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aikoiya · 8 months ago

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Hello there, I love your post and I like your idea about Danny being affected by hamon but now not the time for dp x jjba and i have a long post idea that I would be understanding that it takes you days to research and post your idea.

Danny Phantom (phantom planet not happen in this au idea) x hunter: the parenting and by extension the world of darkness.

A few months before the event of Adorable Family Trip, the D family went to Amity Park for a month to visit one of Big-D ex, Jack Fenton, and while at Amity Park Kitten decided to look into Amity Park folklore. I want to know what 3 folklore that Amity Park has and what Kitten and Big-D thought about it, also bonus point if one of them is not about ghosts.

Also I have fun idea that the D family shenanigans while in Amity Park like Kitten learning about ecto ghost from Maddie ( who has extreme bias), Jack ( who is still learning about ecto ghost), and Big-D ( who usually keeps info until it's relevant), Marckus telling Danny and Dash about his experience with bully and tell them about how Brok Blacklaw eat Marckus book, gross Danny and Dash out, Door and Boy waiting in line at Nasty Burger for the meatiest burger for Boy and telling Jazz about his old 'mining day' unintentionally misled Jazz into thinking he was a miner and not a EOD specialist that he actually is, and Big-D and Jack have a journey and talk about why Big-D broke up with Jack as while Jack is good against ghost, he is not prepared for Big-D reckoning against the various supernatural.

Also for the funny Big-D know Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom when first met and didn't tell his family until on the plane back to Norfolk UK and his reasoning is that "it is obvious".

Holy cow! Honestly, I was confused for a bit. But the further down I got, the more I recognized. Like, Big-D was my first tip off, but it wasn’t until I read Markus, Door, & Boy that it clicked.

Now, I know what we’re talking about. I was afraid this was about Monster Hunter or Hunter x Hunter because I know practically nothing about either of those except dragons & that they are an absolute infestation in Monster Hunter.

You have no idea how lucky you are that my brother got me to watch the animated adaptation on YouTube or I would be completely lost! XD

So, congratulations, I can ramble about this subject!

However, I have only seen the animated adaptation up to Big-D's guide to avoiding arrest & am actually currently watching it as I type because I asked my brother a question about the show & he later said he'd rather watch more of it rather than continue with Lupin III. So, thanks for that. (Jk.)

Brok literally just appeared for the first time. His crew certainly seems to possess quite the motley assortment of very unfortunate faces, don't they?

But, yeah, I haven't seen any of the actual sessions, so my knowledge about how that world works is limited to that.

First off, I love, love, love all the supernatural lore in it. I was literally taking down notes.

Anyway, hmm… Well, I just looked at a list of Michigan cryptids & it talked about Michigan Mermen, though evidently, it's “bad luck to threaten one.” Though, the legend specifically says it's in Lake Superior. At the same time, the 2 lakes are connected by Whitefish Bay, so I wouldn't understand why they wouldn't also appear in Lake Michigan unless it was specifically inhabited by a predator of theirs. There's also apparently the Chicago Mothman, which according to a really cool map someone made from doing a bunch of research (Amity Park Location & Map), is most likely not even a full day's travel from Amity. Then there's the Lake Michigan Sea Serpent, which is, like, right there.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it lived in Lake Eerie. Maybe even just a short walk away from Amity itself.

Though, I do also have something a bit more benign that I made up myself. It's not really a creature. It's just a jukebox that plays creepily accurate music. → The Haunted Jukebox

It's really not much, but I figure that it'd be nice to investigate something that wouldn't try to do unspeakable things to them for once, ya know?

And I do have to say that I very much don't see Jack as the type who'd be into Big-D. In fact, I think the only dude that Jack might have a chance of being into is Vlad, who was never interested & will never be interested. And I don't even know if Jack would be aware of his own interest or if it's ever even crossed his mind.

However, I do have an alternate suggestion. What if Jack & Big-D… were brothers or cousins?

Now, I have a lot of thoughts on not only the Fenton Family’s lineage, but several others too, so here's a link so that I don't have to put it all here. → DP AU - Family Legacy

For that matter, I also hc that Warden Walker is Maddie's dad (but neither are aware). Seriously, go read Grandpappy Walker on Fanfiction.com. It’s an interesting read. However, it never finished. I have other hcs involving her family here, too. → The Walker Family

Now, moving on. This could absolutely work because my theories regarding both the Fenton family & Big-D actually align very well.

Mainly in that I hc that the Fentons are descended from a Lugat, thus making everyone descended from him dhampirs after a fashion.

Now, if we go this route, my suggestion is that Jack was the black sheep of the family… but Big-D was the bedazzled, feral sheep that kept biting everyone. Brilliant & the star of the Fenton family with a brain like a supernatural encyclopedia, but obviously has something very wrong in his head.

In my mind, Jack was never good at learning other languages (which was very important for research) or the apotropaic magics of his family because he could never really wrap his head around the mechanics of how it all worked, so he became frustrated with it all, called it a load of hooey & became determined to prove himself a hunter through the medium he did understand: SCIENCE!!!

And engineering. However, because he'd felt like an outcast due to being unable to understand the magical side of things, he'd begun to reject a lot of the old, tried & true hunter methods, relegating them to the domain of superstition even though a part of him knew that it was all true. He was bitter, okay?

Despite this, he's actually surprisingly honest with himself, considering how full of himself he can be. As such, if he's ever shown concrete evidence that he's wrong, he's actually very quick to adapt & accept that fact.

Then, promptly make amends.

Maddie, however, is ridiculously secular & stubborn. As such, she would be ridiculously difficult to convince regarding subjects involving the supernatural that couldn't be explained using science.

Interestingly, despite being so very different, Big-D was actually one of the only ones in their family who actually heard out Jack’s theories.

At the same time, though Big-D thought that the possibility of this “Ghost Zone” was, indeed, possible, he'd never thought that Jack would not only be able to reach it, consistently of all things, but then prove it!

Personally, I love it when experts of the supernatural are entirely blindsided by something that completely shatters their understanding of the world around them. Like, science is making new discoveries all the time. Why can't the supernatural hunter field also be doing the same?

I'm saying that I think it would be fun if the entirety of Big-D's knowledge of this new plane of existence completely consisted of whatever theories Jack had spoken to him about regarding it.

On the one hand, he's so ridiculously PROUD of Jackie-Boy!!

On the other, Big-D is absolutely shitting his short shorts as it slowly dawns on him the implications of all this.

I mean… this… this is the fucking trans-universal thanatonexus!! Literal proof of alternate & parallel universes!!!

The universe between universes & the moment between times!!!

….

Big-D needs to sit down before he passes out…

Which, my guy. I have a full freaking masterlist of hcs regarding how the Infinite Realms work, how it interacts with the Living Realms, how ectoplasm is made. As well as hcs about Clockwork & Nocturn. → DP Ghost Zone Masterlist

Clockwork - The Origin of Clockwork - Clockwork Through the Multiverse - Nocturn (My Style)

Peruse at your leisure.

Seriously, I might have a problem…

I mean, if you really think about it, how would Big-D know much of anything about ecto-ghosts? The only people shown to possess portals are the Fentons & Vlad & the only other portals are natural portals which open randomly & very rarely. Like, maybe he's heard stories about powerful beings that could fly & shoot lasers, but I don’t think he’d know anything truly concrete.

But I definitely think he's aware of Danny's time traveling shenanigans, though only from the perspective of having seen imagery of Phantom & Plasmius scattered through time. But not that it’s Danny & the mayor of Amity (at least initially).

Which, I honestly think that they'd legitimately despise each other. D & Vlad, that is.

Which, perhaps Big-D's actual reason for visiting could partially be because of that? Maybe he saw a picture in a supernatural tabloid about a little town in Illinois that was a tourist trap centering around ghosts? And the picture used was of one of Danny & Vlad's fights?

Maybe it was Kitten who was reading it & Big-D was just sort of sipping his drink at breakfast, was chatting with Kitten, & glanced down only to choke on his drink as he recognized the figures from one of the single greatest mysteries in all of hunter history. He gasps & wheezes rather comically as he tries to catch his breath. Kitten is concerned, but the second D caught his breath, he declared that they were headed to Amity Park to visit family.

The terrifying thing is that I actually think that the Fentons of Amity might be the most well-adjusted members of the current Fentons in the family… This realization haunts me…

Holy fudge, I think Jack would end up being the responsible & rational one between him & D…

Like, I can just see Jack looking D dead in the eye & telling him that drugs, psychedelics, alcohol any purer than near beer, & especially sacrifices were not allowed within 5 yards of the perimeter of Fenton Works & neither were D's sexual indiscretions.

If he brings that shit anywhere near his family, no one will find the pieces. And if he gets caught with that sort of thing here, then Jack's never met the man.

Like, the supernatural stuff is fine, whatever.

Typical Fenton clan brouhaha, but Jack raised a couple of wonderful, talented, genius kids.

(Even if Danny was having a rough time keeping his grades up at the moment, he could still reverse engineer any one of their inventions practically on autopilot & sometimes could even surpass Jack himself in terms of guerilla science & ingenuity, but that's not the point!)

His kids were brilliant & they don't do drugs or commit crimes or go out drinking, & he's not about to have one Bignaceous Ditryck T. Fenton walking in & screwing up the 2 (3 if they’ve adopted Ellie) most sane, well-adjusted children born into the Fenton clan in 5 generations just because he couldn't behave like an adult for a week! Like, he loves D, but “Seriously, D, you need serious help.”

Which would probably start a bit of a dismissive handwaving about how, of course, he’d never dream of it! But Jack just narrowed his eyes at the other man’s insane smile before sighing with a slump of his shoulders before letting them in reluctantly.

Anyway, I'd very much appreciate Amethyst Ocean to be a thing here. This is the DP ship that I've been shipping since I first watched the show. And it was made canon.

Of course, in the end, it's your choice. Not mine.

Also, keep in mind that if Phantom Planet isn't canon, then neither is A Glitch In Time. Just something to remember.

#danny phantom #dp #hunter the parenting

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tgmsunmontue · 7 months ago

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Caring, Keeping and Collecting Transformers - A Guide 2/?

Maverick is unknowingly surrounded by Transformers. He knows something is up though. Just not quite what it is exactly.

Bradley and Jake, having never met, are embarking on their own journeys and will have to learn to deal with the fact that they've both been adopted by Transformers.

Despite having years more experience, Maverick is no help at all.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Bradley knows his car isn’t normal.

The fact that he has never once had to buy gas is the biggest red flag if he ever saw one, except it’s not really red, because his car never stops working. Only works for him in fact, which he had thought was a joke that Maverick had started jokingly when he was younger. Except his car refuses to start for anyone else. No one can borrow it. He’s tried all of one time, handing the keys to one of his college friends when they’d asked if they could borrow his truck to move. He hadn’t thought twice about saying yes. And then they’d come back over an hour later saying it just wouldn’t start.

So now everyone thinks his car is either cursed or possessed, in a joking way, the same way Maverick had, except Maverick had sometimes eyed it like he believed something else. And as much as he hates Maverick, he also doesn’t think he’d have let Bradley get into something that could potentially hurt him. Had seemed glad that it had started for Bradley, and Bradley alone. He hadn’t thought the car was maybe sentient or something until he’d lost the keys and thought he’d… beg.

“Will you start for me buddy? I can’t find my keys and I really need to get across town to my classes…”

He knows that later he’s going to think he imagined the wave of shuddering his car gave, like it was shrugging its shoulders or something. Except of course his car doesn’t have fucking shoulders, but it still starts and the radio flares to life and he doesn’t recognize the song playing at all, but he listens anyway… It's things I do for you, In return do the same for me. Okay. He doesn’t know what the hell that means, unless he’s meant to take the things I do for you literally.

“I’ll give you a really good wash and polish okay? Oil wherever you want…” Bradley says, and he feels a little stupid, talking to his car, rubbing a hand along the dash, but his car just started because he asked it to so he’s past the point of thinking himself crazy. God he wishes he could talk to Maverick about this.

�� … …

When Jake’s accepted into USNA his family are all proud of him, then he gets into flight school, his dream of becoming an aviator one step closer. He has his degree in mechanical engineering and he knows better now. Knows more now, about how things are meant to fit together. How things work. This plane he’s been working on, playing with, since he was a kid doesn’t fit any of the stuff he’s learnt and he wonders if he simply fucked it up that badly as a teenager trying to do it up.

He goes on a bit of a fact-finding mission. Talks to his uncle, finds out the original body came from a fair distance away, up past the Arctic circle in Canada. The fact his uncle had it transported all the way down to Texas is impressive, but his uncle is a truck driver and has travelled the breadth of the continent. He runs his hands over the body skeleton, knows he’s imagining the humming vibration beneath his fingers even if he wishes it were true. He’s been gone for years, away at USNA, and then flight school. While he’s been gone more bits of scrap have accumulated beside it, and no one knows when or how it got there. He hasn’t had time to dedicate to trying to fix her up properly, but looking around it’s almost like all the pieces are there.

Hell, it’ll give him something to do while he has time to kill between deployments, his parents won’t mind storing it in an old barn if it means he comes home. It’s not like he has anything better to do.

“You realize it’s never going to become airborne…” his father says, coming to stand beside him as he stares at it all, somehow just as big as it had seemed when he was a kid.

“I don’t care. It’s good practice for me, and I enjoy it. No harm right?”

… … …

The first time the Bronco reappears at the hangar Pete nearly has a heart attack. He definitely has a panic attack and has to breathe through it before grabbing the phone and ringing Ice.

“Bradley. Is Bradley okay?”

“Mav? What’s wrong?”

“Just… I know I told you not to tell me. But can you just tell me he’s alive?”

“Yes. I know he is. He left on his first deployment yesterday. Five months.”

He breathes easier, thanks Ice for sharing that information with him and then turns to just look at the Bronco. It’s a bit dusty but it looks well maintained. Shiny and well cared for. A little before five months later when he wakes up the Bronco is gone and Pete finds himself more than okay knowing where the car’s true loyalties are.

… … …

Bradley doesn’t believe in magic.

Magic doesn’t exist.

Any yet sometimes he wonders.

Because he doesn’t know how to explain it.

He’d left his car in Virginia Beach, fairly certain that it was going to be there when he got back. It’s not like anyone else can even drive it, let alone steal it. Although a part of him wonders what would happen if someone tried to steal the tires. And if he could film it.

Getting off the carrier in San Diego he’s heading toward the transport to take him to base. He’s organized a flight back to Virginia Beach, and he’ll take his leave on the East Coast. Except the sound of a car horn has him looking and this, this is why he thinks his life is somehow got a touch of the eldritch or something. The Bronco is sitting and waiting. Waiting for him specifically, windows down, because no one else can drive it.

But it can apparently drive itself and it came to pick him up.

It’s a hell of a homecoming and he kisses his fingers and then taps the fingers to the dashboard as he gets in.

“Good to see you buddy. Missed you.”

He hopes no-one sees him talking to thin-air, but he’s also pretty sure his car can not only hear him but understands him. It occurs to him that he now has to cancel his flight transfer back, and he still somehow has to get to himself and his car to Virginia Beach, because he doesn’t want to be hanging around San Diego and bumping into anyone.

… … …

“Thanks for the new bike…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Love you too.”

Tom frowns. Are people just dumping their old junkers at the hangar now?

Well. At least it’s keeping Pete busy.

… … …

“I don’t want you driving that late at night when you’re that tired. We aren’t in our twenties any more Pete…”

“So you bought me a trailer? So I can sleep at the hangar?”

“Well, not just sleep…”

“Ooohhh… yeah okay. Let’s go give it a test drive huh?”

“Sounds good.”

… … …

Jake is tired. That has to be why he’s seeing a giant walking plane staring down at his plane, his do-it-upper that he’s had for over fifteen years now. He thinks and dreams about planes and flying so much he’s now seeing them when he’s awake. He should probably go back to bed. Then the thing is turning, bearing down on him and snarling.

“You. Human. Did you do this?”

“Holy shit…” Jake says.

“Answer me!”

“Did what exactly? Build it? Yeah. That was me. I’m trying to fix him up. Who are you? What are you?”

The machine’s eyes flick over him, clearly assessing or looking for something and Jake stands where he is, scared shitless but refusing to show it.

“Who I am does not matter, but my name is Starscream. This is… my friend. Jetfire. What happened to him?”

“Uh. I don’t know. I’ve been collecting pieces and rebuilding it… is… Is Jetfire like you?”

“Jetfire is better than I. I failed him. He will need his wings and some power.”

Jake looks between the pile of pieces which form a very rough body of a plane fuselage and then at the towering body of… Starscream.

“Wait, are you saying he can be bought back to life?”

“Of course. We will finish rebuilding him.”

“Holy shit,” Jake says again. “You’re serious. What are we going to need?”

Starscream looks at him, and he doesn’t look happy.

“We…” he looks even more disgusted at the word. “Are going to need help.”

And yeah, okay. Jake can appreciate where he’s coming from.

#Caring Keeping and Collecting Transformers - A Guide #hangster #Top Gun Maverick #AU #TF and TGM crossover

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b-afterhours · 5 months ago

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Avenue of Sins: Neon

A Sequel to Avenue of Sins

SUMMARY: ‘90s. It’s the aftermath. Jaded, Bill and Alma navigate their new lives as they try to drag themselves out of the dark debacherous trenches they had once ensnared themselves in. It’s easy to forget their evils when a silver lining introduces itself into their lives but can they create a less hedonistic life that would be just as satisfying?

WARNINGS: adult content, mature readers only.

The completed first series can be read and found here.

Chapter Twenty-Three

September 1993

To make the trip worthwhile, Bill managed to book a private jet. Despite this, Alma was still annoyed that they were going back to their hometown. On the plane, she drank three glasses of champagne at seven in the morning and then slept comfortably half the way. Fortunately, it would be a short trip. They were making the necessary rounds of meeting family and hopefully avoiding townies while there.

Deep down, Bill didn’t want to come either, but he felt that was beside the point of the whole trip. However, he was glad this would be the last time he’d be back, and at least this time he wasn’t making the journey back alone. He understood Alma’s apprehension, but there was something else she just wasn’t mentioning. It bothered him, but she was bothered about the entire journey in general, and he didn’t feel like bringing it up because it would certainly cause an argument.

They cushioned their arrival in Missouri with a stay in Kansas City rather than just heading straight to Strathburg. However, now they were on the road there, or rather, to Springfield—the largest neighboring town in southwest Missouri.

They were only halfway there on their three-hour road trip when they stopped at some sketchy country gas station. It was the only one they’d encountered that looked the most decent out of all the ones Bill refused to pull off the highway for. Bill had his arms crossed in wait by the one-stall bathroom while Alma and Echo were in there until he could have his turn. He wasn’t trusting of the workers or the patrons inside the adjoining cigarette smoke-filled country café. It was quite obvious to the others that they weren’t from there, and that just made them easy targets.

How he hated small-town bullshit like this. As if he wanted to be there as much as they did. They were giving him the creeps with their silent, dead stares. The vibe was stuffy as they filled the store with their uninviting energy.

“Don’t go outside without me.” He told Alma once she exited the bathroom. “Stay close.”

“All done, papa!” Echo said, waving her washed hands in the air to which he smiled at her.

“Yeah, okay.” She said softly, picking up Echo when she felt his uneasiness.

Alma was heading towards the bathroom with snacks when he got out, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. He grabbed them, and she followed him to the counter to pay for gas as well.

“Jesus,” Bill said, annoyed when he was back in the SUV rental after filling the tank. “Bunch of cousin fuckers in this town.”

“Very Texas Chainsaw Massacre here,” Alma said, munching on Cool Ranch Doritos.

Bill turned his head to look at Echo, drinking milk from a sippy cup with heavy eyes. “Good, you’re still with us. Let’s get out of here.” He said, turning the gear in drive, and feigning a disconcerting shiver.

“You didn’t like it?” Alma asked while they were on the road.

Bill rubbed the five o’clock shadow above his lip, contemplating. “The house?”

“Yeah, the one I liked.” She tilted her head, looking at him.

“Hmm.” He paused in thought. He felt that it was too cookie-cutter, and it was only a three-bedroom house. It didn’t feel like a house to expand a family in. “I just think it’s too close to other houses.”

“What? Like a neighborhood?” She said facetiously. “In New York, we literally live above and on top of people.”

“At the penthouse, I rarely see any of my neighbors. I doubt you ever even saw them yourself the last time you were there.”

“So you want something like this?” She said, pointing to the flat plains of nothingness they drove through. Only in the distance, cows were grazing the lands.

“Put an offer in. If you like it, it’s fine with me.” He said, a bit bored in tone.

“I don’t.” She smirked.

Bill side-eyed her and took a deep breath. “I should have seen that coming.” He grumbled. “The other two houses we saw last week, I wish we could combine. I liked the large windows at that brick house, and the backyard was big. That house on the hill had a whole living space in the basement, an open kitchen, and more rooms.” He glanced at her so she’d get the hint. “But I don’t know, we’ll find something.”

Alma hoped they’d find something soon because, even if it had only been a solid month of living together, just as she suspected, it was getting crowded. It didn’t help that just a few weeks ago he had purchased a computer, and the only place to put it was at the end of the dining table. She was annoyed, and Bill knew she was too. She let it be, but on their first night having family dinner with it, she sarcastically asked if she should make the computer a plate too.

“You called your dad and confirmed that we’re coming?” Bill asked, reaching into the bag of chips in Alma’s lap.

“You were literally next to me when I told him over the phone.”

“Just making sure. You could have been faking me out. It could have been Ulyssa on the other end, for all I know.” He chuckled as he chewed.

“That’s so immature.” She grumbled.

“Doesn’t matter if you did or not, ‘cause I called him too.”

“He told me. He calls me more often now.”

“I noticed that. What does he say?”

“He just wants to know how I am. Asks about Echo. And then he talks about his chickens a lot. He also always brings up how so-and-so had some ailment and are on their deathbed. The last time I spoke to him, it was his neighbor's dog having to be put down.”

“Only good news, I see.”

Alma laughed lightly. “What did he say to you when you called him?”

“Not much, he’s very short with me.” He shrugged as if to seem unbothered.

“Mhmm. I know you think so, but he doesn’t hate you, you know?” Alma assured. “He asks about you when I talk to him. He always says that he’s glad you’re doing well.”

He was silent for a moment before he spoke. “Does he know about Trigger Finger?” He gripped the steering wheel tighter, unconsciously.

“No, love. You told me not to, so I haven’t. But why? Should it even matter at this point?”

Bill took a deep breath. “It’s just too much to explain, and the club is my business. The record shop is what we’re doing at the moment, and that’s all he needs to know.”

“Alright…”

“I’m serious, Alma. Don’t use the club for some kind of ‘fuck you dad’ moment. I don’t want to deal with the blowback of that.”

Alma looked at him perplexed, but he just stared ahead with his jaw ticking, focused on the road, and tense. Maybe he was feeling the loathsome feelings she was having about returning to Strathburg, and they were getting to him now.

“Hey,” she gently said. “I won’t. I promise.” She reached over and tucked her fingers under his palm to loosen the white-knuckled grip he had on the steering wheel.

Bill took a deep breath and nodded, surprised by his behavior just as much as she was. Between them, a promise was a promise, and he settled himself as she took hold of his hand. Just then, the exit sign for Strathburg appeared. Their gaze fell on the town as they rode right past in silence. Memories were flooding their minds. They both exchanged wary glances then. It felt as if their return would be anything but enjoyable.

~~~

They were in their suite at a budget hotel in Springfield, just forty minutes east of Strathburg. Alma sat Echo on the bed, and when she dove next to her, she nearly knocked the wind out of herself.

“Ow!” She groaned, and she got on her knees and pushed on the very firm mattress with her hands. Almost as if she were trying to resuscitate it back to life. “It’s like a rock!”

Bill put their luggage bags down, having had to carry them up himself. He sat on the edge, taking his black baseball cap off, and laid back and frowned. Alma was exaggerating a bit, but the mattress hardly had much give. Exhausted, he closed his eyes as he rubbed his forehead, and then he just began laughing. Laughing at this whole fucked-up situation. Maybe, he should have listened to his girlfriend.

“We spoiled ourselves,” Alma said, laughing with him. “I think I bruised myself!”

Bill laughed even harder. “You’re probably concussed!”

Echo was laughing along, amused, even if she couldn’t quite comprehend what had her parents in delicious stitches.

They left the hotel after they called room service to ask for three goose feather duvets to make the mattress somewhat comfortable for themselves. They grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby sandwich joint, visited a small grocery store, and then headed west to Strathburg.

That pit in their stomach began to sink further and further. Their plan of attack for the day was to visit Alma’s old home to collect some artifacts and then have dinner at his brother Gustaf’s. It was fairly relaxed on purpose, but they felt anything but.

Even if Bill felt the urge to drive right past again, he merged off the exit, and the town just seemed hollow. Almost ghostly. Houses in disrepair or abandoned completely. Bill had to swerve around multiple deep potholes on the crumbing neighborhood roads.

There was once a time when this little suburb was a nice place to live. It didn’t look as awful. People took pride in the state of the exterior of their homes, fresh paint, and nicely manicured lawns. The air in Strathburg even used to feel comforting, as there was a bread factory emanating the scent of freshly baked loaves. Now it sat defunct and dilapidated.

“What happened?” Alma gasped.

When she lived there a few years ago, it wasn’t in tip-top shape by any means, but this just seemed bleak.

“Bad storm,” Bill guessed. “Tornado?” He said, pointing at a house with a sunken roof. “Not sure.”

Shortly, Bill pulled into the empty, cracked driveway of Alma’s home. It still looked fine compared to the majority of the houses. Her block was nearly devoid of people. They had been bought out of their homes and the town by the strip mall development.

“Someone cuts the grass?” Bill asked, noticing it was shorn and not overgrown as her neighbor's lawns were.

“My dad comes once a month to check things out. I doubt he mows it, but he hires someone.” She said, stepping out of the SUV.

Bill let her go ahead and let her have a moment while he got Echo out of the car. Alma swallowed the lump in her throat as she turned the house key. She entered. It was dusty and nearly empty. In her grief, she sold what she could have of the furniture in the home. It was manic, she realized in hindsight. She could swear she smelled the pine cleaning products her mother used still. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and her arms wrapped around herself in a self-soothing hug. It was home, but at the same time, it just wasn’t. It never really was.

“You alright?” Bill asked as he opened a window in the living room to let the stale, muggy air out of the house.

Alma took a deep breath. “Uh, yeah. Um. Most things I'd already packed to store when I was here. They’re in my old bedroom.”

Echo took the lead as she curiously looked around the house, stopping to touch the wood paneling in the hallway. Alma directed her to the right, where she grew up laying her head at night. Her four-poster bed remained sans mattress, covered with a dusty plastic tarp, along with her small writing desk. Bill opened the window that he would always sneak into her room from and smirked.

“Never locked.”

Alma giggled. “I had a friendly peeping tom.”

“I never watched you like a weirdo.” He snickered, squatting down to look at the few boxes in her room. “You got records, pictures, clothes… things.” He said digging through two open boxes.

He picked up a photo of Alma. She was about six years old in a white frilly dress with an uncharacteristic shy smile on her face. He could see his daughter in her, but she really did look a lot more like him. There was no denying it.

“We can go to the post office tomorrow and ship these off. I’m not trying to drag all this to the airport.” Alma said.

“Yeah, we’ll do that. We’re going to have to rent a storage room when we get back.”

There was a framed photo of Our Lady of Guadalupe leaning against her closet door. He recognized it. Once, he had gone to her house, and her parents were away on an errand, which gave them the rare opportunity to venture out of her room. He was following her to the kitchen, where she was going to make them quesadillas to snack on, when he noticed the little shrine in the dining room. There was a wilting bouquet of assorted colored roses in a vase and prayer candles with saints he couldn’t name surrounding a little white ceramic urn wrapped with two gold rosaries. Their names were carved into wood placards, a display her father handmade in honor of them.

Alma had noticed he wasn’t right behind her anymore, and when she found him with his hands behind his back as he inspected the altar, she felt awkward and timid about it. She hadn’t mentioned them at that point in their friendship.

“Uhm,” Alma cleared her throat. “It’s my twin siblings. Leo and Liliana,” she said sheepishly, pointing at the altar. “They were premature.”

Bill could tell she felt uncomfortable. “Oh…” He nodded. “Well, hi Leo and Liliana. Thanks for having me over.” He said, which made her smile before she pulled him into the kitchen.

As the memory passed, Bill finally spoke up.

“Is, uh, that…” he trailed off in thought. “Um, your brother and sister. Where are they?” He asked carefully.

“Half their ashes were buried with my mom. My dad has the other half.” She said it matter-of-factly. “We should ship the picture back home too.”

“Mhmm.” He said, grabbing onto a box and standing upright.

Echo ran around the house, giggling to herself as her parents loaded the back of the SUV. It was a bit surreal to see her daughter traversing around where she had grown herself. Alma entered her bedroom again and found her digging in the last box. In her clenched hand was a photo.

“What are you looking at, girly?” Alma asked, crouching down next to her.

She grabbed her wrist and plucked it out of her grip. It was a photo her mother had taken of Alma and Bill standing side by side on the front porch before they left for prom together. Or so that’s where her parents thought they went. Alma chuckled at the early ‘80s fashion. Her prom dress was teal with a high neck, and there was an obnoxious amount of tulle and ruffles. Bill was in a suit that probably belonged to one of his brothers. It was ill-fitted and wrinkled.

“Is that everything?” Bill asked, walking in.

“Look at this,” Alma said, holding the photo out. “My dress? Looks ridiculous.”

Bill smiled, looking at her in the image, but when he glanced at himself, he cringed a little. He was so skinny, he thought. “I thought it was gorgeous. What do you mean?” He smirked.

“Sure.” Alma playfully rolled her eyes. “We do have a few pictures of us from this time. I just have to go through the boxes to find them. Eventually.” She sighed, placing her hands on her hips.

Bill left with the last box, and Alma took one last look around her old home while Echo held her hand, following. It was a small home. Only big enough for three people. She checked her parents' room. All empty, but she could envision her mother who used to have some heft, frail lying in her bed. She missed her. She wished she didn’t feel so responsible for wrecking her body. It was beyond her control, and she certainly wasn’t the cause, but she couldn’t help but feel some guilt for her existence.

Bill found her, entranced in place again. There wasn’t much they wouldn’t talk about, but Missouri and things of their time there, they just didn’t discuss much. They felt so far removed at this point, that they felt it to be mostly irrelevant. For their sake, it was best that they began to look forward. They were starting fresh and rebuilding in Seattle, and that’s where they wished to keep focus. Being back, of course, they were forced to face it.

“Ready?” He asked. “Or do you need a sec–”

“No...” She cleared her throat. “Let’s go.” She walked into his open arms, and he held her for a moment, rubbing her back to comfort her.

Before leaving completely, Alma took her camera out of the car and decided to take a few pictures of Echo sitting on the porch steps of her childhood home. While Bill took a photo of them together, her old neighbor came outside to see who these strangers were messing about.

She held her hand above her brow to get a better look at them, and that’s when the adults felt her presence.

“Hi, Mrs. Caldwell,” Alma greeted as she got up with her daughter in her arms and stood next to Bill. She grew up babysitting her sons on occasion.

“Oh, Alma, is that you? Oh my goodness! The boys are going to be so thrilled to know that I saw you! They still talk about you,” she lightly chuckled. “And who…” She said, turning her attention to Bill. “Well, I’ll be…” she lightly gasped. “Mhmm. I used to see you sneak into that window, Billy Skarsgard.” She pointed.

“Uh,” Bill nervously scratched the nape of his neck, as if he were finally getting reprimanded for doing that so many years ago. “Thanks for never telling.”

“Ah well. I guess you’re welcome. Now, if her window faced those nosey Richardson's, I don't think you two would be so lucky. And you’ve got a baby too, huh?” She squinted from where she stood on the edge of her property line. “Oh, but that’s right. Your father, Antonio, told me not too long ago when he came to check on the house.”

Alma spoke to her a bit while Bill put Echo back into her car seat. He tried to do it slowly to avoid having to join the conversation, but eventually, he just got in the driver’s seat to wait.

“Yeah, yeah.” Alma nodded impatiently. “Mhmm. Oh, well, that’s good to hear.”

“And he wouldn’t have done so had I not told him to, you know.” Mrs. Caldwell continued yapping.

Bill noticed her glance behind her and shuffled her feet back. “Exactly. Well, we’re actually having dinner with family tonight, so it’s about time we head that way.”

“Oh. Sure, I won’t hold you up.” Alma found that sentiment ironic. “I got a TV dinner calling my name.”

Alma got back into the SUV, looking irritated as she harshly pulled her seatbelt on. “Why the hell did you leave me?”

“She was talking too much.” He laughed.

Once on the road, they drove around the neighborhood in silence, just listening to their daughter babbling to herself. His brother lived in his old home with his family, and Alma was worried about how he’d feel about being in that environment. He had stayed there just last year, and all he ever said was that would be the last time he’d ever do that, and he didn’t elaborate further. Alma didn’t dig because she completely understood it wasn’t so nice to go to places that held ill memories. He was tense, rubbing the side of his jaw with his knuckles, when he pulled up to the curb.

“It’s different,” Bill sighed, but she was glad he spoke up. “It doesn’t really look as it did when there were a bunch of guys under one roof. Lorna adds a woman’s touch to the place.”

Alma nodded. “Mhmm.”

“We’ll be in the backyard mostly anyway.” He exited the car to open Alma’s door for her.

Alma offered to unload their child and the baby backpack herself and let him go first on his own. He smoothed down the front of his black shirt, didn’t even bother knocking, and just walked right in. He didn’t know what possessed him to do that—maybe because that’s how he always entered his old home. Or he just wanted to avoid standing on the porch waiting for someone to answer while he stood with his nerves.

“The hell?!” He heard from the kitchen. “Oh shit,” Gustaf said, peering out from the kitchen. “It’s my home now, you can’t knock?” The brothers hugged each other, laughing.

“You look good, brother,” Gustaf said, patting his little brother's bicep. “And what? No Alma? Echo? Something happen?” He asked, concerned.

Bill looked behind himself and saw them coming up the pathway through the screen door. “One second,” he said, turning on his heel to open the door for them.

Alma walked in, and Bill took hold of their child. His old home had been finally blessed by a woman’s touch, indeed. There was a nice abstract-patterned rug, nice end tables, and a couch without deep dips caused by springs that had just simply given out. It looked lived-in, humble, and, most importantly, much cleaner than the half-assed job men called cleaning.

Alma was greeted by Gustaf with a hug as well. He was dressed simply in a clean white shirt with a brown button down over it and wearing a gray newsboy cap.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said with a sympathetic smile, as it was their first time seeing each other since her mother’s funeral.

“Yeah. Thanks. Uhm,” she slightly stepped away to let Bill approach with their child. “This is Echo.”

Gustaf chuckled a bit at the scene before him. It was a bit surreal to see his kid brother this way, but he was very happy to see it. He reached out for her, and Bill had to loosen her grip on his black shirt, as now she was feeling a little timid. Bill quickly explained who he was to his daughter, and while he didn’t quite know if she understood, her nervousness seemed to fade a bit.

“Hello,” Gustaf said to her once in his arms. “You don’t think me and your dad look alike?” He playfully asked, touching her full, rosy cheek. Echo side-eyed him skeptically.

“She’s not this shy, really,” Alma assured.

“She gauges people.” Bill lightly chuckled.

“I see.” He chuckled, just as Echo reached to touch his facial hair.

Bill had been giving himself a clean shave since Echo startled his mustache off months ago. Seeing her touch his brother's facial hair made him want to grow his back. Especially when his brother held her hand to his cheek to help her pet it, which made her smile.

“She’s precious,” Gustaf said, returning his attention to the parents. “Good job, Alma. And, I guess, you too.” He winked at Bill.

“Mhmm,” Bill smirked.

“Everyone’s in the backyard. She can play with the kids, and the food is almost done.” He said, leading them out, still holding his niece. However, she turned her head over his shoulder to ensure that her parents were following.

They ate burgers, and the kids had their share of hotdogs and chips. Gustaf was stepfather to Lorna’s children. The oldest is Gracie, at ten years old; Tatum, her son, at seven; and Courtland, at six. It was the little boy who Alma did a brief double take when meeting. The siblings all looked alike, as you would suspect, but his eyes were so distinct. Light blue, while his sisters were brown. Even his hair was lighter than theirs, but when meeting Lorna, she had light features and figured he took up after her.

Echo was still being shy, opting to stay close to her parents. She was sitting in Alma’s lap, curiously watching the children kick a soccer ball around with each other. Alma set down her cup of boxed wine that Lorna had given her in an old coffee mug and brushed the baby hairs on her daughter's head down.

“Go play.” She said, pulling her daughter's thumb from her mouth. “I know you want to.”

Echo smirked and then looked at her father for reassurance, and he winked at her with a nod.

“I go play, mama.” She said, shuffling her bottom to get down.

Her girl cousins seemed excited that the little girl had joined, as they found her cute in the little pink romper she wore with matching pink Converse and lace ruffle socks. The little boy kicked the ball towards them, which narrowly missed Echo. Gracie, the oldest, lightly reprimanded him and told him to watch out. Which, Gustaf, said something to him and he apologized.

The adults spoke, updating each other about their lives. The conversations split, and the women talked about current pop culture news. Lorna seemed not to be too bad. Bill didn’t really care for her much, but Alma understood his feelings. On occasion, she liked to bail for weeks at a time. Leaving his brother, Gustaf, with her kids without so much as a phone call to ask if they were okay. And when he married her, she remembered how pissed Bill was. Saying how stupid it was, and at the time, Alma agreed. However, she learned there were stupider things people would do for love.

Gustaf and Bill got up from the table and said they’d take the leftover food back inside. Alma knew they just wanted an opportunity to speak privately. Bill squeezed her shoulder and kissed her before leaving.

“Where do you want these?” Bill asked, holding a tub of store-bought potato salad and a foil pan of charred hotdogs.

“Just leave them on the counter.” Gustaf shrugged as he looked in the fridge for a beer. “Actually, hand me the potato salad, but you can leave the rest.”

Exchanging the tub for two beers, he twisted the caps off and handed one to his brother. Bill looked at the bottle, unfamiliar with the brand.

“What the hell is this?”

“Non-alcoholic.”

“Oh, fuck. I forgot.”

“It’s alright.” He spoke unbothered. “So,” he said, leaning on the opposite counter. “You were talking about the record shop and stuff. What about the strip club? Are you really gonna go back and forth? Or are you finally going to let the shit go?”

“Fuck sake,” Bill grumbled. “Give me some of that,” he pointed at the boxed wine resting on the counter.

He had expected his brother to bring this up, but he’d thought he’d segue to it with more ease. Gustaf never liked that his brother was running a fringe establishment. He just felt that Bill was too good for it, that it didn’t necessarily fit with his spirit.

Gustaf laughed. “Just talk, man.”

“Yeah. I’m going back and forth. The club… You know I don’t like to brag.”

“Just talk.” He assured, taking a sip of his non-alcoholic beer.

Bill took a sip of his too as a form of pause before speaking. “I make a shit ton of money at the club to fully let it go like that. Right now, I’m spending a lot of fucking money. It’s the shop, and we’re looking for a house right now. It’s not that we’d be without, but I have to balance my… books.”

“Mhmm. And are you still selling?”

Bill raised a brow at him. “I’m not selling it.”

“Fuck, Bill! It’s just the same, no?”

“It’s not. It’s completely different.”

“It’s that, and then the girls sucking dick in VIP too. It’s just–”

“No, no.” Bill shook his head. “Your information is years old. That’s not how it is at all anymore. I have my business partner; she put an end to some of the shit I let slide.”

“But it’s the morality of it all, too.”

“Really? The morality?” Bill scoffed. “I know the hang-ups people have about gentlemen's clubs. I didn’t start running it yesterday. It’s all bullshit.”

“Okay, okay.” Gustaf raised his hand defensively. “I’m not trying to question you. I know it pisses you off. But.”

“But?” He spat.

“Will you let me talk?” Bill relaxed his shoulders and let him proceed. “I only brought it up because I was just wondering.” He paused, seemingly trying to choose his words well. “Since you’ve been in Seattle now. I noticed you’re happier, especially compared to last year. You were depressed.”

“I wasn’t depressed.” He said it defensively.

“You seemed very down, Bill. Just mopey. In a funk.”

“I wasn’t depressed.” He said sharply.

“Then what were you? Because you weren’t happy.”

Bill was silent for a moment, his gaze down in thought. He felt himself becoming upset and swallowed hard. “I-I was fucking pissed.” He admitted. “I was fucking…” he bit his lip. “I was just so fucking angry. I don’t like myself. I had fucked my life up. I had pushed Alma away so far that she moved to the opposite coast of the country. I thought that by succeeding in that, I would have proven a point to myself. But when it did, I was so fucking sick to my stomach. It was bad. I was so bad that-that she kept my kid away…” he took in a sharp breath from his flaring nostrils and winced a bit. “And she tells me all the time. All the time,” he stressed. “That it wasn’t me. That I wasn’t the reason. But I can’t help the fucking guilt I feel.”

“Because of… how you treated her?” Gustaf said with a sympathetic expression on his face, trying to understand. Bill nodded as he squeezed his eyes shut when they stung with tears. “But Bill…” He paused, trying to be delicate with his words. “Look. I don’t know what happened between you two, okay? Even if you explained it to me, it would only be you two who would ever understand it. But keeping Echo away… have you really forgiven her for that?”

“Yes. Yeah.” He nodded. “It just… I know why she did it. And that’s something I can’t explain to you. It wasn’t because of me, but it just doesn’t feel good. I can’t help but feel like it was because of me.” He admitted as he scratched the side of his ear.

“Well no. But right now, is everything okay between you?” Bill responded with a nod. “Okay…” He paused to take a sip and to let feelings simmer down. “But all that shit you said about yourself. Alma doesn’t think that. Do you think she would be here right now if she did?”

“I don’t know.” He swallowed.

“You know. You tell me you want to marry her. If you thought she’d say no, you wouldn’t even bother, would you?”

Bill slightly smirked through a small sigh. “Yeah. No,” he said, rubbing his arm to soothe himself, feeling a bit embarrassed. He couldn’t explain himself well, and the gaps just made everything he said out loud much worse. “Sorry, bring all that up. I’m… just stressed out a little.” He peered around the kitchen and looked into the living room past the threshold. He could picture himself and Alma on the old couch as teenagers. With his arm around her as they watched what she would call, “boy movies”. “The journey here,” he continued. “Has just been making me feel fucking weird.” He admitted. “Alma did not want to come, and I didn’t either. You know, we didn’t start out so shitty. Us two. At the club, fuck,” he sighed in resignation. “We were hell. To each other, to other people.”

“Mhmm. But that life you two had in New York, that’s not the case anymore, though. Right?” Gustaf said, hoping he was right.

“Yeah… we’re good. It’s just this place. Literally, this place,” Bill said, pointing toward the floor. He hadn’t expected the emotions he felt to bubble up, and he even felt he’d spoken irrationally. While he could speak to Alma about anything, there were just some feelings he couldn’t quite articulate to her. “How the hell do you even stand it?”

“Shit…” Gustaf let out a huff. “Well, we’re in two different tax brackets. I got lucky that Alex fucked off to St. Louis to dodge child support, so I could have at it.”

Bill scratched his head, feeling a little remorseful for even complaining about his bullshit. It felt like he was lamenting champagne problems in comparison.

“Don’t look like that.” His brother rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his beer. “It is what it is. One of us had to break out of this shit. Sometimes… I think we’re just cursed.” He paused in thought, rubbing his mouth, looking a bit tense. “Look, I know you saw Tate out there.” He gestured.

“Yeah?” Bill questioned because the change of subject felt so off.

“I noticed that Alma noticed him. And if I don’t tell you, she’s going to mention her speculation. Honestly, I’m surprised you never noticed something the last time you were here. But you also seemed to be too focused on leaving as fast as you could then.”

Bill thought he stood out then, but at that time, kids just weren’t interesting enough for him to want to investigate. In fairness, he still had the same sentiment, but his daughter was excluded from that.

“What is it?”

“He’s Alex’s kid. He’s our nephew.”

Bill’s brows pulled together as he stood there silently as if there were a punchline coming. “For real?”

“Well, at least one of however many he has, but yeah.”

“You knew the whole time? Or?”

“I met the kids, maybe six months in. And well, when I met him… I just knew. I heard stuff about Lorna, but yeah, Alex got to her.”

“But the little girl?”

“Her ex-husbands.” He pursed his lips.

“So. She cheated,” Bill hushed.

Gustaf grimaced a bit because he didn’t like that aspect of the situation. “Mhmm.”

“Damn... I-I don’t know what to say?” He bit his lip.

“I know you’re not her biggest fan, but the kids are innocent in all of it. They all are. I love her.” He shrugged. “And at the very least, you know she’s family too. And he’s family.”

Bill almost scoffed, but he diverted it into clearing his throat. “Okay.” He nodded. “Yeah. So we're both just fucked up.”

“Not me! I’m the most virtuous.” He said, making Bill laugh.

Fireflies began to emerge on the shadowed edges of the yard as the women watched the children play during the sunset. Echo was hugging the soccer ball and ran it over to Courtland since she didn’t feel like her kicks gave enough power to drive the ball across the grass.

“Could I take some pictures of them?” Alma asked, picking up her camera from the center of the table.

“Oh, sure. That’s a really nice camera. You do the concert photography, right?” Lorna asked, following her, treading barefoot. She was wearing a buttoned-up jean vest and matching jeans.

“Yeah.” Alma nodded. “Oh, you all just keep playing,” she said when she noticed the children gathering. “Makes for better pictures.” She winked at Gracie, who looked the most intrigued.

Alma crouched down and took snapshots of the kids. She was framing them and zooming in on others. In the viewfinder, she had Tatum in the frame and took a shot of him amid laughter. She paused momentarily, pretending to fiddle with settings on her camera, as Lorna was next to her. His dimples, gap-tooth smile, and the way his ocean blue eyes squinted. It just felt eerie. Soon, Gracie slowly made her way next to Alma, watching her take photos.

“I have my instant film camera,” she said, standing upright. “Do you want to take a few pictures with that?”

Gracie smiled excitedly. “Please?”

“Of course.”

They walked back to the table where the Polaroid sat, and Alma showed her what button to press while taking a photo of Gracie with it. The women sat down, and when Alma passed the camera to her, Gracie nervously let it slip from her hands.

“Damn it, Gracie!” Lorna scolded.

“I’m sorry,” Gracie said regretfully as she quickly picked it up.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Alma assured her.

“Here you go. I’m sorry,” Gracie said, trying to wipe dirt and blades of grass from it as she tried to pass the camera back.

“Take a picture of me,” Alma asked her. “It’ll work fine. It’s alright.” She encouraged.

Gracie sheepishly held the camera to her face, and Alma could still sense her trepidation.

“Should I pose?” She asked playfully. “Maybe like this?” She placed a flat hand under her chin, crossed her eyes, and stuck her tongue out to the side.

Gracie snapped a photo as she giggled. The film ejected from the camera, and the girl excitedly pulled it out.

“See! It still works fine. You’re supposed to leave these alone to develop instead of shaking them. But that's boring, isn't it? You can leave this though, so you can go take photos out there,” she nodded toward the yard.

“Sorry about that,” Lorna said, taking a sip of her wine. “She’s a bit clumsy. You’re really good with kids.” She had to admit.

“Eh?” Alma lightly shrugged. “I just have a lot of experience serving drunks.”

Lorna laughed. “Right! You bartended at the strip club.”

“Yeah.” Alma nodded, silently hoping the kids weren’t overhearing. “And I bar-backed for a time in St. Louis before I moved to New York.”

“Oh, so you’ve always liked the nightlife, then.”

“Mm. I guess it calls to me. Like a big neon sign beckoning me.” She lightly laughed.

“I guess I can figure that you didn’t mind that your boyfriend worked in a place like that? I don’t think I could handle that shit. Wandering eyes on tons of boobs, you know.”

“Uhm,” Alma tilted her head. She didn’t feel up for where this conversation could lead, so she just chose to lean into humor. “I mean, I looked too.”

Lorna laughed. “Well, how could you not? I suppose it’s also never boring.”

“Definitely not.” Alma raised her brows.

Lorna noticed that Alma didn’t seem all too interested in talking about the club. She was sure she'd heard and received a lot of questions about her old profession. She’s heard Gustaf speak about a few of their funny club stories, but to her, it just sounded like two 20-somethings who just refused to grow up. However, seeing them together for the first time, they seemed so removed from her perceived interpretation of them. In a way, she found them to be a little snobbish, but she was just feeling insecure. Seeing Alma’s nice clothes and her jewelry kind of made her shrink. Even from what she knew about the cushier life that Bill provided, it made her a bit envious. There was a small, nagging voice in the back of her subconscious telling her she may have chosen the wrong brother, but she internally shushed it away. Gustaf was a good man, but he was also the safe choice.

Shortly, her husband and Bill had finally emerged from the house with unlit cigarettes perched between their lips, talking out the sides of their mouths, and chuckling. Bill noticed Alma looking past Lorna as she spoke at the rain clouds moving in on the town, then focusing back on what she was saying and laughing politely. He could tell she was a little bored.

“Looks like you two brought the rain,” Gustaf said, taking a seat next to Lorna and lighting his cigarette.

As Bill lit his, he noticed a corner of the table covered with Polaroids of random shots. The grass and children's legs were off-center in the frame, along with a photo of the blue sky, a washed-out photo, and a photo of his daughter holding the soccer ball, but it was out of focus. Alma explained that she let the kids play with the camera, but he could tell. He pointed at the silly photo of Alma and she just smirked. The adults spoke a bit more as they played a card game. However, it was Bill and Alma answering their curious questions about Seattle. Soon Echo came walking over, tiredly rubbing her eyes, looking a bit pouty.

“You tired?” Bill asked her, laying his hand of cards down.

“No,” Echo said stubbornly, but her little arms reached for him to be picked up.

He gladly picked her up and sat her facing forward on his lap. Her face was covered with random streaks of dirt, which he tried to rub away with a lightly used napkin. It helped, but her cheeks remained stained. She yawned loudly and then rested along his torso.

Adults began to wrap up their game and conversation as the heavy clouds were advancing upon them and threatening to unleash rain. They were inside, inching out the front door after thanking Gustaf and Lorna for having them and saying their obligatory, 'see you later’ both knowing there wouldn’t be one. They hoped that they’d consider visiting them in Washington after telling them all about it.

“Wait a second,” Gustaf said, walking into the dining room and grabbing a shoebox from the top of a dish cabinet. “Uhm, Bill told me about your photography, and I gathered some old pictures I could find of him.” He said, passing the box to Alma.

“What?” Bill said, but he was ignored.

“It’s just that I’m sure you’ll know how to take care of them. So Echo could see them someday too.”

“Oh. Thank you,” Alma smiled at him appreciatively.

Gustaf thought she’d take a look inside, but she just tucked the box under her arm and saw her and Bill exchange a look only they could decipher. Alma would leave it up to Bill to open it whenever he felt ready to. Bill could imagine the few photos that existed inside the shoebox, as he had seen them long ago, but he didn’t feel the need to reminisce at this point in his life.

As they drove on the highway back to the hotel in Springfield, the rain was coming down. It wasn’t a harsh rain but rather a nice, fresh summer shower. Maybe one of the last before the cold fall showers to come. It felt comforting to Bill, and if he were alone, it would be nice to cruise in it. Meanwhile, Alma had her thighs tightly pressed together, feeling as if her bladder might explode. She had been holding her pee much too long, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask to use the bathroom. She didn’t feel comfortable being inside Bill’s old home alone. Even if she asked him to accompany her, she felt like it would just look like an excuse for them to debrief or talk shit in the bathroom. The precipitation wasn’t helping her situation.

"Oh, my god. Are we almost there?” She anxiously rubbed her forehead.

Bill glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to pee.” She closed her eyes to distract herself, but the pitter-patter of the rain dinging on the body of the SUV was preventing it.

Bill wanted to ask her why the hell didn’t she go at the house, but he knew it would be useless. If he felt uncomfortable there, certainly she did too. “One more exit.” He ultimately told her.

Bill entered the hotel room with Echo in his arms, asleep, and draped with one of his light jackets to protect her from the rain. The bathroom door was closed when he walked past it. He had dropped Alma off at the entrance, and she jogged back to the room alone to relieve herself. Bill had changed Echo as she whined, but she settled once dressed in her pajamas and warmly tucked into bed. The sound of the shower being turned on caught his attention while he tried to gently wipe his daughter's stained face with a baby wipe as she slept.

He turned his head towards the closed bathroom door, and then he noticed Alma’s luggage was open and rummaged through in haste.

He got up and lightly tapped the bathroom door. “Alma?”

“Yeah?”

He turned the knob and entered. Her back was turned towards him as she washed her hair in the shower. He started to take his clothes off without a thought, just instinct. As he did so, he noticed Alma’s panties by the sink. They were cold and wet.

“Did you piss yourself?” He lightly chuckled.

She turned her head, wringing out the last remnants of shampoo suds from her hair. “No,” she rolled her eyes at him as they spoke through the bathroom mirror's reflection. “I started my period, too.”

“Oh.” He raised his brows.

“Such bullshit!” She grumbled with irritation.

She had debated on whether she should skip the placebos in her birth control pack and start a new one, especially since she’d be traveling, but she chose not to. After every one of his visits she’d make sure she was still having one, and this last month she needed to know for sure. Admittedly, she had a bit of paranoia over it. They hadn’t had a serious discussion about expanding their family yet, but there was just so much going on, falling pregnant just did not seem ideal at this point.

“Mhmm,” he said, stepping into the shower and wrapping his arms around her.

…

They were in bed with heavy eyes, feeling much better as they both helped release some tension in their bodies. They both assumed it would be a rather sexless trip, as there wouldn’t be any semblance of privacy between them. Even if they couldn’t drag it out as they would like, Bill just wanted to be close to her, even if for a short time.

Alma shifted some to get comfortable on the firm mattress and held onto his hand since Echo was between them. She looked up at him, still leaning against the headboard, seemingly looking tired as he watched late-night TV.

His chest rose as he took a deep breath. “I’ll turn it down some.” He said, feeling her gaze on him.

“Mm. It’s fine.” She said, as the TV was already at a low volume because of Echo. “Are you… fine?” She asked carefully because, of course, they were both feeling not too great, being in Missouri. They wouldn’t be fine until they left.

Bill peered down at her in thought. “Yeah. It’s just Gustaf told me something today that was a little, eh.” He said lightly, grimacing and tugging at his ear uncomfortably.

“Like?”

Bill paused, with an almost amused yet incredulous look on his face. “You noticed the boy, right? Tatum?”

“Mhmm.”

“He doesn’t look familiar? He’s my nephew. Blood related through Alex.”

“No fucking way!” She said, in a harsh whisper, in disbelief. “His eyes!”

“Just like his,” Bill nodded in agreement.

“Well. Explain to me what he said.” She said eagerly.

Bill told her just as Gustaf laid it down to him in the kitchen, and was left scratching her head about it too. She also found it odd that Gustaf had somehow gotten the short end of the stick concerning women. However, even if Lorna behaved the way she did, she was also one of the better picks in town worth putting up with.

“It’s whatever, I suppose,” Bill resigned. “But on the drive, I was thinking that if they have a kid… like we might be trash but not hillbilly trash!”

Alma put her hand to her mouth to keep her laughter at bay. “Oh god. I don’t think that’s something to worry about,” she chuckled. “She told me she got her tubes tied.”

“The smartest thing she’s ever done,” Bill chuckled. “Why the hell did she bring that up?”

“Eh, just did when we were talking,” Alma said dismissively. “Girl shit. But wow. Strathburg is way too small!” She yawned.

“Sleep,” he said, pulling the blanket up to her shoulder and taking hold of her hand underneath the covers. “We’re seeing your dad tomorrow,” he playfully taunted.

“Yeah. Luckily, the only cousins Echo has there are chickens.”

#my bill writings #bill skarsgard #aos #aos neon #avenue of sins

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secretlythepits · 5 months ago

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4 Months or 2 Years

When my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, she was told she had 4 months to live. She had 11 masses in her brain. She tried full brain radiation but it didn’t have much of an effect. When we saw her oncologist, we expected a transfer to hospice.

Instead she threw out chemo and said maybe Mom could live for 2 more years. Mom never wanted chemo because she had witnessed its brutality on her brother and sister. We questioned quality of life and her oncologist spoke about her patient who just called her from a trip to California.

We left the appointment dumbfounded and went to a cafe to discuss it over sale and Nanaimo bars. We had already literally settled everything up with the funeral parlor. We had accepted the hard truth. At lunch Mom decided to try chemo, but her heart wasn’t in it. I think she felt like she had to for her girls. It just didn’t feel right, but what do you do with that information? You can’t crumple 2 years into a ball and make a basket in the trash can.

She did one round. It was awful. That’s not what this post is about. She died 4 months from her diagnosis. I think the 2 years was never really on the table. Don’t let anyone tell you hope is always a good thing. It can wield tremendous cruelty through delusion.

My mother died 7 hours before I was getting on a plane to take over her care. There are more than medical decisions that get made based on what an oncologist says. For 4 months, I could stay the whole time. I wanted to. I planned to. But 2 years was a different story. My kids couldn’t be away from their dad for that long. My sister had to work and care for her family too. My sister and I decided to rotate care. I started homeschooling my kids so we could be wherever whenever.

4 months or 2 years?

You make different decisions. Financial decisions. Logistical decisions. Communication decisions.

I have an idea of my husband’s timeline, but nothing definitive. There’s a giant question mark about immunotherapy that is unknowable from the onset. There are strong statistical probabilities.

This is what I’m wresting with now and I’ll use my mother’s timelines for a framework. To be clear, these are not my husband’s timeline projections, but the idea is the same. Is the end sooner or later?

Do I speak up about issues in our marriage and push for my needs?

4 Months:

No. Forgive and let go. Focus on the fundamental love and don’t add an emotional burden to him. I could do this easily in this time frame.

2 Years:

Yes. That’s too long to let hurt fester. It will bubble up anyway. There’s also a real possibility of resolving some or all of it, which would be amazing. I cannot suppress my feelings for years. I would be consumed with anger and resentment.

Do I put my goals on the back burner to prioritize his?

4 Months:

Yes. I will have more time and his is finite. Also, I’d want to maximize our time together.

2 Years:

No. I can give up some but not all. What if 2 years is 3 years or 4? I am coming off of a 3 1/2 year brain infection. I lost so much time. Then I immediately had to support his first cancer journey. And before all that, it was my mom dying. I’ve had nonstop emergencies for 6 years and I clawed my way from the edge of death. I can’t just turn over all my next years. My time is finite too.

But here’s the tricky part. He will only get worse. So, although it makes sense to be tending to him now as this is new and we are figuring things out, I might miss the only realistic opportunity I have to keep my life from being swallowed up by caregiving. The only certainty I know is that later will be worse.

How much time do I devote to building my finances?

Ah, maybe these are the same for both timelines. I’m struggling with being present to the moments and bucking down to focus on providing. Do I continue building my business, the dream I worked so hard for, that got dashed so many times these last 6 years? Or do I chuck it, take some classes to get a certification that would lead to a job I would hate, but would provide a stable income? He could have an emergency and no longer work at any moment. But, that’s also unlikely. Arg!

I hate that I am back in this 4 months or 2 years place. It was torture for me. I remember people telling me I couldn’t make a wrong choice.

I felt like I couldn’t make a right one and it paralyzed me.

Now that I think about it, in the end, I decided to make the choice that was best for me. The toxicity of extended family dynamics was too much for me. I decided mom made her choices (smoking) and I had an equal right to make mine (removing myself from a situation that unhinged me). Mom also wanted space to process after the onslaught of visitors. She needed some solitude. So I left and went home to calm down and recenter myself in my life and in the family I created. Rotating her care was practical but also gave me breathing room that I needed. I could have and would have stayed if we knew it was just 4 months, but I can’t deny that something really important happened to me when I took that break. I think I would have broken without it.

This is stream of consciousness so I didn’t know I’d land on the paragraph above. I just wanted to say what I was trying to figure out, what was hurting my heart. But now I think I landed on a compass. And it rings true because I feel my North Star blinking.

I have to continue to live my own life.

I always knew that. Always know that. The reason that truth felt out of reach is all the social conditioning around being a support. Women are expected to give up everything to be a caregiver, while one of the predictors of imminent divorce is a wife’s serious diagnosis. I am experiencing a personal crisis that exists within the context of our societal dynamic and it would be disingenuous to pretend I was immune to the influences of the patriarchy. And the thing is, I know what to do. It’s more of fear of judgement for doing what I know is right.

Two truths exist simultaneously:

I want to take care of him. I really, really do.

I want to take care of myself. I really, really do.

Why does one of those feel like a mandate and the other a source of guilt? Why the dichotomy?

Why is love for myself always supposed to be second place?

One thing is for sure: with 2 dead parents, a dying spouse, and kids to look after, nobody is going to take care of me

but me.

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cult-of-the-eye · 1 year ago

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What experience I would give as a statement to Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London? Statement fucking begins...

Summer after GCSEs, whole fam picks up and goes to India for 3 weeks

Listen we are hubristic. We literally go from Britain to Turkey to Delhi airport, to a different airport, to Banaras in a taxi, to Siliguri in a sleeper train, to Kalimpong in a car, back to Siliguri in a van, then to Kolkata in a sleeper bus, to Dhakha, Bangladesh by plane, to my grandparents place in Sylhet by car, then back to Dhakha, then back to Delhi, then back to Turkey and then back to Britain.

Tell me we didn't have at least one entity on our side.

None of us got ill. We had a 6 yr old with us. She didn't complain one bit. I'm 100% sure I blacked out for the majority of it. No other explanation than paranormal.

Those sales assistants in shops have to be fucking avatars of the web or something the way they fucking smile and you until you've blinked and you've bought 3 lehengas and she's like very good ma'am

I met my grandma's sister who looks exactly like my grandma, speaks the exact same way, acts the exact same way. It was so uncanny I could've sworn she just was her. Probably very normal explanation (genetics) but we can never be sure.

I made friends with a hand sized spider in a bathroom by singing "Mr spider, please don't kill me" in the tune of Mr sandman to it every day. It disappeared on the last day. (giving spiral)

I got myself an Indian accent. I am not Indian. (Most of my family is from Bangladesh, I was born there) I am not good at accents. I'm not sure how this transpired (could be some elaborate sociolinguistics explanation but I'm gonna go with paranormal)

We went on a massive family day out with cousins to a river near the mountains and we all had a great time until this little menace of a cousin literally got carried away by a current and we were terrified until one of my uncles literally grabbed him by the leg and yanked him out right before he would've gotten completely carried away. I don't think that's pure luck, personally.

My aunts staged an intervention for me about my posture (Not supernatural, Im just salty)

My dad successfully convinced some strangers who sat next to him on the plane that the reason me and my siblings spoke such good English was that we went to an English medium school. When pressed, he came up with the most elaborate story ever. He gave them a random school we went to, told them we were his boss' kids and he was taking us home, bullshitted a company and then when one of them went oh my dad is a higher up in that company, he says oh didn't he retire recently and the guy goes yeah he did! We are completely oblivious of this story, until he leans over and tells us not to call him dad for the rest of the plane journey. If that's not fucking Stranger behaviour then what is.

We get home, exhausted out of our minds and we realise we can't find our fucking front door key. We pile into the back garden and proceed to search through the entirety of our bags, trouser pockets, pockets within bags, we're all on the verge of tears, I'm catatonic, my little sister has picked up a stick and is slowly peeling it, my other sister is the only one actually looking and my dad is staring at the luggage, as if it had grown legs and was doing a little dance right before his eyes. We do find the keys after 20 minutes. We never mention this again. That's fucking paranormal shit right there don't even try to convince me otherwise. Michael the distortion was fucking with us.

Statement ends... (Although that's definitely not even half the shit that happened)

Watch Jonathan "Jarchivist" Sims crumble beneath my experiences. Hes so bamboozled that he forgets to try and discredit me. I bring him a packet of laddoos and some aachar.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #jarchivist #rambles #statement begins #statement ends #indian jonathan sims #it wasnt scary per se #but it would be one of those statements you come out of afterwards like what the fuck #what the fuck just happened

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enkisstories · 5 days ago

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That evening John caught Daniel making mac 'n cheese from whatever imaginary ingredients were available in the plane they were inhabiting.

John: "I'm not hungry, but I apprecciate the gesture nonetheless!"

Daniel: "Pfft! You will make your own sandwiches from now on. This is for me!"

John: "But don't you, as an android, need to eat even less than a ghost?"

Daniel: "Android-ghost. I thought I was above human needs, but then shit happened. Literally. It was gross!"

John: "Yeah, I noticed. But it makes sense, you know? We still are not back in pure soul form, there is an ectoplasmatic shell around us. And that one is subject to the usual wear and tear. It needs fuel and will shed waste."

John: "Anything else that happened today? C'mon, tell me about your day!"

Daniel: "Really?"

John: "Really! We're a family, I got that now."

Daniel: "Not just because you have a crush on me?"

John: "Erm..."

Daniel: "I found a tarot card lying on the ground. It basically told me that I'm standing between light and darkness, but not in the way of needing to decide. This mixed nature seems to be a good thing for me."

Daniel: "Then I happened upon the ghost of a girl. She was sitting in a puddle of what I believed where her own tears next to her tombstone. The inscription said she drowned, though, and that she had been a prankster in life."

Daniel: "Well, and that checked out. Don't ask me how, but I ran away for my very unlife. So I thought, you, as a father, would probably have a better rapport with the girl? Her name is Edith."

John: "Let me think... Are you talking to the man who got an android to deal with the parenting difficulties in his place?"

Daniel: "Oh, right. Are you good for anything at all?"

John: "You won't believe it, I'm already forging business contacts left and right in the spirit world! There's an artifact salesman..."

Daniel: "John!!! If somebody offers you a deal, they are most likely after your soul! And we ARE our souls, so selling yours basically means eternal slavery!"

John: "Oh... I'll be careful, then!"

At this point the Phillips remembered that there were two more ghosts haunting this apartment, the officers Wilson and Deckart. Asked about little pranksters, they replied in unision: "Speak no further! The Renegades are whom you'll want! If anybody can give the ghost girl a run for her money, then Max Villareal and their gang!"

John: "Alright. Looks like Daniel has found his soul journey quest. He will enlist this gang to help him appease the angry ghost girl, while I go look for my dead androids."

"What about Tony and me?" Marlon wanted to ask, but reconsidered. As police officers, he and his partner were something like useful npc to this man, not persons in their own right, who had as complex lifes as John and their own soul journey to ponder. That much the duo had already learned about John Phillips.

#sims 4 life and death #daniel pl600 #dbh daniel #dbh john phillips #sims 4 #simblr

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selunesfavouriteprincess · 2 months ago

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4, 9, 24 for whichever tav you feel like!

Thank you so much for enabling me to talk about my Tavs 🙏🙏

I’m gonna answer these about Xurith, my Drow monk who romanced Lae’zel, and who will be making several appearances in my upcoming kinktober if I ever finish writing them oops

4. What would your Tav’s romance scenes look like? How many would they have?

Xurith is uhhhhhh a bit of an idiot when it comes to romance, and this is why she romanced Lae’zel and not Shadowheart; Lae came up to her and declared her interest very clearly and obviously. Which worked on her.

So if she was an npc being romanced you’d have to be the one to approach her. Your approval would need to be fair for her first romance scene and she would be so down to make out sloppy style, she has no hang-ups over becoming physical early in the relationship. She won’t actively progress it any further without prompting but if the player asks about taking it further she’s very positive about it.

Her second romance scene would be triggered towards the end of act 2, but you'd have to actively be camping at Last Light to trigger it. She’d be antsy and itching to make some sort of progress in the quests and at night she comes over and asks to share your bedroll (in a cuddling way, not a sex way). You are going to be the big spoon whether you want to or not. This is the scene where she shares her worries about the journey with you, and she cries for the first time in years. After the player comforts her you both fall asleep/trance, and in the morning Xurith (very uncharacteristically shyly) asks if they’re official now or something. If the player says yes she goes oh FUCK YES and asks to kiss you right away.

Her third romance scene is in the city in act 3. There’s a soft sex scene and then pillow talk about what you want to do after the netherbrain is defeated. She says she never wants to go back to the Underdark again; if your character is an Underdark dweller, you can choose if they want to say they’ll stay with her or that they want to go back home. If you say they’ll go back home she’ll tell you that she won’t go back, and she’ll enjoy this relationship while it lasts but she won’t follow you back down there. If you want to stay together in Faerun/go to the Astral Plane as a gith then she says she’ll be with you for as long as you’ll have her. If you say “That’s forever” then she’ll smile and say “Forever is a big promise. Are you sure you’ll still want me in fifty years?” Of course the correct dialogue response here is “There’s not a doubt in my mind.” She kisses you and says “Nor mine.”

9. What’s the significance behind your Tav’s name?

So Xurith is a name I actually just took from a drow name generator without much thought to it (she was my second ever Tav so I didn’t put loads of thought into her name like I do now), so I just looked to see if I could find the meaning. The closest I could put together from the drow name guide of prefixes and suffixes was Xullithra which means crimson dragon, which is one of the most accidentally brilliant coincidences I could’ve had for a character romancing Lae’zel.

(Also after this it’s now my hc that she was actually named Xullithra but because she lost her family so young she couldn’t pronounce her name properly, and so when the monks took her in off the street they asked her her name and she said Xuwifuh in her little baby voice and they thought she said Xurith. So that became her name from then on).

24. What does your Tav consider to be their own biggest character flaw?

She’s somewhat absent-minded, very impulsive and doesn’t think her words through before saying them. In an alternate version of events she argued with Vlaakith at the crèche long enough to get the whole party disintegrated. She’s also literally a monk so mindfulness and inaction have been drilled into her from a young age, but she just can’t seem to handle her free spirit and impulsivity. The Mother in charge of the monastery tried so hard to calm it, got her meditating for hours and hours a day, tried positive and negative reinforcement, and eventually came to the conclusion that she was a lost cause. The monks were singing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Xurith every single day at the monastery is what I’m saying. The thing is, it’s not necessarily her worst quality - it’s just what she’s been taught is her worst quality

#Tav: Xurith #tysm I love to talk about my Tavs and Xurith is very special to me she’s such a girlfailure

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checkoutmybookshelf · 6 months ago

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The Consequences of Getting Lightly Stabbed

I have been WAITING to get the hardcopies of the re-releases of this fabulous series to do individual reviews of each book, because this series is my ultimate comfort series. This series hits a ton of my favorite points. It is urban fantasy, does some amazing things with both Irish and Native American lore, has a fabulous slow burn romance, has GARRISON MATTHEW MULDOON, and a protagonist with attitude. It also has one of the strongest writer voices ever. Literally every CE Murphy book SOUNDS like a CE Murphy book, but without compromising the voice of the protagonist. That is a skill that is a hella rare delight. So let me introduce you to Joanne Walker--nee Siobhan Walkingstick--as we talk Urban Shaman.

This is you SPOILER WARNING because this book is too damn good and I want to talk all about it. This is also a CONTENT WARNING for anyone sensitive to novels focusing on cops, because while this series is not entirely uncritical of them, we do spend a lot of time with and around them, and Morrison in particular has idealized being a cop. The book was originally published in 2005, so a LOT has happened since then. Your mileage may vary.

So this series has a bit of a story to it, and if you've been hanging out around my bookshelf for a while, you've seen me mention this series before. It was originally published traditionally starting in 2005. The author had to make a couple of concessions for the series (including relegating a novella to "book 1.5" rather than making it book 2 and a title that she SUPER did not like), but the series did well and its fans love it deeply. I picked it up in...like 2010? Ish? It was early in my undergrad, because I made a dear friend who did not stop talking about this series. So I picked it up, read it, loved it. Fast forward to the 2020s and I believe it was sometime during the pandemic that Murphy got the rights back to this series and decided to rerelease them with new covers, a new order that includes book 1.5 as book 2, and a title change for book 4/5. I tend to be a practical reader; it's rare I collect for titles or special editions. This time though? I made an exception. I want these beauties on my shelf and I want to support this indie rerelease. Also I haven't done a reread of the series in a few years, so this is going to be just a sheer delight for me.

Ok, context having been contextualized, let's jump right into this book.

Joanne Walker is a hot mess. On page one of book one, she is in her mid-twenties, is estranged from a messy relationship with her father and her Cherokee heritage, met her very Irish mother four months ago and buried her days ago, is estranged from her Irish heritage, has lost her job because she overextended her bereavement leave, and is carrying around a metric ton of trauma related to getting pregnant with twins at fifteen and losing one baby shortly after giving birth and giving the other up for adoption shortly after that. And that's literally square one.

I honestly don't know how well I would handle getting fatally stabbed by the god of the Wild Hunt after not sleeping for over 24 hours, but for Joanne, this is just the start of tracking and catching a serial murderer who is killing people who are powerful in or connected to "another plane of existence." It's also the beginning of a new journey for Joanne, because she has power--specifically healing power--and the cost of not dying on a fae blade is learning to use it. She gets help from Marie D'Ambra--who Joanne spots from a plane and briefly rescues from Cernnunous--Coyote, Billy Holliday (a coworker and family friend), and Garrison Matthew Muldoon (Gary; cab driver extraordinaire and kickass septuagenarian sidekick). However, baby shaman (or gwyld, depending on which language you want to use) Joanne is super caught on her back foot and just barely manages to stay ahead of Hearne and Cernunnos long enough to stay alive and keep the Wild Hunt bound into its endless cycle.

The fact that before she met her mother Joanne was also a hardcore realist and pragmatist doesn't help either; she has to not only change her worldview, but she has to get out of her own damn way to do it. And she has to do it while changing jobs. She was a police mechanic who went to the academy on the recommendation (and pressure) from a previous boss. So when her current boss, Captain Morrison, is told by HIS superior that he is not allowed to fire the half-Cherokee woman in his department whose only crime was overextending her bereavement leave, he ends up "promoting" her to foot patrol. Admittedly this was on the expectation that Joanne would leave on her own, because this woman doesn't want to be a cop. This would have worked with lots of other people, but Joanne and Morrison are the most awkward of ducks, and she is too stubborn to quit.

There's also the small matter that when Morrison and Joanne first met, she didn't know he was the new boss and she mocked him MERCILESSLY for misidentifying her muscle car, Petite. And they never really recovered from that little incident, but Morrison is damn good at his job, so when Joanne can produce actual results, he grinds his teeth and coaches her in her new position to be the best she can be, help people, and get the job done. And he manages to be the best grouchy boss with a heart of gold even in this first book where he isn't the most sympathetic and I don't think is MEANT to be the most sympathetic. But when Joanne wipes out on concrete stairs, he's the one there with the smelling salts until it's clear she's ok. When Joanne has to deal with the death of a witness to a school stabbing who was under police protection and Joanne feels guilty for putting a target on her back, it's Morrison who is there going "It's not your fault. But you can do something about it."

Guys, I ship Joanne and Morrison so hard, even in this first book. They're honestly a really interesting and solid couple. I don't want to derail this with Morrison, but I do want to just highlight my favorite interaction between Morrison and Joanne in this entire book. This is Joanne being deeply sleep deprived and filterless, and while Morrison manages to stay pretty much professional, he's HONEST with her:

"Why do I bug you so much?" This was probably not the time to get into it, but I was suddenly incredibly curious. Morrison arched his eyebrows. "No, really," I said." I mean, I know we got off to a bad start, although I still can't believe you didn't know a Mustang from a Corvette--" "I was never into cars." "Obviously. What were you into?" Morrison stared at me over the edge of his coffee cup, then put it back down. "Being a cop." "What, when you were like nine? Fifteen? You wanted to be a cop, not to drive fast cars and pick up girls?" I took an incredulous bite of the apple fritter. "Yeah. I never wanted to be anything but a cop. And that, Walker, is why you irritate me." Morrison looked like he was at war with his own body language, trying to force himself to relax back into his seat while the intense low pitch of his voice drove him to lean forward, speaking to me sharply. "You fell into a job I spent my whole life working for. You irritate me because I think being a police officer is a calling and a solemn occupation and you're carrying a badge without it meaning a damn thing to you. You hang out with my officers in your off time, being just that damned cool, an attractive woman who talks cars and drinks beer and arm wrestles. None of them give a damn that you were in the top third of your class at the academy and that you're wasting your skills in the Motor Pool playing with engines. But it bugs the hell out of me. That is why you irritate me."

Literally I think this is my favorite exchange of theirs in this book, but it cannot be said that this is comfortable or amicable. It's tense and frustrated and I kinda love that.

Now, Morrison is amazing, but even Morrison does not hold a candle to Gary. Gary picks Joanne up from the airport and then spends three days tagging along and snarking as she figures out her powers and gets entangled in murders and goes on a self-directed crash course in healing magic. Gary is HERE for an interesting time with a lifetime of diverse experience, an open mind, and honestly a big squishy center. We are gonna spend like the next six books with people accusing Joanne of dating him and it is the best thing ever because she makes herself an easy target about it and Gary is deeply entertained by it. I've talked about Gary's backstory in detail here, so I won't go too much into it here. But Garrison Matthew Muldoon is the best person in the series, end of conversation. We love him so much.

We can mostly skip over the other cops, but we should address Billy. Because aside from being aware of other planes of existence, Billy is pretty awesome and will become a pretty important secondary character in further books. The poor man leans into his name as best he can, he's a wonderful dad and a decent detective. We also adore Billy.

We also need to address Cernunnos and Suzy. Because despite a fairly antagonist relationship in this book, Joanne and Cernunnos sort of settle into the friends who have sheer animal magnetism and a snarktastic dynamic who nonetheless have each other's backs. We get a lot more of Cernunnos and he is kind of the first touchpoint for the Irish half of Joanne's heritage and powers as Coyote is for the Cherokee half. (We'll address Coyote later; for now he's just cute and furry but that's gonna change.)

Suzy shows up again in book 4/5, and she kind of represents Joanne's first save. Because until Suzanne Quinley at the end of this book, Joanne can't save ANYONE. Hearne's body count is like seven shamans, Suzanne's adoptive parents, a 60-something schoolteacher, and four high school kids in this book before he heads for his biological daughter to sacrifice her to unbind the Hunt. Joanne can't save any of them, and it eats her. She DOES save Suzy though, and Suzy is really the person who proves to Joanne that she really can make a go of the shaman thing and she really can make a difference in people's lives.

This is the book I recommend to people who tell me they like the Dresden Files, because the vibes are similar without the paternalism, chauvanism and dickheaded machismo. Also, where Dresden Files make me FURIOUS, Joanne makes me cry good tears, especially in later books. Her story is about healing and finding humanity and community when you think you've lost them forever. I adore these books, and we'll definitely be talking more about them as the the rereleases keep coming.

#urban shaman #the walker papers #ce murphy #joanne walker #urban fantasy #fantasy books #fantasy novel #books and reading #books #books and novels #books & libraries #book recommendations

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waitmyturtles · 1 year ago

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Well. Okay. The Promise, episode 10 (finale), gave us… stuff to think about. Lots of mismatched, incongruous, random, unconnected, any other synonym — stuff.

I’m in mourning, not for the show ending (I’m so glad it’s over), but for the damn potential of the show. It could have been SO. MUCH. BETTER. Would it have been better if it weren’t a commercial? Likely. Would it have been better if the show cared for its characters? VERY LIKELY.

I was hooked originally for the nostalgia aspect of the show, the reflections on Nan and Phu’s childhood, how Phu stayed in Chiang Mai during those 10 years away, the connection to village life, how that reminded me of my childhood while visiting SE Asia. I was hooked to learn about a slice of Thai food culture in coffee cultivation and how beautifully it was depicted.

The show was filmed gorgeously! Khom Kongkiat, my otherwise dear Uncle Tong, clearly has respect and awe for this slice of Thai rural life.

But, fuck, man. The characters and their stories were clearly secondary to the priority of selling the damn skincare, but ALSO — I’d argue that any sensible journey of emotional growth was rendered secondary to this seeming NEED for these UNNECESSARY spikes of INCONGRUENT DRAMA that, I don’t know, maybe Uncle Tong thought he needed to juice up the show, to mix it up from the commercial aspect?

SO MUCH of the finale was unnecessary. Khunkhao in a knife fight?! Nan’s plane inexplicably disappearing?! And then, PHU (should we be surprised?) having the SHEER. AUDACITY. to scold Nan for trying to surprise Phu on his birthday, and like, LITERALLY getting himself ACCIDENTALLY (not on purpose, PHU) in a disappearing plane situation? Phu — are you my mother? Even in times of utter relief and joy, you’re still gonna be a titchy, whiny B? Get TFOH, PLEASE, MAN.

Mayyyybe I can understand how things reconciled between Phu and Khunkhao, but even that played out inconsistently fast. I mean — they were fighting over the same guy. And then you’re huggin’ it out. Now, I get that finding your missing brother, and finding FAMILY, would be important. That could have been a key point that the show could have leveraged — that, if Nan were to decide to go to China, that Phu would not be alone, as Khunkhao himself said.

But then — the show sends Khunkhao away? And gets him into a knife fight? Only to meet another guy named Nan Fah? Good lord, OKAY.

And then? Nan is throwing ALL THE BONES to Phu for Phu to declare his committed love to Nan, awlll of them. How can Phu POSSIBLY MISS? TELL NAN YOU WANT NAN TO STAY! You two can have a reasonable conversation about careers and whatnot! But, Phu! Nan — FOR ONCE, OMG — wants to hear that YOU, PHU, DO NOT WANT TO BE SEPARATED FROM NAN. Just tell the homeboy, one time!

Phu can’t even pull that off. (As @respectthepetty rightly noted, all of this bullshit is not the actors’ fault — they did fantastically for the crap writing they got.)

And finally, FINALLY (IT TOOK YOU 10 EPISODES!!!), Phu can tell Nan that he promises to wait for Nan, to NOT LEAVE, that he will support Nan in Nan’s career. My gawd. Listen — if the writing was truly meant to indicate that Phu was a whiny, selfish B, at least THAT came off accurately and successfully. GAH.

And then Nan tries to do something sweet for Phu, coming back to surprise Phu — then gets himself lost in the air (???) (with no explanation as to how that all happened!), and Phu SCOLDS him — and then they bonk. OH. KAY.

Jeezus. It’s making me madder as I’m writing about it, ha. (And unfortunately, due to being in public places at the time of this writing, I haven’t even enjoyed the sessy parts — DOUBLE GAH!)

Listen, I LOVED the actors in this show. Take this show with Step By Step, and we’ve had some candy for those of us who really want to see more actors in their 30s and 40s in BLs. I really loved having a show with two fabulous-looking dudes working in work lives, and figuring out their shit in that context.

But The Promise undermined real emotional growth here. Unless Phu, this entire time, was MEANT to be, say, an Arthit-like character from SOTUS — all brick wall, not a single emotional point to give, totally self-absorbed — I mean. Now that I write that, I realize it’s true. He WAS intentionally written like that. I don’t want to believe it, but it has to be that way — for a character to scold his partner after the partner got into a near-death (we assume) plane situation. I’m shaking my damn head.

This show has so much potential. I am absolutely throwing my cup of kopi at the screen. I haven’t felt this negative about a show in a while — and I’m watching SOTUS S. I’m really bummed, because this show could have done so, so much more about internalized fear, maybe even internalized homophobia, and ran with it. It ran away from it.

#the promise #the promise meta #IT’S OVER #GOODBYE NAN AND PHU #although i’ll be watching the sessy times tonight when i’m situated again ha

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sallytwo · 2 years ago

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I have 3 hours before my plane boards so here’s round 2 of sammy writing 18 paragraphs of the situation with my little Thing. Last time I was like 85% accurate in my predictions . You get proper puncaution for this.

Ok so now we know that Dear Wesley is still off being a traveler. I’m going to set aside the Jack 2 situation for now we will revisit it later but right now we don’t have nearly enough information to bring him into it. So what the biggest question right now is “did Wesley just cut everyone off and disappear off the face of the earth OR is everyone pretty well aware he’s off being a traveler” . Which is a split divide in beta canon so it’s a tossup when it comes to the show too. Let’s get into it.

The whole “wesley comes back every once in a while” thing (which is in like... one or two comics... mostly stuff that came out like Right After journeys end) is a mixed bag. Journeys end presents wesley leaving as like.. him going off to a study abroad or something it’s not treated with much weight. But it sort of undermines the situation and I don’t think just leaving starfleet and going on a little permanent vacation would fix .. like all that. Little Thing’s got Issuesssss.

Also I know Star Trek is terminally terrible at forgetting wesley but considering last season was an ENTIRE SEASON about time travel and fucking up the spacetime continuum and picard being like “ooohhhhh i dont know who could help with this”. If its not lazy writing then there’s gotta be a reason for purposefully not mentioning wesley. ESPECIALLY if they don’t mention him when it comes to Jack 2 . It could 100% be lazy writing I’m just acting on the assumption that maybe its not because that’s way more interesting.

Which leaves us with the “Wesley’s been gone since he left in journeys end and no one knows where the fuck he is” situation. Which is. Looks over the the side. Which is pretty prevalent in beta canon -_- And that makes the whole goodbye scene in journeys end really tragic!! Like Bev didn’t know he was going to just disappear like that and that’s the last time she saw him! #1 Reason I cant watch that scene without! The

The. -_- you cant ever really know thats the last time i’d see my brother ansel.. Moving Onnn. But wesley just being Gone makes a lot of sense continuity wise and sort of explains all these gaps where it makes logical sense to bring him up but no one does. It’s a sort of “no one really talks about him” vibe. I don’t really think wesley would choose to stay away that long but at least it gives significance to him leaving. Which is better than treating it super casually like you don’t just drop off the face of the universe because you’re normal. And ready to come visit every few months. Picard is literally a soap opera show so I wouldn’t be surprised if they went with this option.

Whichhhh leads into speculation for this season. Jack 2 coming forward as Bev’s son like. If they dont mention Wesley at all here I Will Kill Myself consider this my suicide note. So it’s the perfect place to put in a little “well beverly other son has uhhhhh been like... gone...” Just one line is all we need for confirmation.. Please god. It wouldn’t make sense for wesley to be around and somehow not know about his secret brother and be fine with bev just cutting herself off from the crew for 20 years and also not be aware at all of all the time travel shit going on last season.

Little sidenote. Everytime in the show that wes has been in danger bev just fucking shuts down (and vice versa we love the Normal Fucking Crusher Family) . Theres a comic run where she thinks he’s dead for like two weeks and just doesn’t mention it or deal with that at all. So if wes did just drop off the face of the earth. I dont think she would handle it well (or handle it at all!) . Because they’re the only family each other has which leads to this like emotionally distant codependency and if she lost her son. after everything else . I think she would fucking cut everyone off and find this new fucking Thing Jack 2 . I’m not aware enough of what the timeline is for the show but “no ones talked to her in 20 years” … like I would be interested in seeing how that lined up. Especially if no one’s seen wesley in 20 years 🤨 Or the more likely option where she just cut everyone off cuz of Jack II (boring, lame) and everyone collectively forgot about her first gay son! Which the show would absolutely do because the world hates dear wesley crusher. I’m not saying this is an accurate prediction I’m talking what would be NARRATIVELY INTERESTING for the goddamn crusher family!

I’m not going to speculate on like “ohhh who’s jack 2s father is he actually bevs son was he adopted” but if. Star Trek Picard writers looking you tearfully and soulfully in the eyes if we get Jack 2 and Wesley interactions... Literally all I want. Ideal dynamic with Jack being like “UGH I hate my stupid older brother who I never met but everyone compares me too because he tragically disappeared and everyones sad about him all the time and no one can mention him he ruined my life!” and Wes being like. Hi ... am I supposed to know who you are. haha. And just leading to the worst buddy comedy ever. Wes has been shownnnn that he’s good with kids and would be a good brother but I think if Jack’s a little cunt to him (likely) he would be a mean bitch back and it would be the most entertaining TV ever shown ever! Again now likely I KNOW. Brining wes back now after being gone that long with all the drama with bev and jack 2… like it would be so interesting man. Obligatory he doesn’t know why fleet foxes refernce cuz like

Option 2 is that we just have like one singular wesley appearance where he shows up and reveals he’s been gay married this whole time and has been having a well adjusted nice normal time for yearsss while the rest of the crew is fighting among themselves and freaking out and he just didn’t help out cuz he didn’t feel like it. and he’s a bit of a mean bitch and then leaves. Number one most unhelpful person in the universe.

ALSO FINAL MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: If wes could come back and have like. one menaingful interaction with bev. Cuz their relationship was neverrr given the time it should’ve been by tng and i’m like still so mad about it.literally just one scene the bar is on the fucking floor LISTEN TO MY MESSAGE.

#read my manifesto boy.#this is like 90% just what me and santeri talked about last night for like 3 hours. you wish you were on our level #picard spoilers

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welcometomybraincomics · 1 year ago

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Heyo! I've got 5 million different projects, so here are the tags and links for all of the ones living in the Tumblr Biosphere

If you're interested in any of these, please ask me about them

I will prepare an entire lecture on the plot, the development, and the in-universe history sthykfjbsrtfgulkmdn I literally have so much, you have no idea 😭

Would you like to participate in the Great Character Revival?

Transformers OC content:

#robits is AU transformer's content relating to an entire community of Transformers who whoopsie daisied themselves into another part of the universe completely separate from the Cybertronian War

A more in-depth summary here as well as a master post

closely associated, but separate, is #mother which encapsulates all things relating to the planet of sentient plant creatures colloquially called "Mother." It exists in two versions: the one where the Stations exist and the one where the Stations don't. In the universe where the station doesn't exist, the plane twins Streaker and Vole are non-cybertronian sentient machines who were brought back to life after a defeat in service of Mother, the sentient plant entity at the heart of the planet.

#Gale Force is content relating to my OC Gale Force, a small Cybertronian who gave himself flight mods set in the universe of TFA

#human TF and #the goofy Transformers road trip both refer to the transformers AU where Cybertronians haven't been revealed to humanity (or at least not the general public) and Sam, a human programmer and hobbiest engineer who consistently makes questionable choices, finds a Decepticon named Whiplash, who has about the same level of dumbassery, and they end up trekking across the US together. #the goofy Transformers space adventure marks a change in setting from Earth to space

Miscellaneous fandom content:

#location: unknown follows an undertale OC named Jacqueline Alveda and her trek across the multiverse. Following her is her chara-esk companion, Polar: a spirit who made a deal with her as a child that when she died, they would get her body. On a separate journey across multiverse is Jacqueline's childhood friend Izaia.

#spiders in a trench coat pertains to my very non serious JJK OC Spiders in a Trench Coat. Is she a human? is she a curse? Nobody fucking knows! she goes around eating curses and disappearing into a hoard of spiders

#Winter the battle maniac follows Winter, a wide eyed Zorua, and her assorted traveling companions and relatives and their various obsessions and misconceptions about the world

Original stories:

#sun and sacrine is closely associated with location unknown, but not technically undertale OC content. It follows two critter boys (a skeleton in a fire elemental) from the same world as Jacqueline, Izaia, and Polar who are having a platonic Romeo and Juliet style adventure because their two families are at odds because they're fighting over resources. Except they don't try to kill themselves, they just run away

also, watch me misspell Sacrin's name every single time I write it xD (it's not supposed to have and E at the end) this is what happens when I name my characters the butchering of an actual word LMAO it's a misspelling of the word "saccharine" which is a type of sugar

#segmented secrets Is currently mostly art of a fantasy world mystery investigation being conducted by children. People are missing, magic is real, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it! Inquiring young minds want to know! Just what in the world is going on?

#Starlight Guilt contains all the content of the story of the same name following the MC, Stardust, who sure is going through it. I try not to post a lot about it because I'm really invested in it and I want to see people's reactions to the content as it's meant to be presented, but also, I'm really invested, so if you ask me anything about it I will tell you the entire plot and all my plans for it XD

#Monique the adventurer holds the goofy goofy content of Monique the wandering adventurer and her trek across the land as she tries to find well-paying jobs and live a good and fulfilling life. the story being written for her is called "you lived to see another day"

#Fumi and Heimdallr all the content and AUs for my characters Fumi and Heimdallr. they're very violent and depending on the AU they're either very gay or queer platonic

#Mira local brainworm extraordinaire. as you might have noticed, many of these tags are just names. that's because I don't have the names of the stories yet. this is one of those. Mira is an Isaki character. She died while going out to dinner with friends, and got reincarnated as an angel and is now attached to life against her will (very literally; she can't die permanently)

#The Neighbors an anthology (?) of absurdist comedy comics about 4 housemates: Nami, Katerax, Rae, and Marsis.

And then there's #Welcome to my brain, the series of unconnected comedy and slice of life comics that this blog was originally made to host, the whole of which is here

While you're here, how do you feel about buying stickers?

#I was thinking of doing this when I had more stuff posted #but the way I go about posting and the way I go about my interests sort of necessitates this if I want anyone (including me) to find stuff #LMAO #is this a masterpost?#I will add to and edit this as I continue to post

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gracelaramusings · 7 months ago

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Day 19: Coron to Singapore

We got up early to catch a bit of breakfast before taking the van to the airport.

There’s nothing like a flight to catch up on some writing. The three hour flight from Coron to Singapore was perfect to again share the wonderful experiences we’ve had over the last days, which I didn’t have time to record and share. With a USB outlet and my iPad on my lap, I was set.

While waiting in line a young couple of travellers asked if they could borrow money for overweight baggage, since their credit card was not working and they couldn’t take out money. Poor things! After Yuval learned it was just 1 kilo of overweight that they needed to pay for, he suggested they take out some clothes and wear them. That hadn’t occurred to them! Problem solved.

We then had a similar experience: oh, the sorrow of overweight baggage.

We are the type of people that hate paying for bags, but will when needed. What we didn’t take into consideration was that while we needed only one bag, our other flights allowed 23 kilo while this airline (Cebu Pacific) permitted just 20 kilo. Gotcha!

They then proceeded to charge what seemed like nearly every traveler for overweight baggage, with each kilo costing 600 Pesos— some $12 per kilo! Also, carryons could only be 7 kilo in total each.

Determined not to pay a cent for overweight baggage, we did the well-known juggling act. Wore sweatshirts, put on my hiking boots and switching them with light sandals… though still overweight, they seemed not to notice we had some extra items that we hadn’t yet packed away. Concerned that at another point along the journey they might double check the weight, we couldn’t breathe comfortably until we actually got on board.

We were overjoyed to see that our friends from Spain were with us on the plane, so we caught up on eachother’s travels and enjoyed reminiscing about how wonderful our excursion was.

Our flight was delayed due to thunderstorms in Singapore. Still, the flight was made that much nicer due to the fact that we had a lovely person in our three-seater. She lives in the Philippines but works in Singapore. She makes the few-hour flight a couple days a month in order to “work from home”. Though a challenge, she has a live-at-home nanny and family nearby which help make it work. She even nurses! It turned out she was part Iranian and part Indian. Towards the end of the flight I asked if she had ever met an Israeli before, and she said it was her first time. She showed me her spectacular wedding photos (white horse and all!). What a great way to pass a few hours. And cooler yet- she's of Iranian heritage. We are the first Israelis she'd ever met.

The Singapore airport is considered among the best in the world. Since I had filled out all the paperwork in advance, we made it through with the ease that was intended. At the baggage claim, they even gave out Oreos, chocolate milk and water, I think because of the delay!

Yuval reminded me of my rule to always ask at information when you arrive in an airport, and thanks to that reminder, we learned that the bus we planned to take from another terminal also came to our terminal, so inter-terminal travel avoided!

The bus literally dropped us off directly in front of our Singapore hotel.

Check in, quick drink then a mission: find a wireless charger for my phone, to keep the juice flowing. We were told there were some electronics stores at the mall across from the hotel, so we ventured into our first Singapore malls. This one was not nearly as fancy as we expected, but we were fortunate to find a cheap electronics place that had a light charger that fit the bill. Yay!

Heading back to the hotel as the stores were all closing, we were tired from travel, so this first night we called it a night, and got a relatively early night’s sleep.

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phawareglobal · 1 year ago

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Jennifer Gendron - phaware® interview 432

On the 14th anniversary of her son's life-saving lung transplant, Canadian pulmonary hypertension care partner, Jennifer Gendron discusses how the PH landscape has changed over the past 20 years and life post-surgery.

My name is Jennifer Gendron and I'm from a small town in New Brunswick, Canada. My oldest son was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension back in 2003 when he was five years old. As a lot of people's stories go, there were some subtle hints sort of leading up to it. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. We thought he had asthma. Just sort of out of the blue things progressed really quickly and we got this diagnosis sort of out of nowhere. It felt like, that he had severe pulmonary hypertension and that there was really not a lot that they could do.

20 years ago, things were certainly looked a little bit different in the pulmonary hypertension world than they do now, even less medications and treatments available. He started on oral therapies and quickly ended up on Flolan. He sort of never really did great. He stabilized for a little bit and then he would get worse. We were thrust pretty quickly, I would say, as PH goes into looking at transplant options. He ended up at the age of 11 having a double lung transplant back in 2009, so 14 years ago.

Back in that day. So one of the first things that I immediately tried to do was find some other people, connect, learn a little bit more about the disease. There was really not much happening here in Canada. I live on the East Coast and I found a very active support group on the West Coast, BCPHS. It was led at the time by Liz McCall. It was the most active group here in Canada and literally on the opposite end of the country. There had been the Pulmonary Hypertension Society of Canada at one point, which had become pretty much inactive by the time that Braden was diagnosed. I found PHA in the US and got myself on a plane and got to a conference down there, met some really incredible people and started to make some connections with people that were from Canada that were also looking for support, that had started little pockets of support groups throughout the country. I got myself connected with that group, and it wasn't too many years after that that we were able to come together and form what is now PHA Canada, that just celebrated 15 years unbelievably as an association.

To me that was one of the biggest, most important things was to connect with other people and learn as much as we could about the disease, find the support that we could not only for our son but for the rest of our family. I had two other young boys that were three at the time, twin boys, that when their brother was diagnosed and certainly it's a disease that impacts the entire family and one that is very complicated to manage. Just talking with other people and connecting with other families that were dealing with this similar journey was certainly, I feel, very important.

It's interesting because over the years I'd often have people say to me... So he was diagnosed in '03, so he lived with the disease for six years before we ended up in on the transplant list. People would say, "Well, he have a lung transplant, wouldn't that fix it?" It sounds like a fix, but you're certainly trading off one set of problems for another and a lot of unknowns. As much as it sounded like this miracle cure, it's not something we wanted to rush into. We also don't live anywhere near a transplant center. Being from rural New Brunswick, the closest transplant center for us is Toronto, Ontario. So 18 hours from where we live, and we had to physically move to that area before Braden could be listed.

We also weren't sure if that was really something that he would be up for. He was 11 years old. He was very frail. Would he survive a transplant? Was a transplant the right decision? Was he up for the long process of the recovery and all of those things, because he was still a child, but he was getting to that age where how much do we involve him in the decision? How much of this decision is ours? At one point, he wasn't responding well to treatment. We had gone through the transplant process, the workup leading up to it, tons of testing, and then they got him on Flolan and he stabilized a little bit. So that kind of got parked. It was almost a relief like, okay, we don't have to deal with this right now. We don't have to think about this. Because it was a really tough decision and a decision that affected us all.

Unfortunately, he stabilized only briefly on the Flolan and so we got faced with the whole transplant scenario again very quickly. We went up and we had all of the testing done again. It wasn't just him that was testing, we all had to meet with the psychological team to make sure we were all capable of going through the process or that they deemed us to be capable of going through the process. We had to, as I say, physically commit to moving our family. That was a big decision, because at the time, again, I had two other young children at this point they were nine years old. We, I guess, decided really early on as a family that if we were going to do this and we were going to go down this path, that we were all going to do it together. So we weren't going to separate our family, because we had no idea how long we would have to be in Toronto waiting for transplant.

My husband was an RCMP officer at the time, he took a leave of absence from his job. I owned my own business. I hired someone to run it. We were still sort of on the fence if it was the right decision to put him through the surgery. I remember we were sitting in Toronto in a restaurant, my mother-in-law had come up to meet us. We had been just going through several days of tests. This was a boy who his two younger brothers played sports, hockey, which he was not able to do. But also, always, "Oh, hockey is so stupid, I'd never want to play a game like that." He was a video gamer, that was his passion. We were sitting in the restaurant having lunch and my phone rang and it was the hospital in Toronto. And they said, "We just wanted to let you know that your son, we've gotten all of his tests back and he is a candidate, we would be willing to move forward and list him for transplant." He said, "Who's on the phone?" I told him and I told him what they said and he said, "Yes." I said, "Really?" He goes, "This is great. I'm finally going to be able to play hockey." And that was that.

I had to leave the table and excuse myself and go to the washroom and lock myself in a stall and cry my eyes out for a few minutes and get it together. But I realized then, okay, this is what we're doing. This is what he wants and we're going for it. We came home and found somebody that would look after our house and packed up whatever belongings we thought we would need and got in a U-haul and drove to Toronto with our two dogs, our three kids and our worldly goods and waited. We really had no idea the wait list at that time... Well, the wait list is always... You just don't know how long you're going to be there. We didn't know if it was going to be months or a year. We arrived in Toronto at the first part of August and got a call on September 23rd, he got the call for his transplant.

Right up until they took him through the doors of that OR I kept thinking, we should just go. We should just go. We know what we have here. We know what we're dealing with. I know what his quality of life is now. We should just turn on and leave. What if he doesn't make it through this surgery? It was horrible. But he was so determined at that point that this was going to be and that he was going to have this new life, we were like there's no turning back now. But yeah, I think of all the highs and lows in this whole journey, that was one of the absolute toughest moments is just not turning around and running out the doors with him.

He's been very fortunate in terms of transplant and how well he has responded. There have been very few setbacks over the years. Early on, he did experience some chronic rejection right at the very beginning, which was really scary, because we weren't sure where that was going to lead us. I had seen and heard a lot of stories where people just chronically rejected and had to go back for a second transplant. That was fairly early on, probably six months out, he ended up with some chronic rejection and having to have high doses of steroids. You have a preteen on IV steroids, who's in this absolute emotional rollercoaster.

But after that, and when they got him stabilized, he really has done very well. We were back home in New Brunswick, he was transplant in September, we moved home in April and we technically could have come a little sooner, but I was really hesitant to leave Toronto. I felt like we were safe there and we were close to the hospital. So moving back home, I found really hard. I mean, my kids couldn't wait to get home. But it was something that I was wrestling with in that what are we going to do? What if things go badly? We had gotten used to traveling back and forth over the years. The closest PH center is also in Toronto. I was used to running back and forth to Toronto with him a couple times a year for follow-ups. But there was just something about being right there and being close to the hospital.

But we came back home and he did really well. We would go back to Toronto a couple times a year initially, and then once a year. Then the years just kept ticking by and he kept getting older. Then my new fear became, oh my God, we're getting close to the point where he's got to leave pediatric world and we got to go down the street to the adult hospital, and yikes. That's a really great problem to have when you are in this world. But that brought a whole new set of challenges with it again, because as an adult they don't want to talk to your mom and dad. They want to talk to you as the patient. As an 18, 19 year old kid, we were always the ones who were the spokesperson and the advocate for him. It was really challenging. At that point he was almost in denial about anything. He's 18 years old, he's invincible. I don't need to worry about all this stuff. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about my medications.

So we went through quite a rocky transition time, I would say, for a couple of years where he was just not as compliant as he should have been. We were trying to be the bridge, but it got to the point where the hospital didn't want to talk to us anymore. That was a challenging time. I mean, he's 25 years old now and it's gotten much better. That was probably one of the hardest times in just managing his illness, was having to turn it more over into his hands and trust that he was going to do the right things.

I never thought we would get this far. I think back to these times, well, initially when he was diagnosed, we were diagnosed in a hospital that had no experience with PH. It was basically take him home and enjoy the time you have left. We really never thought we would reach the milestones that we've reached. As he got sicker, we got to make the most of every day, because I don't know how many days we're going to have. I never thought we would get to this point. Even at the transplant point, it's like, are we going to get through this? Are we going to come out the other side of this? Am I just dropping my son... Is this the last time I'm going to see my son, as I wheel him to the OR? You just kind of live with that in the back of your mind every day.

Even now, people will say to me, "So everything's great. He's fine now." I'll be like, "Well, I mean, yeah, he's really good right now." And that's awesome. But you just don't know what's around the next corner and it's a hard thing when you really sit with it to process. But again, I mean, I just try and look at it as none of us know. He's living with something that he knows he is living with every day and none of us knows what's next in life. I just watch the things that he's been able to do. That day that in the restaurant where he is like, "Yeah, I'm going to play hockey." I was like, "Okay." And he had the transplant in September and another young fellow had a transplant around the same time, and they had a bit of a competition going, who was going to do the best in rehab and who was going to bike the longest? He used that and I started watching him.

Then he would start asking the doctor every appointment, "So can I go play hockey now?" I'm talking October. The guy still has staples in his chest... And they'd be like, "Oh, no, no, not right now." I'm like, oh God... And so every time we would go he would ask this question. So in January we'd go to the hospital and he does the same thing, "All right, so can I start to play hockey now?" And the doctor says, "Well, do you think you can find a league that has no contact?" He goes, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." He said, "I don't see why not." I just about fell off my chair. He's like, "All right." So the next thing I know we're sitting white knuckled in the rink watching him try and stand up on skates. He didn't even remember that he used to know how to skate, he hadn't skated since he was five years old. He was 11 and they put him on a team with, I think they were seven-year-olds with this amazing coach who was like, "We're going to get this kid skating."

He had a ball and he just went from there. I would be panicking about him wanting to do something and he would look at me and say, "Mom, I didn't go through all this just so I could keep sitting home watching everybody else do things." I was like, "How do you argue with that? All right, get out there and do what makes you happy, because that's why we did what we did."

So my name is Jennifer Gendron, and I am aware that my son Braden is rare.

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