#never connected those two dots but they sure do make a line

[dumbassacademia]

Thoughout my youth I got a lot of shit from adults (esp my Former English Teacher Mom) (those are a different breed than regular moms) about how often I said “like”.

Most of them comforted themselves by saying I’d stop doing it as much as I got older and eventually I’d laugh at myself for it just like they did

Instead now when I catch myself doing it whether verbally or in writing I can stop myself and go “Wait, is that necessary? No? Well, it conveys the tone/meaning/vibe I’m trying to get across better than I can say without it. It stays”

Which I think is pretty cool and sexy of me and also reminds me of the time in high school we had to read an article about proper comma usage and then write a response about what we learned from it and I said this

(Comment was my teacher’s response)

[brigdh]

I want to talk about Izzy's rant to Ed in episode 10, the one that brings out the Kraken. I've seen a lot of different descriptions of what is going on in this scene – death threat, homophobic slurs, etc – and I don't think either of those are what's actually what's happening.

Let's look at it closely, line by line, and the way Ed reacts, from the very beginning of the scene.

Ed: Well, feels nice to tidy up a little. Can't believe I was living like this. Can you, Iz? Izzy? Izzy: I'm going to speak plainly. Ed: Wonderful. You know we share our thoughts on this ship.

Izzy, cont: This, whatever it is that you've become... is a fate worse than death.

Okay. So there we've got what some have interpreted as a death threat. But does Ed seem threatened? He's startled, certainly, put on his back foot – literally – but he doesn't look afraid or alarmed to me. He draws in a slow breath, assessing the situation, but overall seems more confused than frightened.

In fact he laughs it off with his next line:

Izzy then escalates the level of aggression in the conversation:

But Ed, again, looks more confused than anything. Check out that furrowed brow, that head tilt! This is a man going "what is your deal?", not a man thinking "uh-oh, you might kill me!".

Extremely noticeably, even when Izzy storms right up into his face, Ed holds steady. He doesn't run, doesn't lean back, doesn't hunch his shoulders or drop eye contact – there is no vulnerability or defensiveness in Ed's body language at all. Ed is in supreme control of this confrontation – look at the slow way he deigns to turn back to the paper Izzy's holding! As though he's making the point that he chooses when to turn, not Izzy:

Then we have the "homophobic slur". But watch closely:

Ed does not react to "namby-pamby", "silk gown", or "pining" at all. He doesn't even blink. He barely seems like he's hearing Izzy. His entire attention is on the picture.

Ed's body language and behavior changes at one word and one word only, and that is "boyfriend". As soon as Izzy says it, Ed's furious:

(It's even easier to notice when you actually watch the scene instead of using gifs, because Izzy really draws out 'piiiiiiining', putting a lot of time between the first half of the sentence and 'boyfriend'.)

Why is the use of the word 'boyfriend' so important?

Well, what has Ed been doing all episode? He's been crying in a blanket fort and singing sad songs, yes, but he's been keeping a careful level of mystique about why he's doing it. Ed often uses distanced circumlocutions instead of directly acknowledging his emotions, but he's doing it in this episode even more so than usual:

Here are the lyrics to his song:

(Version one, with Lucius) Hanging on By a thread Hanging on Shouldn't let go If I let go, all will fall Fingers bleeding down to the bone now Can't let go Nothing makes sense Hold on Hold on Hold... on

(Version two, performed for the whole crew) Just let go Make yourself let go Make it go away Away, away today Life's a hard sad death And then you're Deaaad

Notice something? There is no mention of Stede, or love, or break-ups, or abandonments, or relationships in general. All Ed discusses is a vague life-sucks attitude, which could apply to basically anyone under any circumstances. He seems pretty okay with people knowing that Blackbeard is having some sort of weird emotional breakdown as long as he convinces himself that no one knows it's specifically from having his heart broken

This is true of everything Ed says and does for this entire episode. He never once even mentions Stede's name, unless "Farewell, Bonnet's playthings" at the very end counts. The only thing Ed openly admits to feeling bad about is a fictional character who's having a hard time "holding on" (holding on to what? he never says). There are no allusions to heartbreak or romance anywhere in his dialogue.

Now, Ed's not stupid. I'm sure he knows Izzy and Lucius and the rest of the crew can connect the dots and realize that something bad happened with Stede, even if Ed doesn't fill them in on the details. But Ed is also traumatized, and has a whole host of coping mechanisms set up to help him avoiding thinking about things that he doesn't want to think about. If he's not a murderer because "technically the fire killed those guys", then no one knows he's heartbroken because technically he hasn't acknowledged it.

Until Izzy says the word 'boyfriend'. Suddenly the secret is out, and Ed can't handle it. Izzy knows his weakness. That's why this word effects Ed more than anything else Izzy says in the whole scene.

At the end of the confrontation, he hears the crew calling for another song. Look at Ed here. He looks as haunted, as disturbed, in this moment as he does at any point in Izzy's rant.

This is an important part of the scene, not just a closing note. Because if Izzy (the Caribbean's most emotionally constipated man) can see through him, obviously the whole crew can too.

Obviously Lucius – who advised Ed on his and Stede's relationship, who played along with Ed's 'fictional character' claim, who wrote down Ed's lyrics – can do so most of all.

There's a direct emotional logic to Ed killing Lucius because he had a fight with Izzy, and it doesn't involve Ed having been threatened or hate crime'd at all. Ed doesn't deal well with his own feelings (from Stede), so he chooses to become Blackbeard/the Kraken and gets rid of all the witnesses who saw otherwise.

[readychilledwine]

Love Language

Summary - Lucien never wanted you to question his love, so he makes sure you never have to by leaving small reminders every time he leaves.

Warnings - Fluff, missing your partner

A/N - A few of you said I should clear out my Lucien stuff from Google docs, so I figured I would start doing that 🧡

Lucien Masterlist

You smiled at the random note that appeared on the bathroom mirror from the steam.

“Your smile is like dawn breaking after a long night.”

Lucien loved to leave you little notes, little reminders of his love. It surprised you at first when the bond snapped. Words of love and comfort were constantly appearing in your room, in your office, sometimes, when Lucien was away, Tamlin would even hand deliver them.

The High Lord had told you it was due to his lost love. He had so many words he had wished to say, so many regrets left unspoken. Lucien did not want the same fate with you. He wanted, no, he needed you to hear every word, every thought, every murmur of affection.

You leaned forward, finger writing back in the steam. “If only my smile was enough to warm your darkest days.”

The afternoon had fallen to night quickly. Stars now twinkled above you as you sat curled up on the balcony with your new book. Lucien had sent it to you from wherever Tamlin had him patrolling. He would be gone the next two days, and you could hardly wait for him to be home. You missed his kisses, his hands, his soft expressive eyes as he whispered his love.

You opened the cover and immediately began to cry. Lucien's handwriting sprawled the blank page, letters swirling and connecting like a dance. The book was about star-crossed lovers from two different courts that were constantly at war. Lucien said he had consumed it, refusing to put it down when he first got it, and now he needed you to read it. To read of their love that ran so deeply that at the thought of losing one another was enough to make them both end their lives.

He said he had thought of you while reading it, that he could never imagine life without you. His love sprawled every inch of that page, soaking the fine ink into rich parchment. The book didn't even matter anymore. You wanted to spend the night tracing those curls, the dots, the curved lines. You wanted to memorize the words that felt like poetry he wrote for you and only you. You couldn't help but bring the book to your nose, sighing as the faint scent of sunlight and cinnamon embraced your senses.

You opted to move back into the room. That scent lingered there stronger, wrapping you in a blanket of security. The glistening night sky, so beautiful and pure, was long forgotten as you curved up with Lucien's pillow, the book still resting in your hands as if it was a lifeline close to him. The bond tugged a couple of times, saying goodnight and that he loved you. In two more days, notes would be words.

2 days.

Just 2 more long days.

General Taglist:

@hnyclover @glitterypirateduck @slytherinindisguise @mischiefmanager @bloodicka @starsinyourseyes @the-sweet-psycho @mariahoedt @rinalouu @sarawritestories @starryhiraeth @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @cumuluscranium @loneliestluvr @eternallyelvish @azrielsmate3 @daughterofthemoons-stuff @meritxellao @aria-chikage

[clownakai]

Shuuichi is revising the latest material from his Physics class when his cellphone starts ringing.

He doesn't react immediately, mostly because for a handful of seconds he's absolutely sure that he's just hallucinating the noise. It takes him a bit longer yet to connect the dots: yes, his phone is actually ringing and yes, he really should answer it before it goes to voicemail.

"Hello?" He says in English as soon as he flips the phone open. Shuuichi can count on two hands the people who have his number, and on a single one those who use it at least semi-regularly. Statistically speaking—

"Nii-san?" Nevermind.

"Shuukichi." Glancing at the clock above his desk, Shuuichi quickly does a bit of mental math and proceeds to frown at the wall. "Why aren't you in bed?" He asks, this time in Japanese.

"I am!" His brother replies vehemently, loud enough that Shuuichi yanks the phone away from his ear on instinct. "Sorry," comes immediately afterwards, much more subdued, "I didn't mean to yell.

"I am in bed." Shuukichi repeats. "But... I can't sleep." A tiny little noise— almost inaudible, really— reaches Shuuichi's ears. Sniffling, he realizes after a beat. His brother is trying to hold it back and only partly succeeding.

Shuuichi presses the receiver against his ear again and stands up, coursework forgotten as he begins to pace around the room. "Have you been crying? Why?"

"'M not crying." His brother denies, another sniffle crackling through the receiver. Shuuichi very nearly calls him out on the blatant lie, but reconsiders at the last moment.

"Alright," he concedes. A change in his line of questioning is probably the best call right now. "Why can't you sleep, then? Is it storming over there?"

Shuukichi has never liked storms, truth be told. He's gotten leagues better about them compared to when he was in primary school, but Shuuichi has lived through his fair share of impromptu sleepovers whenever the bone-rattling noise and flashing lights got to be too much for his brother to bear.

Mum used to let them hang out on the couch on those nights, bundled up in blankets regardless of the season, usually with something playing on TV as little more than background noise; it's not like Shuukichi would manage to stay awake for long anyway. As long as he got some company, the storm seemed to become rather innocuous in his little brother's eyes.

"It did for a while." Shuukichi's voice snaps him out of his daze. "Thunder and all. It's just rain now. But I still..."

Shuuichi waits for a continuation that he knows won't come. Glancing outside, he admires the rivulets of water streaming down the window, and then the sky up above, cold and gray. On the other end of the receiver, his brother sniffles again.

It rains because you're sad, Shuuichi thinks irrationally, the way a child would swear up and down that the moon chases their parent's moving car.

"It's raining over here, too." Is what he actually says.

"Really?"

"Mhm."

"Unlucky..." Shuukichi sounds genuinely put out by the notion, for reasons Shuuichi can't even imagine. "What are you studying?"

Shuuichi rolls his eyes. "What makes you think I'm studying?"

"You're always studying, nii-san." Touché. But who would ever want to admit their little brother is right?

"Piss off," he lets slip, momentarily switching back to English. Then he sighs, knowing that resistance is futile. "Physics."

Shuukichi giggles triumphantly in his ear. "I knew it." A brief pause. Then, "Which topic? Is it interesting?"

It's at this point that Shuuichi finally catches on to what his brother isn't saying. The knowledge sits heavy in his gut, something dangerously close to guilt rearing its head in the back of his mind.

He doesn't... God, it sounds horrible to even acknowledge, but Shuuichi has yet to find himself forlornly thinking about his family the way he sometimes catches his fellow foreign students doing. He's not even sure he can say for certain that he doesn't miss them, is the thing, because in moments like this his chest feels like it's going to break open and swallow everything in its vicinity— Shuuichi's personal little black hole, futilely trying to fill a void he wasn't even aware had been left behind when he first boarded that States-bound plane.

But he still— he doesn't think about his family as much as he probably should. Case in point: he has a sister now. Masumi is only a few months old, but she's there, on the other side of the world. Shuukichi would know how she's faring, and yet Shuuichi didn't even think of asking after her until now. He just... forgot.

What kind of person does that make him?

"Nii-san?" Shit.

"Sorry," he replies, scrambling for an explanation that isn't 'I just realized I might not even miss you all most of the time', "I was looking for a topic you'd be able to understand. Wouldn't want to overload your brain."

Shuukichi makes an indignant noise. "Hey! I'll have you know—"

"Do you have your blanket?" Shuuichi continues as if his brother hadn't said anything. "The mouse one."

Shuukichi huffs upon being cut off, but answers affirmatively. "I laid it out on top of the sheets. Helps cover the glow of my phone screen, just in case." Clever kid. Shuuichi is sure that's not the only reason the old blanket isn't stuffed in the back of his brother's closet, but he magnanimously lets the topic slide.

"Good. How does electromagnetism sound?"

Shuuichi talks for almost half an hour. Unused to it as he is, his voice gets rougher and weaker the longer he goes on, but he presses on until Shuukichi stops asking questions altogether and doesn't reply when prompted.

The receiver picks up the feeble— though regular— sound of the boy's breathing, and if Shuuichi falls completely silent to listen to it for a few minutes before hanging up, well... Nobody needs to know that.

(Outside, the rain stops falling.)

[larothoughts]

stacked dimensions, ascension, and gods

this is a crazy conglomeration of ideas from various fics relating to moshang-sqh-is-god theories and how ascension works in other xianxia mediums. basically me with a svsss thought experiment: what if our world is pidw's equivalent to heaven?

heaven is just the dimension stacked above your own

we never see heavenly officials interfere with stuff like in tgcf, it really seems like once you ascend you never come back down again. people from modern china have omnipotent knowledge of events, things, creatures, etc. of thousands of worlds (books) they are interested in. like god existing in the 5th dimension, sy and sqh can see into pidw's past and future just by flipping pages in a book.

ascension very oversimplified is the idea of removing oneself from the reincarnation cycle. under this theory, achieving ascension as a cultivator simply means punching up and entering the reincarnation cycle of the dimension above your own.

the idea that worlds are stacked on top and around each other, ranked in ascending and descending order, is a confusing mess i first learned about in the manga magi. each resident of a world above is viewed as a god to the world below. i imagine this also makes each successive world more and more difficult to punch up through. it's hilarious to imagine that cultivation DOES exist in the modern world, it's just far more guarded/secretive and possibly related to religions preaching the concept of heaven (punching up a dimension) and hell (falling down a dimension.)

the average person does neither and simply reincarnates within their native dimension. while punching up a dimension is closely gatekept, what many people don't realize is that falling down is always an option. because the price of falling is often too high. it's like intentionally choosing to go to a less developed world without your sense of sight and with one hand tied behind your back. sure, heaven provides their version of handicap assistance (the system) but why would you cripple yourself in a world far more dangerous than your own? after your past self presumably worked so hard to ascend? for love???

a soul's connection to their previous dimensional incarnation

when sy and sqh died, i imagined they faced the heavenly emperor or big god equivalent (probably living a few dimensions above our own world), who gave them the choice to reincarnate or to throw themselves into a lower realm. maybe both were recent ascensions from the pidw universe. their premature deaths clearly showed lingering attachment to it: sqh couldn't help but write out the story, and sy couldn't help but fanatically read it.

(did sqh literally create pidw with his own two hands? how could that be possible if he's missing a past incarnation of himself?

i don't have all the answers, it's possibly a time paradox related to how time means nothing when every world is a book and you can flip to whatever page you want.)

long story short, both sj and sqh were missing something from their previous dimension, and really, it doesn't hurt to let them know they could go back if they really wanted to. so they do.

there is a price for going against the natural order, though. they have to sign away much of their free will to the system, which acts as a nanny failsafe that'll throw them back up a dimension if they violate too many lower realm rules (to avoid collapsing the dimension entirely. don't want those pesky 4th and 5th dimension anomalies corrupting everything!) they don't remember this agreement because no one remembers what happens between life and death-- but the fact that the systems can control them is proof their souls signed on the dotted line.

now sqh 'transmigrated' the correct way, by being reborn into the past self linked to his love (og shang qinghua, he probably ascended 2 or 3 lifetimes after that but this is the one with mobeijun). he got to keep all his godly knowledge minus the whole 'agreement with the big god' thing. his system was stricter with some of his actions because the entire point of him falling from heaven was to be with mobei-jun-- something he failed to achieve in his og sqh life. system doesn't care if current hamster man, who doesn't remember making this deal, wants to run away! system was tasked with making sure they got together!

now sy... sy really was a glitch in the universe. so of course his system was especially unreasonable/illogical/unfair. sy barely qualified to ascend in the first place, now this mess of a soul wants to descend???

why the systems are so damn mean

i'm not smart enough to completely make this make sense, but bear with me: sy is the end result of shen jiu killing himself by eating xuan su's shards. something something binding xuan su and yqy together meant yqy's soul was forever stuck in his sword, making reincarnation/ascension impossible. sj's flawed cultivation also damaged his soul, enough so that when he died via xuan su, the agony of his soul leaving his body was enough to draw out whatever was left of yqy in the shards and the two kind of... merged into one. the qijiu soul amalgamation was the one that rejoined the reincarnation cycle, and eventually was able to ascend. but his incomplete mess of a soul made his ascended body weak, leading to the whole 'sick sy destined to die' headcanon.

so wth does this have to do with sy's glitchy fall from heaven? why fall in love with lbh? it's because lbh is a glitch too. a descendant of pidw's oldest glitch... the creation of the heavenly demon.

the first heavenly demon was a modern person whose soul was forcibly chucked down a dimension for crimes against the universe. this is no longer the punishment protocol the big gods use because just look at how badly the heavenly demon thing worked out. they are the reason why modern systems have such strict don't-talk-about-us protocols in place, why dotted lines need to be signed, why systems lean more towards unreasonable and harsh rather than lenient.

because that first criminal whose soul was sent to hell (pidw) had a rudimentary system meant to keep watch and make sure they didn't take over the realm with their godly knowledge. a system he was able to overpower and turn into a weapon that literally breaks the rules of the world: xin mo. now the big gods in heaven really didn't want the pidw universe to collapse in on itself, so they did meddle a bit: whittled down the heavenly demon population to two or three, added an endless abyss as a pressure valve in case the edges of the world start to crack, took away the corrupted system xin mo and chucked it as far out of reach as possible. normal things. the end result native-fied the heavenly demon enough to integrate them back into the dimension, problem solved!

but that doesn't mean the heavenly demon line 100% fits into the pidw universe. they're still a little too op. and things get worse when lbh finds xin mo, reigniting the old heavenly demon vs. system fight wherein lbh wants to use the system to bend the world to his whims, and the system wants to eat lbh because that's ITS JOB. it's meant to destroy dimension-collapsing things and lbh is one hair away from collapsing everything.

the metaphysical sense of wrongness around lbh is what draws the attention of the qijiu soul amalgamation. lbh is an anomaly, a corrupted soul, one that seems to be as inexplicably drawn to punching back up to heaven (but failing) as qijiu's soul weakness inexplicably draws it to hell (but also failing, sick body notwithstanding.)

so when the qijiu soul amalgamation aka shen yuan finally dies, especially after he dies thinking about lbh, why not fuck it all and throw himself back down for love?

the logistics of yeeting a glitched soul into its components

so there are a lot of problems with sy's choice. one, shen yuan as shen yuan doesn't exist in a lifetime that'll let him fall in love with lbh. the first incarnation of the qijiu soul amalgamation reincarnated many years after lbh's reign was forcibly ended by the big gods in heaven deus ex nerfing him. two, trying to stuff him into either sj or yqy at birth (like with sqh) won't work. the souls won't recognize each other.

the yqy part of his soul came from a post-xuan-su binding soul, and the sj part of his soul came from a heart-broken-damaged-foundation shen jiu soul. so the big gods split the difference and chucked him into the first post-xuan-su era sj-is-qi-deviating-bc-of-qijiu-angst event... aka the start of svsss in sqq's body. cue svsss shenanigans, wherein everyone (eventually) gets their happily ever after.

final thoughts aka it's hard to be a qijiu shipper

the logical thing my smooth brain can't 100% work out is how this affects yqy's bound soul during the svsss era. sj's soul is long gone, having merged into sy and then returning through post-ascension 5th dimension time bullshit. but yqy is still alive during this period, and his poor soul must be so confused. despite sy clearly not being sj, he still inexplicably likes and wants to protect sy (who kind of is sj, in a roundabout way.) all i can think of sad qi-ge hours. poor man can't catch a break his entire life is a tragedy.

one solution to his soul problem could be his death. sj was only able to bond with it after the yqy's death because his soul in life was splintered between sword and body. maybe when yqy finally dies, xuan su's shards are returned to sy as cang qiong's second in command. the shards draw him in, and when he touches them, they absorb into his body... completely destroying the last remnants of the system clinging to him.

the system is tied to a contract made by his soul, and the bit of yqy's soul added to sy makes it different enough to shake that system loose. when he ascends a second time (likely with lbh by his side), his soul is no longer broken to the point of illness. it's sy's one last gift from dad.

(maybe when sy made that deal with the big god to be with lbh, each separate part of his soul made a deal too: sj, who died on xuan su, wishing for a universe where yqy lived a long life; and yqy, who died knowing sj was tortured, wishing for a universe where sj was safe from lbh. so technically all 3 of their wishes were granted by sy wifebeaming lbh lol)

[the-mountain-flower]

Translation

Falst finds something in Erin's bag that just might help him solve a mystery from several years ago

Before leaving to charter a ship to Helm, Erin had opted to leave his bag with the members of their group that were, supposedly, resting back at the inn. The rules were the same as he’d told Kendal back in Zuurith: they were welcome to anything other than the notebooks.

Falst was admittedly tempted to peek into at least one of the aforementioned notebooks just for the sake of it. But that probably wouldn’t stave off his boredom enough and he wasn’t in the mood. After his slight familiarity with spellcarving had been useful a few days ago, he’d decided that further study would be a good idea.

To no one’s surprise, Erin’s bag had an extensive personal library to work with. The amount of comprehensive studies on every aspect of elemental magic was actually pretty absurd. Coming across something other than that was a bit of a surprise to Falst, though in hindsight it made sense for the Magus to have brought with him. His interest was piqued the second he read the title of the slim volume.

Zella’s Guide to Translating the Ancient Runic Language

Did Erin have this the entire time? And he never mentioned it?

Why would he? I haven’t mentioned any reason I'd be interested, and there’s no other reason to bring it up.

Clutching the tome in one hand, Falst closed the bag and left for the suite’s secondary room to read in private.

“Falst?”

“What?” Falst nearly snapped, turning around to see Dainix had drawn his attention away from whatever he was making in the pot above the fireplace and toward Falst.

“Where are you going? Alinua said we’re on bed rest, remember?”

“I know.” Falst held up the book, title cover facing away from the others. “Just doing some reading, nothing wild.”

“Oh,” Dainix gave Falst what was probably a look of concern, but didn’t press the subject. “Okay well, have fun.”

“Uh huh.” Falst retreated to the relative privacy of other room.

At the last second, he decided to not close the door all the way.

Falst opened the book before he even sat down. Despite the short length, it took him a few moments to find the section on names, that he wasn’t even sure it would have. He found it near the end, only two pages long.

The words just below the chapter title read: Luckily for our scholarly purposes, an almost-direct cypher can be applied to almost all proper nouns, making this part of our translation efforts relatively easy.

The rest of the section was dedicated to a simple chart, that showed Ancient runes next to those of the modern runic alphabet they correlated with.

He should’ve brought something to write with. There was a wooden desk next to him and one in front of him, he could just use one of those. Erin would get on his ass about damaging the hotel furniture, though. The book in his hands felt slightly heavier at that thought.

Whatever, it wouldn’t be that hard to just stick to mental notes on this one. After all, the version he knew was only five runes.

Five runes that he he knew so well he could draw them with his eyes closed. Five runes to make up a name carved onto his very heart, whose meaning was a mystery to him even after all these years.

And the answer was right in front of him.

The first rune he searched for was near the top of the cypher. Two horizontal lines connected by a diagonal stroke angled to the left, beneath a filled-in triangle shape. According to the book, the character it correlated with one of the most simple of the First Language alphabet: a dot beneath a small curve.

It had only taken Falst a moment to find. And the rest were found just as easily as the first.

The next was the simplest of the Ancient runes, a horizontal line directly above a longer one. It translated to two diagonal curves, next to a dot.

Two horizontal lines above an upside-down triangle, translating to a diagonal line above and beside two consecutive dots.

Two horizontal lines, the one on top accented with diagonal lines on the top side, translating to two concentric curves.

A diagonal line inside the angle of two connected ones and a sideways triangle, translating to a curved triangle with one of its sides open.

Falst’s throat tightened when he began to sound out the name, voice cracking as he said it aloud for the first time.

“Emira…”

A teardrop fell onto the page.

“Shit!” Falst quickly tried to wipe the moisture away. How had he not even noticed he was… He swore again when a small amount of ink smeared beneath his finger.

The next tense moments were devoted to getting rid of any sign of the moisture. If Erin ever found out about this, Falst just might die of embarrassment long before the scholar got his revenge.

Luckily, none of the actual runes had been ruined, just some of the line dividing the parts of the cypher. Once any trace of his mistake had been removed, it was nothing too out of the ordinary from the usual wear and tear over time. There was no reason to suspect anything.

It took even less time to make sure his face was dry, to keep that mistake from happening again.

A knock at the door, and the sound of it opening further, caused Falst to slam the book shut.

Kendal poked his head inside. “Is it okay if I use this room for a bit? Argist requested an audience, and Dainix is using the fireplace and I don’t want to upset Alinua by leaving, so this is the best option.”

“Go ahead.” Falst gave Kendal a serious look as he left the room. “But if they try anything,”

“Argist is much friendlier than Zuurith, so I’m sure it’ll be fine, but thank you.”

Kendal closed the door behind all the way; but it was, what, two inches thick? Yeah, Falst could listen in no problem.

Falst left his position for just a moment to put the book back into Erin’s bag without a second thought, no longer having use for it. He’d spent years wondering what the name on his mom’s gravestone was. He wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wanted to write this ever since writing "I wish I could remember every second we had". IDK why this one took so much longer but here it is :)

Remember to drink water, eat food, take your meds (if applicable), and get enough sleep. Love you all, and have a great [insert time here]! <3

[sol-consort]

When I played mass effect for the first time, turians strongly reminded me of crickets. Like, to the point where I was shocked they were apparently based off of birds.

I think its the like mandibles they have? The ones that are always moving and twitching, kinda reminds me of how crickets or bugs in general would move about

this made me realise I've been refering to their mandibles as talons this entire time for some reason, okay let's pretend I never did that

But yeah I see where you're coming from

They seem like faux mandibles, useless, hard, and part of their exoskeleton that fractured

Their movement seems involuntary. Their surface appears barren from any nerves and blood vessels. The muscles must be located at the joints that move them. Turians wouldn't be able to feel a touch on their mandibles, but a tug would be sharply painful.

They appear to move vertically and horizontally, while most mandibles either move in one plane or the other. The only use I could think of for them is defence? It goes hand in hand with their flattish faces, making the mandibles stick out even more, like a hedgehog with only two spikes.

Cricket mandibles are considered secondary appendages. They have joints, grasp, and independent movements. They act like tiny hands. The little hairs on them help with sensing the outside world, insects can tell when they're wet, humans can not. We can only guess wetness by sensing a difference in the temperature. If you were dipped into a pool of room temperature water in a room with still air, you wouldn't be able to tell...until you moved a limb and felt the dense "air" resistance, your brain guessing its water by connecting the dots rather than actually feeling wetness.

Maybe it's because we can swim—infants have built-in reactions to float—so those traits weren't a priority. While a water droplet can spell the doom of an insect, they drown often. Are turians able to feel wetness as in actually sense it since they can't swim either?

Cricket mandibles evolved from their legs rather than gills, so this would imply the turians weren't always bipedal.

With the bird ancestorial theory, they could've been the remains of a beak that evolved out, like our tailbones. Their exposed teeth underneath only strengthen that theory. You can imagine their mandibles slotting back in place around their jaw and forming a semi beak. Something fractured them, and I'm not sure what.

Also, the fun part about the theory is that crickets do, in fact, have an exoskeleton, and it does, in fact, moult! only coming to a halt once they reach adulthood.

Do turian children and teens moult their exoskeleton? Is that why face markings are only given at a certain age since the tattoo will stay permanent instead of shedding off alongside their exoskeleton?

Damn anon your theory opened so many more doors, and I love it. Side note, I tried to go back in the cricket ancestry evolution line to see if they overlap with birds or dinosaurs, not much at all, sadly. However, most insects like them seem to have evolved from the Orthoptera, which predates the goddamn dinosaurs?? So that's fun!

Also, while scouring the turian wiki, it stated that traces of thulium are found in their exoskeleton, and thulium is a non-toxic (to humans) metal that's found at the crust of the earth! So we were predetermined besties <3

[bibibbon]

Hey, since we all agree AM, in canon, never gave any indication Izu is his heir and any "special treatment" (if we can even say am gave anything to Izu) is more bc people think am is Izu's dad (well shoto did and that makes sense) the scene of am saying you are next....lose a bit of its impact. I guess.

We the readers know who am is thinking.

The rest of the world don't.

So BK jump to the conclusion am was taking about Izu was...ass.

On besties, people are shocked bc the idea of am being Izu's father and a abusive one( for those who don't know my au. Am never abused Izu! But to the public...the story of a girl who breaks bones and has going to the hospital a lot is Sus) gives a reaction out of people.

And is this what is missing in their dynamic. No one reacts, hell, Shoto thought Izu is a love child but...never does anything. No one seems to care.

Am is incompetent mentor. Courtesy of Hori.

In Besties, people do react to that and his popularity takes a toll even when is proved he never hurt Izumi...he is a bad mentor and missed many red flags. Now, am will react to the obvious.

I know people like to defend am saying he is a novice teacher and I get, I do. But am is still an idiot in my eyes, he shouldn't really waste time with the others students and focus on his heir WHO IS STRUGGLING WITH THIS QUIRK.

"that would be favoritism" not really, that would be an being sensible. Even if it is favoritism...no one in UA can say anything as Aizawa has favorites

So my ask here is:

How can I make the whole heir thing matter in besties?

In canon, bk had no reason to think Izu is the chosen one of anything yet...still goes out of his way to hurt him...and we are supposed to be on his side! (Hori please!)

Btw in besties, dabi is repulsed by the idea am is a bad teacher and father. Yes, am never hurt Izumi but he, as a powerful man, never tried to help....how angry and dissapointed would dabi be?

Hi @mikeellee 👋

That's the point, even in the narrative it was pointed out that only izuku midoriya understood the implications and the true meaning of that message whereas society just interpreted it as all might fulfilling his role as the symbol of peace and decaring that any villain who act out of line will face a fate of AFO's harsh beating.

Personally, I disagree bakugo never necessarily jumped to the conclusion that all might was talking about izuku but he did connect the dots and wildly jump to the conclusion that Izuku got his quirk from all might. Those are two different things and izuku in the beginning of the story dropped a hint that he got his quirk from someone, then bakugo saw all might and izuku interacting (which isn't weird but like I said it is a bit strange from Japan's social norms and the issue of nepotism), bakugo then saw all mights last fight, he also asked all might Personally what that was all about and all might refused to answer. All of these factors as well as bakugo losing it over what happend to him made him go and make a wild conclusion which resulted in a huge fight and all might and izuku telling him the truth.

I think rereading the chapter where bakugo confronts izuku would help show how he came to the conclusion.

Now while you have characters like shoto who don't know izuku since childhood think that all might is izukus dad you have bakugo who already knows that it isn't possible and simply resorts to another theory.

Personally, my main question is how and where the idea of all might being izukus dad came to play. Sure you can argue that it's because they have very similar quirks but at the same time I just don't really see it and I wish we got more of izuku and all might since yes all might is a bad mentor and their relationship is incredibly shallow with izuku and all might never developing since the moment they meet.

I think it's interesting and a good thing that you're going to deleve into both fan culture within mha, how infuelntial of a person all might is and the public relations of all of this. Having theories around all might the top hero in Japan but also a very secretive person whom people don't understand the nature of his quirk or know his full name it would be hella interesting to have a freshly retired all might get all of this bar reputation and how that particularly would effect the hero society.

Would this theory of all might being an abuser have people come up and show their solidarity for izuku whom they think is an abuse victim, would the endeavour agency try and use this to their advantage and prop up their number one hero? Or what would happen to the market? The all might products, merchandise and maybe all might having to deal with future lawsuits?

Japan is a country that takes honour, pride and reputation as a big deal so all might going through a huge public scandal like this would definitely effect him and I hope you explore that way more in depth.

[suburbanbonfire]

tagged by @18minutemajor for a hockey art share tag game! I enjoy talking about myself but am terrible at posting so this is perfect. i WILL talk too much, this is a threat.

rules: post your first ever hockey art, your latest hockey art, and your favourite hockey art, then tag three hockey artists.

FIRST ART

I made the Kraken Orb (Korb) at the end of the 22-23 season, as a commemoration, although a sort of ironic one considering i had only gotten into hockey in time for the playoffs so there are a couple players here i actually never got to see play at all before making this (Joonas, Jaycob, Burky, Fleury)

it was a whole lot of fun though! Prior to this i was in a months-long art slump after leaving a fandom, so it was a total surprise to have hockey of all things be what revitalized my art.

technically, the very first hockey art from this was Matty; you can kinda tell by the way his lines are a bit thicker than the rest since i wasn't in my groove yet. i also knew coming in that i wanted to arrange the faces in a circle, but didn't plan out beyond that, so i just made sure that i was getting a variety of head directions in my references and hoped for the best. My favorites from this are Gru, Soucy, Dunn, Schultz, Borgen, and Eeli. I think they all turned out really well.

LATEST ART

MEAT CUT MEAT CUT

this one is fun for me because it's quite different from my usual style of art, with lineart and non-realistic forms/face. I've had the concept in my head for awhile after hearing/reading so many interesting descriptions of the physical qualities that good hockey players possess.

'Sacrifice the Body' actually came in mid-art when i had an epiphany doing something like driving my car or an activity similarly unrelated. Before that, it was going to be a lil heart drawn on the chest and the going contender for the label was 'Ferda.' which would've been great, but sacrifice the body just worked too dang well with the themes.

FAVORITE ART

i mean, c'mon. it's gotta be this one.

my magnum opus, my white whale. it came out even better than i saw it in my head and i love everything about it. when i came up with the idea, i had TOTALLY forgotten that Climate Pledge has those giant windows, so when i set out to find references and saw it, it instantly made everything even better with LIGHTING!!!!

It was my first time drawing this kind of interior architecture and although there's definitely things i would do differently now, im so so proud of how it looks and turned out. I was also still drawing through my decade-old laptop at that point, so I had to split up the work on this into two files - i sketched everything, then worked ONLY on the bg until it was about 90% done, then made a flattened copy to open as a new file to draw the players on top of.

I also have a bunch of WIP shots of it in my drafts I guess I'll throw in here now!

initial sketch to get down the composition before i remembered the window | lines of the building! i actually found a 3d virtual tour of CPA from before it was built which had the PERFECT angle, so i screencapped that and straight up traced the architecture. Ultimately, the scoreboard and the paint lines ended up getting moved around.

planning out my lighting in greyscale (i really need to do this more often, i struggle with values so much, alas) | in progress bg! at this point, the ice and the boards/glass were the only things completed. I eventually said 'fuck it' to being able to see the areas behind the stands like you could in all my references, and just put the people dots all the way up.

Now the most gut-wrenching part

THE TAGS

this is where me being bad at posting comes into play, because instead i just lurk and thats not great for forming connections HERE GOES

@ruinedcasket - it has been awesome seeing your art progress! would love 2 hear your thoughts about it

@rouzys - your kraken stuff is so pretty, love how you capture likenesses

oh god oh fuck everyone else i know has already been tagged fuck oh sshit

If You Are An Artist On Hockey Twit And See This, It Is A Sign

[illarian-rambling]

Thanks for the tag @mk-writes-stuff!

Character Voice Tag

My line is, “What did you think would happen when you did that?” (Bonus points for describing the stupid thing they did)

Your line is, "Fuck, I hate this job."

.

Izjik: "Yeah, I can't gentle parent you outta being a fucking dumbass. Sure. Whatever. Go try to steal that guy's glasses and see if I pay your bail."

Sepo: "Was that some sort of brain-dead experiment on the edibleness of pufferfish? Because I could've saved you the trouble by thinking about it for two seconds - which is clearly more than you did."

Twenari: "You have a condition that makes you suseptible to vertigo. Then you went to run around in the heat, and now you're complaining that you're dizzy. I'm not sure where the dots aren't connecting."

Djek: "I don't know what you expected from practicing mind control on the city rats, but getting nabbed by the conners definitely should've been one of those things. Ah, rich kids..."

Astra: "Love, there's this thing in the business we call the law a' equal and opposite reactions. Now, I know you ain't the sciency type, but I need ya to understand that applyin' a thousand pounds to one side a' my wrench is gonna have the equal and opposite reaction a' breakin' my fuckin' wrench."

Mashal: "There's a difference between being messy and leaving your bag of black powder next to a lit lantern, and the difference is that I'm asking you to please not do the latter. A minor explosion is not what either of us needs first thing in the morning."

Ivander: "Now, I've never been on a ship, but I do know that loose lips can sink reputations. Always talk like someone's listening, so you don't act too damned surprised when you find out they are."

Elsind: "Oh, come on, what did you think would happen? I'm sorry to say, Duchon, but you can't royal your way out of everything."

Avymere: "Actions have consequences, my friend. You may take whatever actions you wish, but know that it is my duty to bring consequences."

.

I had fun with this one :3

I'll tag @kaylinalexanderbooks @ghostlyboysstories @tiredpapergirl @fantasy-things-and-such and anyone else who wants in!

[eris-snow]

𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐞

Tags: Deku's birthday series 2023, izuku x fem!reader, angst

You wake up screaming, wrapping your arms around yourself and shivering. Sometimes you wish you have someone there when you wake up.

I haven’t really been sleeping well lately, nightmares are getting to me.

Curiosity sets in Izuku’s bones as he stares at his history textbook with an accusing glare.

The note is scribbled out in a hurry, with multiple letters connected by one line in an almost illegible form.

It’s clinging on for dear life as the wind blows it around on his history textbook and threatens to peel itself off.

This is odd.

No, it wasn’t the fact that you had written in English. The both of you had opted to write your letters in your second language, just as an added safety precaution after Mineta had come deadly close to reading your notes. Sure, it wasn’t foolproof, but it stops people like Ashido and Denki from even trying to even interpret your Secret due to the barrier of language.

And it’s not because you had given this literal minutes before he met up with you again.

You know that Izuku likes structure, and that was how you had fallen into the pattern of giving your Secrets to him in the morning, and him some other time in the day, usually in the evening or at night.

It was currently 6 pm.

He shakes his head and reminds himself of Katsuki’s words: This season was a tough time for you, and as your friend, he had to be patient.

He could do patient.

A soft smile spreads across his face as he knocks on your door, clutching his study materials tighter against his chest.

You deserve at least that much.

--

You flash him a tired smile when he enters the room, sitting up straighter. “You sure took your own sweet time. I was thinking of starting without you.” You tease.

“Oh, hush you,” He shushes, sitting down on the empty rolly chair. “I’m not that bad.”

The both of you allow silence to envelop the room as you start opening books and pulling out writing materials. That is, until he breaks it.

“Want to do a sleepover on Friday?” Izuku suggests out of the blue. My eyes meet his, and instantly, I know why he’s suggesting it. “This is about my note, right?” I voice slowly.

Izuku nods his head. “We could invite Uraraka, Iida and Todoroki for a mini slumber party in the living room. A Friday movie night sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

The picture is illustrated in warm colour tones, making you smile subconsciously as you imagine the scene. Before the Quirk accident, Katsuki, Izuku and you would have sleepovers at Katsuki’s house. Curling up under blankets and cheering for All Might together, the 3 of you rode every high and low of the movies like it was a rollercoaster that never ended.

“Yeah,” You reply, smile growing sweeter by the minute. “I’d like that. Thanks, Zuku.”

Eyes brimming with relief, concern and raw delight, Izuku beams at you, as bright and warm as a campfire. “Anytime.”

--

It’s about two hours into your study session that you start dosing off. Izuku notices it all: the way your eyes droop whenever you start down at a question too long. The way your pen dots the paper, and how you start scribbling out the answers on your arithmetic worksheet. Frankly, he’s sure that you have no idea what you’re doing when he sees you write Shakespeare on your Mathematics test paper.

He shakes you gently when he sees your eyes flutter shut, trying to wake you up when he sees you succumb to the lull of sleep. “5 more minutes…” You sigh, swatting his hand away as you slump down on your desk.

You look like one of those adults that had worked overtime to meet a deadline, and so Izuku leaves you be. Your test paper wasn’t due until next week, so it could wait. Seeing you finally get the peaceful rest you so rightfully deserved eases his heart a little.

He must have been hyper-focused on his note-taking, because by the time he glances up, it’s coming to 9. Your features are relaxed, arms probing up your head with your jaw open ajar. Izuku shakes his head, a soft smile playing on his lips.

He should probably go.

Quietly, he packs his textbook up and scribbles his Secret to you, debating if he should wake you up or not.

If he leaves you there, you’ll suffer the consequence of a stiff neck when tomorrow comes. If he takes you to your bed, there’s a chance you wake up and have trouble falling asleep again.

Luckily-or unluckily-, he doesn’t have to choose.

Midway through his internal debate, you start to stir, causing Izuku to jump back at your slightest movement.

At first, he thought you were waking up because of the crease that forms in between your eyebrows. You were muttering incoherently too, a few words and phrases that were too soft for him to capture.

But then you start to breathe more heavily, your chest heaving up and down in panicked, deliberate exhales. Eyebrows knitted together, Izuku ceases his murmurs and slides his stationery on the table you were resting your head on. A droplet of water lands on the table, right next to your arms, making his eyes snap to you.

Tears gather in your eyes, streaking down your face.

Izuku’s heart plummets like a ten-pound bowling ball.

You aren’t fine at all.

Izuku shakes your shoulder gently as your breaths get ragged, one of your hands gripping your sleeves so hard he thought you were going to tear them. “Starlight,” He whispers, emerald eyes blown wide in anxiety.

“Starlight, wake up…it’s a nightmare!”

You don’t respond to him at all, disjointed ramblings blurring into semi-coherent words. “…Zuku, please…” Your tears are overflowing now. “’m not lying…”

It took Izuku’s iron willpower to put aside your drunk-like slurs and focus on getting you awake. “Starlight,” He urges, desperation seeping through his voice. “Wake up!”

One final jolt sends you screaming like a banshee, causing him to rip his hand away like he was touching acid. Your eyes snap open. Izuku has never seen them hold that much fear in his life.

You graduate to hyperventilating, short, quick breaths being taken in and out as you cover your mouth immediately, still shivering in your chair with your homework long abandoned.

Empathy consumes Izuku a whole as your shriek replays in his mind again. He hadn’t realised how muffled the walls make them sound.

“Hey,” Nearing you, the greenette kneels to your eye level and wills the anxiety out of his eyes. He makes sure the concern is prominent, though. “It’s okay, it was just a nightmare—.”

“Zuku,” You rasp, a fresh batch of tears pearling your eyes. “Y-You’re still here…”

And that breaks him. How small you sound, how broken your voice is.

How could you think that he’d ever leave?

“Yes, I’m here,” He assures, offering you his hand. “Everything’s fine now.”

Swallowing thickly, you look up at him through your haze of tears. “Sorry, but…c-can I—” Your voice is thick as you sink to the floor beside him. “Can I get a hug? I-I really need one now.”

There are tears in his eyes too as he spreads his arms wide, welcoming you into his embrace. He takes your shivering form and pats your back soothingly, comforting you the best he can. And you seem content with doing just that because you cling to him even tighter, like you’re afraid he’s going to disappear any second.

“Don’t leave, Zuku. Stay here with me.” You say quietly, voice hoarse.

Oh, right. The nightmare was about him.

“I’m not going to leave,” He promises, arms around your torso.

“You swear?” You ask, breath hitching. Another round of tears breaks through when he nods his head, and Izuku lets you cry it all out.

He assumes they’re tears of relief when he couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You don’t talk after that. Izuku holds you like that for as long as you want and offers you tissues by grabbing them from your bedside using Black Whip because he doesn’t want to let go of you now. Eventually, your breaths start to even out, and that’s when Izuku carries you to bed and start to pick up the tissue balls as you get ready to sleep.

That’s when Izuku finally breaks in the question.

“You don’t have to answer me now, but…did your nightmare have something with me dying in it?” If that was so, he wants to do everything he can to assure you wasn’t as reckless as before. He never factored in how much his classmates cared about him until the battle against Class A on his suicide mission to battle All For One alone.

There isn’t the slightest indication of you acknowledging his question. No reply, no rustling of your pillows, not even a flinch.

Izuku thinks of leaving it like that until he sees more tears well up in your eyes, and quickly passes the tissue box to you.

You give him a watery smile, shaking your head as you admit.

“Something like that.”

--

I asked 3 different people on how to cheer you up, but no one got it quite right, so I ended up going with my own idea. I’m glad that you’re feeling better. P.s, my offer still stands. I’m a wall away if you need to talk. Just swing by.

- Izuku

[dearest-painter]

Yandere Johnny with Gary’s Sister reader (with a platonic yandere Gary)

TW/CW:unhealthy behavior, unhealthy relationship,abusive behavior,abusive relationship,Gary has his twisted way of loving his sister in a platonic way,Johnny and Gary threatening Lola,Lola’s bitch ass,already established relationship,Johnny calls you his ‘queen’ or ‘my girl’,It’s not specified if Gary and reader are blood siblings so you can imagine yourself however you want!,Reader has to deal with Gary’s bullshit and is the reason he hasn’t fought anyone yet,Tell me if I need to add more!

-First things first,we all know Gary is very manipulative and has almost all the teachers and students wrapped around his finger or enough for them to not care about his activities. He makes sure it’s the same for you,no one will be allowed to annoy you

-Gary found out about your relationship with Johnny when Lola was bitching that Johnny “left me for some crazy man’s sister!” Or “Broke up with me for someone lesser then her!” Along those lines. He knows that not many people are as crazy as him so he connected the dots early and was pissed!

-You and Johnny were hanging out in town because you two wanted to buy each other something then hang out. It was going good…until Gary showed up.

- “Gary!?” Gary just glared at your boyfriend as he pushed you behind him. Johnny wasn’t going to let this stand because your his girl! “What the fuck do you want from my sister!?” “Just to love her!” “Bullshit!” “It ain’t bullshit! She’s my girl and I’m her fucking boy!” Johnny softly pulled you to him not wanting to harm you as you smiled up at him. Gary growled a bit. “Gary,my dearest brother…how about next week we set up a day for you two to actually talk normally” Gary rolled his eyes and scoffed while Johnny just glared at him. “Fine…but only for you Y/N” “what he said” “thank you both! Now we’ll be on our way!” Gary rolled his eyes again walking away while you and Johnny went to calm down more so Johnny…

-they hate each other completely yet they stick it out for you.

-They have a..truce in a way,they don’t fight or argue as much around you but they will attack or badmouth anyone who tries shit against you.

-Gary loves you in his own twisted way,your parents know that and was the reason you were sent here with him! Without you Gary is a complete maniac,he’s more insane and attacks much more so they sent you with him for others safety.

-He doesn’t treat you as a possession more so his sister that he won.

-Johnny loves you a lot! You were his safety net and crush as long as he can remember but dated Lola do try and hide it,it truly never worked.

-If they heard Lola was bitch talking more then usual and it was about you they’d definitely jump her ass,I’m bullworth everyone fights each other no matter what gender but will get punished harder so they’d stop and make someone else do Itzaes

-Gary gets Johnny to spy on you or hang out with you so he can at least keep an eye on you no matter what. Johnny gets annoyed but hey Gary’s rich and pays him well!

-Johnny gets some of his buds to watch over you. He says “So no one can steal my Queen!” Which is cute until you realize he’s unhealthy obsessed with you. They don’t get annoyed as Johnny’s the boss but also because they like you!

[spookyspaghettisundae]

All Other Eyes Be Damned

The walls had eyes. Tiny cameras dotted every corner of Future Proof’s headquarters. Every stream of data ran through security systems, monitored by a combination of ever-churning algorithms and vigilant human attention. Every employee offered another set of eyes and ears in the hivemind, witnesses to any wrongdoing or espionage.

If they noticed such a thing happening. If.

Working previous jobs in corporate cybersecurity, that network of eyes used to feel like an extension of herself. Beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards, connecting to the eagle-eyed observers at the center of the hivemind.

Filled to the brim with loyal worker bees and cutting edge infrastructure, a towering skyscraper like Future Proof’s would have offered her a treasure trove of tools in her previous occupation.

Now, Chloe Grant was a grunt again. A well-paid mercenary on the frontlines, but a field operative. Her job was to contain and send dinosaurs coming through temporal Anomalies back into their proper eras.

Her job description did not include monitoring potential spies or ensuring the general public never learned of Anomalies or dinosaurs. The CEO, Malachi Spencer, had not hired her for that. And it wasn’t like she missed that line of work, either. Counterintelligence was always a dance on the razor’s edge—doing your job just good enough to make sure the oiled machine kept running without a hitch, yet never drawing so much attention to yourself that you became the subject of suspicion.

Yet here she was. Every step she took down the hallway towards Communications was going to make her look like she might be a spy herself. She had no reason to go there.

The walls had eyes. Those beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards watched her every move.

Now, she felt all those burning eyes on her. As she walked down the hallway, she had to wonder who would be sitting behind a desk and watching her every move from a security monitor. Wondering who’d sound the silent alert if she stepped out of line, or started acting overly suspicious.

After his arrest, Singh was out of the picture. That only left dozens of other people in the company who could be gunning to take down someone like Chloe Grant for a quick win.

Someone could have been composing a note on her in that very moment. For all she knew, Spencer might be reading that kind of memo by the end of his meeting in the boardroom, and activating everybody to get her fired, and entangled in lawsuits going deep enough to keep her impoverished for life.

Paranoia flared up as brightly as the burning fires of those tiny red dots on all the security cameras, the myriads of eyes all around.

She paused by the door to Communications. One such eye’s tiny red dot glowed above the door. Grant caught herself staring at it longer than she should have. Long enough to catch the attention of anyone behind a security desk and monitors.

Snapping out of this trance, she waved a hand, and the door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Danielle Bennet sat in the main hub of Communications, on a sleek swivel chair, illuminated by the cold blue glow from a wall of curved monitors. Only few of Bennett’s screens displayed security camera feeds from on-site premises—her main focus centered around myriads of dashboards accruing staggering amounts of data, camera feeds from other cities worldwide, and a show on YouTube where a young woman was talking at the screen.

Bennett hadn’t heard Grant nor noticed her enter Communications. A steady stream of chatter from two tiny earbuds plugged into Bennett’s ears likely occupied her entire attention, or served as white noise that conspired with the data she was monitoring on the screens to distract her entirely.

The other desks were currently unoccupied. With Singh absent and any other personnel out of office, Bennett sat alone in Communications.

Grant almost sighed in relief. She shoved all the creeping paranoia down into a dark hole, then slammed the hatch shut, and locked it. She pursed her lips and regained her composure, then approached Bennett from behind, giving her new colleague two light taps on the shoulder.

Bennett gasped and clutched her chest with a slender hand.

“Oh my f—Chlo—uh, Miss Grant. What can I do for you?”

Bennett forced a smile so nervous that it looked painful. With a flick of her wrist, she blindly closed the YouTube video she had been watching. And catching how Grant spotted that interaction with a furtive glance, Bennett’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.

“Hi,” Grant said. She paused while she silently struggled to find the right words. She bridged the gap with a question. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yah, uhm, yeah. W-what’s up?”

Grant was a tall woman, easily standing over a head taller than Bennett when next to one another. With Bennett sitting at the hub’s desk and Grant standing next to her, she must have towered over her the same way Future Proof’s HQ overshadowed the surrounding city buildings. A dizzying difference in heights.

Grant leaned in and cleared her throat, ready to drop her volume to a conspiratorial murmur. Bennett flinched and her cheeks turned a darker shade. Her eyes glittered with apprehension.

“I… need your help. This needs to stay in this room, between the two of us,” Grant said.

Bennett blinked. Blinked again. Rendered speechless, she stared at Grant, doe-eyed.

Grant chewed on her lip before continuing, knowing she needed to be more specific.

“I think there’s a spy in Future Proof, and we need to make sure. I think there’s someone spying on Spencer and the stakeholders as we speak right now. What do you say? Help me out, okay?”

Bennett blinked again. It was taking her too long to absorb the gravity of their situation.

Grant waited patiently, even as every second of time painfully ticked, and her chance at learning what she needed to know slowly slipped away. She needed Bennett’s help, but she couldn’t force her hand. Not now.

Not yet.

“Wh—uh-uhm, o-okay,” Bennett sputtered out. With a hasty gesture, she swept her hair back behind an ear and her gaze blanked. The gears were beginning to grind. The blank gaze hardened and then focused on Grant, locking onto her with a serious expression. “What do you need exactly?”

Grant nodded.

“I think there’s a bug planted in the boardroom. I need some way to intercept the signal, to listen in on it or to trace where it’s transmitting to. I know we can do that, I’m no newb to electronic warfare. Question is, can we do that really quickly somehow?”

Bennett narrowed her eyes. The gears behind her forehead continued to grind. Her brain was visibly running through a million calculations at once, chief among them a burning question: was Chloe Grant the actual spy in this scenario, engineering a situation where she could gain access to information she shouldn’t be getting?

Some part of Bennett must have navigated that maze of a million calculations fast. To go out on a limb here. She nodded in response to Grant’s question.

“Yeah, I got an idea, but, shit. Miss Grant—”

“Call me Chloe.”

She flashed Bennett a small smile.

The Communications operator’s cheeks flushed red again.

“Okay, Chloe, well, I have an idea but, shit, Singh just got into serious trouble, he’s—”

“I know Singh’s in hot water. But he’s in hot water with the federal government, not with Future Proof’s management. I haven’t been here long, but it’s clear we need to act before things get even worse. We all know the Midland disaster was the result of sabotage, right? Come on—think about it. Call’s coming from inside the house, Bennett.”

Grant clenched her jaw. Bennett stayed silent, stunned by this waterfall of conspiratorial assumptions. Some of them had struck a chord.

Grant softened her tone and asked, “Danielle?”

Bennett broke eye contact and rubbed her temples. Staring into the sea of data as it continuously churned on her wall of screens, she continued rubbing her temples while she processed everything.

“I can rig one of our portable Anomaly detectors to single out the signal from all the other noise and then trace it. Are you…” Bennett sighed. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure as dino shit,” Grant said, ringing powerfully with confidence.

She almost believed it herself.

Bennett switched gears and practically jumped out of her swivel chair. She zipped around Communications like a fluttering fairy. Within a matter of minutes, she cluttered her desk with tiny tools, grabbed one of the spare PADs, gutted its electronic insides, and rewired the device entirely.

Grant still felt watched. Even in here, an artificial eye was watching their every move. Systems continuously recorded everything. If anybody ever started digging, the hivemind would know what had  happened in this room. There would be uncomfortable questions.

She had to keep telling herself she was acting in everybody’s best interests, so this wouldn’t get her or Bennett into trouble. Hell, if everything worked out, it was bound to make her more popular with Spencer.

Even so, she licked her lips with a dizzying sense of apprehension, almost as if she was standing at the edge of a steep cliff. Stretched this thin with time ticking away, Grant’s patience waned. The longer they waited, the sooner the CEO’s meeting in the boardroom on the top floor would end. The sooner someone could remove the bug and dash any hopes of tracing it back to the spies.

All those eyes. Everywhere. Yet so many of them stayed blind.

Bennett beamed with triumph. She presented the modified PAD to Grant, quickly ran her through how to adjust the tracker to different Wi-Fi and radio signals, and proudly techno-babbled about how she had already filtered out all frequencies and signals commonly present and used throughout the building.

Finally, she handed Grant the earbuds.

“Once you’ve singled out the signal, the PAD should display any video feed, and you can listen in on whatever audio it’s transmitting. If it’s neither one or the other, it’ll just be a bunch of noise, but it’ll be recording everything on this puppy.”

“You are a wizard. I owe you one,” Grant said with a genuine and warm smile.

Before she could register any response to that, or truly absorb how Bennett kept blushing in her presence, Grant stormed out of Communications. The artificial eyes in the walls could continue watching her for all she cared.

Courage and vigor renewed, confidence swelled in her gut as Grant sensed she had found an ally in Danielle Bennett. She quickly dismissed a tiny spark of paranoia that Bennett might be involved in the espionage herself, and leading her into a trap within traps.

Riding the elevator up, Grant’s pulse started racing again. Time slowed, colors brightened, and her awareness sharpened.

Her wristwatch revealed she had lost fifteen minutes already. She hoped Spencer and the stakeholders would be filling a scheduled hour-long meeting in the boardroom.

People as important as the “Three Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse” had other places to be. Things to do. Lives to ruin elsewhere, more millions to shovel into shell corporations and off-shore bank accounts.

Worst case scenario, they were already done talking up there.

Grant muttered at the elevator’s level display, urging it to hurry up in its ascent, as if that would help accelerate anything.

The elevator dinged and its doors swished open.

She ducked past two people she had seen before but forgotten the names of, two office worker bees from the top floors. One of them was Spencer’s personal assistant. They chattered about coffee. They also largely ignored Grant.

The PAD in her leather jacket pocket weighed a ton. Cold sweat gathered in her palm around the small device she kept clutched in there, hidden.

She turned a corner to get out of sight from other human beings, and switched the detector on. Its screen winked to life. First, the display of Future Proof’s logo glitched out with graphical distortions, then replaced by plain text and numbers of Bennett’s hacked tracker superseding the PAD’s installed programming.

Grant plugged in the earbuds and started searching. Meandering around the top floor of HQ, adjusting the tiny dials on the device, and thumbing through Bennett’s new settings. She quickly passed by the main offices and glimpsed the boardroom through its sound-proofed glass walls—Spencer, Cole, Jae, and Romero were still in there, speaking to each other.

Good.

“I see you,” Bennett said, words arriving with a hint of static in Grant’s ears by way of the earbuds. However insecure Bennett may have seemed earlier, she now spoke with authority, and a sing-song in her tone. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I figured you could use some backup. Say hello to the audience at home.”

Grant spotted the nearest camera in the corner of the hallway. All eyes were on her, after all. Though her heart still raced—with excitement, and a creeping sense of dread—part of her was relieved that all those eyes were Bennett’s right now.

She greeted the camera with a timid wave.

Bennett answered with cheer, “Yep, that’s me. Hi!”

Grant flashed the camera a crooked smile. Had little time or space to appreciate Bennett’s sense of humor. So, she continued searching. Tweaking the PAD’s settings.

Then she swore when a sharp metallic whine eclipsed the soft white noise from her earbuds. Almost ripped them out of her ears, but then the whine died down before she could act upon it.

The PAD’s screen flashed with a red alert.

She had traced the signal. And more than that…

NO VIDEO, said the screen with a small error icon.

AUDIO DETECTED, it added beneath that, with a button prompt she could press to start playback.

Grant’s thumb hovered over that on-screen button. Her paralysis wouldn’t last long.

Curiosity won out. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Grant had always hated comparing herself to animals, anyway.

Human through and through. She tapped the button.

While she raised the PAD to continue tracing the signal’s path, speech from inside the boardroom filled her ears.

Spencer spoke as sharply to the stakeholders as he did to his employees.

“…and you don’t think it’s convenient that our satellite imaging and the ADS were offline up until Captain Rose and his team were precisely on top of the incursion?”

The ensuing silence in the boardroom was deafening. Someone clicked their tongue in frustration.

Spencer continued. “What makes the world go round, Mister Jae, is cold, hard cash. You represent the ITC but there’s more than one way to secure the necessary funds, and we might need to consider those alternatives if you cannot ensure our systems are running at full operability worldwide. Let alone in our backyard.”

Another long stretch of silence followed. Grant followed the signal all the while. It led her down a corridor she had never seen before.

Bennett asked Grant, “Should, um, should we be listening to this? This, uh, uhhh—”

“Focus. Never mind what they’re saying,” Grant replied. Tremors rocked her voice, echoes of her racing heart. “Let’s focus on the facts. Someone’s eavesdropping on the boardroom meeting, and we need to find out who.”

Kim Jae finally broke the silence and answered Spencer. His every syllable dripped with venom. “What’s the point in shifting the blame around here, hm? You know better than anybody else that we’re not interested in some government goons meddling with your work. It affects our bottom line as much as yours. Which is to say: badly.”

Grant stopped. The signal was leading her up. This was the top floor of the building, so that left only one conclusion for her to draw.

The signal was being sent from the boardroom to the skyscraper’s rooftop.

“You think they’d be using an on-site antenna to bounce the transmission?” Grant asked Bennett.

“Well, no, I doubt it. Risky move to pull if anybody started looking too closely,” Bennett said.

“We do have a lot riding on this,” Romero chimed in. Her words carried no audible venom, but reminded Grant more of the slithering of a rattlesnake through tall grass. “And do not forget this, Malachi. As much as you can replace us, a corporate entity like yours can be replaced as well. A fancy logo and a glass house filled with a bunch of drones are easy to build. Just takes another yahoo with enough drive to sneeze at a new startup and we’d have another face to work with. Remind yourself of that before you even consider threatening us again.”

The boardroom’s silence, again, was deafening.

Grant stepped into the emergency exit stairwell. She followed the steps upstairs. The detection hack confirmed her suspicion, the on-screen flashing continuing to grow in its intensity. She was getting closer to wherever the bug was transmitting to.

Was Ruiz on the rooftop himself? He couldn’t be that bad of a spy, right? Or was he just that ballsy?

“Uh, Gr—Chloe. Please, I really don’t think we should be hearing any of this,” Bennett spoke into Grant’s ear. “It’s making me feel preeetty uncomfortable.”

Grant had no reason to keep listening. Yet she couldn’t help herself. Curiosity had killed the cat. Curiosity had also killed people before. If she was a cat after all, she probably still had a few lives to spare, right?

She yielded no response to Bennett.

Spencer’s words cut like knives again. He spoke with a gravelly gravity to match a death threat.

“Do I sound like I’m threatening you, Lena?”

More awkward silence.

Grant could almost picture Spencer in front of her: hands folded with an eerie calmness before him as he sat at the head of the table, with his usual stony and cold expression. His eyes resembling those of a predator in the wild, unblinking, piercing in their murderous gaze.

Unmoving, unflinching. While poised to pounce.

She pushed through the door. Violent gusts of wind swept over the rooftop, whipping Grant’s hair around.

The signal was close. The display on the PAD offered her a sense of direction. It flashed brighter and brighter and as she neared the receiver, pinging with subtle beeps in her earbuds that kept growing louder with every step.

“Almost there,” she muttered.

“Can barely hear you with all that wind,” Bennett replied, raising her voice.

“Listen, baby,” Kim Jae said, punctuated by a long groan. “We’ll figure out who was fuckin’ around with the Midland op. Call it an act of goodwill or whatever you want, but we’re as vested in seeing who’s fuckin’ around with you as you are. There’s some problems you wanna, y’know, nip in the bud? Before they grow into more serious problems. Like I said, we’re all sweating a bottom line.”

Grant reached the edge of the rooftop. The screen flashed with a direction indicator pointing to her right.

Past a long, precarious stretch. She backtracked, looked for another way.

There was no other way.

Cole spoke up. “And I can pull some strings. Find out who’s behind Rose and his team, and get them off your back. You have enough burden to bear as it is. Your efforts are not going unnoticed.”

Romero closed. “We all have a lot to lose. Big investments we poured into Future Proof, returns we’re all expecting to see down the line. You keep doing what you’re doing, and the imbeciles who think they can cut into us will pay. Your deliveries to the FIP task force are about to yield first fruits, I’ll have you know.”

More silence.

Grant wasn’t afraid of heights, but the vista from up here was enough to make her stomach churn. It looked like the city beneath the tower was a million miles down. Coated in bright pink by the setting sun, the skyline glittered and its streets teemed with streams of ant-sized cars and microbial people.

She needed to tear her gaze away from the dizzying depths, and focus on the PAD’s tiny screen. It still flashed, still indicating the source was located to her right.

About twenty paces along a narrow, precarious ledge. That’s where the bug was transmitting to.

What she spotted there was not a receiver.

“It’s a fucking relay,” she hissed.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Bennett responded. “I don’t even see you on any of the cameras. Keep in mind, if you grab the relay now, or disrupt the signal in any way, they’ll know someone knows about it.”

Spencer said, “Please enlighten us then, Lena. What are you cooking up overseas?”

Grant had never seen Lena Romero smile, but she could envision it. Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, they could have all served as villains in a James Bond movie. Therefore, Grant imagined Romero to be showing a devious, confident smirk.

Romero said, “Bio-weaponry, and it may prove to be more effective than that old EMD tech you have been using to neutralize, herd, and capture specimens.”

A shudder ran down Grant’s spine. The heights added to her dizziness, threatening to turn into full-blown nausea. Everything Romero had just said had sounded all kinds of wrong. Red flags and warning lights had all flared up in Grant’s mind.

And she had no time to dissect it properly.

The winds howled around her on the skyscraper’s rooftop.

If she wanted to get to that relay in time, she had to balance along the narrow ledge. The walls and a vent offered some handholds she could grip to secure her way across, but a single violent gust of wind risked her sailing off the building’s edge.

“The Containment department might appreciate such developments,” Spencer said. The crooked grin on his face surfaced in his tone. “There will be no sneak peek, I presume?”

Grant committed another mistake of looking down. She rattled down a whole string of disjointed profanities.

“You okay?” Bennett asked.

Grant grunted in approval while she shimmied her way along the ledge. “Mhm.”

“Of course not,” Romero responded to Spencer. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up if something doesn’t… pan out. I don’t want to make any false promises.”

Another gust of wind whipped hair into Grant’s face. She gripped a vent’s grate so hard that her knuckles turned sheet-white. The thin sheet of metal whined and started to deform, bending to her body’s weight.

She envisioned herself slipping, dropping from the edge, falling to her death.

Cole asked Romero, “You wouldn’t be keeping such developments to yourself now, would you, my dear?” He chuckled. That chuckle contained something dark, mirroring his colleague’s verbal poison.

Just a few more steps of shimmying. Grant’s leather jacket scraped and scuffed against rough concrete walls as she clung to the edge of the building with all her might. It crossed her mind how fearless Ruiz must have been to plant the relay in such a dangerous place.

Romero laughed a rehearsed laugh. Hollow, courteous, and disingenuous. “Why, of course not, love.”

Grant reached the relay. A small black chunk of plastic, an unassuming electronic device with a long antenna unfolded from its side—no screens, no blinking lights, nothing noteworthy but a small button. A spidery mess of Velcro appendages from its back kept it fastened to another metal ventilation grate.

Spencer guffawed. “If that is all, then I believe our meeting is adjourned.”

Someone clapped their hands a single time in the boardroom.

Grant needed to hurry.

She cursed again as she fumbled, trying to detach the relay device with a single hand. The other hand was tied up in holding on for her dear life. Another cold and cutting gust of wind threatened to rob her of her balance, reminding her of the deadly drop, above which the heel’s side of her boots freely hovered.

Howling wind almost drowned out a flurry of meek words from Bennet’s end. “Hey, Chloe, if this is too dangerous, maybe we should… I don’t know. Just be careful, okay? I’m up here with you, got your back.”

“I got it, I got it,” Grant lied. Her heart pounded so hard that it wanted to escape from her chest.

Shuffling sounds filled the boardroom. Hands were probably being shaken. A door opened.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse were leaving. Meeting adjourned.

The Velcro straps tore. Grant hissed in triumph as she clutched the freed relay, and made her way back across the ledge—just twenty paces that could have just as well been two thousand.

Forcing herself not to look down again, for every glance downwards only added to her sense of gravity, as if each glance kept adding more weight to her body, making it harder to hold, to not fall. Every cruel gust of cutting wind reinforced this notion, as if the grim reaper itself was flying closer, ever closer, ready to pounce and pull her down.

With white streaks on black leather, where she had scuffed her jacket and pants on concrete walls, Grant gasped with relief as soon as she stumbled back onto safer grounds upon the rooftop.

Bennett was standing there, awaiting her, with both hands folded over her mouth to suppress any gasps. Wide-eyed, she removed her hands and her eyes flashed with a relief to mirror whatever euphoria Grant now felt flooding her insides, as if she had experienced the same adrenaline second-hand.

Grinning stupidly, Grant shared her triumph with Bennett. She held the relay up high and repeated, “I got it, I said I got it!”

“Okay! Okay,” Bennett said. She smiled and stepped up to Grant, then snatched the relay from her hands. “Let’s have a look.”

Grant dropped down into sitting, catching her breath. Everything was catching up to her, and the breathtaking vista of the pink horizon and glittering skyline around her started spinning. Her lungs screamed from all the breath she had been shortening during her death-defying balancing act.

Winds still howled where they swept over the rooftops.

Bennett knelt beside her, enraptured by her laptop, and the relay device sitting next to it while she run diagnostics and scans on the signal.

Scanning.

A small window on her screen kept flashing with those words, repeating.

SCANNING.

Adrenaline and euphoria both faded.

Grant wondered what this all meant. Was Ruiz a spy for competition? For the government? Someone else entirely?

The conversation in the boardroom was over. The bug was still capturing silence and transmitting it into the earbuds, drowned out by howling winds and the hurried tapping of Bennett’s fingers on laptop keys.

“Almost got it,” Bennett said. “The receiver, tracing.”

Another window on-screen zeroed in on a satellite imaging map. It zoomed in with big leaps, first on the globe, the USA, on Texas, and then all the way down into Austin.

Grant scooted over and clapped Bennett on the shoulder.

“You are a wizard. This is amazing.”

Bennett blushed. She asked, “What are we going to do with this, what’s next? Do we tell Spencer?”

The on-screen window zeroed in on a small café. Zoomed in until its outdoor tables and chairs and umbrellas gained definition. Blocky pixels turned precise, drawing a clearer image. Text nearby spat out an exact address.

Grant shook her head.

“No. Sit tight, hold onto this stuff—do not tell anybody,” she said. She used her phone to take a snapshot and pointed at the satellite image of the café on screen. “I’m going to check that place out.”

Bennett uttered no protest. Grant soon left the building, rushing past security guards and metal detectors, and slamming her car’s door shut.

She clocked several miles per hour over the speeding limit as she stepped on the gas. The city flew by while her heart pounded again with a mixture of fear and excitement.

Night had yet to fall. The setting sun still painted the city in bright orange and pink hues, with lights glittering all around, forming streaks as Grant’s car sped down streets, swerving through traffic. Neon signs flickered to life, and storefronts lit up. Faces in the crowds melted away, swallowed in the sea of streaking lights, both natural and artificial.

By the time she arrived at the café, Ruiz was mounting his motorcycle by the curb, slipping a helmet onto his head. Ready to go.

A beautiful red-headed woman in a three-piece suit was sitting at a table nearby, watching him leave. Grant had never seen her before.

Contrary to what she had told Bennet, she didn’t know what to do next.

Two trails to follow, and she now had more questions than answers to show for it.

Only now did it cross her mind: What if Spencer knew? What if Grant was sabotaging something he knew about, something he was accounting for? After all, he wouldn’t have been the first CEO to sell out his own company, to make off with a golden parachute once the ship started sinking.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse had gathered in a boardroom—a nest of deadly vipers.

Whose eyes were on Chloe Grant now?

And who would her own eyes follow?

Stewing in such uncertainty, she felt as dizzy as she did when she had been shooting glances off the rooftop of Future Proof’s skyscraper. Feeling the weight of gravity growing with every look.

Ruiz’s motorcycle rumbled as he ignited its engine, then the vehicle roared. He drove away.

Grant stayed put. She could always figure out how to find Ruiz, though she’d miss his next steps, and those might have been crucial to understand his motives or allegiances.

Instead, she watched the redhead. The unknown unknown. Hoping to answer more questions than following her might raise.

She was going to tail her. See who this was, what she was up to, with her own two eyes.

All other eyes be damned.

[greenhikingboots]

Book ask…20, 23, 34, 25 and any other two that you want to answer!

Thanks @connected-dots! :)

20: a book that got you out of a reading slump This is a tough one for me because my reading dedication levels fluctuate so much, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with what I’ve recently read. However…. I hadn’t read anything but fanfiction in quite a while prior to this past Christmas. But then I couldn’t think of anything else to put on my list so I was like, “Okay, books.” But I didn’t want to ask for any YA books and embarrass myself with my in-laws, right? (I’m saying that in a cheeky way). So my list ended up being memoir type books by comedians: Colin Jost’s A Very Punchable Face, Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, and Amy Poehler’s Yes Please to name a few. I guess that’s less one book that got me out of a reading slump and more a genre and a particular circumstance that got me out of a reading slump. But imma count it. :)

23: a book that is currently on your TBR

We Were Liars is on my bookshelf, but I haven’t read it yet. I have several that fit that category but most of the others I’ve already made peace with probably never reading them. We Were Liars, I’m still telling myself I’m going to read. The premise seems like something I’d like, but the first couple pages are like, “Holy crap. Big cast of characters. I can’t keep track. I’m already over it.” But I mean, I’ve read and enjoyed other works with big casts so why not this one? I think I’ll get there. 25: a book by your favourite author Mentioned Gone Girl and Gillian Flynn in my other book ask, and I’m gonna circle back to there now. It was the first of her books I read and it gave me the strongest compulsion to read her other stuff. I think because she writes in the thriller/mystery genre and there are some twists and turns in her plots, people might just like those aspects and not look beyond them. But I’ve read each of her books multiple times and marvel at her writing on a sentence structure and word choice level. She’s just so good. And I love the way she captures feelings that are so relatable but somehow not often explored in books, TV, or film. Oh! Specific thought! I know after Gone Girl the movie came out, people made a big deal about the “Cool Girl” speech. And I just have to say I’m so glad I read it before I watched it, and that my first experience included the context of Amy’s characterization being even more fleshed out in the book. It’s just so clever and well crafted. But also… I don’t want to say the same book on this one and the last one, even if it is for different questions. So I will also mention that I love Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. I’ve gotta some mother/daughter drama (trauma?) in my own life, so I really enjoyed reading Camille’s version of that. She struggles to figure out her boundaries and how to be respectful while not shrinking herself or losing sight of her own sense of self. It’s under extreme circumstances that I can’t relate to, but the core of the emotions I definitely could and Flynn captures them so well. 

34: a book featuring the enemies to lovers trope

The Atlas Six? I’m not sure if this counts because it’s the first in what is to be a series (I don’t think book 2 has come out yet). So I guess I don’t *really* know that the two enemies are going to end up lovers, but I’m pretty sure they are going to. Also, this is a book by someone who used to write for the Dramione fandom, so I read it because I was curious about them successfully making the leap into traditional publishing (though it started as a self-publishing thing). It ended up not really being my jam. But it might be the only answer I have for this question, at least if I’m trying to stick to books I’ve read rather than just books I’ve heard of. 24: a book on your nightstand A Feast For Crows, my Jonsa friends! I’ve been re-reading Brienne’s chapters. 54: a book with the best opening line I mean…. I’m a fan of the opening line of Pride & Prejudice, but who isn’t?

I did a search and Buzzfeed reminded me of this line I remember enjoying from when I read The Lovely Bones several years ago: “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

And I also like, “Howard Roark laughed,” though I’m reluctant to admit it because the author of the book this opening line comes from is a favorite of some conservative/libertarian politicians I think are asshats. But okay, I’m here and saying it. The book is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I like it better than her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, though I do enjoy both as thought provoking, entertaining novels. The issue is that she and a lot of dude bros who like her work think capitalism is like…. an infallible system? Gross. I don’t want to think about it anymore actually. I wish I could say I like these books without it coming with all the baggage.

But it is what it is. The end. :)

[angrenwen]

"5. F is for... fucking nothing? No love spell to show how far Sophie was willing to go + her shallowness, no F for failure. I DO like her outfits that they did as a replacement for the ‘F is for’ outfits, however.

6. Lunchtime lectures. I’m glad we got to see one at least, but why were the 3 witches so delighted to be involved?

7. Speaking of the coven, damn they were sidelined. WHERE WERE ANADIL’S RATS? Her rats which she loves more than anything in the world, her loyal henchmen, the rats she’s known for?? They showed Dot turning something to chocolate ONCE. I was also expecting Dot to be played by a plus sized actress (no shade at all to her actress!), the book specifically describes Dot to be fat.

8. Fingerglow colours...? Where is Sophie’s iconic hot pink? Tedros’s gold. Agatha’s blazing orange that eventually matches Tedros’s?

9. Trial by Tale. Why did they make it out to be something specifically for proving Tedros and Sophie’s love? It happens literally yearly... and the top students at school take part in it, not just two students.

10. I wanted to see Agatha as a cockroach :(

11. August Sader... who? You know, the man whom Agatha describes as being like a father to her? Evelyn Sader’s brother, the man who foresaw events up to the last book. The man who sacrifices himself to defeat the School Master, who helped Agatha the entire time he was alive (and dead).

12. Totally missed the opportunity to show Tedros picking Agatha ‘by accident’ multiple times in their forest classes. The cockroach on the pumpkin, the princesses in the caskets. He picked HER. That shit is delicious.

13. Agatha and Tedros were waaaaaaay too chummy. He throws his rose at her and she is beyond disgusted. She bumps into him and scoffs at him with, you guessed it, disgust. It’s that one act that gets perfect, polished Tedros to have thoughts of self doubt. He kicks around this doll he made to specifically look like Agatha, then shoots it full of arrows while she watches. They HATE each other. They truly do not like each other, which is why it’s so special when they do like, and eventually come to love each other! There was no animosity (except for when he got punched), no tension other than romantic.

14. I think the relationships in this were way too fast. Idk, it might be me + my demisexuality clouding my judgement but I appreciate slow relationships. I do like that they hugged, and that shot of her taking his hands made me giggle and kick my legs like a lovesick schoolboy. But I didn’t have faith in his love confession. Yes, his confession was painfully Tedros-like, but I just didn’t see it... maybe if they had more time to develop their relationship?

15. Same point as before, but with Sophie + Tedros. Him attending her lunchtime lectures, their conversation as foxes, all those extra moments of them together would’ve made their supposed instant connection more believable.

16. Grimm + nemesis dreams. The movie reveals Agatha as Sophie’s nemesis in one line, when the book takes it a lot deeper than that. Sophie has dreams about her, tastes blood, grows warts, has symptoms. Grimm only reinforces how Agatha is Sophie’s nemesis. Nope, we had none of that.

17. No thorns scene. Idk how mental everyone else goes at that scene, but the fact that Tedros comes after Agatha, and she FAINTS in his arms? It’s all about the vulnerability, and the fact that she vehemently denies fainting ever dfjfkdksk it’s a scene that always stuck out to me in the books, and just another moment that adds to Tedros and Agatha’s slowly developing relationship

18. The Evergirls were so... mean. So, so mean. Why, why, why weren’t Kiko and Agatha friends?? Why was Tristan the only other Everboy mentioned..? Like, where’s Chaddick, best friend/brother to Tedros? Nicholas, my beloved. And the other Nevers, like Arachne and Ravan. I’m sure they were there, just not mentioned by name.

19. Werewolves and fairies. Agatha discovers their true origins in that they were once failed students from opposite schools, but they’re just... there in the movie. Speaking of, BANE. Bane the fairy, once a boy of Gavaldon, who saves Agatha’s life and dies doing so.

20. The gargoyle in Merlin’s Menagerie. Agatha yelling at Tedros “he was a boy! A little boy!” and punching him in the face. I know that scene was Gregor’s, but I did miss this scene. And the fact that many people turned animals caused a stampede because they wanted to be freed by her.

21. Why is Honora an evil stepmother? She isn’t even married to Stefan until book 2.

22. Agatha can grant wishes. SHE CAN GRANT WISHES. And that was shown... where?

23. The antisemitism behind Sophie’s witch design. Evil = having a hooked, large nose?? Not to mention how Tedros becoming evil meant having... facial scars?? Literally w h a t

24. Why don’t Sophie and Agatha know about the SGE...? Like, they’ve had kids taken from Gavaldon every four years. The SGE swan emblem is on every single storybook.

25. Swan pins on their uniform? Nope.

26. They separated Good and Evil in their forest classes? That, or Evil just didn’t... have any. Weird.

27. “Good with Good, Evil with Evil. Back to your tower before there’s upheaval.” Or not, seeing as the reflections on the half-way bridge never existed.

28. Agatha mentions ONCE how other people called her ugly growing up. Book Agatha is truly convinced of her ugliness, and how that makes her Evil and unworthy of being loved. She avoids looking in mirrors because she hates her reflection. She thinks it’s about how you look, not what you do. Then Dovey reveals herself as Cinderella’s fairy godmother, they have that wonderful mirror scene and Agatha finds herself smiling, and crying when she realises she was beautiful all along. I would’ve given anything to see that in live action.

29. Agatha’s Cinderella-esque dress was serving. She looked stunning. But I wanted her iconic midnight blue gown with gold leaves, and blue orchid crown. </3

30. No circus of talents. The scene where Tedros asks, “Agatha of Woods Beyond. Will you be my princess for the ball?” Him asking her to choose him, because he had already chosen her long ago. LIKE- not to mention how Agatha’s talent is shown once again, and that bit where the wolves shield Hester from punishment? Just wished we had seen it :’)

This is no shade at all to the actors, they did wonderfully with what they were given. I love that Tedros has brown hair (blond men with blue eyes scare me xoxo). But, as someone who’s had this series with me since I was 11, I was pretty disappointed. I think as a standalone film, it’s not that bad! Some... interesting music choices. Beautiful costume and creature design - I loved the stymphs, they were perfect. But as a book to film adaptation? Just... yikes. Not a fan."

Things I liked about the new SGE movie (more under the cut):

1. Tedros’s love confession. Such a terrible time to confess. That’s SO Tedros of him. And his bit about how family is important. I saw those parental issues, Tedros.

2. Some of their OSTs are actual bangers. Like the scene where Tedros promises to take Sophie to the ball, and it causes a skirmish? The soundtrack that plays there is sublime (it’s an instrumental of Who Do You Think You Are? by  Kiana Ledé and Cautious Clay).

3. The costumes were BEAUTIFUL. Sophie’s outfits were amazing.

4. The scene where Hester’s demon gets attacked by wasps definitely grew on me. Her sobbing afterwards, Anadil and Dot rushing to comfort her? Love to see it.

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[xaglaophonosx]

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