#once the convention in March is over I go back to just sort of existing

[isfjmel-phleg]

🧳

[beskarhearts]

re: you wanting one shot/blurb ideas: *chanting softly* domestic din, domestic din, domestic-

HOME (DIN DJARIN X READER)

Pairing: Din Djarin x AFAB!reader

Word count: over 1.9K

Warnings: very brief allusion to sexy time (I think that is it but let me know)

Summary: Sometimes home was a person, not just a place.

Notes: Just so you know, I completely ignored events of season 2 because I just wanted these 2 to be happy and we all deserve domestic Din. I hope you enjoyed it and let me know what you think!!

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Home had seemed like such a foreign concept to both you and Din for so long. You were aware of its existence but it may as well had been the Force with how confusing of a thought it was to you two. The galaxy was a hard and tough place, one that seemed like you had to fight to get through each day. Din certainly had been handed the short end of the stick as well, having gone through more struggles and travesties than you could count on one hand. In a world that was so brutal and could sometimes be so cruel, how the hell were you to find a home in the midst of it?

But then for some reason, the universe aligned and you had met Din on a fateful day that changed the rest of the course of your life. It took awhile because of the walls you both had up and the lack of trust you had in humanity, but eventually you came to realize something. Sometimes home was a person, not just a place.

So for years you were content with Din, even if that meant living in the Crest with Grogu and traveling from place to place. You had him by your side and that was enough for you - enough for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t mind hopping from planet to planet as long as at the end of the day you could slip into a cot with Din, no matter how tiny or uncomfortable it may had been. And Din the same. Sure the Crest had been a sort of home to him considering how long he had it but it had never felt quite as bright until you were in it. Never had Din felt so settled and content until he felt the warm brush of your fingers against his hair and felt the wave you seemed to mold into his touch, like you were becoming one person. That was also when Din realized home could be a person.

That still didn’t stop you two from hoping though. You couldn’t bare to say it during the day but at night, when you two whispered sweet nothings to each other, you would also make grand plans of a home. Talk about how one day you two would settle down on a sparsely populated planet somewhere with Grogu. Find a small little house and take care of each other for the rest of your days until you were old. Maybe have a couple kids to fill the empty rooms with noise and happiness. You would talk of having a kitchen where you could make meals and teach Din how to cook, both of you eating something other than ration packs or broth on a daily basis. Find a place with some land so Din could step outside without his helmet with no fear and breath in some fresh air, while the child you had both come to love roamed around the tall grass. Din would speak of a bed - a proper bed - where you both could spread out as wide as you wanted (even though you both knew each night would end with you in each other’s arms, trying to get as close as heavenly possible). A place that could properly be decorated for holidays and special occasions, maybe even a big tree for a Life Day.

But all of those had seemed like simple dreams best to be spoken of in the warm confines of each other’s arms. Because things like that didn’t happen for people like you two.

Until they somehow did. Until somehow everything fell in line and you realized it was no longer a dream, but close enough to touch and grasp if you really wanted it. And hell, you both wanted it so badly. So when Din landed the Crest on a planet with warm air and fresh grass and flowers, he knew you would love it. It was meant to just be another pit stop until Din found an abandoned little house in the middle of this field and suddenly he realized everything he wanted was right in front of him. He could let you and the child settle down. You and him could relax and finally make the family you had discussed. It was sitting there right in front of him, like all the beautiful magical intricacies of the galaxy came together to form this perfect little sanctuary for you both.

Din had been so excited to show you that he quite literally ran to you, dragging you and the child with him in the most chipper mood you had ever seen the man. You had playfully teased him for his childlike behavior until your eyes landed on the small house and your heart melted. The look you have Din was not one you needed to explain because he had the same exact one. No words were spoken, no confirmation of what he wanted that place to be for you. You both knew and all you had to do was grab Din’s hand and walk him into the home for him to instantly decide to retire from his life and spend the rest of his days with you on a planet whose name he could barely remember.

The place had not been in the greatest shape. It was old and had clearly been abandoned for long enough that the place fell into a little disarray. But you and Din had certainly faced much worse so you didn’t allow it to scare you away. Instead Din worked on building furniture and fixing holes in the wall, a big smile on his face the whole time because he was constantly being hit with the realization of ‘this is what normal people do’. You had painted the walls with flowers like you could see outside the windows, filling it with more color than Din had ever seen in his life. And once the home was finally finished, equip with a functioning kitchen and the largest bed you had laid your eyes on, you and Din got married.

You could of traveled into the closest town and maybe found someone to officiate it for you, but that felt so conventional and unnecessary. You didn’t need another person to declare your love for each other and make it official. You had only ever needed each other so you both had as traditional of a Mandalorian wedding as you could, a bit difficult due to it being only you two and the very dapper flower boy that had been Grogu (who had managed to eat all the flowers and not throw a single one). Din wore his armor and you wore a small white dress you had made from a set of curtains but you both swore it was the most beautiful the other one had ever looked.

Shortly after you had gotten married, Din had begun to not-so-subtly, in fact very obviously, started dropping hints about kids. There would be times you were sitting on the couch and Din would look around before saying something like, "This house is a little big for just the three of us, don't you think?" Just the other day, Din had gone into the closest town for some supplies and came back not only with food and stuff you needed, but with a plethora of baby clothes that he all claimed were for Grogu (even though they were all obviously way too small for him).

You knew what Din was doing because it was the clearest thing in the world and you were on board. But watching Din drop the most obvious hints and slowly become more flustered the longer you pretended to be oblivious was hilarious to you. But eventually a dam broke and Din just grabbed you and marched towards the bedroom, very loudly stating that it was time to make some babies ASAP to which you responded with a fit of giggles.

And that led you to where you were now. Stood in the middle of your kitchen in your home, looking out the window where you admired the way the sun illuminated the flowers and trees. A warm cup of caf was clutched between your hands, the wonderful scent filling your nostrils as you held it close to your mouth. The home was silent, the child still asleep in his room and you had left Din to sleep in the bed while you snuck out.

The moment you felt a strong pair of arms wrap around your waist and pull you into a broad expanse of warmth, you let out a small content hum. Din's head nuzzled into your neck, his ruffled hair tickling your chin. "Mornin', cyar'ika." Din grumbled, his voice still laced with a type of sleep-drunk tone you adored. His voice in the morning was always your favorite - it seemed to amplify the gruffness and deepness his voice he usually had.

"Morning." you whispered back, feeling your heart flutter when a light kiss was pressed into your neck before he pulled away, grabbing a mug a caf for himself.

You admired his figure, eyes raking up and down in pure adoration. His hair was ruffled and messy from sleep, going in every which way. His eyes were still a little droopy and his whole body still sagged a little. He was wearing a shirt you had given him months ago, one that you were certain he found ridiculously ugly yet he claimed was his favorite because you chose it for him specifically. "Why are you up so early?"

"Wanted to watch the sunrise." you responded, your smile growing as he padded back over to you and planted a kiss on your forehead.

"You look beautiful."

You snorted, giving him a small lopsided smile. "I haven't even brushed my hair yet or washed my face. I am still crusty."

Din smiled, looking down at you with the warm brown eyes you had learned to love. "Well your crust is very sexy."

You threw your head back in laughter that time, shaking your head as he joined in with a slight chuckle. "Din, you are a horrible liar."

"I'm not lying. I love the morning crust. It's cute." he responded back, no hint of sarcasm in his voice but a slight twinkle in his eye.

"Shut up." you huffed, rolling your eyes playfully.

"Y'know, it is actually so sexy that we should probably-"

Din was cut off when the sound of cries began to fill the house, the noise coming straight from Grogu's room. You chuckled when an exasperated expression grew on his face and he placed his cup in your hand. "What were you saying, handsome?"

Din rolled his eyes as your sarcastic remark but you could still see the small quirk on the corner of his lip. "I'll go get him."

"You sure?" you asked.

"Yeah." Din mumbled, heading towards the door to Grogu's room slowly. He turned back to you once last time before opening the door. "Cyar'ika?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

You softly smiled. "I love you too."

Din smiled before opening the door to Grogu's room, slipping inside. Within a couple minutes, the crying died down and was replaced with soft cooing that filled your heart with warmth, accompanied by the sound of Din's soft voice as he spoke to the child. You placed the cups of caf on the counter and then made your way towards the room, thinking how this is exactly what home was supposed to feel like.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

World War Z was published in 2006, but takes place in 2009 at the earliest.  Late in the book, astronaut Terry Knox states that the International Space Station took over 10 years to complete; it started construction in November 1998, and Chief of Staff Karl Rove Grover Carlson says that the Republican party barely eked back into power after a disastrous 2-termer who started a “brush fire war” in the Middle East (George W. Bush).  He mentions an election year, but he doesn’t specify if it was the new president’s first or second term, so it’s either set right after 2008 or 2012.  This was written before the Nintendo Wii was announced, but one chapter mentions that people brought their GameCubes with them as they fled their homes in search of safety in the frozen Canadian wilderness.  This same chapter also mentions that they didn’t know how to pick survival gear; a park ranger finds a SpongeBob SquarePants sleeping bag frozen in the mud because its owner didn’t know the difference between a child’s indoor sleeping bag for slumber parties and a real insulated survival bag for camping.

The new president is never named, he’s just told be be pro-big business and anti-regulation, pushing a placebo zombie vaccine through the FDA to jumpstart the economy.  When shit hits the fan, he is “sedated” and his vice president takes power; we’re never told what happened to the president, whether he was bitten or had a stroke, just that he was “sedated.”  His Vice President is directly implied to be Colin Powell; he’s former military with family in Jamaica and black.  He appoints Howard Dean to be his vice president to form a bipartisan coalition; he is never referred to by name, but it is clearly supposed to be Howard Dean.  He was a rising star in the Democratic party from Vermont whose wife is a doctor and whose career imploded after he had a passionate outburst.  In 2004, Howard Dean gave a speech where he started passinately screaming about how he was gonna start sweeping state primaries and ride a wave into the White House, punctuating his point by going “HHEEUEAHHGH!!”  This was political suicide in 2004, and he was laughed out of the race.  In the book, he is referred to only as “the Whacko” because of this.  It is implied that he was Powell’s second choice for VP, his first being Barack Obama; the Whacko says that the Democrats wanted somebody else, somebody of the same skin color as the president, but that the country wasn’t ready for that.  In 2004, Obama was a candidate for senate in Illinois, so popular and so well spoken that he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention before he even won his seat; then and there, pundits already had him pegged as the first black president, they could see the writing on the walls.  The Whacko becomes president when Powell dies of stress, but he is consistently referred to only as the wartime Vice President, out of respect for his boss.

Also, the Attorney General is implied to be Rudy Giuliani; all that is said about him was that he was the mayor of New York and once tried to give himself emergency powers to stay in office after his term.  Giuliani did exactly that after 9/11.

Other real life figures mentioned in the book

Fidel Castro; a ton of Cuban Americans flee the continent and return to the island during the zombie war, and he jumpstarts the economy by putting them to work as cheap laborers and slowly integrating them back into Cuban society.  He rehabilitates his image by stepping down as dictator and democratizing the country, voting himself out of office before the “nortecubanos” could hang him for decades of war crimes.

Nelson Mendela, referred to by his birth name Rolihlahla, the father of modern South Africa, he personally invites Paul Redekker, a former apartheid era political analyst, to solve the zombie problem; in the 80s, Redekker created a plan for the white minority government in case the black majority ever rose up against them.  In real life, Mandela lowered the temperature when he was elected president, saying that revenge against the apartheid government would do more harm than good.  In the story, Mandela uses this as justification to reuse the apartheid era plan to handle the zombie outbreak instead.  Redekker is so overcome by his compassion and forgiveness that he has a mental episode and dissociates, believing himself to be a black South African.

Kim Jong-il, the dictator of North Korea, he withdraws all troops from the DMZ and shuts the entire country down.  After months of radio silence, it is revealed that the entire country’s population has vanished; all satellite imagery shows a desolate wasteland, no zombies, but no humans either. He presumably moved everyone into subterranean bunker systems where he not only control their lives as on the surface, but now their access to food, water, and air.  He presumably became the god emperor he always wanted to be; either that, or the entire tunnel complex has been overrun, turning every man woman and child in North Korea into zombies.  The South Korean government refuses to send a expedition into the North to figure out what happened, lest they open up one of the tunnels and unleash millions of zombies onto the surface.

Martin Scorsese, mentioned in passing only as “Marty,” a friend of world famous film director Roy Elliot, who himself is a thinly veiled pastiche of Steven Spielberg.  Interestingly enough, the audio book features Martin Scorsese doing the voice of the conartist who created the placebo vaccine

One chapter has a ton of vapid celebrities hole together in a fortified mansion on Long Island, and takes great care to show each of them getting torn apart not by zombies but by regular people who storm the facility because they were stupid enough to broadcast their location on reality television.  A redneck with a “Get’er Done” hat (Larry the Cable Guy) and some bald guy with diamond earrings (Howie Mandel) blow themselves up with a grenade.  Rival political commentators, an annoying guy who talks about feminization of western society and a leathery blonde (Bill Maher and Ann Coulter) have end-of-the-world viking sex as the facility burns to the ground.  A dumb starlet (Paris Hilton) is killed by one of her handlers and her little rat dog escapes on foot.  A radio shock jock (Howard Stern) actually survives the war and restarts his show.

Michael Stipe of REM joins the army to fight the zombies

Another war veteran mentions how his brother used to have a bunch of Mel Brooks’ old comedy skits on vinyl record, and how he and his squad acted out the “Boy meets Girl” puppet skit with some human skulls.  Mel Brooks is author and narrator Max Brooks’ father.

Queen Elizabeth II, refuses to evacuate England when the island is overrun by zombies.  She intends to remain in Buckingham Palace “for the duration,” mirroring the fact that her parents refused to evacuate to Canada during World War II.

Vladimir Putin declares himself Tsar of the Holy Russian Empire, an ultra-orthodox religious state that has armed priests execute political dissidents under the guise of mercy killing people who have been bitten by zombies.

Yang Liwei, the first “taikonaut” (Chinese astronaut) has a space station named after him

While the main conflict is about government responses to the zombie pandemic, we see glimpses of a greater war torn planet.

A major plot line involves a Chinese Civil War which sees the entire communist politburo nuked out of existence by a rebel sub commander, as well as an attempted “scorched space policy” where the government planned to blow up their space station with scuttling charges to cause a cascade of space debris to encircle the Earth and prevent any other countries from launching missions in the future (this is known as Kessler Syndrome in real life, and was featured as the inciting incident of the 2013 movie Gravity).  The People’s Republic becomes the United Federation.

Iran and Pakistan destroy each other in nuclear war; everyone thought it would be India and Pakistan, but they had very close diplomatic infrastructure in place to prevent such a catastrophe; Pakistan helped Iran build a nuclear arsenal, but as millions of refugees fled from India through Pakistan to the east, Iran had to blow up some Pakistani bridges to stem the flow of zombies, which led to a border war and eventually total nuclear retaliation.

Floridians flee to Cuba, Wisconsinites flee to Canada, the federal government flees to Hawaii.  Everything east of the Rockies is abandoned and ruled by warlords until the government sorts itself out and mounts an expedition to clear the continent of zombies by literally marching an unbroken line of soldiers stretching from Canada to Mexico across the wasteland to the Atlantic.

Israel withdraws from Gaza and the West Bank to become super isolationist, building a wall around the entire country to stop the zombies getting in (they were the first country to respond to the pandemic, and the most successful), but the religious right rebels against the secular left in a civil war that sees Jerusalem ceded to a unified Palestine.

It is an amazing, multifaceted story with so much going on that nobody recognizes.  It was written as a response to the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror.  It’s about a geopolitical shift, a change in the status quo, a disaster from which the world never recovers; America before 9/11 was a very different place than American after 9/11.  Iraq and Afghanistan changed everything, and we’re still feeling their effects to this day; the story uses the zombie apocalypse as the next big international disaster the world must adapt to.  World War Z is World War III with zombies, and I think it would do a lot better if it were published today, now that we’ve had several decades to respond to the fall of the Soviet Union and the endless wars in the Middle East and a global pandemic.

[namjoonchronicles]

cognac & nicotine | nj

↳ pairing namjoon, you

↳ genre drama, suggestive smut, fluff

↳ words 2k

↳ warnings no chill, hidden love, pining on each other but too prideful to admit, namjoon’s a lawyer, graphic description of bed scene, nicotines and alcohol abuse, i miss writing namjoon and got a little frisky

“Don’t catch feelings.”

Fast forward for about three months, and you’re tangled in his sheets, woken up by the sound of the front door clicking shut. The cologne he wore left lingering in the room you shared just a few hours before. His side of the bed is empty, obviously, but there’s a note by the bedside table that sparks a smile on your face. Careful not to let the sheets reveal your bareness underneath, you scooted over to it to see them clearer, and what he wrote in scraggly writings,

“You’ve been served.” With a smiley at the end.

It made you chuckle, how his sophisticated humor eases in. Within these four walls, you still feel a little shy to what it has witnessed. There's the sound of the busy traffic travelling up his penthouse and strangely, it felt like home. It didn’t really register into your brain how massive this ordeal is until you try to step out of his bed and felt the need to clutch onto something to help you walk. You bit your smile and found relief in the fact that he wasn’t watching. He would have made fun of it until the ends of the earth. Looks like he was right, you’ve technically been served.

His lawyer robe disappeared from the hangers, and so is his document bag. That suggests that he left for work already. Which was good for him because you wouldn’t have let him leave if you see him in his black-white attire. Those long trousers, extending his long legs, belt buckle and the white dress shirt underneath his blazers and cufflinks--simply spell erogenous to you. He knows he captivates you in those fit and knows how to use them against you. There’s toast on the table that he spreads with butter and coffee mug ready underneath the coffee maker, still piping hot. There’s traces of his hobbies in this house; the photos he took, the boxing gloves, the figurine collectibles, his anime CDs--he’s just a big little boy.

There’s a bookshelf in the corner of the living room that just represents the lawyer in him. They’re neatly arranged, in alphabetical order, colors, and editions.The books are heavily manifested with notes and scribbles once you flipped them open, and it shows how hard he studies or how confused he was. All the question marks between this pages. He makes you smile even when he’s not here. This is another level of infatuation, now, isn’t it?

Infatuation, the word resonates in your mind.

How do you navigate this? How do you tell your father, his boss?

How will you explain those breathless wars on top of his desk at work when no one is around? How he pushes you against the file cabinet and devours you with his mouth, leaving handprints on your ass? How he has you sprawled on the files he’s supposed to read because you wouldn’t stop sparking his mind, into the dirty things you could be doing? Or how the late night drives almost always turn into something else? How sins taste like nicotine and cognac, laced on his tongue dancing with yours in the depth of night, in the backseat of his car. Soft music playing in the background and all you feel is his hand on your skin, your name in desperate whispers.

How would you explain the way his eyes look at you like he’s undressing you in his mind, amidst the office meeting you had no role in? How can you explain the way his hand cupped your buttcheeks in the lift, far in the back when no one saw and the flirtatious smile that’s thrown everywhere but to you? You know damn well that you would put your life through hell if your parents knew. Now that you’re in his penthouse, your fears began to pile on, one by one. You start listing the things that you hated about him, hoping it will make you hate him.

Those intentional touches, lingering stares from across the room, and how you find excuses to be at the office longer than you should. All those needs to stop.

Why is it that, when happiness finally finds you, you chase it away? Because happiness doesn't last? Because your past has proven to you that it is temporary and you wanted forever but you know it doesn’t exist. When your friends scold you about thinking to break the bonds before it becomes one, it hurts you. It hurts you because you thought of all the years, and all the time you spend with them, you thought they would at least understand your incapability, your flaws and defects. But they don’t. And if the people you trust your life with don’t understand you, you expect Namjoon would?

You shut the door behind you like you would your thoughts. His bathroom is very much like him, organized in its functions; shaving utility, facials, toiletries. And in the reflection, you caught yourself in a pensive expression and it dawned to you just how sad you looked. There’s a mark between your nipples that he left, and you remembered that you left a few on him too. He invaded your mind all too frequently nowadays. With his soap, you smell like him. And your hands glide over your skin where his palms was, the water trails down the valley of your breasts, in the back of your neck and between your buttcheeks. There’s a hickey on the inside of your thighs that tingles when you run your forefinger on them and you take the chance to mimic his hand movements in between your legs.

Drying up your hair, strapped in his robe, you searched for his bed sheets to change the soiled one he had on. Then you throw them in the washing machine while you ate the toast he made. Your phone had been laying face down on his kitchen counter, abandoned since he feels you up the moment you stepped into his space. He was some type of horny last night. It has been a while and you weren’t exactly responsive to his messages for the past few days and he grew needy. It doesn’t help that the new chambering lawyer enters exactly when he was piled with work and a difficult client going through a divorce. He wants to call and rant about it to you, but you’re always so occupied with the new member that he feels slightly neglected.

Standing in the bathroom to check his attire before the trials begin, Namjoon unbuttons the top two buttons of his dress shirt to have a peek of the hickey you made. For some reason, he likes to keep this as a trophy and it be quite a remembrance that if he could have you, he could have anything he wanted. You are the benchmark in his life. It’s a surge of motivation that could seem unconventional to most, but if you knew Namjoon, you know that he is everything but conventional.

He fairly admits that he was extremely affection deprived yesterday, that a simple glance from you would send his blood throttling straight to his groins. But he had to behave because your father was around to welcome Jeon, the new chambering lawyer that would be attached for four months, just like Namjoon was, before he was offered a position there. And for some reason, took ninety percent of the day. He was bitter. And extremely horny. He had to find excuses to have you come to his house and he knows it’s going to be hard because you’re not so gullible, but he hopes you would pretend because he doesn’t know if he’s gonna make it tonight without you. Nothing would have sufficed.

When you rang him to let you know you’re at his doorstep, handing the file he purposely left on your table, his heart leaped and courage set in. He knows there’s no going back to what was. He wanted you and wanted you so badly, his brain malfunctioned.

“Yea just place them on my desk down the hall….” he orders. “Do you not have hands?” you stared at him quizzically but walked in nonetheless, thinking that he might have a good reason why he said so, because he’s not usually so tactful. The sway of your hips as you walk in makes the cognac in his hand taste weaker than it usually is and he downed them whole and grimaced at the after taste. You’ll set those files in seconds, and he has to come up with another useless errands to make you stay longer than you probably should.

“I missed your coffee, you didn’t make me one because of that Jeon,” his voice grittles from behind the shell of your ear as you sort those files on his desk. The tail of your eyes glide to the view of the opened bottle of half-drunken cognac at the corner of the table and you mentally shook in disapproval. He just can’t stop drinking, can he?

“You usually get one from Starbucks downstairs, I didn’t think I had to make a jar,” you shrugged your shoulders, eyes focused on the files, shifting the orders to fit the schedule he had. He was leaning his shoulders on the door sill, hands in his pocket, dress shirt on, rolled up sleeves to his elbows, when you turned around, and the flicker in his eyes he passed you through his bangs was enough to bite your tongue. As if he had read your thoughts, he bits his before shifting his weight to another feet, bobbing his head down like he’s shy of his thoughts and barely in control.

“It’s been a week....” his voice pierced through the silence. “I noticed,” you leaned on the edge of his mahogany table, crossing your arms, giving away nothing. “Didn’t bother you?” he cleared his throat.

You responded by twisting your lips and unfold your hands to march towards him, pulling him by the belt loop and he towers above you with little to no hesitance, greeting you lips first. The kiss grew hungrier and hungrier until you’re backed up against the leather sofa of his office. Halfway through the lip-lock, you have your fingers fumbling on the buttons of his dress shirt, to unbutton them. His grip on your rib cage intensifies, pulling your dress up so he could run his hand on the back of your thighs. And then he parted, while you whined bitterly.

“Bed?” he breathlessly suggested. “I don’t care,” you matched his desperation.

He chuckles handsomely and leaned down to carry you over his shoulders before speeding down the hallway to his room. He throws you on the bed when he notices that you’ve unbuttoned him enough to help him off of those work attire. He unbuckles his belt achingly slow, with a hint of flirtatious smile on his lips, asserting his dominance in a way. As he watched your hand rubbing on yourself to keep the arousal going, he ran his tongue along his lips and told you to watch him as you touch yourself. You’re so far gone and he is barely getting your attention now, so he couldn’t even undress properly because of the look on your face was so inviting. He delved in a demanding manner, possessively taking over your hand and harshly whispered in your ear that he wanted his fingers there.

“You wore the dress I liked,” he nibbles on your earlobe while you responded in whimpers, shivering underneath him. “It’s the one you wore that night when we fucked in my car,” his voice was intoxicating, and he is making you drunk with his words. “I wore the dress I like,” you hissed through your teeth, feeling the familiar clenches below your waist, “You just happened to like it.” He chuckles darkly, smiling against your skin while his hands rode your dress up enough for him to bare your thighs and froze when he realised that you wore nothing underneath.

“You…” “What about it.”

Someone flushing in the bathroom takes him back where he is. Right. The trial. He’s donning a lawyer robe and he walked out looking rather dashing. Here it is. The very thing that makes him drink and smoke. He hates his job, but he loves you. His contract is ending soon.

With countless nights wondering where he stands, he hopes you know that you’re the reason why he even thinks his job is sexy. But how long can you hide this tryst from the public eye? With Namjoon’s constant need for touch, and the barriers your father has set?

And because of him, love will always taste like cognac and nicotine. Will this lungful drag of cigarettes, nicotine in his system, help him cope with what he’s about to lose? Will the liquor laced tongue make him forget the taste of your skin? What can he do? He caught feelings. He knows he wasn’t supposed to.

.

.

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copyright © 2020 namjoonchronicles do not repost

[screensirenfic]

Menthol Cigarettes - Chapter 35

I barely slept a wink that night; too busy tossing and turning as I tried to come up with a reason why this had happened. Why he had done this to me.

I mean; it wasn’t like she actually saw him doing anything, and El insisted that he was fully dressed, but still; it was pretty obvious what was going on.

She liked to believe that that girl was in trouble; that somehow, for some reason Billy was hurting her, even after I tried to explain the ‘other’ possibilities that seemed much more likely.

I don’t know if I’d have preferred it; honestly?!

I mean; sometimes Billy acted a total psycho, and I knew that it wasn’t always aimed at me, but was I really gonna talk myself into this instead of just accepting he was cheating?!

So, that was why we were here, marching up to Max’s house, because El honestly believed that girl was in trouble, and I was too much of a paranoid bitch to leave everything to chance.

“It’s going to start pouring soon. We should be at the mall, or watching a movie, or something...” Said Max, for once being the naysayer in the situation.

“You don’t believe me?” Eleven asked; still set on confirming her vision with her own two eyes.

“I believe you saw some super weird stuff; totally!” Max reassured her; unwilling to come across as the skeptic, no matter what the reality was.

“But you said Mike’s senses you in there before, right?” Max asked, trying her best to sound reasonable.

“So maybe it was just like that. Maybe Billy sensed you somehow.”

Maybe she’d like to think that was true, but needless to say, it had Eleven’s hackles up; mine too, although that was for an entirely different reason.

I mean; could he really be that much of a scumbag?!

I thought we’d gotten over this months ago; Billy finally realising that just because he had a reputation as a ladies man, didn’t mean he had to keep it up when he was in a relationship.

Of course; this wasn’t just a simple case of harmless flirting.

This was a full on, hardcore fu-

“His car’s not here.”

Max stated; her and El having managed to trail ahead of all my fretting as we now stood in front of the house.

“Are you sure you both wanna do this?” She asked, to which both nodded resolutely.

Whatever laid in wait inside Billy’s room; I could handle it.

I’d already had to deal with much worse.

——————————————————-

Sometimes I was grateful my upbringing hadn’t been exactly conventional, and this was one of those times…

Some girl’s dads taught them to change a tire, or put up a shelf, but mine had taught me to shoot rifles, throw punches, and in this case; pick locks.

Not to say it was an easy task, especially with two teenagers breathing down your neck like this was an episode of Jeopardy!

“Almost got it…” I said; thankful that my bobby pin hadn’t decided to break on me yet.

A click sounded, and the pin turned.

“There…” I smiled, turning the handle and pushing the door open wide.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re gonna find all kinds of wrong in here?” Max asked, lingering by the doorway whilst I walked straight in, already intimately familiar with the room in question.

I don’t exactly know what we were planning to find in here.

I mean; I’m pretty sure we all had very different explanations of Billy’s weird behaviour; some wilder than others.

El was expecting to find a body, or something; too many late nights spent watching cop shows with dad to have any real grasp on what to expect in an investigation.

Max was…

Well; I’m not entirely sure what Max was looking for. Probably something to prove her brothers innocence; as weird as that sounded when referring to a boy like Billy Hargrove.

And I wanted to find… Well; nothing.

I wanted to find the place exactly how I’d left it in the vain hope that it would put my anxiety to bed, and I could go on living like I had before; with one dedicated, if a little over-possessive boyfriend, who’d never dream of hurting me.

El launched straight into investigator mode, heading over to his closet to sort through hanger after hanger of double denim and cotton shirts, whilst I stuck to the edges of the room; eyes and fingertips skimming over the culmination of my boyfriend’s existence.

It didn’t look like the room of a cheater.

Not with copious amounts of photographs of us together plastered on whatever surface they’d stick to.

Whether it be cute little polaroids of us in the Camaro when the sun hit just right and made us look like movie stars; or dumb photo booth print outs where we’d pull faces that he’d never let see the light of day outside his safe space; he kept them all.

My hand lingered over a particularly memorable one; a polaroid just bordering on decent of the pair of us in bed together, my bare chest barely covered by the sheet as Billy held the camera high in the air, grinning up at it whilst I buried my face in his neck.

I remembered the day he took that photo;

I’d just bought him that camera as a late birthday present, and he was complaining that I could’ve got him something more fun; “fun” being the key word here that usually translated as “obscene” to Billy.

I’d insisted that we could have plenty of “fun” with his polaroid camera, which proceeded in him coercing me into letting him take a couple of “artistic” shots; cuing the start of his little photograph collection that he was so keen on expanding.

After he’d finished, and taken liberties to indulging in a near dizzying amount of birthday sex, he’d reached across to take “one last photo”; this being one he could keep on his wall, despite my insistence otherwise.

I’d been nervous and embarrassed of it back then; not wanting him to get in trouble if his dad happened to find it taped to his mirror of something, but now; I could finally see the beauty in it.

Billy looked so relaxed and carefree; like it was honestly one of the happiest moments in his life, and even with my face half hidden against his skin, I was smiling too; a clear sign that despite my protests, I was loving every minute of-

“Ugh! Gag me with a spoon!”

Max groaned; having stumbled across Billy’s so-called “underwear” drawer in his nightstand, which was actually filled with girlie magazines and “souvenir” pairs of my panties.

“Hey; Lo. This has got your name on it-“

I darted over to her, snatching the labelled envelope from her hand, absolutely adamant that the kid should never be exposed to its contents.

“Trust me. You do not want to see that.” I warned, watching as the kid’s face crinkled in disgust; probably already guessing exactly what Billy would keep in there.

I shoved the envelope back in the drawer, slamming it shut; because who knew what else Billy kept in there, and with that Max took the opportunity to further the parameters of her search to the bathroom, El following behind.

———————————

It was weird being here without Billy, looking at his things with a strange sort of detachment which I couldn’t quite grasp.

Everything in this room held so many memories for me; whether it be the spicy scent of his cologne triggering flashbacks of his arms around me, or the sight of his leather jacket slumped on a chair; my mind racing bak to all the times I’d seen him in it before and felt my heartbeat pick up.

I walked over to it, picking it up and just holding it for a minute, thumbs running over all the bumps and creases in the worn leather, reminding me of the first time he’d asked me to dance; a once bittersweet memory gotten sweeter with time and circumstance.

He’d been such an ass back then.

Still was, if I was being honest; but I’d learnt to love that about him, even when he drove me crazy half the time.

I wondered if he’d known back then?

That beneath all that macho horse crap, and maschoist sadism, that he’d seen the possibilities of what this really could be.

I lifted his jacket to my face, inhaling the scent of cigarette smoke and stale cologne that always seemed to put my mind at ease.

“Lola;  I think you’re gonna want to see this…”

———————————

I walked into Billy’s bathroom, fully expecting my world to come tumbling down at the inevitable evidence of his cheating.

Instead; my heart dropped for another reason;

“Where did you find that?”

My eyes fell upon the red and yellow form of a lifeguard whistle; blood bright against the yellow plastic as it hand from Max’s hand.

“From the trash.” Max replied; picking up the dread in my tone.

“Do you think it could be-“

I opened my mouth to express denial, when Eleven interrupted;

“No. It’s hers.”

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

12. On Your Side

Decided to publish what I had worked on before my hiatus, mainly for Tina and nem, as a Xmas thing. Ion celebrate that shit, happy holidays or whatever. I was hoping to have completed the story by now, but with my break for mental health, I guess it's either pushed back or gonna be abandoned. Will know in a couple of weeks or so what, if anything I intend to do with it. Its an Apex centered chapter. I'm still on hiatus. You can leave a review if you want to, but don't message me about Simon or this story. Thanks.

*The Grace St. Catherine Playlist, featuring songs used in chapter and songs that inspired the chapter*

“Even through the darkest phase

Be it thick or thin

Always someone marches brave

Here beneath my skin…” Grace let the music play in the background as she tried to do all of the things suggested to her by her “spiritual advisor,” Sunny, whenever she moved into the place. She was doing more drawing - mostly sketches of carnage and rage. She was journaling a lot, mostly in the form of a narrative told by a hypothetical fictional character, because admitting to the things that she was doing on paper was a huge no-no, so she simply projected her life through her journaling character, The Saint, whom would never be referred to by name in any of the entries. In this particular one, The Saint was contemplating calling The Shadow. What would the conversation even be like? He would tell her how bad she was for being mad at him. She would tell him that she only hurt bad people, but he hurt a friend… he hurt her. That was different. So different. But she MISSED him.

She had began to sketch him. She was more of a doodler/drew cartoons and comics on her phone and stuff… but she was shut up in this place for hours at a time and hadn’t really used a pencil and a sketch book seriously in a while. Then, it got away from her. After a few days, she had almost filled up a sketch book with drawings of Simon. She winced when she thought of his name. She had been avoiding speaking it and thinking it. “And constant craving has always been…” She stared at the phone, then changed the track. The last thing she needed was to think about craving, of all things…

Now, that the phone was in her hand, she glanced around, feeling that paranoia that she had since she left home. Nobody was watching her here, but she felt obligated to check, anyway, and upon verifying what she already knew - that nobody was fucking watching her - she went to visit his social media. Private? Since when? She checked another. Same thing. A third, same fucking thing! “UGH!!!” She threw her phone onto the couch and went to go chop wood. She didn’t really like to chop wood, but it did make her feel better to swing a tool and see destruction come out of it.

“Old wounds

Old fights

Another day goes by

I'm not playing by the rules

They can't take me for no fool…” Her phone continued singing as she went outside.

.

Jalicia Barrett was not the same type of watch as Grace was. She obviously wasn’t as upscale as Grace, so she wound up having much to do that was necessary, unlike Grace’s schedule of playing a typical woman. Now, to say that Jalicia was typical would be a stretch of the imagination, as Simon knew that none of Grace’s people were that and she had possibly an unreasonable amount of tiger items, but she was closer to an average person than Grace was.

She went to Seattle University, but hadn't selected a major. She was still doing general studies after taking a few years to get her GED (She began trying at 16 and only successfully received it less than a year ago), so.. a freshman in college, which wasn't bad. She was 19. She worked on campus and seemed to have other odd jobs, like being a delivery driver or personal cab, and stuff at that Infinity Foundation place.

She didn’t have rich parents. From what Simon was able to find, she was never reunited with them, whoever they were. If they had lived in Seattle when she was taken, there was nothing on file to indicate that she was reported missing. Of course… he didn’t know what her real name was. The name Jalicia Barrett only became a name for her in the year after Grace left the mental institution. He knew that was likely connected.

Maybe… she wound up in the system after Grace touched base with them? At any rate… whoever the girl who was brought into trafficking had been, she was now Jalicia Barrett, a girl who began existing when she was 13 or 14 and obviously probably didn’t know her DOB either, as it was on record as the day that her name was given, her documents were created all around the same time, so she had to either have been a baby whenever she was taken, or simply never knew her personal information like birth date and full name.

BUT, she did have prints on file, so she probably had birth records that could be matched to them somewhere. He didn’t know if he wanted to get into that… or if she hadn’t done so herself and simply decided that life was easier being the person that she knew herself to be now. He certainly couldn’t imagine separating from his loved ones and then not finding them for a decade or so and then just… trying to pretend that they were family after all or something. She had the family she wanted… Well… she lost one. He felt bad for her. It wasn’t the same, but whenever he lost Grace, he felt like his world collapsed. To even pretend to understand how this woman must feel losing her life partner after years of being together, he wouldn’t insult her like that. Instead, he looked into the details surrounding that. Whatever happened to that investigation?

He’d provided an alibi for them and the police never spoke with him again. He’d done his best playing ignorant and pretending that everything was casual. Whenever they asked him about Heath, he said that he didn’t know Heath. “I’ve only met him once and he didn’t show up to the gathering… Is he alright?” They didn’t answer, just wished him a good day.

Now, he was looking through their paperwork and he was sure that he might find something interesting, if not useful. Simon had no idea what he was looking for with these other people. Something that led him back to Grace’s trail, and he had to figure out how they worked to even presume that…

Here’s the thing… Simon wasn’t going to write himself off as wrong or going too far. For crying out loud, the things that these people did, and they felt justified in their reasonings, so he wasn’t going to allow himself to feel bad. Grace might need him, and Xander was keeping her away from him. He cursed himself over that gun, though. However, IF she would have just let him explain that he only had it to keep Xander from getting it! He didn’t know what to think when he holstered it, but it wasn’t for her! Why would he hurt her? He scanned through paperwork, trying to take his mind off of Grace’s lack of faith in him and then, he was sure that he found what he needed. If not; he’d found something interesting. “Huh.”

.

Grace called Sunny for more tips. She was doing everything that she told her to, and reading all these books and articles, ordering all sorts of holistic woo woo shit, and trying SO HARD just to not lose it out there… Sunny was always a mood lifter for her though. They would talk for however long, laugh, joke, sometimes get entirely too serious and cry… they hadn’t done this in a long time, but Grace had been calling her more frequently lately and, well… it was necessary for her to be available.

“It’s like… I don’t want to use this word lightly, and I especially can’t tell Xan, but I feel like I’m like… addicted… Does that sound stupid?”

“Xander doesn’t own the word addicted, Grace. He’s struggled with a few drugs over the years, but one of the reasons is because he’s sick. Some people can try things and never really become addicted to them because those things didn’t appeal to them in that way. This dude appealed to you in a way that your body wasn’t used to. He got into your mind, and most likely changed the chemical balance. Affected your hormones and shit, only to find that he wasn’t what you thought and now your chemicals gotta try to balance back out without his influence, so no, it doesn’t sound stupid. Perhaps melodramatic, but I don’t know. You could be addicted to the way that he made you feel. Going through dick withdrawals is a struggle that people don’t give enough credence, too.”

Grace snorted. “I’m… not… going through that. We weren’t like that. I don’t even know if he ever was into me that way? It was like… I don’t know… I never got the feeling that he desired me physically.”

“What feeling did you get?”

“For the most part, that he wanted me around. I don’t know why. He never seemed to be asking anything of me but to let him be near me. He was very good about not entering my personal space, and even when I got comfortable, he still never made any move on me or anything like that. He just seemed to like to be… present.”

“Okay, but what would he be doing when he was present?”

“Sometimes nothing, really. Just looking at me, or listening to me. Sometimes, we were doing our own thing - me reading a book. Him playing video games or writing, or… Idk, working on a cosplay outfit.”

“Girl, on what?”

“He’s a fantasy fanboy before he’s a fantasy writer, so he you know… makes cosplay costumes and stuff for conventions. Whenever he’s not scheduled to be on a panel at one… This is something that I’ve observed, not something that he’s said. He… doesn’t talk about himself a lot. Not at all, come to think about it.”

“Xander makes him out to be a literal serial killer.”

“Xander hates him. What about 808? What does she say? Xan seems to think that he “got to her” or played some kind of mind games or something?”

“Well… she didn’t say anything to me about him, except that he was very talkative and apparently worships you. She was pretty thrown off guard at how comfortable he seemed with being caught and held hostage. She said that he is either the most nonchalant person ever or the craziest fucking person that she’s ever drawn a weapon on, because he acted like they were buddies just chitchatting, and we all know that he knows what we do to people.” Grace didn’t reply. Sunny offered, “Well, whenever I think about the shit that I went through with Xander and how we always seem to find each other in the dark, it's usually in terms of No Angel.”

Grace said, “Beyonce’s No Angel?”

“”Is… Is there another one? Because, if there’s anything AND a Beyonce song, just go ahead and assume that I am only speaking of the Beyonce option.” Grace laughed. Sunny recited, “ I love you even more than who I thought you were before.” Grace held her breath, unsure of what to say to this. Sunny continued, “All I mean to say is that sometimes people aren’t who we initially thought. Sometimes they’re worse. Sometimes they are seriously fucked up. Sometimes, they’re absolute trash… But… you might still love their ass.”

“Damn, Sis… Is this how you feel about Xan? Because those are some hard descriptions.”

“No. Xander is definitely a hot mess, but I was absolutely describing your… thing… over there. Jimony?”

“Simon,” Grace said, trying not to laugh.

“Right. I knew it had “mon” in it.”

.

Jalicia didn’t know what it was about that station that made her put it on all of the time, but her streaming service generally stayed on an old r&b from the 60s and 70s station, and sometimes 80s and 90s, whenever she was at work. She had a journal with a tiger on the front that she was writing down poetry in, but she could never think of titles for any of her work, and she didn’t feel like she was that artistically creative, so she’d title everything, “(Song Title) Plays in the Background,” whether or not the song had any bearing on the poem. Today’s? Let’s Groove Plays in the Background.

Work was a little bit overwhelming, these days, but only because of the things that had nothing to do with it. The fact that she wouldn’t just receive flowers sometimes and have her coworkers wonder why her boyfriend was this thoughtful, but they never saw him. Or the days where she would pout about being broke and having to pack a stupid sandwich and he would insist on having something sent to her at lunchtime, if he didn’t just make her a different, more fulfilling lunch instead. The way that she would get a text whenever he went on his own lunch break, and it would just be some hilarious video or a new thing that they just HAD to buy. Work was overwhelming, because what she had leaned on every shift was the fact that he’d interrupt it with something nice and that she would leave there and get to see him every day.

Now, she was listening to Earth Wind & Fire, in a gray pantsuit and fooling around on her computer while she waited for something to do. She heard the tone of the doorway and she got up to see if somebody needed help. It was a college bookstore and she was often far overdressed, but all she had aside from her typical attire were the pantsuits she wore when she had to do something other than be casual - like functions and interviews or whatever, so that was what she wore to work.

The O. He looked at her like they were friends or something. A polite smile and warmth in his eyes. She stared him down and reached for her phone. “Hi. Can I just have a moment?” He asked. She texted: The O is here and hit “send” to 747. “It won’t take long, I just wanted to give you something.” The O reached into his bag and Jalicia had already identified four common objects in her immediate surroundings that she would definitely use as a weapon against him if he tried something slick. He handed her an envelope, one of the big yellow ones and she frowned.

“I’m not taking whatever that is. For all I know it’s got anthrax in it.”

He laughed and opened it himself, pulled out the paperwork and handed it to her. “I figured out a better method of tracking people down than Heath had the resources for. I know that Xander is trying his hardest, God help him, but he’s not much on a computer and some of these things are hard to find.” She took the pages and glanced through them. Simon helped her find a certain page, “I’ve guessed that you maybe didn’t know much about this part of the situation that you all walked into. The… X, I suppose you’d call him, was very paranoid that he might be on your list and he hired protection.” He pointed out a few key lines that he had highlighted. “Professional protection, and yet when the time came to protect him, Heath wasn’t shot in the arm, or hell, if they didn’t want him to escape, the leg is an option as well.”

“They killed Heath on purpose,” She said, the wind knocked out of her as she did. She tried to take a seat, but just fell back onto a table and leaned against it, knocking down several books.

“They wanted to send a message and since you all slacked up since then, I’m sure that they think that they did.” She started crying angrily and wiped her face. “Flip to the next page.” Her hands were shaking and she wasn’t sure of what she might see, but she flipped to the next page anyway. “That’s your shooter. Since he was on the job, he confessed to being the one who fired and because Heath was breaking an entering and had no family to intercede for an investigation… the cops seem to be fine with what happened to him, despite the fact that our laws state that a person may not use more force than is necessary given the situation.” She shut her eyes and squeezed out tears, her fists tightly holding onto the phot0 of the man. “Next page are his personal details. Do with it whatever you think is best. I just thought that you would want to know.”

She shivered and cried, “This doesn’t mean that I owe you anything. I didn’t ask you for this and I don’t feel indebted to you for it.”

“Jalicia… I’m on your side. Whatever side Grace is on, that’s where I am. I did this because I want to help.”

“Well… This is the most help you’re getting from me - Xander’s on his way.”

“Then, I’ll be on my way.” He had that polite smile again and she was almost terrified how easily it came to him. He left quite a few minutes before Xander arrived.

She instantly fell apart as soon as she saw him, handing him the papers and explaining to him what he was looking at. She left work and was going to call Grace, but Xander snatched her phone while he was driving. “No, what if he. like, cloned your phone or something?”

“What? This ain’t Person of Interest, Boy. What the fuck are you talking about, Bro? He’s rich but it’s not like he’s Lex Luthor.”

“We can’t chance it. He’d do anything to find out where she is.”

“Give me yours, then.”

“Just hold off. I need to check this dude out. For all we know, Simon is just blowing smoke up our asses to get us to lead him to Grace.”

“The fact that you think it’s more likely that he falsified a bunch of police documents than that he simply sneaked them away is making me wonder about you .”

“I let him get too close to her before, and I’m not doing that again.”

Jalicia snatched her phone back from him and they wrestled for it but, he eventually heard Grace on speaker.

“What is happening on that end?” She asked, laughing a little bit nervously.

“We need to talk about Simon,” Jalicia said.

“I disagree with that sentiment!” Xander said in the background.

There was a pause. Grace was panicking a little bit. Did they know that she was trying to check his pages? That she was trying to see if she could make a temporary account just to try to get to them? How would they know that, Girl?

Jalicia added, “It’s about Heath.” Xander turned red in the face and he shook his head and tried to breathe. “Oh, fuck you, Xan. You left him there to die. The least you could do is chill out while I speak to Grace about this.”

“Whoa… That’s not extremely fair. The Apex protocol is that if somebody is hit, we leave and regroup. We go in with the expectation that if we’re hit, we would slow everyone down and jeopardize everything. So, Xander and I both left him,” Grace said the last statement laced with sadness and guilt.

“He pulled you out and sped away,” Jalicia said.

Xander scoffed and then burst into tears, “I’m glad that you’re telling us how you really feel.” His voice was surprisingly calm, but the ladies knew that hurt him more than anything ever had in this world.

“Tell me what you need to say,” Grace said.

“Simon found Heath’s killer.”

“Simon found a person he alleges is Heath’s killer.”

“He had all of the paperwork to corroborate it. More than Heath has ever collected on any X.”

“He had paperwork on a man who works in security who may have shot Heath dead, but as far as we know is not a bad person. He probably was just on a security job. Somebody broke into the house he was guarding and he shot!”

“WHY DID HE SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD???” Jalicia squealed. “I’ve been over this myself, before Simon EVER said anything about it, but WHY didn’t they shoot him to survive and answer questions about what is one of the most infamous string of serial murders to ever hit the city? Why would he risk his job to kill someone that way in security, if there wasn’t a reason that Heath needed to be dead?”

“You… you think that the security dude is old Apex?”

“I think that at best, the security dude wanted to kill a person that he didn’t HAVE to kill and he used Heath as a perfect excuse, making him a shitty person, in my opinion, and at worst, he didn’t want us saying anything to anybody, because he knew why we were there!”

“But, we did release what we had on the X. The information is out there now. Nothing was done about it,” Grace added.

“Precisely! Just as nothing was done about this trigger happy buttfuck, even though our laws state that you’re not supposed to kill motherfuckers if you don’t have to!” Jalicia said. She looked at Xander, poked him in the arm and reminded him, “You were the first one to claim you’ll avenge him”

“And you told me to go fuck myself.”

“Emotions were definitely running high, but if you’re looking for the chance to make good on your word, you’ll have to suck it up and just live with the fact that Simon gave us this, like I have to live with the fact that Heath is never fucking coming home!” She got louder than she intended. Xander wiped his tears with the back of his hand, but more just poured out. He nodded, but he was still extremely upset.

“Send me what Simon sent you. I’ll let you know what I decide from there.”

“Thank you, Grace.”

Grace sighed, paused, then said, “Heath would have wanted us to get out, but even if you had driven away and left us all, we wouldn’t have faulted you… That’s the protocol. Heath knew that…”

“Does that make it easier for you?”

“No. But, we shouldn’t make it harder on each other, either…” Jalicia sighed, rolled her eyes and let more tears fall. “I’m sorry, Jalicia. Heath was the first person in the warehouse that I ever cared about. I would trade myself for him, if I could.”

“He’d never let you,” she hung up and reached out for Xander. He accepted her hand. “I was mean to you…”

“You were honest. It just fucking hurts. Heath was the backbone of this family, and everyday he isn’t here, I lose more and more respect and control. He kept me grounded.”

“Doesn’t Sunny do that too?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe you don’t let it be. Maybe the reason Heath was your rock was because you thought that you only needed one. That’s what I did, too. I didn’t even realize how much of my life revolved around him until I was just spinning in space, with nothing to pull me back. Why do you think I moved in with your ass?”

“To split rent.”

She gave a resigned shrug, but shook her head, “I thought that it would make things better, if even just to put me in a spot where I could just not think about it and not be alone. I figured I wouldn’t get over it, but that at least I would logically be able to grant myself some peace because you’re there too, and that there would be some type of comfort. Not emotionally. That’s gonna take more time than I even believe that I have left in this world. But… at least I wanted that solid ground to stand on, to be able to say, Heath would want his two favorite people to lean on each other and find some strength in his absence.” Xander sniffled. She finished, “But it didn’t matter, and I don’t even know what to do, because I thought that being around you would guarantee some balance, even if it didn’t truly help… I still have all of my grief, and I’m..” she whimpered, “So tired. And empty. And distant. My closest living friend is sitting right next to me, and I have been so alone…”

Xander pulled the van over, unlatched his seatbelt and hugged her. She wasn’t done. She was so focused on her train of thought that she hadn’t even actually noticed that Xander was hugging her. “Heath was always in my life. Before any other human that I can remember. Like, logically, I know that Grace took care of Todd and Heath took care of me… but… I don’t even remember anybody else until maybe I was 5 or 6. I know he wasn’t the only person around, but in my mind, he was. I have NO frame of reference that doesn’t involve him. He was…” She finally realized both that Xander was already holding her and that she was crying again.

She remembered something. She was 4 or 5, her brain was never good at that part. She wasn’t in school or anything. All of her special days were simply moments and occurrences. This particular occurrence. A boy with light hair, getting hurt really bad by the stewards. Heath covered her eyes and started talking about flowers. He found a new book about them. He’d help her try to read later. The noise of the boy being beaten up was in the background, but at the time, she was too young to pay any attention to it and listen to Heath. So, she listened to Heath and the beating was background noise filtered out. Afterwards, he took her to the side of the building and let her pick flowers for their new friend. The new boy was mean. He was mean to Heath and Grace had to help Heath. Then, he was nice. She looked at Xander’s face and saw that same boy, just as hurt and just as angry as the first day she recalled a memory of him.

“He wasn’t always in mine… but he was the first person who was ever just nice to me for no reason other than to be nice,” Xander said. “There’s nothing that I want more than to punish a person who would take him away from us, but to have Simon, SIMON, give us that…” He was red in the face and shaking his head. “He’s using it to get to Grace, and I just didn’t want to give him that kind of power.”

“Then why didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, lets not tell her where we got the information?’ If you had just sent it to her with X confirmed, instead of fighting me in traffic…”

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“I just… This ONE thing, then maybe I can move on.” He nodded and buckled back in. “I’ll get to work on the logistics. In case Grace gives us the go ahead, I want to be ready to move as soon as possible.”

.

Simon pulled his hair up into a high ponytail. He was going to try to get it into a bun, but it had been getting longer and thicker, and while he’d normally just pull the top part into a pony and let the rest hang, but it was windy and he was going to be pretty active, so high ponytail, it was. He had been checking out the X that he gave Jalicia, to see if they were going to make a move on him. He wasn’t positive of the typical turnaround time on an X, so he simply went to watch every night. He wasn’t going to do the car. Dude was in security. He’d probably make him.

Instead, he parked around the block and went to a big tree across the street from the X’s home to post up. He had binoculars and an awkwardly applied hunting tree seat. It wasn’t made for him to be up this high, but he situated it only to have a seat that wasn’t tree bark. He spent the time that he wasn’t watching the house on social media, checking out Sunetra’s pages… which… apparently she went by “Sunny…” which… Simon noted to himself that he had seen a little sun tattoo on Xander, and whenever he came across Sunny’s very tasteful artistic nudes, he saw that she had a little tattoo, as well, on her chest, of an “X.”

Her photos were really nice and she seemed to… possibly be a stripper? He checked a few of her posts and captions. She hashtagged #burlesque in some of them, so maybe not a stripper, but something risque. She was in the fine arts program in college, for dance and had many posts from the Infinity Foundation of her doing dance workshops, yoga, and stuff. She had a lot of witchy posts, too. Simon rolled his eyes, but kept scrolling. Several of her posts were really funny. He noticed a yoga and meditation program that she would be doing at a community center and saved the post.

He watched the X for about a week and a half when he saw the van pull up. In the dark, he couldn’t tell who people were, but two had gotten out and through the binoculars, he could tell that Xander was one and the other was Jalicia. He checked the van. That was an unfamiliar one behind the wheel, but he presumed that it was Sunny or 808, and that he simply couldn’t see them... There was a loud noise and screaming in the house. He turned to see that Jalicia had a knife to a woman’s throat while Xander was escorting the X out, with his hands up. He got him to the van, injected something into his neck and tossed him in. Jalicia unhanded the woman, but appeared to take a bag along with her and the woman ran next door.

Jalicia had taken all the phones with her. The woman had to run next door to call the police. Simon realized that she was probably doing that, and he got out of the tree to get back to his car. If he hurried, he might be able to catch the van!

He went the direction that they had, and when he came to what he thought might be them, he put on a mask of his own, but it was a medical mask, just because that was… possibly not as weird as if he wore like a clown mask or something. They had NOT handled that in the way that he expected. Something told him that they either were rushing or desperate. He wondered why.

But, whenever they pulled the van into an old train station, he parked behind the building and got out of his car. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up.  

He could hear their voices, and he followed the sound of them, but didn’t come from the shadows of the building. They were dragging the bag into a field that Simon knew that he had passed several times in his life, but never paid much attention to. Nobody really did. Was this where they buried them? He wondered. He only saw Jalicia and Xander, pulling the body bag with one hand and carrying shovels in their free hands. Where was the driver? He went around the other side of the building and the van was pulling off. Where were THEY going? He couldn’t start his car. Jalicia and Xander weren’t far enough away to not hear him. He groaned and went to look back towards the field. He couldn’t see anything beyond the tall grass, but he used his phone to try to record where they were… maybe he could find it in the daytime. Besides, they were now far enough away that he could start his car without alerting him. He felt like he had enough.

Simon drove home, wary of a van behind him for a portion of the way. He took some loops and turnarounds that he wouldn’t usually take before he was comfortable that they weren’t following him and it wasn’t the van… but after he got home, he noticed at the bottom of the hill a van, and it looked like the van that they used. It looked like the van that he was nervous might be following him. But. There was no way that the van had found him after those turns. Was it one of them, just letting him know that they knew he had followed them?

He rushed inside and looked out of the curtains. They were there for a moment. They turned the van off and he took a deep gulp and reached for one of his guns. They got out of the van and stood, staring up at the house. DEFINITELY APEX. This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.

They stared, wearing a gold mask, a tam hat, and the all black outfit that he had gotten used to, but then not seen for a while. “Grace!” He said. He put his gun down and rushed out of his door. “Grace?” He called, but she rushed back into the van, tossed something out, and peeled off. “Grace…” He ran down the hill and out to the road. She was gone… He looked down to see what she had thrown down on her way off. It was a Stop sign with a red squiggly line underneath the word “Stop.” He picked it up, roared and began to smash it against the pavement, before flinging it into the middle of the road and going back into his house. He called Jalicia and she looked at her phone, not recognizing the number, so she answered it. “Hello?”

“Was that Grace?” a voice asked.

“What?”

“The person who just followed me home and told me to stop. Was that Grace?”

“No,” was all that she said. He hung up. She put her phone away.

“Who’s that?” Xander wondered.

“Non issue,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie, and there was no way that she was about to ruin their night with… whatever that had been about. She and Xander were still digging when their third came walking up, her gold mask on her face and a shovel in hand. “Girl, where did you rush off to?”

“I knew he was gonna still be alive,” she said and pulled up the mask onto her head. Sunny. “Had to make a stop,” she said with a shrug. She and Jalicia stared at each other a moment, and Xander kept digging, oblivious to the exchange of them questioning each other with their eyes. It was short lived, because Grace was connecting for the video call. “Hey, Girl, Hey!” Sunny cheered.

“Bitch, I’m so mad that I’m not there right now.”

“Be mad at Jimona,” Sunny said.

“Simon!” Grace said, laughing. Then, more solemnly, said, “Draw a squiggle right across his face, for me.”

“Sure will,” Sunny said, pulling her knife out. “What are you listening to, Woman?”

Grace checked the info on her streaming, “Hurts by Emeli Sande.”

“That’s dope. Send me the link to that.”

.

Simon was at the apartment now, crying and sitting in front of the cameras. He wondered if she would return with them, but looking at the feeds he had placed to check the outside of their homes, he noted that the three entered Xander and Jalicia’s home at 3:47 am… and that… wasn’t Grace. It was the woman that he had initially identified as, “One who looks like Grace.” It was Sunny… He flared his nostrils and set an alert to remind him about the yoga and meditation at the community center.

His phone began to ring while it was in his hands. It was a private number. For a moment, he let his heart accelerate. “Hello?” He answered.

Silence. He sighed and almost hung up, but… he felt something. His tears stopped, he sat up erect and waited. She was silent, still. He was afraid to break it, but more afraid of her losing whatever nerve she had at the moment and hanging up. So, he dared to speak. He kept his voice soft and low. Gentle, like he knew she would remember him being. “Hey…” He said. He heard her sniffle and it tore at his heart. “Hey,” he managed to say even softer. “Are you okay?” She sniffled again. “Tell me what I can do to make you okay?”

“Why did you do that, Simon? Why did you?”

“I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to know you. I wanted you… I didn’t know what to do. I was desperate. I am desperate. Please, tell me where you are…”

“You let Xander catch you.” There was the longest pause since the conversation started. Eventually, she spoke again. “I feel like the kids walked in on me doing something dirty…”

“I feel like it’s none of ‘the kids’ damn business what we do.”

“They can’t see stuff like that. They can’t see me being followed and watched, obsessively. They can’t just move on from that. You have no idea the kind of people who… Why did you have a gun?”

“Because, I had just been attacked by somebody that I know is a murderer and I was on edge…” They were quiet again. “I can keep them out of sight from now on. I can keep them away from you, at all times…”

“If I come back into town, my crew is gonna get… difficult. It won’t be safe for you.”

“I can’t prove myself to them? To you? Did you see what I found for them? For Heath? For Jalicia?... For you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Jalicia told me right away…”

“You sound like you’re smiling,” he observed, daring to smile, himself.

“I can’t help it… but… we can’t… do this, Simon.”

“Don’t…”

“We’re both in really weird places and us coming together isn’t good… for either of us, I think…”

“Please…”

“We shouldn’t be together, see each other, anything. You should… get on with your life.”

“No!”

“Bye, Simon.”

“NO!!” She hung up. He bit into his lip so hard that he drew blood, trying to keep his composure. He couldn’t even go to the gun range right now! But.. He could… go back to that field. He knew where it was. He knew where the bodies were now… he… was running out of patience, but he reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault. The longer they kept her away from him, the more confused she would be. She just needed to understand that he was on her side. If she couldn’t… she would have to learn that there were consequences for going against him.

13. A Shot in the Dark Pt 1

[scoundrels-in-love]

Did you slip in through open doors and sit down, just to look at me like that (every day) | Chapter 2 - Jaime I

Brienne doesn’t mean to lie to her father. She just wants him to stop trying to set her up with men who aren’t Jaime Lannister, whom she’s secretly in love with. Unfortunately, that’s exactly who eagerly inserts himself in the narrative as her fake boyfriend. And her father is coming to King’s Landing in two weeks.

Truly, what could go wrong?

Also on AO3. Still part of @jbmonthlymadness Mutual Pining March.

He is so, so fucked.

Not quite the same way he thought a week ago, but still very much fucked.

Jaime glances over to where Brienne is watching a game on the couch for what feels like the hundredth time this half hour. While that itself isn’t unusual, everything else is. Tenseness in her shoulders he isn’t sure he will lure out with a stupid joke and then slay with even worse one, the way they’ve barely spoken to each other today and that his heart is being harshly kneaded by some huge, clawed animal. He’d say it’s a lion, but considering his House that feels just a little cliche .

Though, according to Elia, he is a walking cliche and a terribly executed one, at that. He sighs, realizes that the beer bottle really isn’t where he’s blindly grabbing for it, and averts his gaze from his fake girlfriend. There is exactly one word too many in that title and it’s neither girl or friend. If only he could convince Brienne of the same.

Jaime has tried , he really has. Gotten up earlier to make sure he can prepare her coffee and go on a jog with her, kissed her goodbye on the cheek, pestered her into having a lunch during work hours and ordered takeout to arrive just after she got home the days he knew he’d be home even later than her, sent her obscure memes about animals he found on some nature activist group on Raventome that he frankly didn’t get but hoped she would and have a good laugh between work and more.

Granted, he does all these things regularly anyway (except the cheek kisses, but he isn’t sure they’re as much of a highlight of the day for her as they are for him), but now it’s daily. And it’s not a bother, like Brienne tries to convince him to think, and Jaime would gladly do it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Even waking an hour earlier, although he likes to think that if they were properly dating, he’d persuade her to explore other workouts they could do in the time without leaving the house.

Elia suggested it’s because she’s stressed about the convention, but Jaime knows better. (“Of course you do, that’s why you suggested to be her fake boyfriend instead of telling her you’ve been head over heels for her for years now.”) No, Brienne’s work has nothing to do with the skittishness in her eyes, the way she freezes when he presses lips to her delightfully reddening cheek, sometimes daring to brush corner of her mouth or lingering a second too long because her proximity makes him a little dizzy, or stumbles over conversations topics as if they are larger than boulders she can easily best when hiking. She doesn’t even shut down his flirtations anymore - instead she looks away and mumbles something or trips into the next topic.

Their new arrangement is the cause, and the realization has been rolling toward him like a house sized morning star down a gentle slope.

“Jaime? Movie’s starting,” subject of his sweet agony and worry calls out and Jaime realizes he has quite literally spaced out. And that perhaps his inner narrator is going a little overboard. Elia would have another laughing fit if she knew.

He grabs the snacks and another beer and presents them to her with a smile, falls heavily in his spot that earns a little bit of glare from Brienne because, of course, she’s concerned for the springs and one of these days he will tell her he can think of more interesting things to wreck their couch with. ‘One of these days’ feels like an awful stretch and ‘a mountainclimb later’ sort of thing, though. He heaves a sigh.

“Everything alright, Jaime?” she asks and he looks at her, armed with a bright smile and an easy no, when they crumble faced with concern that colors the blue of her eyes deeper, yet gilded shade like the last glimpse of sunset paints the sea. Of course Brienne finds time to worry about him, despite seemingly thinking she’s standing between two cannons labelled ‘work’ and ‘fake boyfriend’, ready to shoot.

He wants to pull her close and press a kiss to her furrowed brow so much he can physically feel an alternate reality, one where he’s braver and does just that, manifest.

Unfortunately, in this one Jaime only laughs and plops his head in her lap, facing the TV. “Of course I am, B. But if you’re so worried, you can always pet my head and tell me it’s going to be alright.” He likes it when she says that, the way she sets her jaw mulishly and seems to simply talk it into existence with sheer willpower and kindness. But never for herself, only others.

Brienne stills for a moment, then, much to his relief, makes indigant noise and pushes at his shoulder slightly but with no real force. “I’m not a cushion, Jaime” she tells him and he shifts just so he can grin up at her.

“C’mon, I’ve been a good boyfriend this week, have I not earned one lap cushion coupon? I must use it before it expires.”

“ Fake boyfriend,” she says seriously and Jaime looks at the screen again so she can’t witness his grin shattering like the window of Casterly Rock’s kitchen when he had been six and too eager while playing ball. He might feel even more chastised than after the lecture Tywin had given him, which had left a stone grinding sharp edge in his gut for a week.

“Fine, but I am not going to pet your head. You are not an overgrown housecat, no matter how much you may act as one,” Brienne relents, but by the end of the movie, she brushes back a strand he has shaken into his eyes and halfway through the second movie, she actually runs her hand through his hair and he barely manages to remain still, instead of following her hand like foam graces a wave’s edge.

All things considered, Jaime feels re-energized for the next week and his little war campaign on Brienne’s heart. He likes to think of it as war, though she is not a thing to conquer despite her truly formidable walls, just to trounce the narrative she has set for herself.

Once, before that fatefully shitty night when a pipe in his first own apartment burst and Brienne had invited him to stay over until it was fixed (and then he never really left), they had talked about who they would be in Targaryen and Stark eras, both revealing their dreams about knighthood.

Already knowing her love for ridiculous, historical(ly inaccurate) romance novels, he had joked if she’d not like ballads written about her instead, but Brienne’s face had shuttered and she had reminded him that no one would go to war for her . “I would rather defend the innocent and fight than stay home a sad and unmarried maid,” she had concluded, before going off about Blue Knight and other warrior women of Tarth. Jaime had already known back then that in any lifetime she’d be worthy of many great songs - of love and otherwise. But the bridge of their friendship was tentative still and he had had no intentions of being the one to lay the siege on her heart.

And when he had wanted to, he had already been so deep in the annoying, best friend role and still so utterly not having his shit together he didn’t feel he had the right to start the march. Someone better would surely come along. Except no one has, three years later still, and Brienne seems to think it’s a sign she only deserves a photoshopped suit-hanger and Jaime would rather be pierced endlessly by her glowering and risk her friendship that he treasures above anything he has ever known, than passively let her continue believing that.

For now, he’s only dying because of work, as they are currently quite swamped. It doesn’t help at all that his brain is a little (or a whole lot, but who’s counting) occupied with various Romance-Brienne-So-Hard-She-Doesn’t-Know-What-Hit-Her strategies. His plans for Friday come to immediate stop when he arrives home and finds Brienne fallen asleep at the kitchen table, her laptop’s screensaver of pixelated Kingslayer and Blue Knight from their favorite cartoon bouncing around the screen. He had installed it the first week of living here and despite her initial grumbling, she has never changed or disabled it.

This would be easier if Brienne’s one quirk when working at home wasn’t changing her workspace every few hours, as if it helps her think. It’s one of her most restless habits and typically, Jaime finds it adorable, but now that he has to haul half-asleep Brienne to her room he… Who is kidding, he also finds it endearing.

“Jaime, I can walk,” she scoffs, but leans on him anyway and when he helps her lay down on the bed, her eyes are soft and a little dazed and he thinks of early spring mornings, when nothing but the birds and clouds are awake yet, against the blueness of the sky.

Brienne curls up and he pulls a blanket over her and she gives him a sleepy smile, so warm that the consistent pull toward her feels anchored to the sun itself. He follows it and leans down and presses lips to her forehead. She exhales softly and when he pulls back, her eyes are closed, but there’s an almost sad turn to her lips.

“I really don’t want this to end, Jaime.” Her voice is so quiet he almost doesn’t hear - he wouldn’t if he wasn’t so close. His heart does an odd thing in his chest, something that would make it more of a rope dancer than a lion leaping through a ring of fire.

Jaime brushes a strand of her hair back, gently, in an attempt to reassure what odd fear has burrowed into her heart. He shouldn’t be so happy every time Brienne expresses she doesn’t want to lose him, but even her brilliant light can’t erase generations of carefully cultivated selfishness. “It doesn’t have to.”

“But it will.” And then she nuzzles deeper in the pillow and he knows this is a conversation to be finished (or maybe repeated) when she’s actually awake. Quietly, he walks out of the room and when the door has shut gently, bounces toward the living room with a grin that everyone would tell him begs for a punch.

There is hope for him yet.

[hippriestess]

Part 4 - I’ve Been Duped...

It was to be expected that some of those who brought us some of the less essential Fall releases would also respond to Smith's death. One of worst was the first to arrive and it came from perennial recyclers Secret Records; a repackaging of 10 live tracks from the 2002 “A Touch Sensitive” DVD – already reconfigured multiple times – on an LP titled, and this absolutely beggars belief, “Best Of” and credited to “The Fall & Mark E Smith”, a credit never once used on a release in Smith's lifetime (a few gig posters, yes but never a record). Released just 3 months after Smith's death for about £18-20, this received the derision it deserved and, judging from the number of copies for sale on Discogs and their current asking prices, it appears to have sold just a little more than fuck all.

But even this was overshadowed come March 2019 when Ozit/Dandelion released what has to be The Worst Fall Release Ever. Pressed into horrid orange vinyl, the contents of “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes” were staggeringly poor. Proudly labelled as “Non-Record-Store-Day Release” (was it turned down?) the record boasted just 8 tracks. The album tried to elide its rotten contents by calling all the tracks “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes”. Track 1 was a 6 minute version of “Last Nacht” from “I Am Kurious Oranj”. The released track doesn't actually feature within the 6 minutes so this is probably an outtake and therefore probably not owned by Beggars Banquet. There is a drop out lasting several seconds that has gone uncorrected and it's about 4 minutes longer than it needs to be, confirming the brevity of the version used in 1988 to be bob on. Tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 are live tracks from 1981, all of which had already been released on the otherwise unimpressive “Northern Cream” DVD. What is barely credible is that tracks 3, 5 and 7 are also “Last Nacht” but not further alternates, rather being Track 1 cut into 2 minute pieces and simply repeated! Did they think we wouldn't notice?! Utterly awful, thoroughly exploitative and an absolute disgrace. They also stumped up a 30 minute DVD of MES being interviewed. This bore the thoroughly unappealing title “30 Minutes On A Manchester Slag Heap”. I only ever saw this for sale on eBay but a couple of clicks confirmed that it was Ozit/Dandelion product being sold by them through that channel. The cover was of a slag heap rather than of MES. Enough said.

OK, let's tidy up, what's next?

The immediate future sees 2 vinyl releases in the August “drop” of the now-staggered, socially-distanced RSD2020; a double LP of “[Austurbæjarbíó] - Reykjavík Live 1983” on the now inevitable splatter vinyl and a single LP of  “Cerebral Caustic” on multi-coloured “bonkers” (their word, absofuckinglutely not mine) splatter vinyl because of course it is. That's all for RSD this year, a move which represents far better judgement by the organisers. A studio album out of print on vinyl for 25 years and a properly sought after live release on the format for the first time? Yeah, that fits well with what RSD was meant to be back when we all queued up for a “Bury Pts 2 + 4” 7” in 2010.

Now, a fun wee question mark was raised over “CC” when the RSD website credited the release to Demon rather than Cherry Red. It appears Demon have the Permanent Records catalogue and have also announced clear vinyl reissues of “The Infotainment Scan”, “Middle Class Revolt”, “The Twenty-Seven Points” and, perhaps most interestingly, “The Post Nearly Man”, all on clear vinyl with expanded artwork from Pascal LeGras. It looks as though these are coming in under the £20 mark (£25 for T27P) and I reckon they'll be popular – I fancy nabbing MCR and TPNM myself. A bit of a downer that all of these, except, oddly, “The Post Nearly Man” were recently rescheduled from September 2020 to January 2021 but hey ho – probably Covid-related, much like everything else.

As for Cherry Red, whilst one report had it that “Are You Are Missing Winner” was next, they are finally releasing a 3CD/2LP edition of “Imperial Wax Solvent” in October. This includes the much-discussed original mix by Grant Showbiz and a previously unavailable live set from shortly after the album's original release. This is, basically, exactly what we wanted. Hurrah! Can't wait.

Thanks to the speculation re: AYAMW, there was a little disappointment in come quarters and I can certainly see a healthy audience for a straight single LP pressing of that as it was only ever available on a picture disc vinyl before. Here's hoping they won't go for a double splatter vinyl with unnecessary extras (“Where's The Fuckin' Taxi? Cunt” on vinyl? Come on, SPARE US).  

To yr present authors surprise, an expanded edition of “The Frenz Experiment” was announced for release by Beggars Banquet/Arkive in October. I had reckoned a new vinyl edition was likely as it was the only studio album on BB not yet afforded a new pressing and the addition of a second LP with various singles tracks was no surprise either, given that there are similar packages available for “TWAFW”, “TNSG” and “Bend Sinister”. A very pleasant surprise however is the inclusion of the group's Janice Long session from 1987, their only unreleased Radio 1 session. Also, “A Day In The Life” has been licenced for the this also (it was the only studio recording from the era missing from “5 Albums”). The Long session and “...Life” are only on the CD version. As such, this release very much follows the pattern of the “Bend Sinister” reissue from 2018 and is likely inspired by the near ecstatic reception and healthy sales that release enjoyed. Nice that the CD edition is £12 this time, having been more like £22 for “Bend Sinister”.

Let Them Eat Vinyl are responsible for the illustration...they are planning an almost ludicrous onslaught of Fall vinyl. Their website currently lists an almost unbelievable THIRTY ONE Fall LP releases for the three months running September to November. Thirty-one. Now – this includes “Interim” which is already on the shelves but it also includes the “Live From The Vaults” releases. It was assumed from the inclusion of two of these on Cherry Red's “Dragnet” 3CD box that these were part of the Fall Sound Archive deal that MES cut with CR in the years before his death which makes this a bit interesting. Also, LTEV are also claiming they will release “The Post-Nearly Man” on vinyl in October, which clashes with Demon's schedule – they originally had Smith and The Fall's albums for Permanent Records releases slated for reissue in September but all except TPNM have been moved. Meanwhile, “Cog Sinister” are about to release TPNM on CD! After being unavailable and highly prized for 2 decades, we're now set for 3 separate reissues within 2 months!  Anyway, the vast majority of the remaining LTEV are discs from the 2 “sets of ten (really eleven)” although also included are the excellent “I Am Pure As Oranj” and the first vinyl edition of “The Light User Syndrome” since its original release in 1996. Caveat Emptor, as the saying goes.

Narnack are also hinting that a 3LP “Fall Heads Roll” isn't too far off. Having teased this for a couple of years, Early in 2020, it was announced that the label was folding. This announcement was deleted and Narnack immediately moved on to asking fans to suggest what additional material could be added to this new version. Never one of their best, there would have to be some impressive outtakes to persuade yr persent scribe to cough up.  

Elsewhere, Phonogram have yet to succumb to new vinyl pressings of their albums, despite the prices fetched on the collectors market for these, especially “Code-Selfish”. This may be partly due to what seems to have been a relatively low take-up for their 6CD box set from 2017. Titled “The Fontana Years”, this was just the 2CD editions of the three albums from 2007 in a box. It therefore looked weak next to the “Singles 1978-2016” box set as well as providing nothing attractive to the faithful who already had them. It hit the shelves at £35-40 a time and, unsurprisingly, remained there and can now be scored for around £20.

The much requested expansion of “The Real New Fall LP” with the original, very different mix of the album has yet to appear. At last count, contractual wrangles between the UK and US were said to be in the way but who knows? If “Levitate” can reappear, surely this can too.

Of course, we never know what else the less-salubrious end of the market will have for us but we shall approach with due caution.

The cold reality: what we get now is all there is. Mark E Smith now exists for Fall fans on paper, on magnetic tape, on vinyl and in combinations of 0 and 1. A sad fact. But it is clear that the appetite for The Fall is, if anything, increasing. Hindsight is presenting The Fall in a particularly clear light. In such a stylised, filtered and carefully marketed world, full of covert strategies and manipulative messaging, The Fall are reassuringly flawed, human, real. Their jagged edges, their constant state of flux, their DIY presentation and their disinterest in convention draws in the curious. The quantity of music suits an insatiable, want-it-all-and-now culture and, having made their albums for the vinyl format as well as bringing us so many magnificent 3-4 minute singles, their music is almost perfectly suited to today's market place where vinyl albums mix with song-by-song streams. People who love to write about music always loved The Fall and it seems that this is every bit as true today as it was in the days when we never had to wait any more than a few months for a missive of some sort, be it an album, a single, a Peel session or even just an entertaining interview.

Given that The Beatles – the most lauded rock/pop act of all time - have finally reached a generation to whom their blithe optimism means absolutely nothing, it is impossible to say how anything in music will be regarded 20 years from now. But for now, at least, The Fall endure. Their vibrations remain intense and powerful. And we, the people, dance to the waves.

Nine out of ten? Nah. Ten out of ten. Top marks. 

[shellheadtmark2]

𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐕, 𝐒𝐊𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐌: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐏𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌

So it was settled. The Chimer army marched at night, and swarmed into the Dwemer camp. They were relying on Chimarvamidium to lead the first wave, but it malfunctioned and began attacking the Chimer's own troops. Added to that, the Dwemer were fully armored, well-rested, and eager for battle. The surprise was turned, and most of the high-ranking Chimer, including Karenithil Barif the Beast, were captured.

Though they were too proud to ask, Sthovin explained to them that he had been warned of their attack by a Calling by one of his men.

“What man of yours is in our camp?” sneered Barif.

Chimarvamidium, standing erect by the side of the captured, removed its head. Within its metal body was Jnaggo, the armorer.

“A Dwemer child of eight can create a golem,” he explained. “But only a truly great warrior and armorer can pretend to be one.”

- Chimarvamidium

the dwemer, a race of elves also called dwarves (though they were of average size in comparison to the other races of tamriel), were known as master craftsmen; an atheistic race that lived in gleaming cities of grey stone and bronzed metal, among their steam-driven machines and amuniculi.  blinders of the falmer, associates of dragons before the dragon war, half at war with the chimer and half in an uneasy alliance with them.  part of their belief system involved the idea that the world dreamed, and to wake up would return them to their rightful place among aetherium and worked to those ends, building a brass god named numidium.  it’s said their chief tonal architect, kagrenac, used specialized tools - keening and sunder, with the use of wraithguard to safeguard - on the heart of lorkhan, and all once the entire race disappeared.

well.  almost the entire race.

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎

name:  tnathas birthsign:  the thief | 29 evening star race:  dwemer(i) (duuma in the dwemer language) occupation:  former tonal architect | currently traveling adventurer specializing in dwemer ruins birthplace:  kagrenzel, in the velothi mountains current residence:  clockwork castle, located in the velothi mountains specialization:  spellsword/storm mage | blacksmithing | enchanting | destruction and conjuration magic factions:  college of winterhold | bards college | avengers | dawnguard

𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋

tnathas is on the tall end of the spectrum for dwemer, standing six feet, one inch in his bare feet, with a lean, angular frame.  while it’s almost easy to believe he’s just a strange looking altmer, his ears and eyes are what give him away as something else, his ears being more dunmer in shape and size (they’re large, pointy, and are angled away from his head in a more dunmer manner, and he [like most dwemer] wears golden hoops up their length).  his eyes are also more dunmer in their shape and coloration, being blue on black sclera.  he wears his hair short, and his beard entirely unlike the current fashions (or the past ones), just long enough to have three dwemeri beads braided into it.  in a home environment, where he’s safe and feels comfortable, he trends back to dwemeri styles of robes, layers of cloth, open sandals, and runs around barefaced.  otherwise he typically rarely takes his helmet off in public, because the fewer people that see both how odd he looks compared to current elves or that he’s an elf at all, the better.

while a spellsword, he suffers the curse laid upon any dwemer that might have survived the cataclysm by the daedric prince azura, in that his ability to use magic does not regenerate over time.  as such, he has to keep a healthy supply of magicka potions nearby, or rely on the strength of his sword arm alone.  like all dwemer, he possesses the ability of the calling - a telepathic link between all dwemer - though these days...it’s mostly silent.  and because of dwemer innovation in both magic and machinery, he can and has been known to toy with magic that disrupts time for very short durations.  like the skaal and their listening and the former yokudan sword-singers, he’s also well versed in dwemer tonal magic.

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

a badly behaved dwemer in his youth, tnathas often thumbed his nose at convention and responsibility and instead of settling into his expected position as a tonal architect, he took what can be considered an elven gap year and instead traveled across tamriel to see what he could see, staying above ground more than below.  in this way, his experiences have shaped him into something that is not the typical dwemer, as he is less cold, less calculating, and in many ways, less logic driven and more warm and sympathetic.  

however, with the rumblings between those that did and did not agree with what kagrenac wished to do with numidium and the heart of lorkhan, tnathas finally returned home to dwemer life and settled in as a tonal architect, as the war of the first council decided to really get rolling between everyone and their cousins, from dwemer to chimer to nords to nedes.  he ended up, when it seemed that kagrenac was really going to carry out his insane plan to use his tools on the heart of lorkhan, closing himself up in a private lab in a small pocket carved from oblivion, and got to work.  when he emerged again, having no idea of the passage of time on nirn, his entire race was gone, the nords were at war again, this time with some nebulous empire, and he realized very quickly that displaying what he really was would bring nothing but trouble, and let people assume he was altmer or dunmer or an exceptionally large bosmer.  these days he’s simply trying to find his place in the world, while coming to grips with the things he’d been aware had been happening in the dwemer cities, and struggling with the choice of searching for his people - if they still exist - or letting those ghosts lie uneasy in their graves.

𝐅𝐔𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒

+ he’s not a man, he’s a mer, and yes, that’s actually an important distinction.  but if you never see him without the helmet he’ll let you assume what you want. + he can enter dwemer ruins and not be attacked by the amuniculi inside.  your safest way to traverse them is with him, unless you count the falmer.  the falmer will attack. + the house he calls home is full of all sorts of repaired and reprogrammed automatons.  the clanking is unbelievable. + he knows the divines and the daedra are real, he just doesn’t care.  believe what you want, but leave him out of it.  he’s got SCIENCE! to do.  you won’t catch him making deals with daedra or wearing an amulet of mara. + even in private conversation with someone that knows what he is, he’ll often correct himself if he uses old names for things.  it’s all about moving into the future, for one, because he’s not going to dwell in the past, but also because he’s already odd enough without calling something by a name that hasn’t been used in four thousand years. + the house contains...well.  two other dwemer.  of a sort.  they’re called the gilded and they’re automatons built from the souls and gilded bones of dwemer who were ill and dying.  lamashtu and lahar are their names and they act as caretakers for the house.  those who know the whole story will have to deal with the fact that tnathas mostly talks to either of them in dwemeris.  old habits and all that. + there’s also an enormous dwemer city under the house full of gilded that are...broken.  tnathas sees himself as their caretaker, because violent and confused or not, those are still his people and he has a responsibility to them. + his work/life balance is absolutely horrid and he will have to be dragged out of the workroom and study for things like sleep and food. + he’s decided calcelmo is his worst mortal enemy and lives to troll him.  calcelmo has no idea he’s even dwemeri, tnathas just thinks he’s kind of a dick. + his home is open to those he becomes close to and trust, and eventually the idea will take root of a new kind of guild - something like the companions - but to fight for the people who can’t fight for themselves, and not expecting payment in return.  if you guessed the avengers, here’s your gold star.

𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐒 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃

+ clockwork castle + the timelost dwemer - a deep elf race

[mysticsparklewings]

I will be with You

When you go, just know that I will remember you If living was the hardest part, we'll then one day be together And in the end we'll fall apart, just as the leaves change in color And then I will be with you, I will be there one last time now --My Chemical Romance, "It's Not a Fashion Statement, it's a Deathwish" ____ It's rare that I'm this proud of an artwork I've created. ^_^ Usually, there's some glaring issue or just an assortment of small things I'd still change if I had the patience and/or artistic ability to do it. Or even just some things that I feel like could've been done better, even if I know it did the best I could. This time? No. Not right now, shortly after it's been completed, anyway. I'm sure years down the line from now I'll look back and feel at least slightly different. But as it stands now, while I'm sure it has its faults, I am truly happy and truly proud of what I've created here and whatever faults are there aren't bothering me at all. So what then is this, exactly? This my dear Sparklers is a visual love letter to the band I discovered just a little too late but was still there for me when no one else was all the same. Earlier this month, I uploaded a different piece of art to celebrate the announcement of My Chemical Romance's Return, but even when I uploaded that one I was already thinking of doing another one, this time something that was more obviously fan art. But not just fan art as I've done for them in the past (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C), but something extra-special and fun. I really did go into creating this wanting it to be as I described it above; a visual love letter to this band that I love so much and could not be happier that they're back. As such, I've squeezed in as many references as I could: 1. The female figure is molded after Helena from the album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge 2. The male/skeleton figure is supposed to be Pepe (that's what Google said his name was, anyway), the icon and seemingly marching band conductor from The Black Parade album 3. On Pepe's hat, I replaced the usual symbol with the Candle symbol that's been featured in the band's Return artwork 4. They fade into leaves based on the line from It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish (a song from Three Cheers) that I quoted at the top of the description 5. behind them is Party Poison's mask, as featured in the Danger Days music videos 6. on the mask, I replaced one of the black triangle shapes with the hanging man silhouette from I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love 7. The rest of the background is inspired by the covers for the Conventional Weapons releases (which in my mind I count as essentially an unofficial fifth album) (Debatable) 8. Their touching hands could be an indirect reference to the line "And as we're touching hands, and as we're falling down" from Demolition Lovers, a song from Bullets. That's at least one reference each (Three Cheers technically got two) for each of the main releases, plus one directly related to this new era we don't know much about yet. It's not an exhaustive "spot the reference" game, but I'm glad I was able to incorporate as many as I did. Now that I've explained them, maybe I can talk about my process without having to stop to re-explain each reference as they come up.   After some brainstorming, I got this image in my head of Helena and Pepe in this pose (inspired at least partially by this pre-existing fanart I've seen many times before) , which to me is a "renaissance dancing" pose but I'm sure there's some other better way to describe it I haven't thought of. I tried for a very long time to find a reference image of this exact pose to help me get the proportions and general anatomy right within my own stylization, but for the life of me, I couldn't find anything close enough to suit me and I really didn't want to have to settle for something else. As such, I'm sure the proportions and anatomy are off, but even so, I think I did pretty good considering. The main issues I ran into during sketching were mainly balancing the energy between the two characters--which I do think I managed in the end--Helena's skirt, as she's supposed to be holding onto it with that hand you can't see, and Pepe's torso. Originally, I was planning on doing this piece traditionally, but once the sketch was finished it almost immediately clicked into place that I'd be better served to do it digitally, considering what I wanted to do with the mask in the background already, as well as the leaf-fade. (The Conventional Weapons reference hadn't been planned yet, and it was technically only made possible later on by this piece being digital.) Luckily, doing things digitally meant that Pepe's torso was fixed pretty easily. It was too thin in the sketch, but all I had to do was select the right lines and move them out a bit in Photoshop. He's still a bit thin and not super buff, but personally I'm letting that go because...I mean, he's at least part if not all skeleton. If anyone's going to be too thin, wouldn't it make sense that it's him? Helena's skirt I did end up happy within the sketch but...we'll come back to the skirt in a moment. Pepe's...face? looked a bit odd in the sketch, but other than that, once I was happy with that foundation, I scanned it in and got to work on digitizing everything. I went over my lines for Helena and Pepe the way I normally would for something like this if a little intentionally messy instead of trying to get them super clean--as I thought that might be appropriate here--and then I paused with them to work on the mask behind them. The mask admittedly came out very poorly in the sketch, just because I bothered to look up no references for it whatsoever once I decided I was going to make this digital and I knew I could just draw half of it and flip it over. And I'm glad I didn't start trying to follow my sketch lines for it at all because looking up actual references showed me that would've been way off. While I had my reference up, I ended up going in and basically full-coloring and detailing the mask right then. That's the beauty of digital work; a lot of steps can be done basically out of order from how you'd have to do them traditionally and it doesn't matter because you can just move layers around and adjust effects later. I went with this pseudo-soft shading based on the colors and shadows I was seeing in my references, even though I wasn't sure yet exactly how I was going to shade Helena and Pepe. I figured that even if I used a different method for them that I could either go back and adjust the mask as necessary or that it wouldn't matter since the mask was part of the background anyway. Once that was done, I went back to ponder my two figures and the leaf effect that I wanted to do with them. And again, I went a little out of order here, as I ended up filling in the silhouette of Helena and Pepe with a blanket layer of gray so I could see how them blocking the mask was going to look (and I figured based on past experiences I might need the blanket layer in white later). From there, I went into working on the fading-to-leaves effect. My logic was that I'd need mostly the silhouettes of the leaves and then I'd get what I wanted after playing with layer effects or something. This assumption ended up being correct, but we're not there yet. As I worked, I kept looking at my "finished" messy lines. Something just didn't feel right. Honestly, I couldn't tell you where the idea to do this lineless look came from, but it got in my head as I was working and I kept looking at the lines I had and not being happy to just color those in as I normally would, shade it, and call it a day. I tried. I tried really hard to ignore the urge to at least try it and carry on as I was. I'd already come this far, and I'd be done so much faster if I stuck to the plan...But!! Clearly I lost that argument with myself. You know what though? I'm glad I did! I don't think I've ever done lineless art like this before, not counting my watercolor work where that's just part of the process to me. But digital? Certainly not. Human figures? Also no. I've come close in the sense that I've shaded my art before, turned off the line layers before, and thought, "oh hey that almost works without the lines because of the shading,"  but not much farther than that. Naturally, I wasn't even sure how or where to begin, so I went with what came naturally to me. I started by just filling in the lines as I normally would have, and then I went back layer by layer and went back and forth between having the line layer (with the opacity brought down somewhat already so I could sort of see what I was doing) on and off to try and balance the shapes between what they looked like with and without the lines. It's weird because if you ever try this, it's a little like having to figure out a bunch of individual silhouettes that make one whole one, except you need them to be a little more defined if you want them to make visual sense. That step and the next one, the shading, are tied in my mind for which one took me the longest. For the shading, I really just went in blind, using hard-edge cell shading, though originally I planning to come back with some soft shading in certain areas later. The soft shading ended up not happening partly because I liked it much better than I thought I would without it, and I thought the hard-edge shading made the figures pop a little more compared to the background. The thing about this was the same issue I run into with my lines nowadays; to get smooth shapes I spend a while going back and forth between putting color down and erasing it, and sometimes undoing and redoing the same line a dozen times to get it right in one stroke. But that's really my own fault for being stubborn and trying to work solely within Photoshop and not use other programs, as I know good and well I'd have less of that issue if I'd hop into Paint Tool Sai and use the linework layers in there. What can I say? I live up to my Capricorn sign by being as stubborn as a goat. Anyway. The biggest challenge to figure out the shading for was Helena's skirt. I think I would've still had issues with that though even if I colored and shaded my normal way, with the lines and everything. It's just the position it's in that complicates things. I actually did a good amount of shading in reverse here, where I'd make the base layer the shadow color and then the layer on top would be the regular color, as in some cases it just seemed easier to do that than the other way around. The part of Helena's dress around the top, for example. Or Pepe's pants (what little you can see of them). Additionally, I ended up leaving the feather attached to Pepe's hat alone and not really smoothing it out, as I thought the roughness and inconsistencies worked really well to make it seem more feathery. With enough patience and persistence and much back and forth among the various layers, I made it through all of that. I was a little concerned at first about some of my color choices and if the shading was too harsh in some places or not, but I mellowed out as I worked and ended up not making make adjustments after the fact. For instance, originally I thought I'd go back and make Pepe's...skin? closer to a true white and this fleshy off-white color was more of a placeholder, but the longer I worked with it, the more I didn't want to change it. It actually makes sense, given that his hands are normal (as they are presented in official artwork and other fan art not made by me) and that bones usually are naturally more of an off-white color. And I also think it just looks really good next to Helena's pale skin. The hands were a special challenge in regards to both shading and coloring, as hands like to be the more complicated part of a drawing more often than not, but even that I managed to get through with a lot more ease than I would've bet on. The other thing about that is that I was surprised once I got through the steps at how much better Pepe's face looked in comparison to the rest of the drawing. As I mentioned before, it looked odd in the sketch. But one I had most of the colors for him and Helena filled in digitally, the contrast or something just made it look infinitely better. (Combined with a hefty dose of earlier back-and-forth making adjustments to his jawbone area.) Originally, I thought I might use the same cell shading for Helena's eyeshadow. However, while I was still thinking of adding some selective soft shading, I added it using one of the brushes I'd used on the mask earlier. It looked so good to me that even after I tried added the soft shading with it like I planned and decided I didn't want/need it anywhere else, I kept it. And for the record, Helena's hair is kind of the wrong texture (it's officially more straight than this) and she's missing this little netted veil thing she's supposed to have, but I had a very specific vision in mind, so those were the two creative liberties I took with her design. I say it's fair game since I took a liberty with Pepe's hat to get the Return reference in. And besides, those two details being off doesn't make her totally unrecognizable if you know who Helena is in the first place. Once they were done, I spent longer than I bothered to document playing with the leaf layer I'd made earlier to try and figure out how to get the effect I wanted. Sparing you the boring details of my trial error, as I'm sure this description will be long enough without them, I eventually determined the best thing to do was to have one layer of the leaves on top set as an "overlay" layer, and another behind/beneath Helena and Pepe. Then I went back and extended my color and shading layers to extend down over the leaves, and I arranged and clipped the layers accordingly. Technically, the overlay layer wasn't necessary, but it added a little extra dimension that I really liked. By that point, it was my second day of working digitally and getting late, but I had to do one more thing before I could go to bed with my mind at ease that night. With Helena and Pepe done, I turned the mask back on (I'd turned it off so I could focus on them without it distracting me or otherwise getting in the way) and I felt like they weren't standing out enough against it. The bright yellow color was competing too much for my eyes' attention. So, after trying the "stroke" blending option in white and that looking God-awful, I added a new layer between them and the mask and manually gave them a white outline. It wasn't a perfect solution, and I knew that even then, but it was enough that I could sleep soundly knowing how far I'd gotten with the artwork. The next day I had to take a break from working on this to bust out a painting for the challenge I decided to take on this month, but I went back to this as soon as I could after that was taken care of. When I came back to it, I acknowledged that I technically could've left it as it was and call it finished. But I still didn't like how obnoxious the mask seemed for a background piece and it felt...I don't know. Almost hollow, in a way. It was a cool graphic, sure, but I wanting something more than that. Again, I'll spare you most of the nitty-gritty details. But long story short, I played around with layer effects and filters for a while until I had blurred the mask out just enough that it wasn't so obnoxious but also so looking at it directly didn't make me nauseous, and the edges were softened so it felt more like a true background piece and not just an accessory that had been plastered carelessly back there. It was only after I started saving off versions with different backgrounds--one with no background, one with white, one with black--that I realized I was missing a golden (semi pun intended) opportunity to incorporate a Conventional Weapons reference/allusion. Which was exciting because I'd previously been disappointed that I couldn't think of a good way to do that. I went back and forth on layer styles and adding texture with brushes and things for a while on that too, but you can see what I ultimately settled on. It's not a 1:1 to the CW covers, but I'm really pleased with it anyway. I did end up adding a bit more to the white outline in a few places and adding a drop shadow to Helena and Pepe so they'd pop a bit more (it almost makes them look like paper cutouts to me!), but really the only other thing I had to do after that was add my watermark. It took roughly 3 days of work from start to finish, but I was honestly surprised by how fairly smooth the process went. Especially considering the new things I'd tried along the way. I can only assume it's because of just how much my heart was really into making this piece. As I said before, I am truly proud of how this piece turned out. I love it. I love it, and I love the band that inspired its creation. Even the title says a lot here, I think. I picked this line that's repeated at the end of It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish, as it was a leading inspiration with the leaves and everything, and after looking at the lyrics I realized how fitting that line is for this. I discovered My Chemical Romance two years too late, two years after they broke up in 2013, but I've stuck by them ever since, and I will continue to do so, with whatever the unwritten future holds. They've changed, as anyone would over the course of six years, but they came back anyway. Even if it's just for a few shows and they're gone again. Or if it's going to be so much more than that. They. Came. Back. And that's not an easy thing to do a lot of the time. And so, I show my solidarity. I will be with you, MCR, no matter what comes next. You were there for me, and now it's my turn to be there for you, even if it as just another fan among the crowd. And that's really all I have to say on the matter. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[kitkat-the-artist]

Happy 10th anniversary for Homestuck!

What better way to celebrate than actually participating this year with a redesign of my very first troll OC that I never posted. To be fair, if you look or follow my main blog, my profile pic probably the only existing reference photo that I haven’t destroyed or lost.

I’m gonna also celebrate today with a bit of a story that involved the convention I went to recently underneath the cut, so here we go.

March 17th, 2019. I walked into a small panel room that was being run by four mods, each of them in a Homestuck cosplay. Karkat, Vriska, Jade, and Roxy. I was early to the room, but there was at least 10 people there already, more coming in with every second. By the time the panel started, when I looked back, the room was practically filled. Since the panel wasn’t meant to be much, I guess the con staff gave them a room they figured would fit a decent amount, but looking back at how many people were squeezing into the room really showed how many people still liked Homestuck. When the panel started, the mods encouraged us to come up and tell our stories and experiences with Homestuck. The stories I heard was interesting to see how it changed each of them (My favorite one being from a Sollux cosplayer who said their experience with it was from years ago when they played a game with five friends and had to move to another room when theirs got too crowded. They each kept a hand on a friends’ head to keep themselves from getting lose. Only until they got to the vendors did the Sollux notice somebody glaring and when they turned around, at least 23 more Homestuck cosplayers had joined in). When I went to take my turn, I told them where it all started.

I started reading Homestuck in the summer of 2012 after an online friend from an art website that no longer exists recommended it to me. At this point in my life, I had little to no friends in real life. The only people I befriended were the kids that schools praised for being so smart. The ones who ended up in Honors classes, so I had nobody to hang out with during classes or lunch. Over time, I lost contact with them. The only other people I somewhat befriended were people I talked about anime with. Though my time with them was strange and this was at the point in my life where I was wondering if people were being sincere about wanting to be my friend or looking for excuses to make fun of me for processing things slowly.

Third day of freshman year. I was in my first period English class and I was making my way to my desk when I stopped and noticed a girl drawing on her schedule. She was one of the few people who inspired me to draw again because I was in awe at her skills. All over her schedule, she had drawn Adventure Time, Hetalia, all sorts of anime characters, and the one I recognized almost immediately. Homestuck. I got a little closer and pointed to her schedule, asking if that was Aradia. She said yes and after we talked, we started to hang out. We would sit together on the same side of the room in classes we shared together, write notes to each back and forth about Homestuck or the places she had been, stuff we liked to do.

Over time, she and I met other people. That group we befriended so quickly grew and became our little friend group. The people who I had strange friendships with in middle school slowly joined in and we actually got to know each other. At one point, my friend told me about a convention in the area and it was there I learned about cosplay. I dug into what conventions and cosplays were all about and found out there were so many people who were into Homestuck like me. I put together my first cosplay, Aranea Serket, and I met so many great people, some who I stayed friends with even after those many years. My favorite event that year was Promstuck, but every year I went to it after that, I never got to stay long enough or I missed it on the final year until it was no more. (Unfortunately, I don’t have photos from that year, but I did find the old dress that I ruined with the giant Scorpio sign)

Back in school, I met someone among the group in March who would change my life forever. See, at this point, I had a crush on Karkat in the webcomics (to which when I explained this detail to the panel, they all smiled and pointed to the Karkat mod) and I had a Signless necklace that my family bought back when WhatPumpkin was still a store. After he noticed my necklace, he told me “You know, that’s my zodiac sign, right?”

From then on, I hung out with this guy. We used to sit in lunch, holding hands and jokingly call each other dumb pets names involving cats, his being Karkitty. Six years, we stayed together. And after six years of sticking together, we got engaged.

I did end my conclusion of the story of Homestuck with asking the panel if it was alright with them for me to share a redraw of my first troll OC, her ancestor, and dancestor when they were introduced. One person started with “Yes! Show the trolls!” and it became a chant from there. After showing it, I ended my story with saying that while I joke around about Homestuck being a part of my life, I have to thank it at the same time because without it, I wouldn’t have met the people I knew today, wouldn’t be in a happy relationship, wouldn’t be doing cosplay, and wouldn’t be doing art.

After we all told our stories, we ended up finishing the panel off with 6 to 7 year old videos that we all had seen at least once in our lives (Lullaby For The Gods, Mambostuck, Quest Of The Highbloods, You Can’t Fight The Homestuck) and we said our goodbyes. Whether we’d see each other again after that remained to be seen, but it made me happy to know Homestuck still meant something to all of us after these many years.

I apologize for this being so long, but it brought a lot of memories to me after revisiting the story. For that, I’m extremely glad Homestuck existed. It made my life so much better and I don’t know where I’d be, had I not read it or if it never existed. Maybe something else would’ve pulled me and the people I know together, but as far as I’m concerned, Homesuck is what pulled a majority of my interests and friends together and I don’t think anything else would’ve brought as much joy as Homestuck did.

For that, I say thank you, Andrew Hussie, for creating a webcomic that brought me and everything I knew together. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Homestuck whether in working on the comic itself or just being a part of the fandom to make artwork and everything else.

Thank you.

[drones-of-innocence]

Not Impolite

O~o~O

Arthur hated school assemblies.

He sat in the uncomfortable cafeteria chair, spacing out after his eyes lost their focus on whatever was on stage, and wishing for everything to be over with so he could get back to class. Around the same time he stopped paying attention, so had several of his peers, who had taken to murmuring amongst themselves without regard for whatever was going on.

Watching them with only half interest, Arthur’s sight blurred faintly around the edges as he turned his gaze back to the stage, where the people moving and talking didn’t quite register as anything more than a formal collection of colors and lights. Words turned into a faint droning in his ears, too even to distinguish one syllable from another. His leg bounced, and his heel striking the tile became the only specific sound he could make out.

There was a faint crackling noise, and the assembly paused for the morning announcements on the loudspeaker. Arthur looked up, the noise enough to draw him out of his trance.

Some nonsense about the football team, the orchestra’s new fundraiser or something along those lines. The weather. The next date for the upcoming volleyball game, he couldn’t hear the day because some of the other students became bold enough to raise their voices. Then, the pledge of allegiance.

Only a few students near him recited the pledge; the others continued on with their own conversations. With his eyes trained to the flag on the right side of the stage, he faintly mumbled the words that he could remember of the pledge. Something something of the United States of America. And to the something something we stand, one nation, under God, something?

A sound cut through all other noise in the room, a shout? Annoyed by the disturbance, Arthur turned around to the back of the room to see the loud groaning coming from one of the special ed kids. The boy rocked furiously back and forth, covering his ears and yelling out syllables that resembled the pledge in a garbled sense. Arthur couldn’t see his face very well, but he could tell the boy’s eyes were shut very tightly.

He noticed the special ed teachers gathering their students and ushering them out, wheelchairs and all. One teacher struggled to get the yelling boy out of his chair, but he refused to stand and yelled louder in response to her scolding. She looked around with an apologetic and nervous smile once she realized most everyone had turned around to see what was the matter. Arthur suddenly felt bad for them, all crowded in the back just to make it an easy escape in case of an incident. And the rest of the student body, just staring as they left like the insensitive bunch they were. A pang of guilt made Arthur avert his eyes for being included in such a demographic.

As the teacher managed to get the boy under control and herd him out of the cafeteria, Arthur sat properly in his seat and resolved, as he stared at the floor, that he wouldn’t be like the rest of the students. His glare hardened and his cheeks burned as he listened to their careless snickering; they didn’t care who heard. They weren’t even remotely concerned about what had happened with that boy.

In an instant, he stood, and began marching out of the row. He didn’t care who he bumped into, they were all too busy giggling to themselves for him to feel bad at all. A teacher noticed him as he slammed the cafeteria doors open, and called for him to stop, but they didn’t pursue him.

Down the hall, he could see the special ed group headed back for their little room in the corner of the school. The boy who had been making such a fuss was lagging behind. Without thinking, he began jogging to catch up.

“Hey!” he called out, but the boy didn’t turn around. The teachers seemed too occupied with the other students to hear him. “Hey, what’s the matter? Are you alright?” Arthur came up behind the boy and came around to his side at a wide, wary angle. In his hands, the boy had some sort of spaceship toy he was messing with.

Arthur cleared his throat when the boy didn’t look up at him. “Ah, um, I just wanted to know if you were alright. Everyone was laughing in there, so I just…” he trailed off as the boy held up his toy.

His face was screwed up in a sort of disgusted look, and his focus purely lay in the ship in his hands. “Pshhhhh,” he made a noise like a rocket would flying through the air. His blue eyes narrowed and his head nodded forward with the motion like he was pretending to be flying the ship. “Whoooosshhhh.” the whisper came as he faced the blast of an air conditioner, his blond hair flowing back briefly.

Blinking, Arthur found himself at a loss for words. He’d assumed the boy would still be visibly upset, or at least able to tell him he didn’t want to talk about it. Being completely ignored was the last thing he expected. His pace slowed a little, feeling not unlike a forgotten or discarded paper, lost in the hallway and invisible to all eyes.

“Oh, I see you’ve met Alfred.” a woman’s voice startled Arthur, and he looked up to see a teacher smiling at him as she steered a student in a wheelchair. “He’s a little upset at the moment. He hates it when people talk through the Pledge of Allegiance.”

He nodded slowly, looking back at Alfred as he continued swaying back and forth with his toy, making a constant humming to himself. “He’s awfully quiet now. Does he, er, know how to speak?” Arthur flinched as the words came out, realizing just how thoughtless he sounded.

The woman laughed. “Oh, Alfred’s very talkative! He’s just a little shy as well. Why don’t you introduce yourself to him?” her warm smile and soft eyes made Arthur feel a little bolder, relieved that she didn’t judge him for not knowing what he was talking about. He sent her a grateful nod.

Then, coming slightly closer to Alfred while being aware of his personal space, Arthur lowered his voice. “Hello Alfred, my name is Arthur. How are you?” One look at the woman assured him he was approaching Alfred well enough.

Without even looking at him, Alfred continued to play with his toy. “Good.” he replied.

Arthur cast an unsure glance to the woman, who rolled her eyes in amusement. “He’s autistic. He doesn’t respond like you or I, but he’s very sweet and very friendly. He likes Star Wars, loves America, and gives big hugs. Now, I’ve got to go watch some of the other kids, if you don’t mind giving Alfred some company?”

“Of course.” Arthur smiled as an idea came into his head. He watched the woman steer the others into a classroom and followed them inside. He had plenty of time before he had to be anywhere, so he came with Alfred to his designated desk. “What have you got there? Looks like the Millenium Falcon.”

Freezing in his tracks, Alfred slowly turned to look at him, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “You- you like Star Wars?” he asked softly, giving a sort of wide eyed look to Arthur’s shoulder.

Arthur scoffed. “Of course! Who doesn’t? It’s only one of the best series in existence.” he couldn’t help a silly grin as he watched Alfred make an expression he could only assume to be delight. It was endearing to see such pure happiness. Humming again, Alfred went to go get a chair and pointed to it, which Arthur assumed meant that Alfred wanted him to sit down. Flapping his hands for just a moment, Alfred rocked back and forth in his own chair a couple of times before he reached into his desk and pulled out an entire collection of Star Wars toys. “...Oh my.” Arthur’s jaw dropped.

As Alfred began naming each and every character with a faint stutter, Arthur nodded along very seriously, impressed to no end by how familiar Alfred was with the series. He had only ever seen the movies once through, and he couldn’t have named half the toys Alfred had brought out. He caught the eye of the teacher who had talked to him before, and was surprised by the sheer emotion on her face. She looked to be close to tears with how happy she was.

“And- and- and this is Chewbacca. Wanna hear my impression?” Alfred asked excitedly, now looking directly at Arthur.

Arthur nodded. “Of course!”

Alfred made a yelling noise then, with the biggest grin Arthur had ever seen. It sounded absolutely nothing like Chewbacca. “That was very good! Wow, I almost thought you were the real thing!” Arthur praised him, feeling instantly uplifted by Alfred’s laughter.

Something about Alfred was relaxing to Arthur. Nothing about their conversation was forced. Arthur didn’t have to look directly in his eyes to speak with him. He didn’t even have to pretend to be excited, as it was easy to be actually thrilled with the subject. All conventional manners had been thrown out the window, and were replaced with Alfred’s own rules. And though Alfred’s behavior was amusing, Arthur never laughed at Alfred. He only ever laughed with him, and he could recognize when Alfred was acting intentionally silly. Even the stuttering, or the humming, or the hand flapping and the rocking, it was all so new but never weird. It was just Alfred.

Arthur found himself leaving that room with a light spirit, and resolved to come back every morning to talk with Alfred. He floated through the day, feeling pleasant and calm when he normally let the day pass him by like he was an impassive, emotionless drone. He stopped to help a girl pick up all the books she dropped instead of hurrying to class. He lent out his spare pen to his classmate instead of claiming he didn’t have one. When he went outside at the end of the day, he took a big breath to fill his lungs with the fresh air. Not even the humid heat could bother him.

He came back the next morning wearing a Star Wars shirt, just to see Alfred smile.

O~o~O

[svartalfhild]

2018, I Won’t Miss You

A.k.a. I call out this year for all the ways it fucked me over and reflect on a few good experiences.

This year was the first year I’ve ever had a smart phone, which ended up being pretty damn useful, even essential at some points.  However, the counterbalance was that I had to go through finding out how to live in a post-school existence, and that was not pretty, because it put me at all new levels of social isolation and uncertainty.  I stressed super hard about finding a new job.  I ultimately didn’t get one and lost hours at my current job because I thought I was going to be transitioning to a better job at a toy store, but they laid me off only a few weeks after hiring me to replace me with someone with better availability.  They said I could stay on as a “seasonal worker” but it’s past Christmas and I haven’t been asked to fill a single shift since they benched me in September, so saying I still work there is kind of a joke at this point.

The good news is, despite the stress of failing to get a better job, I’ve added art as an occasional source of extra income, starting with doing the cover illustration for a short story my mother published earlier this year and later with opening commissions to the online community.

My mental health didn’t have a super great year, though, especially in the first half.  On top of the job bullshit and the dealing with not knowing how to live life without school, I was feeling intensely bleak about my existence.  I was in an excruciating amount of emotional pain because of things I couldn’t control, and it festered because I had the free time to ruminate about how lonely and dejected I felt.  I hadn’t felt quite that bad in several years, actually.  It’s hard to compete with the shit I was going through in middle school, but this came alarmingly close. 

I think my biggest mistake was trying to force myself to be fine again as soon as possible when it took me a couple years to get past the shit that plagued me when I was 12.  I honestly think, though, that there was a little while there from about July to late September when I was coping pretty well.  I don’t know what happened in late spring to make that happen, but I was in a state of higher functioning for a bit in the summer.

The sad thing is that here at the end of the year, I am once again struggling with the same shit; I’m just a whole lot better with how that affects my behaviour towards other people now.  I do feel like I’ve learned how to better interact with people and shield those I love from the worst of my mental health nonsense.  In turn, I think that has greatly improved my relationships and made me less prone to beating myself up over the things I say.  Progress.

And hey!  I did manage to do some pretty rad things this year, despite all the crap my physical and mental health were hefting onto me.  I got on a plane for the first time and traveled by myself to Oregon to be with some of my closest friends, who I’d only ever known through the internet before.  We went to a convention together and had a really awesome time getting our asses kicked at AtlA themed dodgeball dressed as our DnD characters.  I went through a haunted house for the first time and found out that I’m too rational to be scared by a lot of that sort of stuff (but it was still fun).  I got to go to huge bookstore and see a first American edition of Fellowship of the Ring.  I think the best part of that whole trip, though, was just living with friends and getting a taste of what life without my family’s control could be like.  For once in my life, I trusted that everyone and everything was going to be okay, and for a few days, I was really happy.  Because of that, though, I spent a lot of the day that I left crying or trying not to cry.  Having so much of what you want and then having to leave it is...really upsetting, as it turns out.

But anyway.  I also managed to complete an application to grad school, so even though my whole Find A Good Job plan didn’t work, I still took a step towards some kind of life goal and I don’t have to have a total existential crisis just yet.  I don’t have high expectations about being accepted, but I do have some hopes and that’s something I can hold onto going into next year.

A lot changed with my family this past year.  Dealing with the wake of my grandfather’s sudden death was a major issue all year that seemed almost handled until my grandmother died just a couple months ago, which threw everything back into chaos and despair.  Death and loss have been an awful theme for me this year in general.  On top of my grandparents’ deaths, my dad’s best friend committed suicide, and a friend of mine, who I know to have been suicidal in the past, completely disappeared from the internet when I wasn’t looking, and I was unable to track her down to find out if she was okay.  Other friends lost people who were dear to them as well.  The world was ravaged by increasingly terrible disasters on top of that.  Needless to say, my empathy circuits are fucking fried.

Thankfully, life handed me some pretty great distractions from its bullshit, like an awesome DnD campaign and lots of time with assorted other TTRPGs, or numerous video games like Pillars of Eternity II: Deadire, Fallout 4, and Overwatch.  Netflix brought me countless hours of enjoyment, and my brother got me to watch all of Stargate SG1 with him, which I wasn’t super into at first, but it grew on me.  I started knitting again for the first time in years, because I love knitting scarves for people.  I did a lot of fic writing, but it wasn’t really fanfiction so much as additional content for my tabletop games.  Same goes for art. 

It’s been over a year now since I’ve posted any proper fanfic or fanart, which feels weird, but I think I’ve become so exhausted with the politics of being a fan content creator that I haven’t had the motivation for it.  It’s much easier to keep your passion for something going when you don’t hope to attract the attention of thousands of people, and instead you’re making things for a story you made up with your closest friends.  The only people whose attention you need to care about then are a handful of people who are already inherently invested.

Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t get sad about my work sometimes anyway, regardless of what I’m creating and for whom.  Depression is and has been a real dick this year, and it made me procrastinate on my grad app manuscript to the point where I had to stress years off my life cramming the creation of a 10k word original short story into a single month just before the deadline.  I managed it, though, and that’s the important thing.

I don’t know what to expect from 2019 except more nonsense, because there’s always copious amounts of nonsense.  Having high expectations, given what the past few years have been like, seems rather silly at this point.  I suppose what the new year shapes up to be will largely hinge on whether I get accepted to grad school in March or not.  If I do, then it’ll be a year of big change in my life, going away to live on my own in a different state.  If I don’t, then it’ll just be More Of Same, still living with my parents, working part-time at a shit food service job, looking for a new job, and tearing my hair out trying to get everything together for more grad school applications. 

One way or the other, though, I intend to try to finally get treatment for my mental illness.  I am tired of being like this and I’m tired of having my memory and focus abilities steadily destroyed by this shit.  If anything goes right next year, let it be that.

[teamhook]

CS Supernatural Summer**

Wild Within (Part 2) AO3 or FFN

Early the next morning Killian awoke slowly. He soon noticed he was in a comfortable bed but not the same bed he laid his head to rest last night but a bed of grass. He looked around to survey the location. He then noticed his clothes were covered in blood. The copper scent filled his lungs and the sheer excitement he felt as the scent unleashed a feral craving and the realization scared him. He quickly patted himself down in an effort to ensure it was not all his blood. Deep inside he was afraid of the origin of the blood. He spotted the little creek and washed his face and for a second he thought to go back to the cottage to Emma but opted to leave instead. He didn’t want to frighten her with his appearance.

He went home to shower and get ready himself for the day. He wondered if he should go to the doctor after he showered and was combing his hair he noticed a laceration along his hairline barely noticeable but he didn’t remember it being there the previous night. There was also a new cut on his cheek.

Perhaps he should go to the doctor again and have that checked out. He could have a concussion or something equally as dangerous but no one feels this good with a concussion or any other ailment.

First, he needed to tend to some business. He walked into his office building and soon was saluting Mr. Smee.

"Smee, did you make the calls to the writers?" He inquired impatiently.

"I did sir and so far ten of the top writers are willing to team up. Miss. De Vil said she would follow you anywhere."

"Good job Mr. Smee."

"Do I continue making phone calls sir?"

"No, that should be enough and I'm guessing we should be expecting a visit soon."

"Anything else I can do for you, sir?" Smee asked as he followed Killian into his office.

"Do I have any appointments, Mr. Smee?"

"Yes sir, Mrs. Lucas at 1:00 PM at her home. And please sir if you need to cancel you need to call her. She has called to confirm the appointment several times and she sounded scary."

Killian laughed at Mr. Smee's reaction to an older lady.  "Don't fret, I will not be canceling." As Killian was about to dismiss Mr. Smee his door opened.

"Hello, Killian." Mr. Spencer and an unknown man stood by the recently closed door. “This is my counsel, Mr. Midas.”

“Counselor, nice to meet you. Please, sit down.” He pointed at the comfortable leather chairs.

Mr. Midas forced a smile as he sat next to his boss.

Mr. Smee looked at Killian and once his boss nodded in approval he left the office and closed the door behind him.

"It has come to our attention that you are goading some of the writers into leaving the publishing house and join you in a crazy venture.”

“Why is it crazy? At least we tried and we may or may not succeed but in the end, we will be an added bonus to any publishing house.”

“We, so you are including yourself in the deal.”

“Yes sir, It will be at least ten first-rate writers and myself an amazing deal.”

 Spencer and his counsel shared a look.

Mr. Spencer is the one that spoke. “You are even worse than Gold.”

“Am I? I thought those were qualities you valued. Imagine the backlash after I issue the press release stating that revered top writers are leaving Excelsior House due to the politics their new owner has. We can agree that the bad press will not do any favors to the value of the firm.”

“Mr. Jones we will not give in to threats...” Counselor Midas spoke and was interrupted. “Wait, what are your terms?” Spencer asked at his companions displeasure.

“First, I keep my job. Second, I want a pay increase and additional power.”

“Fine call it off. I will inform Gold.”

“George may I have a word,” Midas asked of his longtime employer.

“Albert, don’t bother. I know nothing about publishing,” George Spencer looked at Killian. “Alright, you can keep your job. I accept your terms.”

“Good but before I do anything I need it in writing. Oh, and I will give Robert the news.”

With those last words exchanged Albert Midas and George Spencer left Killian’s office.

Killian couldn’t keep the smile from illuminating his face. Now he only hoped that Emma was not miffed at his sudden departure. How would he explain it?

Without ceremony, he got up from his comfortable chair and walked out his office door. First, he needed to find the answer to his immediate problem. What was happening to him?

“Mr. Smee. please get a hold of Miss. Nolan and when you do let her know I will be calling on her.” he scratched behind his ear. “I have a bit of a drive to make if I want to arrive on time for my appointment with Mrs. Lucas.”

“Of course, sir” he paused briefly “Sir? Did the meeting go well?”

“Wind might be turning in my favor. I will be able to confirm by tomorrow. I’m off.” He rushed out of his office and soon he was getting inside his car. The drive felt eternal.   

Finally, he reached his destination. A small log cabin in the middle of the forest. It looked cozy and full of warmth.

He stepped out of his car and proceeded to the door. He knocked and soon was greeted with a warm smile. An older woman opened the door wide.

“Are you Killian Jones?”

He answered with a kind smile. “I am and you must be the famous Anita Lucas.”

“I am, please come on in, let me get you out of the cold.”

“Thank you.” He noticed that she was studying him as he walked inside. She guided him to the small kitchen.

“Would you like some hot tea to warm up?”

“I would love a cup. Do you have any earl grey?”

“I do. Sit and get comfortable. I have a feeling this will be a long conversation.” She instructed for him to sit as she prepared the hot beverages.

Should that comment make him nervous? He really needs to find out what is going on. So he does as he was told and waited. He started tapping his foot a bit impatiently.

“Okay, sorry for the wait.” she apologized as she placed the hot tea in front of him along with sweeteners and lemon. “Your assistant mentioned a wolf bite. Mr. Jones and you can simply call me Granny.”

“Aye, I was bitten by a wolf but the reason for my visit is not the bite itself but the symptoms I’m experiencing. Do you know if the toxins of the animal bite can cause any unnatural reactions that conventional medicine would overlook?”

“Symptoms like what exactly?”

Killian scratched behind his ear. “The physical ones are obvious but they are not as concerning as the fact that my senses are heightened beyond their natural function.”

“Let me guess, you can hear conversations from afar. Smell odors that normally would be missed by anyone else. You are more virile and maybe even more aggressive than before?” She looked at him intently.

He simply nodded his agreement.

“When did the bite take place?”

Killian got lost in thought for a second. How could he forget the day it was his anniversary? “March 31st.”

“Very promising. On March 31, the moon was closest to the earth. It has been a little over a century since the last time it was that close.”

Killian cannot help the dread that he felt in that second.

Granny continued with her explanation. “Simple explanation is that you are becoming a wolf. It is not like the movie, no silver bullets needed. During transformation the wolf is vulnerable.”

“Come again? I’m becoming a wolf. An actual wolf?” He scratched his head. “How is that even possible? Is it?”

“You tell me, Mr. Jones. You are the one that searched me out for answers.”

“Mrs. Lucas--” the look the woman sent his way ensured he corrected himself “Granny, do you truly believe that?”

“Mr. Jones life is mystical but we are already used to it so we see anomalies instead of the normal. Now about your situation. There are rules.”

“Rules, what kind of rules?”

“Rules that may help you understand your predicament.”

“What are the rules?” He didn’t expect to hear good news but he was not nothing this fantastical. Bloody hell.

“The wolf is always present but it rests during the day. At night it prowls. That is when the beast is stronger. He grows inside the vessel until the first full moon and then consumes the host. Killing all but his nature and heart.”

Killian paled at the grim prognosis.

Granny continued on. “Not everyone who is bitten transforms. There has to be an analog of the wolf to be wild within. A parallel or match. We can even say an equal of sorts.”

“Granny that is not an accurate description of myself. Most people would argue with that assumption of my character.”

“These people are wrong Mr. Jones. If they were correct you wouldn’t be here right now. It is also said that the bite is not always needed. The passion of the wolf is enough.”

He sighed “Is there a way to stop the transformation?”  

“There are herbs but they are not easily found. Especially with the full moon getting so close. But some years ago I acquired an amulet. It is one of the most powerful amulets in existence.” She got up from her chair and disappeared. Killian just sat on his chair and stared at the cold cut of tea in his grip. Granny finally reappeared after a few minutes with a small box. “You are the first wolf demon I have met.”

“Please forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm.”

“Mr. Jones, the demon wolf is not evil by nature, only if the man he bit is.” She reached for his hands across the table. “I don’t believe your heart to be dark or rotten. I envy you. Power without guilt. To love without a doubt.” She removed her hands from his and opened the box to hand him an amulet. A silver chain and pendant. The pendant was heavy with symbols and what he could make out a wolf image.  

“I cannot accept this.” He stammered as he held the amulet.

“Please accept the gift. I do have to warn you that the amulet has to be worn at all times and it must be next to the skin and never taken off. It will be a great pain and cause weakness while the wolf struggles to emerge. The charm will hold him at bay and sometimes drives him out completely. It is not the silver that weakens the beast it is the mountain ash.”

“Thank you. I must know one last thing is there is a chance it may not work?”

“I have never seen it work but the lore says it will. Before you go there is one last thing. The demon wolf can create a bond with another as well. A mate he feels worthy of his host.”

Killian took in her words and slowly gripped the amulet in his hand. “Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your generosity.” He rose from his sit and said his goodbyes to his gracious host and left.

Killian arrived at his place. He wouldn’t call it a home since it was simply a hotel room. His home had been shattered by betrayal but perhaps there was hope for something new. With that thought, he decided to call Emma and apologize for leaving without a single word. He could only hope that she would be understanding.

He picked up his phone and dialed her number. The line was ringing. The excitement of hearing Emma’s voice made him feel like a kid again. He waited and then he heard a click. “Hello??” The soft breathless voice said. “Emma, this is Killian Jones. I just wanted…” click  “Hello? Emma, are you still there?” Bloody hell this was not going to be easy. He dialed again… click… he hit redial… click… he decided on texting her an apology or at least a plea for forgiveness. “Emma, please, let me explain. That is all I ask for.”

Emma stared at her phone’s screen. Standing in nothing but a fluffy white towel, she gnawed at her bottom lip. His assistant had tried to convince her to return the call but she was stubborn and upset. At first, she was even angrier that he had not picked up the phone himself and now he had. Reading the text over and over. She liked the man and that was scary. She had been so upset when she woke up and made him breakfast only to find the room empty. The feeling of abandonment was overwhelming. It was a connection she had never experienced before.

She calmed herself and responded, “okay, I will listen to your plea.” She waited for the phone to ring and almost as soon as she sends the response her phone started ringing.

“Emma?”

“Plea away Mr. Jones.” to hide her nervousness she continued to dry herself with the towel.

“Lass, I’m sorry for my abrupt departure” he paused “Emma, please finish drying yourself, the noise is quite distracting.”

“You can hear that?” she stopped the movement once his words had sunk in. “Okay, I’m going to put you on hold for a second.”

“Alright. Emma, if you prefer I can call you back in a few minutes.”

“No just hold on a minute.” She just didn’t want to hang up. She put her phone down and quickly toweled her hair dry. She combed through the tangles as fast as she could. “Okay. I’m finished, now plea.”

“I sleepwalked and ended up in the woods. I must have fallen and hit my head. There was blood.” Should he tell her that not all the blood was his? At least he didn’t think so.

“And you didn’t think it was a good idea to let me know?”

“I didn’t want you to have to take care of me once more. I have taken advantage of your hospitality as it is. I’m sorry. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“If you hit your head that would explain the blood loss. Nothing bleeds like the skull. You could have a concussion. Did you at least go see a doctor?”

“I didn’t, I thought about it because no one feels this good with a head injury but I promise if I start feeling light-headed, I will go see one. Am I forgiven?”

“I don’t know, how will I know if you’re lying?”

“That can be easily remedied. I would love to see you and then you can inspect for yourself. I have some cuts you can kiss better.” He cringed a little at the last part of his invitation.

She laughed. “Okay, what do you propose?”

“Dinner tomorrow night at the Cygnus, I’m in room 815 in case you arrive early and need to ring my room. The restaurant at the hotel at 6:30 P.M. is that acceptable?”

“Okay, I will be there and you’d better look like you fell and hit your head.” She warned.

He laughed “I did and I do. I look forward to our meal. Until tomorrow. Goodnight Emma.”

“Good night Killian.” and with that their call ended. He was thrilled that she had agreed to meet. He finally got ready for bed and with the amulet hanging over his neck brushing against his chest hair. He finally had hope that things would work out.  He fell asleep soon after.

The next day Killian awoke to the phone ringing. “Hello?” his voice still raspy with sleep.

“Mr. Jones this is your wakeup call. I have been calling for a few minutes. You must have had a hell of a night.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for the call, lass.” He hung up and pushed the covers off. He readied himself for work and left for the day. He had so much to look forward to today.

As soon as he entered his office Mr. Smee informed him that Mr. Spencer and Mr. Midas were in the conference room waiting for him.

He found his way to the conference room within minutes from his arrival.

“Mr. Spencer always a pleasure.” He strode in and sat across the men. “Do you have the contract we agreed?”

Mr. Midas was the one to speak. “Here it is, I still disagree with Mr. Spencer agreeing to such extortion.” He handed Killian the contract to look over.

“Ah, you are entitled to your opinion as I’m entitled to fight for my livelihood.” Killian was reading the contract and was interrupted.

“Mr. Jones it is all there. Please don’t act like you are having any doubts.” Both Spencer and Midas stated oozing frustration.

“Always a pleasure sir” with that he handed their signed copies and folded his own. He tucked them into his breast pocket and walked out with a smile on his face.

He needed to go to the washroom before heading back to his office. He entered and stood in front of the urinal seconds away from doing his business. He paused and remained rooted on his spot. The door opened and the sound of familiar footsteps had him on alert, Robert Gold. The uneven steps his former friend took as he neared Killian. There was a small difference the limp wasn’t as pronounced as it used to be.

“Jones, it has been a while since we last saw each other.”

“Aye, I remember the day clearly. It is seared into my memory.” Killian responded as he looked at his former friend’s reflection in the mirror. He waited for him to stand next to him and make his move.

“Tell me, dearie, how does it feel to lose everything you love?”

Killian’s single left eyebrow rose to his hairline and a small smile appeared on his face. “Did I? Lose everything I love?”

Robert couldn’t help laugh at Killian’s mannerisms. “Your wife has been sharing my bed for at least a year and now your job is mine too. Everything you took from me is where it belongs, mate!

“Everything I took? Are you daft? Milah chose me,” he paused and continued  “Arthur chose me as his replacement. Dearie.”

“NO! You took her first.” Robert gritted his teeth. “But that wasn’t enough, you had to take the job too. I knew in time I would get my revenge.”

“All this time you made me think you were my friend...That you had my back but it was all a ruse. You were just biding your time. Unlike you, dear friend, I didn’t need to take that approach.”

That caught Robert’s attention. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve had some time on my hands since I no longer have a wife to go home to and now I have the power to say, you are fired.”

“You can’t fire me!”

“Oh but I can. I took a page from your book and nagged Spencer until he gave me your job.” With a simple shrug of his broad shoulders, he goes back to do his business. He unzipped his trousers but from the corner of his eye, he waited for his reaction.

“You are lying!” Robert seethed “Spencer and I have a deal!”

“Sorry, mate, I have a contract that says otherwise and that means you are out!” with his final words to his former friend Killian turned to face him and marked his territory on top of the very expensive leather shoes.

“What are you doing?” asked Robert in disbelief.

“Marking my territory and you got in the way.” Killian smiled as he finished, readied himself and washed his hands to leave a puzzled Robert Gold.

Killian was overjoyed that he had saved his job and Emma had agreed to dine with him. The only little hiccup was the beast growing inside him. All that was left to do was to survive the next full moon and he could have his happy beginning with Emma. He was putting his fate in an amulet to end his curse.

He was at the entrance of the Cygnus at the entrance of the hotel lobby. Milah’s scent welcomed him and before he could avoid her presence she called out to him.

“Killian, could we talk?” Her plea clear in her voice.

“I don’t think it is a good idea. Milah please go.” He kept his back to her. He didn’t know how he would react if he would see her face.

“Please come back home. I have no excuse. It was a mistake.”

He finally turned to face her. “Robert become unlovable now that he is out of my job?”

“I never loved him! He never meant anything to me. I’m going to talk to him and end things.”

He towered over her. “You betrayed me over and over again with a man that didn’t mean anything to you, and somehow you think that is better?”

Her teary eyes became outraged. “Don’t be a self-righteous bastard!” she went to slap him.

He caught her arm before it made contact to his face and grabbed her by the elbow, almost yanking it out of its socket.

Milah stumbled on her feet with a small cry. “Killian, you’re hurting me.” Killian immediately released her elbow and was instantly apologetic.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me! You should go and never come back.” Milah just kept staring at Killian’s face in disbelief. She’d never seen her husband with that kind of attitude before. He was always much calmer. She slowly retreated in defeat.

Milah called Robert to arrange the meeting. “Robert we need to talk.”

Killian had gone to his room once Milah left. He wasn’t going to let her visit sour his mood. He was going to get ready for Emma’s arrival.  

He had changed clothes and decided to trim the thick beard. His sideburns peppered with gray hair. His eyes are as blue as the sea even with few lines that show his age. He felt younger re-invigorated and part of him knew it was more than the bite, that it was because of Emma. She had breathed life into him.

While waiting for his dinner date to arrive he sat on the loveseat in his room as he turned on the television to distract himself from the mess that had become his life. A metallic scent caught his attention, no it was more like stale meat. Where was the foul smell coming from? He followed the scent and soon found the source; on the lush carpet by the night stand’s wooden legs he found the answer. The handkerchief had dried blood, he picked it up to inspect it only to find three fingers wrapped by the cloth. Still on his knees trying to remember anything begging the gods to give him a sign he hadn’t killed anyone. The shiny handcuffs he found near the fingers aren’t inspiring any good thoughts.  

What had he done? The blackouts he was experiencing hadn’t been a real concern before until now. He quickly rewrapped the fingers and discarded them out.  

Should he cancel with Emma? He glared at the handcuffs. He couldn’t burden her with his troubles. What if he hurt her? He had lost his temper with Milah. He couldn’t risk it with Emma.

Lost in his thoughts he missed the interview in progress on his tv. Sidney Glass had with a young girl, Wendy Darling. She had been attacked by The Lost Boys a group of miscreants. They prowled Sherwood Park neighbor to the town zoo. This time they left without their prize. They had been stopped by a good Samaritan that had intervened before the young girl could be hurt. Her hero had told her to run and not to turn back. “What about you?” She had asked as she turned to make her escape. “I’m a survivor.” He had told her and she did as she was told and ran. Not long into her run, she came across two beat cops in pursuit of a trespasser at the zoo that had fled while still handcuffed.

Killian had decided to cancel with Emma but she didn’t answer his call. He lacked the willpower to keep away from Emma so he decided to use a little help. Click. He handcuffed himself to the radiator in his room.

Emma walked into the lobby of the Cygnus at 6:00 P.M. She had been nervous all day. She wasn’t a teenager but she felt like one but the real problem is that it wasn’t a date or was it? She decided to wear a pale pink dress. He asked her to join him for dinner to explain his absence in the morning. Is it horrible she wished it was a date? He made her forget she was truly alone.

She went up the elevator to his room. She was early and she hoped he wouldn’t mind. Room 815, she knocked. “Killian, it’s Emma, sorry I’m early. Hope you don’t mind.” No answer. She knocked twice more. Louder. “Killian, you cannot do this to me, again. Open. The. Door.” There was scuffling inside. “Emma, please go away. I cannot see you.” His voice barely audible.

Emma noticed a cleaning lady exiting from a room not far from Killian’s room. “Excuse me, ma’am. Could I ask for a favor?”

The older lady smiled and nodded. Emma returned her smile. “Could you please open room 815? I think my friend is sick and I’m worried about him.” Without a second thought, the lady opened the door for her. “Thank you.”

Emma entered the room slowly. Her eyes finally landed on Killian. He sat hunched over on a chair by the radiator handcuffed. She approached him slowly to not spook him. “Why are you pushing me away?”

“Please go away.” He begged defeated.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She answered stubbornly as she moved the hair away from his eyes. “Killian, what happened?”

“It's getting late and I think I've become dangerous ...especially at night.”

“And the handcuffs are to protect me? Because you might hurt me?”

“Aye, I think I’m turning into something else.” He looked away from her.

“You’re becoming what? The thing that bit you?”

“Please, you have to go. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Killian, just tell me where the key is.”

“I don't have it. I have no idea where I got the handcuffs from.”

“You don't have a key? What was the big plan? To sit chained to the radiator until you grew paws?”

He smiled “Gods. You make it sound like if it isn't happening. I didn't think past not hurting anyone.”

“Good thing you don't know who you're dealing with. Even with my amazing parents, I went through a rebellious stage. I picked up some shit that I thought I was never going to need and then I met this man who chained himself to the radiator and it all fell into place.” She was looking for something anything she could use.  She was completely focused on the lock trying to free him.

“Emma, love. Why would you want any of this mess? You should save yourself the trouble and go home.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Do you want to know why? Because I like you and you're a good man.”

“I don’t think I’m a good man. If I was this wouldn’t be happening to me. I wouldn’t be cursed.”

“I know you are a good man.” She slowly caressed his cheek. “You look at me like my father used to look at my mother.” She sniffled as she restarted her efforts to unlock the cuffs. “I’ve never met a man that looked at me the way you do and that is very exotic to me.”

“Then why is this happening to me?”

“Well, sometimes the worst things happen to the best people.” The cuffs clicked opened. “It’s all about the tumblers. Now that is taken care of; have you considered that maybe what is causing your symptoms is that you have a tumor?”

“Emma if only it was that simple. With the handcuffs, I found something that confirms my theory.” He looked down at his freed hands. “Please, don’t ask me what it was and then Milah--.” He stopped mid-sentence and his eyes met hers filled with remorse.

“Okay, I trust you but you have to tell me about Milah. Killian,” she noticed there was no wedding band “I know something happened not just the reason you are so upset about right now but before.”

“I’ll make you a deal love. I will tell you about Milah if you tell me about your parents. Do we have an accord?”

“Okay, I accept. I think my parents would have liked you.”

“Do you really think so? It would have been an honor to have known them. As for Milah, she wanted me to go back home.” Emma tensed at the comment. “She was having an affair with the man I thought was my best friend, Robert Gold. And she said he meant nothing to her, she cheated on me for nothing… I just cannot forgive and forget that. The reason I fear for your safety is because I felt anger towards her and I barely managed to control my temper with her. I just cannot take that risk with you.”

“I know you wouldn’t hurt me. Your wife betrayed you and you have a right to feel anger towards her. Do you think you will be able to reconcile with her?”

“She said she was going to end things with Robert tonight but I cannot, I will not be able to mend our relationship with her. I realize she was not the woman for me.”

“She is not the woman for you? Are you sure? There was a reason you married her.”

“Aye, I married her because I loved her but the woman I pledged my life to would have never betrayed our vows. I don’t think I ever truly knew her. Love, could we talk about a better topic? Emma, could you tell me about your parents?”

“They were madly in love and they did everything together. Until today I regretted my little rebellious stage but I guess everything happens for a reason. Anyway, they were in a car accident and for a minute we thought they were going to survive it and wake up from the coma their injuries had caused. The first doctor said it was their bodies way of trying to get better, like a reboot, and then the specialist George hired, Dr. Jekyll, said they were both brain dead. I asked for another opinion but I was told that grandad had already made arrangements. He claimed that was in their will and I could not do anything since he had power of attorney. I looked into it but by the time I got a judge to hear me it was too late.” Her eyes were filled with tears.

“Oh, Emma. I’m so sorry love I should not have pushed you.”

“I don’t mind talking about it with you. Since I met you I’m not consumed by the grief.”

“Oh, so I’m only a distraction?”

“No, you are not.” Somehow during their conversation and the unlocking of the cuffs she had ended up standing between his legs as he sat on the bed. “If you feel more comfortable with the cuffs on we can put them back on.”

He leaned towards her and in a breathy voice he responded, “maybe they are not necessary.” He was inhaling her scent. It was intoxicating to him.

“Easy tiger,” she placed her hands on his chest. She could feel his heart beating.

“I’m sorry-” he looked down trying to calm down. This was different than when he was with Milah.

“Killian look at me.” She raised his face. “I’m not complaining but maybe we can figure something out. Since you are worried you might hurt me. I need you to put your hands behind your back and I can cuff you.”

“Wait, I thought you said it wasn’t needed.”

“Killian. Put. Your. Hands. Behind. Your. Back.” She guided his hands from his sides to behind his back. Her chest meeting his as she slipped the metal cuffs on to his wrists but not completely clicking locked. “I wonder what you can do without hands.” She asked as she played with the buttons of his shirt.

“Oh, you will see love.” His eyes darkened.

Emma pulled his shirt from his pants and slowly unbuttoned it. She suddenly pushed him onto the bed where he was sprawled helplessly.

“Let’s find out.” She smiled as she climbed on the bed.

He couldn’t help but think how uncomfortable his position was because of the cuffs and the fact that the discomfort was a cross he was all too willing to bear.

They were lucky the cuffs were loose and had not completely locked. Soon they were both bare and had embarked on more enjoyable activities. As they laid in bed immersed in their post-coital afterglow Emma decided to ask about the amulet hanging from his neck.

“Killian?”

“Yes, love.”

“Is this silver chain part of a pirate’s treasure booty?”

He smiled as he caressed her back while she toyed with the chest hair surrounding the amulet.

“I’ve done some research about my gifts and this amulet might be the key to stopping this metamorphosis from completing.”

“What can I do to help?”

“You anchor me, Emma.”

“How about we rest for now and tomorrow we can figure out what to do.”

“Did I tire you out, love?”

“Yes you did, you are quite talented with and without hands.”

They both drifted into a deep sleep. A slumber the wolf within rose from. He stared at Emma as she slept. Normally the wolf would wake from his sleep to prowl the night the beast was majorly in control but that was not the case tonight because of Emma’s presence Killian maintained dominance over their shared vessel.

Sherwood Park a few blocks from The Cygnus a lifeless body would be discovered soon. Only her identification card was in her purse. Milah Balefrie Jones in her attempt to save her marriage she made the mistake of angering the wrong person and ended bloodied with her throat torn off.

Killian was the first to wake. He admired Emma’s sleeping form. All he could do is stare at her.

“Hey,” she mumbled sleepily, “staring is not nice.”

“I’m sorry love. I couldn’t help myself.” He spooned her. “Love, you are beautiful even when you snore.”

“Hey! I don’t snore!” She playfully slugged him. He only smiled and held her close, to him. “Is it crazy that I never want to get out of bed?”

“Nope, I feel the same.” She sighed and hummed contently as she cuddled closer to him.

After a few more hours of sleep, they decided to rejoin the world.

“Love we can go eat something at the restaurant down at the lobby or just have room service, what do you desire?”

“Well, we could get dressed and go downstairs to eat or we can stay in bed and get nourishment delivered to us? I vote for room service.”

“Good. Then that is what we shall do. I’ll place the order while you take a quick shower. Okay so what do you want?”

“I don’t know. What is good here?”

“I was thinking of getting the pancakes. They are delicious but they don’t hold a candle to you, love.”

Emma rolled her eyes at his comment and finally got out of bed and ran into the bathroom to shower. She was happy and that scared her. She couldn’t lose him too. She readied herself as fast as possible so he could shower as well.

While she waited for the food arrival and for Killian to get ready. She inspected the amulet and traced the outline of a wolf. She knew there was something to Killian’s conclusion. She hoped he was wrong but deep inside she knew he was right. If he was truly becoming a wolf she would lose him. She turned on his laptop and noticed the history on his browser. He had been doing research but nothing was proving to be reliable. Mostly folklore and mythology. She really hoped they could find a way to survive this together. She noticed that the shower was no longer running. He was going to be out soon and she needed to be brave for him.

Outside of the Cygnus, detectives Oz Walsh and Leroy Brokk were about to inform Killian Jones that his wife was murdered. Sadly with no suspects and the proximity to his home it made him a person of interest.

[defunctblogtobedeleted]

05/27/2021, 05:58 am - new ends, new beginnings

I’m approaching the precipice of departure.

In 4 short weeks my time in North Carolina will finally be coming to an end. I suppose it’s only appropriate that this blog is coming to an end as well.

I always meant to catch up with what quarantine was doing. but getting back together with jill and watching a million shows and playing games weren’t exactly noteworthy writings. Even still it almost seemed like it’d be a cool time piece, since it was a pretty historic event, the year we spent indoors.

Instead I found the inspiration to take weilin up on learning how to code. I quit my job in february, and I’m spending the next year bouncing around friends and families houses hoping to practice hard enough that I can get a good job next year. switch careers. get out of healthcare and into a new field where I can actually take advantage of the potential I have. 

It’s kind of sad to be wrapping this blog up. I never really expected to end it. But to be honest I’m kind of afraid of its continued existence. Not for the personal shame or anything, but for the first time I’m seeking out work in a field where they might try to pore over this content and deem me unfit. 

Pretty weak and fearful a reason. Maybe I am a little embarrassed. Partially of my obsession with andi at the end, moreso my potential objectification and degradation of the physical form. We all need to grow up from our mistakes, but I’d rather my growth continue to be personal and not corporate, I suppose. I just am so afraid of it being tied to my online personas and divulging more personal content than I’m comfortable with. Even more afraid than my fetlife for some reason. It’s weird, my fet is so much more explicit, and yet I feel like it’s so much less compromising lmao. Maybe that’s foolhardy logic though.

I’m really sad. Goodbyes are always the hardest. And the worst part is every time I get sappy and start to cry a little I think of that time at Brown summer camp when I cried in my dorm with the door open and two more popular kids saw me and laughed. I could have been crying about anything, though. Maybe they’re just assholes. But I get embarrassed nonetheless. 

The relationships I’ve built up here in NC I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. I really hope I manage to keep them going long distance. Unfortunately I know many of my smash friends are fallen to the wayside already... bar friends from greensboro forgotten... raleigh friends soon to be departed... but there are the few from each avenue of life that will stay in touch, I’m sure.

It’s sad that many of my thoughts these days are plagued by how frustrated I get with my roommates’ behavior, and moreso how they’re similar to my own and how I regret how I once acted. I wish I had spent more time with Aaron and Ash instead of trying to start those weird streaming ambitions. I wish I had been quieter when playing league and hadn’t kept my downstairs neighbors and jstu up all night when I lived in brewer. I wish I had been a better person when speaking of the opposite sex when I was drunk in gboro. I wish I had been more tolerant and understanding of andi’s mental health issues, and less of a bitch about money all the time. I wish I hadn’t been so shitty to Kailey when things were over and I was resentful and angry, and I wish I had been more vocal and deliberate about the boundaries that I had set, and more understanding when they were crossed because they were so arbitrarily and lackadaisically set. I wish I had done my goddamn dishes the same night I made them dirty at literally ANY other point in my life prior to now. God, I’m such an excuse making lazy fuck lmao. But here we are. And I own all my mistakes and there’s no way to make amends than to continue to become a better person every day. 

It’s too hard to end things. I meant to split things off with Jill at the end of March. and April. and now may. But as excited as I am to move on to independent living and focusing on myself and my work, I really haven’t been able to bring myself to tell her I can’t see her anymore. Why can’t I just be stronger and work harder on myself AND spend time watching shows with her? well poor self control, for sure. Why can’t we continue to see each other long distance or something? mmph. I don’t know. Jill’s character has developed a lot and she really has authentically taken an interest in many of the things I love, and it’s brought us closer together. We put 420 hours into the witcher 3 and it was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had in my life. But I still don’t see us compatible long term, and our sex life has faltered from month to month. I guess I am excited for something new. Will I always? I still wonder if I’m destined to be alone, like my father or (maternal) grandfather. Get it from both sides, I suppose.

To be honest I still daydream that one of my last days here I can hang out with MJ and have a one night stand. I don’t even know why anymore. We’ve sort of stayed in touch through quarantine. The only bar friend who really has, I suppose. But with quarantine that’s as much my fault as anyones. for the first time in my life I’m not seeking people out and checking in, pursuing friendship or time together. But I don’t know MJ still kind of fascinates me. I always wonder what would’ve happened if I had tried to make out with her the first time we met... but alas.

I kind of see this year of being 29 as a redemption arc for myself, academically. See if I can really be successful and actually try, put aside all the social ambitions and dedicate myself to something better. Staying with my friends and family makes it easier, I think. I’ll get to catch up and live with some of the people I’ve cared most about in my life. Sad that I never really felt comfortable asking if I could stay with manu maya and christina though... with their new baby on the way I’m just worried it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to crash on one of their couches. I don’t want to be a burden on them or anything, and I know as good as a houseguest as I intend on being at everywhere I stay I’m just... not... that good. I’m so much better than I was a decade ago, even half a decade ago. I’m finally an adult lmao. But it seems like only in the rearview mirror am I able to see how frustrating a person I am to deal with on a long term scale.

Maybe I’m not as bad as I think... Jill seems to enjoy my company now... But now that I’m unemployed I feel myself starting to fall into annoying greedy money behavior. She offered to pay for me to get sushi a couple weeks ago and really nearly started bawling. I cant afford to reciprocate anymore and it had felt so freeing to actually have a shred of money to throw around with my old job. and it’s so touching that she understands how I feel and really just wants to help me how she can. I’ve finally gotten over feeling like I can’t take anything from her and over my savior complex of trying to help her, but it still feels pretty sad to be the one that needs help again. 

But I guess I did pay for our vacation to lake week, which was a blast as usual. It’s not as one sided as I imagine, it just always feels worse than it is.

Soon things will be better, though. I have confidence in myself that I’ll be successful, and this will be one of the best undertakings I’ve ever done. I’ll find a new path for myself, and reach a new height in this silly capitalist conventional life, and all the happy little tidings that come with it.

Also random thought, but my DUI finally worked out, but I’m not gonna publish that story anyway due to laziness. Just cost another $1000 having to go through trial. Fuck the legal system, fuck capitalism, fuck the government. I’m ready for the singularity to occur and for machines to take over the earth and I’ll just be a little housepet for them, communicating in my scraps of javascript lmfao.

There’s so much more potential than I ever had. Even with my RPSGT and knowing I could go to work anywhere, there was too much inertia here to actually want to move away. Now, I can really go wherever opportunity takes me. And once I find a career somewhere maybe I’ll find new romance and friendship and excitement. But with google moving down here I wonder if I’m just destined to come back, eventually. Who knows.

But for the first time in a long time I’m ready to break free and put my all into becoming something new. 

Wish me luck 💕💕 I’m gonna need it.

[orbemnews]

A Virus Variant by Any Other Name … Please 20H/501Y.V2. VOC 202012/02. B.1.351. Those were the charming names scientists proposed for a new variant of the coronavirus that was identified in South Africa. The convoluted strings of letters, numbers and dots are deeply meaningful for the scientists who devised them, but how was anyone else supposed to keep them straight? Even the easiest to remember, B.1.351, refers to an entirely different lineage of the virus if a single dot is missed or misplaced. The naming conventions for viruses were fine as long as variants remained esoteric topics of research. But they are now the source of anxiety for billions of people. They need names that roll off the tongue, without stigmatizing the people or places associated with them. “What’s challenging is coming up with names that are distinct, that are informative, that don’t involve geographic references and that are kind of pronounceable and memorable,” said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. “It sounds kind of simple, but it’s actually a really big ask to try and convey all of this information.” The solution, she and other experts said, is to come up with a single system for everyone to use but to link it to the more technical ones scientists rely on. The World Health Organization has convened a working group of a few dozen experts to devise a straightforward and scalable way to do this. “This new system will assign variants of concern a name that is easy to pronounce and recall and will also minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people,” the W.H.O. said in a statement. “The proposal for this mechanism is currently undergoing internal and external partner review before finalization.” The W.H.O.’s leading candidate so far, according to two members of the working group, is disarmingly simple: numbering the variants in the order in which they were identified — V1, V2, V3 and so on. “There are thousands and thousands of variants that exist, and we need some way to label them,” said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a member of the working group. Naming diseases was not always so complicated. Syphilis, for example, is drawn from a 1530 poem in which a shepherd, Syphilus, is cursed by the god Apollo. But the compound microscope, invented around 1600, opened up a hidden world of microbes, allowing scientists to start naming them after their shapes, said Richard Barnett, a historian of science in Britain. Still, racism and imperialism infiltrated disease names. In the 1800s, as cholera spread from the Indian subcontinent to Europe, British newspapers began calling it “Indian cholera,” depicting the disease as a figure in a turban and robes. “Naming can very often reflect and extend a stigma,” Dr. Barnett said. In 2015, the W.H.O. issued best practices for naming diseases: avoiding geographic locations or people’s names, species of animal or food, and terms that incite undue fear, like “fatal” and “epidemic.” Scientists rely on at least three competing systems of nomenclature — Gisaid, Pango and Nextstrain — each of which makes sense in its own world. Updated  March 2, 2021, 10:34 a.m. ET “You can’t track something you can’t name,” said Oliver Pybus, an Oxford evolutionary biologist who helped design the Pango system. Scientists name variants when changes in the genome coincide with new outbreaks, but they draw attention to them only if there is a change in their behavior — if they transmit more easily, for instance (B.1.1.7, the variant first seen in Britain), or if they at least partly sidestep the immune response (B.1.351, the variant detected in South Africa). Encoded in the jumbled letters and digits are clues about the variant’s ancestry: The “B.1,” for instance, denotes that those variants are related to the outbreak in Italy last spring. (Once the hierarchy of variants becomes too deep to accommodate another number and dot, newer ones are given the next letter available alphabetically.) But when scientists announced that a variant called B.1.315 — two digits removed from the variant first seen in South Africa — was spreading in the United States, South Africa’s health minister “got quite confused” between that and B.1.351, said Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban and a member of the W.H.O.’s working group. “We have to come up with a system that not only evolutionary biologists can understand,” he said. With no easy alternatives at hand, people have resorted to calling B.1.351 “the South African variant.” But Dr. de Oliveira pleaded with his colleagues to avoid the term. (Look no further than the origins of this very virus: Calling it the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus” fed into xenophobia and aggression against people of East Asian origin all over the world.) The potential harms are grave enough to have dissuaded some countries from coming forward when a new pathogen is detected within their borders. Geographical names also quickly become obsolete: B.1.351 is in 48 countries now, so calling it the South African variant is absurd, Dr. de Oliveira added. And the practice could distort science. It is not entirely clear that the variant arose in South Africa: It was identified there in large part thanks to the diligence of South African scientists, but branding it as that country’s variant could mislead other researchers into overlooking its possible path into South Africa from another country that was sequencing fewer coronavirus genomes. Over the past few weeks, proposing a new system has become something of a spectator sport. A few of the suggestions for name inspiration: hurricanes, Greek letters, birds, other animal names like red squirrel or aardvark, and local monsters. Áine O’Toole, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh who is part of the Pango team, suggested colors to indicate how different constellations of mutations were related. “You could end up with dusty pink or magenta or fuchsia,” she said. Sometimes, identifying a new variant by its characteristic mutation can be enough, especially when the mutations gain whimsical names. Last spring, Ms. O’Toole and her collaborators began calling D614G, one of the earliest known mutations, “Doug.” “We’d sort of not had a huge amount of human interaction,” she said. “This was our idea of humor in lockdown No. 1.” Other nicknames followed: “Nelly” for N501Y, a common thread in many new variants of concern, and “Eeek” for E484K, a mutation thought to make the virus less susceptible to vaccines. But Eeek has emerged in multiple variants worldwide simultaneously, underscoring the need for variants to have distinct names. The numbering system the W.H.O. is considering is straightforward. But any new names will have to overcome the ease and simplicity of geographic labels for the general public. And scientists will need to strike a balance between labeling a variant quickly enough to forestall geographical names and cautiously enough that they do not wind up giving names to insignificant variants. “What I don’t want is a system where we have this long list of variants that all have W.H.O. names, but really only three of them are important and the other 17 are not important,” Dr. Bedford said. Whatever the final system is, it also will need to be accepted by different groups of scientists as well as the general public. “Unless one really does become the kind of lingua franca, that will make things more confusing,” Dr. Hodcroft said. “If you don’t come up with something that people can say and type easily, and remember easily, they will just go back to using the geographic name.” Source link Orbem News #Variant #Virus