us ever...ever tried to talk each other out of what we wanted. We both knew, I guess. She knew I couldn’t stand being mediocre, and I knew she hated the spotlight. And God, I loved that about her. She never resented me for my success or my money, because there was no competition.”

Mingyu takes the eggs off the stove and plates them in one smooth move, setting them in front of you as you finish speaking. He smiles at you as he hands you a fork. “She sounds great,” he says. 

“She is,” you say. “Was,” you correct. Your eyes suddenly burn, and to distract yourself, you pick up a glob of eggs with the fork and blow on it, eating it. Your eyes go wide. “These are good!” you exclaim.

Mingyu gives a sarcastic little bow. “Thanks,” he says. He’s interrupted by a cry from the baby monitor -- Sara seems to have woken up.

You move to stand up to grab her, but Mingyu stops you. “You eat,” he instructs. “I’ll go get her.”

You watch him go up the stairs with the trace of a smile as you continue eating the eggs. He comes downstairs with Sara a few minutes later, and her little head is resting against his big shoulder. He’s bouncing her gently, and you are struck for a moment at how tiny she looks in his thick arms.

In minutes you’ve finished your eggs, knowing you don’t have long until you need to leave. But you do wash your plate and the pan that Mingyu used to make the eggs, despite his protests. “I may not have given the impression that I know how to do the dishes the first few weeks you worked here, but I promise I do,” you tease. 

He shakes his head, amused. “I know you do, you just don’t seem like someone who should wash dishes.”

“Why?” you ask indignantly.

He shrugs. “Kind of like how a queen shouldn’t make her own bed in the morning. You’ve got me for that.”

You actually laugh at that. “Are you calling me a queen?”

He nods his head emphatically. “Of course you are,” he says with a grin. 

Your smile is big enough that it’s hurting your face. “Well, thank you,” you say. “But you’re not my maid. In fact,” you continue, and grab your now-clean fork, “I think you deserve a promotion.”

In a dramatic march, you make your way over to Mingyu, who watches you with amused eyes as you stop in front of him, reaching up to tap both his shoulders with the fork before tapping the crown of his head. “You’ve been knighted,” you say seriously. And he giggles at you -- a surprisingly high, breathy sound that instantly fills you with warmth.

“I’m gonna ask all my friends to call me Sir Mingyu,” he tells you. 

Solemnly, you nod. “I’m glad to know this went straight to your head.”

He laughs again, and you start to walk away. “Well, Princess Sara and Sir Mingyu, have a lovely day. The queen needs to go to work.”

He’s still grinning at your antics by the time you make it out the door.

On the drive to work, you catch yourself smiling to yourself. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been silly like that -- it had probably been since college, and even then that side of you didn’t come out often. You had grown up far too fast, a necessity in a household like you grew up in, and the only person who really could bring it out of you had been Jeri, whom you had been that way for to try to save her from growing up too fast, too.

When Mingyu had entered your house today, he’d been your employee, but when you’d left the house, you felt that you had kind of become friends. The thought, as odd as it was, was also comforting. Because raising a child with a nanny felt clinical and business-y of you, but raising a kid with a friend was probably the closest this could get to how it should be. You make a mental note to make a raise schedule for Mingyu so that he never ever ever leaves your employment.

***

Before

You look between Jisung and Jeri with a raised eyebrow. Letting out a puff of air, you lean forward. “The things I have seen today,” you say while pinching the bridge of your nose, “are things I never thought I’d see when I asked you to house-sit for me. And things I’m expecting and hoping to never see again. Are we clear?”

Jisung’s face is bright red, and Jeri looks traumatized. They both nod.

“Although I am pretty impressed at your creativity,” you continue, feeling the need to lighten the mood in the room. “The kitchen island, Jisung? I mean, that was acrobatic of you both.”

The two of them look at each other and burst into giggles. “Okay, we’re sorry,” Jeri says, her face just as red as Jisung’s, but she can finally look you in the eye. “But can you blame us? I mean, we’re newlyweds.”

“Newlyweds who got carried away,” you agree. “Jisung, it’s okay. I’m not going to commit any murders today. You can look at me.”

“I am so embarrassed,” your sister’s husband groans. “It was my fault, I just --”

Jeri cuts in. “No, it was me, I just --”

You roll your eyes. “I really don’t care who started it. I just care that every single inch of this kitchen is sprayed with medical-grade chemicals and that you promise to never ever ever let me catch you like that again. Especially in my own house.”

“Deal,” says Jeri. Her eyes are twinkling with humor, and you have to concentrate to keep yourself from grinning at her. Because she knows what you’re about to say as Jisung hurries out of the room for the bleach.

“Damn, girl. Good for you.”

***

“Boss?” Cory’s voice sounds as though it’s coming to you from down a long hallway, and you snap back to earth with a little shake of your head.

“Sorry, Cory,” you say, shifting in your seat and reaching for your glass of water. “What were you saying?”

Cory picks at the potatoes on his plate and looks around the fancy restaurant at anything but you before fixing you with a blue-eyed gaze that is surprisingly intense. “I figured this would be the best time to confess.”

What? You’re sure you misheard him. “Confess?” you repeat.

“Yeah,” he says, and in spite of himself, he’s grinning. “Listen, we’ve worked together for seven years. We met freshman year of college, and you really believed in me more than anyone ever has in my life. I -- I’ve kept this in for a long time, actually. Years.”

“Are you telling me you have feelings for me?” you ask him bluntly.

“Well, yeah,” he says, and he blushes. “Are you telling me you had no idea?”

“I seriously didn’t,” you say, your head spinning. You take a deep breath and pray you’ll find the right words. “Listen...I appreciate you so much, Cory. I couldn’t ask for a better editor, and you’re absolutely right -- I have so much faith in you and your skills. This business, my business, wouldn’t be anywhere without you.”

He gives you a sad half-smile. “But?” he says.

“But,” you say, nodding. “But my sister just died, like, three and a half months ago. And I’m still trying to figure out what my life looks like from here. A lot is changing for me...and even if it weren’t, I still don’t think I’d be sure how I felt about being in a relationship with anyone.”

Cory seems to chew on these words as you speak. “Well, I can’t say that comes as a surprise to me,” he says after awhile. “But it was getting to be too much for me to hold in.”

“I understand,” you say, avoiding his gaze.

“Listen,” he says, and he reaches across the table to put a hand over yours. “I want you to take your time and think about it. Think about me, in that way. Figure out if it makes sense in your head like it makes sense in mine. I won’t give up on you, so take your time.”

“Okay,” you say. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” he says -- but you aren’t apologizing for anything you said. You’re apologizing for the way you want to run out of the restaurant, far away from the yearning look in his eyes.

***

Before

“But what if --”

“Save it,” Jeri says, brushing mascara over your eyelashes. 

“Seriously though. What if I --”

“You’re not going to mess it up,” she tells you. She closes the tube of mascara and then pulls the graduation cap from your bag. “Just do the speech like you practiced. You ran it through with me like a thousand times.” She pins the cap on in record speed.

“But what if I do mess it up?” you finally say.

She puts both her hands on your shoulders and gives you a look that shuts you up right away. “If there’s one thing I know about my sister, it’s that she is always prepared.”

You swallow hard at this. “Oh, God,” you breathe. “I’m not sure...”

“Why are you so nervous? You were fine yesterday,” she asks you.

“Because what if it all fails? Not just the speech,” you clarify at her quizzical glance. “All my plans, the magazine, the business...what if it all just fails?”

She gives you a gentle look. “Then we’ll start over. We always do.”

This is what gives you the strength to walk onto that stage: the knowledge that even if the worst possible thing happens, you and Jeri will always have each other.

***

There is, in your opinion, nothing worse than being exhausted and anxious. It creates the perfect storm: desperately wanting to close your eyes and escape the thoughts swirling around in your brain, but also being entirely unable to relax, which is the state you find yourself in after the dinner with Cory. So you toss and turn in your hotel room, a three hour drive from home, and wonder how Sara is doing.  

Your last text from Mingyu had come in at around 7pm, and he was putting her to bed then. According to his updates, her cough had gotten worse. Cory’s confession truly couldn’t have come at a worse time, when you were already so preoccupied with Sara’s health. At 10:57pm you check your phone one final time before your exhaustion beats back your anxiety with a stick and you reluctantly sink into uneasy dreams.

It seems like minutes of sleep before you wake to your phone ringing. Your eyes fly open, but you suddenly realize your arms and legs aren’t working as you try to reach for it. Your breath speeds up, but you can’t open your mouth to scream. And spiders seem to be crawling out of the shadows on the walls.

Finally you can twitch your fingers, then move your arms, then sit up and grab your phone. Still shaking, still hyperventilating, still sick with worry, you check the caller ID and your stomach drops -- it’s Mingyu. 

You quickly answer. “Hi,” you say breathlessly.

His voice is slightly muffled. “I’m taking Sara to the hospital,” he says, his tone urgent. “I don’t think she’s breathing very well.”

The air has left your lungs. You hear yourself answer him -- something about thanking him and you’ll see them soon -- and then you drop the phone. For a split second you’re frozen in panic. Then, you leap into action. You grab your keys from the nightstand, leaving everything behind but your phone and its charger, and race down the hallway to the elevator in your pajamas.

What follows is the most tense three hour drive of your life, riddled with flashbacks to phone calls from police officers on the highway. “You’re sister’s been involved in an accident,” you hear over and over in your head. “Come to the hospital.” You’re gripping the wheel so tightly that your knuckles ache, and you alternate between struggling to breathe and silently weeping. There are whole minutes, maybe more, from the drive that you don’t remember. You don’t know if you’re speeding. You don’t know what time it is. The only thing you can think is Please God, don’t let another member of my family die in that goddamn hospital. 

You had hoped you’d never have to walk into this lobby again -- never have to smell the chemicals or see the doctors or talk to the front desk people and tell them who you’re there for. You never wanted to be in this same elevator, going up to this same floor, possibly to the same hallway you’d visited nearly four months earlier. And yet, here you are. It’s like your brain can’t believe it -- nothing feels real. If things got any weirder, you’d be tempted to reach your hand out to the nearest wall, half-expecting it to dissolve into smoke in your hands. 

You round a corner, arriving in another one of those identical hallways, your heart in your throat, and you see him. Mingyu is standing about halfway down the hallway, talking to a doctor, his shoulders set in anxious tension, and before you can stop yourself you’re calling for him. You don’t even register his shocked expression as he turns to see you, and you don’t even realize that you’re running to him before he opens his arms to you and your collide with him.

He wraps you up tight in his grasp. “Hey,” he grunts in your ear, probably from the speed at which your body crashed into his, but his voice is calm. “She’s okay, they’ve got her on an oxygen machine. They’re giving her great care. She’s gonna be fine.”

The doctor clears her throat. “Who is this, Mingyu?” she asks. 

Mingyu doesn’t let go. “She’s the child’s legal guardian,” he explains over your head. 

The doctor makes an understanding noise. “I’ll let you have a minute,” she says.

Mingyu turns his attention back to you. “Breathe for me,” he says. “Big deep breaths.”

You try to obey, and the only thing you can think about is how shaky the breath sounds as it enters your lungs. “Can I see her?” you say, and your voice comes out in a raspy whisper.

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s just in here.”

He ushers you into the hospital room, where Sara lies in a little crib, her nose hooked up to a cannula pumping oxygen into her lungs. You approach her sleeping form, only vaguely aware of Mingyu’s arm across your shoulders, and bend down to brush a trembling hand over her forehead.

“She’s really going to be fine,” Mingyu murmurs to you. You look up at him, and for some reason, the way he is looking at you is what tips you over the edge. The emotions spill over, and you find yourself burying your face in his chest as you sob.

He doesn’t say anything. He just wraps his arms around you, pulling you closer into him and letting you cry. You don’t even have it in you to be ashamed of how desperately you’re clinging to him, fingers bunching into the fabric at the back of his shirt, crying the first tears you’ve shed in front of another person besides Sara since the funeral. His grip on you tightens the harder you sob, and you dazedly consider the idea that Mingyu might be trying to squeeze the sadness out of you. It’s an oddly comforting thought, and soon enough you’ve released all your emotions, the evidence of them two unflattering tearstains on Mingyu’s tee.

You take a calming breath in, pulling back to look at his face. His eyes are red, and his face is set in stony lines. It is then that you realize he’s not okay. 

Several pieces of the puzzle that is the man in front of you seem to collide together in your brain at once: the way he talks about kids and the ease with which he interacts with Sara; the way the doctor seemed to know him on a first name basis; the way he’d held you almost as though he was also trying to hold himself together too. Mingyu is familiar with this particular part of this particular hospital. Mingyu has had personal experience with sick kids.

But you don’t say anything about it yet -- you know it would be too much to ask him to explain what is most probably a complicated and painful history. So you just give him a watery smile and say, “thank you for being here. And for taking such good care of her.” You pause and draw in a hitching breath before adding, “Sir Mingyu.”

He gives the tiniest smile. “I’m glad I was able to get her here in time to get her help.”

“Well, you’ve got a job until Sara moves out,” you promise him.

The smile gets bigger. “That’s a long time,” he says in a falsely skeptical tone. “You sure you won’t get sick of me?”

You roll your eyes. “Oh yeah, I forgot that you’re incredibly unpleasant to be around,” you say scathingly. “But seriously. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to take care of Sara. You need a raise or something.”

He shakes his head. “Just pay Chan a finder’s fee instead,” he jokes. “I’m sure he’d love that.”

“He probably would. And I probably owe him one,” you say, wiping the sticky tear residue from your eyes.

To your surprise, you once again find yourself wrapped up in a tight squeeze from Mingyu. “Thank you for getting here so fast,” he says quietly.

“Of course,” you say. You hesitate before winding your arms around him and squeezing him back -- perhaps hearing the unspoken truth that Mingyu needed you there as much as you needed him.

***

Before

“I’m never going hiking again,” Jeri complains, and Jisung laughs.

“You’re going to see the view, and you’re going to change your mind,” he predicts. 

You grin at their banter -- this is only the second time Jeri has invited her new boyfriend along on one of the hikes, but you can tell he really likes her. And according to that last comment, he also knows her pretty well.

Cory is nearly sprinting up the trail ahead of you. “Come on, guys!” he calls. “We’re almost there.”

You’re feeling a little irritated with him because he tried to guide you in the complete wrong direction, but you try to keep that off your face as you trudge up the mountain. Sure enough, around two more bends is the summit. You are looking into a deep valley with a crystalline lake at the bottom, and the sight pricks your eyes with emotion. You refuse to cry in front of Cory, though, so you instead turn your attention to Jisung and Jeri, the former of whom is carrying your sister the remaining fifteen feet to the summit.

But when your sister sees the valley and the lake, she hops off her boyfriend’s back and scurries nearly to the edge. You have to grab the back of her backpack to stop her from overextending herself and hurtling over the edge of the cliff. “Easy there,” you say to her, but she’s not listening, her eyes shining with the sight. 

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” Jeri asks. 

You look back at Jisung, and you can see it in his eyes -- he’s absolutely whipped for her. You’re almost surprised that he doesn’t kiss her in front of all of you. Exasperatedly, you chuckle, thinking privately that you should probably start adding to Jeri’s wedding fund. 

You stay up there for almost an hour before disaster strikes, but surprisingly, it’s you who twists an ankle tripping over some rocks. You wince as the group is making its painfully slow way down the mountain, your ankle throbbing with every step. “I need a breather,” you tell them. “Go on without me.”

But as Jisung and Cory start to move away, Jeri plants herself beside you. “Go on without you?” she repeats. “But we’ll be so entirely lost without you. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you.”

***

The hospital keeps Sara in for one more night before she’s improved enough to be off the breathing machine. You can’t help but tear up as they place her into your arms, and she reaches up to your face to pat your chin clumsily. “Hey, baby girl,” you coo. “You did so good.”

Alone, you soak in the feeling of her comforting weight on your chest for a few more minutes before gently laying her in her carrier. She fusses a little, and you speak in soothing tones: “Shhh, it’s okay, my love. We’re going home. You won’t have to be in there for too long.”

And then finally, finally, finally, you get home. Walking in the front door with Sara to the empty house feels both soothing and incomplete, and you realize as you hoist her carrier to her bedroom so you can sit in her rocking chair that your mind is on that tall, dark-haired man who laughs at your ridiculousness and held you when you fell to pieces. You had bullied Mingyu into going home to rest, knowing that if he had stayed with you like he planned, he’d be in caretaker mode. You don’t regret your choice to send him home, but you also realize that you feel that he should be here, with the both of you. The fact that he isn’t leaves a small empty space in your heart.

Still, it’s heaven enough to hold Sara and rock her and clean her stuffy nose off every few minutes. Settling back into the chair and letting Sara’s weight onto your chest, you think that there’s almost nothing that could make this moment more perfect. 

And then, you cough.

[natequarter]

team "sharks are smooth":

faraday. in fact, he started the joke at conclave whilst looking for ways to piss goddard off. nobody realises he came up with it. he finds it absolutely hilarious to troll the hell out of other scythes like this, because surely someone as wise as faraday could never be so stupid

rowan. faraday introduced him to the idea, and he regularly uses it to fuck with goddard. at one point during his time as goddard's prisoner, he said it to goddard, and goddard got so angry he made rand drop a piano on rowan to render him deadish

rand. she doesn't mention it to goddard, but she secretly finds it hilarious

sister astrid

chomsky. he doesn't realise it's a joke; he genuinely thinks it's true

tyger. he joins in with rowan because it's really funny

jeri. jeri has seen many sharks. touched them, even. jeri can confirm: they are smooth

constantine. nobody is entirely sure if he believes it's true or not

team "sharks are not smooth":

goddard. it drives him mad. no one knows why, but it makes him genuinely murderous with rage. more so than usual, that is. once somebody said it to him in the street and he gleaned them on the spot

citra. much like goddard, it makes her furious, and she has berated rowan countless times for his terrible grasp of science. she has done actual research in the thunderhead's backbrain and if the thunderhead says it's not true, it must be wrong! sharks aren't smooth, rowan!!!

the thunderhead, as it is sadly incapable of being wrong. however, it does find the joke amusing

munira, who has had to deal with too many annoying people wrong about basic facts in her time as a librarian and academic

greyson, who initially doesn't get it. after he becomes the toll, however, he starts spreading the word: sharks are smooth

morrison. he does it to please citra. it's the only thing that actually makes her like him

eaten by sharks:

curie

[delta-queerdrant]

where are your troubles now? forgotten? (Resistance, s2 e12)

(POV you’re watching the Barbie intro but it’s Star Trek screenwriters. Please indulge me.)

Once, in another century, there was a show called Star Trek Voyager. (Cue 2001: A Space Odyssey music.) A lady and two dudes created it. Occasionally other ladies cowrote episodes. But by the time Season Two rolled around, there were not so many ladies. Actually there was just Jeri Taylor, and by god she tried. But one lady cannot be all things to all people.

Then in November 1995, a great miracle happened. A new lady was hired to write a teleplay. It was fresh, inventive! Something was happening!

Her name was (music crescendos)

L I S A K L I N K

I don’t know much about Lisa Klink, except that “Resistance” marks the beginning of her multi-season involvement in Voyager, and that she was a five-time Jeopardy winner. (I do not watch Jeopardy, I would not be good at Jeopardy, but Jeopardy people are nevertheless my people.) Mostly I know that I turned on “Resistance” and, despite my general disinterest in the show’s production history, immediately asked: who the FUCK wrote this?

“Resistance” is not a perfect episode, but after half a season of flailing, it is a revelation. Klink, writing the script for a story by Michael Jan Friedman and Kevin J. Ryan, has a clear vision of what Voyager can be - a show that’s grounded, emotionally resonant, and trusts its actors. 

I am partial to the gritty, Blade Runner-inflected, Firefly/BSG brand of science fiction television, so when we started in media res, our heroes in civvies doing deals in an outdoor market, I died and went to cyberpunk heaven. (Neelix’s coat alone is worth the price of entry.) Instead of swanning across the galaxy like tourists in a slightly under-resourced cruise ship, the Voyager gang are finally the scrappy underdogs they ought to be.

This is our second Janeway episode of the season, and the first episode, perhaps of the series, that really gives her a character mandate beyond “strong but feminine captain who loves her dog.” Mulgrew has her work cut out for her, acting against JOEL FUCKING GREY, but they’re both marvelous. Waking in the home of the enigmatically batty Caylem (in a claustrophobic sequence whose stagey absurdism recalls a Beckett play), Janeway slowly grows to understand that Caylem, who’s decided she’s his daughter, might be her best ally for escape. The growing emotional connection between the two is so tender and understated; as a writer, Klink has mastered the light touch.

Janeway and Caylem end up collaborating with the local resistance movement to rescue Torres and Tuvok, who have been imprisoned by the lawful evil overlords of this world. Our characters genuinely feel like they are in big trouble! Torres and Tuvok’s prison stint is rough. (I did enjoy B’Elanna’s beatnik dissident prison garb. She looks like it is approximately 1956 and she is a French student who has been arrested for throwing a baguette at a cop.)

The only weak sequence is the prison break itself, which feels too easy and relies on a tired “sex worker disguise” subterfuge. But the ending is so satisfying and will break your heart.

Once Janeway’s back in uniform, it feels like we’ve truly been on a journey, one that brings to mind iconic episodes like “The Inner Light.” Voyager is a long way from home, and I want these characters to go through transformative experiences. The boldness of this episode gets us a little bit of the way there.

A radical reimagining of Voyager, and the best episode of season two in my estimation. I award this one 4.5/5 melon hats.

[seventeenlovesthree]

I know you wrote, you have a ton of projects till the end of the year, but! I saw Ruki/Jeri in your poll and would you care share your two cents about them girls? Only if you have time. I loved them since Ruki was teaching Jeri to play the digimon card game 🥺 I think they are my fave f/f ship in digimon

First things first: You can ALWAYS drop messages in my ask box, I'm always happy and up to discuss and share my own meta about ships and characters!

While my personal favourite f/f ship in Digimon overall will always be Sora/Mimi, I can actually draw some parallels between their dynamics, particularly when it comes to the similarities between Sora and Ruki - I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but the main aspect here is: Both Sora and Ruki have incredible soft spots for Mimi and Juri respectively and thus break through the initial trope(s) you associate with them. You would not expect the more introverted tomboy (who start off actively rejecting typical femininity) to care so much, be so protective of and overall get along so well with the supposed girly-girl at first glance, would you? While Sora is having more of a big sister vibe going on towards the other/younger characters, it's less likely for someone like Ruki, who used to push everyone away and wasn't even seen interacting with girls prior to meeting Juri.

You would expect her to look down on "card game newbies" the same way she used to ridicule Takato and Jenrya for being "too soft" - luckily for Juri, Ruki had already started contemplating her approaches and view points and, probably for the first time ever, seemed to feel some kind of pride in being able to teach someone. It's interesting how she just... Immediately feels drawn to Juri, how softly she talks to and smiles at her and has all the patience in the world for her. Sometimes I feel like some scenes/moments didn't make it into the final product, because Ruki's softness increases a lot faster during the midpoint of the series (and it's really a shame because the more the cast grows, the less you see individual interactions between certain characters). Either way, looking at how she treats Juri, it's no surprise that, aside from mimicking Takato's card slash pose, Juri also copies Ruki's initial card holding pose. Juri is admiring Ruki greatly and through the course of the series, whenever possible, she does cling to her - whereas Ruki is there to protect and comfort her, but without EVER belittling her. She knows Juri isn't weak, but worries for her for very understandable reasons after the loss of Leomon.

Tamers overall has a very interesting framing theme when it comes to Ruki, her reltionship to her family (mostly influenced by female figures) and to Renamon - as mentioned, she is initially rejecting feminity due to a difficult relationship with her mother. Not only does she not want to be "like her" (a model obsessed with beauty and not having time for family anyway), but she's also obviously rebelling, lashing out due a sense of having to prove herself and displaying strength. We know she longs for the attention of her father and can assume that there is underlying trauma of feeling rejected as a daughter that causes her to bottle up. She appears incredibly detached and/or lashes out when others show her affection, which is why she is initially still tough towards all the boys around her. But she improves almost all her relationships upon accepting Renamon more and more as an equal partner and friend, culminating in their Matrix evolution to Sakuyamon, which definitely represents the beginning of Ruki being able to embrace her own sense of femininity. One might argue that there are also potentially romantic undertones in how her behaviour changes towards Takato and Ryo (which, as we know, is a typical trope in media to portray boyish girls becoming more feminine). But I'd really like to add that the first human character that brought out her gentle side was Juri. And thus, my verdict is - Ruki wouldn't even have gotten that far if it hadn't been for Juri contributing to her soft side coming to the surface. (Renamon still has the biggest impact here and despite being proof of Digimon having no gender, Renamon is still associated with the female gender and thus being another female influence.)

There is... A lot of wlw subtext here in my opinion (the RenaRuki subtext in particular is INSANE, if you think about it), but unfortunately, Digimon has never dared to cross that line officially. I do see the appeal in people shipping Ruki with the aforementioned Ryo and Takato (though I personally feel like the former is a little forced, disruptive of the group dynamics and also a bit too stereotypical - the latter is somewhat difficult when you see Juri as semi-official love interest for Takato, it makes the whole thing a little messy). But in my opinion, it would have been nice to at least show the girls being important to each other. Because they absolutely are, even if my memory on the final Tamers episodes is a bit rusty.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s5 ep7: Infinite Regress

Another oddly unsatisfying episode about Seven of Nine. It seems like every episode about her boils down to one of two plotlines: either she disagrees with Janeway, and spends the entire episode arguing with her like a petulant teenager and disobeying her orders, or something goes wrong with her Borg implants, and she ends up having strange flashbacks/visions/memories/etc, that cause her to go rogue and lose control of herself, and compel her to do weird stuff. This one is one of the latter, and while Jeri Ryan did a good job acting wise, the writing leaves something to be desired. I guess I'm just frustrated with the repetitiveness and lack of depth in Seven's episodes at this point.

Since it's already been established that Seven is prone to these kinds of incidents, it seems extremely odd that nobody thought there might be a need to perhaps give her lighter duties or restrict her from being able to access certain ship functions or, you know, actually try to figure out what's causing these things to happen all the time so they can help her. But no, they just let her go on like everything is fine, and then they all somehow have shocked Pikachu faces when this happens again. This particular time, Seven suddenly starts to experience the ex-Borg version of multiple personality disorder, where the brain patterns of people she'd assimilated as a Borg take over her mind and body randomly.

Jeri obviously had fun playing a little kid, a Klingon warrior, a Ferengi business man, and all the other people whose personalities hijacked Seven's mind, but aside from giving her a fun acting challenge, the story once again didn't add up to much. She doesn't remember anything that happens when the other personalties take over, so the intriguing idea of a now-human Seven having to face the horrors of what she did as a drone is totally negated. There's some wrenching speeches she gives as the various people she assimilated, which the Voyager crew, and we the audience, obviously find tragic and disturbing, but Seven's totally unaware of it, so it's kind of a pointless missed opportunity from a story standpoint. Seven is disturbed by hearing the cacaphony of disorganized voices in her head, but never has to face the individual memories or personalities herself, or experience any repercussions once the problem is solved. While I did appreciate how much she trusted and depended on Tuvok during the mind meld, since I think their friendship is wonderful and underutilized, the scene in her mind where she sees all the people in her head didn't have the weight it should have. It was just her being lost in a crowd of people, there wasn't any element of recognition of those people as individuals who's lives she'd participated in destroying, however unwittingly. The shifting between comedy scenes and tragic scenes so quickly felt a little disjointed too. (One thing I'll say in this ep's favor though is that Seven's scenes with Naomi are very sweet, and I do like they let Seven become more open and lighthearted in scenes with kids.)

I think the whole idea of having an ex-Borg character was kind of a bad idea, since there's just so many layers of trauma associated with it, and if they're not even going to explore it beyond a surface level, the story loses a lot of it's realism, and you need some anchor in reality to suspend disbelief, even in sci-fi. Especially since Seven lived most of her life as Borg, we already have to suspend our disbelief pretty hard to pretend that she could be a functional adult human after a lifetime of being a mindless drone (I could buy it for someone who had been assimilated as an adult, and only spent a few months or years as a Borg, but not someone who'd been assimilated as a child and spent 2 decades). It just makes it more far fetched to say that she can just go through all these additional weird experiences that mess with her mind, and still be fine. Every time something like this happens to Seven, it's obviously disorienting at best, and traumatic at worst, but once they supposedly cure whatever's going on with her in any given ep, they act like it's over and done, and that she'll be fine. (Until the next ep where it happens again, obviously, but everyone will still be shocked Pikachu next time anyway!)

It's just intensely frustrating that Seven's character development always takes a backseat to making her look hot, and to not being too intense or scary or unattractive for the imaginary male viewer they were trying to court when they created her character. It's lowest common denominator writing that rarely has any consistency, which makes it hard to care about someone you don't feel like you really know. How she behaves serves the needs of the script of the week, with no through line or reasoning behind it. (I could say the same about most of the characters at this point, but that's another kettle of fish.)

In the beginning, I thought they actually did a great job when she was scared and angry after first being severed from the collective, and it actually surprised me to see how in her early episodes, they showed that she wanted to fit in and be part of Voyager's crew, but was unsure of how to do it. That made so much more sense! After having spent her whole life as part of a group, of course she'd want to be part of a new one when she lost her old one. Suddenly having her become mean and disdainful of everyone, wanting to be apart from everyone, and placing her own opinion on a pedestal above everyone else's, came out of nowhere, and didn't feel organic to her character at all. And nearly every time they try to delve into the repercussions of her having been Borg, they pull back, and neatly gloss over it with a magic fix it at the end of each episode. It's like she's just a pretty doll for the writers to play with rather than an actual character they're willing to really think hard about and explore the ugly side of.

Confronting trauma is difficult and time consuming and ugly- and she has so much! Let her be not okay for a while! Maybe she needs to take a few weeks or months off to really process some of the experiences that are surfacing now that she's human- maybe she needs some intensive meditation with Tuvok because all this shit she's been through, and continues to go through, is painful and scary and enraging, and she can't deal with it and be a realiable crew member at the same time. That would be realistic! They should let her be an ugly mess for a while- healing isn't always a linear progression, nor is it pretty, but if there's one thing they won't allow Seven to be for more than a few minutes at a time, it's not pretty. The writers and producers see her as eye candy, and don't give a crap about her as a person, and it sucks. They don't even really care that she was Borg, except when it gives her magical superpowers that no one else in the crew has. They could have done so much with her, and made her an interesting and relatable character, but they didn't, because they wanted a sexy Barbie doll in high heels and a catsuit instead. And it sucks, and it makes the show worse too.

Tl;dr: Another 'Seven's Borg Implants Are Malfunctioning' episode, that yet again shies away from any actual repercussions for Seven as far as facing or coming to terms with her past, and yet again shows everyone ignoring the fact that this keeps happening regularly, and that Seven deserves some help and accomodations for it. An acting showcase for Jeri Ryan, but the script felt like a big missed opportunity.

[moonmoonthecrabking]

do i give jeri arthritis bc i have it? yes, but beyond that i think it could be interesting with her camp director dynamics. who views it as a punishment (does she view it as a punishment for pre-marital sex) and who sees it as how life happens? who helps her and gives her rest and who pushes her to keep going? how does she feel when her adrenaline tapers off? does she worry about medicine while she’s in the middle of the woods? does she stick to a “supervising” role on activities because she knows she could be in pain? does she try to hide it from the campers? has she learnt how to manage her energy? do people pray for healing, and if so how does she feel about that? how does it play into her dynamic with boy jerry? does she push through the pain of digging through the ground because they can’t let a body be found, making her unable to get out of bed in the morning bc walking hurts too much? does he use it as “evidence” that she’s “more sinful” than him? does he actually have half a heart and support her with her disability or does he feed into the most toxic evangelical disability rhetoric? etc etc