#not that i ever post my convention stuff here but yeah been super busy with that too 😭

[ratsrequiem]

Once again everyone apologies for the inactivity, I’ve been so busy with school and work 😔 hopefully i will have more time now that its summer!!!

[davyjoneslockr]

For the headcanon thing: Mista 😎

(For this)

Sorry this took so long, I've been busy but I'm working on answering all the stuff in my ask box so don’t worry :]

Headcanon A:  realistic

Okay maybe not ~super~ realistic but whatever. He was raised by nuns. He was the product of a very short-lived fling between his mother, an immigrant, and his father, The Entire Horse himself. He was born after his father left, and his mother died due to health complications soon after - having no family in Italy, and worried at the prospect of her son growing up as an orphan without moral guidance, she arranged to have him taken in by the convent of the Catholic church she attended.

This had both good and bad impacts on Mista. He quickly came to love the women raising him as his family, and he found comfort in both the reliable structure of day-to-day life and in his faith, which he carries with him into adulthood. At the same time, being raised in such a strongly Catholic environment while having undiagnosed OCD did not always mix well, especially when he got intrusive thoughts, or developed maladaptive beliefs tied to religion ("God will hate me if I do X arbitrary thing," "I will be divinely punished if I don't do Y compulsive action," etc).

Eventually, it gets to be too much, and he decides to run away in his mid teens. For a while, he thought about returning, but going to prison and joining Bucciarati's gang took him in a different direction. While he claims he doesn't need to go back now, since he has a new family who he loves more than anything, there's a part of him that's afraid to go back. After everything he's done since leaving, he's not sure he'd be able to face the women who raised him - people he'd considered unbreakably virtuous and pure. He doesn't let it show, but deep down, he struggles with a lot of good old Catholic Guilt.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Likewise maybe this is actually realistic but I don't care it's funny. He's a stoner. He goes behind Bucciarati's back and uses his Epic Mafia Connections to buy weed. Probably makes his own edibles, which he has to hide from Bruno in increasingly ridiculous ways. "Yeah no Bucciarati don't worry I always keep cookies in my sock drawer. It's uh. So the others can't steal them y'know. No you can't have one. Why does it smell bad in here? It's uh. Giorno turned my shoe into a skunk earlier. Yeah he does that a lot. That's a normal thing he does. Please leave now."

Narancia's also a stoner on the same level (love wins <3) and Fugo will partake occasionally if it's with them. A lot of their dumbest debates start this way, because Mista is convinced that he is super smart and philosophical when he's high (he's not) and he always raises the most fake deep questions ever. They try to listen to music together while they’re high, but they always end up arguing because Fugo wants to listen to Are You Experienced or Surrealistic Pillow or something, while Mista’s weed music is just like. Jimmy Buffett and The Beach Boys. If it's just him and Narancia, they usually end up cuddling and rambling to each other until they decide some word or phrase is funny. They will then just sit and say it over and over, echoing each other, and giggling like idiots until they fall asleep snuggled together.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Okay if you’ve seen at least one (1) of my posts before you’ll know this but. Mista takes a long time to recover from the events of Vento Aureo.

For starters, his relationship with Giorno is basically shattered. Even though he initially saw him as a younger brother figure, he loses all trust in him after discovering Bucciarati’s body, and he truly, genuinely hates him for a long time afterwards. He doesn’t bother caring for someone who showed him no sympathy in the aftermath of his loved ones’ deaths, and it’s only his desire for stability that keeps him loyal to his cause. They do make up eventually, but it takes years, and while they’re polite with each other, they’re never quite friends again.

He fights with Fugo a lot when he returns, too, but unlike with Giorno, they eventually rekindle their friendship. In fact, it’s arguably stronger now, after they’ve lost nearly everyone they loved. It’s always haunting, though, when they’re alone together, and there’s an ever-present void, an empty space that another person used to fill. Still, they lean on each other - and even though it stings when Fugo and Giorno fall in love, Mista grins and bears it. At least Fugo gets to have a happy ending.

Mista, on the other hand, doesn’t. He goes through a number of flings, hooks up with people here and there, but he never falls in love again after Narancia dies. He keeps telling himself he needs to get over it - what kind of person can’t get over the equivalent of their high school sweetheart? - but his mind, subtly or unsubtly, is always fixated on the way he loved him. He finds that the romantic comedies he used to love are hard to watch, nowadays; even if it’s just a movie, it’s painful seeing something that had once been so close, but is now far, far from his reach.

He grieves, and he processes his trauma, and he grows to live with it, eventually. But he’s never the same carefree, jovial person he used to be.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Listen. I’m sick of seeing fanart where he’s a generic white skinny anime boy with short straight hair and a six pack. The Mista who lives in my head has textured curls and body/facial hair and is a little chubby and I’ll never change my mind on that.

Oh also y’know all that stuff I said about Narancia being dead? Yeah fuck that. They live in Mista’s apartment together and eventually they buy a house in the countryside, and it’s disorganized and cluttered but it’s their home. They play their music loud and dance together in the kitchen, and they grow old and love each other even more as the years go by. I don’t know if they’d have a kid, but if they did, I could see them having a son, and Mista would sing to him every night, and they’d frantically call each other into the room so they could watch his first steps, or hear his first word, or see something he built out of toy blocks. They’d be the coolest uncles to Fugio daughter also. Idk man they just deserved to find peace and happiness I think.

[acetarisborn]

Happy (delayed) international asexuality day!!!

I haven't written (and posted) in a while and one of my most popular posts is the one about me simping for Asmo from Obey Me while being ace so... what better day to post this than yesterday!! But I fell asleep so now...

The brothers falling in love with an asexual MC

This is my first time writing one of these so it may end up feeling more like fanfiction than headcacons lol.

Asmo

The second you saw this gorgeous charming man it was love at first sight, and he felt the same way

Although you might have felt a little intimidated when you found out he's the avatar of lust. You might even think you have no chance!

But oh boy are you wrong

This man adores every aspect of you. From your gorgeous body to your breath-taking personality and he knows you love him as well.

The surprise in his eyes when he finds out you don't like him only for his looks is priceless

He can't help but blush brightly every time you give him the slightest of compliments, which sometimes turn into ankward laughs if he adds a sexual advance at the end

You try everything to let him know without telling him. Wear the ring, make several ace jokes and even wear the damn flag pattern on your clothes, to a point that the entirety of RAD but Asmo knows you're ace

But to be fair he might not even know what asexual means

He lets you know his feelings in a BIG way, something very intricate and romantic like a huge banner with help of the bros or plans a situation where you two end up dating

When you tell him you're asexual he's shocked to say the least

Not all humans enjoy sex?! Truly the newest concept he's ever heard

He does get sad at first, realizing he won't be able to experience that pleasure he's been fantazising about, but once he thinks about how out of all the beings in the Devildom you fell in love with the demon of Lust himself he bursts in laughter

He stops abruptly once he realizes why you look scared or sad because of his laugh and explains himself immediatley

If you tell him you understand if he doesn't want you he turns serious and grabs your hand

"Mc, you are the most gorgeous, kind-hearted and amazing person I've ever met, I didn't fell in love with how you are in bed or anything about sex! I fell in love with everything that makes you, you. I would never leave you over something so... so ridiculous! No matter how much I enjoy it!"

Once you guys start dating he showers you with gifts and fancy stuff (mostly skincare products)

He starts being super cautious about what he does or says, but eventually loosens up after the thounsand time you told him to do so

He also loves kissing you all over your face (if it's okay with you). On the lips, nose, cheeks or your forehead

All because he wants to remind you every day how precious you are in his eyes and that he loves you no matter what

Beel

You can't tell me you guys didn't fell in love that time you shared a room, you knew at the spot but this certified himbo is very oblivious

"Im hung-" He never gets to finish this sentence again because you always have a snack or food to offer him

Of course this is what starts his liking to you.

He doesn't realizes at first but it's the little things like what draws him in

He always wants to seat next to you at lunch and just talk for hours, he blushes at the sight of your smile or his eyes light up every time he sees you walk by

He begs you to cook for him no matter how many times you already do or say you're terrible. If you make him a bento this will make his whole week

Once he realizes his feelings he plans to tell you, not knowing you were planning on telling him you're ace and doing the same

"That's cool but um...whats an ace?"

Once you explain it to him he's a little surprised but nothing too extreme, he understands and didn't paid mind to sex anyway, he's happy he got to know beforehand.

"Oh, that sounds like you, good to know, specially now, because..."

He stops hiding a big box of chocolates and opens it, the chocolates spelling "Will you be my partner?"

If you ask him if he's okay he nods almost agressively, which ends up in you tackling him in a hug

Once you start dating he's ready to provide bear hugs and cuddles, he's the cuddliest demon in the Devildom

"Hey, I found this food/thing with the ace flag colors, thought you might like it"

He asks you to help him cook whenever he's hungry. Doesn't matter if it's the greatest culinary piece ever or an absolute disaster, he's happy he gets to spend time with you.

Levi

Okay but that overflowing PASSION when he rambles on about TSL, that fire in his eyes, *chef kiss* you can't help but stare dreamily at him

"watcha looking at normie?" He asks while blushing madly at the way you kept looking at him

The first time he finally accepted he's in love is when you dragged him to your room to watch a new anime, he realized you were a total weeb just like him (And I know you are because why else would you be here?)

Since then you have anime nights at least once a month with all the snacks you can get in your bed or couch

He obviously loves playing any kind of videogame with you, he doesn't like some of the ones you do but plays them anyways just to see you celebrate once you've won

Dragging you to conventions is a given, he spends weeks making you the perfect couples cosplay, staying all night muttering about how yours needs to be perfect

Since most of his brothers don't care/like or are too busy for his ramblings about a new game or anime he goes to your room very often. He's happy you're always there for him.

But IS HE JEALOUS

If he sees anyone flirting with you in the slightest of ways he'll go into overprotective mode. In a bad day this means as much as asking you for a pencil in class

We all know he puts you in a bit too high of a pedestal compared to him, but it's because he loves you and tries his best to gain confidence once you tell him how wonderful he is.

"They're so cool Henry! They are so nice to me and so pretty. I don't deserve them but do I want to try!!"

Since he's too shy and introverted none of you have asked the other out yet, but you decide to trust him and come out to him first.

"Oh yeah, I know plenty of asexual characters, I know what it is. That's great! You have my whole support!" This one takes you off guard

He talks about how he kinda suspected it but never said a word in fear that it could offend you.

This was enough for you to jump in and tell him your feelings.

To say he's blushing is an understatement. His whole body is red

"I like you to...But a-are you sure? You're just so pretty an- and amazing and I-I'm just a yucky otaku... Not that all otakus are yucky! You're not! Oh crap, I'm so sorry."

You snap him out of his rambling with a hug or a kiss, telling him how much you love him no matter how he belittles himself, because he's already perfect.

He tackles you in a hug out of excitement and says he loves you too

He has no problem with sex at all once your relationship starts, he wasn't having any to begin with and never thought of the idea of you guys doing it, so it's pretty much the same.

He tries his best to make bentos for you or use any romantic tecnique he has ever seen in romance animes

Instead of overprotective mode he now brags about his amazing partner to everyone he can.

"Mc, we should cosplay these characters! This one's ace!"

He'll do anything for you to feel safe and welcome in his arms no matter your sexuality.

Satan

This lovable bookworm fell in love later than anyone (except Belphegor) did, in the train murder mystery.

At first he thought it was mere admiration, but then why was his heart beating so fast?

Don't get me wrong, he's outraged. He hates that he's not paying attention to class to write poems, being distracted from his books because his mind wonders off thinking of you, and he despises that every time you bring him a cup of tea or flash a smile his face turns bright red in front of his brothers.

Eventually he has no choice but to ask Asmo and he is overjoyed. He offers himself as a wingman many times and Satan declines every single one

He doesn't tell you about this willingly, Asmo creates some devious situation where he ends up needing to confess his feelings.

He has never felt so relieved that the time you said you liked him too

He finally shows you some of his poetry (at least the less cringey ones) all of them talking about your outer and inner beauty in a way that almost moves you to tears

Everyone is surprised by how frequently one of the scariest demons out there lets himself get hugged by you at any given time, even if he's busy he always has time for you.

Also cats. Plushies, bags, clothes, anything with a cat on it you gift it to eachother

You eventually gather courage, enter his room and talk to him, thinking that maybe him being so distracted reading would soften the news

But he just nods mindlessly

"Satan? Did you hear me? I'm asexual" You take his book annoyed but the answer leaves you in shock

"Yeah, I know! can I go back to my book now?"

Turns out you were being painfully obvious and Satan is too smart not to notice.

"So... you're okay with it?"

"What in the world made you think I wasn't?"

He closes his book and you two have a long talk about how he accepts you and loves you for who you are over some tea

Mammon

He has always been in love with you as you have with him, what else is there to say?

Mammon melts at the slightest of touches and compassion you show him

He's so happy every time he's with you because you actually treat him like his brothers should

He loves them but they aren't the kindest towards him, so there's nothing better than hearing from you how much he's worth

He repeatedly asks you for money or pulls out some pranks but suddenly stops. How weird? Could it be that he feels bad for making you feel any kind of sad?

You have to stop him from saying he's your first several times, thankfully it eventually works

He tells you how great you are in a way he isn't directly telling you? But you can just know

"Hey, hu-I mean Mc! You're...the less annoying person in this place...Thanks for that" Yes, that was him trying to compliment you

As your bond becomes stronger he starts to loosen up to you. Leaving you gifts or flowers at your door with a smile on his face.

"Lucifer took my dear goldie for a week because of this but ya know... it's worth it."

When you actually accepted to go to the biggest casino in the Devildom he considered it as your first date.

You spend the hole night seeing him win and loose money, even pulling you in to have fun as well

You two take a break exhausted at a fountain. Mammon sees his chance and goes in slowly for a kiss

"Wait, Mammon. If we're actually going to...date, there's something you have to know."

"You're the most outstanding human, what the hell, the most outstanding being in the three worlds I've ever met in my eternity, Mc! What makes you think I'd leave someone as breathtaking as you over wether or not you wanna have sex?!"

"For some people it's a big dealbreaker..."

"Well, not for the Great Mammon! Only an idiot would let you go because of your sexuality. And no matter what they all say, I'm no idiot"

You end the night holding hands and going back to the House of Lamentation, ready to start this beautiful romance.

Lucifer

Ok. First things first. Everyone can agree Lucifer is (or seems) even hornier than Asmo, so this is gonna get...complicated. But we'll get into that

He sure seems the least likely to actually show the vulnerability of being in love, but gosh did you made your way into his heart

It was a long and diffecult journey to get him to like you, but he eventually got a liking to you the more you guys spent time together

You were able to make him loosen up as well.

Dragging him to anywhere you loved instead of being sat down with mountains of paperwork

Always waking him up after he fell asleep in his desk with a blanket, a hot cocoa (Coffee if the work needs to be done by the next day) and even a kiss on the cheek if he's lucky

By the time the whole Belphie situation was defused he was finally able to show his true intentions

He's a fairly elegant person, so when he tries to make an advance, he does it with style

This means all kinds of fancy places once he's off from work with the most romantic of views. Every day you feel like being swept over by a true gentleman

I'm pretty sure he'd have you as his partner by now, maybe he never officially asked but you both imply you're a couple at this point.

But as I said it, he has his whole...punishing thing......

It's exactly because he starts crossing the line with one if these why you just had to stop him and tell the truth

He gets shocked and slowly start fitting the puzzle pieces in place

"Well, this is unexpected. Wait. Have I... made you feel uncomfortable around me all this time?"

Once you nod he falls in his bed ashamed

"My deepest apologies, my love. I truly hope you forgive my reckless words. I must know, are you not feeling safe in this relationship?"

You explain how wrong that asumption is, telling him how every day with him is incredible, but showed your discomfort at some of the things he says

He was relieved he hadn't crossed the line yet and was never going to let himself cross it.

"I am so glad you shared this information with me, I promise to make this relationship the most romantic experience of your life"

He stays up all night researching everything ablout being ace, he gives you gifts related to this, finds out your love language and does what it is every day, he does every romantic thing you can think of and he even asks you to go to a pride in the human world!

He's willing to do all he can in order for you to feel loved in any way you want

Belphegor

Well, he did tried to kill you, so I'm pretty sure his betrayal hurt if you helped him for love

He knows you're at least a little scared of him and he knows he needs to apologize, but never finds the time because you always seem wary of him

He tries by leaving a note in your desk that says "I'm so sorry for what I did. Thank you for bringing our family back together"

This is the first smile he gets out of you as you look at him

This escalates to him passing notes whenever he's not asleep. In class, the table at dinner, outside while hanging out with you and Beel, anywhere. This happens so often you end up always having a pen in hand to answer.

It goes until one of you decides to speak, you start talking and become best friends in no time

Although Belphie seems too possesive for his feelings to be just friendship

Honey, if you thought Levi was bad he's nothing compared to Belphie

He uses every excuse to get you away from anyone that possibly flirts with you. It's either that or his death glare burning them for several minutes until they run or apologize

He always wants to be with you, even if he's sleeping he feels the lack of your prescence

This is why he always tries to convince you to take naps with him, snuggling with you is the best part of his day

If you're more of a night owl he'll do his best to stay awake and look at the stars with you in the planetarium. Sometimes falling asleep in your shoulders "on accident" wink wink

He mumbled about you in his sleep and that's how you found out and ended up dating

The relationship is pretty much the same with more kisses and hand holding, along with him convincing you to skip class sometimes just to sleep

Also plushies, a lot of them, all of them

You decide to tell him one day while snuggling beneath the stars. Being sure enough that he'll understand, although the nerves are still there

"Okay... so?"

You express your worries and he stands up looking almost menacingly but his words killed the scary mood

"Are you dumb? How did you think someone like me would even worry about that?"

"I'm not Asmo, beds are for sleeping. Come on, lets steal that cake Lucifer saved in the fridge, I heard it's sort of an inside joke between us."

After this he keeps asking you about the whole asexual spectrum, thinking he might be part of it. He's shows true interest at every question you answer and tries to use this new information for future dates.

All and all it's very relaxing to date someone like him, who surprisingly has a very loving and understanding heart behind what people are used to see.

[serenedash]

I started rambling about my experience with kh and then it turned into khux and then it just turned into me rambling about Ryou and my art journey????? enjoy I guess,

it’s very long but there’s art in there :)

It’s funny to think about my kh journey as a whole tbh, I grew up watching my mom play video games, which included kh1 and 2. I wasn’t allowed to play the playstation2 we owned BUT I did have a gameboy so the first game I played was CoM (after my mom finished it ofc,) so I guess you could say I’ve always been passionate about kh “””side games””” lmao but I did fall off of kh very quickly bc again, I wasn’t allowed to play our PS2 and also I Am A Terrible Gamer I’ve Never Finished CoM I’m sorry you all had to find out like this, but then 358/2 came out when I was in middle school and!!! I didn’t care and I didn’t play idk why lol

Anyway, fast forward to high school I’m like 15 and my older sister, who HAS been keeping up with kh, has a wallpaper on her phone of roxas and ventus. And bc I haven’t kept up I say “nice roxas wallpaper” and she says “thanks but it’s roxas and ventus” and I proceeded to get so mad that I was determined to prove to her that her wallpaper was just roxas twice and then I fell down the BBS rabbit hole and suddenly I was reading about vanitas and then I’m reading the fan translations of the BBS novel and I’m crying??? I am sobbing???? and that’s how I actually got into kh for real lol we are vanitas stans before we are people,

It’s so funny how I thought I was some kh super fan, knowing all this stuff that I spent so long reading and rewatching cutscene movies, but I never once, SOMEHOW NEVER ever came across khx. It’s so absurd and bizarre I seriously have no idea how I never once encountered khx prior to khux. I suppose that has to do with the fact I wasn’t involved in the fandom? In early high school I had stepped away from fandoms as a whole and I didn’t have any interest in really posting content or interacting with fans anymore bc of how burnt out I was from a previous fandom,

but khux released! and I was so hype and excited for it! on launch day I was a senior in high school, I had ran around to every “nerd” and weeb I could find in school to ask them to join my party and fun fact about me is I have crippling social anxiety I literally refuse to start conversations irl so holy shit I was OUT HERE doing the MOST

My player just originally had my name (Matt) but everyone in my party had fun names so Ryou was born! High school was one big yugioh phase for me and ryou bakura is one of my favorite characters ever so it was just the logical name choice lol I quickly started creating Ryou, the character, as well. I was also leaving my homestuck phase and that + vanitas obsession made This character design (art circa 2016)

If y’all are familiar with my kh oc’s you might notice that keyblade now belongs to my kid Monty LOL

Anyway that got scrapped quickly for the chip and dale outfit (which is where Ryou’s trademark goggles are from <3) Goggles have been a staple of my character designs for a LONG TIME so like, it had to be done, (that’s a separate ramble about a separate oc tho)

OG Ryou was an interesting guy; he was a young party leader with this overwhelming responsibility on his shoulders bc of his status as a party leader. In his original story, he also struggled heavily with darkness, much like Terra but for Ryou it was more that the darkness was controlling him and not like a source of power like it was for Terra

A big part of early Ryou I kept, however, was the crushing awareness of loss. One of my party members (the strongest one at the time,) had left without saying a word and I was very confused and hurt. This was around the time the ephemera plot was happening so I decided to incorporate it into Ryou’s story; having him experience losing a friend to darkness since it’s so normal for wielders in Daybreak Town to just disappear, and this would unintentionally become a theme for both me and Ryou as khux friends would just randomly disappear.

I was desperate for khux at this point and I decided to watch the fan translations for khx and GOD, god, was I obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the foretellers. And I’m not going off about that here bc I already did that, but I actually started entering fandom again! I did it slowly, I started on tumblr before this blog was made altho it was me sending anons to the few khux related blogs I could have lol a friend convinced me to get twitter where I got involved with the ffxv fandom, which led me to the kh fandom and eventually the khux fandom there which is what REALLY got me going on khux.

I joined discord servers, most of the servers I’m in are khux related, and from there I joined the khux oc rp (shout out to anyone there who might be reading this lol here’s some art from the beginning of the rp,)

It’s SO FUNNY how the RP influenced me so heavily. I hadn’t RP’d in YEARS, I used to have a strict no oc rp policy, but here I was? And the funny part is, I had barely developed Ryou. I had scrapped his original story and all I had was POST WAR Ryou so I literally had to reverse write him; I had only ever written him as a depressed, guilt ridden adult, but it was a fucking blast and I have such fond memories of this rp when it was active,

But anyway, this encouraged me to get more serious about art! I started drawing, writing, cosplaying, and roleplaying when I hadn’t done any of that stuff in a very long time. The first time I ever drew a background was for a deviant art khux competition actually LOL

also! I always think extremely fondly of the drawing I did of Aced in the keyblade war. It was also one of the first backgrounds I ever drew and it felt like my real starting point in the khux fandom. It got a ton of notes on here and someone wrote a tiny fic in a reblog which just made me SO HAPPY like it really felt like people were noticing me :) I was going to draw a matching Ira but!! I just never did!! One day tho, it’s on my art bucket list to redraw this along with Ira,

Aside from my personal growth, khux was great for my social life ngl, I made SO MANY friends online and got to meet a ton of people irl over the years! It’s crazy to think about all the people I now know and talk to? It honestly makes me really emotional. I’ll never forget taking the train into NYC and meeting up with discord friends. Going to conventions and talking with people about the latest khux update? Absolutely insane and those were some GOOD TIMES, if I thanked every khux friend or even just person who made an impact on me then we’d be here for a LONG TIME,

Fun fact, for my Lauriam cosplay all I needed to buy was the wig I just owned his outfit LOL also? Probably retiring that cosplay ngl people treated me like absolute garbage when I wore him and it led to a lot of confidence issues for awhile ngl. That’s probably one of the only memorable negative experiences I have with khux; it was great when khux people recognized me but for kh fans that weren’t in khux? They were FUCKING MEAN??? fuck kh fandom at large, I only care about khux fandom,

This leads me to another huge part of my experience in khux fandom: THEORIES!! I used to write SO MANY and oh my god my brain was so full all the time. It was a huge appeal for me in the fandom; I had been previously writing theory posts in the RWBY fandom and it just migrated over to khux for me lol I had done a ton of theorizing around Lauriam tbh, it was really the only reason I liked his character at all bc initially I did not care about the dandelions, anyone who wasn’t Skuld I was like “please leave Now thanks”

A funny part of khux fandom I never intended to be apart of is the MEMES, I really only started doing memes as stress relief bc college had me so busy all I had time/energy for was these quick little shit post drawings.

The first meme I made, file name “invi despair” LOL we need to get her a girlfriend smh anyway, I think in my senior year of college I did a bunch of rapid fire memes all in one month bc the stress of finals was getting so bad afdgfhdgf as far as I know my impact on this fandom will be my memes bc all I do now is enter a kh/khux server and introduce myself and I go “yeah I draw art. here’s a meme” and everyone goes OH YOU, honestly I am nothing if not a clown

I’ve talked so much idk where I’m going with this. Khux is just a good game even if the gameplay actually kind of really sucks yknow lol but it was the first game I played where I like, REALLY got into the meta and the mechanics. I used to read so much on the mechanics and watch youtube videos on which medals were worth pulling for. I was never a whale or a top player exactly, but I could rank well if I tried lol I’ve made it to the top 100 for solo rankings, my party has made it to top 10, and in pvp I’ve made top 300. I’m not the highest level in my party but FUCK do I know how to manipulate this game LOL

And with all that hard work, the strategies, the theorizing, the content I’ve made-- it’s been my life for 5 years. I’ve logged into khux almost every single day. At the end, I have logged 1820 days in khux out of 1910 days. Kinda crazy. Crazier I’ve never spent money on khux either lol the only “money” gone into it was one time my mom gave me a google play store gift card and I used it on my birthday for a VIP xemnas medal which eventually made it to regular pulls anyway but it was nice and a little treat :)

I’m not a gacha fan, I don’t care for it, so I don’t think I’ll be touching another gacha again. But for kh? This was pretty fucking awesome, even if it sucked a lot sometimes LOL It was worth it for the people I’ve met most of all I think. I would honestly be a completely different person without khux and that’s REALLY insane to think about.

[earlgreytea68]

A Review of the Fall Out Boy Biography Inevitably Colored by Shippiness Oops But Really Mainly By My Love for Pete Wentz

I don’t even know who the audience is for this monstrosity of a review, nor do I know the audience for this biography, though, so, like, it’s fitting lololol: 

I am a new Fall Out Boy fan. I say that because, if anybody was in need of a Fall Out Boy biography, you would think it would be a new fan. AND YET. I’m not entirely sure who the market for this book is, because it isn’t really Fall Out Boy fans of any duration, because not only can everything in the book be easily located with the simplest of Google searches but also there’s so much he leaves out. And what he leaves out is just…so incredibly telling. It’s like, the facts he chooses to highlight are often pointless and random (although thanks for telling me that Pete Wentz’s jeans were so tight he had to perform without underwear, I’m going to think about that a lot now), whereas the facts he leaves out are the ones that lend both complexity and context. Like, this whole book could be Exhibit A in how malleable facts can be. Given the same set of facts, this man and I would tell two very different stories.

At least partly this is because he’s a music critic (I glean from the book) and I’m a creative writer. I believe he is a music critic because he takes care to dedicate a paragraph of musical analysis to every song on their earliest CDs (he loses interest in them over the hiatus, and more on that later). I appreciated this, because I know nothing about music, and I learned a lot about how talented Patrick Stump really is, like, not as a vocalist, because I knew that, or as a musician, because I also knew that, but as a smart, clever songwriter. I don’t know how to critique music, and I was happy this guy was full of praise for what Patrick does. He also pointed out musical hallmarks of theirs – like their tendency to drop the music suddenly for Patrick to sing an a cappella line – and that was the first time I’d ever really thought about them.

He was full of much less praise for Pete’s lyrics, though, and I think that’s because he’s a music person, not a word person. Not that he thought Pete’s lyrics were ever bad but he tended to stay very conventional about them: emo, confessional, dramatic, and ingeniously juxtaposed with Patrick’s clear-as-a-bell voice. He’s kind of obsessed with the contrast between Patrick’s voice and the lyrics he’s singing, whereas I’m much more obsessed with the contrast between Patrick himself in sweater-paws and glasses snarling, “I am your worst nightmare,” like, sweetheart, I doubt it. AND YET HE PULLS IT OFF. Like, that’s so interesting to me, how much Patrick can make himself embody Pete, that act of alchemy where he sings on his behalf, but this book talks less about that than I think it might, mostly because I don’t think this guy really wants to think too hard about how incredibly good Pete’s lyrics actually are. The thing about Pete’s lyrics – he does this, and it’s so clever, it’s killer clever – is you can read them so easily on one very obvious and expected layer, and then there’s always one or two additional meanings tucked underneath them, and you might never stop to think about them, especially if you’ve already written him off, but his lyrics reward careful study and a lot of thought, he specializes in triple entendres, a turn of phrase that spins out into so many meanings, that’s so hard to do and he makes it look so easy that it’s such a simple mistake to dismiss it, to not even see how dense his poetry is. The conventional story on Pete Wentz is he’s good at marketing – marketing the band, marketing himself – and so he spun in circles to keep the spotlight on him and away from Patrick, and that’s definitely one take, and another take would be to point out that the same whirligig sex-symbol tabloid-fodder act also had the side effect of undercutting any tendency to take Pete seriously from a literary point of view, like, so much easier to just say that, in keeping with his goth guyliner, he wept into his inkwell and scrawled messily over parchment. So anyway: criticism #1 of this book is that they should have complemented the music-critic-ness with an English major.

Criticism #2 is that I feel like people always get wrong what appeals to girls, to speak in the massive generalizations of this topic. Like, someone somewhere was like, “Hey, girls like this Fall Out Boy band, it must be because Pete Wentz is hot.” And they’re not wrong about that, exactly, but they always seem to miss how many entangled layers often come with attraction. Like, yeah, sometimes it’s just he’s got nice abs but often there’s a million other things happening there, and one thing I cannot forgive this guy for is not just his failure to engage with Pete’s lyrics on any real level, but how little he also truly examines Pete Wentz’s genuine marketing genius. He’s a music guy: His interest is clearly in Patrick, and also in Joe and Andy, because they’re musicians, and he can wax poetic about them. Pete gets his standard paragraphs: Oh, he chose the right management, the right record label, the right deal. He can pick out a good band, like Panic! or Gym Class Heroes. All of that is true, but none of it really grasps exactly how smart Pete really is. Like, the book hardly mentions at all how much Pete realized immediately the value of internet fandom. When I first fell for Pete Wentz – that first weekend I spent Googling him – what really was the death knell for me was stumbling upon the old FOB Q&As he used to run in the earliest days. And it wasn’t actually his constant leaning into the Peterick shipping with such dead-on unerring understanding of fandom that did it for me (although that was pretty charming, ngl). It was how often teenagers messaged Pete Wentz with their problems, and how patiently he took the time to respond. My boyfriend broke up with me. My grandma just died. I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. Again and again and again, Pete Wentz took these messages and wrote out detailed, laborious responses. And I know he was a guy angling hard to be famous but not all guys angling hard to be famous realized how important something like this is, this very personal connection, like, above and beyond the bantering and the smirks, and even if you’re doing it entirely for ulterior motives, that’s a ton of emotional labor he was performing. I finished reading those Q&As and thought, God, Pete Wentz must have been exhausted.

And I’m not sure that’s something the bio ever really wrestled with, because it never really talked about that aspect of him. I don’t actually think the bio read anything Pete Wentz has ever posted online, like, not even those basic Q&As that are the easiest thing in the universe to Google, never mind the secret blogs he still has scattered all over the internet with nuggets of lyricism buried in there for Patrick to mine. It’s just so easy to buy into the Peter-Pan, devil-may-care Pete Wentz picture, and for all I know that’s the truest of the pictures, but it’s also undeniable fact that the other side to that was either really cunning and savvy or just a nice guy, and either way it’s another layer to Pete Wentz that gets short shrift in the bio. Which isn’t surprising because although the author clearly appreciates Fall Out Boy the band, the author clearly isn’t fannish at all, whereas it’s pretty abundantly clear Pete Wentz is fannish. He’s unapologetically fannish. He speaks fan language with a fluency that is hard to fake. And he’s astonishingly well-versed in tropes. He’s instinctively good at creating a good story, not just in his lyrics (although he, like Taylor Swift, is adept at tropey lyrics, so it’s no surprise they have a mutual admiration society), but in his life. In addition to the Q&As, that first weekend was full of me being like, …How is this the tropiest thing I’ve ever read??? It’s unsurprising that the bio doesn’t point out all the tropes in the Pete Wentz / Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy story, because the author isn’t versed in tropes, but Pete Wentz definitely is. He knows how to use words, well. And you wouldn’t necessarily know it to listen to him – he babbles and uses tons of filler phrases and never, ever ask him what his lyrics are about, it’s like trying to have a conversation in Wonderland – but that’s all part of the aw-shucks-sometimes-I-scribble-some-stuff-down-Patrick’s-the-real-genius brand.

Now I am not qualified to write a Fall Out Boy biography and also I don’t know these people and also everything I do know comes from Google but that said, I feel like I do know for a fact some primary source materials that the writer just chose to leave out that really does display how malleable stories can be depending on what you highlight or not. Like, if he didn’t want to draw psychological conclusions based on the facts that’s fair enough. But he also pared back the narrative so drastically that it left off the true meat of it, like, if you read this book you would not necessarily think there was much interesting about these people, whereas if you really dig into everything they’ve got out there, well, you could start to think they’re super-interesting people. But I am a creative writer and this biographer was a music critic. He settles happily into the song analysis but I’m busy connecting dots into a narrative, and life is complicated, it is not a simple narrative, but that impulse underlies most biography, the idea that we can assemble the facts into something that has something to say about a human life. But that act really exists in how you assemble the facts.

 ~~~~~~~~TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE DISCUSSION~~~~~~~~~~~

A really good example of this is the way the biography deals with the Best Buy incident. Here are the bare facts: Pete Wentz, in a Best Buy parking lot listening to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” took too many Ativan. In a phone call, his manager noticed he was slurring, called his parents, they rushed him to the hospital, he lived. These are the facts that the book gives you, and these are true facts.

If you want to expand slightly upon these bare facts, Pete has given many, many interviews about this incident because he is very open about mental health issues and his bipolar disorder and depressive episodes and anxiety. Pete has said that he’s not sure he was trying to kill himself so much as just make his head quiet for a little while. Pete has said he felt like he was too busy being Pete Wentz for everyone else and he just wanted to rest. These are also facts, although ones I don’t think the biographer truly believes. He does dutifully quote them but he also clearly has his own belief about how much Pete’s telling the truth. Because this is inevitable in any telling of the facts.  

If you want to expand slightly upon these facts, you could point out that Pete’s lyrics reflect how noisy his head is (“when this city goes silent, the ringing in my ears gets violent”), which might color how you understand him when he says he just wanted some peace and quiet. You might also point out that, as the bio has already said, Pete was the driving force behind the band’s strategy and it was about to culminate. You might remind the reader that Pete walked away from other possibly very successful careers to do this band (there is much made in the book of the theoretical ease with which Pete could have achieved a soccer career, which made me raise my eyebrows a bit but, you know, Patrick does say Pete’s really, really good at soccer). You might recall that Pete has these kids relying on him whose parents he literally had to persuade to trust him. You might say that so far everything had gone exactly as he planned and he just needed to stick the landing. You might mention the fact that they kept rewriting songs and rewriting songs and rewriting songs; that Pete was in such utter meltdown mode that he was sliding lyrics under Patrick’s door and then retreating, so that the rest of the band never even saw him; that they had scrapped half the album and were furiously writing new music right up until the deadline – all of which are facts not even mentioned. You might say all of those things, because they are indeed all true facts.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is appropriate at this point to note that many of these things were simply not germane to the story this biographer was telling, which was a music-critic-focused story. But these things are all incredibly germane to the story *I* would tell, about these four people who found each other, lost each other, and found each other again, and the two people at the center whose creative alchemy was by turns either too dazzling or too explosive and in both incarnations needed to find a way to balance to keep the band afloat. This is the story I would tell, but, to be totally honest, Pete and Patrick’s creative partnership doesn’t really seem to interest the writer of this book. He mentions it vaguely, in passing, once or twice, fairly standard surface proclamations about Pete handling lyrics and Patrick handling music, and Pete drawing the spotlight away from Patrick who didn’t want it. Or he’ll say that the true secret to the band’s success is Patrick’s voice and Pete’s lyrics, like Patrick could be any pretty-enough voice, which I think just isn’t true, there’s so much more to the way they clicked together. I read this great New Yorker article once about how, through history, genius exists in pairs, that often two people need to find each other to push each other to be better than they would ever be apart.

It’s fine to not want to get into that too intensely, it’s just that that means that half the story of Folie goes away, if you’re not focused on how the band was creating. Like, there’s so much about the lead-up to Folie to talk about: Patrick’s control over the music to the exclusion of everyone else, Pete’s worsening prescription pill thing, and the way that their creative partnership seemed to disintegrate while simultaneously leaving no room for Joe or Andy in the band. The book mentions really none of this – nothing about the fact that at one point they had descended into physical altercations over chord progressions; nothing about the story the producer tells that Patrick would get so frustrated after phone calls with Pete that he’d throw things around the studio; nothing about the story that Patrick once told Pete, “I don’t care, I’m going to write a song and call it ‘I Don’t Care,’” such a telling little tale when later Patrick comes to hate the song “I Don’t Care” – so the hiatus feels like it descends out of nowhere, with a paragraph about the fans not liking the album. Which, again, is a true fact, but without the other true facts of the way the entire creative process was crumbling around them, around all of them, it sounds less compelling. The bio does get into Joe wanting to flex his creative muscles more but doesn’t connect it back to the Folie era of being shut-out. The hiatus becomes entirely about Patrick not liking being booed.

Even worse to me is the book devotes a lot of time to each of their music videos, which is awesome, because their videos are important and great, but it devotes exactly zero time to the video for “What a Catch, Donnie.” And I’m so bewildered by that, you can have a field day with the symbolism in that video, even if you want to just make a true factual statement about its plot: Patrick collects all of the detritus of Fall Out Boy and all of their friends come and party with him, while Pete goes down with a sinking ship all alone, to a medley of the words he’s leaving behind. Like. That is literally what happens in this video. And then the hiatus starts. To me this is one of the most ridiculously angsty things ever, that they would go out to their own triumphs echoing back at them and the literal death of captain!Pete Wentz. To the story I would tell, this is the most germane. It merits not a single mention in the bio (other than praising the song itself for being one of the strongest on the album, and talking about the Elvis Costello cameo).

Because he’s much more interested in them musically than as people or relationships, he seems to lose interest in them post-hiatus. He details each of their hiatus-era projects with his typical attention to the music criticism side. And then he spends, like, eight pages talking about the guy who wrote the article that triggered Patrick’s “We Liked You Better When You Were Fat” blog post. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s an entire chapter dedicated to the article and the guy who wrote it. Patrick’s response is described and quoted and even praised, but not in nearly as much as detail as the original article, and Pete’s reaction to Patrick’s blog post gets literally zero attention. Which is fascinating since, in some tellings of the story, that’s the entire reason the hiatus ended. Pete has said on multiple occasions that he read the blog post and was upset Patrick was so upset and called him up and asked him to try writing with him again. But if you’re not actually interested in that creative relationship as a relationship, then you don’t see a reason to explain the motivation behind trying again.

You also don’t really see a reason to tackle why they initially struggled to get back into it. Like, truly grappling with the Pete/Patrick relationship leads to more depth than the surface “Patrick doesn’t like the spotlight, so Pete takes it for him.” That’s too simplistic a formulation, as Pete himself has said. It also discounts Patrick’s obvious dedication to Pete, his complete willingness to step in and publicly defend him on many occasions, like, Patrick’s no shy, retiring wallflower when it comes to Pete, Patrick can let loose viciously on behalf of Pete. Their protectiveness is mutual, although the public narrative often glosses over that. (In one of those “why leave that out” details, the biographer notes that Hemingway was Pete and Ashlee’s ring bearer but not that Patrick was Pete’s best man, Idk.) At any rate, I point that out because the struggle they had to find their groove writing together after the hiatus mirrored their initial struggles, to find their way into trusting each other’s strengths, but the book is just kind of like, “The first session wasn’t successful but the next session was. They were out of practice.” They weren’t out of practice with songwriting, not really, especially not Patrick – they were out of practice with each other. And that wasn’t just a hiatus-era souvenir, that went back to Folie, but we didn’t get that part of Folie.  

The biographer also, annoyingly in my view, loses all interest in them at this point. He devotes almost no time to the post-hiatus era, which is fascinating to me, since their ability to launch a comeback as successfully and relevantly as they did is striking, and to do it not by relying on nostalgia but by generating genuinely new hits with a genuinely new audience, and he’s not interested in that at all. Even worse than not being interested in this is the fact that he fails to close the Folie loop, like, he devotes lots of time to Patrick coming to hate Folie because of how much the fans hated it. Then he makes a little note, like, “Maybe someday Patrick will come to love Folie again,” or something, and the thing is, I know the book was written a few years ago now, but there was definitely stuff available about how much Folie had become a fan favorite in the hiatus years. Patrick gave an interview somewhere where he talked about the reunion show and how he read fan reviews of it and the fans were like, “They should have played more songs from Folie!” I always think at that point And then Patrick looked into the camera like he’s on The Office. But, at any rate, Patrick got to see Folie become beloved and that loop could have been closed better and he just leaves it dangling. (I’m almost like, Did he really write most of this book while they were on hiatus and then when they came back he was like, …Goddamn it?)

He doesn’t at all get into the shock of the immediate level of success of their comeback, like, that’s another thing that’s documented, that they were unsure anyone would care and they were so startled by the response that they had to actually add larger venues onto their tour because they’d thought no one would want to come to their shows. He could have talked about how people waited hours outside in the Chicago cold to get into the comeback show, how they started the show with “Thriller” and Patrick says the response was electric and it must have been amazing and he’s just not really interested in it, you can tell that he’s bored. He doesn’t talk about how Patrick hadn’t really thought about having to perform the new songs live because he didn’t think anyone would really care about the new album, so they had to really think about how they were going to make it work, and how he almost permanently damaged his voice having to sing “Alone Together” live and that’s what finally finally drove him to pursue actual voice lessons, like, he mentions none of this, he’s just like, “They wrote Save Rock & Roll, and then they wrote American Beauty / American Pyscho.” He’s just clearly, at that point, bored. Whereas in the story I would tell, that is the most satisfying part, the happy ending beyond their wildest dreams.

Okay, omg, this is SO LONG, but here are some other random thoughts:

·       He never – not once – goes back to source Pete’s lyrics to their original blog entries, which can be very interesting. This is because he’s not interested in the lyrics really, but it’s very frustrating to me because, like, SOMEBODY TAKE THESE LYRICS SERIOUSLY, PLEASE, THEY’RE SO GOOD. It also means that he misses things like “Miss Missing You” and the way it echoes Pete’s poem with the line “I miss you missing me,” like, that’s just a fact ::shrug:: He also says “Hum Hallelujah” is about teenage romance, and that is the most straightforward, surface-level reading, like, “Oh, it says ‘teenage vow in a parking lot,’ that’s what it’s about.” This pains me only because “Hum Hallelujah” might be the most perfect lyrically constructed song Fall Out Boy has, every line is golden and stuffed with meaning and emotion, and he’s just like, “teenage romance,” so dismissively, and I wince, like, “I could write it better than you ever felt it” is a line that deserves more than that. Not to mention “I love you in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital,” god, or “One day we’ll get nostalgic for disaster,” ugh, do not read this book for lyrical analysis. He also terms the best lyrical line on Cork Tree as “To the ‘love’ I left my conscience pressed / Between the pages of the Bible in the drawer” and, while there’s nothing wrong with that line, I don’t even think that’s the best line in XO (I mean, leaving off the follow-up of “What did it ever do for me? I say” undercuts those lines immediately, imo). (He does at least point out that “Keep quiet, nothing comes as easy as you / Can I lay in your bed all day?” is a devastatingly sexy couplet.)

·       Can I just say, the entire debacle with Hey Chris gets precious little time in this book, which in a way is fine but in a way is like, just by Googling I got way more information on what went down and the weird, weird words that were being flung back and forth (at one point the term “heterolifemates” is used which makes zero sense at all in this context), but this book does spend a lot of time with Chris and Pete pre-Patrick (fascinating, right???) and there’s this weird part where Chris says he hated Pete before he met him and is like, “He should wear pants that fit,” which is just…such an interesting reason to hate Pete Wentz, like, Idk, Chris, coupled with your heterolifemates thing and weird thing about “whose name do you say every night???” which is also weirdly sexual phrasing and also being like “no one knows how to break a heart like he does,” like, everything about this entire situation has so much queer subtext but the book doesn’t touch any of that, ever, in any circumstance, with a ten-foot pole.

·       EVERYONE, THE BORDERS WHERE JOE AND PATRICK MEET IS LOCATED IN EDEN PLAZA AND I AM SO UPSET I DIDN’T KNOW THAT WHEN I WROTE THE DEVIL FIC.

·       I did not know that the producer wanted them to change the “We’re falling apart to halftime” line in Dance, Dance because he thought it was too incomprehensible and I’m just like, That’s the lyric where you thought you were going to lose people??

·       From the bio, describing the Live in Phoenix performance: a strange moment where Wentz inexplicably gets changed onstage. A strange moment? Inexplicably? Okay, like, germane to my telling of the story is how much those dick pics affected Pete Wentz’s public persona, how much he knew exactly what he was there to sell and he sold it with gusto, and how much of a spiral that ultimately sent him on. Instead, this biographer finds it inexplicable that Pete Wentz would take his shirt off onstage, and his analysis of the music video for “This Ain’t a Scene” gives the dick pic storyline only an offhand reference, calling it “making light” of the scandal, instead of really digging into the obvious pain there, like, that’s not a joyful lark there. (Later, much later, years later, Brendon Urie will manage to actually make light of the dick pic saga, both in the Drunk History and also in the joke of the dick pic being the photo that comes up when Pete calls him, as seen in the promos for the tour they did together, and that feels much more genuine. But that bit in “Arms Race” is kind of heartbreaking.)

·       Pete says of their failed attempt to get the Guinness record of the first band to perform on all seven continents that it was the worst feeling he’d ever felt in Fall Out Boy, and the biographer is like, “Really, Pete? Really?” and I kind of want to shake him because Pete Wentz is obviously a dramatic person and he feels disappointments keenly and he made that statement literally just as they were finding out they wouldn’t be able to do it, like, of course it’s just hyperbole! The biographer is weird through that whole section of the book because he never once mentions that, as a consolation to Pete, Patrick stayed up all night with him so they could get the record of most interviews by a duo in a twenty-four-hour period, like, that’s what I would have said about that story instead of trying to get way more out of Pete’s off-the-cuff self-pity (which is just so Pete Wentz, it’s like this writer hasn’t just spend a hundred pages writing about him…).

·       Whenever I read about how many songs Patrick shows up with when it’s time to record an album, I always feel this little twinge of solidarity with him, like, sometimes that’s just how it is in your chosen creative medium, you’re just always endlessly writing.

·       I had never thought before about the fact that Pete says all the time that he was too selfish pre-hiatus, all the time, a lot, that’s how he describes his problem – and the fact that there’s an entire song on Truant Wave called “Love, Selfish Love” with the line “God bless the sad and selfish” and I’m just going to…sit here and think about who in Patrick’s life could be described as sad and selfish.

·       From the bio re: Soul Punk: It’s disarming to hear this garrulous boy-next-door sing so candidly about sex. Yeah, I don’t think you were paying attention to the way Patrick smirks at the camera in the music videos, buddy.

·       Detail I knew but had never really thought about before: that Pete got Patrick to really click into songwriting with him again by giving him a puzzle. Patrick says that sometimes Pete gives him homework assignments, “I want a song that sounds like x, y, and z,” and Patrick will be like, “That’s impossible,” but also so intrigued that he ends up sitting and writing the thing. The fact that Pete knew, after a few mediocre songs neither of them liked, like, “You know how I snag him? This way,” is adorable. Also, the fact that it was Pete who adored the song to come out of it, “Where Did the Party Go?,” and that it was his excitement over the song that made Patrick think, Okay, maybe we can do this, like, it was Pete’s joy that drove Patrick’s optimism, they’re so creatively linked, these two.

·       He does include the detail that Pete was worried he’d fallen behind during the hiatus because he didn’t spend much time playing music and so he committed himself to practicing and improving with metronome work, like, Pete Wentz ugh <3. In a very recent interview that I cannot blame the bio for not including, Pete said that Patrick helps him with the bass because he’s so musically talented and everything about that offhand statement just kills me.

·       I did not know that one of the leaks of their reunion was on a blog that wrote “You can stop refreshing for a journal update,” and I’m in love with that, sorry.  

·       Ugh, can I just say, the fact that Patrick sang all of his vocals for Pax AM Days live with the band is just so unbelievable, he kills me.

·       From the bio: “We were fireworks that went off too soon / And I miss you in the June gloom, too,” Stump sings here, and you can’t help but wonder if the words refer to his public but brief marriage. …I have indeed helped the wondering of that because I have never once thought that about this song lolololol

[unofficialkfamtranscripts]

King Falls AM - Episode Twelve: All the Pretty Flowers

View on Google Docs

Summary: October 15, 2015 - Against Ben's wishes, Sammy broaches a touchy subject after witnessing a hearse delivering white roses on his way into the station. Is it a King Falls Halloween tradition or could it be something more sinister? #RedRumRoses

[podcast intro music]

[jazz music]

Chet Well the clock on the wall is telling me that’s all, y’all. So I’m gonna mosey on down to The Red Rock bar and buy all the ladies a drink on me. But don’t try to fool me again, Dennis. This has been Chet Sebastian’s Jazz Corner. Until next time… keep it cool King Falls.

[Sammy & Ben Show intro music]

Ben Good evening, you’re listening to King Falls AM [door closing]– that’s 660 on the radio dial. [slightly irked] And this is the Sammy and Ben show— sans-Sammy at the moment.

[footsteps]

Sammy Sorry about that, Ben! everybody at home. I was just running a little late. I was j- Y-you know, I just saw the weirdest thing!

Ben Was it Chet leaving? I told him to take that fur coat off. Guy looks like he walked off a set of a Blaxploitation[1] film.

Sammy *laughs* No, I wish I’d seen that. But I was driving in tonight- I was running a tad bit late, as you can see, and I swear to you: I’m coming up Main Street, I got behind a hearse delivering these giant white rose bouquets! Like, every couple of streets the damn thing’s stoppin’!

Ben No.

Sammy No *laughs* yeah it did.

Ben … SOOOOO… Weee’ve got a great show for you folks tonight. Uh, Ernie Salcedo…

Sammy Ben.

Ben *pointedly clearing his throat* … Yes?

Sammy Okay, I can see you slashing at your neck furiously and shaking your head “no”, but the audience can’t. Sooo, what’s the issue here?

Ben *nervously* I’m sorry we… just don’t talk about this, Sammy.

Sammy So you know of it! Is it like some kind of weird Halloween thing?

Ben [flatly] Halloween? Are you serious? We don’t celebrate Halloween here in the Falls, Sammy.

Sammy WHAT? This is like friggin’ Halloween Town! You know those shops that open up every year around Halloween and close the day after? King Falls is where all those shops should move to when it’s not Halloween.

Ben Two things. 1) That’s a horrible business model, and 2) Halloween is one, big, diabetic pumpkin.

Sammy Come on? You don’t like decorating? Trick-or-treating?

Ben ALL OF IT. It’s like you’re— tempting these ghouls and goblins to come and mess with you. We get enough of that here. And again, diabetes.

Sammy Okay, I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m not gonna lie— this is kind of a surprise.

Ben What can I say? We’re more the Christmas or Arbor Day types.

Sammy Okay, so the hearse is delivering flowers. What’s the deal if it’s not a Halloween… ritual?

Ben Did you really see that? Did someone tell you to mess with me about this?

Sammy Scout’s Honor. I was late because of it! I illegally passed on a double yellow line (sorry Deputy Troy) just to skate around ‘em and make my way up the mountain.

Ben … I don’t like this. I-I don’t know that I’ve ever known anyone that saw the flowers delivered. Usually businesses and people just find the wreaths the next morning. D-Di-Did you see inside the hearse? Was it… people?

Sammy You know, I didn’t look, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say… it was a human being.

Ben Well, that’s good. *breath* It’s something.

Sammy Okay, so the roses…

Ben [voice breaking] Damnit, Sammy! We got a show scheduled, ya know?

Sammy I’m well aware! Just fill me in about the roses and we’ll move on.

Ben [muttering] Yeah yeah, okay, so… *deep breath* Every year, around this time—

Sammy Halloween…

Ben OCTOBER.

Sammy Uh-huh…

Ben Every— October… there is a certain society of people— and I use the term “people” loosely— that congregate and deliver the rose wreaths to individuals and businesses. That’s— a fact.

Sammy And?

Ben Annnd… nobody really knows what happens after that.

Sammy [audible grin] But legend has it…!

Ben Don’t “legend-has-it” me! Nobody knows for sure! Why gossip?

Sammy Okay. What do you think happens, Ben?

Ben *breathes in* Uuuugghhhh… Well, I think people either accept this weird— invitation or… they don’t. But I can tell you, the people that don’t? Well… they don’t, last long after that.

Sammy Okay. So we’ve just went from spooky 1-800-Flowers to murder in only a few easy steps.

Ben Not- murder- per say, but… businesses that decline tend to… move away or go under. Or tragedy strikes. Sure, I-I’ve heard stories of these folks winding up on the wrong end of a funeral ceremony, but… I couldn’t prove it. Are you satisfied now?

Sammy Of course. Thank you, Ben. King Falls, you’ve heard our story, now let’s hear yours!

Ben DON’T open the phone lines!

Sammy We’re-opening-up the phone lines here at the station! 424-279-3858. Have you had contact with this demonic annual floral delivery? Hit us up!

Ben Don’t call or tweet us. Please.

Sammy Give us a call or tweet us @KingFallsAM, [smugly] Ben will personally answer every tweet #RedrumRoses[2]

Ben NOPE! Not gonna happen.

Sammy Ben…[faux sympathy] It looks like the phone lines are lighting up, buddy.

Ben I expected better of you, King Falls.

Sammy Lucky Line 1, you’re on the air with Sammy And Ben.

Pete Low-down, gossip-mongering, muckraking filth.

Ben [flatly] Pete?

Sammy [quiet and amused] Escobar?

Pete N-uh- it’s Pete. You know damn well I’m listenin’.

Ben Wwhat’s on your mind tonight, Pete?

Sammy Did your mom teach you to start off phone calls with name-calling, Pete?

Pete [faint creaking in bg] My mom taught me to… stand up for myself! Don’t start a fight, but don’t be afraid to end it.

Sammy Who’s fighting?

Pete Oh, what a short attention span you have, Sammy. Not dwelling on you and Mr. Howard Ford Beauregard III issues; you’re picking a fight with the Unknown! Ben told you to shut your trap. [very faint sounds of driving]

Sammy Heh, lemme tell you, this would a long four hours if we didn’t talk and, y’ know, sometimes you have to—

Pete Yeah yeah, I get it, Mr. Nincompoop Radio Host. [creaking] You gotta blab. But that’s something you don’t trifle with. You should know this.

Ben Sammy, you know I hate to say Pete is right about anything, but—

Pete But I’m right about this! I know you know, Ben. That’s all I need to know. Stop yapping about things you don’t understand.

Ben Thanks, Pete.

Sammy [mostly resigned] Did you have a question or an experience with the flowers, Pete?

Pete Abs-absolutely not! I– d-don’t try to get me in trouble. [car door closing]

Ben You okay over there, Pete?

Pete [failing at being nonchalant] Yeah I’m just out, and… uh, just out.

Sammy [incredulous] This time of night?

[car door slamming]

Pete Yeah! I’m- runnin’ errands and- stuff like that, y’know. ‘T’s- It’s not- it’s not your business!

Ben [literally tongue-in-cheek] Uh-huh…

Pete You’re makin’ something of this. Yer- you’re doin’ somethin’, you’re getting me invo— Stop.

Ben It’s just weird, Mr. Beauregard’s gardener is out at 2 in the morning, running errands.

Sammy So your boss doesn’t have anything to do with the roses, does he, Pete?

Pete Ben Arnold. If you’ve got a lick of good sense, I wouldn’t walk too close to Sammy for the next feww… mm— mmmm… lifetimes! He’s gonna wind up on the bottom end of an anvil.

Sammy You know, I just don’t think asking questions is the equivalent of buying ACME rocket kits and trying to catch a damn bird.[3]

Ben [semi-stern] Y’mind answering his question, Pete?

[creaking]

Pete Oh, HELL NO. You two are a couple ‘a horse patoots. I’m never listening to this show again.

Ben Until tomorrow.

Pete PETE OUT! [click, dial tone]

Ben Are you happy, Sammy? Is this what you were hoping for?

Sammy Civilized conversation is the only thing I look for. That said… I’m gonna say, it’s a tad bit suspicious.

Ben There are dots we don’t need to connect. MOVING ON!

Sammy Maybe you’re right.

Ben Folks, we’re gonna take a break to pay some bills, and we’ll be right back and on schedule.

[rattle, guitar strums]

Dale (presumably) [voice is a low murmur (for lack of a better word)] Dale’s Dollar Tree… [strum] at dirt cheap prices… [strum] it’s almost free. [guitar,western music] Hi, everybody, I’m super excited to tell you ‘bout some unbelievable deals we have right now… at Dale’s Dollar Tree. Let’s segue to the savin’s [eagle screech] Our low prices are guaranteed… Who’s guaranteeing it, you ask? … Me… [guitar stops] How do you take advantage of these savings? [strum, rattle] 1) Walk into Dale’s Dollar Tree [strum] 2) Throw somethin’ in your cart [strum] 3) Savings. [guitar] Dale’s Dollar Tree. [eagle screech]

[S&B theme]

Sammy Ladies and gentlemen, we are back and you’re listening to King Falls AM. Now we were just talking about me running late this morning, because of a, uh, hearse—

Ben [cutting Sammy off] So we’ve got a great show scheduled tonight. We’ve got Mr. Eli Goldblum on later in the hour.

Sammy And who is Mr. Goldblum?

Ben Are you kidding me? Only the most renowned post-mortal psychologist known to man! He’s on his spoken-word world tour, and this Thursday, you can see him live at the King Falls Convention Center.

Sammy … That’sss-something.

Ben Indeed! So that’s in about… forrrty minutes. Uh, we got Rose, (from Rose’s Diner, of course) calling in to talk about how the Bee Crisis is affecting her honey-baked ham specials for the- foreseeable future.

Sammy [TIL] Really? That’s something that’s happening?

Ben Come on, Sammy. This bee situation is serious business.

Sammy You get points for not buzzing or saying “beeees-ness”

Ben You don’t wanna know how hard that was…

Sammy -eh- Okay. So, how can we help with the bees?

Ben Uhhh… cut- back- on swatting them?? *awkward laugh* I-I-I don’t know for sure that’s-that’s why we’re talkin’ to Rose.

Sammy Gotcha!

Ben And our first topic of discussion this evening— was gonna be—

Sammy About the flowers.

Ben Don’t.

Sammy Okay, look. Can we open up the phone lines again? I’d like to talk about these flowers. Uh, you tell King Falls your topic, and then we’ll see what they wanna talk about.

Ben You know they’ll talk about the damn rose wreaths!

Sammy You heard it here, folks. Line 7, you’re on with Sammy and Ben.

Herschel Ugh, I can’t sleep with all this damn racket going on! You two DINGLEBERRIES keep it down!

Sammy *laugh* Herschel??

Herschel Oh, hell. Don’t make me get out of bed and give you a full blast so late at night! [muttered] Don’t even know where my slippers are…

Ben Mr… Baumgartner, you realize you called us, right? This is- the radio station.

Herschel I know who and what I called. I dialed you DICKWHISTLES because all this [mocking] cry-babying about the damn flowers. Turn that jazz fella back on so- so I can get some rest!

Sammy Chet is on from 10 to 2, Mr. Baumgartner. This is Sammy and Ben and we- talk about—

Herschel I don’t give a damn if it’s Tricky Dick Nixon calling to give me a Congressional Medal of Honor! You shut your nose holes about the damn funeral flowers. And play me some heroin-fueled American art! [click]

[dial tone]

Sammy We’re gonna count that as one for the flowers…

Ben Line 14, you’re live on the air.

Creeper Long time listener here!

Sammy [click, dial tone]

Ben Did you hang up, Sammy?

Sammy Yeeaah, sorry. I hate that guy.

Ben Line 3,*chuckles* this is King Falls AM.

Beauregard Good evening, Benjamin. Samuel. This is—

Ben Beauretard?![sic]

Beauregard *sigh* Mr. Howard Ford Beauregard the Third. My man told me that you were spreading more lies than usual on your little “radio show.” I thought I would call and clear the air.

Sammy Mr. Beauregard, can I just say, before this call goes ANY further— that we will not accept any abuse towards us or the listeners of this show.

Beauregard How cute that you think people listen to you two buffoons.

Ben That’s abuse! That’s exactly what we were—

Beauregard Oh, that’s a joke where I come from. You millennials would never have lasted back in my day. With your emotions and feelings and the like.

Ben When was that day, again, Mr. Beauregard?

Beauregard Information about myself and my family, can be found in my international, best-selling e-book, “King of King Falls” … I don’t have to answer to— well— you.

Sammy *sigh* Did you have a reason for the call tonight, Beauregard?

Beauregard Indeed, I do. While men with any couth wouldn’t speak about festivities that they know nothing aboouut—

Sammy So, you’re behind these deliveries?

Ben Also, while I would never name names and throw my friend under a bus— you should know this wasn’t the agreed upon topic of the show.

Sammy Oh, stop it.

Beauregard [agonizingly insincere] I don’t know a thing about the supposed yearly white rose deliveries you speak of. My family, nor myself, have ever been involved with such jovality.[sic] In fact, in all my years I can’t recollect such a thing.

Ben I don’t buy that for a second. Maybe you’ve never sent the roses, and— let’s play devil’s advocate and say, sure, you’ve never received them (which I doubt), but there is No Way you haven’t heard of this.

Beauregard Maybe it’s something you commoners have made up, like, uhh- the tooth fairy or the Illuminati orrr— equal rights for the sexes.

Ben I can’t deal with this guy! Just dump him and let’s take another line.

Sammy Wait… Mr. Beauregard. If you don’t care about this— and, in fact, haven’t even heard of it until tonight— why would you bother to break your Hate-Silence with us to call in?

Beauregard You’re not nearly as dumb as you look, Stevens! And while I continue to honor my statement before— I’d have to assume that this “rose” ordeal is a real thing. It’s probably a very special thing! An intimate invitation sent by the upper echelons of King Falls. A way of making amends or bring people worthy of attention, into a conversation that normally would not have been invited to have.

Ben Just for everyone keeping score at home: I took a college course on Crazy and I believe he is saying he knows that the wreath deliveries are real, and he is probably behind them.

Beauregard Time is money, gentleman. Not that you understand that concept. But instead of painting a ceremony you know nothing about as tragic and scary— perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s something more than that, entirely. In any case, it’s not something that should be spoken about in public. [phone pings] Ahhh… I’ll be going now, “gentlemen.” And while I do use that word lightly, perhaps take a break from your radio program and… check your door.

Ben Isss that a threat?

Beauregard Trick-or-Treat, Samuel… Benjamin. [click]

[dial tone]

Sammy I wonder what he sounds like when he has something nice to say to people.

Ben He probably hasn’t said anything nice to a person since the 60s… The 1860s.

Sammy Ya know, I didn’t mean to ruffle anyone’s feathers tonight. Especially crazy old billionaires who try to drive us off the air— so let’s just—

Ben I’M GONNA GO CHECK THE DOOR.

Sammy What?!

Ben Yeah. [chair sliding out] I’m sorry, man. Beauregard gives me the willies [squeak] and I wanna make sure there isn’t—

Sammy A sugar-glider on a noose?

Ben Too far. I was just gonna say— that he hasn’t had Pete ding-dong-ditch us- or something.

Sammy And here I thought the Williams boys had that market cornered.

Ben I’ll be back in a sec. [footsteps rushing off]

Sammy [shouting after him] Don’t talk about Pete that way, Ben! He’s never gonna listen to the show again! Alright, folks. We are just a few hot minutes away from Eli Goldblum coming into the studio to talk about, [ominous bg music starts] uh… I’m guessing- ghosts with lingering mental issues? Ah, sorry— apparitions. [footsteps rushing back] I’m holding out hope for an apparition with multiple personality disorder, but I don’t know if that’s a thing or not… [chair squeak, Ben sitting] Ben? You okay, buddy?

Ben [upset] How many times, did I ask you to stop talking about the stupid, hearse, Sammy?

Sammy What’s wrong?

Ben [sarcastic] Oh, nothing. You wanna go outside and take a look?

Sammy You know, I don’t think I want to. I’m happy with you filling me in.

Ben Well, I didn’t go outside, Sammy! I didn’t have to. I looked out the front window.

[ominous bg music getting louder]

Sammy Yeah? And?

Ben [hissed] damnit

Sammy … Ben. What is going on? Do we need to call Troy?

Ben The whole parking lot- your car, MY car— as far as the lights will let me see— Nothing but white roses, man.

Sammy … Are you serious?

Ben Go look!! Just don’t go out there, huh? It looked like it was snowing, that’s how many of those damn things are out there.

Sammy [scrambling for optimism] What’s the chances that it’s just a non-Halloween bouquet from Emily to you?

Ben ZERO. Zero percent chance, Sammy.

Sammy [seriously] Folks, we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

[KFAM outro]

[CREDITS]

References

[1] Blaxploitation - Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The films, while popular, suffered backlash for disproportionate numbers of stereotypical film characters showing bad or questionable motives, including roles as criminals.

[2] #RedrumRoses - Redrum is from the psychological horror film The Shining. It’s “murder” spelled backward.

[3] “ACME rocket kits and trying to catch a damn bird” - I sincerely hope no one will ever be too young for this reference, but I once had my little brothers ask who Mr. Rogers was so: this is a reference to the Looney Toons cartoons, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. In each episode, Coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and eat the Road Runner, a fast-running ground bird, but is never successful. In order to catch the Road Runner, Coyote uses absurdly complex contraptions- most acquired from the mail-order company ACME- to try to catch his prey, which all backfire comically with Coyote often getting injured in slapstick fashion.

[prorevenge]

Read the sign, No Parking!

A little context first. About 4 or 5 years ago, I was working at a small B-Movie Horror Movie Production Company (Call it BM) that was housed in these really old Live/Work lofts. My best friend's sister, who ran their shipping room, got us both hired some years earlier. I was the runner for BM, although the 3 of us basically did everything that wasn't movie production related, and even then, we sometimes helped with that stuff too. At the time of the incident, my friend's sister had just been fired and my friend had given his two weeks in protest. That means I had been "Promoted" to head of the shipping room, on top of my very busy job that involved a ton of driving, and all the misc. crap that we had to do, since nobody else wanted to do them. At least I got a nice hefty raise, since my job was not 2 people's worth of work harder... is what I'd like to say. At this point the company wasn't doing as well, so i was often being paid late, if at all. You could say my disgruntled attitude is probably what led to the incident haha.

The parking situation in the building was... not great. The lot was a small gated lot behind the building. It was a single lane that had 2 deep spots to the left, single spaces on the right, and was about 8 cars wide. At the end was loading dock that had a ramp that went up into the back of the building. There was no visitor parking, as every parking spot was assigned by the building, although there was technically a spot in the loading dock that you could park at if you were quick and left your information visible on the dash, so that one of the businesses could call you to move it if they needed it. It was kind of a park at your own risk kind of thing, since there were a ton of signs that said "No Parking in Loading Dock," "No Visitor Parking," "Owner is Responsible for Damage," etc etc etc. All were clearly visible and posted all over the place.

So on this day, we had a pallet of goods, and misc equipment and furnishings being shipped by freight to a convention. It all totaled to about 600-700lbs. I brought the pallet down to the dock and noticed a real fancy looking bmw suv parked in the spot at the dock. It wasn't a big deal, like I said, people park there from time to time and he did, in fact, leave his information visible. There was still a good hour to an hour and a half till the scheduled pick up, so I gave the info to the guy in the office that usually handles that kind of stuff while I went back to work getting ready for my runs for the day. A half hour passes and I notice the car still hasn't moved, so I ask my coworker what the deal was and he tells me that the guy said he was on his way back from where he was to move the car and that he would be back at any minute.

Another 15 minutes pass and the freight driver calls me to tell me he's 20 minutes away and to be ready. And of course, the car still has not moved. I cannot stress how important this convention is to the company, the owner starts freaking out and starts giving me a hard time. I tell my coworker to call the guy for the 3rd time, and the guy tells him very rudely that he'll be back soon and hangs up on my coworker. I talk to the building owner to try and find out which loft the car belongs to and he has no idea. I call around to the other tenants and the ones that answer do not recognize the car. So I grab our heavy duty pallet jacket and head downstairs to prepare for the worst. 15 minutes later, and here comes the freight truck pulling into the parking lot. I try to explain the situation to him, but he tells me that he's on a schedule and that if we can't get the car to move in 20 minutes, he was leaving with or without our pallet. I can see my boss with this worried/angry look on his face glaring at me, so I decide to call the guy myself. This is how the conversation goes:

(Entitled Ass: EA Coworker: CW Nuka: Me)

Me: Hey is this EA?

EA: Yeah, who's calling?

Me: Hey, my name is Nuka, I work with CW. We've been calling you about moving your car, are you almost here?

EA: Yeah man, almost there.

Me: Can you give me an estimate? Cause our freight truck is here and he can't pull into the loading dock with your car here.

EA: Haha I'll be honest with you bro, i'm in "Super far away city" right now.

Me: Dude that's 2 hours away by car! What the fuck man, you've been telling my guy here that you're on your way. Have you even left yet? Or does someone here have a spare key or something?

EA: Chill Bro, I'll get there when I get there. I took the train here and I ain't ready to come back yet. And of course nobody has my keys, why would they? It's my fuckin car.

Me: Dude there all kinds of signs here that say no parking. What are we supposed to do now?

EA: I don't give a fuck, tell the driver to wait or come back later.

I see the driver tapping his watch looking impatient.

Me: Alright man, we tried to do this the civil way. I'm giving you a heads up that we're gonna have to use the ramp to bring down the pallet. It's a heavy ass pallet and we don't have that many guys here, so I can't guarantee nothing is gonna happen to your car. I'll do my best though.

EA: What the fuck does that mean?

I hang up on him and tell CW to get as many of the office guys that are willing to help. I swing by the building office and explain the situation to the owner and he gives me a... not so confident thumbs up, already knowing that it's gonna be a long day for him. I can hear my phone vibrating like crazy, but I was already done with this guy. I get back to the dock and I see my friend and 3 of my scrawniest and out of shape coworkers. I explain to the driver that we were gonna bring the pallet down on the ramp and he insists on helping to get it done quicker. He takes the handle to control the pace while everyone else just braces against the pallet to offset the weight. Literally the second the pallet jack is fully on the ramp, the driver loses control of the fidgety handle and slams the full force of the pallet into the dudes headlights. My friend and I can't help but burst our laughing. We look up and see the building owner and the guys friend who actually lives there watching in horror from the balcony above the dock. I clearly hear his friend say "oh shit, they hit your car!" and we start laughing even more. Honestly, we were laughing probably loud enough for him to hear us.

The driver starts freaking out, because this was technically his fault. I calm him down and tell him that we just need to finish. Holy moly, pushing that 700lb pallet back up the ramp to get it out of the headlight socket was ridiculously exhausting. Honestly, we couldn't even get it completely out. It ended up doing a lot more damage and caused a really deep scratch on that front panel as it scraped loose. I gave the driver my information and told him that the car owner would most likely be the one at fault, but he was welcome to call me if he needed me to make a statement.

We all had a good laugh about it. Probably would've felt worse if the car owner wasn't such an ass. I heard someone making a huge stink when I was leaving for the day, but nothing ever came of it. I did notice a ton of new liability and no parking signs pop up all over the building though haha. I never saw the guys car again, but the friend would give me the stink eye on the rare occasion that we bumped into each other.

The moral of the story, leave your keys with someone that can move your car if you know it may be in the way, or just pay the 7 bucks to leave it in a nearby lot. Also, don't be an ass.

(source) story by (/u/UnencumberedNuka)

[dashinberlin]

The First Day of the Rest of My Life in Berlin

Welcome to my diary. I have been meaning to keep one of these for the whole of my twenties but I never got around to it. I’m currently 26 years old and today was the day that I moved to Berlin. It was a   decision i made one year and ten days ago on the 13th of November. IT came about because my dreams and career have been stagnating for a while [4 years] In London and I really wasn’t happy anymore, especially after moving back in with my dad because my previous residence was too full of dogshit and used needles. I got up at about 8 I think. Dean, my ex boyfriend and best friend came over about 9, and we spent the morning sorting out a bunch of my last belongings. It was all very frantic and rushed, but I left the house in a state my dad was relatively pleased with. 

We went to the post office first to mail some rubber to my crush in America. It was rubber from my passed away Sir. We were such a scene trying to fix the broken granny trolley full of stuff for dean with parcel tape in front of a busy post office.  We got on the tube. It was a nightmare trying to navigate with three things on wheeels and about 5 or 6 back packs or bags. It was really strange and busy the whole things. Given that I had given myself a year to plan all of this, the fantasy-land version of myself had dreamed that everything would have been packed up and put to bed months ago, however the real version of me new I would be a qausi ,but never ever complete disaster as usual. In my head I think of myself as being one on a team of rag tag misfit kits who save the day wearing inventive but destroyed outfits, and brandish effective yet fucking weird and unconventional looking weapons.  

So yeah we got to the airport and checked in, nearly burst into tears telling the lady on the desk i’d been planning this day for a year. my mate Bill works at heathrow and he came and joined us at the whetherspoons to see me off. When we’d drank and the time came for us to leave I decided now was the perfect time to record a video with Dean where we read off and performed our list of completely fucking weird and abstract foiles-es-deux language memes from the stickynotes app on my laptop. “blabble fish” “octoboyfriend” “Hatch distress call” and “pacman around the shop” were all memes that we re-enacted for this video. it was LOLZ. 

And then the time was upon us. We walked to the gate, and we said goodbye. I pretty much instantly burst into tears telling dean good bye and how much i loved him, whilst holding him.  We’ve been joined at the hip seeing each other at least two times a week for four years so it was a bit tough. We said we loved each other and were thankful for the times we had. I gave bill a “come here Bill!” and pulled him close. 

Got through security and put my head-phones on. Next song up on my list was Foals- Spanish Sahara. This track is a work of art. It progresses so slowly I had to skip the first minute to be able to skip to the part where you could actually say it was a beginning verse. I walked to my gate (A26) as the song progresses. ....  This whole time, the last year I knew was going to be year of closing doors behind me, some shut easy, some shut with the sound of broken hearts bittersweet wishes. When I decided to leave London it was like suddenly my 3d interaction with the city and all the people in it had become a massive one way track labyrinthine palace and at every step where i knew it was the last time i’d be in one place, or talk to one person, I neatly and quietly closed the door of this memory behind me. At first you’re zig zagging all over town shutting doors, but when it gets closer to things like, your leaving party, and your last ten tube rides, and then last time you see people you see every day, and then suddenly you’re listening to Spanish Sahara (a song about abandoning a foresaken place) and you’re looking through airport glass at the plane your about to board and you let out a great big silent scream because the fucking plane door now not only represents final closure of the palace of your life in London, all the hopes, failures dreams, tears, memories, laughs, blood, semen, and ambitions of this place. It staggeringly also carries the weight of being a portal to another dimension. At this point the plane ceases to be a plane, but instead is now a vessel that carries you from your neatly shut-down city of failed dreams, through time and space, to your future in a world that you really don’t know that much about, apart from that there was a big wall that cut it in half, and that it is currently the  stunning playground of Gay Angels, Neo Nazi Demons, and all those in between... oh and by the way, they’re all dancing to techno and fucking on the dancefloor. 

So I board the plane. I go to my seat I booked, its by a window at the very back. I’m sitting there with tears in my eyes and a woman turns around from the seat in front of me and asks in german if the lighter she has just found on the floor is mine. I tell her no its not, an eventually in german “Dass is nicht mein feuerzoig” and we strike up conversation. I tell her very quickly this is my moving flight to berlin that i’ve been planning on for one , and she’s instantly overwhelmed with compassionate amazement. Her name is Ingrid. She was super sweet to me, and told me numerous times that she had huge respect for me making this gigantic leap, and the guts it took to make it, and how much fun berlin would be, and how so many people never listen to their gut instinct. Over the cours of the flight she tells me over her story, how she lived in Berlin for 10 years, in Schoneberg no less, and how she thought she’d be happier becoming a sister in a convent, and how her dream led her astray, and how it had hurt to leave everything to start again and it not worked out. She explained how she worked in finance for a bit, and then a hospice which was a her true calling in life, and now how she was doing finance work again....and was very unfulfilled.  I told her more of my year,  how the dogshit needle house and years of london stagnation had made me so anxious sometimes at work I just wanted to sit there and cry and scream at the blank wall in front of my desk. And how something drastic needed to be done. I told her how I lost Michael in Berlin and how is death affected me, nd how I believe in magic and the amazing energy of the universe that will help and guide you if you are good, and you believe, and if you ask nicely and you yearn, and you work hard it will heLP YOU THE FUCK OUT. Ingrid supported all my additions with points of her own, and I think in that moment she new that like me, her life had become derailed from it’s path towards destiny and that it was time to get off of this path of pointlessness and back on one which makes her happy.  That vessel. The wormhole to another life. Was a magical place to be. The plane flew over a beautiful wash of white clouds the whole way to Germany, and their textures changed from bright sunshine to darkness very quickly as sunset speed was enhanced by the plane’s cruising speed of threehundredandX MPH. With the ground obscured by smokewaves and light switch of the earth being flicked off so quickly, it was the transition from one path to another was practically audible. It was like the closing palace was actually my universe collapsing into a singular hyper dense singularity, and this new state, one even smaller than an atom was where I was in the vessel in that moment. The changing of the sky and the earth around me was actually the visual signs that my new future was being rotated and recalibrated around me, so that when the door of that fucking plane opened, a new palace and a new universe and a new future would burst out in front of me, sprawling infinitely. The name of that future is Berlin. 

The plane lands. I get my bags with Ingrid. We take a selfie, proclaim the importance and sacred of our meeting and we move on.  In the cab ride back to my place the driver welcomes me to Berlin and we instantly start talking about the insane nightlife. By the end of the cab ride he has revealed to me that he has always wanted to go to berghain and i give him some ideas of he could look cool and get in. and he is very thankful. He also told me how when he’s having sex he loves speaking in english because he finds it super fucking hot...like seriously, he spoke so emphatically that from what i can tell, english sex is to him what bondage fisting is to me. 

I hang about for ten minutes waiting for Alis excited as fuck. When she arrives and opens the foor and screams “welcome to your new chapter!!” she looks slightly concerned at me for  second because a few seconds has passed now and I’m so fulll of amazement and awe at those words my mouth was a big jar with a small lid, and  filled with big word pickles and none of the eighty word pickeles could come out. . . So I just sort of jumped in the air and screamed a abit. We climbed about 7 flights of  stairs up to the flat with my HEAVY Fuckng bags where she let me in and showed me my new room. Which. just. oh. my god. It’s. just. so fucking big. I can’t even believe it. I have the best room in the house! It’s long and tall, you could get about two and a half of my old bedroom in brixton into it easily.  Suddenly I was here, The sparks of my new life palace constructing itself in front of me. All I could think was that it seemed so easy in a way.  Like I had asked, and yes i did work, and save, and put in love and money and effort, and it just appeared in front me and now I can just go walk over, and pick it up and hold it and it’s mine. MY DREAM IS MINE AND ITS COMING TRUE EVERY SECOND THAT PASSES. 

[shadowsong26fic]

The Handler AU

As requested by @tigerkat24.

(I do also have fulltext for one scene in here, which will be posted and linked here in the near future, probably tomorrow, after I clean it up some.)

Right. So. A couple of notes before I get started:

1) This AU prominently features Lavinia, and also super self-indulgent. Gonna say that straight-out. This is me and my OC and a bunch of tropes I adore. It is not the most self-indulgent piece I’ve ever put together, but it’s probably up there. I say this because, while I am pretty much past the point as a fan/content creator/whatever where I’m ashamed of my self-indulgent BS, I understand that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it’s as obvious as this piece is. And I like people to know at least in general terms what they’re getting into when they open a piece of mine. So, you know, bear that in mind as you move forward.

2) Because of the way I work/develop AUs/OCs/etc., there are certain personality traits/satellite characters/plot points that are common to all/most of Lavinia’s storylines (...yeah, it’s a Thing I do, with OCs yeah but also with OC-free AUs and AUs of AUs and ‘hey what if I changed this plot point here, or put OC B in this situation instead of that one, or stuck Canon D in...look, y’all have seen my Distaff variants, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about; I don’t always stop at a single layer of canon-divergence, but then there has to be a thread connecting everything, or it becomes a totally different story/character, right? ...I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well. ...anyway, back on topic). As a result, despite being an AU of a completely different AU, this outline is therefore somewhat spoilery for a future Precipice arc. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve hinted at where I’m going with her in the fic proper and/or bonus content, or at least I’ve tried to, (plus, I know I’ve mentioned some things here on tumblr about particular narrative/character tropes I like), so it’s probably not too surprising? Or, at least, I hope it’s not. If it is, I need to get better at foreshadowing… Anyway, it is still technically a spoiler. To the point where I considered sitting on this (and a couple related AUs) at least until a particular event from Arc Seven that makes said future storyline about as clear as it can be until it actually happens. But…I decided ehhhhhh, why not (plus this was requested). But, you know, if that is something you want to avoid, might be best not to read this outline until after Arc…nine, I think? Just as a head’s up.

3) This is essentially a Kallus-centric Rebels fic (though, as mentioned above, also prominently featuring one of my OCs). And, other than that one bit in the Valdemar AU I wrote a month or so ago, this is the first time I’ve actually written Rebels content. (…granted, I’ve plotted more things--the closely-related Pellaeon AU features Rebels stuff pretty heavily, as does the middle arc of the Valdemar AU, which started as ‘Anakin would do really well as a Herald actually’ and has now turned into a massive three-part kudzu plot of a niche crossover and I should really redo that outline properly at some point, plus a few other things…) Anyway, the point is, I’m not necessarily super familiar with the conventions/etc. of this part of the fandom, and I apologize for any off-voice bits.

Okay! Now that I have warned for spoilers, inexperience, and self-indulgent BS…welcome to the Handler AU.

Oh, one more thing I want to mention—because this is, as stated above, super self-indulgent, Kanan is still alive because I said so. He got pretty crisped in that explosion and therefore missed the final battle, but didn’t actually die.

(Imperial records may have listed him as dead for a while, because No One Could Have Survived That, but he did survive.)

(How? IDK, maybe Ezra actually was able to do something from the between-place in this version.)

(Point is, we still have Kanan.)

(Ezra and Thrawn are still on a road trip with a bunch of space whales, though.)

ANYWAY. On to the good stuff.

It all kicks off like two months after Yavin.

Some timeline notes:

Because timelining anything in Star Wars is A Project, I am making some executive decisions here.

We’re approximately a year after the Rebels series finale.

(Meaning Jacen is like 3-4 months old, depending on exactly how pregnant Hera was at the time.)

This is also about how long Zeb and Kallus have been explicitly dating.

(There was SO MUCH PINING going on for a while there.)

(But it took that long for either of them to actually do anything about it.)

(Kallus figured out pretty early on that he was interested, but didn’t really think he deserved this/had earned it yet/that Zeb could possibly be interested in him, and therefore decided to bury his feelings Like A Goddamn Professional Okay.)

(Zeb took a while longer to clue in, and then couldn’t figure out if this was just him or what--see above re: burying things; worked a little bit too well--plus he has his own issues to work through.)

(And then there were some frantic Confessions and so-glad-we’re-alive sex and…)

(Yeah, this is a thing now.)

(Exactly zero people who have spent any time with these two dorks at all are surprised.)

(As is so often the case, the last people to clue in that this was A Mutual Thing are the two idiots involved.)

(There may or may not have been a pool or three going.)

(Hera won at least one of them.)

So. Kallus has made himself useful wherever he can since openly defecting, really, but generally works analyzing intelligence reports and training field agents for potential undercover missions. Even if his specific information is getting more and more out of date (few, if any, of the codes, etc. that he knows are still valid at this point), some things aren’t going to change that quickly, and his background is useful here.

Anyway. He gets called in--

“We’ve been approached by a would-be double agent deep in Imperial territory; received three transmissions in the past few weeks. So far, everything we’ve been sent checks out/has been useful, but.”

“But you’re wondering if this agent is an ISB plant.”

“Exactly. She calls herself Vector.”

“She?”

“Yeah. The scrambler she’s using is doing its job, which means we can’t actually use a voice print to ID her, but vocal pattern analysis got us that much. And that she’s likely Coruscanti, Human, and under thirty. That’s about all we know.”

He goes over the data and the recordings from the first three contacts and nothing jumps out as a red flag/any of the tricks he’s familiar with.

On the first call, there’s some dancing around; as if Vector’s trying to make sure of who she’s talking to. What he’d expect from either a plant or a genuine defector, really. Not particularly helpful.

The other two are fairly brief/straightforward, and start the same way each time--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it. Also not particularly enlightening, given the question he’s been asked to answer.

The data itself, though, is--interesting. Not easy to access, for the most part, and not necessarily all from the same source. Parts of it are the kind of thing ISB would use as bait, but just as much of it is not. Some of it provides useful context for intel the Alliance has received from other sources (some covert, some not), which is not the kind of thing an ISB plant would send.

So, he goes back to his superiors and tentatively reports Vector as probably genuine. He wants to be on hand for her next transmission, though, to be sure.

(He wonders, idly, who they had evaluate his initial transmissions like this, or if using an established codename and protocol was enough…)

(He’s Concerned it might be the second.)

(There are some worrying gaps in Rebel Intelligence’s security that he can only do so much to patch.)

Of course, there’s a slight problem with that. Vector’s transmissions haven’t exactly been regular--the second one came four days after the first, and then it was nearly two weeks to the third.

And when they do come, they’re very brief, so if Kallus is, say, busy with a training exercise on the opposite side of the base…

(Or otherwise occupied in a supply closet.)

(He does have, y’know, a life when off-duty.)

(...which is something that still sends him into weird brainspirals of “how did this happen” and “i don’t deserve this” and “when is it going to blow up in my face” on occasion, but that is a separate problem. One that he buries. Like A Goddamn Professional.)

(no that’s not a habit of his why do you ask.)

IN ANY CASE, this means that it ends up being her sixth message, close to three weeks after Kallus is initially brought in, before he’s able to listen in live.

(Transmissions four and five, after he reviews them, don’t really change his analysis, but still.)

Transmission six comes in while Kallus happens to be in the tiny corner of the current base that Intelligence has claimed.

It starts like the others did--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

Once the file transfer initiates, he responds.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

(Okay, technically, he probably should be using a different handle now, since it’s really supposed to be for field agents only and he isn’t one anymore. And there are similar shared code names for Intelligence agents primarily on base duty, or he assumes there are, but even after over a year of not using it, it’s still the first one that comes to mind. Reflexive, almost. And now it’s going to stick.)

There’s a beat of silence from the other end, and Kallus is briefly concerned that he misjudged the situation, that she’d going to panic and cut the transmission.

But, “I can’t leave the link open long,” she says.

(Part of him thinks she sounds...almost relieved? Like she’s been waiting to be challenged like this, and the longer things went on without a test, the more nervous she got.)

(He can understand that worry. That sense of just waiting for the other shoe to drop.)

(And, yes, other Rebel Intelligence agents probably could have tested her like this, and if he hadn’t been around as a resource they almost certainly would have, but given that he knows exactly what to look for, the Powers That Be had decided to leave it in his hands.)

“Of course,” he says, and asks her a few questions, rapid-fire.

(He’s less interested in the specific details of her answers--and he’s not really asking her questions about her identity--then how she approaches answering him. Not necessarily something he can explain, which is part of why he didn’t coach any of the other officers and get this taken care of on transmission four or five, but just trying to get a sense of her.)

(One thing he does is privately revise the estimate of her age--he thinks she’s younger than the previous guess, probably twenty or so. Sabine’s age, maybe, at the oldest. Which makes her even less likely to be a plant in his opinion; ISB wouldn’t put this much effort into setting up an agent that inexperienced, not on a mission this sensitive, even if she was inconceivably talented and precocious. As an in-person infiltrator, yes, absolutely; but for this many layers of intrigue...no, they’d want someone Experienced.)

She ends the transmission somewhat abruptly, after about five minutes, but he was more or less expecting that and anyway he has what he needs.

“Well?”

“She’s genuine,” he says. “I’m as sure as I can be of that.”

“Good to hear.” A pause. “...you’ve run undercover agents before, correct?”

Kallus shuts down the knee-jerk paranoid response as fast and hard as he can.

(There are almost certainly people in the Alliance who still don’t trust me but none of them are in this room. I know that. Calm down.)

“Yes, once or twice,” he says, cautiously. “For short-term assignments.”

“Congratulations. You just volunteered to be Vector’s handler.”

(Hence the name of the AU. AKA the one where Kallus adopts a baby spy who JUST HAPPENS to be Palpatine’s daughter.)

(...yeah, he didn’t really see that one coming.)

(...at some point, I should probably go through and outline Lavinia’s politics and her reasons for defecting in detail, but in the interests of focusing on Kallus’s end of things, which is much more interesting, a (hopefully) brief digression on the subject:)

(Lavinia was created and trained to be a spy/manipulator, to perform the kind of tasks and access the kind of information that Palpatine could as the avuncular Chancellor but cannot as Emperor, now that he’s thrown that mask away.)

(...apart from very specific, carefully staged moments, like with Ezra.)

(So, part of manipulating people means understanding them, which means Lavinia does a lot of research to put her targets into context, and in so doing comes across a wide variety of cultures/forms of government, at least in an academic context.)

(And that means that, once she starts thinking beyond “how can I survive until tomorrow” and starts thinking about broader impact/more long-range plans, it doesn’t take her very long to realize that her father’s government is...well, let’s call it deeply flawed.)

(What she does when she comes to that conclusion varies, depending on other circumstances--but she doesn’t necessarily defect right away. Mostly for practical reasons; in Masks!Verse, which this AU is a variant of, she has no Rebel contacts that she’s absolutely sure of.)

(Meaning, in this case, both “absolutely sure is an actual Rebel and not just sympathetic to their aims/politics” and “absolutely sure would be willing to work with me despite my parentage.”)

(And if she approaches anyone she isn’t sure of, it’ll get her or her contact or both of them killed. Defecting from a distance, while she can better protect her identity, has a much bigger risk of interception, which, again, would get her and/or her contacts and possibly a lot of other people killed. Or worse.)

(Basically, she doesn’t think defection is a viable option for her--there are some other reasons for this, but those play a distant second to these concerns.)

(But then Alderaan happens.)

(And these concerns carry a lot less weight.)

(It takes her a couple months to figure out how to make contact with Rebel Intelligence, let alone how to do it safely, but she starts working on it at that point.)

(...I think that’s the salient points here. Like I said, I have a fair bit more about Lavinia’s politics/etc. and the ways/extent to which she’s willing to defy her father in various AUs, but that’s enough for this one, I think.)

So, Kallus can’t really argue with the assignment (even if part of him kind of wants to? Not because he thinks he can’t do it, but because he’s concerned that being another deep-cover informant’s handler is going to dig up a lot of stuff he’d really, really rather keep buried.)

(Look, he feels like he’s finally found his equilibrium. He’s even, somehow, approaching happy with his life for the first time in what feels like forever which, guilt-induced brainspirals aside, he doesn’t want to give up.)

(Besides, handling Vector wouldn’t be his only responsibility, and if he does start losing that equilibrium, he’s not sure how much his other work will be affected.)

(On the other hand...)

(On the other hand, there are very few people who have done what he did and survived long enough to make it back to Rebel lines.)

(Oh, there are other deep-cover informants, sure; but the majority of them are plants inserted by Rebel Intelligence.)

(And while, even leaving aside the technicalities involved with Senator Mothma and others among the leadership who had previously served in the Imperial Senate, there are plenty of defectors--up to and including General Madine and some other persons of very high rank--for the most part, once they make that decision, defectors grab what they can and run.)

(The ones that don’t usually don’t survive as long as he did.)

(Or, alternatively, they don’t identify themselves to the Alliance or even necessarily work directly with them; they perform internal sabotage rather than espionage.)

(Those embedded defectors tend to last longer, but not by much.)

(Which means that he’s probably the only person--certainly the only available person--who has been where Vector is. Who better to help her?)

(As for his own issues...well, he is a Professional, dammit. He can damn well compartmentalize. He’s very good at that.)

(...yeah, this is kind of a running theme for him. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s...very much not.)

(It remains to be seen how much it’ll help or hurt when dealing with Vector.)

So, he accepts the assignment, and goes back to his quarters to tell Zeb and collect a few things--given the irregularity of Vector’s transmissions, until he can talk to her again and set up a better protocol, he’s going to basically have to camp out in Intelligence.

(Which he’s not looking forward to, but it is what it is.)

Zeb is already there when he gets back--their current shifts don’t entirely line up, which is fine; they have at least a few hours overlap most days which is better than some pairs can say.

After several minutes saying hello...

“Did I miss anything interesting?” Kallus asks.

“That Skywalker kid came by a bit ago,” Zeb tells him. “Looking for Kanan.”

Kallus blinks, halfway through fixing caf for the two of them. “...aren’t he and Hera off investigating a potential supply line?”

(Which is, of course, far below Hera’s current paygrade, but she volunteers for that kind of mission on occasion. An excuse to spend private time with her family, while still technically being useful and not taking actual time off.)

“Yep,” Zeb says. “Apparently, this is the third or fourth time something like that has happened. They keep missing each other.”

"Well, I’m sure they’ll link up sooner or later,” he says. “Especially if Skywalker’s actively looking for Kanan.”

(He hasn’t actually met Luke yet at this point, but he’s heard the rumors. He has no real doubt of this fact.)

“Yeah, probably,” Zeb says. “I think Kanan’s been trying to track him down, too. He’ll be sorry he missed him.”

(...yeah, we’re going with Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence to keep those two from actually meeting for a while.)

(Partly because it’s easier than figuring out all the timeline/plot implications that might have (and I’m lazy, and that is the focus of another story), but mostly because I think it’s funny.)

Kallus nods. “...did he and Hera take Jacen with them, or...?”

(He hadn’t seen any evidence the baby had been left with them, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.)

But Zeb shakes his head. “Nah, Sabine has him this time. Why? Something going on?”

“I have an assignment,” Kallus tells him.

“Huh. Extraction?”

(Logical assumption--the bulk of the fieldwork he does now, all-hands-on-deck situations like Lothal aside, is extractions. Occasionally helping sell an insertion, but generally the reverse.)

“No, not this time,” he says. “The agent who reached out, the one I told you about--I’ve been assigned as her handler.”

(He has long since gotten permission to discuss at least surface generalities of his work with Zeb, and they both know where the line is.)

Zeb’s ears flick a little, and Kallus can practically see him weighing the same pros and cons that he himself did earlier--and probably several others he hadn’t thought of.

“So, I guess that means you’re camping out in intelligence for a while?”

“Unfortunately,” he says. “Of course, there is a difference between being on-call and being on duty. And my schedule technically won’t change.”

Zeb perks up at that and grins before kissing him. “Well, I’m sure I an find an excuse to be in the area. Sometimes. Just in case. You know.”

“Mm.”

Fortunately, call number seven comes less than a week later.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

A brief pause. “Yes.”

“I’ve been assigned as your handler.”

(He figures the best way to deal with someone who’s probably twitchy and paranoid and otherwise on high alert is to be as scrupulously honest as he can. That doesn’t mean telling her everything, of course, but it does mean being straightforward, difficult as it is, and not outright lying.)

(If he can. So far, he can.)

Another pause. “I understand.”

(She’s hard to read on this one, whether or not she finds it suspicious. She might even be relieved again, that she’ll have a set contact point, rather than a whoever’s-available sort of situation.)

“There are some protocols I’d like to establish, for further contacts.”

“I can’t call at a set time,” she says immediately. “Or at set intervals.”

"I understand,” he said. “But I’m going to give you a more specific frequency to call.”

“Yes,” she says, and that definitely has a faint note of relief.

“Can you, if nothing else, send an all-clear transmission every two weeks?” he asks. “It doesn’t need to be at a set time, but so we can gauge--” whether or not you’re alive and uncompromised “--how concerned we need to be after a long silence.”

She pauses. “...I think so. Yes. I can do that.”

(Definitely young, he thinks, maybe even younger than Ezra--would be.)

“That’s all for now,” he says. There are others he wants to establish, of course, but those are the most important and her file transfer is nearly complete. 

“I’ll be in touch,” she says; hesitates a second; “Vector out.”

(...well, she’s signing off officially now, rather than just abruptly terminating the connection. Progress. I think.)

He goes back to his quarters, and life settles into a new routine.

He keeps up his old duties--analyzing reports, training potential undercover agents, etc.--and also keeps track of Vector and her reports.

That last one proves...well, his early optimism wasn’t entirely misplaced?

Vector is very, very good at what she does. Her files are varied in their content, and sometimes not as useful as she might’ve hoped, due to timing or other resource concerns, but the quality of the work she does never comes into question.

But part of being a double agent’s handler is assessing how they’re holding up under the incredible stress of the position. And she is frustratingly vague when it comes to anything approaching anything personal about herself.

In addition, there are two additional protocols he wants to set up early on--first is a way for him to reach her.

“Just because I have access doesn’t mean I have influence,” she says. “I can’t seed disinformation for you. Not without getting caught.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

(Though, of course, he had considered the possibility--as well-positioned as Vector seems to be, how could he not?--but while he doesn’t completely rule out the idea, he files it away under “only as a last resort.” Better to leave her in place as long as possible.)

“But if there’s something specific we want you to keep an eye out for--or if we need to warn you about something...”

“Right,” she says. “That’s fine, then.”

The second, though...the second is where they run into real problems.

“I also want to establish an emergency signal. If you need extraction, or if you end up captured by Rebel agents.”

(He still wonders, sometimes, if staying behind when Ezra came to extract him was the right decision. It had seemed so at the time, but...)

(He’ll probably never know. And fretting about it doesn’t do any good.)

(knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to stop.)

“No,” she says.

“Vector--”

And she hangs up on him.

Exactly why she’s so reticent to establish something like that, he isn’t sure--he has some theories, but...

It’s frustrating, to be sure. Makes it harder for him to do his job.

(And it makes him worried about her--if she’s working without any kind of exit strategy, that likely means she doesn’t think such a thing will be possible. Which, on the one hand, shows her dedication to the cause, but on the other hand...on the other hand, if she thinks getting caught is inevitable, she might get sloppy with her own security and that might well turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

(The other alternative, that she doesn’t trust him, or the Alliance, with her safety if things do go wrong, is...well, probably more distressing, in all honesty.)

(Though not, perhaps, altogether surprising.)

He decides to seek Kanan’s advice on the problem.

(Kanan, after all, knows best what to do with unruly teenagers.)

(...well, so does Hera, but Hera’s advice would probably be less applicable/harder to apply to his specific situation. Also, she has better things to do than help him do his job.)

(Which is the other frustrating thing, that he can’t handle this by himself.)

Kanan’s advice is pretty straightforward--be patient, and don’t push her too hard. You can’t help her if she won’t let you.

(This is part of why I wanted him still around, incidentally.)

(Because there is something utterly hilarious about Kallus going to Kanan for parenting advice.)

(And that’s exactly what he’s doing.)

(Even if he hasn’t quite figured that out yet.)

So, taking this in mind, he backs off. A little bit. Decides to start from square one, and build a rapport, and go from there to get some of the other basics that he wants established.

Standard interrogation technique, technically. Not one favored by ISB, obviously, or really encouraged, but even they knew it had its uses.

Vector is still cagey about personal details, but she does start to soften a little as several weeks go by.

He brings up the idea of an emergency code phrase again, after about two months of this kind of sporadic contact.

This time, she says she’ll think about it.

Things hold in this pattern for about a year, and then Vector makes a call, as usual.

Or, it starts like a normal call, anyway.

“You probably won’t hear from me for a while,” she says, as the file transfer is wrapping up and they’re about to sign off.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No,” she says. “Nothing like that. And nothing related to the work we’ve been doing. But things are going to be...difficult. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get an all-clear message out for a while.”

He doesn’t like this at all. “How long?”

“A month,” she says. “Probably. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I’ll contact you as soon as I can safely.”

It is one of the longer months of his life.

But, as promised, the dedicated comm he has for her lights up eventually.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum,” he says. “Good to hear from you again. Everything all right?”

“Yes,” she says. And she seems fine, and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

When he tells Zeb about it later, though, is where it gets...interesting.

“Glad to hear your kid’s okay,” he says.

“My--she’s not my child, Zeb,” Kallus says.

“Really.”

“....”

“Look, you talk about her the same way Kanan talks about Sabine, when she’s off blowing things up on Mandalore.”

“I...wait, really?”

“Yep,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “I mean, it’s not a problem. S’kind of what we do in this family, isn’t it? Take in strays. ‘Bout time you got in on it, really.”

Kallus just stares at him. “I...what.”

Zeb waves a hand in front of his face. “Alex. Babe. You all right in there?”

He shakes himself. “Yes, of course. Sorry."

“Ehh, don’t worry about it. I mean, it’d probably have been nice for the two of us to talk about kids in general before we started adopting our own strays, but--”

Really, sometimes Kallus thinks that Zeb likes the expression he makes when utterly poleaxed like that.

(He does. He thinks it’s adorable.)

(Also, Zeb figures this is a conversation they maybe should have, because they’re clearly both in this for the long haul and he saw this opening and...look, no one ever said Zeb was good at broaching delicate topics gently.)

“...do you?” Kallus asks, when he recovers. “Want children, someday?”

“I mean...yeah,” Zeb says. “If you do. I mean.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” he confesses.

(Because long-range planning is hard; because they’re at war, because he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because he doesn’t deserve any of this and planning for a future he doesn’t deserve is just--a little much for him sometimes.)

“But...yes,” Kallus says. “I think so, yes. I would like to raise children with you. Someday.”

Zeb’s response to that is positive and enthusiastic and leads to things they will definitely not be discussing with their hypothetical children ever.

It’s a month or two after that that Kallus finds out who Vector is.

(…well, for a given value of ‘finds out,’ anyway.)

He and Zeb are babysitting--Sabine is back on Mandalore; Hera is on duty; Kanan was supposed to be finally meeting Luke but there was an issue at the spaceport and he’s stranded for the next few hours.

(Like I said. Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence.)

Zeb has just put the kid to bed, and Kallus is watching the news.

“You’re still watching that?” he asks, nudging Kallus to make room for him on the couch and drawing him to lean on his shoulder.

“I’ve told you before, dear, knowing what the Empire is saying, no matter how different that is from what they’re doing, has its uses.”

“Especially if you know how their propaganda is constructed, I know,” Zeb says, and nuzzles his ear. “Just thought you were almost done.”

Kallus smiles faintly and leans into the caress. “I am, I promise. I’ll shut it off in a minute. I just want to--”

He pauses. Rewinds the feed. Pauses it--pre-recorded coverage of some public event the Emperor’s kid had been at, with the newscaster commenting on the progress of whatever “public works” project it was supposed to kick off.

“…what is it? Something she said?”

(...something to do with whatever this “project” is covering up?)

“Hush,” he says, fiddling with a few buttons and calling up a printed transcript and skims through it before sinking back against Zeb, letting out a breath.

“Babe?”

“I think I know who Vector is,” he says.

Zeb stares at him for a minute, then stares at the paused footage--frozen on the Princess’s face, icy and composed.

“…her?” 

“Her,” he confirms.

“Why…?”

“Little things,” he says. “The way she talks, some unique turns of phrase. And she fits the profile--young, Human, Coruscanti, close to someone powerful but essentially a civilian herself…and…when Vector disappeared on me last month, that coincided with a period where the Princess was more visible than usual.”

“Karabast,” he mutters. “When you put it like that…”

“It’s all conjecture,” Kallus points out. “I can’t prove any it. Not without digging deeper--which, if I’m right, risks compromising her cover--or asking her straight-out.”

(Which, of course, would also be a bad idea. It would probably seriously damage the trust he’s spent the past year and more building, and it might not even get him an honest answer anyway.)

“Right,” Zeb says. “…any chance someone else could put this together?”

Kallus makes a face. “Unlikely,” he says, though he doesn’t sound totally sure. “The recordings of our conversations are kept as hard copies only, for security. Not uploaded onto any networked drives. And a very small set of people have access to those copies. I doubt anyone could put it together without that access. Still…”

(Someone dedicated enough, who managed to access one of those recordings, or intercept a transmission along the way, or compromise the lines of communication from the other side…)

“Kriff,” he says. “Anything you can do about it?”

“Not really,” he says. “Other than brief Draven and keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Yeah,” he says, and studies the picture again; glances over at the morose look on Kallus’s face; feels his ears twitching. “Huh. Never would’ve figured the Emperor’s kriffing daughter to defect.”

Kallus jumps a little, drawn out of his thoughts, then rolls his eyes and gives Zeb a fond, exasperated smile (which was really the point, honestly; to needle him into a better mood), and rather dryly points out, “There was a time you would’ve said the same about me.”

“True,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “Guess it just goes to show, people surprise you all the time.”

“Indeed,” Kallus says, then reaches over to shut off the feed and changes the subject.

Six weeks after that, Vector goes quiet again. This time without warning.

When her two-week check-in goes by with nothing, he’s immediately concerned. She’s never missed a check-in before, not without warning. He decides to give her a day, and then ping her himself.

(He generally avoids doing that--only when he absolutely needs to speak with her about something time-sensitive that can’t wait for her to reach out.)

There’s no response to his message, either.

He reports the missed check-in, of course. Tries again the next day. And a third.

Still nothing.

(He knows a rescue won’t be authorized--technically, they don’t actually know for sure who or even where Vector is, and if his theory is correct, they cannot make a run on Coruscant for one agent, especially not one as visible as Princess Lavinia.)

(He keeps telling himself that. Over and over again. As he tries a fourth and fifth time to reach her.)

“Zeb,” he says, after a third full week has gone by since the last time he heard from her. “I need you to talk me out of doing something stupid.”

“Uh, sure, babe. What’s going on?”

He explains the situation as briefly as he can. “And I am this close to staging a half-assed unauthorized raid on Coruscant to extract her.”

“...nah, if we’re doing an unauthorized raid on Coruscant, it should be a full-assed thing.”

That...that wasn’t really the answer Kallus was looking for.

(In hindsight, he thinks, as he tries to redraw building plans from memory and plan this stupid, stupid venture, he probably should have gone to Hera if he really wanted someone to talk him down. Or possibly Kanan. ...no, Hera.)

(...it could be worse, though.)

(he could’ve tried asking Sabine.)

Fortunately, before they can actually run off and get themselves killed--

(or court-martialed)

(or in trouble with Hera)

--Kallus’ dedicated comm chimes.

“All clear,” he breathes. “That’s the all-clear. She’s...she’s alive.”

It’s nearly another week before he hears anything else, but finally a real call comes.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum. Are you all right?”

(she doesn’t sound all right; it’s hard to tell through her scrambler, but she seems strained.)

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “I apologize for the delay, but things are settled now. My cover is intact.”

Which is good to know, but not what he asked.

“And what about you?” he says.

She doesn’t answer right away.

“Vector?”

“I’m here,” she says. “And everything is under control. You don’t need to worry about me. Nothing that--it wasn’t anything to do with this, I was caught on the fringes of something unrelated. It won’t interfere with my work going forward.”

Which still isn’t an answer.

(He’s pretty sure the non-answer is his answer, though. Damn it.)

(He knows the risks. Better than most. And he knows she knows them, too. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear, especially knowing that there is kriff-all he can do to help her.)

Into the silence, she says, “I’m your asset, Fulcrum. Not your friend.”

“......”

“I’m just--” She sighs. “I’m your asset. Not your friend. It’s...we should both remember that. It’s probably better, in the long run.”

And part of him is hurt; part of him is annoyed that he is being lectured on professionalism by a damned child; part of him is worried again--he did finally talk her into an emergency code phrase, in case of capture or other disaster, but here she goes again, hinting that she doesn’t have an exit strategy.

(Not like I did, either, he reminds himself. Can’t plan that far ahead. Not when you’re doing this kind of work. And even when Ezra came for me--)

(He buries it. Because he is a goddamn professional, Vector’s reproof aside.)

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says. “And I’ve had worse.”

“........”

All right, that he likes even less.

“Vector--”

“I have to go,” she says. “I’ll be in touch when I have something else. And I’ll do my best to warn you if I have to disappear again. Vector out.”

And, in the interests of “good Lord this thing is close to 6k already,” we’re going to skip ahead quite a bit, about a year and a half, to just after the evacuation of Echo Base.

For the first time in a while, the whole family (minus Ezra) is back on the Ghost together.

(Kanan, Hera, Chopper, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Rex, and Jacen.)

(They’ve all been in touch and met up fairly frequently, but they’re no longer a discrete cell and they all have their own, often separate, duties with the wider Rebellion. So, while the circumstances leading to it are awful, it’s nice to have an opportunity like this.)

Orders are to lay low, and make their way by a prearranged roundabout route to the fleet rendezvous five days later.

The first night, they mostly spend catching up and letting Sabine fleece them all at cards.

(Except Rex. Do Not Play Sabaac With Rex.)

(They had all forgotten that rule.)

Hera is sending occasional messages back and forth to Command, to confirm/make adjustments/etc., but otherwise things are fairly quiet after the frantic rush of the evacuation itself.

(Fortunately, none of them were injured in the escape. It’s happened before, when they’ve had to leave a base in a hurry. That was a week no one wanted to repeat.)

It’s their second night of drifting, and Kallus is just starting to fall asleep (Zeb is snoring beside him; the noise honestly probably should have been annoying but is genuinely comforting at this point, to the point where he has trouble sleeping without it) when his comm beeps.

It’s Vector.

More accurately, it’s her emergency signal.

He extracts himself from the bed and slips out into the hall to talk the call.

“Fulcrum.”

“It’s Vector,” she says, unnecessarily. She’s not using her usual scrambler this time, but a more standard vocoder, probably cannibalized from a stolen helmet. She sounds drained, and slightly breathless. “I’ve been burned. I got...I got away. I had more..." She stops, clears her throat. “I got away. I was able to remove my tracker and I’m as--I’m as sure as I reasonably can be that I’ve lost anyone following me by other means. I-I pulled as much raw data as I could onto a couple of portable drives on my way out, but I’m on a...I’m on a sliced public terminal right now, I don’t want to keep the line open long enough to send them in the usual way and I...I don’t know what the protocol is now. Please advise.”

“Where are you now?” he asks. There are so many other questions he wants to ask, needs to ask, both from a personal and a professional standpoint--is she all right; how did she get caught; how did she escape; how long has she been compromised--but they can wait until she’s been located and brought in safely. He sets them all aside, and focuses.

(Like A Goddamn Professional.)

“Ixaly,” she says. “I’m on...I’m on Ixaly.”

He closes his eyes, mentally traces their route through hyperspace. Ixaly is in this sector, it shouldn’t be far...yes. If he’s counted right--they’ll be doing a navigation stop shortly, and dropping out of hyperspace. From there--a few hours to Ixaly, unless he’s completely turned around.

“There’s a cantina,” he says, “in the Diira district in Central City. The White Shale. Can you be there in six hours?”

A brief pause; he can hear her breathing. “Yes,” she says, at last. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

“That’s the fastest I can arrange a pickup,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

(If he’s right about how close they are, it might not actually take him that long, but there’s a balance between getting to her as quickly as possible and budgeting in time for something to go wrong. He doesn’t want to risk being late and having her move on because she thinks he’s not coming. He may not be able to contact her if something goes wrong; not if she’s relying on sliced public terminals to reach out to him. And he has no idea when she’ll be able to make contact again, or how long whatever data’s on her drives will stay viable...so, six hours. He’ll have to trust her to stay alive that long.)

“I’ll be there,” she promises. “White Shale cantina, Diira district, Central City, six hours.”

“Exactly. You know how to reach me if there are any problems.”

“Yes,” she says.

“It’s almost over,” he says. “You’ve done well, getting yourself this far. Just hold on for a little while longer, all right?”

“I will,” she says; takes a breath. “I’ll see you in six hours. Vector out.”

The line goes dead.

Half a heartbeat later, he feels the familiar rumble of the hyperdrive cutting out, switching over to sublight engines.

He’s in his window now, he doesn’t have time--

As he heads for the Phantom, he runs into Kanan.

“...what’s wrong?”

“Vector,” he says, clipped. “She’s had to run. She’s not far--”

“Go,” he says. “I’ll let Hera know. ...take Zeb with you. In case you need backup.”

(Which he doesn’t really need, and it might well spook his contact if he brings a team--he has run extractions like this before, after all, and Vector is particularly cagey--but he nods.)

“I will. Thank you.”

“How long do we wait before sending our own rescue party?” Kanan asks.

Kallus does some quick mental math--six hours to the meet; going by Vector’s history, she may need some convincing to come along (like I did, until it was too late; but it’s already too late for her, isn’t it?); she might be wrong about having a tail; they might run into unrelated trouble...

“I’ll send word once we leave the system. If you haven’t heard from me in twelve hours, that’s when you worry.”

“Got it,” he says, and starts off towards the cockpit to update Hera, when Kallus realizes--

“Wait,” he says.

Kanan pauses, half-turns back to him.

“I don’t know who Vector is, not for certain,” he says, “but I have considerable circumstantial evidence that she’s Princess Lavinia.”

Kanan takes that in, then nods slowly. “Right. Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll pass that along.”

“Thank you,” Kallus says again, and the two of them separate--Kallus goes to wake Zeb and then get the Phantom prepped and underway; Kanan goes to tell Hera what’s going on.

(...and corral his son.)

(Jacen has developed this habit lately of hiding on the Phantom when he thinks it’s going somewhere Interesting.)

(Which is usually whenever someone other than Mamma is driving.)

(He likes going on Adventures with his various uncles and Auntie ‘Bine, okay.)

(They go on the best Adventures.)

(But retrieving one of Kallus’s deep-cover agents whose cover was blown like a week ago at most is maaaaaaybe not the best Adventure for a three-year-old.)

Fortunately, Zeb isn’t hard to wake and grasps the situation quickly. The two of them head for the Phantom--

And find Sabine sitting there waiting for them, spinning idly in the pilot’s chair.

“...Sabine--” Zeb starts.

“Whatever it is that’s got you two running around frantically when we’re supposed to be lying low,” she says, “I wanna help. You might need backup.”

On the one hand, Kallus is pretty sure they won’t. And his prior concerns about spooking Vector if he comes in with a team still apply.

On the other hand, Sabine is one of the best people to have beside them in a crisis, if things do go all to hell. She’s creative and generally carrying an array of weapons that defies the very laws of physics.

Besides, he doesn’t have time to argue with her.

“Fine,” he says. “But you follow my lead--both of you. Neither of you has been on an extraction like this before, and this is what I do. All right?”

“All right,” Sabine says. “Who is it we’re extracting, exactly?”

“A spy, working under the code name Vector,” he says. “She’s been feeding us intel for close to three years now. Her cover was compromised, and she had to run.”

Sabine nods. “Got it,” she says.

“And, if I’m right,” he says--because if he is, Sabine will have to know before they get there, “she’s the Emperor’s daughter.”

“...all right, then,” Sabine manages, after a moment of stunned silence. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

They detach, and the Ghost disappears behind them back into hyperspace as Kallus sets a course for Ixaly.

And now, since I’m sure y’all are wondering the same thing Kallus is--i.e., how did she get caught/how did she escape--let’s backtrack and leave Kallus’s POV for another brief digression--

It all comes down to a man named Vedric Greer.

Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard. He’s been in that elite unit for over fifteen years at this point, selected more or less straight out of the Academy.

He’s been the head of Lavinia’s detail since she was twelve.

(Before that, he had a variety of assignments; he never got stuck with Vader, for which he is profoundly grateful, but he guarded a few valuable objects/locations, and he was on Tarkin’s detail for a couple of years.)

See, here’s the thing about Royal Guards. They’re put through a lot of conditioning, both physically and mentally, to become living weapons who are absolutely loyal.

And he is. Vedric Greer is an absolutely loyal man.

The thing is, to be a Royal Guard assigned to any living being other than Palpatine himself--Vader, Tarkin, Mas Amedda, Lavinia, a few others--means to be equal parts bodyguard and prison guard. Such a Guard is at least partly there to protect his principal from external threats, of course, but if said principal steps out of line or he’s given certain orders, he becomes their jailer. Or executioner. Or worse.

When he’s assigned to someone like Tarkin, of course, that isn’t much of a problem.

But a lonely, precocious twelve-year-old kid like Lavinia? Who, whatever traits she may have inherited from her father, has them tempered by an actual conscience?

...yeah, it doesn’t take a whole lot for him to bond with her, just a little.

(Throw in the fact that he has a lover, an Imperial Archivist who survived Scarif by being transferred to Coruscant days before Tarkin blew it up...well. Maybe the cracks in his armor aren’t only to do with the little girl he’s been made responsible for.)

So. Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard, and that means he is a living weapon, and absolutely loyal.

But over the past seven years--and especially the last three--maybe, just maybe, that loyalty has started to shift.

(He doesn’t even realize it, at first; and when he does notice the traces of affection, of tangential loyalty in himself...well, he reasons that Lavinia is all but an extension of her father’s will, anyway. Right? And if he conveniently fails to see certain signs...)

(Reynard, his lover, knows way before Vedric does where this is going, of course.)

And then, one morning, his orders change, and all those little things come crashing down.

(It was such a simple thing that screwed her over; Palpatine seeds bait among his minions constantly, little nuggets of information so that, if there is a high-placed leak, he can track it back to its source right away. Standard counter-intelligence, really; and everyone, everyone, is under suspicion. Everyone is tested.)

(Lavinia is normally very good at spotting this sort of thing--she has a natural aptitude for espionage, she was trained by the best, and she puts just as much effort into surviving her father and completing her mission as he did into taking over the galaxy. How else would she have lasted nineteen years as her father’s daughter--let alone three as a deep-cover Rebel spy?)

(But this time--this time she missed it. And now he knows.)

And Vedric Greer has a choice to make.

It’s surprising, in the end, how simple it is.

“My lady,” he informs her, “you are undone.”

He helps her cut out the tracking device implanted inside her ribcage (which is also fitted with a killswitch, of course, in case she ever tried to slip her leash); she asks him to come with her; he refuses.

(He is not a Rebel. He is not disloyal.)

(What he is, is her protector. What he is, is--hers.)

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“So am I,” he says, and, “Go. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

“Goodbye,” she says, and disappears.

He sends a brief message to Reynard--hoping he’ll know what it means (he will; he always knew this might happen), and prepares himself to meet his death.

(Or, at least, that’s what he believes is going to happen.)

(...look, as I said before, this is Self-Indulgent BS(tm). Like I’m really gonna let Greer die. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have no earthly idea how he survives but he does. Because this is my self-indulgent BS, dammit.)

Okay. Back to Ixaly, and the actual rescue/extraction mission.

(…by which I also mean forward, since it’s like a week later.)

Our Heroes reach Central City about an hour ahead of schedule. After a brief discussion, Sabine disappears into the district to be on-hand for immediate help, if needed; Zeb, who doesn’t blend in as well, will stay with the Phantom; Kallus of course goes to the cantina to find his contact.

He heads there more or less directly, taking in as much detail of the city and the specific neighborhood as he can.

He’s been here before, but it’s been several years; there is a garrison in place, but the occupation seems comparatively light.

Which means there’s a not-unreasonable chance that this will go smoothly.

(Of course, as soon as he thinks that, he starts coming up with all the potential problems that could still happen. For one thing, he or Vector or Sabine might be recognized…)

Security on the cantina itself; mostly local talent, just as it was on his last visit. This is a fairly middle-of-the-road place; just dishonest enough that he and Vector should blend, not so dishonest that they’re likely to get caught in the middle of any…unpleasantness. Part of why he picked this place. That, the fact that it isn’t particularly difficult to find, and is fairly close to his ideal landing site.

(Not the official port, naturally; while Kallus doesn’t doubt that they could bluff their way through, he’d rather not try it on such short notice. They’d landed the Phantom on the city outskirts, about fifteen minutes away by foot.)

In other words, things are about as well-situated as they could be, under the circumstances. He has three separate exit routes at least tentatively mapped out, of varying efficiency and difficulty.

(And, if it came down to it, Sabine or Zeb could create one for him, of course, but he’d prefer to avoid that if at all possible.)

(In any case, best to have backup plans; he’ll pick the best route of the three once he has a better idea of what Vector’s capable of at the moment.)

(He’s almost certain she’s hurt, and he doesn’t know how badly, and she’ll never actually tell him, so that’s the best he can do.)

Inside, the cantina is fairly crowded--which is a mixed blessing; on the one hand, more cover for their activities/conversation, but on the other, more people to see them.

It’s a varied crowd; mostly local shift workers, a few semi-legitimate traders and mid-level bounty hunters. Most importantly, though, there are no troopers that he can identify, even off-duty. Excellent.

He gets a drink (to blend in, primarily) and finds a table in the corner where he can keep an eye on the other patrons and watch the door without being obvious about it.

He’s not kept waiting long.

She blends in pretty well--she’s managed to dress herself in a slightly-outdated local fashion, one that helpfully comes with a cowl that doesn’t quite hide her face, but does enough to keep her mostly anonymous from a distance and make dodging any security cameras easier.

(A few other women in the cantina are dressed similarly; not many, but enough that she doesn’t really stand out.)

She doesn’t head straight for him. She weaves through the crowd for a minute, hesitates by the bar as if she’s considering something, orders a drink. Her attention drifts over the crowd; she doesn’t linger on him, but her hand twitches a little.

(Ah. She spotted him, then. Good.)

(He isn’t really surprised that she figured out which Fulcrum she was working with. And it does make things simpler--there are a few signals he could have tried, but there wasn’t time, when she called, to pick one of them and be sure.)

(An advantage, if a counter-intuitive one, to using the legacy code name with her, he supposes.)

She starts moving again; doing everything right--wandering as if she’s looking for a seat, gradually making her way to a small empty table next to his.

(The whole thing takes probably less than two minutes. It feels longer. Then again, it always does--this isn’t the first time he’s met a contact like this, and that never changes. Doesn’t matter whether he’s the first or second to arrive.)

He taps out a quick signal on his commlink--contact made, everything’s on track so far--and waits.

“I have a data file for you,” she says softly. “Several, in fact.”

He smiles faintly into his drink. “Well done.”

The way the tables are laid out, they’re sitting next to one another, both with their backs against the wall. It’s a simple matter for her to slide the two drives over to him, and just as easy for him to make them disappear.

(Leaving together discreetly will be a little harder, but he’s been doing this for quite a while. They’ll manage.)

“I have transport off-planet,” he tells her. “We should wait a few minutes, not get up right away, but it’s best if we leave sooner rather than later.”

She shakes her head. “I'm not coming with you.”

(He wishes he could say he was surprised.)

He doesn’t turn to look at her, as much as he wants to. “If you’re concerned about reprisals…”

“I’m not,” she says. “Not really. It’s just…not a good idea.”

...and in the interests of “good Lord this thing is probably pushing 10k and it’s not even the full fic it’s an outline,” I’m going to skip the rest of this conversation. Suffice to say, he’s right and she’s wrong, though she takes some convincing, but they leave the cantina together like fifteen minutes later. Also, he confirms that his theory as to her identity was correct somewhere in here.

Anyway, like I said, he talks her down, and she agrees to leave with him.

Once out of the cantina, he can get a better look at her, assess how badly she’s hurt.

(He knows she is for certain now; she’s breathing carefully, shallowly, and a little too fast--but he could only see her hands and the vague shadow of her cowl before.)

“Are you all right?” he asks; even though the answer is obvious; she’s favoring her left side and very pale.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says.

A characteristic non-answer, but a step above denial. He supposes.

“All right,” he says. “Let me know if you need help.”

(There’s not much else he can do here and now, anyway; they have some supplies back on the Ghost, and she can get proper medical attention once they rendezvous with the fleet.)

“I will,” she says, which is something at least.

They make it two blocks before they run into a squad of stormtroopers.

It’s a routine patrol; and, even with a wounded asset  to escort, it wouldn’t have been a problem under most circumstances. He could avoid the confrontation, or talk his way past.

But the squad sergeant stiffens in a particular way, staring at him.

“Karabast,” he mutters.

(You’d think, after all these years, this would stop happening so often. But, no, it’s still even odds that, out in the field, someone will recognize him.)

Lavinia takes half a step back. “I can--”

“They’re not here for you,” he tells her, then drags her behind cover a split second before the troopers start firing.

Then takes a minute to take stock.

This is...not an ideal position for a standoff. And while they might be able to fight their way through...

Best plan is to stay put, hold them off as long as they can, and call in Zeb and Sabine for backup.

Good thing I listened to Kanan, he thinks.

He takes out his sidearm, then pulls his holdout pistol from his boot and offers it to Lavinia.

But she shakes her head. “Father kept my focus narrow. I’d do more harm than good.”

“...right.”

Even less ideal. But it’s all right. He can handle this.

He takes his comm, switches it to the voice setting.

“Specter Four, this is Fulcrum. We’re going to need a slightly more dramatic exit than I planned for.”

“Copy that, Fulcrum,” Zeb says. “Could use an opening, Specter Five.”

“And to think you boys wanted to leave me behind,” Sabine says.

“Yes, yes, can we save the ‘I-told-you-sos’ until after we’re clear?” Kallus says, firing off a handful of shots to keep the squad at bay.

“She does have a point, babe.”

“Not on open comms, dear, how many times...”

(Honestly, the little bit of flirting is at this point half an inside joke, after the one time they legitimately forgot to switch channels, and half a way to quickly gauge how serious the situation actually is.)

(Plus, it’s fun. They like flirting.)

“Thirty seconds,” Sabine cuts in.

“Right,” Zeb says. “I’m headed to your position. ETA two minutes.”

“Copy. Fulcrum out.”

Two minutes, under these conditions, is a long, long time.

But, right on cue, thirty seconds later, there is a magnificent explosion, which gives them some breathing room, and then Sabine slides down the wall to land next to him.

“Not my best work,” she says critically, watching the cloud on the horizon, “but it’ll clear a path. Hi,” she adds, for Lavinia’s benefit.

“Hi,” she says, softly.

“...she doesn’t have a blaster,” Sabine says, turning almost accusingly to Kallus.

“Because I’ve never had one before,” Lavinia answers for him. “And this really doesn’t seem the time or place to learn.”

“Well, we’ll fix that later,” Sabine says.

“All right,” Lavinia says, then ducks down as Sabine positions herself better to start shooting back.

The next ninety seconds go much quicker, and then comes the welcome sound of the Phantom’s engines on approach.

It’ll have to be a quick exit, and for a split second, Kallus wonders about getting Lavinia up the ramp fast enough without Zeb actually landing--

But then he sees that Sabine has her jetpack.

(He has never been so pleased to see it in his life.)

“Take her,” he says, once the shuttle is in sight. “I’ll cover you.”

Sabine catches his drift right away, and nods. “Hold on,” she tells Lavinia, who blinks, but does.

And then they’re off.

Kallus just keeps firing at the troopers until, based on the noise it’s making, he judges that the Phantom is close enough that he can make the jump.

He’s--almost right.

He comes within half an inch of missing, then Lavinia’s hands shoot out and grab one of his wrists; Sabine grabs the other and the girls haul him on board.

“We’re good, Zeb, go!” Sabine shouts, while Lavinia drags Kallus the rest of the way in and slams the hatch shut.

We did it.

He takes a minute to catch his breath--he knows it isn’t really over; there’s still a great deal of work to do once they get back to the Ghost and then to the fleet proper.

But for now--they’re all alive, they’re all safe, they’re all at least as intact as they were when they got to Ixaly; the extraction was successful.

Kallus decides to let the rest of the problems wait, and take the win.

He picks himself up and heads to the cockpit, to give Zeb a quick hug and send word to Kanan and the others.

For all the drama and the worry when it started, today turned out to be a very good day.

And I think that’s a good stopping point, don’t you? There is definitely more, featuring (in no particular order) the worlds most #Awkward Road Trip; Kanan and Lavinia meeting; Kanan and Luke finally meeting; Zeb and Kallus adopting a kid or three; Lando; Jacen being precious; and so much more.

But, uh, see all my notes above about “how long is this thing now?!”

(And, again this isn’t even fulltext.)

(This is just the outline.)

...so, uh, yeah, if you made it this far, thank you and I hope you enjoyed my Self-Indulgent BS(tm). <333333333

[reflectingiridescent]

5, 6, 15, 16, 42 for the year-end meme, please and thanks!

Ask me stuff about my year.

5. Post your favorite selfie.

Idk why I like it so much, haha. It looks super artistic and poised, and it really wasn’t. I was just checking my hair while drinking bubble tea.

6. If you traveled, where did you go?

Oh god.

January: Honolulu for work, Houston

February: Bangalore (I was living there at the time) Goa, Jodhpur…and then I got laid off and Rex was giving, so I was like you know what? Let’s just backpack around so I can not think about what is going to happen to me, an immigrant worker, now we can spend some quality time together since we’ve never lived in the same country the entire time we’ve been together!

March: Jaipur, Udaipur, Pushkar, Delhi, Agra (this was the Taj), Hampi

April: In a wild fit of laid off anxiety, I decide that visiting friends I never get to see is a good idea, and I buy tickets to Vienna for two weeks. While I’m there, I hop over to Bratislava because my friend is married to a dude she never gets to see, and she was like…so can you just like, leave for Easter? (I was like yeah sure whatever, and this is how I ended up in Slovakia on Easter Sunday.)

May: Austin for my sister’s graduation, New Orleans with Rex so he could finally meet friends like @sora2522 and @neonjudas and @autumnstatic and @lovejustlied and @sugarandbourbon-blog

June: Toronto because I ended up temporarily homeless because of visa bullshit + flatmate bullshit + insufficient paperwork for fucking taxes bullshit, and Rex was like, why don’t I just fly you here and take care of you which I would normally say no to, but joblessness + homelessness + some girl almost fighting me for her deposit money that wasn’t even mine to give her was like, yep, I’m done. Also I’d been sick for about 3 months at this point because I honestly just think my immune system was fucked.

July: Singapore (I finally was able to move, and the visa went through, and asdfghjkl)

August: Las Vegas for the Star Trek Convention, in part because TNG randomly really helped me get through the layoff. Also because I have a cousin who lives out there with her youngest, and I haven’t seen them in like YEARS…since my dad’s funeral maybe?

October: Thailand (Koh Samui, Koh Tao?), to see my friend who got laid off along with me, except he was in Pakistan and I was in India, so there was like, no way we were going to see each other lol. And then he ended up moving to Toronto a couple months ago, so he and Rex now go sweater shopping together hahaha.

November: Yangon to see a friend I haven’t seen since we were drinking buddies in Beijing - she moved back to Belgium, and I moved to India. She was also training for a marathon, so I went to train with her for that one weekend. My mom wanted to see the northern lights while her “knees were still working” (she is very conscious about her age lol), so I flew home, and we spent Thanksgiving in Fairbanks, Alaska, which is the first time I have celebrated Thanksgiving in the US in like three years. I went to New Orleans to see the above-mentioned people.

My mother and I are going to the Philippines together on the 26th to see our family there. So that’ll be Manila and Coron.

15. Which new ship/fandom has taken over a lot of your time, attention, and tears?

I think Star Trek has been an overarching theme of the year hahaha. The layoff really made me want warm, fuzzy bright things, and so I guess instead of reaching for DS9 like I normally do, I reached for TNG? Except TNG is a hot, beautiful mess, so I guess I spent a lot of energy headcanoning around things.

Uh, but let’s see, I’m looking at @cosmic-llin and @leyenn for (1) planting Deanna/Will/Beverly seeds in my head and then (2) making me challenge myself as a writer to see if I could write a functional three-person romantic relationship. Which then grew into a giant wlw/poly rewrite of half the Trek universe. Oh my god.

And then I looked up all of this stuff about being poly and spoke to my poly friends, and it ended up being really educational, and I’m now reading a ton of stuff with poly relationships in them because I am intrigued and in the Ever Growing Original Novel Series I am writing, I am curious to see if I can fit one in.

Anyway, the point is that I was writing for myself again, which was something I think I had lost even during the job I had before this one? Tech is crazy, and I was crazy busy, and the company was really nice but also a lot like walking on hot coals. Like you want to do it because everyone else is doing it, but it’s not so healthy.

Tears: Philippa Georgiou aka my mom

No tears for these fandoms but I reached for them because they didn’t make me cry: B99, Bob’s Burgers, Insecure

16. What food did you try for the first time?

Salted egg yolk chips/fish skins, popiah, laal maas, asam laksa…oh, I guess I had real schnitzel for the first time too.

42. What are you most proud of accomplishing?

Getting through this dumpster fire of a year! Seriously. Uh. Let’s see. Writing like 60k words in the back half of the year NOT FOR WORK and submitting my application for a television production program. I’ll be signing that acceptance paperwork next week so that I can hopefully get out of tech and into television/something I like a little more. It’s part-time and here in Singapore, so I can work while I get trained.

[heckin-good-holland-blog]

In Real Life

Request: 

Warnings: None!!

Pairing: Reader x Peter Parker

Genre: Fluff ~

Word Count: 2.7k holy moly

A/N: I'm so sorry this took like a million years but I hope you like it :D I'm thinking of making a part 2 so let me know what you guys think!! Also I didn’t get around to proofreading so if you see mistakes PLEASE let me know xx

Ever since middle school you had been watching your friends find dates and get into relationships. They teased you about being a third wheel sometimes, but you didn't mind. You did feel lonely once in a while without someone there to hold you, but you didn't feel that way very often. Even though technically you weren't dating anyone in real life, there was a boy thousands of miles away that had your heart. He was constantly texting, snapchatting, and even video calling you to the point where he knew more about you than your friends in real life did. You had the biggest crush on him and wished more than anything that you could see him in person one day.

You met Peter online, seeing his nerdy blog recommended for you and deciding to follow him. For a few days you just kind of liked each other's posts occasionally and that was it. That was up until you saw his post about the Avengers. Being a big fan of them, you built up the courage to shoot him a message and you two immediately hit it off. Peter knew a lot about all of the superheroes you idolized, which gave you plenty to talk about. As it turned out, Peter actually worked for Tony Stark. You almost didn't believe him, but the things he knew and said would have been impossible to make up.

Over time you and Peter got to be a lot closer. Even though you had never actually talked to him in person you felt as if he was your best friend in the whole world. Your feelings for him grew even more than that though and you eventually wound up being in a relationship. Peter actually asked you out during one of your traditional all-night Skype calls.

"I've got something I have to ask you," he said as he slid into frame on his rolling chair. He had his wireless headphones on underneath his hoodie and was busy trying to get his mic in the right place. He had a lot of nerdy technology stuff and was always finding new electronics to play with.

"Sure what's up?" you asked. You turned up the volume a little bit, butterflies filling your stomach. That happened a lot when Peter talked to you. Even though you loved seeing him and hearing his voice, you still preferred texting since he couldn't see the way that the things he did affected you. Luckily the lighting in your room was bad so he couldn't tell if you were blushing.

"Ok so," he said, letting out a long breath. "We've been talking for a while and uh... It's sorta weird isn't it? That we've never met? I mean I don't think that it is... Unless you do."

"I don't think it's weird at all," you replied. He nodded, his mouth curling up at the sides. He had a habit of hiding his smiles like that but you didn't really know why since his smile always made your day.

"How do you feel about trying a long distance relationships?" he asked suddenly, hiding his face from the camera by leaning over slightly. You were a little taken aback. Sure, you had been crushing on him but a confession like that was the last thing you were expecting.

"I-I think it's worth a shot," you said. "I mean, we talk more than a lot of the couples that I know... Besides, maybe we can finally meet soon."

"Wait, seriously?" he exclaimed, getting super close to the camera. You laughed and nodded.

"Let's do it!" you said. He grinned, unable to disguise the pure joy on his face. And that was that. You and Peter cared for each other so much that the distance didn't even matter. You started to forget that it was even strange to date someone online. Every time your phone went off your heart sped up since there was a high chance it was going to be Peter. Some nights you even cancelled your plans with friends just to call him.

Two years passed, and you were still going strong. One day after school you logged onto your computer to see if Peter was online when you noticed that you had a new email. You almost screamed when you read that it was from Stark Enterprises. Apparently there was a youth convention thing being held in New York and you had been selected to go. You reread the email at least 50 times before your parents got home and you practically recited the entire thing from memory as you begged them to let you go. It had always been a dream of yours to work for Tony Stark since you were really interested in science and, let's face it, you thought Iron Man was awesome. You were super jealous of Peter and his internship. Realization hit you like a truck as you were in the middle of guilt tripping your parents into letting you go.

"Oh my god!" you exclaimed. "If it's in New York then that means... I could finally meet Peter!" Your mom and dad knew about your online relationship and although they were skeptical at first they ended up really liking Peter. You had let them talk to him a bit one day when he was on Skype and he made such a great impression that they absolutely loved him.

"I don't think there's any harm in letting you go," your mom finally said, giving in. "You did say that the airfare is payed for, right?"

"Yes!" you said quickly. "I just need food money and that's it."

"Alright, fine," your dad agreed and just like that you were going to New York. After some careful consideration you decided not to tell Peter right away. There was a part of you that was afraid of meeting him because you were scared that he wouldn't like you as much in real life. It was ridiculous since you'd been talking for so long, but you couldn't help but feel nervous. As the days went by and the trip got closer you felt more and more anxious.

When it was finally time to leave, you headed off to the airport by yourself. Your knees trembled as you entered the terminal and you spent the whole flight thinking about Peter. You tried to snap out of it since the real reason you were there was for the youth convention, but he was really the only thing on your mind. The two of you had talked many times about how great it would be when you met and you were just so terrified of letting him down.

After landing you hung around the airport for a while trying to figure out your next move. You decided to text Peter and try to catch up with him since you didn't have to go to Stark Tower until the next morning.

Heyo, what are you doing right now

He read it right away, the three dots that showed he was typing popping up.

Parker 💘: I'm doing some homework at that sandwich shop I talk about all the time. Sorry I can't call tonight, I gotta study

You grinned despite yourself. Peter talked about Mr. Delmar's shop constantly and had described it to you a million times. You flagged down a taxi and told them to take you there right away. Sure enough, when you arrived it looked exactly the way you had pictured it. You checked how you looked in your phone camera, fixing your hair a little before going inside. It smelled absolutely delicious, and you quickly scanned the small restaurant for Peter. Your heart fell when you didn't see anyone you recognized.

"Um hi," you said to the man working, thinking that as long as you were there you might as well get something to eat. "Can I have the number 5? With extra pickles?"

"Absolutely," he said with a friendly smile. He must have been Mr. Delmar.

"I have a question," you said timidly. "You wouldn't happen to have seen Peter Parker around recently, have you?" He looked at you for a moment before shaking his head.

"No, I haven't seen Peter in a few days," he replied. "Why? Do you know him?"

"Yeah I do," you said, blushing. "We... We're really close uh... friends."

"Ah, you his date?" he asked with a wink. "Pete's a good kid but if you ask me you're a little out of his league. He's a bit of a brat." You laughed as he handed you your sandwich.

"Good luck tracking him down," he said and waved as you left. You stood out on the street eating your food for a while, wondering why Peter had lied to you about where he was. Curious, you texted him again. It was just a short 'wyd?' but you felt weird about it. Maybe you seemed a little clingy but all you wanted was to see him. It took him a few minutes to respond, but when he did you were ready to read it right away.

Parker 💘: I'm at the library doing some work. Now's not a good time, sorry

You frowned, disappointment washing over you. He must have been really busy. You shoved your phone in your pocket and headed to your hotel, giving up on Peter for the time being.

The next morning you woke up early since you couldn't sleep. The excitement for the convention had kept you awake for a long time and you were really looking forward to the day. You got ready quickly and hopped into another cab to Stark Tower. When you arrived, there were loads of other kids your age funneling into a large lecture hall. You followed the crowd, finding a seat towards the back. After everyone had arrived and settled in a hush fell over the crowd. You looked up to see Tony Stark himself standing in the front. Forgetting everything about your troubles with Peter, you listened intently for the duration of the presentation.

Towards the end Tony had left and another guy was talking for a while. You saw your phone light up from inside your bag and against your better judgment you checked it to find a message from Peter.

Parker 💘: Hey! Tony's busy rn and I'm just waiting in the tower, do you want to call me?

You sucked in a breath, your heart pounding. Peter was here. You typed a response as best as you could with your shaking hands.

Where are you waiting?

Parker 💘: Um in a room in the west corridor. Why?

You didn't bother answering before stuffing your phone in your bag and rushing towards the door. A man was blocking the door since he must have been a security guard.

"I... I think I'm gonna puke," you lied. He wrinkled his nose but let you pass, and you practically ran through the door. It dawned on you that you had absolutely no idea where the west corridor was, so you just started wandering around. You walked all over the first floor but found nothing, so you climbed up a flight of stairs. You were almost to the top when you stopped dead. Tony Stark was standing before you and he looked very intimidating.

"Excuse me, kiddo. I don't think this is where you're supposed to be," he said. You were so shocked that you could only stare with your mouth open. You couldn't believe you were being scolded by your biggest inspiration.

"I-I'm sorry," you stammered. "I was just l-looking for somebody-"

"There's someone else walking aimlessly around here?" he asked. "We can't have that, there's a lot of top secret stuff up here. We should go find them, do you know where they went?"

"No!" you said, panicking. "He... He works for you. He's my friend, I just wanted to see him." Tony considered this for a moment. He looked you up and down, his expression unreadable.

"Your friend..." he said as he turned away from you. "You said he works for me?"

"Yes! Yes, he told me he's part of an internship program here. He said he was waiting to talk to you about something and I thought that since I was here I'd try to go and see him. Of course I didn't really think that through because, as you said, there's a lot of top secret stuff and I shouldn't be-"

"Alright kid that's enough," Tony cut you off. You didn't realize you had been babbling so much and felt your face flush. He faced you again and you were surprised to see he was smiling.

"I think I know who you're talking about," he said. "Thanks for reminding me that I need to talk to him. Here, I'll lead you there if you swear not to walk around here by yourself again."

"I promise!" you exclaimed. He chuckled and started walking with you jogging behind him to keep up. It turned out you were going in the right direction and eventually you stopped in front of what appeared to be a break room of sorts. You stood shyly behind Tony, your nerves getting to you.

"Hey!" he said loudly to someone inside the room. "We need to talk. Before that though I ran into someone who I think you know." He moved over slightly so that you could see. There, sitting on the couch with his feet on the table was Peter. He was even more handsome than you thought he'd be. He wore his t-shirt with a joke about telekinesis that you loved so much along with a big flannel. He stood up when he saw you, knocking over the pile of books that sat on the table.

"Y/N?" he asked, his eyes wide. He was taller than you thought, with wider shoulders as well. One strand of his hair was loose and sat limply on his forehead. You felt your eyes begin to water and you nodded slowly. You looked away, feeling like you could burst into tears at any moment. A few seconds later you were being enveloped by his arms. You pressed your head against him and hugged him back, squeezing him gently. You had waited so long to feel his touch and you were scared that if you let go you'd never get it back. He pulled back a little, his arms moving around your waist.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. You looked up at him, trying to memorize the exact colors in his eyes and the freckles on his face.

"I... I was chosen for the youth convention and since it was in New York I came to see you," you told him. He was smiling from ear to ear and seeing him so happy made you even more emotional.

"You're so much more beautiful in person," he whispered as he pulled you in for another hug. You laughed, sniffing a little.

"Peter, I've been waiting for so long to meet you and I just..." You trailed off when he kissed your forehead, your breath hitching. He moved closer towards your lips and it was like everything was moving in slow motion.

You jumped suddenly when Tony cleared his throat from behind you, stumbling back a little.

"Oh crap, uh... sorry Mr. Stark," Peter said awkwardly. You were both suddenly very aware of his presence in the room and you quickly backed away from Peter feeling very embarrassed.

"Yeah, I'm only a little weirded out," he said. "Listen, I'm gonna go since I have a lot of stuff to do. Find me later or just call Happy, ok?"

"Y-yeah alright," Peter replied. "But what if Happy doesn't pick up?"

"I think you'll be a little preoccupied anyway," Tony said with a nod in your direction, causing your face to turn bright red. He smiled and walked away, leaving the two of you alone.

"I've looked up to him for so long and I admire him a lot, but I don't think I could have waited another second for him to leave," you said with a giggle.

"Well, we've waited this long, haven't we?"

[sometimesrosy]

so if madi is telling the story like fairy tales and legends or myths,than bellarke love story is gonna be also a legend/love story like in myths and tales,adam/eve,romeo/juliet,tristan/isolde,greek myths,fairy tales you know years or centuries later they are gonna be still remembered the king and the queen(princess) of the new world,really Jason wants to create his own myth legend love story in a postapoc show,i don't know if you follow me.he loves trag love stories he is making BC one of them.

Although we know next-to-nothing about the S5 overall plot, I’m coming to you with this question from a storytelling perspective. Because you’ve read & studied so much literature & film. When is it realistic for Bellamy & Clarke to get real with each other in the course of S5 from an entire series pacing viewpoint? Imo so many obstacles were thrown at them in s4 to purposefully avoid it & drag it out. But is that likely to occur again in S5? Are the writers really going for true end-of-series—

-endgame to get them to finally confess and be together? Like end of S5 or S6 if it goes another season? I want the battle couple you do, Rosy. I’m just not sure if the show wants it. The show has them as a battle platonic couple, they’re already most of the way there. Now it’s telling their love story’s development or re-development after 6 years. So, does that up the odds for it being drawn out. Because I’ll just sit here dyyyyying. Thanks, Rosy! xoxo

Yeah. I know, right? It’s crazy and hard to deal with. So here’s what I’m figuring out about this show and these writers. They are using a lot very traditional story telling techniques. They’re pulling on archetypes and mythology and tried and true tropes and conventions, but they mix them all up so you never know what is going to come up on top.

And it turns out that while I have a pretty decent background in traditional story telling techniques and modern fiction and post modern concept and mythology and psychology and all that good stuff, what I’m NOT an expert in is tv. Hollywood is not my thing and perhaps I think it’s not as *literary* or something. I’ll examine that as my bias. But it’s clear, I’ve stated, that I don’t like soap operas. And the thing is, soap operas sell. And a lot of the pacing they’re doing with the show is based on the soap opera thing and the rules of hollywood and tv and sweeps week and what works for this medium which is not my medium…. so I’m not so sure I can speak to you about the pacing of tv stories.

In my world, you put a chekhov gun at the beginning of the story, you use it by the end, so the romance story put into play should have been clear at the end of the season. Except a season in tv is not a novel. Not quite. A season needs a cliffhanger. At least the way they do this show. So they didn’t shoot the gun of the Bellarke romance, they just cocked it and pointed it, and… didn’t pull the trigger. They showed it to us, but no bang.

We have to wait for next season. Now according to that, they have to give it to us next season. But tv has different rules. And a lot of people have been saying all along that they would wait until the end of the show to make it canon, so I can’t say for sure. I don’t like it. I don’t like the time jump. I don’t like holding off on the romance. Stupid Hollywood. 

But what I can tell you is HOTDAMN I was right about the creation myth. I’ve been saying Bellarke was a mythic love story and origin story about the beginning of the world since 2.05. 

This pacing is a lot slower than we usually see in tv and that can be really frustrating. I’m not even just talking about Bellarke, but also character development. They let their stories sit and grow. They let them backslide. They start a story and then pick it up again later, they drag a redemption out three seasons. Healing takes time. People don’t get over trauma. They hold grudges for seasons. 

It’s very much more realistic. 

They give us the tropes, and then hold out on the payoff. 

I do think it is realistic that they might give us romantic Bellarke. It could happen. I don’t know if it’s guaranteed. Because what if they’re waiting. I think they should read their audience better than they did season 3, because people are getting frustrated. They’re going to need to give us something and not just SELL Bellarke in marketing but start giving us a little in canon, besides the subplot and cinematography and non explicit narrative development.

The clues I’m seeing that they MIGHT be ready for canon romantic bellarke, full on relationship and kissing and everything is 

They hired that romantic scene director. Not a random guy, but they guy that wrote the best primetime love scene I’ve ever seen. Like I can’t believe that made it to PG it was so hot. Olicity. SUPER HOT. 

They ended last season with the near confessions, head and heart, hug, together, then separation going immediately into Clarke being, basically in love and committed to Bellamy, although he’s been gone 6 years. You just can’t have her in love like that, PINING like that, and not do anything with it for the season.

The sizzle reel was a bellarke fan video and only spoke Bellamy’s name (also true for the 6 year later finale scene) It was refocusing the story on a fairy tale that feature Clarke and Bellamy as the heroes. 

The way they are talking about Clarke and Bellamy in marketing and cons is as Clarke and Bellamy being the story. JR once said Clarke and Bellamy weren’t the story they were telling right now. They didn’t. They told other romantic stories. Now they are saying it’s Clarke and Bellamy’s story. No ambiguity.

Does Clarke love Bellamy? YES CLARKE DOES. Again. No ambiguity. Oh y’all didn’t understand the hug and head and heart and gun scene? Didn’t understand the talking to him for 6 years although he wasn’t there? HERE HAVE A SCRIPT TO SCREEN where Clarke talks about Bellamy WHO SHE LOVES. 

I feel like the marketing and social media conversation is getting people ready for Bellarke, both fans and antis. Please note. All these reasons, except #2 which is about narrative, are all about hollywood and the business and the marketing. Because going by just the narrative, I can tell you what story they’re telling, but I can’t tell you WHEN they’ll do it. 

Does this help? The story is definitely Bellarke. The pacing? Mix a soap opera with an action flick and a mythic fairy tale. I can’t tell which pacing they’re using. Action wants it quick and dirty. Soap opera draws it out. Fairy tale makes it inevitable. Hollywood is a mess. What’s wrong with a nice novel, huh?

[rockofeye]

Way Leads On To Way

It’s been a busy couple weeks over this way, and a lot of stuff is happening both rapidly and slowly.

Last weekend, we mounted lave tet in Boston, which made for a long weekend Doing Stuff with family. It was a really lovely and intimate experience for me with some of my siblings, and it was good to spend time with them without the hustle and bustle of a big ceremony going on around us. Ceremony of any sort leads me to and leaves me with new understandings of the spirits and how they move in the world, which is a blessing I am grateful for.

Yesterday was Michaelmas/Feast of St. Michel Arcange, and one of my husbands walks with St. Michael, so I began a novena for him several days before lave tet began which was an interesting challenge for myself. Several nights had ceremony ending in the wee hours, which meant I would begin my prayers in the wee-est of wee hours since I prefer to make most of my big prayers right before I sleep. Some nights I was too exhausted to do anything but the main novena prayer, so I owe Agaou some rounds of rosary-saying.

Today was Haitian dance class, which meets weekly here in the city, and while I have been before, it had been a long time since I had been. One of my brothers was teaching, though, so I wanted to go support him and I really do need to lean how to dance. It was so, SO much fun. I joked later that it usually takes me a plane ticket and a passport to enjoy sweating profusely so much with my friends, but LORD it was good. We danced a little yanvalou, parigol, a whole lot of Djouba and Nago, and ended with a bit of banda. 

As soon as the drums started,I really felt alive--I live for those damn drums because they are the heartbeat of the spirits, and it is so joyful to hear the rhythms. I didn’t do too badly, overall--there is some stuff that I am really not good at yet (my spine does not yet want to move like my brother’s, but it will get there), but I picked up the footwork and could get it going. I love me some Djouba and Nago dances, though, and it was really amazing to start to learn how to move my body like the spirits do when they are down in possession. I really can’t wait to go back.

Today is also the 120th anniversary of the death of St. Thérèse of Lisieux/ Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She has shown up for me in a big, big way after kanzo, and it’s likely because of my pre-kanzo praying to her. Part of my bargain with my spirits to get to Haiti and into the djevo was that, if they would help the money come, I would attend Mass weekly. The church I attended Mass at had a votive altar for her, and I knew her to have the reputation of being deeply faithful and possessing a lot of internal spiritual strength and fortitude--she entered the cloister at 15 and never left the convent after that, eventually dying of tuberculosis inside the walls. So, I prayed and asked her to grant my strength to do what I needed to do to fulfill my promise to my spirits and to have faith in their plan for me. They were prayers of desperation, honestly, since things were burning down and I had no idea how I was going to make it all happen. To be frank, if my mother had told me that praying to the light bulb would have helped me, I would have done it. She didn’t tell me to go speak with Thérèse, but I decided that nothing was off limits so to  Thérèse I went.

Imagine my surprise when she started talking back, after I had settled down from kanzo. I have dreamed her over and over where we sit down and talk about things or where I find things that have her image on them. Hell, right before kanzo someone gave me a statue of Thérèse. I wondered out loud to my mother why a saint known to be a very Catholic-y Catholic would start talking to me, and my mother looked up from her task and said ‘because she was listening’. Duh.

Thérèse doesn’t seem to have any sort of issue with me--despite me being the worst version of a Catholic you have ever seen, complete with my happy living in sin of various sorts and the whole trans thing and on and on--and even seems pleased with my attention. She outright doesn’t care about the vodou thing, which was super surprising, and the more I read about her, the more I understand how she and her philosophy of devotion fit within my spiritual sphere and personal development. Once I get settled into my next home, she wants a space of her own and I guess since I was screeching at her pre-kanzo, she is exempt from my ‘absolutely no more spirits’ declaration I made post-kanzo. So, she’ll get her shrine.

Her attention and presence has coincided nicely with a request from one of my husbands to attend Mass regularly, which, in the dream he gave me that informed of this in a ‘why don’t you attend Mass more? why don’t you participate?’, resulted in my dream-self sort of telling him off (’the Church doesn’t want me and I don’t want it’). My mother’s take on all of this was super pragmatic--if your husband is telling you to go to church, you probably should get your ass to church’. So, I have been bouncing around to a variety of churches to find one that I like. Tomorrow, I go to Mass at the chapel at the local Carmelite monastery for a special Mass in honor of Thérèse, since tomorrow is her official feast day.

All of this keeps being drawn together in one fat care package for me of ‘things you need to work on’ from my spirits. I was not raised Catholic, but grew up in a fairly religiously combative Protestant household with involvement in what amounts to a Christian-flavored cult and am a pastor’s kid. I have a lot of baggage to unpack there and they are making sure I get to it. In a lot of ways, it is circles just being looped in tighter and tighter to form one whole, which, basically, is me. It’s nice, in it’s own way, if not completely comfy.

The title of this post is part of that idea of tightening circles, kind of. One of the big misconceptions that a lot of folks have about kanzo is that once you’re out, you’re good. Like, things are in place, life will be smooth, you don’t have a lot to keep chugging on, and I sort of laugh at that because I totally see where that comes from--you’ve essentially just climbed a huge spiritual mountain complete with ice crevasses and sheer cliffs. Surely this means Done, right?

Nope. For me, I got lucky--I didn’t even have the time/space to consider what came after kanzo as the world was basically ending on the date I was scheduled to head to Haiti. Anything after didn’t matter and I didn’t think about it, so it wasn’t that huge a deal when it was clear that, oh no, kanzo is really just a beginning of the work. In that framework, the way leads on to the way. There is no finished and no good enough. There will never be a point where I can point to something and say ‘yeah, I got that’. There is always a way to make something a little better or a place to learn a new thing or, at the very least, a new challenge from the spirits. 

In that vein, priests never really retire, in any sense. There will always be spirits to tend and feed, always stuff to do, always ceremonies to put on, always clients to help, and so I will always work, in many spheres. The way leads on to the way. I will always needs to have income, if only to make sure my spirits stay happy, and I will always need to develop myself as a person so that I can be the best priest-tool and best version of myself for my spirits. There is no sitting still, only moving forward, even if I am crawling.

So, the way continues to unfold, and I am glad for it. It means I am not dead yet and that I have purpose at my finger tips, even if all I want to do is scratch at the walls when things are uncomfy.

Lots of stuff coming up for me, too! A book I wrote a piece for on queer magic in vodou will be coming out in April which is super exciting. I will be doing an AMA/ask me anything on Reddit as soon as I get myself together and submit the post (and I will link it here if anyone wants to go read) and have a day where I am not running around doing a million things. I am starting to plan for top surgery in the not-distant future, which means I have a lot of things to plan out and work to do since this will not be a small undertaking at all. More stuff is on the cusp of coming to fruition, and it’s all good.

Things are good in general, and I feel blessed to wake up every day and feel gratitude for all that has transpired in the past few years and gratitude for all that my spirits have done for me. All that I have descends from them--my hands may have done the work, but it is by their grace that it all has come to be. These days, I can only pray to know their will for me and to see their faces out in the world and on the inside--they take such excellent care of me, and I am so damn small and inconsequential.

It is rainy and overcast here today, which I love, and I hope you are having as satisfying a day as I am! 

[sassasquashedgrapes]

Another Story: A Glee x Kissed by the Baddest Bidder Cross-over

It’s me again! Your friendly neighborhood, Squashed Grape.  

It’s been a while since I got into the fanfic (or any literal stuff) and decided to do some fan service today.  This is an old post but a goodie.  You see, I’ve been a fan of Glee during the early days and was also a huge Otome player (lol. the closest to player I’ll ever be).  And made this fanfic cross-over of sorts inspired from the Voltage Inc story, Kissed by the Baddest Bidder.  Actually I *might* have switched the names a bit and the plot line is from the intro except for a few tweaks.  Anyway, I just wanna lay it all down there so nobody starts yelling bloody murder.  

After all, wasn’t 50 Shades like some fan service to Twilight, so haters can just move along now, Nothing to see.  

So without much further ado, a short story cross-over for y’all!!

By the way, be prepared for a series of long fanfics of Glee coming at your way. This is only just the beginning of the Hargreave brothers.

click below

Another Story: Kissed By The Baddest Bidder/Glee Fanfic.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the otome game and the delicious notion of having someone used up for bidding, using the Glee characters seemed absolutely too good to resist.  How could I? So shall we? Elian “Ian” Hargreave – Eisuke Ichinomiya Mike Chang – Soryu Oh, the cool mobster Noah Puckerman – Mitsunari Baba, the philandering theif Kurt Hummel – Ota Kisaki , the artist. Lol I know, Ota doesn’t swing that way but I always pegged Ota as a closet anyway. Cooper Anderson – Mamuro Kishi, the lazy detective and of course: Lucy Quinn Fabray – MC

Quinn Fabray is different in this storyline.  I made a parallel universe of sorts, changing a bit of her past to make her come to her present future.  So instead of moving to McKinley High, Lucy Q. Fabray’s father, Russel, dies of a heart attack and thus her mother remarries another man who worked as a hotel concierge manager in one of the most prestigious hotels in New York, the fictional hotel/casino Wyndham, (loosely based on the Waldorf Astoria) which is owned by then the family of Elian Hargreave’s grandfather who eventually takes over the hotel after graduating from high school.  Quinn has grown up in the hotel, pretty much understanding and loving every detail and aspect of it, treating it as if it were her own family since she pretty much lead a lonely life in New York, being a small town girl from Ohio who turned out to grow into a beautiful young woman.  This storyline is inspired by the Otome route of Eisuke Ichinomiya, whom I think was the best storyline for someone like her.  I’m way too biased that I don’t think I want to share Soryu Oh with her, hahaha.  Fast forward to the present, Quinn just graduated from Yale, but is now working he as a chambermaid in the hotel to earn extra cash at the same time pay for her college loans while she looks for a job.  

Prologue: As I feel a trickle of sweat behind my back while being in the middle of the spotlight, I start to wonder as I stare into the crowd facing me “how on earth did I ever come to this?”

12 hours earlier

“Good morning,” I greet cheerfully as I swing open the door in locker room of the female changing hall as if I’ve done so many times over.  I’m working during the summer as a maid at a hotel owned by the Hargreave Group, which is a large company that owns banks, trading companies, locally and overseas.  

“Good morning, Lucy,” greets Marley, one of the maids who also works part-time in the hotel.  I know for a fact that she looks old enough to still be in highschool, but I’ve never bothered to pry into matters like gossip. As long as they keep to their business, I keep to mine.  But despite it, I feel like I could confide in her because she seems so open and nice.

“The VIP convention starts today.  I am super excited,” Marley grins as she mentions one of the annual big events the hotel/casino throws.  

“I’ll bet you’d be way too busy to get excited since you’ll be working at the casino floor,” I grin back thinking how exhausted I’m going to be once this convention is over.  I’ve been living in the Wyndham since I was 15 after my dad died and my mother remarried.  I’d come to love it as if it were my own family and was familiar with its daily routine until 4 years ago when it underwent a massive renovation into becoming the first hotel/casino in New York.  It had been quite a scandal at first, with government officials opposing the idea of bringing “Las Vegas” to the metropolis, but the whole issue died down after a while and for the last two years, the Wyndham, became New York’s first legal casino and hotel.

“Don’t you wish you could work at the IVC?” Marley was referring to the International VIP Convention, one of the newly annual conventions frequented by Hollywood A-list stars, World leaders, socialites and big time businessmen who gathered once a year to play at the casinos and have a go into dabbling in a world of glamour

“Yeah, that would be great.” I agreed quietly.

“Well, that’s the goal of everyone who works here.” Marley sighed as she hunkered on the bench and rested her elbow on her knee as she propped her head on her hand.  “I’ve been dreaming about it ever since I saw it on TV. Seeing movie stars, top athletes, and other super famous people all over the world gathered here in this party.  I even heard Perez Hilton was so pissed that he didn’t get an invite.”  She pursed her lips conspiratorially.

“You know, when I applied for this job a few months ago, I didn’t think I was going to be hired that I thought I was dreaming when I actually did.” Marley grinned happily.  I smiled feeling how infectious her mood was, she was so upbeat by the whole thing, I didn’t want to look like a kill joy so I agreed.

“Oh my god.” She stopped suddenly as if she had thought of something of real importance.  “What if some rich, famous guy falls in love with me at first sight?” I hope he knows you’re barely 18, I mentally think and almost utter it out loud but I stop myself and….

“Haha, keep dreaming.” I just say instead.  

Whew, that was close. Our VIP guests are important, but I also value working for our regular guests, too.  I had just graduated in a Marketing degree at Yale, but with the recession, jobs were scarcely handed and I didn’t feel the need to dabble in doing freebies as an Intern in a big corporation, when I could be earning much more doing it here in Wyndham.  It really isn’t so bad.  I really didn’t care that much about image anyway since moving to New York.  Somehow the anonymity of it all had liberated me from the confines of the shallowness that I had experienced living in Lima, Ohio that I didn’t give a damn anymore.

I thought about the IVC, the International VIP Convention, Wyndham’s largest annual event is today and the international publicity with the media hanging around the area was totally insane. Unlike Marley, I had actually dreaded this more because I knew things were busier and a lot more tense than usual.  My step-father, Charlie was one of the managers of the hotel and was in charge of the VIP guests lounge and had direct connections to the owner, Mr. Elian Hargreave.  I heard a lot about the new owner, how accomplished he was despite his young age. He was featured in Forbes magazine as the most successful businessman under 40 years of age (rumors had it that he couldn’t be more than 30 years old.)  He reminded me of a true-to-life Bruce Wayne, ridiculously handsome in a dark, mysterious way and was always surrounded by beautiful women.  I knew my sister, Fran was crushing on him big time that she even begged Charlie for an introduction, but to no avail.

As we left the locker room and head to the hotel lobby, where a crowd of reporters and onlookers gathered, people whom I’ve only seen on TV or on a movie screen started appearing, strutting as if they were meant to walk down the red carpet and enter the magnificent lobby as if it were from a Hollywood movie scene.

“Oh. My God.” Marley’s mouth literally hung wide open.  “Look who just got out of that limo.”

I crane my neck and look around thinking that she just saw the famous TV actress who was in a popular teen show.  What was her name again?  Elena Davenport?  She was famous for being in this TV show about a love triangle between a vampire and a cyborg.  It was insane how people were shouting her name as if it were part of her entourage. She looked stunning with her black hair and her golden skin that had obviously seen the tropics recently.  She was then accompanied by an equally handsome young man who stood well over six feet tall and had a shock of black brown hair.

“That guy’s always on the VIP list.  They call him the King,” Marley whispers as if we’re in church.

“I thought that was Elvis,” I quipped chuckling at her disgruntled look.  I knew what she meant.  I wasn’t one to get caught up in celebrity gossip, but that King she was referring to was no other than the owner of the Wyndham, Mr. Hargreave.  He gallantly bowed offering his arm to Elena who gave him a dazzling smile as she took his arm.  Hanging on the other side of his arm was also someone famous.  I heard she was the new Broadway superstar and her name was Rachel Berry.  Behind him was another famous model who often graced those ads in Vogue and a famous British reality show actress.  

All the women around him are famous, I think dully as I look down in my frumpy uniform.  For some odd feeling I felt a pang of something that I couldn’t understand wash over me.  Before I had time to even think about it, Marley again interrupted my thoughts by whispering again on my ear.

“He’s been living in the penthouse suite for a while now.” “Of course he does, he owns the hotel.”

“But it costs tens and thousands of dollars to stay there for the night.” Marley argued.

“Maybe it’s a lot more convenient to keep tabs of work here than living on Park Avenue or at the East Side.” I shrugged watching as Mr. Hargreave pays no attention to the huge crowd and walks straight ahead.

I realize that I can’t take my eyes off him.  I’ve heard the how the female hotel staff would gush about how hot he was, but seeing him in the flesh just took my breath away.

“Aaaah!!!  Over here, Elian!!!” one of the women from the mass crowd screams holding a phone camera hoping to get a picture of him.

Suddenly, a group of women, thinking about doing the same thing start running towards him and bump into me and I feel myself being pushed right into the crowd and on to the red carpet.

SMACK!

I feel like I just hit a wall and close my eyes bracing myself for the pain to follow after the impact. Instead I feel a band of steel arms hold me close, as if to steady me from the madness.  I then pry my eyes open and find myself staring into a pair of steel gray blue eyes that were placed like jewels on a handsome chiseled face.

Mr. Hargreave!!

“Aah, I- I’m so sorry,” I stammered, feeling the rush of blood flow straight at my face and into my brain as I continue to look at him, almost mesmerized yet horrified by what had just transpired.  I still feel his arms around me and I could just tell that this multibillionaire really does work out because he’s practically hugging me right now.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a haughty voice belonging to the new Broadway ingénue pipes up beside Mr. Hargreave.  She sounds almost disgusted by the sight of me.  I can see from the corner of my peripheral vision that Elena Davenport was smirking as if amused by what was happening.  God, I didn’t think she was such a bitch until now.

But instead of voicing that sentiment out, I knew I had a job at stake and right now it was totally hanging in the balance.  I had just publicly humiliated myself in front of the owner of the hotel and his guests and was drawing unnecessary attention right now and it was more than I could honestly bear. I swallow and gather myself before bitchy Quinn Fabray comes out and try to mutter an apology again but am cut short by a curt, masculine and surprisingly sexy voice.

“Get out of the way,” Mr. Hargreave says as he suddenly pulls away from me, and pushes me not quite gently aside.

“What?” I mutter in disbelief as I lose my balance and fall flat on my butt to the ground.

Owwwww..

I look at slight disdain at the man who apparently was also my boss, but his muscular, tapered back was the only thing that could see that look on my face as I watch walk further away. He brushes off his suit as if he had just encountered a speck of dust and before I thought he had finally dismissed me, turns his head and shoots me a glare and then suddenly disappears into the casino hall.

I suddenly realize with a shock that I still had that look of displeasure on my face and grimaced as I rubbed my lower back, trying yet again to stead myself as the crowd disappeared into where Mr. Hargreave and his entourage were headed.  Marley quickly comes rushing over to my side.

“Are you okay, Luce?” She asks me, totally concerned as she called me by my nickname.  I haven’t been called Lucy for a while, I had been using Quinn since I had come to New York, but somehow there was a comfort in still being known as Lucy while here in the confines of the Wyndham.

“Yeah, my butt and my pride are fine,” I say.  

“Oh my God.  Mr. Hargreave caught you in his arms.  I am so totally jealous!  Did he smell nice?  Was he really as buff underneath that suit as they say?” Marley was acting like a puppy dog fawning over that jerk.

“I don’t know, I don’t even r-remember,” I lied because I had just mentally scratched Elian Hargreave off as a completely cold, aloof, unfeeling human being.  The nerve of that man!  He didn’t even bother to defend me while I, one of his staff members, was berated by that Broadway bitch Berry.

Hmm.  That had a nice ring to it.  I feel tons better knowing that the girl could have used a plastic surgeon as good as the one who did my nose.  

Come to think of it, Elian Hargreave was actually pretty frightening.  I’ve seen how New Yorkers glare sometimes, but that cold look was totally at subzero levels worthy of the Artic.

I smooth out my clothes and hear the click clack of high heels behind me.

“Just what were you thinking, making a fool out of yourself?” a cold, voice tinged with an Italian accent snapped me back to reality.  “And in front of such important guests and even the owner of this hotel?”

“Miss Thelma, “ I say coolly plastering a smile at one of the hotel managers.  Thelma Caparano has been on my ass since the day I started working at the Wyndham when she found out I graduated with honors on my Marketing degree from Yale.  Perhaps it was that and because I’m Charlie’s kid that she thinks I deserve to be more ill-treated than a worn-out mule from a third world country.  She stands imposingly before me, all dressed up in her expertly tailored uniform as she clacked impatiently on her Prada heels waiting for me to answer her.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am.  It was an accident…”

“You are at fault for not paying attention to what’s going on around you,” she clucked her tongue at me, looking at me disapprovingly under those heavy glasses that framed her would-have-been pretty-if-she-wasn’t-such-a-bitch face.  She was probably a few years older than me, but the harshness of her demeanor just made her look like petulant and almost bratty for a woman in her mid-thirties.

“Aren’t you in charge of the regular guests, Fabray?” She asks with a smirk on her face.  

Oh boy, she does enjoy torturing me.  

“You have no business even being here in the lobby.  Not unless you get promoted to handling the VIP guests.  But you won’t get that chance, would you?  Not even if you begged your stepfather.” She laughed as if she had just thought of that joke and it was funny.

Ugh.  I am totally so close to slapping her but instead I reply setting my gaze downcast hoping that she won’t see me seething as I meekly reply “Yes, Miss Thelma.”

“Well, since you’re here,” she motions to one of her hotel assistants who was following her like a dog who hands over a box as she shoves it towards me. “Go to every floor and drop off these announcement letters while you’re at it.  These are for the guests who wish to avail of the spa promo package we are having in honor of the IVC.”

“Okay,” I say since arguing about doing a herculean task is going to go nowhere anyway since this angry vampire is out for my blood.  She’s always been a bully and since I would never dared complain of this to Charlie even though I could have, I decide I might as well just shut up and deal with it. I turn and nod to Marley, saying my goodbyes and head towards the elevators.  

As I walk by, I see a man, about my age arguing with a young woman about something in front of the elevator. The woman is wearing a dress that looks like something from the recent Fashion Week runway as she throws a mask at the man at the same time spewing a litany of curses in fluent French.

“Connard!!  Baise toi!” she screamed as the man looked back in her as if in shock.  “You lying, cheating scum!  I never want to see you again.”  With that, she gave him a resonant slap in the face for added effect before she walked out of the hotel.

This is awkward.  I turn my attention instead to the mask that looked as if it were something one wore to a masquerade ball.  I suddenly got an image of 50 shades of Grey and find myself  staring at the mask lying on the floor.  I was about to pick it up when the man who was slapped earlier moves quicker than I could and in a blink of an eye was brushing it off as if were the only precious thing that mattered to him.

Wow, his hands were fast like those of a magician.  I turn to look at him and realize that he wasn’t bad looking either.  He was of above average height and was muscularly built, but a bit thicker than Mr. Hargreave.  He also had dark hair and had the most dazzling pair of emerald green eyes I’ve ever seen.  I couldn’t tell what his hair was like underneath that Fedora hat that just made him look like the epitome of 1920’s gangster cool in a modern way.

Fedora Hat sighs dramatically.  “Great, now I don’t have a date.”  He says as if talking to himself then realizes I’m watching him.  When our eyes meet, I quickly look away self-consciously because I didn’t want him to know that I had been caught staring at him.  I try to act cool despite the awkward tension but know that he saw me witness the whole thing.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” He smirks, as if reading my mind.

“Yeah.  I-I’m really sorry.”  I backed away slowly as if avoiding being pounced by some agitated animal.

“Aw, come on. Don’t run away,” Fedora Hat laughs as he gently takes my arm as he leads me towards the elevator, completely ignoring the fact that I’m in the hotel maid’s uniform with a box of undelivered fliers on the other arm. “I’ll explain everything when we get there.”

“S-Sir?”

Before I know it, the man ignores my protests and continues to guide me, half-dragging me into the elevator with him.  We’re alone in the elevator and to be honest, this is the first time I’ve been to the basement area.  I’m surprised that the basment’s elevator looks just as elegant as the regular floor elevators.  It sort of reminded me of going into a secret lair of some evil villain but at the same time being cooped inside a glass bird cage of sorts.  I tried to avert my attention to the man beside me and look instead at the buttons of the elevator as the blinking lights affirmed our descent to the unknown.

“Whew!  I’m lucky I found you,” Fedora Hat grins at me, still holding onto my arm having no intention of letting me go.  His grip isn’t painful nor in any way gentle, but it’s firm enough to hold me into place.  As if wanting to distract me from thinking of it, he adds “coz there’s no way I could go to the party without a beautiful woman on my arm.  That would be a total buzzkill.”

Buzzkill?  Who says that sort of thing these days?

“Party?  You mean, the IVC?”

“The One and Only. Isn’t it obvious how I’m dressed?” He opens one free arm to show his expensive Italian cut suit.  Definitely Armani now that I got a closer look. And definitely custom made as it fits him perfectly.

“I-I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean that you—“

“Hahaha.  I’m kidding, babe. Man, you’re kinda uptight for a pretty thing.  Were you raised in some Christian Bible thumping school or something?”

“Uh, that’s because I work at this hotel,” I say slowly almost as if trying to hint that I’m still in my maid’s uniform, completely ignoring the fact that he’s actually right about me being Christian.  “So technically, I can’t go with you to the party as your date, sir.”

“What are you talking about? The reason why that woman earlier left was so you could be my date, Lucy.” He smiles in the most seductive, sexiest way possible as he finally noticed the name plate on my uniform.

Whoa, this one’s pretty dangerous.  And a hopeless flirt as well.  I try not to show my fear when grabs my chin and lifts it up to meet his face as he peers down, bringing it closer to mine.  I can feel his breath grazing against me as he looks into my eyes.

“Definitely my type. Angel blonde hair, mesmerizing green eyes, and luscious lips…” he trails on softly as I sort of feel his face coming closer.  He moves way to fast and I try to squirm away, backing off thinking now I understood perfectly why he got dumped in the first place.

DING! Saved by the bell of the basement floor. The elevator arrives at a full stop at the ballroom and Fedora Hat quickly backs off  and casually straightens himself as if nothing of importance was about to take place.  He could even care less whether he kissed me or not.  Jeez.

“Let’s rock and roll, Princess.” He  announces and gives off a broad smile as if putting on a game face.  And contrary to his calm demeanor, he drags me out into the ballroom before I can protest as I’m lead into the glamorous ballroom that reminded me from a scene of a Hollywood movie.

I gaped in awestruck fascination, marveling how I could have possibly missed out the new renovations at the Wyndham.  The renovations had still managed to maintain some of the old architecture, paying detail to preserving its original Art Deco state, but added with contemporary minimalist design, it’s mixture was astounding and beyond words.  I had no means of any background in architecture, but this was like walking into the Hall of Fame on architectural immortality. I was shocked that everyone present were almost nonchalant of the genius behind the design and how lavishly decorated the ballroom was to the point that even the catering was handled in the most A-list of ways.  I turn my attention to the gorgeous Swarovski crystals that were adorning the chandeliers that were hanging from the high ceiling.  

The entire floor was jam-packed with the rich and famous that I wasn’t even sure if I was hallucinating because it was too much sensory overload to be true.  I turn my head and notice Cristian Renaldi, the famous World cup soccer player from Spain to my right.  And that’s the famous Hollywood actress, Julie Moore.  And even the former President of the United States is over there?  I feel like Alice in Wonderland being wrapped around the surrealness of it all being around these celebrities that it takes me a moment to get back to earth and finally notice that Fedora Hat who had dragged me here in the first place was gone.

Huh?  Where’d he go?

Suddenly, I hear a womanly voice from behind me.

“Hey, do you have any champagne?” I turn around and am surprised that it wasn’t a woman, but a young man with an angelic face whose skin was as flawless as fine bone china. He had soft, brown hair and bright blue eyes.  He looked so familiar because his face was on the cover of this month’s issue of People Magazine being tagged as one of the 25the most beautiful People of the World of this year.

“K-Kurt Hummel!!!” I gasp, recognizing the mega hyphenate National artist/ Pulitizer prize winning Children’s Novelist/ Socialite.

“Oh, you know who I am.” He smiles brightly, happy to have been recognized in a sea of famous faces. “Thanks!”

“I-I’m sorry, I’ll look for the champagne now.” I mumble apolitically frantically looking for a bottle of Dom Perignon and Mr. Hummel chuckles behind me, as if thoroughly amused.

“You sure you work here, Alice?”

“P-Pardon?”

“You remind me of Alice in Wonderland when she fell down the rabbit hole and stumbled into the Mad Hatter’s party.” He moves away from me and reaches over the table behind me and lifts a bottle of Moet et Chandon and pours himself a glass.  He then thrusts his newly refilled glass towards me nudging me to take a drink.

“Here. You could use one more than me,” he grins.  I was about to protest but there was something harsh in his eyes telling me not to defy him as I emptied my glass.

“T-Thanks,” I was about to take the bottle and refill his glass for him when he shakes his head and takes the glass from my hands and pours himself another.

“Now, go on to doing whatever it was and I hope you get back home safely, Alice,” was all he says as he raises his champagne glass, giving me a wink of good luck for whatever it was I was about to partake.  He leaves with a wave.

He definitely was spot on about what I was feeling right at that moment.

I should definitely get out of here before I cause any more trouble.

But before I do, another man stops me from my tracks.  He’s over fifty, overweight, and perhaps a bit slightly drunk as he grins at me and grabs my hand. Ugh, he also seems really sleazy. “Aren’t you a pretty one?” He slurs and I inwardly flinch from the smell of alcohol and sweat coming from him.  “You wanna come with me and give me room service? I’ll make it worth your while and give you a big tip afterwards.

Ewww.  His head is shaped like an egg and his pock-marked face is flushed as he looks me up and down.

“I’m sorry, sir but we don’t offer that kind of service here.” I answer politely, knowing that we had been trained beforehand on how to deal with rude perverts like this guest.

He completely ignores me and starts going on how rich he is and how much is net worth is.

To be honest, it wasn’t really much.

He then slips his arm around my waist and is about to pull me towards him when…

“This party just got really trashy.” A familiar masculine voice announced icily.  I turn my head towards my savoir and realize that it’s Mr. Hargreave.  He ignores my gasp of surprise and scowls at the sleaze holding me.

“I’d rather appreciate it, sir, if you kept your attention from the hotel staff and settle instead for the bevy of beauties surrounding you,” Elian Hargreave  grinned sardonically nodding his head towards a group of runway models who flirtly waved back.  And just when I thought he couldn’t intimidate the sleazebag, he looked at me as if I were a piece of trash marring the ambience and added cruelly. “Besides, you could totally do better than THAT.  This one’s hardly a raving beauty.”  

“I-I’m really sorry, Mr. Hargreave, sir!  Pardon me!!!” Sleazebag bows apologetically quickly letting go of me as if he had been burned and kept his distance from me like I was infected with Ebola or something. He furiously wipes away his sweat and runs off.

“T-Thank you, Mr. Hargreave,” I say, totally ignoring the pain that he had brushed me off as a ugly and unattractive.  But then again, men like him are probably used to just dating models that even ingénues were all blasé for him.  

“Let’s go, Elian,” one of the pretty models whom he nodded to a while back approached him and casually hooked her arm around his, totally ignoring me.

“I can’t stand people who don’t know their place,” another one of those long legged giraffes piped in hooking her arm around his other free one as if she were about to die in a desert and he was her oasis.

As if he didn’t even acknowledge my existence and hadn’t even heard me, he turned his back as if nothing had ever happened a few minutes ago before being led away by the Amazonian Brazilian bimbos.  He starts walking still surrounded by women and I’m completely overwhelmed as I watch him walk away.  I suddenly notice a purple handkerchief on the floor behind him.  I remember this being a part of his suit and realize that he dropped it.

Almost without thinking, I picked it up and started going after him.

“Uhm, sir! Excuse me, I think you dropped this—“  I try to chase after Mr. Hargreave but he gets lost in the crowd and I can’t seem to find him.

Oh, wait!  There he is!!

I make my way through the crowd and follow him as he makes an exit to the far end of the ballroom.  

A long, deserted hallway stretches out behind the door that Mr. Hargreave enters.

“Wait.  Where did he go?”

There are several doors on either side of the hallway and I didn’t catch up with him in time to even know which doors did he enter.  However, I hear voices coming from the far end.  But somehow, as I strain to hear from the distance I get the feeling the conversation wasn’t even in English.  I shake my head, thinking that I really have to return this handkerchief back to Mr. Hargreave, I strengthen my resolve and make my way towards the door where the voices were coming from.  I note the door is slightly ajar, which explains why I could hear them.  I peek through the gap and see several briefcases lying on a table surrounded with guns and large sums of money being packed by three Asian looking men dressed in all black discussing where to put the money in perfect Cantonese and before I could see more, I feel a large hand grab me by the shoulder and roughly pulls me away, swinging me around and forces me up against a wall…

Fear and surprise of being caught seeing something I shouldn’t have take over that I feel like I just might have suffered my first heart attack.

But unfortunately, that doesn’t happen.

Instead, my heart starts pounding again in fear as I’m facing a tall, Asian man of slim, yet muscular build with broad shoulders and powerful muscles who is now glaring at me and asks in in slightly cold, yet scarily threatening voice.  His hair is slicked back and even though I know he’s actually quite good looking, I’m paralyzed with fear to hardly even notice.

“What are you doing here?” He demands as he pins me against the wall as his sharp eyes look at me.  

Oh dear, God.

It happened so suddenly my body starts to tremble as I start to realize that maybe he is one of those gun men and those men aren’t just hotel guests.  But Mafia?  Triad?

What on earth should I do?

I breathe and swallow but it’s way too hard to even do so.  Instead I focus on his face and answer.

“I-I- w-w-ork h-he---“ He completely ignores me and says instead, “you’ve got give seconds to walk away, disappear and forget everything you just saw. Got it?  Otherwise, I’d hate to think what would happen to you after.” He also said it in a way that sounded like he was talking to a five-year old.  A not very bright one at that too.

I nod wordlessly over and over, desperate to get away and he immediately lets me go.  I run so fast my legs get tangled up with each other at first and don’t even think of where I’m headed.  I just run to the point of exhaustion and find myself at the basement storage room. I close the door behind me and try to catch my breath, relieved with the fact that I have just barely escaped with my life as I offer a silent prayer and make the sign of the cross in complete gratitude that the scary Asian Mafia guy just let me go.

I ruminate over the thought of how it was possible for the Triad, one of the notorious Asian Mafias could be tied up to an event like the IVC? Were those guys even part of the Triad? Maybe they weren’t even mafia.

Get a hold of yourself, Fabray.  Keep it together.   I have just realized right at this moment I had actually lost the box of flyers I was holding earlier.  I wasn’t sure if I had lost somewhere from that struggle between me and Fedora Hat, or that Mad Hatter encounter with Kurt Hummel, or even with the Middle Aged Sleazebag .  I try again to get my body to function properly as I compose myself thinking over again where I had last left it and realized that it was on the table where I had been with Mr. Hummel.  

Just as I swing the door open, I hear a loud crashing THUD.

The door I just swung had collided into something and I could hear a group of men scream “Watch out!!!”

I see two mean-looking men peeking at the other end of the door looking helplessly as the box they were carrying drops to the ground.

“Shit!  That was the Winged Victorian Angel!”

Oh no.  I remember from the news that this 300 year old museum artifact was meant to be raffled off as the grand prize at the IVC.  It had been shipped all the way from the Louvre in Paris as a gift from the newly elected French President to the United States. The proceeds of the IVC’s funding and the raffle were meant to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan somewhere in the Philippines.

I quickly open the crate box and find the statue was broken in half and my heart just drops to my stomach in nameless shock.

I am way too shocked to even mutter an apology.  Not only did I just destroy what might have been a National Treasure, millions of homeless Filipino children were going to starve and suffer.

“Hey, this was a very important piece that was going to be auctioned off.”  The slim mean-looking guy barks at me, ignoring my shocked state. Did he just say auctioned?  Didn’t he mean it was going to be raffled?

“How are you gonna pay for this?” Asks the Fat Meanie beside him.

“Uh…..Sorry?”

“You think an apology is gonna cut it?  You owe us, bitch!”  

The men reach out to me and….

 ……………..

 And I find myself being auctioned off.  The host of the eveing had just announce d that the next bid was me, a healthy fit young Caucasian American.

 Is this even legal?  I think as I swallow in fear hearing the bids knock from $2 million to higher.  I got put up in place of that Winged Victory Angel.

The mere fact that someone just started the bid off at $2 million was unreal.

I could barely make through the crowd as everyone was wearing masks similar to the masquerade mask Fedora Hat had with him when his date dumped him.  But somehow I felt with a sinking dread that the person who placed the initial bid was the Middle Aged Creep from before.  Oh crap, is he really going to buy me?  I definitely do NOT want that at all.

“$2 million, going once……going twice……”

I heard the announcer say that I’d be a slave, or a toy, or……God knows.  This is horrible.  I try to shake myself off this nightmare, but I know what I’m going through right now was just as real as everything that partook 12 hours ago.

Oh God, how did I get to this?  I fall to my knees, hang my head in shame as I feel the tears well in my eyes start to overflow.

I start praying hoping that Charlie, or my Mom or Fran could find me before it’s too late…..

Just then….

The auction hall suddenly buzzes with commotion as the announcer stops from closing the deal.

“Seat number 100 with a bid for $20 million cash.”

The crowd is drawn into complete silence.  

I peer through the gates to look for 100, but whoever was bidding was not in the crowd.  All I could do was stare up at the sum of the winning bid, completely dumbfounded as a  bell sounds, calling the auction to a close.

“Sold to Seat Number 100 for $20 million.  Thank you!!”

Someone bought me for twenty million US dollars?

My cage is carried over to the edge of the stage.  As I get off, I’m greeted by two masked men.  They weren’t the mean jerks from earlier but something about them looks vaguely familiar.  One of them looked to be wearing a Fedora Hat.

Fedora Hat bought me? Before I even get the chance to ask, Fedora Hat in the mask grabs my arm and says” This way….”

Wait, what the heck am I being so nervous for?  At least it’s Fedora Hat who bought me and not that Middle Aged Creep.  But where are they going to take me now?

And who bought me?

I feel totally numb from this crazy situation that I don’t even notice that I’m brought up into the penthouse.

I gasp in marvel looking at my surroundings, knowing that out of all the hotel employees, only Charlie and a few other managers were ever allowed to come up here.

Wait, speaking of Charlie, does he even know about those weird auctions happening at the basement?

“We brought her, boss.” Fedora Hat announces to the man in the immaculate tux seated on one of the elegant sofas.  Like Fedora Hat and the other man,  he was also wearing a mask, but something about him looked made me sense that I’ve also encountered this man before.  Even the other man seated beside him also with a shock of black hair was also wearing a mask also seemed vaguely familiar.

“Wait.  You’re----“

“We bought you,” Mr. Hargreave says indifferently, removing his mask as if he didn’t even hear what I was about to say.  The other man beside him followed suit.

“Guess we did end up seeing each other again,” the Asian Mafia guy remarks in the same casual, yet cold tone.

“You know this woman, Mike?” Hargreave raises his eyebrow almost as if in disbelief.

“You can say that.” He shrugs, not really giving a toss.

“Wait.  You bought me?  In that auction”  I stammer, trying to still make sense of it all.

“He means WE won you, Alice.” Kurt Hummel corrects as I turn around in disbelief as he removes his mask as well.

“For $20 million, Princess. The boss must have it bad.” Fedora Hat grins as he casually throws his mask and lays it on the next empty sofa.

“M-Mr. Hummel?” I squeak, not sure if I was asking if Fedora Hat was referring him as ‘the boss’ or if I was just asking a reaffirmation that I knew at least another familiar but friendly face.

“Pffft!!! She doesn’t even know you’re name, Puck.”  Kurt laughs.

“That because I didn’t have the time to tell her,” the man named Puck crosses his arms as if he were a pouting kid who wasn’t included in a game of tag.

“Isn’t this some form of human trafficking?  I shouldn’t have even been up for that stupid auction in the first place.”

“Hey, anything and everything’s for sale at that auction.” Puck grins matter-of-factly, completely oblivious to the fact that I had stated it being against my own free will.

“Absolutely,” Kurt agrees. “You can buy almost anything there. Like stolen art, government secrets, and even hire a hitman!”

“That was last year, wasn’t it?” Puck asked as I noticed that he and Kurt were the only chatty ones in the group while the other two men watched silently.

“Anyway, this was the first time anyone was sold off in the manner of fashion you had earlier,” Kurt says tilting his head as if trying to understand what was really going on. “You must have done something really bad to put yourself up there, huh?”

“Well…….I accidentally broke the Winged Victory Angel….” My voice trails off and I realized that something wasn’t right here.  Wait a minute, weren’t they just talking about selling black market things in a legal casino that by the way just happens to be in a highly publicized area? Was this even legal at all?  “Who in the world would approve of these things?   Do the police even know?”

“Well, to answer question number one.  I did approve of it.” Mr. Hargreave says as if bored by this whole conversation.

“What?”

“If it’s worth anything, it’s here.” Hargreave scoffs and laughs coldly.

“Reckless as always,” Mike shakes his head.  “This woman isn’t even worth anything.”

“Think about it for a moment,” Hargreave looks at me up and down as he folds his arms looking at me as if he were the predator toying with his prey.  “Won’t it be fun coming up with ways to use her?”

“What gives you the right to decide that?”  I ask exasperated.

“Who gave you permission to speak?” Hargreave asks coldly, merely raising an eyebrow.

“Huh?”

“Not another word unless I. SAY. SO.” Hargreave says, savoring the last three words, enunciating them slowly as if threatening me to not disobey him.

“If you’ve got a problem, we could always send you back to be auctioned off.” Mike sneers as if finding this even more amusing.

These guys are so scary. I’d rather die first than be sold off again.

I shake my head looking at both men, pleading them that I won’t disobey.

“Come on Boss……Mike……You two should be nice to the girls,” Puck quips, trying to lighten the mood, but honestly it fell a bit flat.  Not that I’d feel better either way.

“We need to figure out who gets to keep her,” Kurt says, as if now he’s the one who was bored by the whole turn of the conversation.  Though he acts as if he wants everything finalized, I get the feeling that he’s not entirely happy with the idea of having me for a slave.  In fact, he looks rather…….reluctant.   I’ve heard rumors that Mr. Hummel was gay, but I didn’t think now would have been the best times to actually confirm that.  So instead I ask the second question that’s been nagging me.

“What do you mean, who gets to keep me?  Didn’t you all buy me?”

“Yes, that’s true. But that’s really not your concern now.” Puck says.  “If I were you, I’d choose me.  I’m the only good guy here, so you can rest easy.”

“Says the world-famous thief and con-artist,” Elian Hargreave snorts derisively.

“Now, now Elian, you’re just trying to make Puck look bad.” Kurt says as if coming to his friends defense. “You’ve already got tons of groupies, why don’t you just play with one of them and let the rest of us have our fun?”

And to think I thought Kurt Hummel was safe because I assumed he was gay.

Guess again, batman.

“Mike Chang’s the one who could have his pick,” Hargreave threw a smirk towards the cool Asian mobster guy’s direction.  “Women would do anything to be the lover of a Hong Kong mobster.”

So he really was part of the Mafia.

Who ARE these people? I’m speechless but I try to pull myself together and try to shake some last-minute common sense in them.

“Human trafficking IS illegal, you know.  I’m going to report this to the police and I don’t care who you are.”

“You see a cop anywhere?” Elian Hargreave throws his head as if calling out to no one in particular. I follow his gaze and see a worn-out looking man standing by the window smoking a cigarette.  He looks to be the older of the bunch, probably around 35 in age. Rather good-looking, in fact he sort of reminds me of that guy who plays a thief on TV except that he looks disheveled and hasn’t shaved in a week.

“Damn it, don’t just blow my cover like that,” he groans as if he didn’t even want to be a part of this conversation.

“Better now than later, right Detective Cooper?” Kurt giggles as if enjoying himself.

“Shut up, Hummel.”

“Oh, don’t be so mean. Just because I’m dating your brother doesn’t mean you have to be so rude.”

“Wait, you’re a cop?” I ask incredulously, ignoring the fact that Kurt Hummel just confirmed he was openly gay.

“Yup.”  Apparently, the Detective spoke the fewest words possible.

I seriously CAN NOT believe that even the police are in on this.

“Well, it looks like we’re not going to reach a decision any time soon.” Kurt announces, really emphasizing on the obvious.

“Well Boss, at times like these….” Puck begins but Elian Hargreave cuts him off immediately.

“Right. I don’t want to waste anymore time.” Hargreave nods and stands up with Mike Chang following suit. All the men except for the Detective stand up and saunter over to me with Mr. Hargreave standing in the center of the group with his arms crossed looking down at me with cold eyes.

“Make a decision,” he says. “I’ll let you choose who buys you.”

---END---

Elian Hargreave.  Be ready to hear more of another Hargreave, Elian was just the prototype of my OC in the next series of fanfics.

[pendragonfics]

Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards

Guilt Is a Rope That Wears Thin: Chapter One | Chapter Two

Paring: Peter Quill/Reader

Tags: female reader, female pronouns, alien abductions, set after Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 1 but before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, baby Groot, mentions of fandoms, outer space, angst, fluff.

Summary: Abducted by aliens, traded between Ravager factions, and taken in by The Guardians of the Galaxy. Now that's something that you can add to your resume.

Or, alternatively, you make friends with a guy who also was abducted by aliens, and become Team Mom™ to everyone on The Milano.

Word Count: 2,044

Posting Date:  2017-04-25

Current Date: 2017-06-12

Your heart is racing even before you open your eyes. It’s like you know you’re not in your bed, surrounded by your nerd paraphernalia in the college dorms, hell, it’s like you know you’re not even on the same planet as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Maybe that’s because you can smell something that’s completely not of Earth, and can hear chatter that sounds just so alien. When you do open your eyes, it’s like you’ve woken up somewhere amidst a Star Trek convention – standing above you are figures that look like masterpieces of an over-timing makeup department and CGI. But they’re all real, because the blue man with a metal headpiece is staring deep into your soul, his mouth agape to show jagged teeth.

“She’s awake,” His voice sounds like it’s from the south, but his body just reminds you of frat boys who paint themselves for big games. Your heart hasn’t stopped it’s thumping, and almost whimpering, he sees how afraid he is. “Damn, someone get Quill before this Terran frightens herself to death.”

You swallow, wondering what a quill was, and if by ‘Terran’, he meant you, because honestly, you felt like this was a major drug dream. Wondering if your roommate had dosed you on acid, you see a human-looking guy appear, slightly older than you.

“Hey, hey, don’t freak out,” he bends, kneeling to your height, his hands raised. “I’m Peter. Peter Quill. You’re probably –,” He pauses, and shoots the aliens and creatures around him a glare, “Can we have some space? Yondu?”

The blue man, Yondu, nods. “C’mon boys, fun’s over. Leave these Terran’s to their talk.”

The crowd dissipates, leaving you and the guy named Peter there on the floor of what seems to be a real clunker of an area. “Where am I?” You ask him. “I – I was at college yesterday, I went to sleep in my bed, but –,” you catch your breath, eyes flittering over the area you’re in. “This is a dream. A prank. Did Lincoln put you up to this?” You demand, sitting up.

Peter shakes his head. “I don’t know anyone who’s called Lincoln, unless you’re talking about Abraham,” he cracks a little smile. “We intercepted a ship who had, ah, abducted you. You’re not on Earth anymore.”

Your heart skips a beat. Well, that was confirmed, then. “If I’m not on Earth, where am I?” You ask him. “Don’t tell me I’m on the moon. I’m not up for any Doctor Who crap.”

The little smile on his face widens. “I remember that show! It’s still running?” He asks you.

You blink. “I’ve just been abducted, by aliens, am currently at pissing-my-pants scared, and you, are asking me if a British TV show is still running?” You state the facts. “Yeah, it’s still running. They’re up to the twelfth doctor now.” You take a shaky breath, and add, “I’m _________. We’re in a spaceship, aren’t we?”

He grins, and extending a hand, adds, “Great to meet you, _______. If you’d like to come with me, I’m going to take you to a, ah, less crowded place.” Standing, you follow him on unsteady legs from the place you had woken up, traversing the halls of the spaceship behind his footfall. “I was abducted, back when I was a kid. I grew up out here, with Yondu and everyone. I guess that’s a terrible way to relate to another person, but, hey, it’s all we’ve got to go on.” He flashes you a sad smile over his shoulder. “Ah! Here we are. Gamora, she’s awake!”

As if you’d not had a terrible enough day already, you had to be introduced to more aliens. In the room, were the most rag-tag band of people – well, two of them looked like people. One looked like one of the trash pandas who’d rummage through your mother’s garbage at home, and the other like a little sprout…like a tree man. Baby. The lady with green skin, and purple hair eyes you, almost inspecting every molecule you’re made of before she strides forward to shake your hand.

“I am Gamora,” she nods, “It’s not like we needed another mouth to feed, but you look like you are a fighter, and are welcome here.”

You feel your face pale, your hand slackening in her grip. “Fighter? I did not sign up for this shit, I’m terrible at fighting!” You turn to Peter, a panic falling over you. “I’m studying theoretic physics, not intergalactic Fight Club!”

“Ha!” The man the colour of a pale chalk board covered in red markings belted out a laugh which almost made you pee a little in fright. “This is a woman of honour, revealing her strengths! I like her.”

The raccoon gave him a side-eye glare. “Shut it, Drax.”

You take a deep breath, but Peter Quill interrupts you, butting in. “Will everyone just take a breath, and maybe give _______ some space?” He turns to you, and gives a sad smile. “We’re leaving Yondu’s ship in the morning, but before we can drop you back home, we’ve got a mission that needs completing.”

The little tree person nods. “I am Groot.”

The racoon rolls his eyes. “What do you mean, if she even wants to go home? Of course she does, she’s quaking in her bunny slippers.”

You can’t help but glance down at that, but you’re not wearing bunny slippers. You’re not even wearing shoes. Just fluffy bed socks, and the oversized Stevie Wonder shirt you wear to bed. How on Earth did you get abducted by aliens and all that shit in your pyjamas?

“I am Groot!” He intones.

“It doesn’t matter if she looks like a good place for a nap,” He translates, sounding irritated. “Oh, so now I’m not the person you like napping on now. Fine. Nap on someone your own size.”

The pair of them walk off, leaving you, Quill, Gamora and Drax standing there. “By fighter, you didn’t mean like, a hero for hire sort of thing, did you?” you ask Gamora, breaking the silence that was left without the bickering twig and raccoon. “I’m sorry I overreacted, I’m just, like, really scared right now. Wish I had my iPod.” You add, thinking of the 250 tracks on your laptop back in the dorm room.

“iPod? Sounds like an escape mechanism.” Drax muses. “I should like to get one of those. Then I will be able to escape all danger with it.”

You clear your throat. “No – it’s more like, ah, portable music. A Walkman?” Under your breath, you add, “These guys are from outer space, nobody has a Walkman out here.”

Peter grins. “I do! I have two tapes.”

---

It’s eight months later when you realise that you still haven’t been delivered back to your boring old life back on Earth. But you’ve been busy, flying around outer space with the guys who everyone calls The Guardians of The Galaxy (pretty bomb-ass name, - better than The Avengers, but that was you probably being biased because they’d destroyed your favourite café in the Battle of New York), kicking ass, taking names.

You’re more like the planner for their missions – while they’re just doing hero stuff, you’re organising their schedules, making sure The Milano doesn’t run out of fuel, cleaning Drax’s knives after battles, putting all the bombs and doodads Rocket leaves out away in their place. You even take care of Gamora, making sure she’s okay with all the nightmares of Thanos, and eating right.

It’s a long shot from theoretical physics, but when you’re not the Team Mom™ you’re working out equations with textbooks you find at junker stops, and papers that alien academics had written on the subject (thank goodness someone invented translation devices, because otherwise you’d be left staring at scribbles all day). If you ever make it back to Earth, you’re sure going to give the scientists Dr Banner and Stark a run for their money.

But at the moment, the team are between missions, and you’re lying on the lounge with Quill, sharing an earbud each to listen to his tunes. They’re old, but you’re not complaining. It’s not like you miss modern music, it’s all just the same riffs anyways.

“Sorry we never got around to bring you back home to Earth,” he turns to you just as the song Mr. Blue Sky ends. “Not to brag or anything, but the team is much better with you around.”

You can’t help but laugh. “‘Not to brag’ ... dude, you realise that every time you start a sentence with that, you’re bragging?”

Peter chuckles at that. “Yeah, I guess so.” He glances to the tape, and pausing the next track before it begins, he sits up a little. “Don’t like, deck me, but it’s great having you out here with us, and youdon’teverhavetoleaveifyoudon’twantto.”

You frown. “What? I didn’t catch that.”

He sighs. “_______, you don’t ever have to leave if you don’t want to. I’d miss you a heap if you left, and that’s saying something because a butt-load of people I know have left me and I didn’t really miss them until too late. And you’re cool and stuff, and make jokes and you’re like, super smart.”

“Is this you coming onto me, Peter?” You’re half incredulous, because you’ve seen how smooth he is with other people and flirtation. “Or are you just listing all my good attributes like, like a job offer, or something?”

He nods. “Something like that.”

You can’t help but laugh. “I don’t think there was ever really a place for me back on Earth. I had to fight for everything as best as I could to get where I needed to be, and even then, I couldn’t stop fighting until I got it. Hell, even my own parents decided my brother was better than me, and so I did all I could to beat him and get into the best college in the country, get the best marks. But no, he was still the golden boy.” You grit out. It’s been a while since you’ve dwelled about life before you were abducted, but once you’re starting, you can’t seem to stop. “If anything, I’ve really found something worth it out here. And I don’t have to compete. I’m just … me.”

Peter looks almost relieved at your words. “That’s rough, buddy.”

You laugh. “Nice Avatar reference, Star-Lord. But I still want to go to Earth. Just, you know, grab a fresh change of clothes, give my parents the middle-finger, pick up my limited-edition comics.” You skip a beat, and add, “You can even get some more tunes!”

He hesitates. “I…I never told you how I was abducted, did I?”

You shake your head. “I took it as a no-go zone.”

Peter takes a deep breath. “Yondu picked me up on Earth on the day that my mother died. Ever since, I’ve just thought of it as the place where she died, but … if I go back there, I know I’m going to be disappointed.”

You frown, your hand seeking out his to hold it. “How so?”

“Because … nobody will remember her like I do. She’ll just be, you know … another grave in the ground.” Your hand tightens around his, and he squeezes back. “I know, sounds pathetic.”

You shake your head. “No, it doesn’t. It’s like … I know how it feels. When my brother drowned, everyone mourned like they’d lost the moon, like it was gone, no more moon. I realised that when he died, that I was the asshole because all he’d done was existed, and I’d done all I could to one-up him. It never worked, Peter,” you tell him. “If I could go back in time, I’d just once sit down with him, and give him the biggest goddamned hug. It wasn’t his fault he was loved. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t.”

You feel a tear fall from your eye, but before it can hit the lounge, Peter wipes it away. “Let’s go back to Earth.” He whispers. His face is so close to yours, you can count ever freckle, see every line on his face. “It’s about damn time we get closure.”

You sniffle, leaning your forehead against his, “Hear, hear.”

>> NEXT CHAPTER

[squeemcsquee]

Anime Iowa 2019: Saturday

Saturday started off with a filling breakfast, compliments of Comfort Inn. I sorta miss the days of being able to run around on almost no food during a con, but I have learned that I get super hangry anymore if I try. So I loaded up!

Side note, I think hotels have really stepped up their breakfast offerings over the years. I don’t remember having options like this as a kid unless it was a higher-class business hotel that we’d occasionally stay in for my dad’s employer’s “employee getaway” weekends.

After breakfast, it was time to get into cosplay. And this is when I realized I’m getting a bit hooked on cosplaying at cons. On Friday, I’d stuck purely to regular, comfy clothes. And I had told myself that I’d packed “regular” stuff for Sat/Sun, in case I didn’t feel up to cosplaying...then I looked at what I’d actually packed. Every single clothing item was black. Because my cosplay options were the Impala and Night Vale Scout. So, unless I was gonna just be a Goth kid all weekend, I sorta boxed myself into cosplay, lol.

I tried out some anti-possession temporary tattoos I’d gotten from Wish. They looked amazing, but the smell... I don’t think it ever completely vanished that day. I’d get a whiff every time I moved my arms. They smelled heavily like those thick permanent markers in the metal bodies. 

Still, I was happy with the results.

Once I was ready to go, it was off to the con!

We started with “A Day In The Life of A Voice Actor” with Morgan Berry and Sarah Wiedenhoff. 

It was definitely entertaining, but I was wishing I’d had more coffee with breakfast. The room temperature and the quietness of the panel crowd were just enough to make me feel sleepy. I think that’s a common issue though, with panels right at the start of the con day. 

After that, @lechevaliermalfet and I split up. I headed over to the Hyatt to attend “The Story Behind Violet’s Eyes” while he attended a panel in the con center. When I arrived for my panel, there were a few hiccups before it began - a communication goof with the hotel meant that the room had not been unlocked until right at panel time. The hotel was under the mistaken impression that no one would be using the room until 1800, though there were panels scheduled off and on all day. So it took our host a couple minutes to get his notes organized, etc. No problem - it happens. 

“The Story Behind Violet’s Eyes” was interesting, though I do think perhaps the panelist could have benefited from a visual aid. It was a discussion of Violet Evergarden and PTSD representation in anime. Our panelist was from the podcast Trash Pandas Watch Anime. I haven’t checked the podcast out yet, though I intend to.

From there, I wandered and people-watched a bit. But I think Anime Iowa really suffered from their location being simply too big for a small con like theirs (approx 3k people). This was an event center clearly intended for events easily triple the size, and so I felt like I kept missing cosplayers/people because the halls often felt so empty. So I didn’t get the number of cosplay photos I expected. It also meant I didn’t even touch video gaming or tabletop, once we discovered were they were - the size of the rooms made the offerings seem sparse and the atmosphere wasn’t as welcoming. I don’t blame the con - I think it was just because of the location.

So I gave up and ran back to the hotel for lunch/relaxation. Thanks to losing track of time, I ended up not attending the concert I’d wanted to check out and instead went to Right Stuf’s panel with @lechevaliermalfet.

We got 2 awesome pieces of news at that panel, imo.

@lechevaliermalfet​ is the one who introduced me to El Hazard and I really enjoyed it, so the idea of upgrading our copy is excellent. 

I never finished Zetsubou Sensei after I was introduced to it, but I would love to do so one day. This seems like I’ll have the perfect excuse to get my own copy and do just that :)

Right Stuf ended the panel with prize drawings and here came the highlight of the weekend for us: @lechevaliermalfet actually won the grand prize!

That lovely box is the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Collector's Ultra Edition Blu-Ray set. And yeah, it’s impressive. I’ve never seen Gundam Wing, but @lechevaliermalfet has and I suspect we’ll be watching it together soon.

After that, we had some time before our next panel, which was Greg Ayres’ “It Gets Better” event. We actually arrived only a couple minutes late, but we didn’t get into until 20-30 minutes had passed. See, every panel room at Anime Iowa had two entries - but the panel signs and the staff members were only at the “primary” doors for each room. For Greg Ayres, unbeknownst to us and a few other attendees, they closed the main door, which was then locked from the outside. A staffer was at the secondary door to let people in, but there was no signage. And this didn’t appear to have been communicated to other staffers, either - @lechevaliermalfet went to get someone from the info desk, who was just as baffled as we all were. 

Once inside, however, the panel was just as uplifting and empowering as always.

Our next event of the day was “AMV After Dark” which was the AMV contest for 18+ entries. There were only 4 videos, so after the initial voting, we just sat and reviewed previous years’ entries. 

Is this something other cons do? I haven’t been to enough AMV contests to know, but I have to say I like the idea of an 18+ option. 

Obviously, we couldn’t take photos of the actual AMVs, so I just have this quick shot of the screen setup for the event. Given the small number of attendees, this setup worked out quite well. 

And then it was on to J. Michael Tatum’s 18+ panel. Y’all, whether you know who this man is or not, this is the best 18+ voice actor event I’ve been to so far, hands-down. Why?

Well, because the rules are simple: No BS basic questions. Go for the jugular. 

Oh, and be prepared to be embarrassed. See, if you want to ask a question, you have to first win a coin toss. Otherwise, JMT will ask you an embarrassing, adult-rated question. So if you aren’t prepared to embarrass yourself in front of fellow attendees, don’t raise a hand to ask a question. 

It was full of laughs and shock and just a general good time.

(As always, any photos from 18+ events that I post are from before the event starts)

After his panel, the convention center was closing and we all got kicked out. @lechevaliermalfet and I hurried back to the hotel to drop our bags and so I could ditch my license plates, though I forgot to change shoes. Which wasn’t quite as big a mistake as it could have been, but I must remember for next time.

Because we went to the rave. And loved it.

Greg Ayres is an awesome DJ. Whether it was video game music, Baby Shark (yes, really), anime tunes, or whatever...everything blended well and the energy level was high. We ended up staying for over an hour, when originally the plan was to just “check it out.” 

That was when I regretted wearing my boots, since they aren’t exactly made for dancing. But I survived.

And that was Saturday!

My Anime Iowa 2019 coverage

1) Cosplayers of Anime Iowa, Part 1

2) Cosplayers of Anime Iowa, Part 2

3) Anime Iowa 2019: Friday

4) Anime Iowa 2019: Saturday (current post)

5) Anime Iowa 2019: Sunday