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soulmate-game · 5 years ago

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I might make this a tumblr only mini-series of connected oneshots, and I might or might not put them up on AO3 when they are all done. We’ll see how I feel.

I know I submitted this AU to Multifandomscribette, but this is my take on the prompts I gave them. This is not the same AU, and I am not using their headcanons. Just the same basic premise of Marinette being Stephen Strange’s biological daughter.

You know Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, but this story is about

Lady Strange, the Grand Guardian.

What is with this family and alliteration?!

—*—*—*—*—*

Stephen Strange was a narcissistic, emotionally constipated bastard. But he was rich, well known, and handsome, which counted for a lot when he decided he needed some time to relax, unwind, maybe with another human.

And when Sabine Cheng realized what had happened, that night she had catered for a high society medical conference gala in the States, she vowed to never drink again.

She also vowed to never tell Strange about the child growing in her womb. The only person she ever told about her child’s true origin was Tom Dupain, the man she started dating a month after her chance encounter with Doctor Stephen Strange. Nine months after that, when Marinette was almost a month old, she would propose to Tom in blatant disregard of tradition. She would be waiting for years if she wanted Tom to get up the courage to ask her, and even though it hadn’t been a full year yet Sabine knew what she wanted. Seeing the gentle way Tom held her daughter, their daughter, seeing the way he looked at the little baby as if she hung the stars for him, well that only solidified the little Chinese woman’s love for the french man.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng would not know about her true father’s origin until she was twelve, when a science lecture at school had her asking Sabine who had blue eyes in each of their blood lines.

When Sabine hesitated, Marinette knew instantly that something was wrong. Sabine never hesitated. She was a whirlwind of decisiveness, always knowing what to say and how to act. Hesitation wasn’t a part of her.

Sabine told her everything. How her biological father was someone she only met once, how he was a successful surgeon who had won many medical awards. How he didn’t know she existed.

Of course, Marinette was immediately obsessed. Hurt by her mother’s secrecy, she turned her feelings of betrayal into curiosity and researched everything that there was to research about Stephen Strange. Apparently blue eyes ran on his side of the family. His own were more icy than hers, closer to a blue-gray, but familiar all the same. Both his parents were already dead though, so there went her hope of having another set of grandparents.

Marinette even went so far as to read the research papers he had written, and did follow-up research until she understood as much of it as she could. It helped that Professor Mendeleiev was more than willing to sit down and go over the medical papers with her so they could try to understand it all together.

One day, while Marinette was sewing a new dress, she paused with her needle in the air and stared at her fingers. After that day, she took much more pride than before in how steady her hands were. Her father was a surgeon, it must have been a biological trait. She clung onto anything that connected her to the oh-so mysterious Stephen Strange.

And then came Marinette’s thirteenth birthday. The same day that Stephen Strange was in a car accident and deemed in critical condition.

If Marinette kept an app for American news sources on her phone and set them to alert her if the name of her biological father was mentioned in any reports? Well, her parents didn’t need to know.

She didn’t tell her parents about the reason she was so morose for the rest of the day. She didn’t tell anyone.

She cried herself to sleep when Doctor Stephen Strange was declared to have irreversible nerve damage in his hands, and again when he went missing on a mysterious “vacation” that no media sites seemed to have any information on. She didn’t know why she felt so much connection and pain for someone she had never met, but she couldn’t help it. She would keep researching, keeping her eyes out for any mention of the man online without any luck.

That is, until Master Fu and the Miraculous entered her life. Slowly, she began to neglect her obsession with her biological father. Her passing crush on Adrien Agreste even faded away, never having much traction to begin with because of her overlying concern for the father that didn’t even know he had a daughter.

When Marinette was fourteen, the city of Paris was flooded and she had to swim through the quickly bloating bodies of the dead in order to defeat an Akuma. She reversed the damage and everyone who died was resurrected with no memory of their demise, but Marinette would never forget. All it took was a glimpse of the wrong face on the streets and she would be overcome with a panic attack, with the sight of glassy eyes and blue faces.

That was when Hawkmoth’s attacks picked up in intensity. When people began to die during Akuma attacks more frequently. When Marinette stopped sleeping in quite so much.

Her obsession over her father was a mere footnote by then, something she would idly look into on her ever increasingly rare free time with no success.

When Marinette was fifteen years, six months, two weeks, and two days old, Master Fu died. Marinette assumed the alias of Lady Strange, alongside her identity of Ladybug, so that the Miraculous wielders could contact her and know she was the new Guardian without knowing that she was also their leader in the field.

On the one year anniversary of Lady Strange being the Grand Guardian of the Miraculous, there was a worldwide magical disturbance.

Unlike Fu, Marinette did not limit herself to reacting to Miraculous problems.

—*—*—*—*—*

When Stephen glided back down from the equivalent of thousands of years bargaining and dying with Dormammu, he expected Hong Kong to be in a mess. It had been, from what he remembered of the scene before he created the time loop.

But it wasn’t. Instead, the streets looked as if no damage at all had been created. Kaecilius and his remaining zealots were tied up, quite literally, in what looked like string and hung upside down from a lamp post. Sitting down on the curb of the sidewalk and giving him a dangerously sharp glare was a young woman in a spotted costume, a mask over her face. When Strange realized he could not get any of her features to stick in his memory, he realized what she was.

Another magic user, but different from a Sorcerer. Her Neptune blue eyes bore into him with an intensity he was wholly unprepared for, but had no problem baring. After dying almost a million times, a guy tends to grow a backbone of vibranium.

Wong and Mordo stood on either side of the girl, both at a respectful distance. Wong had this wide-eyed look on his face, so much more expressive than usual that it caught the new Sorcerer Supreme off guard. Wong looked… awed?

Mordo, on the other hand, was regarding the girl with a look of barely disguised disdain and distrust. That was in character though, so Stephen didn’t pay it much mind. Instead, he walked over even as his bargain with Dormammu kicked in and Kaecilius’s cult was banished to the Dark Dimension.

“You reversed the damage, then?” He asked without beating around the bush, glancing down briefly to assure that the Eye was, indeed, still on him. It was. The girl stood up, her eyes continuing to blaze with an unknown soup of emotion.

“I did,” she confirmed easily. It wasn’t until he stopped only a few feet away from her that the sorcerer noticed how small she was. The only detail his mind allowed to stick with him besides that fact was that she also looked young. Too young to have to deal with a mess like this. “You might not know of me. The Temple Of Guardians made a deal centuries ago that all records of their existence and our own magic be removed from any Sorcerer sanctums.”

“The temple that appeared in Tibet out of nowhere more than a year ago?” Strange asked, eyebrow raised. “I remember the Ancient One briefly mentioning how much of a hassle it was to hide their reappearance and teleport the temple’s location somewhere new. I was under the impression that all the members of that temple have been in a pocket dimension separate from this reality for almost two hundred years.”

“They have,” the girl confirmed with a nod. “But before that, one of the Guardians escaped that fate. He became the Grand Guardian, and was my teacher until he passed last year. He named me the new Grand Guardian to take his place,” she turned, looking at something that Stephen couldn’t see. “I have illusions keeping us from being seen by the crowd, but it would be better if we took this inside the sanctum,” she said, nodding her head to the Hong Kong Sanctum’s door behind them. Strange simply nodded, more than willing to distract himself from his immeasurably long torture by indulging his curiosity. If this girl showed up and went out of her way to repair the damage the sorcerers and Kaecilius caused, then he wanted to know why.

“Wait,” Mordo barked, walking up to have a heated discussion with Strange that ended in the former storming off. Stephen knew he should be concerned about his former friend’s desertion, but he couldn’t muster up the energy for it yet. Focusing on the mysterious girl in a ladybug suit was an easier topic for his exhausted mind to latch onto.

When they got inside, the Sorcerer Supreme saw that she had even reversed the damage in the building. He saw a few scattered disciples rubbing their heads and looking around in confusion from their spots crouched on the floor. Stephen was almost certain he had seen those same people as corpses before.

The ladybug-spotted girl had scarcely removed her gaze from him for even a second, and easily picked up on the older man’s train of thought.

“My powers reversed all the damage I could handle, including physical wounds and death,” she told him. Strange blinked.

“That explains why I thought you all looked odd. Your clothes are spotless and you don’t look like you’ve fought at all,” he directed that comment to Wong, who merely nodded. “But that doesn’t explain how you can do such a thing. I’ve been intensely studying magic and magic theory for the past almost three and a half years, and I haven’t come across any healing spell that can be this effective without the subject of the healing themselves helping to work the power through their body. I know you are not a sorcerer like we are, but what exactly is your magic? Who are the Guardians? And who exactly are you?”

The girl pursed her lips, waiting until the two older men led her to the still-wrecked tea room. Her power hadn’t been able to reach that far when she had to focus on reviving so many people without the regular Cure. That only worked on victims of Miraculous magic, what she used on the Hong Kong streets and the Sorcerers was a more advanced usage of Tikki’s powers that she learned from both Fu and her periodic visits to the Tibet temple.

“The Guardians are a group of monks dedicated to the protection and distribution of Miraculous, which is essentially magic jewelry. I would normally go on to say how this might sound unbelievable, but you have a very similar pendant around your neck right now,” she pointed out once they all sat and Wong conjured some tea for them all. Stephen tensed at her mention of the Eye of Agamotto, his eyes narrowing. Did she..?

“I know what is inside the Eye,” she confirmed his silent thought, her voice soft but firm. “And I don’t care about it in the slightest. It is probably a good reference point for my explanation though. At the birth of the universe—“

“The Stones came into existence, each one representing and controlling a core aspect of reality,” Strange interrupted impatiently. “I am the Sorcerer Supreme, girl, I already know that.”

The young female rolled her eyes, huffing. “If you listened patiently, you would know that the story you were told is only partially true,” she snapped back with false patience. “The Stones were not the only things of great power to be created during the birth of the universe. Kwami, the first living beings to be born, were also created. They are each living representations of abstract concepts, some of which overlap with the powers of the Stones. The first to be born is the Kwami of Creation. She is essentially the goddess of creation itself, the living embodiment of that very term in every way. She is the source of my abilities, she lends me her power as I am her chosen Wielder. It is that same power of creation that allowed me to essentially counteract the destruction that was caused today, by having a condensed form of her power combat the direct source of the destruction and nullify it. The second Kwami to come into existence is her counterpart and the only one equal to her in power, the Kwami of destruction. There are a lot more, including the Kwami of illusion that used her power to keep us from being seen outside. And the Kwami Of time, which allowed me to experience the time loop you created,” the girl’s eyes sharpened again, boring into his own. “I left it after the equivalent of a few weeks, when I realized I couldn’t join you and do anything to help. The Kwami Of Time is about two-thirds as powerful as the Stone by itself, and there are more than double the amount of Kwamis as there are Infinity Stones,” she took a deep breath. “My job as Grand Guardian is protecting all of them, and distributing the jewelry they are bound to as necessary to combat world or reality threatening events.”

Strange remained quiet after that, drinking in the information and doing his best to wrap his head around it. Perhaps this young woman wouldn’t mind telling him more at a later date, especially seeing as they held equivalent ranking in two separate secret magical organizations. His eyes trailed down to a necklace she was wearing.

“How many of these pieces of jewelry—“

“Miraculous,” She corrected. “That is what they are called.”

“... Miraculous, then. How many are you capable of wielding at once, if they are so similar in strength to a Stone?” Wond asked, crossing his arms. The pigtailed girl leaned back from her spot sitting on the ground with them, humming in thought for a second as she decided what to tell them. A glance at Stephen seemed to make up her mind.

“Creation and Destruction hold equal power to a Stone. The Miraculous one stage lower than that hold four-fifths the power of a Stone. The last tier, where the Time Miraculous sits, is two-thirds,” she told them from memory. “I can wield Illusion, which is on the second tier, along with two third-their, and both Creation and Destruction at the same time,” she admitted. “But it saps a lot of my energy and I rather not ever do that again, if you don’t mind. I can wield all of the Miraculous though, since all of the Kwamis like me and are loyal. I can wear any three at a time, and I can switch between them as quickly as I need to.”

Strange really needed some sleep. Five thousand year’s worth of sleep would be nice. He ran a hand over his forehead, wondering who in the world gave this much responsibility and power to a child.

“One last question, and then you can spend the night if you wish, we’ll begin reconstruction of all the Sanctums in the morning,” Stephen spoke, forcing his back to straighten and his eyes to meet the girl’s. “You never answered it, actually. Who are you?”

The girl's mouth twitched in the first semblance of a smile he had seen on her yet.

“When I am in this transformation, I am Ladybug the hero of Paris,” she said with a grin. “Spots off.”

A soft pink glow ran down her body, very similar to the ring of power that sling rings produced to make portals. It left behind an adorable teenage girl with blue-black hair pulled back into pigtails, and striking blue eyes. She was clearly of Asian descent, but there was something else very familiar about the sharpness of her jaw or the stubbornness in her lip.

“My real name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. However, I go by an alias whenever I act as Grand Guardian, so that there is an extra layer of secrecy to protect me and my loved ones. I created that alias based on my biological father, who was never told that I was even conceived,” she said meaningfully, never losing eye contact with Stephen. His eyebrows furrowed.

“That’s pitiful, but what does—“

“My alias is Lady Strange.”

Wong barked out a short laugh before he forcibly covered his mouth, his eyes filled with sadistic amusement as he watched Strange’s reaction. The elder Strange, that is.

The new leader of the Sorcerers opened and closed his mouth like a fish, completely caught off guard. He looked over to Wong.

“Is there a spell to test paternity?” He asked warily. Marinette’s smile fell a bit, but Wong nodded.

A few flashes of orange light and two green ‘99% Match’ results later, Strange let his head fall into his hands.

“Alright, Marinette,” he finally managed to mumble through the slightly trembling appendages still covering his face. “I just spent thousands of years in a time loop with the Lord of Chaos, my back aches, my head aches, I will deal with this in the morning. Or whenever I wake up. Figures my own blood relation would end up in a position of extreme magical power, must be genetic. I still have questions, but sleep comes first. Don’t expect me to be a good parent. I really need sleep.”

Marinette just giggled, standing up and helping her father to his feet with surprising ease. “Just tell me where to go and I can drop you off in your room. No more magic for the rest of the day, you’re clearly spent. And as long as you make an effort, I’ll be fine. But don’t expect to ignore me and I’ll just go away, I have ways to track you to the ends of the universe and across the multiverse and time itself, and I will not hesitate.”

“Yep, she’s your daughter alright.”

“Sleep, Wong. It’s good for the brain.”

#mlb x marvel #doctor stephen strange #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #doctor strange #no romantic pairing yet #Only familial pairing right now

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crimeronan · 5 years ago

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no supernatural au concept i haven’t been able to stop thinking about since considering ronan and opal were once the same age

the lynch family has a reputation. partly it’s because they’re fucking weird, but let’s be real -- every rural town has its share of characters. weird farmers are par for the course. if the lynch family just kept to themselves at the barns, no one would know they existed. however niall lynch is a swaggering larger-than-life storybook hero who loves attention and scandal, so: the lynch family has a reputation

by and large, the household is made up of known entities. niall, the irishman who never shuts the fuck up. aurora, the quiet beautiful wife with the bizarrely gorgeous beadwork at craft fairs. declan, the eldest son who’s got one foot in DC and won’t ever look back when he gets there. matthew, the youngest boy with the enthusiasm and adoration and intellectual prowess of a golden retriever puppy

however. the lynch twins are largely folkloric

it’s not just that they never seem to appear in public. it’s that there are a dozen decade-old stories told by knitting folks on their porches that cannot POSSIBLY all be true, including:

the lynch twins set fire to the post office

the lynch twins stole four pallets of soda from the back of a truck unloading at the henrietta general store and drank all the evidence

the lynch twins lured a man into the woods and stabbed him in the leg

the lynch twins helped the local vet’s office coordinate 30 TNR procedures because they’ve befriended a colony of feral cats

the lynch twins trained a rotating cast of corvids to shit on the mayor when he leaves his office every evening

the lynch twins were banned from three local churches after incidents involving a statue of mary, stained glass worth several thousand dollars, and the preacher’s microphone respectively

adam doesn’t give much of a shit about local gossip but has gleaned quite a bit of it when being deferential and polite to middle-aged women at the dollar store. it takes him a month of attending aglionby to put together that ronan and declan are siblings (they look unbelievably alike, but their body language and speech are SO different) and another week after that to realize ronan’s one-half of the unidentified lynch family variables

“isn’t there another one of him?” adam blurts

declan looks up and blinks, nonplussed rather than smooth for once in his life. “excuse me?”

adam’s eating lunch and has ended up at a table with declan not because of friendliness, but because declan’s taking a break from his roving cast of intransient social interactions to work on college apps and adam’s getting a head start on homework. neither is here to make friends. adam nods across the room at ronan, who appears to be constructing a fully landscaped mountain sculpture out of french fries

declan says “god, i wish” as ronan upends a bottle of ketchup over the fries and causes a volcanic eruption that obliterates everything in the lunch table’s path

that tells adam absolutely nothing but also he doesn’t really care. later, when he and gansey are friends, and he’s no closer to understanding ronan but much more actively annoyed by him, he asks gansey the same thing

“oh, his sister!” gansey says, and beams. this at least explains why she doesn’t go to aglionby. “she’s great. she’s taught me a lot about what plants want to kill you”

adam can’t decide what to make of this. once upon a time he’d think that the affection of someone like gansey predisposed the mysterious lynch sister toward being like declan, but it turns out gansey reserves that ebullient expression for losers like him and ronan and noah alone, so. more data necessary

it’s important to note that this isn’t like, occupying a huge part of adam’s mind. it’s just idle querying because he likes knowing things. to that end, he asks ronan once if he’d ever met ronan’s sister when adam attended the public junior high. they’d be in the same grade, right??

ronan gets weird and evasive with some response about how she homeschools with his mom, and adam’s like okay, some religious cult thing with the women running the farm. whatever. not my issue

adam and ronan get slowly closer over time, etcetc, you know how it goes. eventually adam's invited to the barns. his first few visits are normal. suspiciously normal. aurora is loving and gentle in a way that makes adam skittish - probably more due to his own issues than any Actual malevolence, but who knows - and there is zero mention or sign of a girl living there

it doesn’t Really bother adam, but it kind of bothers him. less because he’s dying to meet her and more because equations that don’t add up make him nervous. his running list of theories include 1) she doesn’t exist 2) she’s dead 3) she’s at some elite boarding school for girls in connecticut 4) she’s an emancipated minor 5) she’s not an emancipated minor but has run away anyway 6) she’s a fugitive from justice 7) she’s in prison 8) she’s dead but, like, worse this time

adam carefully and subtly raises his concerns to ronan by asking, “so is your sister being tortured in your attic or what?”

ronan, reasonably, is like, “the fuck?”

adam’s like, “look, all i’m saying is that when a twin goes missing in a story and no one seems to care, something sinister’s afoot. that’s all i’m saying here.”

ronan’s like, “say the word ‘afoot’ again. you sound like gansey. come on”

he takes adam out for a walk in the woods, which seems like a pretty murdery way to respond. adam, uncomfortably aware of that rumor about luring people to the woods and stabbing them in the leg, is like okay i’m about to die here. i’ve uncovered a lifetime movie plot and now i’m gonna be buried in unmarked barrel #457. what a way to go

this is pretty much confirmed when he gets attacked

he hits the ground before he’s really registered anything beyond a surprise impact. it drives the breath out of his lungs. he flips onto his back right away. ronan’s got half a foot of height on him and stupidly long legs so a sprinting escape doesn’t seem viable. he’s gonna have to rely on the old-fashioned power of fingernails and kicking

he has time to see a pair of blown-pupil eyes WAY too close to his face before the weight disappears from him. the culprit is a girl, late teens, with hair that’s probably blonder when the matted dirt is washed out of it. “for fuck’s fucking sake,” ronan is saying, hauling her to her feet and blessedly away from adam’s vulnerable internal organs, “why. WHY.”

“holy shit.” adam sits up, clutching his chest. he can feel every bone in his body. “god. god. god”

the girl is almost as tall as ronan. she’s dressed in some kind of baggy coverall-ish getup that might once have been an army parachute. she is not wearing any shoes. there’s some blood on her face from a recently-opened scab, and also a black speck on one cheek that adam thinks is a smashed fly

“you didn’t jump gansey!” ronan is saying, extremely exasperated. “why!”

“i didn’t have my hammock yet when gansey first came,” she says. she does not sound remotely sorry

adam looks up and discovers that there is in fact a hammock stretched between the trees. it’s one of those heavy-duty camping numbers with thick canvas and a full insect net. it’s also thirty feet in the air. there are branches on the way down, but they are very precariously spaced. adam does not want to know how she parkoured to leap onto his shoulders

“when you snap someone’s neck,” ronan says, “i’m not helping you hide the body”

“who says i haven’t already?”

“the fuck? and you didn’t ask me to help hide the body?”

she darts a few feet away and pulls herself into a tree. adam watches with slight fascination as she shimmies out along a long branch until it dips under her weight. as he gets to his feet, trying to piece together his wilted dignity, she rides her makeshift nature elevator down until she’s staring into his eyes again. hugging the branch like a snake. absolutely no consideration for how normal human beings behave. it’s almost marvelous

“sufficiently free of my attic, parrish?” ronan asks

“uh, yeah. yep”

“so this is opal,” ronan says

opal flips over so she’s hanging from the branch like a sloth. then hooks her legs around it and reaches down until her palms are flat on the ground. cartwheels out of the tree like a particularly feral acrobat. adam jerks back to avoid being smacked by a faceful of twigs at the whipcrack slingshot of the branch bouncing back

opal pulls a pocketknife from one of the folds in the DIY parachute sewing machine tick protection onepiece from hell. adam eyes her warily

“opal, this is parrish. or adam. whichever. don’t stab him”

“god,” adam says again

opal beams. she opens the pocketknife, but all she does is start cleaning bits of plaque from between her teeth with the tip, which is somehow so much worse than stabbing. adam looks at ronan and finds him pinching the bridge of his nose. it occurs to adam that this is the only time he’s EVER seen ronan express any sense of embarrassment in any social situation. ronan has no sense of propriety. adam didn’t know he was capable of feeling embarrassed

he immediately likes opal just for that.

“yes,” opal says, unconcerned, answering a question no one’s actually asked. “ronan is the normal one”

#i spent nearly. 2 hours writing this stupid thing. this concept is so excellent #trc #pynch #opal lynch #my writing #this was SUPPOSED to be short enough i wouldn't have to readmore it but. shrug emoji #adam parrish #ronan lynch

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tazzytypes · 4 years ago

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Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 8

Hey guys! So sorry it took a bit longer this time to get a chapter out. As always I love hearing from you guys and every comment and Kudos keeps me going. Realy, your support, no matter how small you think it is, means a lot to me. This chapter is a bit slower, in my opinion, but I hope you all will like it!

Read on AO3 or see Masterpost for more chapters!

Em had decided to drop the investigation into the Geiger counter and focus on more productive investigations. The work schedule and manual from Mead’s closet would bear more fruitful and usable data, but it didn’t mean that moving from it was easy. Something about Stu’s death was off, they all knew it. Em knew about answer lay in that single page of shorthand gibberish.

Now they were in the library... her and Emily at least. Timothy was in a meeting. Langdon had the worst timing... or the best. Depended on what eyes you looked with.

A book sat in her lap, closed after she had read the last page. Dante’s Divine Comedy — she had meant to read it above ground but... well she had meant to do a lot of things. As the days went on the more worry she had over an idea of an afterlife. She was desperate for it and if, as an unbeliever, she was cast to hell, she’d much prefer to have an idea what torture she faced.

Frowning, her hand went to her throbbing leg. Em prayed her sewing skills were enough to mend the wound, small but deep. She had dressed it with some cloth from the towel she had bloodied and tied it in place with a ribbon. Most of the time she could hardly feel it, but one wrong move and she was hissing in pain.

Emily was doing some reading of her own, that of the more productive sort. She understood science much better than Em did and was having a go at the Geiger counter note.

“You know what I hate most about stories?” the brunette mused aloud after staring at the ceiling for a good twenty minutes.

Emily’s eyes didn’t leave her book, “What?”

“The ending.”

Her friend's nose scrunched for a moment before she turned to her, “isn’t that the whole point of reading? To make it to the end?”

“It’s sad,” Em sighed, “isn’t it?”

Em shrugged, watching her friend stare at the sky, “depends on the ending.”

“No... happy or not... it’s sad.”

Emily sighed, closing her book and stashing the note in her corset, “I think you’ve been spending too much time in your own head.”

“So have you,” Em reminded.

“Because I’m trying to figure something out.”

This piqued Em’s interest, eyes glimmering with the excitement of something new as she leaned towards her friend. “A mystery.”

Emily laughed and shook her head at the other woman’s antics, “you make it sound dramatic.”

“We’re some of the last people on earth... everything we do is dramatic as there is nothing to compare it to.”

“You’re eccentric, you know that?”

Em was starving for something new to investigate. Her mind needed a focus or else it would go into the worst places. “What’s the mystery, Miss Holmes?”

Her friend rolled her eyes but quickly turned to business.

“Venable is hiding something.”

“Venable is hiding a great deal of things,” Em noted, “that isn’t something new. So is Langdon, but that’s part of his job description.”

“Why the secrecy, though?”

“Knowledge is power.”

“But what is the truth?” Emily said, “we’ve been here for almost two years and all we’ve found out is when certain Wardens work and decontamination procedures and whatever else is in that manual.”

“Then how do we find out their secret plot?” Em asked, “preferably before we have to put that manual to good use.”

Emily rose from her seat and quickly made sure the library was empty. It wasn’t a particularly large library... about the size of the one at her high-school. She looked down every aisle before coming to sit back down, leaning in close to Em.

“Timothy and I are working one out,”

“Oh?” Em asked, raising an eyebrow.

Emily’s face flushed, “Not like that!”

“Don’t dash the power of a romantic subplot.”

“Did you always speak in poetry or have you finally gone insane?”

“I’ve simply lost my filter,” Em dismisses with a wave of her hand, “this plan of yours?”

“We need you to distract Langdon.”

El laughed, quickly quieting when she realized her friend wasn’t laughing along.

“That man would see right through any attempt.”

“He likes you,” Emily reminded, “why else would he call you to his office so often?”

“Bored cats will catch mice and watch them run around, barely surviving death for hours on end, just for their own amusement.”

“...so Langdon’s a cat.”

“He something far worse.”

Emily sighed, “will you help us or no?”

Em really didn’t want to tell her friend that she would be a hindrance to the investigation due to her injured leg. However, saying that would bring up more questions and she really didn’t want the girl to think she had completely lost her mind. Blackouts were one thing... homicidal urges were something else entirely. And the possibility of them happening at the same time? Not a cocktail she was willing to try.

“Your best bet is to observe his behavior and watch for patterns,” She noted, “find out when he’s distracted. You’re smart, Emily, that’s why you’re here.”

“So you’re not going to help us?”

“I want to live,” Em insisted, “the best I can do is keep silent while you two work. Venable’s already watching me like a hawk and she’d gladly take down all of us if it meant killing me.”

Emily understood her friend’s reluctance. Last time Em had a more hands-on role. She could take action if things went wrong.

“Don’t you want to know?” She asked, grabbing her friend’s hands and squeezing them, “knowledge is power, right?”

Em remembered her vision, Emily and Timothy laying on the floor while foaming at the mouth. Their eyes staring desperately at the sky as if begging god to spare them.

She cursed under her breath and pulled away from Emily’s touch, pinching her nose and sighing.

“Where do you need me to be?”

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

By the time Timothy arrived Em and Emily had long grown bored of talking plans. In all honesty, the less Em knew of what they were doing the better it was. If she got caught there’d be nothing to pry from her. All that mattered was Em would make a distraction at the right time, pretend to search through his office while Timothy and Emily searched his room.

For now, however, they were content to play Heads Up and pretend the real world didn’t exist.

“Am I a pretty… lady?” Em asked. She was never good at this game.

Emily was sitting in Timothy’s lap, draped over him like a cat with her legs propping up on the armrest of the sofa.

“Would she be?” Timothy asked her.

Emily hummed, “I’m not sure.”

“Let me rephrase it,” Em proposed, turning to Emily, “is she my type?”

“Yes,” Timothy answered a bit too quickly, Emily giving him a look and shaking her head.

“But she has—” he tried to reason.

“But she doesn’t have—” Emily reminded, the pair staring at one another until they burst into laugher. Emily curled into Timothy, her head resting in the crook of his neck.

They were interrupted, as always, by a screeching of the library doors. Laughter halted in their throats, eyes turning towards the sound of feet on carpet as silence overtook the room save the small sizzling of melted wax meeting fire.

Mead appeared from the shadows of the room, arms crossed as she came to stand before them. Her eyes narrowed as she realized two-thirds of them had a piece of paper taped to their heads, something written upon them which she could not see.

She turned to Em with and sighed, “Michael wants to see you.

Not bothering to hide her annoyance, Em rolled her eyes and rose from the armchair.

“Who was I?” She asked the pair.

“Gwyneth Paltrow,” Emily said with a smile.

Em turned to Timothy and gave him a look. Her type? Really?

“Oh, honey,” She said, “bless your heart.”

Emily smiled and leaned in to whisper in his ear, “That’s southern for stupid.”

“You said Pepper Pots could get it!” Timothy exclaimed.

“Pepper Pots is a badass,” Em noted before turning to follow Mead.

“They’re the same person!” Timothy shouted, exasperated as Emily’s laughter echoed through the room. It only stopped when the door closed behind Em, sealing off the pair from the rest of the world.

“You have a—” Mead noted, motioning to Em’s head.

“Oh!”

Em laughed and took the card from her head, staring at it for a moment before turning to Mead.

“Do you mind?” She asked the woman, holding out the card. There were some things she’d like Langdon to not know, small as it may be.

Mead sighed, trying to sound annoyed as she took the paper.

“Half the time I don’t know what to expect with you three.”

“Have to pass the time somehow.”

“Who’s Gwenneth Paltrow?” Mead asked, opening the paper and turning it back and forth in her hand.

“Actress,” Em told her, side eying the paper and trying not to think of the dull ache in her leg, “always on about that crazy new-age stuff that makes no sense.”

Mead shrugged and pocketed the paper, “never was one for all that crap.”

“Me neither,” Em admitted, “only know the name because she got into some crazy cult shit.”

Her companion let out a barking laugh, an infectious smile crawling onto Em’s lip, “so did half of Hollywood.”

The woman showed no hint of suspicion towards Em. Then again, Mead was the type of person who knew how to control her speech and emotions until it was time to strike.

A familiar sound of a cane caught the pair’s attention as they made it up the stairs— tap-ta-tap, tap-ta-tap. Em looked to Mead, trying to read any emotion on her face. There wasn’t… something that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Venable’s face greeted them as they turned onto one of the many upstairs hallways. Em took some satisfaction in the momentary widening of her eyes as the woman saw them. The expression quickly straightened, lips pursed as Venable tore her eyes from Em and laid them upon her escort.

“Miss Mead,” she said, voice reminding the brunette of when her parents pretended they weren’t at one another’s throats just a moment before they sat down for dinner, “May I have a word.”

Mead’s only response was a subtle nod before she turned to Em, “you know the way.”

Em offered her a friendly smile, making sure it remained on her face as she walked past Venable. Her contempt was so easy to read.

“Have a good day, Miss Mead.”

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

Langdon was standing by the fire when Em entered. It felt like he hadn’t moved since their last visit, affixed to the same spot she had left him with his hands behind his back. She took a moment to read the room as she closed the door quietly behind her.

There were no wardens in the room, meaning he probably didn’t see them in Mead’s room and that Venable most likely didn’t inform him of her suspicions. So Venable didn’t trust him… that was revealing.

“Is this another interview?” Em asked as she took a few steps forward. She imagined he already knew she was there, but her words finally forced him to turn and acknowledge her. A smile flickered to his lips as he turned to her.

“This time more of a social call.”

“Oh?” she said, a brow quirking up her forehead and a smirk finding it’s way to her lips, “Is that what you’re telling residents now?”

Langdon glanced to the floor, still smiling as he shook his head. Finally, he gestured to a set of armchairs facing the fire. She rounded them, taking the one on her right. Her hands rested on the back as she waited for Langdon to move.

His eyes were focused on her skirt, eyes slightly narrowed in thought. Her awkward gait was obvious to him, slight as the limp may be. Langdon didn’t note it, simply staring at the woman until she finally sat. Em did so with a sigh, eyes turning to the chess set that sat on a small table between them. It looked like he had been mid-game with someone.

“You play?” she asked as he sat next to her, legs crossing as he turned towards her ever slightly.

“On occasion. You?”

“I used to be good once,” She admitted with a rueful smile, hands going to straighten one of the knights, “but I haven’t played since I was a child.”

This visit felt different from the others. Langdon seemed almost relaxed, leaning back into his chair and hands free of any files. The fire crackled before them, making the world feel a little more quiet than usual.

“Why is that?” he asked. She felt his eyes on her but refused to look at him, occupying herself by fiddling with the pieces.

“My parents weren’t overly fond of spending time with me… though they pretended they did.”

“Perhaps I can reteach you.” Langdon offered.

Finally, Em’s head rose from the chess set. He watched as green eyes flickered between himself and the fire, never quite meeting his gaze.

“I’d like that.”

They set to fixing up the chess pieces, exchanging pieces that lay on the other’s side. He chose the black pieces and she took the white — she’d have to make the first move. Though, that wasn’t surprising when it came to conversations with the man.

“You’ve spoken a lot about your parents,” he noted, “what about the rest of your family.”

“Emotionally abusive father and a codependent mother,” she noted, “are a perfect equation for isolation. One that kept us from reaching out to others and ensured that my siblings would rarely return home.”

“You feared him,” he noted, taking a bishop she held out to him, “your father.”

“Fear,” she corrected, “present tense.”

“But the bombs—”

“Fear is illogical that way,” Em noted, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“What was your family like?”

Langdon paused, eyes betraying his amusement as he debated what he said next. A few details wouldn’t hurt.

“I was adopted by a family friend after my grandmother committed suicide.”

She didn’t apologize as most people did. Her eyes said enough. He expected the usual questions, the kind one would encounter in therapy. Em was debating which ones would be appropriate.

“Do you miss her?”

“Which one?”

“Either.”

Langdon sighed and placed his last pawn in place, “someone once told me that nostalgia is much nicer than true memories.”

“smart person,” Em noted, moving her first piece — a knight.

“She was.”

He was quick to counter her move, choosing to move a pawn near the outer edges of the board. The fire crackled as a log snapped in two, settling into the center of the fire with a rippling crack.

“I have to admit your quick thinking is intimidating.”

“Take all the time you need,” he reassured.

Her hands hovered over the board, fingers twitching as she ran through possible outcomes in her head. When she spoke, her voice sounded distant.

“So you can pick at my brain while it’s distracted?”

Langdon chuckled, moving a piece after she moved forward another knight, “Something like that.”

A comfortable silence filled the room as they got into the game, Michael’s movements quick while Em took more time to play out moves in her head.

“Are you sure about that?” he had taunted at some point, a devilish grin on his face. Em paused for only a moment. If she didn’t move the rook to take his bishop he’d have check in two.

“Fuck off, Langdon,” she laughed, moving the piece despite his warning. Her laugh was infectious as he shrugged his shoulders and moved another piece.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Langdon won, naturally. Though Em had a feeling he hadn’t played fair. His smugness filled the room, leaning back in his chair with an air of content at having beaten her. It both annoyed and amused her — like when her brother beat her at Super Smash Bros.

“Another round,” she demanded and he rose a brow, sitting up in his seat. He rose an amused brow and she shook her head. “This time we play checkers.”

“Checkers?”

“I lived in the south,” she reminded, ignoring a stare that displayed how much the man was judging her, “there were Cracker Barrel restaurants on every major exit. One was right across from the college dorms I stayed in.”

“So you’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Don’t worry,” she teased, “perhaps I can teach you.”

He smiled and put the chess pieces away as she pulled the checkers out from the compartment inside the board. She set them out and waited for him to make the first move.

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Em said as she quickly countered his move. He chuckled at the symmetry of her actions and waved his hand for her to proceed.

“Why was this place designed to fail?”

The way his hand hesitated over his piece betrayed his surprise, quickly recovering and completing his move. Her pieces clicked against the board as she countered, waiting for him to respond.

The blond straightened back into the iron mask he wore around the rest of the residents. “What makes you say that?”

Answering questions with questions. That was also a game she knew well.

“This whole place was designed on the tip of a knife,” She explained, balancing a checker on the tip of her finger, “We’re just waiting to lose our balance.”

To emphasize her point she allowed the checker to fall. It clattered on top of the other pieces she had stolen from Langdon.

“And what would you do to make it better?” he posed, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Do you want me to alphabetically or categorically?”

Langdon leaned back with a short barking laugh. He stared at her with what she’d almost consider pride… the cat’s favorite mouse. He waved a hand again, prompting her to continue.

“Whatever is easier.”

The board lay between them, game abandoned in light of a more interesting chain of events. She mirrored his actions, considering which point to bring up first.

“This place was built by the rich, yes?”

He nodded, watching her intently.

“Why the hell would the rich settle for unfulfilling cubes?”

“Those cubes—”

Em cut him off with a sigh, “have all the nutrients we need but not all the calories. An extreme coupon mom would have a greater quantity and quality of rations than we do.”

The blond prepared himself for a long conversation, leaning his head against a hand that was propped up on the armrest of his chair. She stared at him, waiting for a response.

“What else?” he asked with a sigh.

“The Cooperative put in place a NASA-esk water filtration unit, but couldn’t find a way to have a self-sustaining food resource?”

“You make it sound easy,” he noted.

“It is,” She stated, “Scientists already had designs in place before the bombs dropped.”

“This does nothing to prove we intended the worst,” He nearly sang.

“Then why do you claim there is a sanctuary more equipped for this? Why is that not the standard for all the outposts?”

Langdon thought back to his first interaction with the girl. Her first accusation. He should have known she’d be trouble from the start… but perhaps he could use this to his advantage. Leaning forward, he moved another piece across the board.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Em was intent to get to her thesis — the final blow.

“You intended this from the beginning — make people desperate enough to see their true colors then pick them off one by one.”

He chuckled, twirling one of her pieces in his hands and he shook his head and stared into the fire.

“Someone’s done their research.”

“Venable and yourself are the most openly condescending people I’ve ever met… you both think you’re so smart and with this crowd that’s mostly the case.” She said with a scoff.

Em took one of his pieces, then another, “you’re so pleased with yourselves that anyone with a brain can look right through you and see your intentions. No offense.”

“None taken,” he said with a smile, “…Mostly the case?”

“Timothy and Emily were chosen for their genetics. That’s the only good choice The Cooperative has made thus far.”

“Your care for them makes you blind to their faults,” he noted, “no offense.”

“None taken.” Em said, offering a shrug as she collected three more of his pieces, “King me.”

They lapsed back into a comfortable silence. Langdon lost and as she had expected he did so poorly, immediately challenging her to another game. That meant what she had said had some effect on the man. He sought to cover his fumble with conversation as they began the next round, asking about her observations of Outpost Three’s inner-workings.

Even that conversation came to comfortable silence, Langdon far more intent on this game compared to the last. Em stared at him when he wasn’t looking, too busy playing out moves in his head. His lips would twitch ever slightly when he thought.

“Do you ever feel lonely?” she asked him, playing the question in her head a few times before speaking.

“Lonely?” He echoed, voice distant as he finally moved a piece, “I thought we already had this conversation.”

The brunette sighed and stared at the pieces for a long moment as she ran through what to say next.

“Do you ever have that feeling that something is supposed to be there, but isn’t?”

He also took a moment to think, mouth open for a moment as he chose the right words to say, “I’m afraid I am unfamiliar with the emotion.”

“You’re lucky then,” She admitted, “sometimes it’s often claustrophobic in nature… like looking for a friend in a sea of thousands.”

“I thought you said you were content with your own company?” he asked, moving his piece to the other side of the board, “king me.”

“I am, but… I can’t place it. It feels different somehow.”

He looked at her, brows knitted together as he moved another piece, “how so?”

“It’s the same yearning I feel for a sense of purpose,” she said, shaking her head and speaking before she could think. Her eyes were on Langdon, but the man could tell she was looking at something past the physical realm. “But more specific. I yearn for someone or something, but I can’t place it’s… like I’m looking at it through a fog.”

“We all left things behind in the old world,” he noted, giving her his full attention “perhaps you are searching for something you lost.”

She sighed, “but reminiscing on such things is a fruitless task. Nostalgia is only healthy in small doses.”

“Nostalgia can be good.”

“Too much of anything is a bad thing,” Em noted.

“That it is.”

A buzzing in her head made Em focus back on the game before her. The sound of pieces moving made the blond turn back towards her, out of his thoughts and back into the current moment.

“What is it like?” Em asked, changing the subject, “traveling from outpost to outpost?”

“Is that what prompted your question?” he asked, sighing as he forced his mind back on strategy.

“In part.” She admitted.

“I’d call it a time to reflect,” he noted with a sigh, “but it’s hard to think when you’re keeping an eye out for cannibals.”

Em’s gaze turned to the fire, brows bunched together at the bridge of her nose. Venable had been right. She had somewhat hoped the monsters the woman spoke of would be nothing but fear-mongering.

“It’s only been a year and people are already—”

She cut herself off. Biting her lips and shaking her head, she chided herself, “no… that’s not fair of me to say.”

“Law was the only thing keeping humankind from its unlimited cruelty,” Langdon noted, hardly phased as he got yet another piece to the other side of the board. He was a quick learner. “The outcome isn’t that much of a surprise.”

Em was quick to change the subject, “What did you see out there?”

“Nothing pleasant.”

For some reason, he wished to keep the reality from her. Whether out of compassion or a desire to keep her ignorant, she couldn’t quite tell.

“I’d like to know,” she finally insisted, “Venable has only told us so much and we’re forbidden from leaving the premise… even with hazmat suits.”

Langdon nodded. He expected as much from the two women — Venable and Em. Pausing from the game, he gave her his full attention — turning in his chair and resting his elbows on the armrest closer to her.

“The trees are barren and everything is covered in thick green fog,” he said, slow and methodical as if he were trying to recall every last detail, “the animals have gone rabid or are in the very late stages of cancer. You cannot see the sun in the sky… an eternal night.”

“What about the people?”

“Killing each other for food or simply out of paranoia. Cancer and tumors are the norm for most.”

Her arms had come to brace themselves on the arms of her chair, knuckles white and jaw clenched. She stared into the fire but did not see it, darkness clouding her vision as she was sent back into that first day in the outpost. How many of those messages weren’t their last? How many survived only to face torment? How many had she abandoned in the wastelands?

“The children?” she forced herself to ask, forcing herself to look at him. His eyes widened every slightly before he glanced away, conflicted. She watched his chest rise and fall, his eyes close momentarily as he centered himself before speaking.

“On the way here, I came across a woman,” He told her, “A young mother, with two children. They were some of the unlucky ones who were far from the blast radius to survive the fireball, but… not the radiation.”

Em’s mouth opened every slightly in shock as she realized he was crying, a single tear breaking free and racing down his cheek.

He held his hand up, the other hovering over it and tracing up his arm as he continued to recall the incident before resting at his chest, “they were covered in tumors — sores. Their lungs were burned from the toxic air.”

With a clench of his fists, he fell back in his chair and refused to meet her eye, “After a few moments I realized that the child she was carrying in her arms was dead. She was begging for us to murder her other child out of mercy… she didn’t have the strength to do it herself.”

Em didn’t even realize she was crying until he turned to her. She stiffened as he reached out a hand to her cheek, cupping it and brushing away the tear gently with his thumb.

“Did you?” she asked, voice hardly above a whisper and his hand still on her cheek.

Blue eyes refused to look away from her, “Did I what?”

“Have mercy.”

An emotion she had never seen on him before tainted his features. It made his face fall, his eyes shine in a way that wasn’t pleasant and his lips part every slightly. His hand pulled back from hers and he turned away from her, closed himself off.

“No,” he finally answered, “I couldn’t bring myself to.”

Langdon felt regret… shame.

“I doubt anyone could.”

“Why do you cry for them?” he asked.

“I have nieces and nephews,” she said, “friends and—”

A frog sat in her throat keeping her from speaking. She waited a few moments before clearing her throat and drying her eyes, forcing the unpleasant emotion back from whence it came. After a few more breaths of unprompted tears, she spoke again.

“I’m sorry for bringing up a depressing topic.”

“Knowledge is power,” he noted, “and the desire of power is in our nature.”

Langdon cleared his throat as well before turning back to the game. It seemed both of them were content to pretend the last few moments be forgotten… for now, at the very least.

“What would you do to survive?” he asked her, waiting for her to make a move.

She sighed rather loudly. Naturally, he was using interview questions to take back the power he had relinquished for but a moment. Still made her head feel light like she had whiplash.

“What would I want to do?” she asked, moving a piece without much thought. Langdon was keen to take advantage, quickly moving his piece to take over it. “Or what I would actually do?”

He scoffed, “is there a difference?”

“Of course. I’d like to think I’d preserve some of my humanity — morality and the like.”

“But in reality?”

Em opened her mouth and closed it again. What would she do? So far she had certainly become more… adventurous wasn’t quite the right word. Admitting that, however, would be giving him and, in turn, The Cooperative more information than she was willing to part with.

“I don’t know,” she said, “It’s hard to know what you’d do until you are forced to take action.”

“You like to skirt around questions,” he notes, “despite my warning against hedging.”

“You want honest answers,” she reminded, “that required introspection — especially with these questions. It’s rarely linear.”

“How do you react to conflict?” he asked, sounding like he was reading from a list. Em wouldn’t be surprised if he had all the questions memorized at this point.

“What kind of conflict?”

He sighed, trying to be annoyed but failing as a hint of a smile let itself be known, “Your answers tend towards the circumstantial.”

“C’est la vie,” Em said with a shrug, moving a piece and watching Langdon frown as she captured one of his kings.

“It certainly keeps at least one of these conversations interesting.”

Em gave him a look, “is this a conversation?”

“We’re communicating, are we not?”

“You’re asking questions and I’m talking about myself for…”

She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room, “… an hour. Not much of a conversation.”

“Therapists would disagree.”

“You’re my therapist now?

He didn’t look at her, but she could see him smirk, “…of a sort.”

The brunette leaned forward in her chair, regarding him for a moment, “Then what do you see?”

Langdon’s head quirked to the side as he eyed her, “I see a woman who hides her insecurities behind bold and intelligent words… a philosopher without students.”

Em could only laugh, sparing him an amused but unbelieving look, “You give me far too much credit.”

“My records indicate you were quite introverted and withdrawn before,” he noted, “What changed?

“When you stare at death he does not care what mask you ware,” she told him, voice distant as if it was not her own, “so why bother with pretenses and polite society?”

“Why, indeed?”

They finished the game, coming to an impasse with two kings following each other across the board. Langdon rose from his chair and wandered over to the pitcher of water from before.

“You care for some?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

He turned to her with a Cheshire grin, “what happened to polite society?”

“Born in the south, remember? We mind our P’s and Q’s and say ‘bless your heart’ instead of ‘go to hell.’”

“I hear it’s quite pleasant this time of year,” he said, turning with two glasses of water.

“Hocus Pocus,” she noted.

“A staple in my house during Halloween,” he noted, a sad smile coming to his lips.

She rose and took a step forward as he approached her, hand extended to take the glass from his hands. A thankful smile turned tense as too much pressure was placed on her bad leg. After sitting for so long, she had forgotten it was there. She leaned back on her good leg and regulated her expression.

Langdon didn’t seem to notice and she pulled back and carefully lowered herself into the chair, waiting for him to move and do the same. Placing the glass on the table beside her, she turned to make a comment about a third and final match only to find him crouched on the ground.

Red coated his fingers, a small puddle on the ground the size of a silver dollar. One of her stitches must have torn. Of all the timing…

“You’re hurt,” he noted, looking up to her, “where?”

“Oh,” she tried to write off, “it’s embarrassing, but I think that’s— “

His eyes were deadly as he stood and stepped towards her, a growl in his throat, “we agreed not to lie.”

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Em lifted up her skirt to reveal the comically small injury that sat three inches above her knee. As she feared, unbinding the bandages revealed the stitching had come undone.

He kneeled down in front of her, hand hovering over the wound. “What happened?”

She tied the bandages around it, resolving to cauterize it later as she knotted the ribbon extra tightly around her leg. Langdon retreated as she threw her skirts over it once more, obviously not wanting to let the incident rest or for her to leave his office without treatment.

“A fucked up side-effect of conditioning.”

Langdon sighed, “this is why I said—”

“I’d be better off acting on my anger?” she snipped, “oh, yes, I remember. You were quite insistent on that point.”

Em averted her eyes, staring past him and into the fire with venom. From the corner of her eye, she could see Langdon sigh, shoulders falling ever slightly.

Her shoulders tensed as she felt a hand upon them, finally turning towards Langdon as she realized he refused to pull away. He wanted to speak, she could tell that from the way his lips pressed together. Why was he speechless? Langdon had a response for everything.

Green eyes couldn’t look away from him— his knitted brow and the frown that marred his features. His hand rose to her cheek and all she could feel was her heart beating in her ears as the heat rising up her neck. His thumb ghosted under her eyes, over the tired circles where tears had been not even thirty minutes before.

This strange and witty woman… why did she have such an effect on him?

Hands curled around the back of her neck as he moved her hair from around her face. The pieces she had pinned back had begun to fall from their confines.

His fingers pulled her forward, thumb hovering under her chin. She felt like she was under a spell, unable to move. Did she want to move? All she could feel was her heart trying to force its way through her chest.

She smelled sweet— lavender and earth overwhelming him in the best way. His eyes flickered between her mouth and her eyes, his neck craning to the side as he felt her breath on his face.

Then, she suddenly tensed. Breaking free of the spell, she pulled back— jumping off the chair and past him to the door. She had let her guard down and… she didn’t know what to feel. The hammering in her heart told her to run, but—

“I’m leaving,” She whispered.

Langdon took a step towards her, a hand outreached. He moved as if he were approaching a wounded animal, slow and tentative.

“The interview isn’t over,” he said, hand coming gently around her wrist.

“Yes,” She growled, realizing something that made her steel herself against him and tear her hand from his grasp, “it is.”

“This could forfeit your place—” he began, cursing himself as he realized how he sounded.

“So be it. I don’t care.”

She tried to open the door and his hand went instinctively to keep it from opening. He needed her to understand. He needed—

“I’m not here to hurt you,” He all but pleaded, “take a seat.”

“…You’re right—” she finally said after a moment. His grip on the door loosened and a smile of relief came to his face, tenseness leaving his body.

The door slammed into his head as she threw it open. With a grunt of pain, he fell back and gripped at his head. When he looked up a satisfied smirk was on her face, the door blocking her body from him like a shield.

“— My anger is best used outward instead of inward.” She said, disappearing back into the hall. By the time he stumbled to the door and threw it open once more she was gone… like she had never been there in the first place.

The thought of that terrified him.

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

Em was… well, she wanted to pace, but the newly cauterized wound on her leg would have protested too much. So there she was, seething on her bed. Her hands dug into the comforter, pretending it was someone’s throat.

At least this time she had been sure to put away her knife first. Then again, the now blistering skin took care of any destructive and impulsive urges she may have.

She had been blind, the desire for having her life mean something clouding the reality of logic and fact. Langdon wanted her to depend on him. He wanted her to think she was special. Em wasn’t. She was an average person with a tragic childhood. A dime a dozen case.

Coco probably got the same treatment. They were both single and desperate to survive, desperate to be wanted. Langdon weaponized sex.

… But that wasn’t what it was. Not to Em, at least. It was vulnerability, understanding, trusting someone with—

He was playing with their emotions. All their emotions. Part of her was willing to be strung along. Was certainly an easier route.

With a sigh, she hung her head in her hands. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. To live or not to live… wasn’t that the fucking question? She was supposed to graduate this year, get a shitty job with shitty pay, and live in a shitty apartment. It’s why she had sacrificed so much, stayed in a less than happy place in the hopes that one day—

A knock at the door pulled her from the spiral. Straightening her back and clearing away her misty eyes, Em turned to the door.

“It’s unlocked,” she informed the person on the other side.

“That’s new.”

Emily’s head pocked through the door before she slipped inside, closing the door behind her after checking her six, “You didn’t come to finish our game.”

The bed dipped as she took a seat next to the brunette. Her worry was transparent on her face, lip quirking to the side and eyes focused on Em’s face as she waited for the woman to say something. “We were worried.”

Em could only shake her head, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Though her eyes were focused on the floor, she could feel Emily’s hands cover her own. A familiar squeeze curling around her hand.

“We’ll make it through this,” Emily assured. It did little to convince Em. No matter what the brunette did, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being on the wrong path.

“And then what?” she couldn’t help but ask, teeth gnashing with every word, “we leave here and play the game somewhere else in some mysterious sanctuary or play Mad Max as we slowly die from cancer?”

For once, Emily didn’t have a retort.

“I can’t live like that anymore!” Em hissed, finally turning towards her companion, “My whole life I’ve lived one day to the next just to say I made it another day. I can’t! I— “

Her companion could only stare at her friend, mouth open but no words. What could she say? Emily hadn’t much thought about what would happen next, the cost of living. It was quite like what doctors faced, wasn’t it? Determining whether quality of life justified the means to the end. What was the future when they faced the end of the world?

Em shook her head, “I just can’t.”

#michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon #ahs x reader #ahs x oc #ahs #ahs apocalypse #ahs fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction

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mysaldate · 5 years ago

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(UM seduction methods anon here) Im in awe over how much you write for so many character, every day! Do you have any hc on how they live? (where they live? living conditions?) BUT please dont push yourself or anything either!

Thank you so much for worrying about me! I’m simply trying to do my very best for all of you! And thank you also for such wonderful and original requests!

The living conditions of the Upper Moons headcanons

Daki&Gyuutaro

This one will be short since we know quite a lot about them. They’ve lived in the red lights district for their whole lives. In the streets and usually with little more than just their clothes on but they had each other.

They stayed in even after they became a demons. No surprise, there’s plenty of food and nobody will really care if a couple girls disappears.

They don’t have separate rooms of course. These two are literally inseparable so of course they wouldn’t bother with something like that. There’s nobody to tease them about it either since people are not aware of there even being two of them and as for their fellow demons, those just don’t care. Except maybe for Douma but he wouldn’t tease them about it.

We got to see their room so there’s not much to be said about the decorations either. Daki is a stylish girl and she likes to show it off even in the way she sets up their room – even if nobody much gets to see it.

Kaigaku

He never really had much of a home per say. He became an orphan at a young age (if he wasn’t abandoned as a baby already) and then was chased out of Gyomei’s temple as well. Jigoro took him in but unfortunately enough, that relationship didn’t really work out either. Strangely enough, he felt most at home when he was outside, travelling from one mission to another.

After he became a demon, he stayed with Kokushibou for a short period of time but that was just before Muzan approved of his existence. After that, he had to find his own territory – which wasn’t really too hard anyway. He picked a run-down old house as his shelter from the sun for the day but he didn’t really care much how it looked, at least not at first.

It’s not that he wouldn’t like company but there’s not really anyone to share his place with. Humans wouldn’t hang out with him, other demons literally can’t. Other Upper Moons won’t.

He first didn’t care at all how the place looked but after some time, he decided that since he didn’t have anything to do during the day anyway, he could at least try to decorate the place a bit. So while the sun is up, he does little things inside, like sweeping the floors or painting the walls. He even learnt to sew to make curtains. And at night, when he’s not out hunting, he does other reparations. Even he is surprised by how much fun he can have, giving the place a personal touch.

Gyokko

Being an artist, it’s not unlikely that he lived in an open, arid room before he became a demon. Lots of sunlight too. And occassionally, a companion or two but those never really stuck around for long. His place was filled with various unfinished art pieces.

Now that he’s a demon, he can’t have the luxury of a sunny appartment. His pots, however, work as a little pocket dimension so that’s an upgrade? Of sorts? It doesn’t really have a set shape either, it’s a little bit like Nakime’s Infinity Fortress but shapeless, like the walls are made of water or another liquid and constantly change form.

He lives with plenty of goldfish. The entire place is nearly filled with aquariums of various shapes and forms. You know how people make mazes for hamsters, guinea pigs or even cats? Well, those are nothing when compared to the lengths Gyokko goes to for his fishies. It’s not just glass, coloured or plain, either. Sometimes he would use the nichirin blades or pretty hairpieces of his victims’ to decorate the elaborate fishtanks as well. If a human ever strays in, it’s the last thing they say.

Gyokko LOVES decoration. Aside from his fishtanks, he has numerous statues, paintings and just about everything else you can think of. Both handmade and stolen. For his handmade art, he usually uses bodies or bodyparts of his victims, possibly their blood too. It serves both as an artpiece and a food reserve just in case he ever gets to a position where he’s forced to starve. Surprisingly enough, his pots are great at preserving things. Oh, and let’s not forget about the amount of detail he puts to the exterior of his pots!

Hantengu

Back when he was a human, he didn’t really have a home, naturally. He couldn’t afford it. And most people wouldn’t let him stay more than one night, chasing him out often with sticks and stones. He had to travel all the time and preferably somewhere far away where the rumors about him didn’t reach yet. Due to this, he becomes restless when he has to spend a long time in one place.

Now, as a demon, he also doesn’t stay in one place all the time. He usually sneaks in a house, kills the family and stays there for a few days before moving on to the next one. Some of his other personalities, namely Sekido and Karaku, find this a little useless and bothersome but they wouldn’t really fight him on it.

Speaking of whom, his other personalities split when they have time to be alone as well, taking care of him and the house. It’s a great way to keep him safe as well since at least one of them is always on guard for possible intruders. They get along... somewhat well. There are the usual conflicts between Sekido and the others. Karaku is careless about their cover, Yoroko likes to make pranks on them and Aizetsu tends to lock himself in his room for hours on end. Poor Sekido is left with the task of housework, making sure they don’t get discovered too soon, acting as the voice of reason... and he still has to go out hunting and stay on guard when it’s his turn.

Yoroko likes decorating stuff and Karaku loves to watch him but their taste is strange to everyone but them. Surprisingly enough, Hantengu as well as Aizetsu both can actually create rather beautiful tapestries and Zohakuten sometimes paints when Sekido is just too done with the three useless dorks.

Nakime

She used to be your typical hikikomori. Nakime spent all her time in her room, with nothing but a pile of books and her biwa. It wasn’t a big room either. While her room did have windows, she prefered them covered and read in the light of an oil lamp. As expected, it wasn’t too good for her eyes...

She lives in the Dimensional Infinity Fortress now. A place she can fully control and knows everything about, one that bends to her will and where she can transport anyone anywhere at any time, just as she wants. The only exception seems to be Muzan who comes and goes as he sees fit (at least until the current arc but y’all already know how I feel about that). It’s not that she minds it, she still knows where and when he enters and leaves and even if she didn’t, it’s not like he would ambush and kill her for no reason (right?).

Despite providing rooms specifically suited for the Upper Moons, she much enjoys her solitude. Even when they’re in and she has to keep an eye on them (I’m sorry, I’ll stop with the puns now), she keeps her distance. Try to annoy her, or even just seek her company, and you will mercilessly get thrown out. An exception, again, is Muzan. He doesn’t live there with her though and only seeks her out when he has work for her to do.

Decoration of the rooms varies greatly, mostly based on what are they used for. Most of the Fortress is not decorated since Nakime sees no reason to waste time and effort on that. However, there are special parts that deserve special attention. Just as an example, there’s Muzan’s upside-down lab, Douma’s lotus pond, that traditional japanese area Kokushibou first appeared in... And of course, the execution platform that’s now decorated with the red of the Lower Moons’ blood.

Akaza

Again, we have a very good canon idea about his life as a human. First living with his father and then spending some time in the streets, he eventually ended up staying at Keizo’s house, taking care of Koyuki. He had his own room there too but it didn’t really matter because he spent most of his time by Koyuki’s side anyway. Rumor has it he dragged his futon to her once when she was having a nightmare and never moved out until she got all better.

He’s pretty much a street rat as of now, looking for challenges and new foes to fight for the most part. During the days, he usually stays still outside, in dense forests or deep caves. He’s not particularly picky. Sometimes he stays there during the night too, setting up a campfire and waiting for someone to wander close. For some reason, he doesn’t really like cities, especially during the festival season.

So yeah, he lives alone. At least usually he does. It’s not all that rare for Douma to find and bother visit him. He doesn’t want company. Getting attached would make him weak. The more people you care about, the easier it is to take advantage of you.

The only thing he cultivates in his surroundings is his own body. No, I’m not talking about the tattoos, though those certainly are a decoration as well. Rather, it’s his muscles and strength. However, he still prefers to have some manners over raw power, hence why he keeps refusing Douma’s more than generous offers to hunt down some girls together even if that could make him stronger.

Douma

Grew up in the temple in the forest. High up on a mountain overlooking a small town, it’s not a place with the most access to society. But cults are usually like that. When he was about three years old, his father planted two magnolia trees in the courtyard so that the place is a little more lively and the trees can grow tall to provide lots of shade in summer since the sun could be quite annoying. If only he knew...

Loyal as he is, Douma stays at the temple even now. He had it expanded a little and even had a lotus pond build right behind his room so he can calm his thoughts at least a bit after every session. He used to need it more than he does now, especially since he now also has the one made by Nakime that is way better and more spacious.

Canonically, there is at least one temple servant staying with Douma at the temple. But honestly, it wouldn’t be quite like him to satisfy himself with a single person. There’s probably a number of people taking care of the place, both temple servants and maidens. They also serve as a source of entertainment and possibly even as a last-resort snack just in case. There also used to be Kotoha and Inosuke for a short period of time but well...

While he is quite childish and it might sound just like him to go overboard with decorating stuff, that’s not entirely true. Really, the most he has is the skull closet with engraved golden door. That and the pot in which he planted Kotoha’s head but that one is a gift from Gyokko so it doesn’t really count.

Kokushibou

As with most of them, we were blessed with enough info on Kokushibou’s, or rather Michikatsu’s, homes. Growing up a samurai, he never had time to spare, little to no friends and a bride who was most likely found for him without him having any say in it, it’s really not that much of a surprise he would elect to leave it all behind and become a demon slayer since it gave him significantly more freedom.

Even as a demon, not much have changed. During the day, he stays at a mansion like the samurai lord he is, and at night, he goes out to hunt down the pests in the area, more often than not treating himself with a bountiful feast while he’s at it. He also has a room in the Infinity Fortress but like the majority of the Upper Moon demons (actually everyone but Douma), he enjoys his solitude way more.

He has a few servants at the mansion. Ones that get replaced every once in a while when they mysteriously disappear. But the salary is high enough to let any major rumors die out in a blink (I know, I promised, I’m sorry) so the most he has to deal with are whispers about him overworking his servants to the point where they rather abandon the money and run away under the cloak of the night.

You would probably find the house eerily plain but he’s used to it. The backyard is where he spends most of his time aside from his room and those two are the only actually decorated places in the house. And they’re still kept neat and practical for the most part. He rarely has anything that wouldn’t serve a purpose, both when it comes to items and people.

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meghiemootriesawhumpblog · 5 years ago

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Carlo

I wrote this because I had an idea stuck in my head- I’ve been mulling over it for weeks. I just had to get it down. I’ve really never written with someone else’s characters before so bare with me. Also, this is the first time I tried writing in present tense so... bare with me on that one, too. There really isn’t any like direct whump in this.

Carlo and Max and the world they live in belong to @deluxewhump who so graciously let me use them.

I’m sorry it got so long I’m literally making it two posts. Merry Christmas!

(I really don’t know how this got this long. I never write this much.)

Anyway this takes place like way way way later after what’s going on with Carlo right now. Carlo is in college in this. Enjoy!

"You don't have any family, right?"

Carlo carefully peruses the library bookshelves. He isn't really reading the titles. Mostly he's just passing over them pretending to be very consumed with the options of literature on horticulture to avoid answering the question.

There are two options for answering this kind of question- lie or tell the truth. If he lies, if he says yes, he has a family, really he swears, then later he will have to remember the lie and keep it the same. If he tells the truth, he'll probably be asked more questions that he couldn't answer with the truth and he'll lie anyway. But right now he couldn't remember exactly what he told Sam last time a conversation like this came up. He had to remember that first. He should probably start keeping a notebook.

"Hey, Carlo" Sam sounds annoyed but in a pleasant friendly way that Carlo is still getting used to "earth to Carlo, did you fucking hear me?"

She cusses a lot too. But that doesn't really bother him. Much.

Carlo takes a deep breath as Sam repeats the question.

"No," Carlo decides. Truth. "No, I don't really have a family."

Sam nods sagely. "That's what I thought. Me either. I think we bonded over that in Chem lab once."

Carlo actually did remember that once she said it. Chemistry lab. So she really doesn't know all that much about him then. She had told him her family was "a bunch of shits and so we don't talk anymore". Carlo had told her he didn't have any family either. Volunteered the information. And she had smiled at him. It was a crooked, kind smile that radiated from her eyes. He had desperately wanted to make her smile again. Which was why they were friends now really. He kept following her around trying to make her smile again. It was actually harder than he had first thought. She was bitter about things.

"So you'll be around over break then. That's fucking awesome." She moves until she stands next to him, picking up a book on organic mushrooms. She makes a face and puts it back. " What are you doing for Christmas?"

"Christmas?" Carlo repeats.

"Yeah," she says with a laugh "you know 'the most wonderful time of the year'" she sings the last part slightly. Her voice rises and she laughs again. "You know what fucking Christmas is, I'm sure."

He does know about Christmas. That's not it. He actually has plans for Christmas, but they are with Max and he can't tell this girl about Max without telling her about… everything else. So he just stares at her.

"I'm working a double I think. Shitty I know, but hey money's fucking money right." She says, seemingly unphased by his silence. "But I should have Christmas Eve off. If you want to, you can come over. I usually just drink copious amounts of cider- the alcoholic kind of course- and watch a decidedly not Christmas movie until I pass out. But we could…" her voice trails off for a second and she suddenly looks right at him and Carlo has to look away, back to the bookshelf "…watch Elf or some other Christmasy shit… if you'd rather. Maybe try drinking hot cocoa or whatever the fuck"

"I have to go see Max" he hears himself say it before his thoughts catch up with his lips but by then Sam is staring at him.

"Who the hell is Max?"

Shit shit shit

"No one, I mean he's just like, just Max."

Carlo could feel his heart racing in a way it hasn't in gosh it's been years since he felt this vulnerable.

Sam eyes him suspiciously but doesn't say anything for a long time while Carlo just stands there staring at a book titled Hydroponic Food Production and feeling like time was moving just so damn slow. Too slow.

"Sorry, dude I just…" she tries to catch his eye but he's looking at the ground now right where his sneaker toes against the bland, thin library carpeting that would never be in a place like... He feels eleven years old again and he just can't. She is apologizing now which is stupid. He should be apologizing for being stupid enough to think he could get away with this. Acting like a person. When he wasn't.

I need to go see Max because he's my owner and I have to see him and I want to see him because I just owe him so much and he's so important to me I'm sorry, Sam. Please forgive me. I'm sorry.

She was still talking "like I have never even heard of this fucking 'Just Max' before and we've known each other a minute... so it's just weird I guess, but then you've never been a sharer so."

Carlo is still looking at the floor and feeling like absolute shit. She clearly wants an explanation and he's not going to give her one.

She grabs her bag off the table near the shelf they've been lingering at. Carlo looks at the bag now. It is a muted green with colorful patches all over it and he wonders if she sewed those on herself. Probably did. She is so damn independent. She controls her own life and probably always has. She's always been a person.

"Well" she says, "I should be going. Pretending to study with you have been fucking real, my friend, but if I want to actually pass American lit and keep my scholarship I should probably" she makes a clicking sound with her tounge and gestures toward the exit. She was leaving then "You gonna be cool getting home?"

Carlo forces himself to meet her eyes. "Yes," he says in a tight voice "I'll be fine. Yes."

"Alright," she eyes him a minute longer like she wants to say something else, but doesn't. She shoulders her bag and holds two ring covered fingers up in the air at him "deuces" she says. She's smiling, technically, but isn't one of the smiles Carlo likes. It's hollow.

Carlo stands there in the now empty aisle feeling a hollowness of his own he hasn't felt in a while.

He's wondering why the hell Max thought this was a good idea.

---

When Carlo opens the door to his little apartment, he just feels worse. It normally feels good coming back and being in a space that's so fundamentally his. He picked out the furniture. He stocked the pantry. He set up the bookshelves himself and filled them with all his favorites. Well, Max had helped a little. But he had asked first.

But right now? The place feels empty. He slides onto the couch. It is a beautiful blue couch that makes him feel cozy, except now it feels foreign and wrong. He wants a hug. He wants to go home.

He pulls out his phone and is already clicking before he realizes he is doing it.

It rings four times before he picks up.

"Carlo?"

"Max." A wave of relief. Max.

"Hey sweetheart." Max's voice is a bit muffled. Carlo wonders what he was doing. Probably something important. The phone did ring four times. "What's wrong."

"N-nothings wrong." He says into the phone, hoping it sounds like the truth. He doesn't want Max to think he's a liar. Although he is. He used to never lie as much as he does now. "I just wanted to, to say hi is all."

Max hums in response but doesn't question him. "Well hi then, Carlo." There's a banging sound like something falling and Max curses softly "Join any cults or activist groups lately?"

Carlo smiles "No, sir. I've just been studying. Finals"

"Exciting." Max says, deadpan. Clearly Max doesn't seem to think finals are all that exciting. But Carlo actually likes the learning process. Taking the finals is the pay off, proof he'd actually learned something. Validation. He doesn't want to disagree with Max though. So he stays quiet, just taking quiet comfort in knowing Max exists.

"What's bothering you, buddy?" Max asks after a minute. Complete silence. Whatever Max had been doing, he's stopped.

"Max, I…" Carlo stares at the ceiling fan. It moves so slowly. He should tell him. He seems to guess already. I messed up, sir. He bites his lip.

"My friend, Sam, she invited me over for Christmas. Well," he amends "Christmas Eve, she wasn't going to be doing anything so she invited me over."

"Oh really? That's nice." He sounds pleased. How can he be pleased?

"Nice?" A strange wave of anger hits him with a sudden intensity and he sits up straight on the couch. "Max, we have plans already! I can't, I can't spend Christmas with her. And, I, I told her that."

Max laughs. "You'll be here on Christmas day and besides you can come over anytime, sweetheart."

Carlo swallows. "No, I told her. I said I had plans with you. With Max."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah?" Does he not understand? "You told me not to tell anyone about you because then people might realize stuff.. about me. And then I did! I told Sam!" You should punish me but you won't. He pushes the old thought aside and tries to focus on what’s really bothering him. "What if, what if now she knows?" He hears how small his own voice is and he's filled with shame.

Max is silent for a moment "What else did you say?" He sounds vaguely curious. None of the anxiety coursing through Carlo's veins is evident in Max's voice.

"Nothing," Carlo's voice is desperate "nothing else, sir, I swear."

Carlo doesn't breathe until Max speaks "No big deal then; you didn't really tell her much. You can tell people about me. Just not all the little details about our history. That's what's dangerous."

"I said more than I should have." He fiddles with the cloth of the pillow on his couch. He'd picked it out at Target specifically because it was so soft. "And you had told me not to."

"It was a suggestion when I said not to tell anyone." Max's voice is soft "I meant only for you to be careful. I don't give you orders anymore, Carlo."

I wish you would sometimes. He thinks. Then feels guilty. He isn't supposed to feel that way anymore. He doesn't want to feel that way anymore.

"You like her? She's a good friend to you."

Carlo doesn't have to think about it. "Yes."

"Do you trust her?" Max asks.

Does he trust her? That takes a second longer to consider. "Yeah, I think so."

"So," Max ventures "how bad would it be if she knew? Hypothetically?"

Carlo hesitates. How bad would it be? He thinks about how Sam looks at him. Like he's just anybody. A regular person. A knot forms in his stomach. "What if-" he sighs, gathering himself "what if she looks at me different? Like when she realizes. What if she sees a, a p-pet instead of her friend?"

"Do you really think she would?"

"I…" would she? "I'm not sure…" He picks the pillow up. He hugs it to his chest wishing he could hug Max. He could go over there, Max would be fine with it, but that would be a bit dramatic wouldn't it? He couldn't do that. No, he was a grown man. He was fine. He clutched the pillow tighter.

"If you want to tell her eventually, that's okay with me, baby. But you also don't have to tell her anything ever."

Carlo thinks about that "It's not something I can un-tell her."

"No, it's not.” Max agrees “But it's fine if she knows about me. That alone wouldn't hurt, probably.” Max pauses “Carlo, it would be great if I could meet her, too. If you were comfortable with that. She could come for Christmas Eve here, instead, not that it is going to be very exciting. Do you want to invite her to join us?"

"Join us? At our house?" His voice squeaks a little.

Carlo senses Max's smile on the other side of the phone almost like he’s holding back a laugh "Yes, at our house. Then you can spend Christmas Eve with both of us."

"Hmmm" He imagines Max and Sam in the same room. Shaking hands. Drinking wassail together. Her dirty boots on his nice rugs; she'd probably put her feet up on Max's coffee table. It isn't super easy to imagine, but not that difficult either. Max would be kind to her. Probably make stupid jokes that would make Sam laugh. She would see Carlo and Max together and… and what? What would she think exactly? How would Carlo explain Max?

"Should I invite her? Should I, I tell her?"

Max is quiet.

"Max, just, just tell me what to do." He needs to be told what to do. And Max isn't going to do it. He knows.

"I'm not going to tell you what to do."

Of course you won't. He tries to be angry. But he isn't. Not really.

"I know." He acknowledges "I sometimes wish you would."

He doesn't miss it. The fear and uncertainty. The fact that he used to have barely even a concept of his sense of self. But it was nice. Sometimes it was nice to just let life happen around him. Decisions were so hard. And now he made so many decisions. What to eat, what to wear, where to sit in class, who to talk to, when to do his homework, what classes to take. Sure, they were thrilling when he was deciding what book to read next or picking out a comforter for his bed. But these big decisions that would affect his life were anxiety inducing. He wanted Max to just pick for him. What should he major in? Would he look good with dyed hair? Should he invite Sam over for Christmas? Should he tell Sam his identity was fake? That he was fake?

He wishes someone would just tell him what to do. He'd reserve his right to say no. That's as much independence as he actually wants.

"But" Max was talking again. Focus. "I'll give you my advice. That I will do. Here it is: I'd invite her over. But not tell her details just yet. Baby steps."

Baby steps. He could do baby steps.

“Baby steps” He repeats into the phone, grinning.

#I'm so confused because I opened my google docs on the computer and it was 8 pages #which shocked me cuz i was doing it on my phone and I thought it was like 2 #carlo #max #deluxewhump #writing #other people's ocs #sam #christmas #whump #sorta #i'm like still embarrassed but i'm just going to go for it #please give me feedback if you want i have no idea what i'm doing #i need more practice writing #which this counts #eight pages my gosh

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gaamagirl565 · 5 years ago

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Matters of the heart S2 ep 7

Matters of the heart Season 2 Episode 7 How the tides turn Special thanks to @1a-lchemist for help with the Romanian {OPENING CREDITS} {Zapada comes down the stairs to see Isaiah sewing something} Zapada: Copilul meu? Isaiah: Oh! Good morning Zapada! Zapada: what happens here? Isaiah: oh, I’m sewing something for my baby brother or sister! Zapada: May I see? {Isaiah holds up a tiny red bear with jingle bells attached to the limbs} Zapada: Ohhh! Isaiah! That is so…*sobs* Isaiah:...Zapada? {Zapada pulls him into a tight hug} Isaiah: ACK! Zapada: Copilul meu dulce! {Varian walks in with a cup of tea but stops when he sees them} Isaiah: Dad! Wait! Save me! {Varian sneaks back out} Isaiah: Ah!..W-wait!...no! You traitor!! {Varian smirks and goes to walk away when a villager runs through the front door; Varian drops his teacup and Zapada and Isaiah are immediately at attention} Villager: Varian! Sir! Message from the King and Queen! Varian: What’s wrong? Villager: The cult made an unprovoked attack on a neighboring kingdom! Multiple casualties, homes destroyed and crops burnt… {Isaiah gasps and Varian covers his mouth in horror} Varian: a-anything else? Villager: The King and Queen are going with a small group to help aid the survivors. The Queen requests the Royal engineer’s attendance. Varian: Understood. Tell Rapunzel I’m on my way. Villager: As you wish sir. The group will leave at noon. {The villager leaves and Varian hurries over to his desk and begins packing a satchel; Zapada walks over to him} Zapada: Varian? Varian: I don’t understand...they’ve never made an unprovoked attack before… {She takes his hand} Zapada: are you alright? Varian:...I’m...I’m fine…*he brushes her cheek*...I’m just confused and I feel like I could have prevented this... Zapada: Perhaps we have answers when we get there? Varian: We? Zapada: Isaiah and I are going with you! Varian: Zapada no! You’re too heavy with child! I won’t risk losing all of you. Zapada: Varian! Te iubesc, dar oprește această protejare obsesivă stupidă sau te voi sugruma până la ultima răsuflare!

{Isaiah looks on shocked and Varian shrinks back} Varian: I...Have no idea what you just said but I feel like I should fear for my life... Isaiah: Dad please let the severely hormonal albino lady go with you...I don’t wanna die. Varian: *sigh*....fine Zapada: good...I go pack my saddlebag… {She walks away; Varian slumps against his work bench} Varian:....Get married dad said...it’ll be fun dad said...ugh. {Cut to the forest with Noremoth sitting in a tree with Catalina} Catalina: haha! Stop it! Noremoth: and why would I do that? You make the funniest face! Boop the nose! Catalina: haha...I can’t believe your mission is almost over… Noremoth: yeah… Catalina: You’re gonna come back sometime right? You’re super fun to hang out with… Noremoth:...*sad smile*...Yeah...I’ll be coming back. Keira: Hey love birds! Catalina: Keira! Stop calling us that! We’re not “love birds”! Keira: Whatever, Eugene and Rapunzel need us… Catalina: what for? Keira: that cult attacked another kingdom last night. {Noremoth jumps down} Noremoth: WHAT!? Catalina: You know about them? Noremoth:....yeah… I heard of them...I have to go… {Noremoth runs over and mounts his horse} Noremoth: Catalina it was lovely to meet you...Keira...bye…. {He gallops off; cut to Isaiah on a horse looking conflicted and Eugene notices and rides up next to him} Eugene: Hey kiddo. You alright? Isaiah: yeah...just...I kinda feel like this is my fault. Eugene: W-what? How? Isaiah: I made the cult mad cause I attacked miss Cass...and then she attacked me and now I have some of her power. And...now they’re attacking innocent people and it’s all because they want the moonstone sliver! {Pink magic crackles around him} Eugene: Hey easy buddy...deep breaths okay? Isaiah: sorry… Eugene: it’s not your fault..these people are...unstable...they’re crazy with anger and I bet half of them aren’t even angry they just are cruel and bloodthirsty. Isaiah: Then how do we stop them? {Rapunzel rides up} Rapunzel: With Corona spirit! Eugene: Sunshine! Rapunzel: We’ll all get through this...it may seem bleak and hopeless at times but as long as we have each other and keep the faith we’ll make it through. {Isaiah smiles at her} Eugene: Oh my god… {Isaiah looks and gasps in horror as they ride up to the kingdom; in the distance, Noremoth rides over a hill and sees the carnage and looks shellshocked; the place is practically burnt to the ground with people trying to dig through the remains and set things back in place} Varian:...They’ve never gone this far. Rapunzel:...Varian go with Eugene and help make plans to rebuild, Angry and Catalina look for survivors, Zapada and Isaiah you can help the wounded, I’m going to go find the leader here and get what happened. All: Yes you’re majesty… {Everyone goes to do their respective jobs and of in the background Noremoth skulks in the shadows looking at the destruction in utter horror} Noremoth:...I don’t understand...why did they…? {He steps on something and it crunches; he lifts his foot and picks up a singed toy wooden horse; his eyes widen and he drops it and covers his mouth as he runs over to a wall and gags; after a few moments he just rubs his head against the stone wall} {begin song “fighting”} {NOREMOTH} So many things happen in a year

But mostly bloodshed paints all my time I watch eyes fill with fear So many things in my life I regret but still I’m fighting So many days I wondered “was my birth a crime?” But as I grew I realized my only crime

Was being an orphan! “A drain on society” “a filthy pest” Well maybe now they’ll feel Remorseful. As I run my sword through their chest So many times I wonder is it worth it? To keep on going or to give up and die. My existence until now had no meaning. So why? Why do I keep Fighting!? I see the destruction that I cause and kills me It kills me deep inside. I hear children cry the same cry I did I wish to help but my hands are tied I ask in my mind that they forgive me. So why? Why do I keep fighting? Oh, why? I’m fighting… But why...do I still fight?

{End song with Noremoth wiping his tears and overhearing talking and he lurks closer in the shadows to evesdrop} Kingdom leader: It was just terrible you’re majesty...we stood no chance… Rapunzel: Just take a breath and try to explain it. Kingdom leader: Well they came in the middle of the night... none of us were expecting them. they were like animals. setting fire to everything, pillaging, they killed a great many of us, but I know what they mainly wanted, they broke into the treasury of our kingdom... they took so much I fear for my people… there was one woman who I assume is the leader once she had what she needed from our Treasury she told her band to retreat... but by then... the damage has already been done. {Noremoth growls with anger and slinks away} Rapunzel: I assure you Corona will do whatever they can to help this Kingdom get back on their feet… Kingdom leader: Thank you, your majesty… {Cut to evening and Isaiah walks over to a basin and washes blood from his hands with a sigh} Varian: Hey buddy… Isaiah: Dad… {Isaiah hugs Varian and snuggles into his torso} Varian: Rough day? Isaiah: a lot of these people are really hurt...Dad, why are people so mean? Varian:...That...That’s a good question, buddy. And unfortunately, I don't think anyone will ever have the answer to that one. {Zapada walks over} Zapada: Isaiah was quite the little helper today... he helps me tend a lot of burns and cuts today. He’s a little hero. Varian: tell me something I don't already know. {Isaiah smiles and suddenly Zapada jumps and grabs her stomach} Zapada: Oh! Varian: Zapada!? Are you alright!? Zapada: I’m fine!...little one is kicking me!..wanna feel? {Isaiah nods and gently puts his hand on her stomach} Isaiah: ….wow...hi there!... Varian: we still need to decide on a name… Zapada: we said Clover for girl...we need boy name. Isaiah: I got one! Varian: Oh ho...really? Let’s hear it. Isaiah: Sterling! Zapada: Sterling? Varian: Like sterling silver? Pfft.. {Zapada smacks his vest} Varian: OW! Zapada: act nice! Isaiah: *laughs* {Cut to the Cult HQ where Larkspur sits drinking from a goblet; Noremoth then storms in and walks up to her} Noremoth: YOU HEARTLESS WENCH! Larkspur: Well you're back... how was your mission did you learn any valuable information? Noremoth: Yeah I learned your backstabbing cutthroat! Larkspur: oh am I now? Noremoth: you knew I would never agree with a plan to pillage and commit genocide Larkspur: I wouldn't call what we did “genocide”. {Noremoth slaps the drink from her hand} Noremoth: what would you call it then!? did you even see what you left behind!? both men, women, and children slaughtered like pigs! when I joined this movement I joined because I too wanted to see a new world order and I also wanted Corona to pay for what they did to me. I did not join to slaughter countless innocent civilians. do we even need the money you stole!? or was this just a little fun Rendezvous for you!? Larkspur: you know how the men can get...they tend to get a little tense when they haven't battled something in a while. and our vessel did need the exercise. I needed to make sure her powers were still at full potential. well potential enough without the moonstone that is. Noremoth: this is not what we originally stood for. Larkspur: is that so? and pray tell how do you plan to fix it in your little mind? {Noremoth unsheathes his swords} Noremoth: it's time we got back on track. Larkspur:... are you truly sure you want this, Norie? {Noremoth swings his sword at her and she blocks it with her dagger} Larkspur: you filthy bugger… {Larkspur shoves him away and they circle one another} Larkspur: who would have thought this is how it ends? you know I did like you, Noremoth. Noremoth: no you didn't…. {she shoots some throwing knives at him; he deflects them with his sword and charges her; Cassandra hears the fighting from her cell} Cassandra: What the hell? Larkspur: Urgh! Noremoth: you know I always wondered why you never listen to me but now that I'm fighting you I think I finally understand. Larkspur: oh really? Noremoth: your pathetic little girl who's had nothing go right for her in life. what's wrong mommy and daddy didn't love you enough? {Larkspur charges with a scream and swings down at him; they lock swords} Noremoth: admit it I'm right! aren't I!? you're pathetic and scared, and were pushed around all your life! you put on this front acting like you care but in reality, you don't care at all you just want everyone to suffer under your thumb for the crappy hand you were dealt! you're no better than a whiney child! {Larkspur punches him and Noremoth falls back on the ground; Larkspur goes to jump on him with a knife and cuts his arm but he kicks up and flips her over; Larkspur lands harshly on the ground} Larkspur: AUGH! {Noremoth gets up and points his sword at her and wipes the blood from his lip} Noremoth: as I said before... pathetic. you don't even know how to fight. Larkspur: ….. that maybe but I do have one thing that you will never have… Noremoth: and that is? {suddenly swords are at his throat with cult members surrounding him} Larkspur: I have faithful followers… Cult member 1: what should we do with him, Mistress? Larkspur: Throw him in the dankest little cell that we have here... and let him rot for the time being... I'll figure out what to do with him eventually… Cult member 1: yes mistress… {The grab Noremoth and drag him away} Larkspur: Buh-bye Norie… {He’s taken to a cell and harshly thrown in; Cassandra looks up and sees him in the cell across from her; Noremoth groans and clutches his injured arm; Cassandra tears part of her clothes} Noremoth: Urgh!... Cassandra: Hey!... {Noremoth looks up and sees her toss some bread with a cloth wrapped around it to his cell} Cassandra: tie the cloth around your arm tightly... it'll stop the bleeding. and I was saving that bread but you can have it… Noremoth: ...Thank you… {END CREDITS}

#tangled #TTS #RTA #tangled the series #rapunzel’s tangled adventure #fanfic #matters of the heart #MotH #Isaiah #Varian #Zapada #Rapunzel #Noremoth #Eugene Fitzherbert

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clockworkmoose · 5 years ago

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I’ve only got so much brain-battery to put towards doing things, and this isn’t like, actual physical energy, just.. mental ability-to-want-to-do-shit-instead-of-sitting-like-a-depressed-lump energy. If I’ve got a high charge, it’s easy enough to spend some and do a fun thing, and then go to bed and by the morning it’ll be recharged up to full

but the farther down I drain that battery level, the harder and longer it takes to recharge. So doing something social with friends when I’m at high battery is fun! but doing something social with friends when I’m at low brain-energy will take longer to come back and it makes me wary because what if I get so low, I can’t recharge? And then the energy I spend just keeps draining away faster than it comes back, I can’t replace it fast enough and I have to sequester myself away for days just to regain the energy I spent in half a day.

And I’ve been really, really struggling the past 6-ish months, because I’ve got this one terrible, terrible chaotic employee. She started out not terrible when I hired her, but she’s been careening wildly off in a worse way over the past year, and then six-ish months ago I had to start giving her twice the hours and relying much more heavily on her, which put me in much closer proximity to her and right in the way of her chaos, and she is an absolute DRAIN. And just. Trying to distance myself from her doesn’t really work, it’s a really small business, I work very closely with my employees, and every day I see her, and even some I don’t but don’t worry! She’ll keep me updated via text or phonecalls! she just... absolutely sucks energy out of me and trying to avoid her has only somewhat worked! I can tell her straight to her face “stop telling me about your personal life” and she goes “oh, okay” and launches right into another story about how the red dots on her arm means she got AIDS from sleeping with a guy a decade ago, and the doctors are conspiring against her when they say she’s clean, and don’t I just agree with her that it’s terrible malpractice and immoral of them to hide something that important from her?

And starting when I gave her more hours, I could feel my brain battery energy just,, draining away because of her. It was kind of horrifying, in that vague-back-of-the-mind way of thinking about how my brain works, just watching myself actively WANTING to do things, WANTING to talk to people WANTING to sew and make things WANTING to go to social stuff with friends... and just being completely unable to force myself to actually do those things because I either hadn’t had the brain energy, or was so close to this chasm tipping point where I knew if I spent that last little bit of energy I’d absolutely fall into this place of being so low on energy it would take ages to recharge even the tiniest bit, so I was straight up avoiding doing anything at all except going home and basically curling up with app games or tv show reruns and doing nothing because I had to reserve those tiny shreds of energy I had left to be sapped away by this employee. Which was just making me fucking PISSED like why was I letting her lay claim to my brain battery, instead of letting me use it as I wanted??? But I didn’t really have a choice, because she WAS going to drain that energy, whether I wanted her to or not; I can’t just decide to not lose energy when she starts yapping at me, holy crap if I could have done that, it would have saved me so so many problems?

Until maybe two-three months ago, I actually hit that chasm tipping point and it’s been incredibly bad, like, even basic just “I should eat food” has been more energy than I’ve been able to spend, and even then at close to zero energy, employee was still sucking away the little bits I recharged every day, I was not getting better in any way at all, it’s been hell. Like, even though nothing actively BAD was happening, I just. Felt like everything was absolute hell, and felt all the worse for it because nothing was actually physically wrong, I wasn’t dealing with any specific issues or problems, I was just kind of cruising through life vaguely existing, which I think in part made me feel worse. There wasn’t actually anything WRONG, I just wasn’t doing things I would have liked to be doing. And it’s super easy to just say ‘well if you want to be doing something and you’re not doing it, that’s on you then, innit?’ and blame yourself for just being lazy, or making that choice to not do things for yourself.

But I was in this place of NOT being able to make that choice for myself, I didn’t have the energy to make those kind of decisions and was just wallowing, and that’s really hard to explain and verbalize, especially to people who aren’t fighting with their adhd brains to just feel normal? It’s so angering to be sitting there thinking you want to do something but not being able to actually start doing it and just sitting there wondering why you’ve not started doing it yet because you want to... Like I can deal with this on a normal day when I have brain energy because I can recognize when my brain is doing that and do this hard reboot and reset, tell myself I’ll do something else instead until I find something my brain has the energy for, and then after I’ve started that thing, segue into the thing I’d actually wanted to do instead, but for months I just couldn’t recognize that my brain wasn’t working until after the fact looking back and wondering why I didn’t eat anything all day and realizing that I’d gotten stuck and didn’t even know and realizing that I’ve not been in control- and even recognizing that knowing that fact would do nothing for the next time, so fuck me!!!

But I finally got another person working for me, and rearranged the work schedule to minimize my contact with soul sucking employee, and after a month of this new schedule I’m feeling maybe 15-20% charge again? Like, enough that I’m starting to do things again, I’m finally out of that chasm, but barely, barely. This weekend I cleaned the living room! I’m working on two sewing projects! Well- one! I started one and hit a road bump and had to set it aside because troubleshooting it was going to take too much brain energy, so I started working on a different project instead and I’ll come back to the first once I’ve recharged a bit more!

But I’m still feeling so absolutely mentally fragile, I have to be gentle on my brain, and I’m afraid that just one more story from this employee about her shitstorm of a life or how she’ll be taking her case against this drunk-driver-sent-by-a-cult-to-assassinate-her all the way to the supreme court (as well as getting the lawyer who didn’t want to help disbarred for “failing to serve the good of the public” (????)) will be more than enough to shatter this little bit of progress back up I’ve made and send me back spiraling down.

But now that I mentally CAN do fun things like work on my galaxy quilt, I NEED to use some of this energy for myself, I have to do SOMETHING because I feel like if I don’t, I’m falling apart and losing myself completely, and not using the energy I have now will be as worse as saving it up and waiting for a full charge because there won’t be anything left of me if I wait any longer.

This month, I only had six days where I was physically in contact with this employee and only answered one phone call from her (misread her name and thought it was someone else; was upset at myself) and only replied to 2 out of her 76 (I counted) text messages. NONE of which contained info I actually needed to be informed about while I was out of work and off the clock.

So that’s good, now I know what kind of level I need to keep her at in order to regain my energy she stole.

But what’s not great is in the first two weeks of July, I’ve already got 5 days I will overlap with her and have to be in contact, and I’m straight up terrified of losing this tiny bit of progress I’ve made because I want to feel normal I want to be able to want to do something and then just... do it! Not sit there wanting to do something and being driven to tears because I can’t actually start doing it! It’s fucking terrible not having energy! And I hate it I hate it, I hate her for taking so much time an energy from me, and I can’t get rid of her, and am honestly thinking of getting rid of myself, finding a new job doing something else that is less relevant to my interests and sucks more energy--- because at this point, even a job I hate would probably take less energy than dealing with is employee does. But there’s just no stable steady jobs available, and I can’t responsibly plan on hopping from temp job to temp job assuming I’ll just ~have a paycheck each week~ because I’m the one currently supporting the house so that James can focus on finishing his dissertation this year and finally get his phd over and done with.

So I’m just hunkering down, recharging as much energy as I can now this week so that next week hopefully I’ll have the energy to lose again.

#moosemun

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lavellane · 5 years ago

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5 + 10 for emeraude, 14 + 18 for effie, 19 + 24 for arylene and 30 through 45 for imogen bc i love her so much ? 😏😏😏

fdjkfjkfdk thank u SO much maia i absolutely Treasure You !

EMERAUDE HAWKE - DA2

What does your OC normally wear? What would your OC wear on a special night?

emeraudes fashion sense is probably my favourite out of all my ocs, so uh if u havent looked at her pinterest board yet u should do that bc its Very cute hehehe

anyway for the most part she sticks to dark, practical clothing whenever she's out and about in kirkwall or doing merc work, etc. she picks clothes that convey strength and power, but she likes having a little bit of colour somewhere on the piece, just to keep things interesting. she's not much of an embroider, but was a good way to keep herself distracted during hard times, so she tends to add little patterns here and there whenever she gets the chance!

as for special occasions, for her this would actually just be. a quiet night at home or a relaxed gathering with her friends. bc its so rare for her to have that lmao. anyway for events like that she usually wears light colours and soft fabrics, simple but always decorated with flowers or colourful patterns.

What does your OC keep in a special drawer?

she has a collection of gifts ! that kids from lowtown would give her over the years she spent in kirkwall. she's a very community based person and wants to do right for her city, and shes very nurturing (in an ironical, Cool Big Sister way) so she likes making sure all the kids are safe and being looked after. she gets a lot of trinkets and strange gifts from some of the kids as a result, but she does treasure them (even if she laughs about it with her friends) and keeps them all !

EFFIE RYDER - MEA

Who is the mother and/or father figure in your OC’s life?

effie's maternal rolemodel has always been her late mother, ellen. nobody could really fill that role in her eyes, since they had such a close, positive relationship before she passed. her relationship with her dad was a lot more strained and it really impacted a lot of her relationships later on in life too ! she tends to.... see an older man who is Vaguely Nice to her, and then think “ oh, youre my dad now?” which isnt fair to anybody obviously but yeah she,,,, has a lot of unresolved issues regarding alec and tends to unintentionally project so. We stan !

How many times did your OC move as a child? Which area was his/her favorite?

oh constantly lol. With her dad being an n7 and her mother working so hard on her research, they tended to move around wherever her parents work required. she actually enjoyed it this way. she was never good at making long term friends, but she lived meeting new people, and obviously with the move she got to experience a lot of different cultures which really put the idea of adventuring and travelling in her head at a young age.

ARYLENE TORR - TES IV

What does your OC think of children- either in general or about having them?

she likes them ! she tends to keep her distance with most communities and groups of people in particular, but she does like enjoys having the odd conversation with the odd street urchin here and there, either sharing with them some strange, ridiculous life advice or – if shes feeling particularly chaotic – telling them the scariest stories she can think of. as for having them, arylene isnt AGAINST the idea, but she has far too much for the foreseeable future for that to ever be a good idea

Who are the people your OC dislikes/hates?

outwardly, arylene is an almost unbearably easy going person, so you would assume she doesnt hate anyone lol. but she does DEEEPLY dislike cults and groups of ignorant people who are arrogant enough to start messing with the balance of life, or making deals with gods, etc. she believes that people like that can do an unbelievable amount of damage, so she invests a lot of time and effort it sabotaging any group or plot she happens to find !

IMOGEN FOSTER - RDR2

Did your OC participate in extracurricular activities, and if so, what were they?

hmm idk if this even EXISTED in 19th century london lol, but she would have done some very tame version of girl scouts as a child! She barely remembers any of it, but she liked the classes on what plants did what, which were safe to eat, and the likes. its something that helps her a lot when on the run with the gang, and something shes always had a personal interest in, as a nurse !

other than that, she’s done a lot of independent study on history, classical literature, and she speaks fluent italian we stan !

What is your OC’s opinion of school? What kind of student was s/he?

imogen comes from a very wealthy aristocratic family, so she was very fortunate that her privilege afforded her the education she got at the time. she is VERY grateful to have attended the schools she did, and she made sure to make the most of it, paying attention in class and studying harder than most of her classmates. she's a smart girl with a very active mind, so knowledge is something she can't get enough of. she was actually petitioning the board of education to allow her to attend university before she left for america – already their had been women accepted into universities at that time, but obviously it was still a very scandalous thing lol, especially since imogen wanted to study medicine.

What subjects did your OC excel at?

imogen is a HUGE overachiever and did pretty well at basically everything from science, mathematics, language studies and later on, in her studies as a nurse. i can tell you what shes bad at though lmao

anything physical really dkdkdks she is TERRIBLE at horse-riding since she usually just went by carriage everywhere in the city. art and poetry and writing in general she was never great at, because she's a pretty logical person and was told she never put enough emotion in her work lol !!! sports...obviously was very limited anyway as growing up in like? the early 1870s lol. and as for the traditionally feminine lessons in like ?? sewing and cooking and stuff well ! she was very average at them which made her  feel worse than if she was actually bad bc she's so used to excelling and making a name for herself oof

What subjects interested your OC?

Imogen loves greek literature and mythology !! the iliad is her favourite book and she keeps her heavily annotated, dog eared copy – a gift from her late father – on her person almost constantly. needless to say its why dutch admires her as much as he does lol.

obviously, as a nurse-trying-to-be-a-doctor, she has a great love for medicine in all its forms. she's always been fascinated in natural remedies, and even moreso when she's running with the van der linde gang and is really relying on the land to survive.

What is your OC’s dream job and/or current profession?

hmm okay so. Technically she's a nurse – she worked in her father's hospital for almost 10 years prior to his death, and she was sort of his unofficial understudy, as in she knows a LOT more than her job description requires lol. but after her father past away, another, less progressive man took his place as chief of surgery and made a lot of changes to the way the hospital operated, and imogen was let go. she and her mother were fighting against it, however, under the ground of unfair dismissal, but obviously given the time period it didnt get them very far. so ! i mean technically she's unemployed rn. but she still has dreams of being a doctor, or at least continuing her career in medicine.

How is your OC working towards their dream job and/or achieved their current profession?

Oh VERY direct action up until she got disheartened and chose to take her sabbatical. she had been working in her role for nearly a decade, and was very obviously one of the most experienced nurses there. even younger doctors would sometimes ask her for her medical opinion dksksks anyway what i am saying is Brain Very Good. she had been fighting to gain admission into a university – any, she wasnt picky – to study medicine officially, but it didnt get very far and she put it on hold after her father got sick. after he died and she was laid off, she fought even harder against the city to reinstate her title, and continues to fight after she returns from america a year or so later.

What are your OC’s thoughts/opinions of his/her current profession?

helping people is her entire life, and she wouldn't know what to do without it. she loves being a nurse enough to fight to be a doctor, but also in BEING a nurse, she is hyperaware of all the things current medical standards seem to get wrong, and she has a lot of ideas about how else to go about things. her father, a shockingly progressive and worldly man for the time period, shared her sentiment, but he wasn't able to make the changes he wanted to before he passed, so imogen hopes she can be the change herself, and make her father proud

What is your OC’s biggest dream?

being a licenced doctor, babey ! preferably at her father's hospital, but at the point she will take what she can get.

How does your OC react to and handle stress?

imogen handles stress very well , which is partially why she makes such a good medic, and also how she managed to survive the first week of being with the van der linde gang lmao. she is very good at shutting out EVERY distraction when things get dicey, and her brain tends to move at a million miles an hour. all traces of english etiquette and politeness go out the window, though, so you'll usually catch her barking orders at people, and yelling at anyone who prevents her from doing the work she needs to do. it.....is a big wake up call for people like dutch and micah, and gets her into a LOT of trouble on multiple occasions.

How does your OC handle anger?

ooo......not great. she’s grown up with parents who maybe encouraged her to speak her mind a bit....TOO much given the historical circumstances lol. she really doesn’t stand for ignorance or prejudices in any capacity, and if she has a problem with someone and it gets in the way of her trying to do her work or help others - she will ABSOLUTELY be having words. she also overestimates her own strength quite a lot. she’s tried to throw hands with micah MANY times, often forgetting she’s this tiny 70kg englishwoman and he’s .... Him sdjkdcjkf. she has a big mouth too so she often says snide remarks without even meaning too, which tends to get her in trouble as well. on the bright side, it also helps her fit in with the gang quite well, because for the most part they all appreciate how wild she is lmao

How does your OC handle grief?

hmm i guess it depends on what you would class as “well”? she doesnt cry very often - being stoic and handling your emotions is important when your a nurse - but she does tend to shove her feelings down far longer than she should, and tries to pretend they don’t exist by simply focusing on other things. she also blames herself when a lot of things go wrong, because she’s a perfectionist and wants to FIX everything, so when she finds something - or someone - she can’t save, it feels like a personal failure. like she let them down :(

What is your OC’s greatest fear?

probably being trapped in an unhappy, unfulfilling marriage with someone who undervalues her. she’s not much of a homebody and doesn’t have too much of an interest in being married, but the idea of feeling FORCED to marry someone in order to have a decent quality of life makes her blood run cold oof

What makes your OC happy?

helping people ! meeting new folks ! learning about other cultures and ways of life! learning about NEW THINGS in general ! proving people wrong ! insulting micah !

as tough and high-and-mighty as she sometimes seems, she’s a pretty easy person to please, honestly. treat her with respect, give her space to do the things she wants to do, and don’t get in the way of her opportunities to learn new things, and she’s mostly very happy !

What kind of sense of humor does your OC have?

she has a fairly macabre and sardonic sense of humour, something she picked up from her mother. she says a lot of Shocking things for the time period, and she’s not shy of dirty jokes either. the first time sean heard her, a soft, well spoken english Lady, make some filthy, crude joke, he nearly had a stroke right there on the spot kjkjkfdjkf

What are some things that greatly upset your OC?

senseless violence, suffering or cruelty. she really hated the gang at first and hoped to escape the first chance she got, because all she could see was the crime and disregard for human life she assumed they all held. fortunately, as she got to know them, she realized this wasn’t exactly the case, but she still has a lot of anger in her heart for a few key members of the gang who seem to enjoy bloodshed more than anything. she also hates any form of social prejudice, and people who gatekeep knowledge and opportunities from others.

What are some things that annoy your OC?

i guess all of the above, but she also dislikes misplaced arrogance, and people who talk down to others. she tolerates dutch, but often gets frustrated with the way he speaks, using as many big words as he can to manipulate and confuse others. she believes that really intelligence doesn’t require obscure jargon and big, fancy words - she likes keeping things simple, so everybody can follow along.

#trvelyans #asks #ilysm for asking so many questions gal and sorry for the late reply !#oc: emeraude #oc: effie #oc: arylene #oc: imogen #imogen is my new rdr2 oc in case u couldnt tell djkdsjks #i need to update my ocs page with all my new Babies #also im so sorry for how long and probably messy these replies are #i did Not proofread this in the slightest so. godspeed !!#/ long post

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layce2015 · 7 years ago

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Doctor Strange (Strange x Reader) Chp 7

We walk through the portal and into the closet. I stumble a bit but Stephen holds me up, as he groans in pain, and the two of us walk towards the door. He grabs the handle, opens the door and both of us walk out and stumble into the hallway of the hospital.

“Can I help you two?” A woman in scrubs asked as she walks up to us. “Dr Palmer, where is she?” Stephen asked her. The Nurse looks at him then at me and gasped.

“Sir, we need to…” The woman started to say but Stephen shouts over her. “Where is she?!?”

The woman jumps back, startled, and said. “At the nurses station.” I let out a groan as Stephen shouts. “Christine!”

We walk down the hall and see Christine walking out, staring at us. “Stephen? (Y/N)?” She said as we walk up to her. “Oh my God. What…” She stammered as she stands in front of me and sees the wound in my chest. “We need to get her on a operation table now. Just you.” Stephen said.

Christine looks at him confusion and was about to argue until I said. “Now! I don’t have any time!” She nods and leads us through the double doors on our left and Stephen carries me through them. “What happened?” Christine asked us as we enter the operating room and walk to the gurney that was in the middle of the room surrounded by medical equipment.

We walk over to the table and he helps me lay on it as I said. “Stabbed. Cardiac tamponade.”

I lay on the table and Christine walks over to me and opens up my tunic a little more to look at the wound. “What are you guys wearing?” She asked us as I try catch my breath. Then she looks up at Stephen and saw the wound on his shoulder.

“Stephen! You’re….”

“Don’t worry about me! Just focus on her, please!” Stephen shouted as Christine jumps at this. “Stephen…” I said, weakly, and Stephen looks down at me then nods.

She lightly knocks on my chest and said. “The chest cavity is clear.”

“The blood….is in the pericardial sac.” I said, weakly, then I closed my eyes and black out.

****

*3rd Person POV*

Stephen freezes in place for a moment then runs over to your side and takes your hand in his. “No. No, no, no, no, no!” He exclaimed, frantically, as Christine looks over and sees what he was going on about. “(Y/N)! (Y/N)!” She shouted then she goes over and grabs a needle, full of blood, and hovers it over your chest, trying to find the right spot to insert the needle.

“Just a little higher.” Stephen instructed her and Christine nods as she does what he said.

“Here let me help.” A voice said next to Stephen’s ear and he looks to his left to see your astral projection. Christine looks up and screams as she falls back.

“"Please be careful with the needle.” You said.

“(Y/N)? Oh Lord, oh Lord. What am I seeing?” Christine asked, frantically.

“Her astral body.” Stephen replied.

“Is she dead?” Christine asked him.

“No, Christine, but I am dying.” You said. She looks down for a moment then straightens up.

“Right. Right. Yeah. Alright.” She mutters as she walks back over to your body and hovers the needle over your chest.

You reach out and phase your fingers into your chest and light it up to show her where to stick the needle. “I’ve….I’ve never see a wound like this before.” Christine said then she looks at your wound then at Stephen’s shoulder. “What were you guys stabbed with?” She asked.

“I don’t know.” Strange replied as you shake your head. Then she holds the needle and inserts the blood into your chest.

****

Few seconds later, you look off to the side and see the male Zealot and straighten up. “I’m going to have to vanish now.” You replied. “No. I…” Christine started to argue but Stephen looks over at you. “Is one of them here?” He asked. You nod then you disappeared. “(Y/N)!” Stephen shouts then he looks over at Christine and said. “Keep her alive, will you?” then he sits in a nearby chair and astral projects while Christine looks around in confusion.

In the Astral Dimension, you and the Zealot were tackling each other as Stephen sees this then begins to jump in and starts to throw punches at the Zealot, who fights back, and the three of you fight all around the room, phasing through objects and even through Christine.

Then the three of you phase out towards the hallway, still throwing punches and kick at each other. All of you make it back to the operating room and the Zealot starts getting the upper hand by punching the snot out of you and Stephen until he finally kicks Stephen out of the room then he kicks you across the face, knocking you out.

****

In the real world, the heart monitor let’s out a long beep, signaling no heart beat. Christine stares at this in a panic and she hurries over to the defibrillator and turns it on, charging it to 200. “(Y/N), come on.” She whispers as the machine charges and she places it on your chest and it jolts your heart.

In the astral plane, the Zealot is about to crush your head when Stephen comes back into the room and was about to tackle the Zealot until your eyes open as you feel a jolt of powerful energy go through you and it knocks the Zealot out of the room, Stephen moves out of the way and stares at you in shocked.

Confused, you look down at your hands then look over at the defibrillator and you get an idea.

“Hit me again!” You shouted at Christine as she jumps back in surprise, again, and she said, through her clenched teeth. “Stop doing that!”

“Up the voltage and hit me again!” You commanded.

“What? Are you crazy? No, your heart is beating!” Christine argued as Stephen appears next to you and shouts. “Just do it!” And both of you disappear again. Christine sighs then ups the voltage on the defibrillator.

After it finally charges she places the pads on your chest and shocks you again.

In the astral dimension, the Zealot comes back but you and Strange grab him by the shoulders and hold him up against the wall.

You feel the jolt of the defibrillator again but this time more powerful. The Zealot looks at you two in fear as you scream and suddenly the zealot is gone.

Christine looks down at you when you and Stephen jolt awake, scaring Christine. “Oh God!” She exclaimed. “Are you okay?” You take a few deep breathes and nod at her as Stephen stands up and walks over to you.

****

*Your POV*

Afterwhile, Christine finishes sewing me up then she begins to work on Stephen’s shoulder. “After all this time, you two just show up here and fly out of your bodies?”

“Yeah, I know.” Stephen chuckles as she continues to sew him up.

“I mean what the hell is happening? Where have you two been?” She asked.

“Well, after Western medicine failed me, I headed East, and I ended up in Kathmandu.” Stephen replied.

“Kathmandu?” Christine asked, confused.

“Yeah.” replied Stephen as you nodded. Christine stops sewing, looks up at Stephen and asked. “What, like the Bob Seger song?”

“1975, Beautiful Loser, side A.” Stephen said and I chuckle at this. “Then I went to a place called Karmar-Taj and I talked to someone called the Ancient One, and….” Stephen said then Christine talks over him. “Oh. So you joined a cult.”

“No, I didn’t. Not exactly. I mean, they did teach me to tap into powers that I never even knew existed.” He said.

“Yeah, sounds like a cult.” She said and I chuckle.

“It’s not a cult.” Stephen and I said, in unison.

“Well, that’s what cultists would say.” She said and we chuckle. “And of course I followed his trail and ended up in the same place and…well…” I muttered as I make a gesture to us then I begin to get up. Stephen starts to stand up as well but Christine stops him.

“Wait, Stephen…what do you guys think you are doing?” Christine asked as she stops him with her hand on shoulder chest. “We’re late for a cult meeting.” He replied as he walks over to me and helps me up. Stephen comes to my right side and Christine comes to my left and the two of them helped me up.

The three of us walk out of the room and into the hallway as Christine asked. “Where are you two going? Just tell me the truth.”

“Well, a powerful sorcerer, who gave himself over to an ancient entity who can bend the very laws of physics, tried very hard to kill us.” I said as we get closer to the closet.

“But we left him chained up in Greenwhich Village and the quickest way back there is through a dimensional gateway that I opened up in the mop closet.” Stephen finished as we reach the doors to the closet. “Okay. Don’t tell me. Fine.” She said. I smirk as Stephen turns the handle and opens the door.

Christine looks at the gateway, her jaw drops open as we walk in the closet and head towards the gateway. Stephen gestures for me to go first and I jump in and he follows after me. He turns back to Christine and said. “We really do have to go.” And he makes a gesture to close the gateway.

@disneyoncerlover815

@posiemax

@strangewhovian-blog

#doctor strange x reader #stephen strange x reader #doctor strange #reader insert #x reader #marvel cinematic universe #benedict cumberbatch

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carriemesrobian · 8 years ago

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Why I Don’t Watch The Walking Dead Anymore: An Essay

It’s not just because they killed Glenn and Tyrese in needless, boring White Showbizness Standard Ways. Though those were definitely an off-shoot of the main problems, which I see as

1) Fan Service

2) Turning It Up to 11

3) Taking A Dump On Well-Developed Characters & Worlds

(The idea that killing a fan favorite like Glenn would be more “exciting” than having him remain as a major pillar of the community, in a place which formerly shit all over Korean people and other POC, and show how things have drastically changed or remained the same is depressing as hell. It’s like TWD just wanted us to believe that nobody “sees color” anymore because of the Zombie Apocalypse. Uh, no. Flesh-eating hordes don’t change anyone’s previous lived experience. Judith’s experience might be different when it comes to ethnicity and race, but that’s a can kicked far down the road. ANYWAY.)

Fan Service is basically the notion that anyone who “reads the comics” should get a taste of what happens: We kill who is killed in the comics, we make everything horrible and bloody and honor all those panels that show blood spray and a huge AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! dialogue box.

Fan Service in another medium (comics to TV, as here) is dumb as hell. Television, if you haven’t noticed, is a different experience than interacting with silent, one-dimensional images. For one thing. Jesus Christ. So use the comics as inspiration - which, yes, they do - but don’t behave as if you have reinterpret the experience literally. That is boring and unnecessary and indicative of people who don’t understand the assets of the medium they are working with.

Turning It Up to 11 assumes that it’s not enough drama that these people who have trauma-bonded in terrible times would be fighting and scrapping over small and big things. Oh, no. We must add all sorts of additional villains and plagues and car crashes into shark tanks because that will somehow make the show BETTER. When the most energy goes into zombie special effects is when you know the writing staff is phoning it in. Faxing it in, really. Basically, the last 3 seasons have been this way for me and maybe that makes me a boring viewer, but I feel that being beset by iniquities and hostilities on all sides in the form of death-dealing beasts is probably sufficient for a high-stakes show. The last three seasons resemble every comic-book movie sequel, where they add 18 new supervillains while subtracting any traces of humor, nuance or b-plots.

(Also, humor? Where did that go? It wasn’t a hallmark of TWD, but every good story-teller knows that deep grief and tragedy make fertile soil for wit. There is nothing funny about this show anymore. Not even for a minute. A sign of flat, literal, plodding writers.)

That gets us to #3. The first few seasons of this show carried us slowly through so many different characters and their struggles. We were seeing them change and grow and evolve and devolve in so many fascinating ways. But then what the new writers did was value plot over character, which is nonsensical and even annoys those to whom Fan Service is king. An example: Carol is upset by violence. She can’t kill anymore for the people she loves. So, she’s leaving, because that’ll really...do something? Naturally she sews a gun into her coat because that’s fuckin badass, yanno? And how many times do we need to watch Rick be beaten down only to come back?

(So much of this show is about being bad-ass. Still? A few years in, we have to show how everyone’s bad-ass? I think the only people still living are default bad-asses, so let it go already. WE GET IT. You have to be bad-ass to survive. Pass the salt.)

The idea alone that Judith exists, this soft little defenseless ball of meat that must be held and fed and kept safe and quiet at all times, is enough of a dramatic device for me. I don’t need Negan’s bat or Terminus’ Weird Cult BBQ (though that was kinda interesting, and could have been explored, except no, we need to have Carol turn into Rambo). The idea that love and affection are still valuable in this world is something the writers don’t care about, or don’t consider high stakes. Yeah, yeah, Man Pain. But enough with the War of Ideas, e.g. what makes us human? what kind of killing is just? Shut the fuck up already! Instead of dropping these abstractions like rocks on our heads, why not do a little Showing Instead of Telling? What about the War of Survival being an enormous (and far from tapped by these writers) source of material? People trying to survive with others they have adopted as family? Who fights more than family, I ask you?

Thinking about these things is why writing fic used to be fun for me. But I can’t even bring myself to do that anymore. I could complain about this for years, but I don’t think the show will get more than one more season anyway.

#the walking dead #why the walking dead sucks #people in hell want daryl dixon #except not the way he's written at the moment

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foodselfiesandstuffblog · 8 years ago

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Saint Heron: NELLY FURTADO TOURS US THROUGH ‘THE RIDE’ OF HER ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER

From traditional pop classics, urban dance tracks and steamy Latin love ballads, Nelly Furtado‘s body of work makes a solid argument as one of the most diverse discographies in pop-music history. Which, in part, is why I virtually jumped at the chance to interview the renowned Canadian songstress. That, along with the fact that her music has been there as a spiritual guide throughout the majority of my turbulent 22-year-old life. Since her 2000 “I’m Like a Bird,” debut the singer-songwriter has diversified her channels of creativity by rejecting limitations. Along her never-ending journey to defy the boundaries of genre, she’s written tracks that make you jump to your feet just as often as those meant to pick you up off the ground. In her revealing discussion, Nelly speaks endearingly on re-establishing herself as an artist, defining moments with her peers, and her sixth studio album, ‘The Ride’, set to debut at the end of next month. Following her pattern of not actually following a particular pattern, Furtado plans to show her fans yet another side of her complex artistry. If the album is as honest and pure as her intentions, we may be in for ‘The Ride’ of our lives.

Ashley Vance: It’s been about 4 years since you’ve released a full-length project. Talk to us a bit about the path leading up to The Ride and how the journey has treated you.

Nelly Furtado: Honestly, it’s been a really interesting 4 or 5 years. I really put a lot of me into this album, and it’s kind of interesting because I’ve been writing songs since I was a little girl, so my albums really are a reflection of me entirely because I write my material and I live my material. This album is really raw. Lyrically, I went through a huge life shift, which I like to call a paradigm shift. I had been living on fast forward for a long time and finally decided to take apart the pieces of my life that seemed excessive on different levels and that seemed blurry.

I severed a tie with a business partner and father figure that I’d had for almost two decades. Once that unraveled, I started shifting a lot of things in my life and created a deeper kind of simplicity. I did some fun things; took up play-writing classes, started working at my friend’s vinyl shop for fun, started taking sewing classes and pottery classes. I have a 13-year old daughter, so I’m also a very hands-on mom.

I also, for a while, was very busy. I had my own imprint, I was working on developing other artists, and I realized that I had lost the true essence of my own artistry which was really just a free spirited, Bohemian girl who just liked to sit in a living room, playing a guitar and singing a song, ya know? [laughs]

Definitely!

I kind of unraveled the accouterments of a pop career [laughs]. When you travel, you move with a lot of people and you tour the world. I signed my record deal when I was 20-years-old. I already had a child by the time I was 25. I went through the trials, I guess. Eventually, life catches up with you since you can’t live in fast forward all the time and these songs reflect that. I have a song called “Carnival Games,” which is literally about the fact that when you’re at a carnival with the pretty lights, the fun games, and a ferris wheel in front of you, you’re not really thinking about life outside the carnival. It’s kind of like, that lyric, “If you spend enough cash at the carnival games, you’ll have a prize when you walk away.” But then, you’ll never know what winning is really like at all.

I have another song called “Tap Dancing,” which is literally about how as an entertainer you’ve been praised for entertaining people since you were a baby. It’s almost like my sad clown song because when you walk on stage and take off your makeup and your costume, you may still find yourself still wanting to entertain your family and friends and not really realizing that your life also needs moments of stillness and quiet to really grow as a person.

I have another song called “Live,” which is like, “you know what? I’m tired of being a good girl. I’m tired of doing everything right. I’m tired of proving people.” I don’t want to live getting what I need and never what I want. We live in a world where all the information is there for us to make perfect choices 24 hours a day, but at the end of the day we’re human and we just want to live out our lives and make those mistakes. Because even though we end up with mud on our face, we write a good poem about it and feel the beauty in that moment. So, I don’t know. It’s kind of like coming to age isn’t really the right phrase. I like to call it a moment of distilling. A sobering, you know? [laughs]

[laughs] So kind of like working with a long-term hangover?

Yeah! And it’s kind of rare too, when you’re life and the themes on your album actually reflect what the music sounds like.

John Congleton had a huge hand in production, correct? How did that come about, and what was it like to collaborate with someone with such an esteemed track record?

I chose John Congleton to produce knowing he had never produced a pop album before. He’d only done alternative, punk, and modern. I met him through Annie Clark of St. Vincent, who I’m a huge fan of. I met her in Japan on tour and she introduced me to John because I asked her to. I said, you know, I really love the work on your albums I have to give credit to your producer, and she graciously introduced us. I found myself alone in Dallas, TX at John’s converted funeral home studio in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, wow!

He’s the type of producer who doesn’t really care about commercial success. He doesn’t care about any of those things. All he cares about is artistry. He was really firm with me in saying, “this album, if we do this right, could really remind people that you’re an artist and have been for a really long time.” And I thought to myself, okay, here’s someone that I feel challenged by and I want to make sure he feels that this is worthwhile, so I’m going to dig a little deeper. The day I brought him the song “Pipe Dreams,” I played the song on my guitar and just kind of sang it. I’d written the song in Kenya. I developed a relationship with a community of girls there and their families and we’d share music together. Anyway, I wrote the song on this water walk where the mothers kind of show everyone where you can get water from before they had a well system, so it was kind of this moment. “Pipe Dreams” is about not wanting fiction anymore or fantasy. Just give me reality. Give me reality in my relationships. Give me reality from myself when I look in the mirror. So, when I sang, John was listening to me play the demo and he kind of out loud just said, “Oh shit.” [laughs] It was kind of like “wow, she wrote something really good here!”

All of your albums throughout your career have had a distinctively different dynamic and sound, specifically Whoa, Nelly!, Folklore, and Loose. Why so? Was this done purposely or was this you experimenting and finding your own sound within the industry?

I think I’m just that quirky person! I’ve always been an eclectic person. I’ve had a very odd upbringing. Here I am, this child of Portuguese immigrant parents, growing up in a British colony called Victoria. It was kind of suburban, but on Sunday at Portuguese school I had this very rich cultural life. I learned to speak the language, I danced in Folklore groups, but then my friends and I loved hip-hop. It was just a really mixed bag of influences. I think my music reflects those influences. I also think that I believe music should be very democratic. I feel like I don’t believe in limitations of genre at all. You make the music connect to the source, it doesn’t matter the genre, and you express yourself. I recently did an installation, sort of performance art. I basically sat in a room and I wrote songs with 100 strangers. Some people, they had never written a song before. Basically what my point was, was that we are all connected physically and that we all have empathy inside of us. It’s the reason why the idea of the collective conscious exists. That’s why we all connect with the same songs sometimes. In that room I was trying to create moments with all of these people that were not branded or recorded or captured on video along with moments that proved the psychic connection between all of us and the way that the unconscious plays into that and into songwriting. It’s something I started when I was going to Kenya and playing songs with the girls. I’d do songwriting workshops and we’d just write a song in the moment, and I realized everyone has a song to sing.

To answer your question, the reason all of my albums sound different is because I have a very low attention span [laughs]. I’m not really a “joiner.”I did a 10k last year, and I knew I wasn’t going to join the cult of running. I just knew I wanted to run. I feel comfortable in different situations so, it’s kind of who I am. I’m a very free spirit.

Loose has to be one of our favorite albums from you. From your vocals, to the songwriting, and all the way to the production. That album actually solidified this musical relationship that you have with Timbaland. The two of you are a mighty duo. What is a studio session like between the two of you? What has been your fondest memory?

It’s fun that you’ve asked me this question because he has a new show called the Pop Game, and he invited me to help him launch the premier episode.

Really? That sounds awesome, are you excited?

Yeah! Him and I are mentoring kids! I’m on the premier episode meeting the kids and the moms and dads as we kind of sit there and reminisce on Loose and performing together. But Timbaland and I go back to the year 2001 when he sampled my voice on this Ms. Jade record called “Ching Ching,” and he invited me to be on the Missy Elliott remix for “Get Ur Freak On.” With Loose, we were able to get together in a really focused way and create something really special. To be honest, it was the party of a lifetime. We’d be in the studio from midnight to 6am in Miami, and I was in a really free spirited mindset at the time. I think it’s because I’d just finished nursing my daughter, so my body felt like it was my own again after two years [laughs]. There was a certain type of freedom in the air. I think we were just in the right place at the right time, and we were really connecting in terms of the music we were listening to. We both had something to prove! I think that makes it even more powerful when you both have something to prove.

Let’s touch on this new project! The word on the street is you won’t have any features on this album. Is this you making a statement of being ballsy and independent, or are you more-so using this as an opportunity to produce an album that’s solely centered on you?

That’s a really good question because my last English album had a lot of collaborations and my Spanish album had like eight collaborations! So yeah, I’ve done the collaboration thing pretty heavy throughout my career. I’m lucky to have very successful with crossover duet songs in collaborations. But, it wasn’t even an option. It felt like this album was so personal that it never entered my mind to have anybody on it. I think I was so full of things to say that I didn’t need anyone to compliment any of the songs. I really thinks it’s a simple as that.

It sounded very singular. We used all the same musicians. Dallas has this amazing tradition of musicians who’ve grown up playing in the church – organ players, clarinet players. So, I’ve got a lot of those instruments on my album because we used the same people and team. Since we had this cohesive little team, it really made sense that the vocals kind of had a similarity about them.

You seem to be moving in a refreshing, new direction as you’ve worked toward the release of this album. Tell me, how did the video concept to “Pipe Dreams: come about?

That’s actually the best story ever. I’d been approaching the aesthetic of the album in this very organic kind of way. Right when I got to Dallas, I called my friend who did the packaging for my Spanish album. he’s like my little brother. I said, “You’ve got to come to Dallas! There’s something happen and I don’t know what it is, but it’s a great vibe!” I just found Dallas to be so welcoming and the artistic community was so welcoming to me. I met visual artists and musicians, and it was just so organic and cool. A lot of people move to Dallas because there’s no state tax and they can live an artist life at cheaper costs. I just fell in love with the city. I featured this artist Samantha McCurdy on my album cover. It’s her 3D stretch canvas artwork, and she did the entire vinyl. We shot that maybe 2 years ago. We kind of featured all these people we met in Dallas in the photo-shoot because we felt like we should have a community essence to the project because it just felt like the city was organic as a community. One of the artists in that is a visual artist who actually created an original lyric zine that I’m selling to my fans right now actually, online. It’s beautiful, original artwork. He also contributed to my album artwork, but in addition to this, I asked him to film a video for me. So I was in Dallas a couple months ago creating a sound design project for an Art Basel installation in collaboration with my friend Sheinina Raj, who did a show called intercultural which featured self portraits of her in several different traditional outfits as a meditation on race and identity. She’s of mixed race, her fathers from India and her mother is British white. We put together this collaborative sound installation with some of the pieces with this technology called Soundwall where the sound comes from the photograph! It’s actually really cool.

I flew to Dallas to work with Adam Pickrell, and since I was going to be there, I said, “Jake, let’s shoot a video for ‘Pipe Dreams’.” And literally, we didn’t even know we were going to shoot it until 24 hours before. Adam and I were driving to his home studio, and I see these pink signs in Lake Highlands area. I said, “Let’s stop here,” so I went inside the house, and I realized that this home had once belonged to a woman named Edna Sue and she hadn’t been seen since like the 1950s. The home was full of these really cool artifacts from her life, like hand carved wooden pens with her name and memorabilia. On a whim, as we were leaving, we bought a few things and I asked the state sales representative if we could shoot a video there the very next day, and she said sure. They only charged us $100. It’s crazy how the most spontaneous things become the most perfect things. You always forget until that happens and it’s like, “Oh yeah! It’s supposed to be like this! It’s supposed to be spontaneous.”

The video was edited by another artist name Pierre Krause, and she’s an amazing Dallas based creative. Dallas has probably some of the most interesting and vibrant artists that I’ve seen in a long time. I just love the aesthetic of it and I think Jake has a great eye.

Tell me a bit about your songwriting process. How do you think working on this album helped you to continue to evolve as a writer?

The main takeaway for me was seeing beauty in everything. When you allow yourself to be raw, to be naked, to write from that “hung-over place” [laughs], I think you automatically start seeing beauty in everything. I’ve got to say, I’ve been writing nonstop for the last four years. It’s like something happened to me. I was putting these really high expectations on myself like, “I’ve got to be the perfect mother, I’ve got to be the perfect business woman,” and then all of a sudden, it was like, “No.” I don’t have to be a perfect anything. I just have to be. What if I just be? When you let yourself be, all of a sudden the writing is so natural and you’re finding beauty in every puddle and every vignette. It’s all beautiful, it’s all worthy of writing about. My process is weird though because my lyric and melody often come at the same time. Melody and lyric often come as a package deal, but not always. I use garage band, I use voice notes on my phone. I do it the old fashioned way by sitting down with paper and pen and a guitar.

I like to collaborate, too. A lot of songs John would just kind of throw out there. I’m very open when it comes to writing, and I’m constantly learning new things. Recently I wrote with this new band called The Skins and another artist named Pangena, along with Zuri Marley and Hodgy from Odd Future. We just got together and jammed for three days straight on a side project, and what I noticed when I was writing with them is that Bailey, one of the singers from The Skins, was writing melodies for me that I’d never write for myself. So I think, even if you like writing, you have to stay open minded and be open to new ideas.

Over the past year or so, you’ve worked closely with Dev Hynes, creating “Hadron Collider” from Freetown Sound. How did your relationship come to fruition?

I’ve got to say, Dev is one of my favorite people. He’s just such a precious soul to me and I think meeting him was a really big part of my journey over the last couple of years. David Byrne invited me to be apart of this project called Contemporary Color and the movie he made is coming out about it. Basically, he brought together 10 artists and 10 color guard groups from across the U.S. and Canada to collaborate on a concert to be featured at the Barclay’s Center for two nights and at the Luminato Festival in Toronto for two nights. It was such a great, great group to be a part of. I was coming from this kind of “pop” career, and everyone else came from alternative or other types of genres. Honestly, I met Dev at rehearsal because David wanted everyone to sing on each others sets. Dev was singing BGs for me and him and I were like magnets. We said, “Hi, how are you? Here’s my number. Studio date tomorrow.” He flew to Toronto and I booked a studio room, just following through with action, and before you know it Dev and I were writing “Hadron Collider” and singing. Those vocals that I did that night ended up on his album and those were pretty much the demo vocals.

We were very inspired. We pulled up Romeo and Juliet, the movie, our favorite scene where the little boy is singing our favorite gospel song right over the edge of the church [laughs]. We wanted to capture the poignancy of that movie and all of the amazing moments on the soundtrack, so that’s kind of what “Hadron Collider” was inspired by. It was also inspired by me telling Dev that me and him should have a band called Hardron Collider to make him laugh! Overall, I would say Dev was definitely like a mentor to me. I was exposed to an artist who was literally living the creative life on his own terms, navigating success on his own terms, and creating a life out of that that would still keep him content and in touch with his soul. I really admired that. I think Dev leads by example and that’s why he attracts some cool artists into his vortex because he lived the real artist life. Nowadays, it’s hard to live that life. I think we live in a very fast paced world, and for me, he just kind of reminds me to slow down, take some photographs, and write the song. That’s the most important thing.

If you had to choose, what period in the history of music has had the biggest influence on your overall artistry?

I have to straight up say ’90s R&B and Hip-Hop. That’s the first thing that comes to mind because my friends and I lived vicariously through all those TLC and Salt N’ Peppa videos. That was our escape as suburban kids with immigrant parents who were banded together through music. We would get together at jams or hook up and write rhymes together. For me, groups and acts like Mary J. Blige, Salt N’ Peppa and TLC were my role models and icons in terms of not really seeing yourself as a woman in this business but seeing yourself as a person. I think that they set the tone for the duality, strength, positivity, and total like, gumption.

In The Ride short film, you remarked that women are so powerful, “we tend to push other people’s buttons just by being ourselves.” As a woman working in a male dominated industry, why do you think that’s true?

I think we’re still in the process. We’re still in the struggle. We’re still fighting our way back to equality. Because I believe that equality existed in history, even it was in civilizations in times we don’t recall anymore. But, I do believe there was a time once upon a time where we were equal. Truly and fully godesses. I think our conceptual memory of this is present, but in the real world, because of all the politics and all the paradigms, it just doesn’t exist. I finally just read the “We Should All Be Feminists” essay. I used to read feminist texts all the time but I hadn’t read a more current one. In a way it just spelled it out. We have such a long way to go. Of course we’re going to push buttons. Of course when we do things out of the box or force people to see us as more than our bodies or our sexuality, we impress our brains, conviction and strength on the world. That’s going to cause havoc. But I think it’s exciting. I have a 13-year-old daughter and I love the perceptive her and her friends have on the world, and I love that they are able to discern fake from real. From what I see with my own eyes in terms of creativity and where people are heading, I really think the future is gender-less. I feel the future is even more body positive and limitless. The boxes are going to become increasingly irrelevant, and it’s wonderful. And I hope to be able to contribute to that energy in whatever way I can.

As you mentioned in your short film, the music does seem to take you to the “right place,” whether it be Pop, Urban, or Alternative. What has it been like to color outside the lines of so many genres throughout the course of your career?

It’s been thrilling. I remember the first time that I wrote a song when I was just a 17-year-old singer in a group in Toronto. I was just this kid from Victoria, but I knew I had this special and unique way of singing. And I remember when I got to work on the Missy Elliott remix for “Get Ur Freak On” and people thinking I was a Jamaican boy because people had never seen the “I’m Like A Bird” video [laughs]. And this is like, pre-social media. I’ve prided myself on innovation from an early age. I think it’s because my grandfather was a music composer. He was obsessed with music to the point where his day was just different spurts of inspiration. As my career went on, I was trying to make choices that were consciously different. I remember when “I’m Like A Bird” was first finished and the drums sounded a lot busier. I remember saying, “It’s not quite right. It’s not simple. We need to take out all these drums and just leave the kick and snare in the verses.” It’s that consciousness of how can I tweak things to make them a little more unique? The same thing happened with Loose. At the time, my label wanted us to use a different mix because they thought the sound was too dirty. But what I fought for was keeping that garage “loose” sound because I knew that would help stand out from other pop records at the time. And sure enough, I was right. If we’d changed the mix, it wouldn’t have been the same album. I’m kind of a music nerd. I’ve always been interested in doing things my own way. I’m experimental by nature. I’m endlessly curious about people and sound. I like puzzles. A challenge is a challenge.

Growth, Reflection and Acceptance are the three pillars you chose to highlight in the short. How do these three periods relate to the overall theme and the artist beneath this album?

To grow, you have to have perspective. To grow, you have to learn from your mistakes. So, I think taking the filter off the lens of my own life helped me to see where I was. It helped me write from a very clear space.

Wait, what’s the second one? [laughs]

Reflection! In this case I had a lot of solitude and aloneness because I kind of stripped away everything in my life. I was alone and able to reflect. How better to hear your own voice than in an empty room with it bouncing off the walls. Some of the reflection came afterwards. The last day in the studio, I listened to the mixdown of “Carnival Games,” and I just totally bawled in John’s studio and locked myself in his little washroom where he keeps his Grammy awards [laughs]. I realized that the studio has become an island for me to put myself back together, you know? I went there to fix myself through testimonials. He was my witness; John was there to testify all of my sins on the album. That sounds so silly, but it’s basically like this redemption, testifying of sins album.

And then, Acceptance! In the theme of acceptance, I went from writing this song called “Phoenix” in rural England the day after I arrived. I also flew there alone. I woke up in a cold sweat the night before, and asked myself what I was doing there, in this little bed & breakfast in rural England. I was taken by fear of the unknown. I kind of pulled myself together, pulled out my laptop and started getting ready for the studio. The next day I wrote “Phoenix.” So, I thought I was writing it about other people, other strong people. Two years later, I finally finished the vocal in the studio with John and my friend Wakeem was there and he goes, “Hey Nel, you wrote that song for yourself didn’t you?” I looked at him and said, “yeah, I think I did.” Two years later I’d accepted the fact that it was my own life raft I’d written myself. It was my own life ring in an ocean to keep myself afloat. I experienced this weird sensation of me soothing myself with the song as a sang it, which was kind of cool. And I really felt and recognized for the first time that we’re never alone in the universe. We’re not alone because we’re all unified in our emotions. I had this moment of acceptance that I was broken, but I put myself together.

This is repost of an article published on Saint Heron.

#Saint Heron #Nelly Furtado #The Ride

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