#outside she's the same rose dave has always known and in her head she is SCREAMING that they should be together

[dubacheryking]

ok i have been thinking abt daverose ALL FUCKING DAY while i was at work and. dave and rose being friends their entire childhood, pretending to hate each other kind of and just having their weird contentionus friendship, and rose doesn't even really think she likes guys but then they meet in person and she can't not be attracted to him, except dave is already dating some other girl and it's messy and horrible and they're such fucking teenagers about it and. and the point that i was getting to is i think rose should drive home and pull over on the side of the road in the middle of the night while its raining and slam her fists on the wheel and scream bc it's so unfair that dave was her friend first and in her life first and they're literally known each other for most of their lives at this point, and she still can't have him the way he wants bc he is with someone else. and maybe she gets a little creepy abt it after a certain point. so anyway this is waht has been in my brain for literal hours ok.

[aperrywilliams]

A Normal Conversation Ch17 (Spencer Reid x Maxine Brenner)

(Not my gif!)

Masterlist

Ch01 Ch02 Ch03 Ch04 Ch05 Ch06 Ch07 Ch08 Ch09 Ch10 Ch11 Ch12 Ch13 Ch14 Ch15 Ch16 Ch17

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Summary: Spencer and Max spend time together and explore more about the things they enjoy together. Some news at the end can be worrisome.

Word Count: 4844.

Rating: Mature. Some smut. Fluff. Angst.

Warnings: Penetrative sex, cursing.

A/N: It has been a while without publishing a new chapter. But here we are again. This is my baby, I couldn't leave it alone.

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Chapter 17: Who am I speaking to?

They held each other for a while, until Max was already much quieter. The tears had stopped falling.

"Thanks, I really feel better," said Max, breaking the embrace and leaning against the kitchen counter.

"Glad to hear that," Spencer said smiling.

“Yes, you were right. I needed to get it out." Max rubbed her eyes and wiped the last traces of tears from her cheeks. "It's not that I haven't done it before, but there are times when I remember and I can't stop the tears..."

"You don't have to apologize for that."

"Really, thanks Spencer". Max gave Reid a kiss on the cheek and turned to wash the mugs and plates that were in the sink. Spencer stood for a few moments wondering if it was a good time or not to go home. He felt that Max needed her space even though he didn't want to leave her alone, especially after seeing her previous state of vulnerability. Reid wondered if it was convenient to talk about something else or just leave. The least he wanted to do at that moment was make her uncomfortable. At last he decided to speak.

"Are you sleepy? If you want to sleep, I can go home. So I let you rest…”. Spencer said as he started to button his shirt. Max wiped her hands on one of the towels on the counter and turned to look at him.

"Not. I'm not sleepy. And not. I don't want you to go home,” said Max as she approached Spencer looking for him to look at her. She took one of his hands and squeezed it gently.

"Okay... so... do you want us to talk about something?"

"Not... really, I think we talked enough... or at least I talked enough..." Max put her arms around his neck and sought his lips to catch them in a deep kiss which Spencer responded with more intensity than he expected, clutching her hips. When they parted they looked at each other with a smile. "Spencer, everything I said before is true, but there is something I missed adding..."

"What you missed?" Reid asked as he ran fingers of one of his hands through her hair and the other stroked her cheek.

"I couldn't have thought of just having casual sex with you...". Max said as her fingers played with one of the buttons on his shirt.

"No? Why not?" Spencer asked curiously.

"Because from the day I met you I knew that I wanted you just for myself...". Max started unbuttoning his 'recently buttoned' shirt, as he cupped her cheeks with both hands and leaned down to kiss her. The idea of going to his place was gone in seconds as they began to kiss fiercely. Max with her hands on his bare chest traced pats that drew whimpers from both of them. He lifted her with his arms and sat her on the table to level her height. He pulled out his shirt first and then untied the lace of her robe, dropped it on the table. Reid paused a moment so that he could gaze at her nudity.

"I don't know how you do it... but look what you do to me..." Spencer said as he buried his mouth on her neck and taking one of her hands guided her to touch his obvious erection.

"I'm not going to complain about that..." Max said giggling as she unbuttoned his slacks, which slid down to the floor along with his boxers.

"Neither do I..." he said groaning at the touch of her hands. "Tell me what you want?"

"I want you to fuck me right here and right now...". Max said with visible excitement.

They could both tell that while it wasn't a very comfortable place to have sex, the scene they imagined was erotic enough not to give it a try. And they managed to make it work. After some awkward movements, which included a kick from Spencer to the table and Max's near fall from the edge of the table, they managed to find a position that provided sufficient balance. Holding Max's hips with his hands and hers around his neck with Max’s head back, they increased their rhythm, as well as the moans and words of adoration between them.

“Oh… fuck. More. Harder. Faster. Like that... oh Spencer... " said Max moaning and panting.

"Yes, say my name Max... I want to hear it ... say it…". Spencer replied while his thrusts increased in speed.

"Spencer... babe... uhhh... yeah, like this... Spencer... go on... fuck...". Max was engulfed in pleasure

"Fuck Max...". Spencer could barely articulate a coherent sentence.

"I'm so close Spencer... fuck ... I'm going to cum".

"Do it... cum for me... that’s right baby... fuck... fuck..."

It wasn't long until they were both lost in the heights of an orgasm that hit them almost at the same time. Barely able to breathe, they let out one last groan that echoed off the kitchen walls. With a little more awareness of time and space, Spencer rose, carefully picking Max up from the table and carrying her into the bedroom. He gently laid her on the bed while he went to the bathroom. When he returned Max had not moved from where he had left her. He came over and lay down beside her. Breathing more normally, they stared at the ceiling.

"So just for you, huh?" Spencer said after a while.

"Is it too much to ask?" asked Max laughing.

"In this minute you could ask me for anything and I could not refuse ...". They both laughed. They didn't even want to see the clock, but they could have bet it was early morning. They covered themselves with the sheets and the comforter. Max lay on her side, turning her back to Spencer, who hugged her from behind and placed a kiss on her neck, while tracing strokes on her arm.

"You drive me crazy, you know that right?" Spencer whispered in her ear.

"Now I know. And I assure you that you will not get rid of me so easily Dr. Reid," said Max smiling as she stretched to get comfortable under the covers.

It wasn't long until they were both sound asleep.

The next morning the ringing of Spencer's phone on the nightstand woke them both up. Not yet fully awake, he picked up the phone and saw it was Garcia. "You must be kidding...?" he said just before answering. Max turned to him rubbing her eyes and seeing how after a snort he answered the call.

"Reid… Penelope, did something happen?"

“Good morning, Boy Wonder. I know it's Saturday and it's early ... "

"Please, tell me we don't have a case..." Spencer said as he rubbed his eyes.

“No, no… is not that. But I need to locate Rossi and he doesn't answer my calls”.

"Okay... Rossi? What's wrong?... and why me...?"

“You were the one who saw him last yesterday. I thought you might know something about his plans for today..."

"No, I don't know anything about him... only that he was going to his place... he didn't tell me if he was going to the cabin today... did you call Kristal?"

"No. I didn’t. I can't explain, but I can only tell you that he asked me for a favor and I need to report some things to him. He explicitly asked me not to involve anyone else…”. By now Spencer was up and out of bed and into his boxers. Max looked at him curiously when she saw how he frowned.

"It's because of Lynch… right?" Spencer interrupted.

"Reid don't make me talk, please ... just if you talk to him, tell him I need him to call me" Penelope said quickly.

"Okay. If I'm lucky I'll let you know…"

“Thanks genius boy. Give my regards to Max"

"Uhm? How ...?"

“I know you are there with her. I called you at your place first and you didn't answer me. Since it's Saturday and the time, I don't think you're anywhere else. Give her my regards and I hope we can see each other later"

"Okay ... I'll tell her". Spencer said still confused, hanging up. Max, already more awake, was looking at him curiously.

"Something happened?". Max asked seeing how Spencer was still standing next to the bed.

“Nothing happened… yet, I think. It was Penelope. She sent you greetings, by the way. For some reason she knew I was here…”. Spencer said, shaking his head and sitting down on the bed next to Max.

“Penelope is adorable. And she cares a lot for all of you," said Max as her hand began to gently caress Spencer's back tracing circles on it.

“Yeah, she is a great woman. We have known each other for many years and she has always been for everyone..."

"But you were worried, what did she say?... you have a frown," asked Max.

“She was trying to talk to Dave. I think… they are doing an independent investigation of a case that we still have open… one of the difficult ones… and very personal for Rossi”.

"And you're worried about him ..." Max said. Spencer nodded.

"Yes, I know what it feels like when a case touches you personally..." he said scratching his head.

“Maybe… all of you need to spend more time outside of work. You are all friends, you need to be distracted from the things you do and see every day... surely that does not help to solve a case, but at least help to pause and talk about what is happening to you...". Spencer crawled into bed again, sitting with his back on the backrest.

"It's difficult to do that sometimes... but in general, it's Rossi himself who invites us to his house... well, mansion... from time to time..."

"And don't you meet somewhere else... go out to other places? Do other things?"

"We have gone where Matt’s, where Luke’s... where Penelope’s... where JJ’s... it's not the usual, but sometimes it happens..."

"And in your place?". Spencer thought for a moment.

“Eh… I don't think I've ever planned something like that in my place… I mean, they know where I live… they have visited me… but doing 'something'… I think never did. Well, it's not Rossi' yard either…”. Spencer said with a shrug.

"Okay, your home is not a mansion... but intention is what counts, right?"

“I hadn't really thought about it… we've always relied on Penelope and Rossi for our activities outside of work…” Spencer mused.

"It is not bad give back sometimes...". Max leaned in to give Spencer a kiss. "Good morning, by the way."

"Good morning..." Spencer replied returning the kiss gently.

“I'll go to the shower and make breakfast. Think about what you want to do today, because if you think I will let you go home now, you are wrong”. Giving him another kiss, she got up from the bed.

After Max got dressed, Spencer asked if she could go get his travel bag that was in the trunk with his clothes while he showered. They ate breakfast while going through the newspaper Max received every day. They agreed to go to the National Gallery of Art, which while they both knew, Max knew it would have a new exhibit she was interested in seeing. Spencer agreed. Then they would have time to walk for a bit before lunch. The day was clear but a little colder than usual.

They toured the exhibition in as much detail as possible for a few hours. Spencer asked Max questions about some of the things they saw, to which Max tried to give as much detail as possible, at least what she knew. There were very striking paintings which caught Spencer's attention. "Surely you are not a lover of modern art" Max said laughing at one point. "Not much really" was his reply. They both looked relaxed and it was noticeable they enjoyed that time in each other's company. Max was happy to be able to talk about the things she liked without having to hold back or see any disgusted or bored face. For his part, Spencer was pleased to see someone as passionate about something as Max was at that minute. In addition, he liked to learn new things and thanks to his memory, he knew that he could retain them without major problem.

After leaving the exhibition they walked through the surrounding streets and found themselves in a park which they decided to cross to continue their conversation. In addition to commenting on what he had seen in the museum, Spencer gave her details of things he had seen in other places. Some of them had been discussed on their first date night, others were new to Max, so she took the opportunity to ask all the questions that appeared to him. During their walk they found a place that caught their attention for lunch. At lunch Max got a call from his dad.

"Dad? Hi..."

“Max, I was just calling you to see if you would come tonight or tomorrow. Michelle just called me and Sammy will come for dinner today, in case you prefer to come today instead of tomorrow"

"Yes of course. I thought tomorrow was better, but if Michelle is going to be with Sammy, I'd rather go today"

"Okay. See you in a few hours then"

"Yes, bye dad. I love you". Max hang up and left her cell phone on the table. “It was my dad. I was thinking of going to see them tomorrow, but I'm going to dinner today and seeing Sammy... I thought maybe... you could come with me"

“Max, I'd like to… but I promised my mom to be with her today before bedtime. I’m sorry…"

"Okay, don't apologize" Max said giving him a smile. "You can come with me another day."

"Of course"

After lunch, they walked past a photography exhibition and they decided to visit for a while. They walked holding hands while they recognized some of the photographs and discussed them.

“I think you might like this one. It dates from 1942, World War II, collective chaos and this farm in the middle of a field. It contrasts with the smoke from the surrounding sectors, after a bombing…” said Max as she pointed to one of the photographs at Spencer.

“It is impressive how it seems to be an oasis among all the disaster that surrounds it. It's really good,” Spencer said, coming closer to look at the details in the photograph.

“There are several with the same contrast. The first time I saw it my skin crawled, really”. Spencer was so focused on seeing the image that he didn't notice Max had pulled out his cell phone and was taking a picture of him.

"What?..." Spencer asked, realizing what Max had done.

"I needed to capture that face". Max said smiling.

"My face?" Spencer asked curiously.

“Yeah, that adorable face immersed in wonder and concentration. Besides, I don't have any photos of you and unlike you, I don't have an eidetic memory”. Spencer couldn't help but laugh.

"Okay. It seems fair to me"

"Can I be more daring still?". Max asked

"More…?"

"Sure... how about a photo of both of us?"

"Selfie style?". Spencer asked with a frown. Max nodded. “I think just for you I would make an exception. Not that I really like the idea..."

"Come on... give me something for when you're on your cases trips... please?"

"Okay... but just for you, okay?"

"Don't worry, I won't share it with anyone. Just as I am not going to share you with anyone either" said Max joking.

Spencer hugged Max as she positioned the phone to try to capture both faces. Unfortunately her short arms didn't help with the perfect angle. Spencer, realizing it, took the cell phone himself and pushed it away to improve the angle. He pressed the button and the photo was captured. Max took advantage of their closeness to lift her face and search for Spencer's lips with hers. Eyes closed and kissing, Spencer pushed the same button again. Another photograph was stored on the phone.

"Thank you". Max whispered.

"Just for you". Reid replied giving Max a peck in her lips.

The afternoon had passed quite quickly and it was nearing time for their family obligations. Spencer took Max back to her apartment. He parked the car outside the main entrance.

"Can we talk tomorrow?" asked Max.

"Of course. Give my regards to your dad, Eloise, Michelle and Sammy"

“Sure I will. Have a good afternoon with your mom"

"Thank you. I hope I can take you one of these days, of course, if you want to go. She will surely like you"

“Do you think so? You must be the most important thing for her. I don't think it's easy to please when it comes to you” said Max laughing.

"You please me... that should be enough." Spencer leaned down and lifting her chin let their lips meet gently. Letting out a sigh, Max clung to the lapel of his jacket to keep from breaking the kiss. As they pulled away they both sighed.

"Would you believe me if I told you that you have me as a teenager?... what did you do to me Dr. Reid?"

"I think the same as you to me... Miss Brenner." After a short kiss, Max quickly got out of the car.

"I will not risk staying here forever... although I would like... now, go" said Max smiling and closing the car door.

Although they spoke on the phone on Sunday, they could not see each other until a few days later. After two cases in a row out of town, Spencer had arrived at his apartment exhausted. He remembered that Max had her last interview at the Smithsonian and they should be about to give her the final answer. He picked up the phone and called her while he was lying on his couch after throwing his shoes on the floor.

"Hey how are you?". Spencer said.

“Hey… what a surprise. Well... are you out yet?"

“No, I just arrived. I'm in the apartment. Do you want to come?... I would offer to go but I don't think I can move anymore. I'm lying on the couch and I don't have the energy for anything else…”.

"I would love to. But can it be later? I have to pick up Sammy from a schoolmate and take him back home. Do you think could be later?"

"Yes of course. I can order something for dinner"

"It would be perfect ... see you later then..."

"Max!, wait... did they call you from...?". Spencer was interrupted by Max.

"I have no news yet... well, I'll tell you more details later, okay?".

"Yes of course. I’ll wait for you". Spencer replied.

It was after 8:00 p.m. when Spencer felt two knocks on the door. He had already received the food he ordered, so it was surely Max. He got up from the couch and opened the door.

"Hey! Handsome”. Max greeted.

"Hello gorgeous. What have you got there?" Spencer asked pointing to a paper bag that Max was holding in one of her arms.

"Something for dinner," Max replied, as she got in the apartment. Spencer closed the door and took her free hand pulling it up to his body and leaning in to kiss her.

"I missed you". Spencer said after breaking the kiss but still hugging her.

"I missed you too". Max whispered back.

"If you want I can show you right now how much I missed you these days...". Spencer whispered playfully searching Max's neck with his lips.

“Uhm… tempting. But… let's have dinner first,” Max answered, letting go of Spencer's arms and walking to the kitchen. "Besides... I have news for you." Spencer looked at her confused. Max smiled and pulled a bottle of wine out of the paper bag. "I got the job!".

"Max! You didn't want to say anything to me on the phone when I asked…". Spencer reproached as he walked into the kitchen as well.

"I wanted it to be a surprise," Max replied.

“This is excellent news! I knew you would get it...". Spencer said as he grabbed Max's waist and plastered a kiss to the base of her neck.

"Thank you for having faith in me"

"I didn’t hesitate for a minute"

"That's why we should celebrate" Max said as she opened the bottle of wine. Spencer prepared the plates and they went to the table for dinner.

After dinner they both sat on the couch with a glass of wine in hand. Despite talking a lot at dinner, Max was quietly watching Spencer rambling about the importance of music in the development of modern psychology. Reid, even though the enthusiasm in his speak, could notice Max's silence.

"I'm rambling again, right?" Max, realizing that Spencer had stopped speaking, rushed to reply.

"No, it's okay. You were developing an idea... "

"And you were in outer space..." Spencer said with a frown.

"Sorry, I got a little distracted..." Max apologized.

"Don’t apologize. What happens?... because something happens”. Reid had his eyes fixed on Max studying her reactions.

"Is this what you get when your boyfriend is a profiler?..." Max tried to joke, avoiding a conversation she didn't want to have.

"You don't have to be a profiler to know that something is happening..."

"Yes it's true. But I don't know what to answer you…”. Max shrugged.

"The truth, for example?..."

“It would be easy if I really knew what's wrong with me. But it’s not so clear to me…”. Max took a sip of her wine.

"We can try to figure it out together..." Spencer offered taking a sip of his wine as well. Max let out a sigh.

"Okay... this will come out spontaneously, so don't expect some sort of order in my ideas..."

"Too many warnings Max…" Spencer tried to joke, which brought a little smile to Max.

“I know I should be happy. I am. I got the job I wanted, my family is fine, I have a loving, attentive and attractive boyfriend who drives me crazy…”. Spencer blushed a little and smiled. “It's true! Don't be humble with me Dr. Reid, ok?. But well, despite all that I feel anxious. I'm having strange dreams, nightmares. It's like from one moment to the next I'm going to lose all the good things I have in my life now. I'm scared. And I don’t know why. I don't see any signs that anything is going to happen… I don't know. But I think about it and I don't like it. What if they call me tomorrow and tell me it was a mistake and I don't have the job? What if after I finish talking you want to break up with me because you think I'm crazy?... ". Max finished speaking and took the last sip of wine left in her glass. "I'm silly, I know. I shouldn't even be talking to you about all this…”. Max complained.

"Hey... don't say that." Spencer took Max's empty glass and set it along with his on the coffee table. He sat closer to Max and took her hands. “You are not crazy for sharing your fears with me. And no, I'm not going to break up with you for this…”. A smile crossed Spencer's face.

“I'm not used to feeling good about things that happen in my life. That's why I think all the time that I'll lose everything from one moment to the next… it's stupid…”. Max confessed.

“I don't know if it's exactly the same, but I think I've felt that way more than once. Too good to be true, right?... And I'm not just talking about your attractive and loving boyfriend...”. Max started laughing as she shook her head. “No, but seriously. I think you are afraid to enjoy the things that are happening to you. And that makes you feel guilty. But you shouldn't! Max… you have right to do and live life as you want to. And enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with that,” Spencer said.

“Yeah, I know. And I really want to. Moreover, we shouldn't even be talking about this right now… ”. Max released Reid's hands and sought his hug snuggling. “I'll stop my silliness. Now I want to enjoy being with you. Had I told you that I missed you these days?" Max said as she dropped into Spencer's embrace.

“Yes, but it doesn't bother me you remind me. I missed you too". Max raised her head to look at him.

"Show me" she said intensifying her gaze on him and biting her lower lip trying to contain a mischievous smile.

"With pleasure". Spencer leaned down and caught her lips in a long, intense kiss. When they pulled away they were both breathing heavily.

"Uhmm ... I’m not sure if you missed me as much as you say..." Max teased.

"Am I not?... well... let's fix this to make it clear." With that said, Reid suddenly got up from the couch and picked up Max, taking her in his arms and leading her to his bedroom.

"Spencer! What are you doing? Where are you taking me?..." Max said giggling.

"Where I could show you the evidence to prove my point" Reid sentenced with a mischievous smile on his face.

After that night, several days passed where Max and Spencer couldn't see each other. Max, on the one hand, left things in order at school after having notified that she was leaving her job. Between that and the training days at the Smithsonian, the hours of the day slipped by quickly. Meanwhile Spencer came and went from the city according to the cases that were arriving at the BAU. Despite this, they both managed to talk on the phone for even a few minutes during the nights. That, in addition to the messages between them in the day.

In one of the messages Max received, Spencer told her they were in a difficult case and it might take him more days to get back than he thought. Two days after that message they talked on the phone for a while and Max noticed Spencer was exhausted. Max let him know her concern about how his voice sounded on the phone to which Spencer replied not to worry about him, that he would probably end the case that day since they had a solid clue as to where the unsub was. He promised as soon as he got home he would sleep a whole day to recover.

The next night came and Spencer hadn't texted during the day or called Max. Thinking for a moment, Max was going to call him but stopped when she remembered perhaps Spencer had arrived home and was recovering his lost sleep, just as he had promised the night before. Still impatient, she didn’t want to be an alarmist and went to sleep.

The morning after, Max woke up and the first thing she looked at was her phone to see if she had any messages from Spencer. Nothing. She saw the clock and it was still early. It was possible Reid was still sleeping. Max got up and started her day like any other. Among her activities was to collect the last things she had at school and begin to prepare the materials she would take to her new work place from the following week.

When Max got back to her apartment checked the clock and it was almost lunchtime. No notification on her phone. That was weird already. Although Spencer might be exhausted, it was difficult for him to be sleeping at that hour. So she decided to call him. The first call was unsuccessful. The phone rang until it threw up voicemail. Tried a second time with the same result. At the third call there was finally an answer. Max was quick to speak.

"Wow, I was scared that you didn't answer the phone... I knew you would arrive exhausted, but not enough to sleep until this hour...". Max was interrupted by a voice on the other end of the line.

"Max?" The voice wasn't Spencer's, but it sounded familiar.

"Yes... who am I speaking to? I'm trying to locate Spencer...". Max's head began to spin rapidly thinking of all the possibilities why Spencer wasn't the one answering her call.

"I'm Penelope... we met a while ago..." said the voice on the other end of the line. There Max recognized that it was Garcia, Spencer's co-worker.

"Hi Penelope. Is Spencer there with you…?”. Max thought they were at the BAU and her genius boyfriend had left his phone forgotten.

"Max... no, he is here... but he can't... we're in the hospital... Spencer is injured and unconscious...". Max froze upon hearing Garcia's words. Apparently one of her nightmares was coming true in that precisely moment.

——————–

[justatiredghost]

Living for the Moment Chapter 2 A series of glimpses at Klaus’ life if he’d met Dave in his mid 20s. His life isn’t magically transformed, love can’t fix either of them when they’re both homeless and in a bad place. They’re not even really ready for a relationship yet. But maybe a supportive friendship can set them on a better path, the two of them inspiring each other to take care of themselves. It’s going to be a long and bumpy ride, and the question is, when will they actually admit to themselves that they have feelings for each other?

-

Klaus rarely slept well. The most he could hope for most nights was a few hours of unconsciousness by getting blackout drunk or high, which unfortunately wasn’t known for being all that refreshing. This morning was no exception; what he’d taken the night before did the trick, but could only last so long and as it wore off, the voices of the ghosts always waiting at the edge of his mind slowly rose to the full force of their screaming and wailing. It jolted him awake with a start and he scrambled out of bed, breathing heavily, searching for his things and, most importantly, any drugs that he might have hidden away. 

“What a beautiful morning,” Ben said, taking Klaus’ spot on the bed

Klaus muttered a curse under his breath as he tried to ignore the concerned or irritated looks of the others trying to sleep at the shelter. He only had a few pills left, that would have to do for now. He flipped Ben off as subtly as he could before heading for the exit. He needed a cigarette. Desperately. 

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” Ben said, suddenly at his side. “You’re so grouchy in the morning. Let’s go do something fun for a change.”

“How about you take your ‘fun’ and--” 

Before he could come up with some sort of colorful finish, he nearly walked directly into another man. Looking up, he completely lost his train of thought as he found Dave staring at him in equal surprise. Considering Dave had taken center stage in some of his half-remembered restless dreams, he had a second of wondering if he was just really high or still dreaming. He wished he was high. 

“Hey,” Dave said with a smile. “Small world. Good to see you again.”

“Is it?” Klaus asked, legitimately curious as he lit up a cigarette in the doorway. “That’s not usually the reaction I get after standing someone up.”

“That was just kind of a line,” Dave admitted like he was sharing a secret, opening the door so they could both move outside, and probably so Klaus wouldn’t get yelled at for smoking indoors. “But now that you mention it, I had a good time otherwise so it’s not like I can be too annoyed.”

“Sure you can,” Klaus said. “I believe the appropriate reaction is usually anger.”

“Is it? If I had to pick, I’d say a little bummed, maybe,” Dave said with a shrug, pulling out his own cigarette. Klaus whipped out his lighter and held it out for him before he could go looking for his own. “We all got lives, man. You gotta go, you gotta go.”

Ben coughed, only half disguising the word ‘pushover,’ in the middle of it. Klaus ignored him.

“Can’t blame you for enjoying the ‘Klaus Experience,’” Klaus said with a wink. “Although, maybe you’ll get a kick out of this. I actually thought you’d stood me up.”

“Really? Does this mean you’re mad?” Dave asked.

“Hey man, anyone stands me up, it’s their loss,” Klaus said emphatically 

“That’s the spirit,” Dave laughed. 

“That’s the truth.”

“It certainly is,” Dave said with a much too sincere smile. “But I gotta know, how exactly does that work? You thinking I’d stood you up?”

“Eh, I got a bit high, lost track of time,” Klaus said with a shrug, taking a drag. “You know how it is.”

“I sure do,” Dave said, nodding sagely, although Klaus wasn’t sure if he actually agreed or was just humoring him. “If it wasn’t intentional, any chance you’d let me make it up to you? Promise I won’t stand you up this time.” 

“What?” Klaus said in surprise, barely stopping himself from choking on smoke. He hadn’t expected Dave to want anything to do with him after, well, everything. 

“Yeah, let me by you a--” he dug around in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. “A coffee?” He sounded much too hopeful and Klaus was irritated with himself for finding it endearing. 

“Well, how can I say no to coffee?”  Klaus said, ignoring Ben’s disappointed sigh. Someone who wasn’t likely to get too angry at his antics was definitely someone worth keeping around, he reasoned. 

-

“So,” Klaus said, making himself comfortable on his side of the booth, stretching his legs out. “Do you usually buy coffee for people who stand you up?”

“Depends,” Dave said, immediately pulling out the little sugar packets and making a game out of stacking them, building a little sugar packet house. “Can these people make me laugh so hard alcohol comes out of my nose? 

“You have strange standards, but I am hilarious, so I’ll give you that.”

“Besides,” Dave said, handing a sugar packet to Klaus, inviting him to join in. “I had to apologize for making you think I’d stood you up.”

“And yet I’m the one who should be apologizing for actually, if unintentionally, standing you up,” Klaus said, gesturing with the packet before building onto Dave’s little house.

“So? Are you?”

“Am I what?

“Going to apologize.”

“Yeah, sure, I guess I should,” Klaus said, clearing his throat like he was about to give a speech, hand over his heart. “I’m so sorry for standing you up. And for depriving you of all of this.” He gestured to all of himself, winking yet again.

“I’m not sure how I survived,” Dave laughed. “But really, it’s cool. Who hasn’t gotten high and lost track of time before? But what about you? Do you usually go on dates after standing people up?”

“I mean, I did have fun last night, so—” Klaus admitted, because he couldn’t deny that he was a flake and, really, it was probably better that Dave knew that up front.

“I knew it,” Dave exclaimed, apparently missing the point, but Klaus wasn’t going to correct him if he wanted to take the ego boost and leave the rest on the table.

“Don’t get all full of yourself, every party I attend is a good one, so really you can only take half credit.”

“That’s more than enough for me.” 

“Hi, Dave,” the waitress said, coming over to their table. “The usual?”

“Yeah, two coffees this time, Cheryl. Thanks.” 

“You got it.”

“Come here often, then?” Klaus asked once the waitress left.  

“Well, my work is right across the street,” he said, gesturing to a construction yard they could see from their seats. “We’re almost done with this job, though, so it’ll be a bummer to find a new place that won’t kick me out for drinking endless free refills.”

“Pretty face like yours, I’m sure you’ll manage.”

And he actually blushed at that. It was adorable and he would have liked to dwell on it and tease him, but the waitress was back. Dave seemed a bit relieved at the distraction. 

“I got some fries for you both, on the house,” she said, setting it down in front of them. 

“Oh, wow, thank you,” Dave said, smiling at her. 

“I think she has a thing for you,” Klaus whispered across the table to him once they were alone again.

“She’s not really my type,” Dave chuckled. “And to be honest, she’s probably just glad I’m not here alone for a change. I think she was beginning to think I don’t have a social life”

“Well, either way, I’m completely happy to take advantage of your good fortune.”

“All jokes aside, thanks for getting coffee with me,” Dave said, holding his mug up like he was gonna toast him. 

“Yeah, apparently I should stand you up more often,” Klaus said with a whink, taking his own drink in hand.

“Or,” Dave said, drawing the word out like he was trying to get his courage up enough to actually finish the sentence. “You could find out how things go if you stick around.”

“Hmm,” Klaus said, acting like he was considering, like he hadn’t already made up his mind the moment he agreed to coffee. “Sure, I’d be willing to see how it goes”

“Are you going out again tonight? We can meet up at the same place. And hopefully we can avoid standing each other up this time.”

“Sure,” Klaus said. “So long as we can skip the preamble. Flirting across the dance floor was fun and all, but I’m pretty sure our night could be better spent.”

Last night, they’d continually gotten distracted from the main reason people usually meet up at clubs. While it had still been fun and another night of the same would have still been enjoyable, Klaus wanted to make sure there was no doubt where he’d like the night to end up even if it was obvious neither of them had a place they could go home to together. There were other ways to have a little fun, after all, and Klaus certainly wasn’t above back alley or bathroom escapades. 

He decided that the easiest way to get this across was to reach his foot out, running it along Dave’s ankle and up his calf. Dave’s eyes widened in surprise, but he grinned back, a blush creeping across his face, and attempted to surreptitiously reply in kind. Instead, he misjudged the distance and accidentally kicked his leg, causing Klaus to gasp mock-accusingly and kick back. 

From there, things quickly devolved into some sort of competitive game of footsy, the rules unclear. All Klaus knew was that it was taking everything they had to not laugh out loud and disturb the other tables. He wasn’t sure why things with Dave always turned out so ridiculous, but he was having more fun than he had in a long time so it wasn’t like he was going to complain. 

The game ended abruptly when Dave banged his knee on the table, nearly spilling their coffee. They both stopped, trying to look innocent, until they made eye contact and immediately descended into giggling, Dave rubbing his tender knee. They got a few glares, but really that only caused them to laugh more, leaning close together conspiratorially.

-

When Dave eventually announced that he had to get to work, Klaus was once again struck by how easy it was to lose track of time when they were together. And it was strange how disappointed he felt as he headed down the sidewalk after saying his goodbyes. Then again, he’d gotten coffee and had eaten more than he usually did, so maybe that was the only reason he felt so reluctant. 

“So, you’re going out again tonight,” Ben said, clearly disappointed as he fell into step beside him. 

“I thought you said you liked the guy?” Klaus asked. 

“‘Like’ is a strong word. I’d like it more if you didn’t go to clubs at all.”

“Well, we both know that’s not gonna happen,” Klaus said, pulling out another cigarette and grinning at his brother. 

“You said you’d take me to that free art gallery,” Ben persisted. “We should go there instead.”

“Sorry, it’ll have to wait,” Klaus said and he really did feel a bit guilty for putting it off for so long. “I gotta resupply. We’ll go another day, okay? Now, help me figure out which dealer might actually give me an advance until I can get my hands on some cash.” 

Ben sighed heavily, but at least he didn’t disappear. 

[propfortytwo]

heres the entire plot of homestuck explained mostly

the story takes place over 4 (technically 5 counting the end) alternate universes, and starts in the 3rd one, but it makes more sense if we start from the beginning chronologically.

a race of humanoids called trolls who are basically just humans with grey skin, orange horns, multicolored blood, and varying degrees of psychic powers exist on a planet called beforus. things are relatively uneventful, until the abdicated heiress to an empire, meenah, discovers The Game(tm) on the moon.

the game, otherwise known as sburb (or sgrub to the trolls) exists to propagate the universe; a successful session of it creates a new universe entirely. it involves a server player manipulating the real environment of a client player to bring them into a type of pocket dimension called the medium aka the session aka the incipisphere whatever, point is, you get there. the client can then, from that dimension, host the server of another client and bring them into the same session, and so on; the trolls sessions have 12 players, and human sessions have 4. each player has their own ‘land’, a small planet vaguely themed around them with a unique poorly defined quest, but that doesnt come up too much so dont worry about it immediately. each player also has a unique mythological role consisting of a class and an aspect; there are 12 of each for a total of 144 possible combinations, for instance john egbert is the heir of breath. this not only defines their abilities, but also their personality and role in the story.

each session has a few constants: a ‘planet’ in the center called skaia, which is a bright ball of just sky, with clouds that show you visions of the future; at the center of it is the battlefield, a chessboard which gets bigger and more complicated as things go on. a session will also always contain prospit, a yellow planet that orbits close to skaia, and a purple planet called derse that orbits far away from it. in a game session, prospit and derse are at war, with derse seeking to destroy skaia and the battlefield by sending an asteroid belt into it; coincidentally, this also destroys the home planet of the players, as many asteroids are teleported into reality. in the sessions weve seen so far these asteroids also are used to paradoxically send baby versions of the players and their ancestors back in time but that isnt too important right now. each player has an alternate self called a dream self, which exists on one of the two planets (but doesnt have any bearing on their morality or allegiance, just personality). dream selves, along with the session itself, always exist alongside the normal universe before the game even begins, and under certain conditions your normal self will, when asleep, awake as your dream self and vice versa. in addition, a player who dies can be revived, but only as their dream self.

back to the plot; the beforus trolls aren’t very good at the game; in fact, they fail and spend a few years not being able to do anything until they discover a way to reset both their game and the universe itself, which will retroactively swap them with their ancestors as players and do some other things as well. they should logically not even exist anymore, but due to some shenanigans that happen in the 2nd universe, they exist as ghosts in a sort of afterlife formed by dreaming players whose dream selves are dead or missing. overall, only two of these 12 trolls are actually important to the plot, meenah and aranea.

this brings us to the second universe; beforus is now called alternia, and it is a considerably more violent and horrific place, with troll society being murderous as pretty much a standard. as you can imagine literally everyone is traumatized by this. the first 12 trolls to get introduced in the comic come from this timeline, and include funny lawyer girl terezi. there’s also a considerable amount of infighting, most of which is vriskas fault. she comes up later.

the 2nd troll session is considerably more successful than the 1st, and finishes the game creating a universe, though this new universe contains a “small” defect due to negligence on the part of the players. before the trolls can enter their new universe, however, they are unexpectedly attacked by an angry teleporting chess dog with wings and a katana, who murders all their dream selves and blows up prospit and derse. the trolls go into hiding on a meteor, where they learn that this strange murderous furry came from a session inside their new universe. they elect to constantly harass the players of this session. also around the time of furrymans rampage, a girl named feferi convinces some eldritch creatures to create the aforementioned afterlife, while another girl named aradia who was briefly a robot comes back to life as a god tier and freezes furrydude in place. a god tier player is someone who has died in a particular way and as a result been revived with conditional immortality (if they die they are immediately revived UNLESS their death was either heroic, or just ie they were a piece of shit), powers based on their class and aspect, and a new outfit also based on their class and aspect. meenah in the first universe did this, as did vriska in the 2nd, though only because aradia beat the shit out of her for being awful. speaking of which she murders her childhood friend who she has abused and tormented for years because thats just how vriska is.

this brings us to the start of homestuck, the comic. there are four kids at the moment: john egbert, an overall lovable dumbass who is the first to enter, rose lalonde, a goth lesbian obsessed with wizards and psychology, dave strider, funny sunglasses memelord and horrifically abused swordsman, and jade harley, the prophetic scientist heiress of an old colonialist who was raised by a magic dog. through some difficulties they enter their session, and things IMMEDIATELY start going wrong. they just barely get everyone into the session before earth is ruined, and before that can even happen, the aforementioned murder furry is created when a bureaucrat named jack noir kills the black queen and steals her magic ring. a different jack noir was also present in the troll session, this one became a mobster named spades slick. (yes, that stupid fucking intermission was actually important). this happened because like the players, several ingame npcs also are brought to the dying planet, after it gets fucked by rocks. these include, on earth, WV aka the mayor, PM who will be important later, and two other jackasses who arent important. PM is cool because shes a mailman who fights through the fucking legions of hell to deliver a package to john and then later receives a copy of jack noirs magic ring and proceeds to chase him across the void for 3 years and finally beats the shit out of him. love her. anyway;

like the 1st universe, the kids are informed by a creepy man who talks in white text on a white background like a fucking tool that they cant succeed and will have to reset their session, though with coordination from the trolls, they have a plan to survive it. they also plan to use a very large bomb created as part of that defect i mentioned before to blow up something called the green sun, which is where jack noirs magic furry powers come from. this will also coincidentally kill spooky white man who has a cueball for a head and release an eldritch horror known as lord english into the timeline. meanwhile in the troll session, a clown troll named gamzee is driven into a rage by a video of the insane clown posse sent to him by dave and murders several of the less relevant characters because hes a piece of shit. also meanwhile a troll named eridan ALSO kills some people including someone named kanaya who is a lesbian vampire with a chainsaw who eventually marries rose. kanaya then cuts eridan in half because she Is Too Fucking Angry To Die. love her. ALSO ALSO meanwhile vriska is about to fly off and expose their hiding place to jack noir, but is killed by her childhood friend terezi. she dies for good because its considered a just death. anyway back in the kid session, things go awry and its revealed that white bread tricked them, as the bomb actually CREATES the green sun retroactively. also, because of the properties of the green sun and where the bomb was set off, the two kids who set off the bomb, dave and rose, meet up with the remaining trolls outside of the kid session. meanwhile jade fucking dies to a bomb made of shaving cream but is revived as a god tier and for unrelated reasons also fused with her magical dog. dave and rose also ascend to god tier as they died when a massive fucking sun spawned on top of them. john was already god tier due to some shenanigans by vriska earlier. basically everyone has their signature look now.

jade uses her new god tier abilities to shrink down every planet in their session including the battlefield, before bringing herself, john, and an alternate timeline dave onto a battleship and literally fucking launching it through the fourth wall into Poorly Defined Author Space which is technically on the moon of alternia. andrew hussie is here. as they leave the session before its reset, they stay alive, same with rose and dave. also meanwhile with rose and dave, one of the surviving trolls, sollux, uses his psychic powers to launch the meteor towards the newly reset session at relativistic speeds (all sessions TECHNICALLY exist in the same dimension? its weird), while jade does the same with her battleship.

thus begins the 4th timeline/universe. shit only gets stupider from here, consider taking a short break.

ok, ready?

the new universe is shown off, with the new kids; jane crocker, an average young woman who stands to inherit the betty crocker company which in this timeline is like amazon (shes an alternate version of johns grandmother); roxy lalonde, who is literally the best character in homestuck (alt. rose’s mom); jake english, a dumbass who lives on a deserted island, speaks in horribly inaccurate british slang and dual wields pistols (alt. jade’s grandfather); and dirk strider, a canonically gay nerd with pointy anime sunglasses and a sword who builds robots and canonically watches mlp so like fucking make of that what you will (alt. dave’s abusive brother). their entry into their session is different; their session is called a void session, and is inherently unwinnable because of retroactive time bullshit, and for related reasons, the meteors that would destroy earth are never sent. you may ask “well how did the kids get there then?” to which the answer is when the reset happened the destination of the kids guardians was switched to be this new session. doesn’t that mean the guardians never existed, you say? stop thinking.

anyway janes entry into the session coincedes with betty crocker revealing herself to be a hostile alien empress who slowly takes over the earth with the help of the insane clown posse and guy fieri. she’s also the alternate version of meenah, who in the alternia timeline was the empress and also kind of a horrible person. shes here because of nonsense involving lord english, who she works for but hates. in fact, theres an interesting side effect to this; dirk and roxy actually live 400 years in the future from jane and jake, from after betty crocker aka the condesce killed everyone and flooded the planet. they still enter the same session, through dirk doing some stupid shit and controlling both his dream self and his actual self at the same time and moving everyone around.

there’s a long period of absolutely nothing happening in the 4th session while the trolls and kids travel to it, and during this were introduced to two characters; calliope and caliborn. theyre brother and sister, and are part of another race called cherubs who look like green skeletons and which share a body with each other and fight for control of it. caliborn is the fucking worst and actually becomes lord english eventually, while calliope is a nice down to earth person who makes fan characters and cosplays a troll. they also technically exist in a... 5th, separate universe, on a dead earth?? which is probably the future earth from the ending? i dunno it makes no fucking sense.

anyway calliope dies due to some plotting but death means fucking nothing in this story so shes off hidden in the afterlife. the meteor group and the battleship group pass through this afterlife like physically several times during their journey through the void and meet many of the dead trolls, including dead vriska, meenah, and aranea, who come up with a plan to lure lord english, who is currently destroying reality and murdering ghosts, to a place where they can hit him with a magic ghost weapon. they find it, and john touches it out of curiosity, whereupon he gains weird powers that let him travel ANYWHERE in canon at any time, though he cant really control it. during his random zaps around he beats the shit out of caliborn which is cool and good. partway through, aranea leaves and uses a magic ring to come back to life JUST as the two groups arrive at the new session and the 4 new kids ascend to god tier, at which point everything goes wrong all at once.

through a contrived series of events, jade and jane are mind controlled by the condesce, and a long fight scene ensues where jake unleashes his true power and then dies, aranea tries to usurp the condesce but fails miserably, and basically fucking everyone but john and roxy die horribly, planets are smashed into each other, the session is falling apart due to interference from caliborn who has limited control over the narrative for some reason; its not good.

fortunately, john in theory has the ability to fix this by retconning events in a particular way. he has no idea how to though, until a dying terezi headbutts him, writes instructions on a blindfold in her own blood, and then dies, falling into a chalk outline of her own corpse she drew immediately beforehand because shes fucking metal. john also, during this time, uses his new powers to move his planet out of the session into a white void apparently outside everything. as a consequence of this, in an alternate timeline his planet explodes and roxy dies, though in THIS weird space, he and roxy are still alive.

following terezis instructions, john changes some subtle things in the past, before ultimately preventing her from killing vriska by knocking vriska out. this, surprisingly, actually has a positive effect; vriska has powerful mind control abilities that allow her to put jane and jade to sleep upon arrival and prevent the bad timeline from happening, but she also mellows out a bit and keeps everyone from losing their minds during the journey, while also forming a plan to fight the condesce that works out pretty well. the person she murdered gets revived as well, though she still treats him like shit so im not giving her points for that.

john and roxy arrive from the bad timeline with johns planet, and roxy uses the magic ring to bring the dead calliope back to life. also around this time calliope meets an alternate version of herself who killed caliborn in her timeline and is spooky and mysterious and super fucking powerful and will be able to help kill lord english, so thats cool.

some nice, genuine heart to hearts happen between the characters as they get set up for the final battle, at which point it happens, in a 20 minute flash. the condesce gets defeated, lord english's influence is cut out from the session, and the new universe is created; its actually a pretty happy ending.

and THAT is the end of homestuck.

[dahniwitchoflight]

Candy 18-21

oh, oh no

I’ve heard things about Jane x Gamzee

now I get to experience them, oh boy...

Gamzee gets, strangely serious about stuff for once, huh, who would have thunk it

yeah, It’s clear Jane’s political stuff seem to stem from some kind of fear that one day humanity won’t exist on Earth C for whatever reason

that over time, the population of trolls versus humans will eventually skew so much that there won’t be any adam and eve left to match up with each other

in her mind she really doesn’t hate trolls, cuz its not really about the trolls, not at all, but obviously her actions are equivalent to someone who does hate them and she just doesn’t get that

and like, yeah if you just left them to their own devices, maybe that would happen, but then (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) Gamzee has an extremely good point that they already did that when they plopped all the ectokids down and called it a day for a 1000 years, like, they managed to figure it out on their own just fine

and also

ectobiology will literally never stop being a thing so like, as long as some of the god kids stick around, eventually you can just make more humans it’s no big deal to restart the human gene pool since it will be identical to the first time they started it

there’s no reason to make sure this system runs smoothly the “natural way” it won’t, this situation is unnatural for both species

Jane’s just gotta realize that if she wants humans to keep sticking around, she just has to keep supporting the human population, that’s it, whatever trolls do or don’t do doesn’t matter for that goal

course it doesn’t help to compare trolls to animals when talking about their breeding rate and how it naturally evolved over time unlike the apparently non animal humans Janey

Also Alternian society is def not how troll society naturally is but like how could she know that? And how could any troll near her really explain that? 

aaaand I got so up in taking this seriously I forget who was talking

Jane’s into troll blackrom though that’s interesting and unexpected 

oh wow, Jake was there the whole time

Did they really name Jake and Jane’s baby Tavros??? oh jeesus

Yeah Kinda figured the Jane x Jake thing wasn’t gonna actually be happy

I’m really surprised Jane’s version of happiness apparently involves boinking a weird funny man I mean, she canonically likes clowns and jokes, so at the same time I’m not surprised, I mean, she WAS raised by the condesce, it’s just weird how that influence comes out in her sometimes versus how it doesn’t come out in her

literal Jake nightmare scenario though I think lol

really hammering home how the passions of youth don’t really translate well to happy adult relationships

Oh, so there’s the part where Jade reveals she has Bec biology, considering the fandom reaction you’d think we were gonna get some kind of gross M rated sex scene where she pegs Karkat or something

but all she does is talk about how she’d love a normal family and home life and lament that her circumstances ended up not really allowing that and giving enough hints that we can figure out why that would be

it’s not handled grossly at all, even if the subject matter is odd and it doesn’t come off as some sort of character sabotage

this whole time what we’ve known all Jade was that she was lonely and just wanted a family, not that hard to figure out why, girl’s got the same complex as Joey Claire about her family situation, but she’s more reserved about her feelings since she didn’t get to have a comparison of role models like Joey did with her babysitter and also Jade’s food and shelter needs were somewhat taken care by a planet guardian so the affect was somewhat lessened on the outside, she just didnt get the same chances as Joey to be able to articulate her emotional turmoil about it

aww Jade’s not happy either, well, that’s how it goes when you make relationship decisions based on flimsy passions that are more about fulfilling the needs of the self than about actually wanting good things for a partner

More like Jade’s sort of realized that Karkat and Dave don’t have a genuine romantic interest in her and she’s the only one keeping this ship afloat

oh shit, a dead younger jade, oh damn wait she’s the one from Meat that was trapped in the house juju and then immediately died from space razors

Yeah’s she’s a bloody symbol of meat that’s for sure, theyre making that pretty clear

“Her eyes go wide and she feels the breath go out of her for a moment. She looks directly upward. Where did this body come from?”

Again, if we take that symbolism circle of Breath = Sugar = Drugged up High =  Breath

This little dash of meat falling into wonderland would break the breathy haze for a bit wouldn’t it?

So if this kind of thing can happen to others besides John, there’s hope yet for something of value to come from Candy

“ There’s a peaked skylight at the top of the foyer that splits the morning sun like a prism, spilling multicolored dots across every surface below. Amongst those dots are drips of teen-Jade’s blood. It’s so dark on the spotless tile that it looks nearly black. “

I wish I could draw things, I’d love to draw this exact scene here, it’s pretty and morbid

Yeah, the relationship theme of Candy seems to be that everyone’s jumping into Kismesis plus Matesprite threesomes, that seem to be neither of what anyone actually wants in totality

There’s some realization that their Candy filled atmosphere is actually more a drug or a poison, teen jade can’t be revived, and it’s not because of what happened to her, but more because of the environment she is in now

Ah Roxy, ever the social chameleon people pleaser, not working this time though

Jade’s is easily explained already as she has the social graces of an elephant

It is kinda sad tho to see most of the human characters actually aren’t that good at being cool about troll stuff

“CALLIOPE: pUrple roses traditionally represent love at first sight, however these roses are actUally red roses that we prepared Using a blUe dye.CALLIOPE: the blUe rose is the most elUsive and mysterioUs of all flowers.CALLIOPE: the combination of red and blUe in this context is meant to evoke the dUal natUre of death, in that there is nothing more mysterioUs and impossible to comprehend than the vast void of the afterlife, bUt also there is nothing that makes Us appreciate the life and and love that we already have than the mystery of death.CALLIOPE: while death is terrifying, there is always joy to be foUnd among the sorrow. each time we witness death, we fall in love with the important people in oUr lives all over again.“

Why do I get the feeling Calliope is talking about actual rose here somehow?

Is it because she started off with “here’s the symbolism of Purple Roses”?

a Red Rose dyed Blue

Now if Cascade taught us anything Blue and Red certainly represent a mutual destruction of opposites coming together to create a third new thing in the blaze of the aftermath, but that thing was a Green Sun, not something purple, so why bring Rose into mind for all of this?

We have been seeing the effects of what happens when people in candyland awaken from their drug haze with a smattering of blood, but in that case why not make the symbolism more clear by saying a Blue Candied Rose dyed Red as if with Bloodied Meat?

is it more to mean that the correct path lies NOT in Candy being dyed Red, but in Meat being dyed Raspberry Blue?

I Mean, Candy!Rose certainly seems shaken here, having gotten jolted out of her drugged haze at some point, but unable to See, and she’s actually starting to be concerned about that and Meat!Rose is kind of out of commission at this point, So I guess to get things back on track, Candy!Rose would have to go back to the Meat somehow, or might be the influence needed to snap Meat Rose out of her daze

Though I don’t like how this is taking place in the context of a funeral, specifically bringing to mind how Dirk did the same thing using the vessel of Death, I hope Candy Rose doesn’t try to just, off herself

with Dirk taking control of Rose’s ultimate self in Meat, Candy!Rose might be the only true Rose left to take heroic action

Aww, Callie is still head over heels for Roxy, I’m really surprised with this theme of threesomes that nothing ever came of a John x Roxy x Callie, but then again all the threesomes so far have been painted Black and Red, and unless John or Roxy was to form a Kismesis with Callie, I don’t see it happening at all

OH SHIT SPEAKING OF RED AND BLUE

Damn, Sollux and Aradia are here

“KARKAT: MAYBE FUCKING NEPETA IS ABOUT TO POUNCE FROM BEHIND THAT GROTESQUE STATUE OF THE HUMAN SUFFERER T-POSING OVER THERE.”

Karkat don’t tease me about Nepeta but also again WHY is actual Jesus here.

Is Roxy a christian in this timeline? Was she legit just praying to actual Human Jesus? That’s so, weird, especially for Roxy to do, what the fuck in Roxy’s upbringing on an apocalypse earth would make her want to worship Jesus?

Oh wait, that’s obviously what she thinks that every other human sincerely does, since she only had human media to go off of, and like, technically no human has ever said they DONT worship christian gods to her.

“GAMZEE: wHeN tHe DoOr Of ThAt FrIdGe pOpPeD oPeN iT wAs LikE i Be AlL sEeIn ThE lIgHt AnD sHiT.

SOLLUX: well yeah

SOLLUX: that’s what happens when s0me0ne 0pens a d00r t0 a t0tally dark encl0sure.“

Gamzee has had a weirdly meta understanding of what’s going on so far, for some reason, I can’t fathom what could be the Lighty influence that he’s gotten

unless...

Dirk really IS starting to subsume Ultimate Rose, and that’s bleeding over to every Ultimate self connected to Dirk

the more Gamzee knows meta shit and says oddly correct things, the more we know Dirk is “winning” over Rose

Oh, that’s why Gamzee is really here isn’t he? I mean, storywise? He’s a Dirk thermometer/gauge/thing, he’s our way of measuring how far Dirk’s influences are going in Meat

“ARADIA: its so nice that you believe all that gamzee

ARADIA: i think i can honestly say

ARADIA: im reasonably happy for you?“

lol

“blue smoke”

You don’t really tend to describe Smoke as being Blue right? At least, I don’t think that’s usual

But if we’re straight up associating Candy with Blue  to complement Meat with Red now, it’s just making the whole Sugar = Breath thing that much stronger

*EDIT* DUH OF COURSE OF CANDY’S COLOR IS BLUE

BLUE GUSHERS. OBVIOUSLY. *end edit*

and I mean, what is Breath but a weird bluey smoke?

Roxy just wants to be happy with all her friends, that’s all

It is a good shake at trying to explain the nature of infinite possibility, that in reality, there isn’t really more weight put into one possibility over others, that’s how it works in real life anyway

unfortunately a storyline of canon is going to favor some version of events over others, and people make choices because they have preferences for that choice over other choices, something that seems kind of lost on Candy!Roxy who seems to just be okay with going along with anything because everything has an equal chance for having happytimes in this place

Roxy may be starting to lose her sense of self as well, and with her knowledge on things and how’s she’s been described as immutable so far, I wouldn’t be surprised at her having easily and subtly slipped into Ultimate Self hood herself and just being really okay with the idea that there is no one true Roxy, that she is just one piece of many, and not like, needing to delve into that further, not needing to connect with all her alternate selves, happy just being singular but at the same time completely malleable

Oh! Baby time.

Oh fuck, Al!Calliope in Jade time.

Why is Callie so afraid of Alt!Callie? That didn’t come across in their meetings in Homestuck as much, so why is that different here?

Is it because of Jade’s earlier comment of “there can only be one instance of a person here” and Callie doesn’t think she can win against Alltie?

Also, all these instances of Alltie appearing in Jade’s body is making me worried Alltie is doing something to both of their Ultimate Selves, like she’s subsuming Jade somehow like Dirk is subsuming Rose

I mean, they are fighting one another, so if Dirk’s doing something she has to keep pace right? In her mind, it’s probably totally justified

this is getting long enough for this post though, off we go again but I’m still reading

[gal-liveblogs]

So we start off Homestuck 2 with a picture of space. Got some green space clouds. So far nothing I would not expect. Though I see there also appears to be a spaceship of some kind, zooming through all this space. Would this be Dirk’s ship?

. . . Yep. That’s defiantly Dirk’s ship. I’m sure Theseus has some really deep, literary meaning, but the reference flies right over my head. As does most of Dirk’s references. He’s too smart for me.

I find it funny that Jake continues the tradition of emblazoning his face on his things. We saw his alt-self of Grandpa Harley doing at all the time. Dirk, of course, has to scribble out the face of his ex.

Dirk. Dirk, are you wearing a villain cape right now? Is that what you’re doing in this moment? Dirk, please.

He is totally wearing a villain cape, complete with tattered edges. He is also wearing a Heart gi, because Dirk is nothing if not anime.

Jesus Christ, I already see the paragraphs of orange under this. You’re gonna make me read all this, aren’t you. Dirk?

Dirk proves to be as verbose as ever.

So did Dirk really write out all his narration on physical pieces of paper and scatter them over his desk? Did he do that just to be Extra, or is that something he has to do as an Author now? Do they only count in the narrative text if they are actual text and not just his own thoughts?

Whatever the case may be, Rose interrupts his soliloquy.

I have it on authority that decanting is sometimes necessary to ensure a wine is at its best. I like to think that the same was ultimately true of her.

Decanting of a person’s soul sounds particularly ominous, thought I can’t express the exact reason why.

ROSEBOT: I just imagined you wearing an apron over your god tier outfit and almost felt my facial fuselage buckle in such a way as to approximate a fleeting smile.

Glad to see being a robot and also assimilating all her possible selves Rose remains a sass queen.

DIRK: Alright we get it you are literally a robot.

DIRK: No need to keep pointing it out every chance you can get. I got enough of this with the Auto Responder.

ROSEBOT: I'm just playing along.

ROSEBOT: One of the fundamentals of bad science fiction is that any artificial beings must make their inorganic nature known at every juncture they can.

DIRK: Do overly precise and completely meaningless statistics that you pull out of your ass on the fly also count?

ROSEBOT: Oh absolutely.

ROSEBOT: That's one of the first things you just sort of spontaneously learn when being booted up.

ROSEBOT: For example, I've calculated that by making these remarks I have raised the base level of amusement in all my conversations by 36%.

DIRK: Well I don't personally find them very funny.

Dirk has some trauma with robots pulling out bullshit statics. Which makes it all the more fascinating he continues to build robots that can have free thought.

Jesus Christ, it wasn’t just the lighting, Dirk’s shades really are orange now. Hussie may not have known about Kamina when he designed Bro, but Dirk always wearing Kamina glasses has just become a part of his character. So much so that they are even colored like Kamina’s instead of black now. I have to wonder, had Kamina not been a character that already existed or if people hadn’t kept pointing out that Dirk/Bro wore shades similar to an anime character, would Dirk be so anime? Is being anime just a character trait that Hussie gave him because of a funny coincidence and he wanted to play up the joke, or was he always intended to be so anime?

Also is that trashcan literally an inferno?

ROSEBOT: I just thought you might like to know that we're getting pretty close to your chosen crash site.

Do they not know how to land the ship? Does the ship not have landing gear? Do they need to crash for narrative reasons and otherwise would be perfectly capable of landing normally? Is Rose just making a joke?

DIRK: Wait, crash site??

Oh, good, Dirk is as confused as I am. So that rules out narrative reasons.

ROSEBOT: A landing gear appears to have fallen just a little outside the realm of vital.

So lacking landing gear it is! God damn it, Jake.

DIRK: (God DAMN it English.)

Ha!

ROSEBOT: Don't be such a chud, Dirk.

I am afraid to ask what a chud is. Is that like a cuck? I don’t know what a cuck is either. I am also afraid to ask what a cuck is.

ROSEBOT: She's functionally mortal, remember?

Yeah, that really sucks that Karkat, Terezi, and Kanaya all lack godtier. Karkat would complain about his lack of flight abilities, but I’m surprised Terezi or Kanaya never brought up this fact. Especially Kanaya, what with her marriage to Rose. Kanaya would eventually grow old and die, leaving Rose to keep on living. Of course, Rosebot has decided to leave her loving wife behind so in this particular case that point doesn’t matter.

DIRK: You mean to say that you don't think we'd be in peril if it came to it?

DIRK: There's nothing about our situation that strikes you as falling within the bounds of precarity, as far as the rules are concerned?

ROSEBOT: Oh. You're right. I suppose I hadn't thought of that.

ROSEBOT: But I think we can remain calm in the knowledge that nothing particularly heroic is going on right now. At least, not that I'm aware of.

DIRK: ... Right.

Not sure if Dirk’s meaning flew over Rose’s head, or if she’s just choosing to ignore the possibility of Just deaths as a joke.

That doesn't mean this (*gestures to the narrative*) isn't still going to be a thing, though.

I don’t know why, but this tickles my funny bone.

All in all I think you'll find, as far as narrators go, I'm an excellent... hm. On second thought, maybe that's a bit of a problematic phrase. Yeah, yikes, that one's got a sordid history. Best we steer clear of it. We're all lucky I'm around to make those kinds of sensitivity judgements on everyone's behalf.

I’m glad you can recognize that Homestuck fans all have a fight or flight response that that memetic phrase, but I don’t appreciate you patting yourself on the back for being sensitive when you, as a narrator, could not use Roxy’s correct pronouns once they came to light.

It's time to get this story back on the rails, back to what it was always supposed to be. I know it, and you've somehow always known it too. There was something else, some other route that Homestuck was meant to take but then didn't, a way that wouldn't've spent so much time dicking around with stuff nobody cares about. Like seriously, why did we all have to sit through talking about everyone's most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words. That would never have happened in Act 1. Where did it all go wrong?

So Dirk’s grand plan is to go back to the asinine tomfoolery of Act 1? To do away with character relations and feelings and have people messing around with their sylladexes? I must say, I never would have expected this from the likes of Dirk. I thought he was all about the complex thought processes and inner turmoil.

Thank you for returning the narration to classic black, Dirk. It’s so much easier on the eyes.

Channelling my full potential as an ascended player of Heart, I expand my consciousness to commune with the boundless force of collective willpower that is the internet.

Wow, who knew Heart players could become the internet. I mean, I guess it makes sense. The internet is just a collection of people, and Heart is all about the soul. 

I was really hoping the command box he made would be an actual command box. I missed out on the Homestuck days of old where the command box was a real thing. It would have been fun to be a part of that myself, but I understand the fandom is just too big for that ever to be feasible again. That’s why it was done away with in the first place, and that was when the fandom was smaller.

The writers came up with e good command, though.

Yeah, I have a feeling Dirk is going to decide to ignore this command and stop taking suggestions. Either that, or he’s going to inform us that he is not making Homestuck, he’s making Homestuck 2.

But I should have known better. People think you can run a story like this? This must be just about the stupidest idea anyone has ever come up with. I'll just have to make up the commands myself from here on out. Seemed to work ok for the other guy.

Yep, pretty much what I expected.

Oh Jesus Christ, what even is this room?

O.K., let’s take things from the top. Looks like we got the beta kids’ entry items, as well as their Aspect flags from Prospit and Derse. Why does Dirk have these things? There also appear to be some cruxite dowels next to them, but they are any of the colors we’ve seen before.

WOAH, HOLD UP, Are those Dave’s copies of SBURB? Or are they Bro’s? Clearly Dirk has just collected a bunch of items from various points in Homestuck’s timeline like some sort of museum. For what purpose, though?

Oh my god, there’s a Tab watering can. I assume it was alchemized, since Dirk mentioned earlier using alchemy to make his rad new shades. I wonder why Dirk has that Skaianet poster on his wall. I would have thought he’d want nothing to do with anything Jake had his fingers in. Then again, there also appears to be a kotatsu with Jake’s bedspread in the middle of the room.

I can’t tell what the green thing is next to the mutated kitten. Or what that other green thing next to the robot horse is either.

OH FUCK ME THERE’S A ROBOT CAL IN THE PROCESS OF BEING MADE. DIRK, NO. WHY. YOU HAVE THE NARRATIVE CONTROL NOW, YOU SHOULD KNOW CAL IN ANY FORM IS BAD NEWS.

Is that... Is that an anime body pillow there at the bottom?

I also keep my FLORA OF THE SUCCULENT PERSUASION in here, so's I can keep an eye on them.

Dirk grows succulents... That is not a character trait I expected of him.

> Continue

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p10 reaction

So, with little fanfare, we've passed the point in time that is the Masterpiece.

I wonder if John's next interaction with the outside world will be granting himself retcon powers, or whether from his perspective the next thing is being summoned by Vriska. That being said, I wonder how Vriska will react to seeing these people emerge from the house artefact, you'd think she'd be very surprised. Will John & co. have felt it to be hours from their perspective, being trapped? Or longer? Can't have been years, or their relative age difference wouldn't matter any more.

Also, is Davepetasprite^2 nearby for their confrontation with LE? If not, this definitely won't be the final showoff! But if she is, well... I wonder how things turn out, this almost can't already be it for Lord English. Then again, if the perspective now switches back to Earth C for a long time, by the time we switch back the plot could be culminating.

I also wonder if there will be any interaction with the people outside the Black Hole's event horizon (I know, contradiction in termini there). Like, post-retcon Aradia, who'd been watching the mayhem unfold.

---

"Jane Crocker sweeps into her office" Well then. That answers that. Mary Poppins-style entry for them, then? :P Courtyard Droll isn't around to be wielding an umbrella, fortunately.

I'm interested to get a good look into her mind, given all we've heard said about the state of Earth C, and Dave's mistrust in her. Also wondering how her relationship with her Dad has evolved over the years. Wouldn't at all be surprised if he was still leaving supportive notes as well as confectionary in her office.

Blaperile has a good point, Dirk might be coming around, being her campaign manager. Their relationship was always interesting, due to the similarities to as well as the differences with John & Dave's.

"The sun cuts through her venetian blinds, painting butter-yellow strips of light all the way from one end of her impeccably tailored office to the other." In other words, exactly the state in which a private investigator likes their office to brood. :P Stations may change but demeanors don't do as quickly.

"It’s a lovely day, like most days, so not terribly remarkable except for the horrid news that she has just received at her customary morning press conference." There's competition afoot and its name is Vantas.

"[Jane] brushes her hands over her hips to smooth the wrinkles out of her powder-blue pencil skirt. Then she hems, haws, puffs out her cheeks, and takes a very deep breath before snatching a pillow off the nearest couch so that she can scream into it." So majestic. And such a Jane thing to do, too (even though Rose started the whole screaming into pillows for Homestuck), remember the time she was being 'supportive' when Jake was contemplating Dirk's affections? Both times, really.

"There are, surely, a multitude of ways for a person to find out that an acquaintance is running against you in a presidential election. From a carapacian reporter, in front of twenty-six other members of the interspecies press, was not the method Jane would have personally chosen." Welp. Well, yeah, it stood to reason Dave wasn't going to say anything, given his misgivings about her. 27 reporters, huh. Kinda wondering about how representative they were to the entirety of the populace. All the bigwig stations must've been represented, of course, but then it would seem humanity has an overly large representation in those already.

"She cannot believe that Karkat would do this to her. This is no longer a political fiat (which the election would surely have been had she run uncontested by any other civilization-founding celebrities) but rather a battle between “friends.” What did Vantas think he was doing?" Well, uh, it seems that he's giving you fair competition where you seemed to be of the idea there wouldn't be any. That's not really a good starting point for a politician, Jane. Seems like her business-minded attitude is indeed influencing her campaign strategy.

"This could not have possibly been Karkat’s idea." Yeah, I'd thought she'd be on to it quickly.

"He is not cut out for politics, neither intellectually nor in the very important matter of social constitution. Certainly not when it comes to economic policy. In fact, Jane is pretty sure that Karkat Vantas would probably literally burst into flame if too many people happened to look at him at the same time, like a vampire walking out into the sun." I was going to say that's unfair of her, but then she's never known Karkat when he's aflame with purpose, only the Karkat that's been hurt too much and suffered too many losses to remain motivated. Also, of course she'd "think of the economy" first. :P That's hilarious given Dave's concerns.

"Wait. Jane lowers the pillow from her face and stares at her brass-and-glass art deco ceiling. Was that vampire thing xenophobic against Kanaya?" Well, at least we know that IF Jane's really xenophobic, as Dave fears, she's trying to become aware of when she is and doing something about it. Of course, trying and succeeding are two different things - just as Karkat.

As for it being hurtful, well... Good thing she never met Game Over Kanaya, she might have had some objections to death-by-light-from-above.

"Dave was certainly no Dirk Strider, no Rose Lalonde, no Roxy, but he had that same scheming gene, buried deep down beneath his transparent onion layers of posturing and, frankly, rather outdated humor. An instinct to plan." Well, I wouldn't have said as much - if it was genetically determined there's no reason Dave couldn't have just not inherited those genes. But then, I'm all here to see Dave's take on scheming, sure. He's had a great example in John planting ideas about apple juice in his head. The bar is already set.

"And despite being inarguably the dimmest of his family’s impressive ecto-biological stock...

Oh, dear. Stock. That’s likely a problematic word, isn’t it?" Yep, seems like Jane really is trying. Can't believe I'm saying this, but if Kankri were here, he might have some good advice for her. A lot of bad, too, but still.

"Despite being the least mentally gifted member of his family" Eesh, okay, but she's still got a lot of prejudices to work out.

"Dave has always had an awful lot of opinions on the economy. In fact, Jane cannot remember a single conversation she’s ever had with him that wasn’t about the economy. She thinks back to one time at John’s eighteenth birthday when Dave engaged her in a rigorous and rather one-sided debate about deregulation and the failure of “neoliberal austerity measures” until Karkat had to come over and put his hands over his roommate’s mouth to make him stop talking." Well, I guess he's really, REALLY concerned. Can't blame the guy, though, but poor Jane, Rose knows what that's like, being on the other side of that trailing, lumbering monologuing. At least Rose's monologue's don't meander. :P

"carapacians were widely known to be swayed by underdog populism." That's because their civilisation was founded by WV, isn't it?

"And the consorts? Who had even given them the right to vote in the first place? In any other year..." Oh, so... Does that mean the consorts only got their right to vote so recently, after 5000 years. That's... Well, that might just be indicative that until recently, their political activism was nothing to write home about.

Jane starts to chew a pencil and it's just so FITTING for her, she's so fidgety, it's probably how Jade ended up being so giddy.

"In any other year, this wouldn’t be a problem. She’d be happy to accept a graceful, temporary defeat and let Karkat play president for a couple of years. After all, unlike her, he was not immortal." ... Eesh, so, yeah, that confirms that Karkat's godhood isn't expected to be eternal, unlike the humans. They could be wrong about it.

But what is so special about the current year, is the political situation on Earth C THAT volatile, or is Jane aware of things about to unfold on a cosmic scale - or even pan-cosmic, if she knows about the events back in canon with the Black Hole 'n all.

"But Earth C’s paper-thin idyllic history was very close to a boiling point—its very first boiling point, in fact, which will have everything to do with the problematic nature of troll reproduction." Ahhhh, right. So that's why she's aiming for the reigns. Didn't think her 'political takeover' had so moral reasons. ... Or, well, at least humanitarian.

"The first generation of natural-born trolls obviously cannot be entrusted to a troll." ...

Well that's just cruel. I know she'll have reasons given troll history on Alternia and B2 Earth alike, but it's their purpose as gods to change the world for the better, together.

Guess now we get to see the parts of her thinking that gave Dave reason to brand her a fascist, semi-serious or not.

"The citizens of Earth C were able to rest easy knowing that the government held careful rein over the... well, over matters of equity. No one could possibly trust something so important to a troll, knowing what everyone knew about their violent history." So it's the hemospectrum she fears would be reinstated. She's equating their biology with their ideology then, thinking natural-born trolls are fundamentally more oppressive as to those birthed through scientific means. Oooh boy. That's a whole steaming pot of problematic thinking.

"Jane presses her eyes shut and runs her fingers along the fine-grain patterns in her mahogany-paneled desk. She is about to think something that she has promised herself never to think again. In fact, she is about to say it—this horrible, ghoulish, girlish thought that used to rule her world and make her so terribly weak. The shameful thought is expressed out loud in the form of a defeated sigh." ... Is it... "I wish Dad was here?" Even if he's still alive, she might have tried to become her own woman, cutting more ties than is healthy.

"JANE: I need Jake." Pfffff, okay, yeah, that I understand. She needs his support to swing the voters. Guess Jane is also trying very hard to be "over him", just like Jake with Dirk. I can see how well that is going for her. Now I wonder how the Nannasprites are doing.

"She spins around and, still sitting on her desk, presses a familiar entry on her phone’s contact list." Either it's Jake and it's familiar to her because she still looks at it ten times every day, or Dirk's because they get along so well and are working together on her campaign.

"JAKE: Ahoy ahoy!" ... Yeah, this is going to be so cumbersome for Jane, I can just feel it, her old feelings now causing quite the opposite response towards everything that makes Jake who he is.

"the ol’ horse tranquilizer trick." Just... just how many times has Dirk pulled this on him already? And how many more times is Jake willing to go through with their show?

"JAKE: Which i suppose i should have seen coming, as dirk has ended all of our matches in this fashion for the past week." ... Jake. Jake, honey, you need a coach. A non-robotic one. Or settle for a non-shitty spirit guide. I know that narrows it down to basically zero, as far as sprites are concerned, but still.

"JANE: Oh dear. That sounds absolutely terrible, Jake. Is there anything I can do to help?" I wouldn't like it if Jane keeps pretending to care for Jake if there wasn't any truth left to the gesture.

"JAKE: Help? Gadzooks woman! I hardly think myself in need of help. JAKE: Its a jolly good adventure working with someone so predictably unpredictable as our good friend dirk!" Then again, it would be hard not to get exasperated by all of this... airheadedness, well meaning as it is.

"You would think that Jake enjoyed the sadomasochistic nature of his and Dirk’s personal and professional relationships. Judging from the last conversation about election strategy with Dirk, he seems to be perfectly aware of this feature of Jake’s personality. You can’t be too nice when courting his endorsement, Dirk would say. He doesn’t respond to nice." So Dirk is still being rather methodical in his interactions with Jake. :/ But I mean, Jake does respond better to challenges, at least initially. He appears not be scared off/by Dirk though, I wonder how he's worked through his feelings about their breakup?

"something big and hollow and metal connecting with Jake’s head. When Jake comes back to the phone, he’s yelling into it." Jake's life is just like a cartoon on even the best of days, isn't it?

"I appreciate very much that you have called me out of the blue to say such nice things to me with no ulterior motive!

From anyone else, this would have been a portentous statement. However, Jane knows that Jake English could not have possibly meant this with anything but the utmost sincerity." Well, I wouldn't mind it for Jake to have developed a level of self-awareness, but yeah... That's unlikely by now, isn't it?

"JAKE: Because i must note that although i try to stay sporting about what comes at me, i cant say that i am chuffed about how much of my correspondence lately has to do with the marketing of my image. JAKE: Its beginning to feel like all people want from me is to stick my derriere on a signpost for their own profit." ... Well, okay, he's become self-aware to the extent he realizes people idolize him and pine for his affections. But that's just because he was so very much affected by that during the session. It'll take a lot longer for him to pick up on more subtle and rarer things, though.

"It must be so difficult. For you more than the rest of us, due to your, let’s say... JANE: Natural gifts? JAKE: Huh?" Well, guess he doesn't realize his good looks yet, at least.

"JANE: But you know that I have always wanted what’s best for you, right? JANE: And I am ready to give that to you. JAKE: To give me what? JANE: The best, Jake. The very best." That could be very ominous, "what's best for you". But what would it be if it were sincere? A way to follow in his Grandma's footsteps, while ensuring he doesn't blunder and blow up anyting unintentionally?"

Jake is quiet a moment, and Jane can hear the rusty gears turning in his head." Insert "*thinking*" smiley here.

"JANE: You should stop by to see me this evening! JAKE: Do you mean my evening or yours? Were in different time zones right now and i dare say that the sun just went down here so if you wanted to have a soiree on my time youve missed your chance." It'd be a fair question, assuming Jane could've been in his neighbourhood. I'm sure their meetup won't go quite as nefarious as pretending they're dating to the press, right? ... Right, Jane?"

Jane feels her fake smile flexing so hard that it was beginning to hurt. Oh yes, she loved this man in basically every category that you could possibly love a person, but sometimes talking to him is like trying to build a house of cards while riding a mechanical bull." Ah, so they were facetiming? :P Note the past tense in 'loved'. :/ Well, old flames do still elicit feelings of friendship, a lot of times.

"JANE: Mine, of course! I’ll have the best year of your favorite crocodile-made scotch flown in from the Consort Kingdom and we’ll have a little catch-up.

Jake actually hates scotch, and only drinks it for appearance’s sake. But for this—for this unbelievably pivotal moment in the history of the planet that they created with their bare hands—Jane is willing to spend a few thousand boonbucks to watch her old friend pretend to sip at the same glass for a couple of hours while prattling on." So: A) Crocodiles might be living in Scotland, if the scotch authentic. Highlander Crocs in kilts and playing bagpipes. Glorious. B) Boonbucks are the currency running the economy, which explains how they can all be so rich. Of course, their influx of cash could've disrupted the economy, but if it had Dave's would've already complained about it. C) Guess there's never been something as disruptive to happen to Earth C as the Mother Grub, then. Not even natural disasters. D) Plan Fake Date is apparently, actually going to happen.

"Time to work your magic, Crocker." Magic being ruthless business-minded political scheming, I hope. Since she's serving Jake drinks he doesn't like, it'll all be for pretense, down to the drinks too. But I wouldn't like to be in Jake's shoes if she starts to fake-fancying him.

[darkultimatefrisbeecamp]

Looking For Some Silverlinings: Chapter Two

The following is part of the dark!frisbeecamp au. To learn more, visit @darkultimatefrisbeecamp. There you can find ghoulish headcannons, spooky stories, and more. Feel free to comment or submit content. Enjoy.

Warning: The following story, as well as the rest of the dark!frisbeecamp au content includes graphic content, and viewer discretion is advised.

“Hey, could you pass the blue beads?” Gus asked. Jonah handed him the box, and returned to sitting in utter disbelief from the past 24 hours. Right now he was making a friendship bracelet. Last night he was being told that he was now a part of a cult. At some point a person has to wonder why their life ended up the way it did, and nothing will raise that question more than being forced into a satanic cult where the first thing they have you do is make friendship bracelets. Jonah shook his head, and continued making his bracelet, looking down at the bracelet Andi made him. Though the pain of leaving her seemed trivial now that he was faced with an even greater tragedy: the unknown fate of his parents. Curtis nor any of the other counselors mentioned what exactly happened to them, and every possibility scared Jonah to his very core. They could’ve been tortured or killed, already a frightening possibility, or they could’ve known what they were doing to Jonah. Even then, Jonah couldn’t be concerned about that because he needed to think of a way out. The biggest problem was going strategy, as any one of the campers around him could be working for the cult. The only person he knew for sure wasn’t with the cult was Gus, and this understandably left Jonah feeling a little hopeless. 

“Jonah, you ok?” Gus asked as he finished his bracelet. 

“Are you freaking kidding me right now Gus? What part of this is ok?” Jonah snapped. Gus looked down at his bracelet, and passed it to Jonah. 

“I just wanted to let you know I made you a bracelet.” 

Jonah looked down at the bracelet; it had blue and green beads and Jonah’s name in the middle. Jonah sighted. Gus wasn’t the enemy, just a kid in the same horrifying situation as him. 

“Thanks Gus. Sorry for snapping at you.” 

“It’s fine. You know, you just got to try and stay positive.” 

“How are you not freaked out by all of this?”

“Eh, I guess I always figured I’d end up with a cult. I’ve always been more of a follower than a leader if you what I’m saying.” 

Jonah just sort of sat there and stared at Gus, and before he could respond, one of the counselors came into the mess hall. Her name was Nancy, a tall blonde who seemed to be one of Curtis’s right-hand men. She had the same dead-eye stare that Dave had, but unlike Dave she didn’t even attempt to smile. She was just stone-faced, and anytime she looked at someone it looked like she was staring into their soul. Hell, Jonah thought, with everything that’s going on she might actually be able to do that. She blew her whistle. 

“Alright children that’s enough bracelet making. Clean up your stuff and head to the field. It’s time to start practice.” 

Practice. Jonah had been dreading it ever since orientation. Anything could happen. They could be sacrificed, or someone could be revealed to be the Antichrist. It could be anyone, Jonah thought, oh god what if it’s Gus? Jonah looked over at Gus cleaning up the beads, and shook his head. It was definitely not Gus. But Gus might know more than he’s letting on. Jonah couldn’t trust anyone, as at any moment they could be revealed as the Antichrist. Just make it through practice, Jonah thought, just try and survive. 

The kids followed Nancy out onto the field, and Jonah frantically gazed around trying to find anything odd. For the most part it looked like an ordinary field; bright, trimmed grass, some benches on the side lines, nothing unusual. Just as Jonah was about to let himself relax, he saw a familiar face walk across the field. Natalie. Carrying a cooler, wearing the camp’s shirt. Her eyes met Jonah’s and she walked over to him. 

“Jonah, what a nice surprise!” she said, “I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

“Um, are you serious?” he asked, backing away a little bit. 

“Of course I am! Ensuring our campers are having a fun time is almost as important as finding the Antichrist!” she exclaimed, with the same unnerving smile Dave had. Nancy called her over. 

“Oh I gotta go. Have fun at practice Jonah, I’m sure you’ll do great!” She ran over to Nancy and Nancy blew her whistle. 

“Listen up campers. Today we will be seeing you raw ability in destroying your opponents. Joining me will be our counselor in training, Natalie.” Natalie gave a big smile and waved to the campers. Gus waved back before seeing Jonah’s bewildered look and slowly putting his hand down. 

“First, we’ll run some drills, and by the end we’ll divide you up into teams. The rest of the week we’ll be determining which campers are best fit to be the team captains. Any questions?”

Jonah looked around at the mix of horrified looks, and Gus slowly raised his hand. 

“Yes?” Nancy said. 

“Will snacks be provided?”

“Of course snacks will be provided, what kind of institution do you think we’re running here? That’s enough talk, let’s get started.” 

The campers head out to the field when Nancy blew her whistle again. 

“Wait, one more thing,” she yelled out, “while only one of you is what we’re looking for, the rest of you still have a purpose to serve. However, any campers that are viewed as weak and therefore of no use to this institution will be disposed of. Permanently. So, I would try my best out there.”

Jonah could sense the panic from the rest of the campers, Gus looking like he was about to cry. It was in that moment that Jonah knew that there was no hope of escape, no way out. He was truly gone. He looked over at Natalie, still smiling. She had been home, she had left this place. But she must have been here before if she was a counselor in training. Jonah had to push it all out of his head because he needed to do his best. He couldn’t screw up like he did last time, cause not playing ultimate was a matter of life and death. 

They spent about four hours on drills, taking water breaks intermittently throughout the afternoon. After what seemed like an eternity, Nancy blew her whistle once again and called the group over. 

“That will be all for today. Before you head to the showers, we will be giving team assignments. There will be two teams, team A and team B. There are no reassignments, no trades, what is given will be final. Now, will the following campers please step forward.’ 

Nancy rattled off some names, one of which being Gus, but not Jonah. Gus looked noticeably disappointed but didn’t object, seeming to despite his past shortcomings understand that complaints were a quick way to be disposed of. 

“The rest of you will be in team B. That will be all. Head to the showers and meet back in the mess hall for dinner. Curtis will be giving a special presentation,” she said, and for a second it almost seemed that a twinge of a smile appeared on her stone face. Jonah began to head to the showers when Natalie ran up to him. 

“Wait, Jonah you left your bracelet.”

“But I have all my - “ he looked down to see a small note tied to the beaded bracelet. He took it and Natalie ran off. He took out the small piece of paper and opened up. Meet me outside cabin 4 at 2:00 am tonight. Come alone. Jonah looked down at the note, unsure as to what to make of it. For all he knew it could be a trap, but right now it could be the chance at escape. He put the note in his pocket, and looked back at the bracelet. It had glossy rose-colored beads with two eye ball beads and the word “Mirror” spelled on it. He put it on and met up with the rest of the campers. 

At the mess hall, the campers dined on a rather odd soup. It was a brown broth with what appeared to be vegetables, but when Jonah went to take a bit, he realized that all the vegetables were plastic. Confusion quickly came over the campers, and before anyone could say anything, Curtis walked onto the stage. 

“Good evening children. As I’m sure you’ve all realized, the vegetables in your soup are not real. Throughout your time here, we won’t just be searching for the dark lord’s offspring, we’ll be teaching valuable life lessons. The first lesson here tonight will be that of altruism. We don’t want a group of Satan’s minions who consume will little regard for one another. No, what we want is a group of Satan worshippers who are willing to give up everything in service of our dark lord. To learn more, we will be watching the following education video.” 

The projector screen lowered and a video in a similar format to that of the orientation video began to play. It was as if someone had taken the script of a low budget after school special, gotten even worse actors, and added occult overtones to it all. Jonah couldn’t entirely concentrate as he was focused on the note, and kept trying to catch a look at Natalie. She was in the front of the mess hall watching the video intently, not seeming to notice his stares. Nancy was next to her, eyes glued to the screen, mouthing along to all the words of the video. The whole thing seemed to drag on forever until the screen finally faded to black, and Curtis walked back on stage. 

“Now I hope you kids learned a little something about altruism that can help you in serving the dark lord. Go on and get some sleep, because tomorrow the journey really begins.” He continued to smile as the campers filed out of the mess hall, gazing proudly at the work he had done that night. 

In the cabin, Jonah laid restless, looking at the clock on the night stand every few minutes. Around midnight he decided to get dressed and kept pacing around the room, careful not to wake up his bunk mates. Around 1:45, Jonah quietly slipped out of the cabin and walked over to cabin 4. It wasn’t too hard to find with lanterns lighting the path to each cabin. He found Natalie standing behind the cabin, gazing down at her watch. She looked up at him. 

“Good you’re early,” she said, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.

“What do you want Natalie?” Jonah asked coldly, trying not to show just how terrified he was. 

“Well for one for to calm down cause right now you look like you’re about to shit your pants.” 

It seemed Jonah could not hide his horror. 

“Well, in all fairness Natalie you asked me to meet you in the middle of the night when we are in the middle of a satanic frisbee camp!” he exclaimed. 

“Shh! You wanna get us killed? Listen, I told you to come because we need each other.”

“For what?”

“What else? To get the fuck out of this camp.” 

[spartanguard]

until the end of the line

there’s still a bit of Friday left for a Captain Charming fic (with some Snowing and CS). waaaaay future fic; warning: major character deaths...ish. (you’ll see). thank you to the Abed to my Troy @shipsxahoy for beta’ing! 

AO3 | FF.net | ~5.5k words.

There was still something satisfying about relaxing on the porch after a full day of work, even after all these years. Killian basked in the glow of the setting sun, a pleasant ache in his aged muscles as he settled into the weatherworn wooden chair he’d claimed as his own some fifty years back.

(How odd that such a timespan would be considered the majority of most people’s lives and was only a fraction of his—yet was, by far, the best and richest, putting all his previous decades to shame.)

He never thought he’d have such a full life to reflect on. As he sat overlooking the backyard of their home, where a sheepdog was currently chasing after butterflies, he got so lost in the memories of children (and later, grandchildren) playing there that he didn't notice when someone took a seat next to him; not until the thunk of a beer bottle on the arm of the chair pulled him out of the past.

“What were you thinking about, Hook?” David asked, sinking his old bones onto an equally weathered chair and taking a sip from his own bottle.

“All the things this yard has seen. Remember when my cunning daugthers tried to throw a kegger back here?”

“And instead of busting them, you joined right in, and called everyone over,” Dave finished with a chuckle, deepening the already thick lines around his eyes. “I think we embarrassed them into never trying that again.”

“Whatever works, right?”

“I'll drink to that.” He held his bottle to Killian, who clinked his own against it, and they both settled back to reminisce, as they did most evenings while watching the sun’s descent.

He hadn't noticed it the first time around, but the red sky made for an exceptionally beautiful sunset in the Underworld.

They sat in companionable silence, watching Wilby play in the yard, as they had for countless nights over the past few years. Time was a bit fuzzy—they liked to blame it on old age, but both knew it was just part of “life” down here. By his estimate, Killian had been in the Underworld for about three years; David, five. Actually, his father-in-law was the first to greet him upon arrival, waiting in the marina once he’d docked the Jolly Roger. He was surprised to see David at all, but when he realized that they were both in the Underworld rather than moving on, he figured they were there for the same reason.

For Killian, at least, he knew he had once promised to not let Emma be his unfinished business; but he later promised to always, always be at her side, for all eternity. He'd obviously broken the first part and he'd be damned—literally—if he wasn't there to escort her into the second.

He could still feel her, too, just like the first time here. Some days, it was stronger than others—maybe because one was missing the other more than the usual constant amount—but he always seemed to be aware of her, despite the distance, and he knew it was the same for Dave.

And so, the two silver-haired mates filled the ensuing years waiting for their True Loves in a variety of ways. Despite being the land of the dead, the Nolan farm was still flourishing and there was always something to do. Today had been repairing the barn door; last week, it had been mending fences; and there was always the day-to-day work of milking the cows, collecting eggs, herding the sheep with Wilby’s help, and shearing the wool periodically—the products of all going to Granny, who appreciated and used them in various ways.

“So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Killian asked as the stars began to show overhead. (At least those were no different from the land of the living; there was some comfort in knowing that his loved ones were looking at the same lights in the sky.)

“There’s probably some painting to do, and Arthur had asked if we could take a look at the garden outside his office, but neither are urgent. I say we take a day off to sail; you?”

“Sounds perfect to me.”

It was so unlike the Underworld he’d found himself in all those years ago. No longer was it a land of hopelessness and depression, but a peaceful place to resolve any unfinished business before moving on. Arthur wasn’t the power-mad king this world had known previously, or even the one he’d been when they met him in Camelot—he’d truly fixed this broken kingdom, and did all he could to see souls on their way.

Consequently, the Underworld was rather quiet. In the time they’d been down there, they’d seen many friends arrive, reunited with the ones who were already there, and seen nearly all to the afterlife. It left them free to do whatever they wished, and it wasn’t an entirely lonely existence, but it was almost too relaxing sometimes.

He wasn’t unhappy, but he was anxious for the next thing; he’d never been good at staying in one place long without some form of adventure. But he was ultimately a patient man, and willing to wait as long as it took for Emma to join him.

Beers finished and the moon out, David slowly rose from his chair and called for Wilby to come. He offered a hand to Killian and pulled him up, too; Killian hadn’t realized how sore he was until just now.

“Breakfast at Granny’s?” David didn’t really need to ask; it was how they started nearly every day.

“Of course, mate.”

They hugged each other tight, and then David headed off into the night towards home, Wilby at his side, while Killian went about his nightly routine. He went in the house, took off his shoes by the front door, hung his leather jacket on the same hook he always had, and made sure the front porch light was turned on (just in case). Then he headed upstairs to the master suite, carefully placed his brace on the bedside table, and washed the day’s dust away in the shower.

Like every night, he took stock of his reflection as he toweled dry. He was leaner than he had been as a young man, his ribs and cheekbones standing out more than he would like; the illness that finally claimed him did a number on his body, but he at least wasn’t in any pain down here. He imagined the arrogant pirate he had once been would have some nasty, vain words for the old man in the mirror, but Killian wouldn’t trade a single one of the many lines on his face or gray hairs on his head for the beautiful life he’d lived with Emma and their children.

All the old scars were still there, but faded with time: the lash marks on his back from a life in servitude; the jagged line from Excalibur that sent him here the first time; even the gnarled mess of his blunted wrist had smoothed over the years. He knew that was how it was supposed to be—time heals all wounds and all that—but he always liked to say that Emma's love had mended him, and in countless ways, it had.

A yawn overcame him, and suddenly he felt far more tired than he had a moment ago. (It truly was odd how his immortal soul fell victim to such mortal complaints.) Without further dawdling, he donned a shirt and sleep pants and collapsed into the too-large bed. Out of habit, he stuck to one side; he could never bring himself to sprawl across it and fill the empty half, knowing it belonged to someone else. But again, he was happy to wait as long as possible for her.

Across town, in an equally oversized bed, he knew David was doing the same. He was eternally grateful to have a friend down here who was in a similar position, and part of his unbeating heart went out to his father-in-law, knowing how he was alone the first couple years. Some nights, when the loneliness crept in, one of them would spend the night at the other’s house, just to make the echoing halls not so hollow. Dave’s pancakes the following morning would usually help chase away any lingering melancholy.

It wasn’t an altogether terrible existence; just an incomplete one. So, like every night, when Killian drifted off, he dreamed that Emma was in his arms.

“Morning, Captain; looking as old as ever.”

“Why, Lady Lucas, I've no clue what you're talking about. I'm hardly a day over 250.”

Killian and Granny’s banter had picked up right where it left off when she passed some 35 years ago and was still a part of their daily routine, almost as if the price of coffee and eggs was a witty retort.

He slid into his usual booth across from David, who was already working on a mug, and Granny followed shortly with one for Killian and their usual breakfast orders. Like every day, his was piled just a little too high.

“Love, you know I can't eat that much,” he teased.

“You're too skinny, Jones. Eat up.” Ever since he arrived, she’d tried to make up for what the cancer had done and put some more meat back on his bones; it hadn't worked and likely never would, but he appreciated her efforts nonetheless.

He and Dave just chuckled and dug in as she walked away, muttering under her breath. They did manage to catch her saying something about Ruby; it was common, though unspoken, knowledge that her granddaughter was her unfinished business. Not for a necessarily bad reason—she just worried too much, and wouldn't be at rest until Ruby was, at rest too. So she took out that excess concern on the restless souls who found their way to this realm in the meantime.

Restless was the word of the day, it seemed. Ever since he woke that morning, Killian had felt on edge, filled with the same kind of nervous energy that preceded a battle. And judging by the furrow in Dave’s brow, he was in a similar state.

“You feel that, too, mate?” he inquired between bites of bacon.

“Like something's about to happen, but you're not sure if it's good or bad?” David questioned in reply; Killian nodded. “Yeah, all day, and it just keeps getting worse.”

“What do you think it means?” There hadn't been any major problems down here in years—not since Hades left. “Perhaps we should check in with Arthur?”

“Yeah, let's do that before…” The tinkle of the bell on the door interrupted David, and he trailed off as he stared at whoever had just entered the diner. Despite all the years of knowing him and being able to read him nearly as well as Killian could his daughter, his expression was unreadable: somewhere between shock, horror, and elation. Killian could only think of one person who could elicit such a reaction, and turned in his seat to see if the newcomer was who he suspected.

It was: with a watery grin on her face, there stood Snow, a bit older than he last saw her, with hair the color of her name, but just as regal as ever.

No words needed to be spoken between the reunited True Loves. David simply stood, walked over to her in as few steps as possible, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

Other diners applauded, and he was pretty sure Granny wiped a tear from her eye. Killian too was elated to see the reunion, both for David and to have part of his family back, but deep down, he knew it would be bittersweet: they were likely to move on soon, and he would still be here. He knew that line of thinking was selfish, but it came unbidden, likely due to the unease that hadn’t abated at Snow’s arrival.

He stood from the booth as she reunited with Granny, joking that she was finally older than the old wolf, before letting David lead her back to the table.

“Snow,” he greeted warmly.

“Oh, Killian,” she answered in a motherly tone, pulling him into her always-warm embrace. “Has David been taking care of you?”

“Of course he has, milady,” he confirmed. “Though I think we both know he needs to be looked after much more than I do,” he added, winking at Dave, who chuckled.

“Yeah, yeah, enough of that,” Dave attempted to rebuff, but the crinkled laugh lines around his eyes said otherwise.

They all settled back into the booth to catch up, and Snow promptly stole a piece of bacon off David’s plate. Killian smiled sadly at the memory of Emma always doing the same to him; suddenly, he didn't quite have the appetite for his meal anymore.

But he was hungry for information about his family, as was David. “So how is everyone?” Dave asked right away, barely letting her finish chewing.

“Well, I was kind of...out of it the last few months,” she started, a bit sadly. Both men just nodded—they’d both been through the same, so Killian blessedly less so. “But in the last couple years, everyone was great. Lucy had a baby!” she exclaimed, turning to Killian. “His name is Killian Henry.”

Killian glanced down, blushing; he and Lucy had always been particularly close, but he was still honored to hear the name. Snow continued on about the rest of their kids and grandkids, and it truly warmed his heart to hear that everyone was doing so well. But one name was noticeably absent.

“And Emma?” he finally asked, a bit more impatiently than intended.

Snow’s face fell a bit. “Well, like I said, I’ve been a bit out of it. She was fine before I got sick, and we were living next to each other in the retirement home, but I don’t know if anything has happened since then.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He’d wanted to hear that she was still thriving, giving their grandkids a run for their money and sneaking Pop Tarts whenever she could. Age would catch up with her, too, he knew, but he didn’t want that for her.

She needed fresh air, not to be cooped up in some home. And he needed some, too—right now, if he could. Quickly, he thought of a reason to leave; he knew they wouldn’t buy it, but he’d never want to seem rude. “Ah, I suppose I shouldn’t infringe on your reunion any longer. I’ll be seeing myself off. Until later,” he farewelled, starting to slide out of the booth.

“You sure? You’ve hardly touched your food; Granny will be mad.”

“I'll have to extend to her my apologies, then.” (In the background, he heard the woman in question shout, “Damn right you will! Remember who controls the rum around here!”)

“Still want to go sailing?” David asked once Killian stood. He was a bit surprised; he assumed they'd want to spend the day alone.

But he was hardly one to say no. “Absolutely. If you both want to.”

Snow answered, “I'd like that,” with a nostalgic smile; it had been some years since they'd been able to go out as a family.

“Then I'll ready the ship. ‘Til then.”

Without looking back, he left the diner, pausing only to give Granny a thankful nod, and headed down to the docks, where the Jolly Roger was bobbing happily. Even after all this time, setting foot on deck was still like greeting an old friend.

Before he went about readying the sails, he stood at the railing and gazed out at the ocean and horizon beyond. While the sky still tinted everything red, the sea at least no longer carried that garish green hue from the River of Lost Souls. Not long after he arrived, he helped Arthur free all those trapped in the River with the help of some casual research he and Belle had done over the years. It was Killian’s special privilege to see Milah off to her happy ending (finally), and he gladly bore her teasing about how old he was (also finally). David and James also reconciled at last, and while there was some ribbing there about David’s age, it was apparent that James was a bit jealous that he never got to do the same.

Now Killian was the jealous one, envious of those resting souls while his continued on waiting. His other reason for coming out alone was to see if the water would calm him like it always had, but whatever tenseness was agitating him ceased to go away. Maybe he'd talk to someone about it later...maybe. Or maybe he'd just find ways of distracting himself until David and Snow inevitably moved on.

He went with the latter, setting about pulling lines, checking sails—anything he could do by hand or that required focus, even though most of it was beyond muscle memory at this point. He was feeling a bit better by the time Snow and David arrived, but still unsettled. Even once they’d cast off and were in open waters—the place he’d most found solace for most of his life—unease still scratched at him. Snow asked if he was alright while they ate the picnic lunch she packed; he brushed it off as having slept at a weird angle. She and David exchanged a knowing glance he’d seen far too many times, but they knew not to prod so they didn’t.

He chided himself—he should be happy to be reunited with such a dear friend! The happy smiles on David’s face all day alone were definitely enough to warm his heart. But he couldn’t shake the bittersweetness of it all, especially when they all sat down to dinner at Granny’s like they had so many times in the past. As someone who’d once had no family at all, he had made sure to never take the one he’d found in Storybrooke for granted, and he certainly wouldn’t start now; he just selfishly wanted to hold onto it until it could be completed again.

They retired to the Nolan farmstead for a nightcap, like he and Dave did regualrly, and chatted about the old days as they watched the sunset paint shadows on the fields, until all that was left was the reddish glow of the moon.

“You wanna stay tonight?” David offered once they moved inside, but Killian couldn't bring himself to accept.

“No; I've intruded on your time with your wife enough. I'll just head back home.”

David nodded sadly; he too must have realized that his time in the Underworld was now limited. So he brought Killian in for a bruising hug, pouring all his unsaid words into it, and Killian held on tight.

“I love you, man,” David said softly.

“Love you too, mate,” Killian answered, hoping his voice didn't betray his hurt at the impending loss of his best friend. It was like facing David’s death all over again, even though he knew he'd probably see him again. He just wasn't sure how long it would be.

They eventually (reluctantly) broke apart, and Snow was quick to pull him into an equally tight hug. “Thank you for taking care of him for me,” she whispered, also aware of the impending separation.

“It was my pleasure, milady.” It truly was—though he couldn't be with his wife and children, his best mate had been excellent company.

He could feel tears pricking at his eyes and stepped back, glancing down to try to hide it. “Right then,” he said, swallowing. “I'll be off.”

His hand was barely on the door knob when David said, “Granny’s tomorrow?” ‘One last time’ was unsaid, but hung in the air.

“Aye, of course.” He wouldn't miss it for anything. “I'll see you then.” They said their farewells and he left, slowly walking back across Underbrooke toward home.

There, he went inside, took off his shoes by the front door, hung his leather jacket on the same hook he always did, and made sure the front porch light was turned on (just in case). Then he continued his nightly routine as always, washing off the salt this time, and again slipping into one side of that too-large bed by himself. A lone tear tracked down his face and he murmured “I miss you, Emma,” before drifting off.

Usually, he was awoken by the first morning light shining through the gauzy bedroom curtains. The red cast softened it a bit, but it was still enough to rouse him. Emma had always complained about his ability to rise with the sun, until near the end when he was too tired to do so—then she missed it.

He sighed at the memory as he slowly woke, still hazy as he regained consciousness. Last night’s dream of Emma had been especially vivid; he swore he could feel her soft skin under his fingers, still perfect to him despite the effects of time. He swore he could even smell her hair and feel her warmth pressed against him. So he forced himself to blink his eyes and shook his head as if to shake the dream away.

A sleepy groan accompanied his movement—but it hadn’t come from him. Something, or rather someone, was shifting next to him, tucked into his side.

A voice broke the silence. “‘Nother hour...go back to sleep.” And Killian’s breath hitched in his throat; it had been far too long since he heard that tired tone.

He glanced down at his chest, where their hands were intertwined and where her head was resting; he was always her favorite pillow. She was a bit older than he remembered, but still absolutely beautiful, especially in slumber. Her hair may be silver now, but it was still a riotous mess that he absolutely adored. Surely he was still dreaming, then—it couldn’t actually be her, could it?

Gingerly, he squeezed her hand and whispered hopefully, “Swan?”

Blearily, she blinked a few times and looked up at him, staring back with the same green eyes that had entranced him for so many decades, but now edged with deep lines as she softly smiled at him.

“Hey, beautiful,” she answered, with a slight smirk.

He reached up to cup her face, running his thumb over her cheek. She was real; she was here—warm and soft under his palm and at his side. Part of him couldn't believe it, but the rest of him was beginning to thrum in a way he hadn't since his death.

“Killian?” Her concerned voice cut into his thoughts, and her brow was furrowed to match. “Are you okay?”

He didn't even try to come up with a response; he just surged forward and claimed her lips in a long-overdue kiss. No other reply was needed, judging by the way she instantly responded in kind—she knew exactly what he was saying with it. All the I love yous and I miss yous that had been said from afar were poured into one single embrace. The desperation and joy in it reminded him of when he’d been resurrected, though this was quite the opposite. Wait, that meant—

He pulled back abruptly, nearly panicked now. “Emma! Are you—were you—”

“Shh,” she told him, placing a finger on his lips and knowing full well where his racing mind was going. “I wasn’t hurt, or sick, or in pain. I just...missed you all too much. It was just like Titanic,” she added with a smile.

“You died an old woman, warm in your bed?” he finished, smirking slightly. (They’d watched that movie many times over the years, and it had only reinforced his preference to wooden ships.)

She nodded. “After Mom passed, I was just...ready. I went to bed, and then I found myself here, right outside the house. Thanks for keeping the light on for me.”

“I never turned it off,” he murmured.

“I figured. You know, I could feel you the whole time, just like before. Didn’t I tell you once not to wait for me?”

“I never listen.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And you love me for it,” he teased, echoing a conversation that was now a distant memory. “I could feel you too, love, every day. And I think I realize now why I was an inexplicable nervous wreck yesterday.”

“Sorry,” she apologized, looking sheepish. “And sorry I kept you waiting so long.”

“Nonsense,” he quickly answered, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “You were where you needed to be, with our family. How is everyone—Henry, the girls?”

For the next hour, Emma caught him up on the goings-on of their family and Storybrooke while they held each other tight—him taking every opportunity to pepper her with kisses—and he was overjoyed to hear that everyone was well (though he did go red again at hearing the name of their great-grandbaby). “What about yo—” she started, but was interrupted by the grumble of her stomach. “Sorry,” she winced. “Wow, I didn't know I could still get hungry.”

He just chuckled and glanced at the clock, noting that it was almost time for his regular breakfast date. “How about we head into town for some food? There are some people there that will probably be overjoyed to see you.”

“Hmm, I could probably go for some pancakes,” she mused with a saucy wink.

After another thorough kiss, they went about their morning routine just like always, as if they’d never been apart. They danced around each other—and with; Killian was hesitant to have her out of his embrace for very long—until they headed out the door in their matching leather jackets and made their way to breakfast wrapped in each other's arms.

Whatever quip Granny had prepped for that morning died on her lips when she saw Emma trail in behind him; she was just as surprised to see Emma as Emma was Granny. Despite being the same age, Granny fussed over Emma like she was still a girl, just as she had Snow, and quickly ushered her over to the booth where David and Snow waited.

Again, Killian stood by at the tearful reunion, but with none of the awkwardness or inner turmoil of the previous day’s; in fact, he too got misty-eyed watching his wife and her parents embrace and shout over each other, until David brought him into the group hug and the four of them huddled tight. While it was by no means his whole family, it was a core group of it and having them finally back together made his soul feel more peaceful than it had in ages.

Peaceful. He was at peace. His unfinished business was complete. Did that mean…? He glanced at David across the huddle; he too was wearing a calm but curious expression, and they exchanged a nod. They knew.

Granny ended up breaking apart the reunion to serve breakfast, so they took their seats as she slid mountains of food across the table; she knew what was coming, too, Killian guessed. His plate of eggs and bacon was comically large today.

“Haven't we been over this, Lady Lucas? You know I can't finish that.”

“Well, you better try. There's no sense in wasting food and you need it more than I do.”

“Does she always do this?” Emma whispered, scooting in closer to his side and wrapping an arm around him.

“Every morning.”

She squeezed her arm against his waist and her face fell. Somberly, she observed, “I forgot how much the cancer took out of you.” Without warning, she jumped out of the booth—incredibly spry for a woman her age—and engulfed Granny in a hug once the plates were set down. He could imagine the content of their brief, hushed conversation, based on the warm glance Granny threw his way and her response of “Someone had to.”

Emma gave her a peck on the cheek before sitting back down and digging into her pancakes (which were briefly interrupted by him placing a gentle kiss on her temple). Over the meal, she answered all the questions Snow hadn't been able to answer about the family.

“Oh, poor Henry,” Snow lamented. “Losing both of us so close?”

“I know, but he's strong. He’ll be okay, and Regina is there to help him, and vice versa.” There was no denying how tight knit their weird little family had become—the loss of both Emma and Snow would be deeply felt, he knew, but probably most of all by those two.

Before the conversation could restart, a voice cleared its throat at the end of the table. “Your Highnesses, it's so nice to see you again after so long.”

“Your Majesty,” Snow greeted Arthur with a nod. (Emma was understandably quiet, given their history.) “Looks like you've done quite well for yourself down here.”

The king blushed. “Well, I owe much of it to these two, especially recently. Their assistance here has been most valuable.”

“It was our pleasure, Arthur,” Killian quickly responded, and it truly had been.

“May as well do some good with our time down here, right?” David added, smiling.

“It's truly been an honor, men. And, if I may say so, I believe the winds are right today for a good sail.” He stared pointedly at David and Killian as he said it, imploring them to catch his deeper meaning.

They did. Since assuming the throne of the Underworld, Arthur had developed a kind of sixth sense regarding the direction of souls. Whether it was part of the position or developed from Arthur's own studious nature was up for debate, but he could always tell when a change was coming.

“You know, that does sound pretty good,” David agreed, sending a knowing glance to Killian.

“Even though we went yesterday?” Snow questioned, not quite catching what was going on.

“You can never spend too much time sailing, love,” Killian countered.

Emma leaned her head on his shoulder. “Sounds perfect to me.”

“Seems settled then,” Arthur observed. “I hope you have a pleasant day, friends. Take care.”

“You, too,” Killian and Dave answered, knowing it was more a farewell than anything, and Arthur excused himself.

“So what have you two been up to down here?” Emma wondered aloud, before taking a sip of her cocoa with cinnamon.

“Don’t tell me you’ve spent the last few years attached to each others hips,” Snow teased. Their so-called ‘bromance’ had long been a point of humor between the ladies—“adorable” seemed to be the prefered description—which was equally amusing to the guys. Why shouldn’t they be best friends? They’d certainly been through enough together.

Their silence seemed to answer the question. “Did you really?” Emma asked in a tone that was less mocking and more of genuine awe.

He started, “Well, there was lots to do on the farm—”

“—And he can’t quite sail by himself—” David jumped in.

“—And Arthur needed help—”

He was cut off by Emma and Snow’s laughter. “Some things just never change, do they?” Snow mused.

“I’m glad you had each other,” Emma added with a pat on his arm.

They continued to chat about what they’d been up to in the Underworld as they finished breakfast (Emma squeezed his hand tight when they told about freeing the souls from the river) and spent a fair amount of time saying goodbye to Granny when they left, with more than a few tears shed.

Arm in arm, they then made their way to the docks, Wilby at some point appearing and falling in step with them. At the harbor, the Jolly Roger bobbed in greeting, like it always did, as they boarded the ancient vessel.

Together, they equipped the ship for launch—a well-oiled crew at this point—and prepared to set sail.

“You ready?” David shouted at Killian from his place on the deck, holding tight to a line—and asking about far more than sailing.

“Aye,” he confidently answered from the helm, and they were off.

The sun was nearing its peak in the reddish sky, but the farther they cruised toward the horizon, the brighter the world around them got. It was not unlike another time in Killian’s memory, when a god had seen fit to send him back where he belonged.

Now, all these years later, he was again where he was supposed to be: at Emma’s side, and with his family and best friends.

And together, they sailed into the white light of eternity, at peace at last.

tagging some awesome peeps: @kat2609 @nfbagelperson @gusenitsaa @thesschesthair @optomisticgirl @fergus80 @xpumpkindumplingx @its-like-a-story-of-love @mryddinwilt @cocohook38 @annytecture@wingedlioness @fairytalesandtimetravel @disastergirl @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @stubble-sandwich @athenascarlet @kmomof4 @ilovemesomekillianjones@whimsicallyenchantedrose @phiralovesloki

[smokeybrandreviews]

The Force is Weak

The Star Wars Experience at Disneyland has grossly under performed. Merchandise sales is at an all time low. The Last Jedi and Solo were both bombs. Rise of Skywalker is getting all kinds of side eye from the community. It’s wild to see this happening because i love Star Wars almost as much as i love Marvel. Skywalker and friends was a sure thing. How the f*ck did Disney f*ck it up? If you listen to Iger and Kennedy, it’s an combination of toxic male masculinity and Star Wars fatigue. While that is true, it’s not the major problem with this franchise. I’ve poke on this before but it’s been several years and i have a much larger cross section to judge. In my humble opinion as a fan of the   franchise since the 80s and a life long lover of geek culture, i wanted to dive back into this train wreck in a galaxy far away.

Problem: Kathleen Kennedy

Kennedy is the biggest problem Star Wars has encountered in a long time. She is the one-eyed, drunk, captain of this capsizing ship and she keeps throwing people overboard instead of actually patching the many, many, leaks that will follow. She’s the intern that was around that got Lucas his coffee for decades and came along in her position as a grandfathered in stipulation for the overall sale. Kennedy is not a creative. Kennedy does not know the lore. In fact, she has gone out of her way to declare her disdain for it. The decades of creative position outside of the initial 2 trilogies and Clone Wars simple doesn’t count, even though there are fan favorites and intriguing stories told in that now ambiguous mire. Kennedy seems to want to erase what Star Wars was and elevate what it’s going to be; What she is in charge of. It feels like she wants to be seen as equal to Lucas and that’s never going to happen.

Fix: Move Kennedy to a strictly executive position.

Get her out of the day-today. Effectively banish her to oblivion and install someone to take up that Kevin Feige roll. Maybe the cat that is in charge of Star Wars TV, Dave Filoni. You need someone who knows the lore and has a respect for it. Kennedy is neither of those things. That chip on her shoulder from years of being dismissed by the creatives at Lucasfilm has her literally dismantling everything the fans love because she hates it. I understand she has a contract but the fact that she gave Ryan Johnson a trilogy worth of Disney bucks after the way Last Jedi went, is very telling of where her head is. Basically Kathleen Kennedy needs to be removed from her responsibilities of the Day-to-Day of the Star Wars machine. She is the biggest problem. Literally everything wrong with this franchise begins and ends with her.

Problem: Rey

I don’t have a huge problem with Rey but i understand why everyone else does. Rey is mad OP for no other reason that “female empowerment” which is ludicrous because one of the strongest females ever set to film in Leia, is literally IN the same movie where Rey is introduced! How do you f*ck up the evolution of the next generation so hard when the blueprint is wlking around the set with you? Gender politics aside, i’ll get to that in a minute, Rey is more a prop that a character. We don’t know anything about her. At all. She’s super good at everything she attempts with no explanation. Like, a few throwaway lines here and there would fix the narrative laziness about her easily. “How can you fly this ship so well?” “I’ve been on Jakku my entire life. I’ve had time to study.” This exchange makes the fact Rey can fly the Falcon plausible. “How do you fight so well?” “i can kind of feel the flow of battle. I told you i can take care of myself.” This establishes Rey has a sense for battle that can’t be explained, ie. The force. Of course, this doesn’t explain how she bested Kylo or embarrassed Luke with a stick but it plants seeds for the real fix.

Fix: Rey HAS to be a Skywalker.

Not a Solo. Not a clone. Luke’s kid, specifically. Anything less will go down like glass with the fans. I think that’s where JJ was going when he wrote the treatment for these films. Objectively, that’s where it had to go. Star Wars is a Skywalker story. You can do so much with that line. Hell, the Expanded universe, f*cking Legends now i guess, did a wonderful job with all of it. Rey needs to be the child that Luke had in secret. Maybe those junkers stole her. Maybe he gave her away to keep her safe. In order to save that character, Rey NEEDS to be a Skywalker. This would only elevate her in the mythos, not belittle her accomplishments. But, again, Rey is a Kennedy creation. She can’t be linked to Skywalker in anyway because she’s hers and not his. This mentality is a mistake and it’s crippling one of the most compelling aspects of this brand new take on the franchise.

Problem: Gender Politics

Oh, this can of worms is about to get all over the place. So i get what Kennedy wanted to do. Star Wars is an inherently masculine story. It’s a story of fathers and sons. A patriarchy is strangling freedoms under threat of planetary destruction with the biggest phallus replacement in the history of cinema, until Awakens gave it some viagra for their climax. Throwing in a little estrogen would go a long way to level of this testosterone party. That makes sense and, like i stated above, Rey has potential. The community isn’t against female warriors. Look at Ahsoka. Ma started on a rocky introduction. By the time Clone Wars ended, she was held in the same air as Vader, Luke, Leia, and Solo. Ahsoka is literally my second favorite character in all of the mythos, after Vader. And that’s not counting any of the ancillary characters. Bastila Shan and Mira Jade immediately come to mind. Hell, Chelli Aphra has become one of my favorite characters! What these cats all have in common is the fact that they are well written characters with earned strength. None of these women are mary-sues who come across as more of a OC self insert than a proper Star Wars protagonist. None of these characters are plot derailing distractions with no substance or agency other than to save Finn, robbing him of his moment because “muh love.” Rose Tico. I’m talking about Rose Tico. Why is Rose Tico?

Fix: Tone that sh*t down.

It’s fine to have gender politics in these movies. They are political animals. It’s that the execution is scathing which, in turn, is alienating the community. “The force is female”? Really? Did that even need to be said, let alone printed on a shirt and paraded about while offending long time fans with your dismissal of their very valid concerns? There were, of course, asshole in that chorus. Hell, they might have been the loudest. But just because i have a critique about your movie, doesn’t make me sexist or chauvinist. It means that there are very real issues with character and narrative development that needs to be addressed. It means that, if i can see these flaws, they are very visible. That means a lot of people are seeing the same things i am because they are there. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate the female-led direction of this new trilogy. I hate bad stories and these, so far, are bad stories. Stop using your feminism as a shield to legitimate critique and fix the goddamn movies!

Problem: Direction

These cats, on the sword of Kennedy, have gone through a lot of directors, man. of these first movies, a little over half have had a director change in the middle of production. Hell, Solo had their directors changed because Kennedy fired them over that Droid, L3-37. Apparently, that was a caricature of Kennedy, herself. The directors, the cats who made Lego Movie and Spider-Verse, thought it was funny. Kennedy didn't so she fired them, even though their movie was 3/4 finished.Rogue One suffered a similar fate but that was more Kennedy hated the film and it was managed poorly so Tony Gilroy “directed reshoots” but it’s widely known he shot just under the amount that would give him a director credit. And then there’s the directors promised movies, who lost them before they even started production. Trank, i’m looking at you.

Fix: Vet your visionaries better.

I don’t understand why this is a such a problem for Star Wars when Disney owns the blueprint for this sh*t in Marvel Studios. Feige hires cats you wouldn’t expect and let’s them create to their strengths.The Russos have given us the strongest films in the MCU and Winter Soldier is, in my opinion, their Dark Knight. Taika Waititi literally saved the entirety pf the Thor franchise and is positioned to be the first in MCU history to get a fourth installment. Edgar Wright was tapped for Ant-Man but in a rare misstep by Feige, walked away. Instead, they hired Peyton Reed but had enough respect for what Wright brought to the table, that they used his screenplay and gave him credit for it. Kennedy has extended no such courtesies. It’s like she doesn’t make movies with any respect for the material but makes the movies she’s always wanted to make but couldn’t. It’s like a bunch of sporadic ideas that are all over the place. You can’t make a coherent, interconnected, cinematic universe by throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what will stick. hat’s what the DCEU did and we’ve seen how that has fared.

[smokeybrand]

The Force is Weak

The Star Wars Experience at Disneyland has grossly under performed. Merchandise sales is at an all time low. The Last Jedi and Solo were both bombs. Rise of Skywalker is getting all kinds of side eye from the community. It’s wild to see this happening because i love Star Wars almost as much as i love Marvel. Skywalker and friends was a sure thing. How the f*ck did Disney f*ck it up? If you listen to Iger and Kennedy, it’s an combination of toxic male masculinity and Star Wars fatigue. While that is true, it’s not the major problem with this franchise. I’ve poke on this before but it’s been several years and i have a much larger cross section to judge. In my humble opinion as a fan of the  franchise since the 80s and a life long lover of geek culture, i wanted to dive back into this train wreck in a galaxy far away.

Problem: Kathleen Kennedy

Kennedy is the biggest problem Star Wars has encountered in a long time. She is the one-eyed, drunk, captain of this capsizing ship and she keeps throwing people overboard instead of actually patching the many, many, leaks that will follow. She’s the intern that was around that got Lucas his coffee for decades and came along in her position as a grandfathered in stipulation for the overall sale. Kennedy is not a creative. Kennedy does not know the lore. In fact, she has gone out of her way to declare her disdain for it. The decades of creative position outside of the initial 2 trilogies and Clone Wars simple doesn’t count, even though there are fan favorites and intriguing stories told in that now ambiguous mire. Kennedy seems to want to erase what Star Wars was and elevate what it’s going to be; What she is in charge of. It feels like she wants to be seen as equal to Lucas and that’s never going to happen.

Fix: Move Kennedy to a strictly executive position.

Get her out of the day-today. Effectively banish her to oblivion and install someone to take up that Kevin Feige roll. Maybe the cat that is in charge of Star Wars TV, Dave Filoni. You need someone who knows the lore and has a respect for it. Kennedy is neither of those things. That chip on her shoulder from years of being dismissed by the creatives at Lucasfilm has her literally dismantling everything the fans love because she hates it. I understand she has a contract but the fact that she gave Ryan Johnson a trilogy worth of Disney bucks after the way Last Jedi went, is very telling of where her head is. Basically Kathleen Kennedy needs to be removed from her responsibilities of the Day-to-Day of the Star Wars machine. She is the biggest problem. Literally everything wrong with this franchise begins and ends with her.

Problem: Rey

I don’t have a huge problem with Rey but i understand why everyone else does. Rey is mad OP for no other reason that “female empowerment” which is ludicrous because one of the strongest females ever set to film in Leia, is literally IN the same movie where Rey is introduced! How do you f*ck up the evolution of the next generation so hard when the blueprint is wlking around the set with you? Gender politics aside, i’ll get to that in a minute, Rey is more a prop that a character. We don’t know anything about her. At all. She’s super good at everything she attempts with no explanation. Like, a few throwaway lines here and there would fix the narrative laziness about her easily. “How can you fly this ship so well?” “I’ve been on Jakku my entire life. I’ve had time to study.” This exchange makes the fact Rey can fly the Falcon plausible. “How do you fight so well?” “i can kind of feel the flow of battle. I told you i can take care of myself.” This establishes Rey has a sense for battle that can’t be explained, ie. The force.Of course, this doesn’t explain how she bested Kylo or embarrassed Luke with a stick but it plants seeds for the real fix.

Fix: Rey HAS to be a Skywalker.

Not a Solo. Not a clone. Luke’s kid, specifically. Anything less will go down like glass with the fans. I think that’s where JJ was going when he wrote the treatment for these films. Objectively, that’s where it had to go. Star Wars is a Skywalker story. You can do so much with that line. Hell, the Expanded universe, f*cking Legends now i guess, did a wonderful job with all of it. Rey needs to be the child that Luke had in secret. Maybe those junkers stole her. Maybe he gave her away to keep her safe. In order to save that character, Rey NEEDS to be a Skywalker. This would only elevate her in the mythos, not belittle her accomplishments. But, again, Rey is a Kennedy creation. She can’t be linked to Skywalker in anyway because she’s hers and not his. This mentality is a mistake and it’s crippling one of the most compelling aspects of this brand new take on the franchise.

Problem: Gender Politics

Oh, this can of worms is about to get all over the place. So i get what Kennedy wanted to do. Star Wars is an inherently masculine story. It’s a story of fathers and sons. A patriarchy is strangling freedoms under threat of planetary destruction with the biggest phallus replacement in the history of cinema, until Awakens gave it some viagra for their climax. Throwing in a little estrogen would go a long way to level of this testosterone party. That makes sense and, like i stated above, Rey has potential. The community isn’t against female warriors. Look at Ahsoka. Ma started on a rocky introduction. By the time Clone Wars ended, she was held in the same air as Vader, Luke, Leia, and Solo. Ahsoka is literally my second favorite character in all of the mythos, after Vader. And that’s not counting any of the ancillary characters. Bastila Shan and Mira Jade immediately come to mind. Hell, Chelli Aphra has become one of my favorite characters! What these cats all have in common is the fact that they are well written characters with earned strength. None of these women are mary-sues who come across as more of a OC self insert than a proper Star Wars protagonist. None of these characters are plot derailing distractions with no substance or agency other than to save Finn, robbing him of his moment because “muh love.” Rose Tico. I’m talking about Rose Tico. Why is Rose Tico?

Fix: Tone that sh*t down.

It’s fine to have gender politics in these movies. They are political animals. It’s that the execution is scathing which, in turn, is alienating the community. “The force is female”? Really? Did that even need to be said, let alone printed on a shirt and paraded about while offending long time fans with your dismissal of their very valid concerns? There were, of course, asshole in that chorus. Hell, they might have been the loudest. But just because i have a critique about your movie, doesn’t make me sexist or chauvinist. It means that there are very real issues with character and narrative development that needs to be addressed. It means that, if i can see these flaws, they are very visible. That means a lot of people are seeing the same things i am because they are there. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate the female-led direction of this new trilogy. I hate bad stories and these, so far, are bad stories. Stop using your feminism as a shield to legitimate critique and fix the goddamn movies!

Problem: Direction

These cats, on the sword of Kennedy, have gone through a lot of directors, man. of these first movies, a little over half have had a director change in the middle of production. Hell, Solo had their directors changed because Kennedy fired them over that Droid, L3-37. Apparently, that was a caricature of Kennedy, herself. The directors, the cats who made Lego Movie and Spider-Verse, thought it was funny. Kennedy didn't so she fired them, even though their movie was 3/4 finished.Rogue One suffered a similar fate but that was more Kennedy hated the film and it was managed poorly so Tony Gilroy “directed reshoots” but it’s widely known he shot just under the amount that would give him a director credit. And then there’s the directors promised movies, who lost them before they even started production. Trank, i’m looking at you.

Fix: Vet your visionaries better.

I don’t understand why this is a such a problem for Star Wars when Disney owns the blueprint for this sh*t in Marvel Studios. Feige hires cats you wouldn’t expect and let’s them create to their strengths.The Russos have given us the strongest films in the MCU and Winter Soldier is, in my opinion, their Dark Knight. Taika Waititi literally saved the entirety pf the Thor franchise and is positioned to be the first in MCU history to get a fourth installment. Edgar Wright was tapped for Ant-Man but in a rare misstep by Feige, walked away. Instead, they hired Peyton Reed but had enough respect for what Wright brought to the table, that they used his screenplay and gave him credit for it. Kennedy has extended no such courtesies. It’s like she doesn’t make movies with any respect for the material but makes the movies she’s always wanted to make but couldn’t. It’s like a bunch of sporadic ideas that are all over the place. You can’t make a coherent, interconnected, cinematic universe by throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what will stick. hat’s what the DCEU did and we’ve seen how that has fared.

[foxcantswim]

Twelve x Clara Whouffaldi - Two Worlds Apart Chapter 1

AU - TIME LORDS VS HUMANS

A New War Has Arrived. The Time Lords Vs The Humans. One rebel Time Lord, known as the Doctor, is the only one who doesn't want the war. He meets a group of humans who also don't agree with the war... but the Doctor doesn't know that. He fears that if he tells the humans that he is a Time Lord they will kick him out. He ends up meeting a human, but she looks oddly familiar. Who is she? 

“HUMANS AND TIME-LORDS ARE FORBIDDEN FROM CO-OPERATING WITH ONE ANOTHER. IF YOU SUSPECT THAT THERE MAY BE ANY FORBIDDEN ACTIVITY - PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER BELOW. YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ASSOCIATE IF YOU DO NOT ALERT THE NEAREST STATION. TIME LORDS ALERT OTHER TIME LORDS. HUMANS ALERT OTHER HUMANS. THIS IS WAR. NO PEACE WILL COME FROM IT.” - (These signs were everywhere... Clara had noticed that the number of them grew larger by the day. The Doctor had noticed that the number of them grew larger by the day.)

A War. A War that could be considered the same level of devastation as the Time War. Except the only species that are in this war... Are the Humans and the Time Lords. The two factions have never agreed with one another- the General of Gallifrey had declared war upon Earth and it has been going on for almost two hundred years. Yes, the Time Lords were indeed a lot more powerful than the Humans... But a resource was spreading across the Earth... A resource that can end a Time Lord's life within seconds. No more regenerations. And that resource is: Azbantium. It's used to keep Time Lords locked away in a prison as he takes billions of years to destroy.

A traitorous Time Lord had 'accidentally' left a small piece of Azbantium in a UNIT base. This Azbantium was found by a woman called Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT managed to duplicate the Azbantium and ship it off to all the other countries. The traitorous Time Lord was known as the mad man with a box- the Doctor, his true name forgotten along with his past. The Doctor refused to fight against the Humans considering the amount of time he spent on Earth- he had walked among them and even though he thought that he was bigger than them... he never wanted to rid them from the universe.

Despite the war, Humans continued to repopulate the Earth to try and fight back against the Time Lords. And one day... a Human was born. One of the only Humans who didn't want to fight. She saw the Time Lords as equals and all she wanted was peace. Her parents- Ellie and Dave. They go by the last name Oswald. Their daughter, Clara, would peer out the window and look at the constant explosions... she wished that it would be different.

For the first 15 years of her life she remained in the house and only got to go outside for one hour per day. Once she hit 16... a well-known Time Lady had made a hole in Clara's life. The Time Lady was known as Missy... had put an end to Ellie Oswald's life. She was about to end Dave's and Clara's too but... she vanished without a trace.

Clara ended up leaving home. Always on the run. Never staying in the same place for more than 6 hours. The only place that she could really stay in was the underground base- this base only allowed people in if they didn't want to fight the Time Lords... Which is not a lot of people. A few members of UNIT didn't believe in fighting with the Time Lords, but unfortunately it is their job to fight back. She had joined the 'underground base' at the age of 21- she was surprised when she reached her 27th birthday... She believed she would have died many years earlier.

Amy Pond and Rory Williams were the first two people Clara had met in the base. She was then introduced to Donna Noble, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness- Who would not. Stop. Flirting. There was also another man called Mickey Smith who was currently in a relationship with Martha Jones. Sometimes Clara found it difficult to keep track of everyone's lives. Martha and Jack were the 'leaders' of this little group- they would tell everyone what to do and where to go. Supply runs etc.

"Clara!" Jack called as she entered the base, "You okay? No bruises or cuts?"

She shook her head as she dropped the bag of food onto a nearby table, "No no, I'm fine. The Time Lords sent down a modified Dalek though and it's causing havoc on the streets above. It almost killed me." she was breathing heavily. The Time Lords had managed to engineer themselves an army of Daleks.

"Perhaps you should sit down." Martha suggested. Clara nodded before sat back on the rusty old sofa.

Clara then asked, "Where's everyone else?"

"Amy, Mickey and Rose went out on a supply run. Everybody else is asleep." Jack replied. He then when into another part of the base and seconds later he returned to Clara's side with a small glass of water.

She shook her and yawned, "No no no... We need to preserve water."

"You've been saying that for three days, Clara." Martha spoke, "Drink." Clara took the small glass out of Jack's hand before taking a sip.

"Thanks, Jack."

"We gotta move!" Mickey exclaimed as he entered the base.

"Wh-What?" Jack questioned, "What's going on?"

Rose then added, "The Time Lords. They believe that we are a group set out to destroy the them."

"We tried to communicate-" Amy began.

"You tried to communicate?!" Clara questioned as she stood up.

Mickey nodded, "Yeah. They held us at gun point and we tried to explain that we wanted to be equals with them but... they didn't listen.""

"We met someone along the way. He had brown floppy hair and the most atrocious chin I have ever seen." Amy stated.

Martha then asked, "Did you bring him with you? Is he like us?"

Rose let out a sigh, "We saw him get shot by the Time Lords. We ran away. For all we know his body could still be lying there!"

"I think they're tracking us so we gotta go!" Mickey reminded.

"Okay okay." Jack said, "I'll wake the others up then we'll get going. Just bring enough food for the walk to the other base." Jack disappeared into the sleeping quarters whilst Mickey and Rose went into the kitchen to grab some of the food- Just enough to make it through the two day walk.

A few minutes later Jack emerged with everybody else, "Ready?" Martha asked. They nodded in response. We all quickly made our way up the stairs and opened the hatch to exit the base. Mickey always remained at the front of the group so it was his job to alert us if anybody or anything was coming our way. Everybody also had a weapon in hand just in case.

"Okay, we're good." Mickey assured as we all started to walk to dark streets. Pretty much all of the houses were destroyed, broken cars were scattered across the roads. The planet known as 'Gallifrey' was also visible in the sky, it was about as far away as the sun... So not too close. You could hear the occasional scream now and then- Probably due to yet another Time Lord attack.

As the group walked, they passed families who were either hiding in corners or hiding in alleyways. Clara wished that she could help them... But it was every man for themselves in this world. And hopefully one day, that would change. Clara and Rory were the ones in charge of keeping track of the food. Making sure that they had enough and making sure that everyone got their share.

"We have to split up if we want to make it out alive." Donna whispered. They were so close to the base now. About a thirty minute walk. But Daleks were patrolling the corn field for any sign of life and they couldn't exactly all go bombarding through them. Everybody nodded before going through the tall corn. They used to go in pairs but that proved to be difficult, now they go alone.

Clara hated doing this- Walking through a corn field filled with Daleks. Who knows when they would appear? "I detect life-forms!" a Dalek echoed.

"Find them! Exterminate them!" another Dalek ordered.

"AFFIRMATIVE!" Many Daleks spoke. There were definitely more than ten Daleks. Clara practically held her breath as she walked and she felt like her heart would escape her chest at any moment.

Surprisingly, she managed to get to the other side. Nobody else was there though... The rule was: if you got separated- you keep on going. You go to the base without them and you wait until they come back. If they aren't back within five hours- then they are presumed dead. Clara looked at her watch: 22:36. She started to run towards the city, once she arrived her running slowed down. It wouldn't be smart to alert the Daleks now.

In the distance, Clara could see two Daleks approaching. She quickly turned into an alleyway but she soon tripped on something causing her to fall to the ground. She groaned before looking to see what she had tripped on. Her eyes widened when she noticed that it was person... A man... Another human just like her.

The man let out a sigh of pain, "Ohh... Did you just kick me?"

"Shhh!" she shushed him, "Daleks are out there. And why are you lying on the floor?"

He managed to sit up and put his back up against the wall, "I erm- I think I passed out. I don't really know what happened." he ran a hand through his grey/silver hair.

She really wanted to help him. She had never helped anyone before. The groups rule kept running through her head: Every man for themselves. They only let people into the group if absolutely necessary. She didn't realise that she had been staring into his eyes so she awkwardly coughed, "Well erm- It was nice meeting you, sir. But I've gotta get going." she tried to stand.

"Wait wait." he said as he grabbed her arm, "You seem like you have a home. A place to live. Maybe I could stay with you until I find my Tar- I mean- home."

"I er-" she paused, biting her lip. What would the group even think? She started running through the pros and cons. Afterall it wasn't like he was going to stay with them permanently, "Okay. Yes. We have three homes technically. We travel between them whenever things get too hairy." The pair stood up, "Just follow me and stay hidden."

He rolled his eyes, "I'm not new to this thing. I don't think I want to encounter a Dalek." As they started to discreetly walk towards the base he asked, "I didn't catch your name."

"Clara. Clara Oswald." she told him, "And yours."

"Well, I'm the-" he paused, "J-John Smith." he really didn't want her to find out that he was a Time Lord. Who knows what would happen. All he wanted was peace between the Humans and Time Lords.

"Okay, John Smith. Get ready to meet the rest of my group, I guess." she gave him a small smile as they inched closer and closer towards the base.

Chapter 2

"And this is it." Clara announced as they made it to the hatch. She moved the leaves off of the top of it before unlocking it with a key. The two quickly entered and 'John' shut the door behind him, "Now we just have to wait for everyone else to get here. We were separated by some Daleks." she only just realised what John was actually wearing. A brown jacket and a bowtie... She raised her eyebrow at his attire, he soon understood.

"Right... do you have any new clothes?" he wondered.

She nodded, "Through there." she pointed towards a door, "Pick whatever you want." he nodded as he made his way into the room. A few moments later he emerged. His clothes were quite the opposite to his previous get up. He wore a hoodie and a coat over it... strange.

"It'll do." he stated, "And do me a favour. Next time when I'm lying down- don't kick me." he started to feel his personality kick in. He had only just recently regenerated afterall.

"It's not like I did it on purpose." she said as she started to sort the food out on the table.

I sat down on a tattered sofa, "Maybe you should look where you're going." Before she could answer, the base entrance opened.

Clara let out a sigh of relief, "Rory! Martha! Are you okay?"

Rory nodded, "Yeah. A few close calls but we're good." They both then eyed John.

"And who might this be?" Martha questioned.

"I'm John Smith. Also know as the man that Clara decided to kick." he then mumbled, "Useless pudding brain."

Clara groaned, "Like I said. It wasn't on purpose so stop being to grumpy about it." she looked at Martha, "He's staying here until he finds his home."

John tried to come up with a lie, "I er- I got separated from my friends and sister. I'm just trying to find them and then you will never see me again."

Everyone managed to make it back with some cuts and bruises. They all agreed that John could stay for a few days too. Clara felt glad that she had 'helped' somebody by taking them into the safety. Another part of her felt annoyed at John's sudden behaviour though.

"You need anything doing, Jack?" Clara asked.

He shook his head, "No. You've done plenty for this group, Clara. And besides... It's way too late for you to go outside."

She just groaned in annoyance, "I can go out at night, Jack! The Daleks and the Time Lords don't scare me."

"Sure they don't..." John mumbled to himself.

Clara and Jack looked over at him, Clara then questioned, "What was that?"

"Er-" John paused, "I said: she should go. The Daleks and Time Lords aren't too bad..." he stood up from his chair, "You can easily dodge the Daleks and all you have to do is stay out of the way of the Time Lords."

"I guess. You can go with her!" Jack suggested.

"Yeah. W-Wait, what?"

"Are you serious?" Clara questioned, "I can handle myself."

"Clara." Jack paused, "Take him with you. Get to know him a bit more."

She rolled her eyes, "If I'm not back in two hours- then John has probably killed me."

"I don't want to waste my strength on a useless pudding brain, Clara." he stated.

"Okay. If I'm back in an hour- I've killed John." she said before heading to the hatch, "We'll try to get some more food and water."

Jack nodded, "Be safe."

John followed Clara out of the base and she lead them to the nearby town.

Clara was getting rather angry by the fact that all the building doors were locked. She hadn't come into the part of the town before and she just assumed that everything would open- she wanted it to be an easy job to just walk in and take something and then walk straight back out.

'John'absolutely hated saying that his name was: John... But he had to hide is real identity away from these humans. He subtly took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket whilst Clara was too busy with the door on the house across the street. He unlocked the door, "Clara!" he whisper-yelled so that he didn't alert anybody nearby. She quickly made her way over to him as he deposited the sonic back into his pocket, "The lock was faulty." he said. She smiled as she opened the door.

"Good. Maybe we'll find something useful in here." she said as the pair entered the dark house, "You want to take the upstairs or should I?"

"Wouldn't it be a lot safer if we stuck together?" the Doctor/John may have come across as an angry old man who despised the human race- but he still didn't want to see Clara perish so soon.

She shook her head, "I'd rather do things faster. So I guess I'll take the upstairs. Just go in the kitchen and look around for some canned food and bottled water. I'll go upstairs and see if there's anything interesting up there."

He muttered, "If you're sure." he made his way into the kitchen and Clara made her way up the stairs. She soon decided to take out a torch from her backpack. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet and the cold wind made her shiver. Clara couldn't hear anything. Pure silence. She couldn't remember the last time she had been isolated in such a quiet place. As she turned the corner into one of the bedrooms her eyes widened. She froze.

She didn't care if anything or anyone else heard her, "John?!" she called. A few seconds later, John appeared by her side.

"Clara." he whispered, "Don't blink."

"Wh-What is that?" she wondered. Her hand that was aiming the torch at the creature was shaking. The light then started to flicker.

"It's a Weeping Angel. If you blink it will move closer towards you and send you through time."

"And how do you know so much about them?!"

He paused, "I-I overheard the Time Lords talking about them a few days ago."

"Well..." she paused, "I don't really want to stay here much longer." she quickly grabbed John's hand and pulled him back towards the stairs.

"Stop holding my hand! People don't do that to me!"

She groaned, "Oh, shut up!" she pulled him down the stairs. Just as she was about to drag him out of the house, she noticed a bag next to the door, "What's that?"

"You said you wanted food and water. So I put them in that bag."

"You were fast!" she exclaimed before making him carry the bag.

He then mumbled, "Yeah, don't say that in bed." She gave him a disgusted look before he was the one who had to pull her out of the house.

Chapter 3

One Week Later

"He is so- He's just so- He's annoying!" Clara was pacing around the small room whilst listing the things that she hated about John.

Amy let out a sigh as she leaned back in her chair, "Clara, you need to calm down."

"Calm down?! He's driving me insane! I'm going to need medication if I ever want to calm down again!" John had gone out with Rose and Rory to on a supply run. Jack and Donna were in the planning room trying to find a new place to set up base. And Mickey and Martha were currently making food for when the rest of the group got back.

"You've been talking about John a lot lately." Amy smiled, "Why is that?"

"Why?!" Clara questioned, "He's infuriating!"

"Are you sure you don't like him." her friend said suggestively.

Clara just gave her a shocked look, "Are you being serious right now? Why on Earth would I like him with the stupid way he talks with that stupid mouth on that stupid face of his?!" Amy just folded her arms and gave her a questioning look whilst raising her eyebrow. She just looked at Clara... waiting.

"Tell the truth, Oswald. I won't judge."

"N-No! He-"

Amy cut her off, "Clara... Yes or no question: Do you find him attractive?" Clara opened her mouth to protest but it quickly slammed shut, "And that answers my question."

"Wh-What?! I didn't say anything!"

"You didn't have to." Amy smirked.

Clara then flopped onto her stomach on the sofa, "You're making me confused..." she mumbled as she dug her face into a pillow.

The Doctor had strayed away from Rose and Rory.

He rarely sleeps but he managed to get an hour or two of kip last night. He couldn't stop thinking about his dream. He's had this same dream for years now. About a woman, jumping into his time stream just to save him. He vaguely remembered travelling with this woman but he couldn't pinpoint her face. He remembered the name: Clara... The woman he met a few days ago was also called Clara... But that was just a coincidence. Right? She also reminded him of a certain woman he met in a diner many years ago... But it couldn't be the same exact person. He shook his head and rid any thought of this mysterious 'Clara'.

"It seems that Clara hates you." Rose stated as she slowed down to allow him to catch up. They stopped walking as Rory went into a house to look for supplies.

The Doctor shrugged, "Can't impress everyone." Clara... she seemed so different to everyone else. But he couldn't see why. He was the Doctor! He should know everything! He would catch himself many times each day just staring at her. He was interested in what she was doing and he had no idea why!

Rose then clicked her fingers in front of his face, "Earth to John."

"Wh-What?" he asked.

"When I say hate... It's more like denial."

He looked at her in confusion, "Denial?"

She nodded, "I can see it. Everyone in the group can see it. Except for you and Clara."

"See what exactly? Honestly, why doesn't anybody explain things properly these days?"

"That Clara likes you." she stated.

He raised his eyebrow, "You're giving me mixed messages here. Previously you said that she hated me"

Rose just sighed, "Put it like this. She hates the fact that she likes you."

"Erm... okay? So she likes me. That's good I guess. I... accept her presence." he 'accepted her presence' a lot more than Rose actually thought.

"You are so blind, John." Rose then added. No he wasn't. He understood completely. He's walked amongst Humans for years and he has grown accustomed to what the term 'likes' means... He wasn't a total idiot.

Once John, Rory and Rose came back- Everyone was ready to eat, "Run into any trouble?" Martha asked.

Rory shook his head as he started to eat the noodles, "Just one Dalek." Clara and John were picking at their food. Clara was too busy thinking about what she actually felt towards John: hate, like? What was it? John was too busy thinking about who the mysterious woman in his dreams was... it couldn't be the woman who was sitting opposite him. Right?

"You not hungry?" Amy asked Clara.

Clara quickly shut out her thoughts, "No. I just feel a bit sick." she lied.

Amy then whispered to her, "Lovesick?" Clara then groaned before standing up.

"I'm gonna go to bed. Hopefully, I'll feel better by morning." she said. Everyone nodded before she made her way to the spare room. This room was the only room that had one bed. The other room was huge and it had over ten beds. The 'spare room' was used for people if they wanted to be alone... and Clara wanted to be alone right now. Just so she could gather her thoughts. As she lay on the bed she looked up at the stone ceiling... and then at the stone walls... and then at the stone floor. This was no way to live. Underground with no sunlight. Candles were the only things that lit up the rooms in this 'home'.

There was then a knock at the door... God knows how Jack managed to install doors into this place, "Clara?" John walked in.

Clara then sat up, "Er- Y-Yeah?"

"I bought you some water if you want. It tends to help when you're feeling ill."

She gave him a smile, "Thanks." he handed her the bottle of water. To be honest... her stomach was feeling a bit off. She felt sick. It wasn't butterflies. She. Felt. Sick. She kept on telling herself that it was just an illness that would go away.

God knows how it happened, but John had been in the room with Clara for well over an hour now. They were just talking. An occasional story here and there. John didn't like sitting down and talking... He HAD to be doing something practical. Like fixing a machine or fighting a monster. Not listening to a Human. But Clara... he felt like he's heard her voice for years. Countless years. But why couldn't he remember her face?

John hadn't noticed the silence until now. They were currently sitting on the edge of the bed together. Why hadn't the sickness left Clara's stomach yet? She was starting to get concerned about it. What illness could she have been possessed with?! Having an illness in times like these was not a good situation.

She decided that she didn't care that she's only known John for a week. She wanted to try something. Just a test. She wanted to show that she didn't like John... She was going to kiss him and prove that she didn't need anything more. She leaned forward and surprisingly, he didn't move away... And that was when Amy decided to burst into the room. John then stuttered, "Er- N-Night, Clara." Once John left the room he shut the door behind him.

"No no no!" Amy exclaimed, "I didn't mean to burst in on such a moment! Get out there girl!" she pulled Clara up from the bed.

"Wh-What?!" Clara started, "What are you talking about?"

Amy rolled her eyes, "You really are hopeless sometimes."

To be continued...

[utopianparadoxist]

Lilith in Starlight: Light as a romantic motif in Homestuck

Yeah yeah I was gonna write about Jade--still gonna but I got to thinking about this instead and I can write this up quicker. In this beautiful day of 4/13, I want to let you all in on a secret:

Homestuck is good, y’all. Specifically, Homestuck’s romantic relationships are good, and there’s a specific motif running through all of the main relationships in the canon that makes them all better and more meaningful:

The Light Aspect.

The Light Aspect has specific connotations in Homestuck--it’s linked not just to literal Light, but to Information, Ideas, Understanding, Good-Fortune, and most relevantly to us, the concept of Enlightenment. 

All of these connections are ones I’m planning to outline in soon upcoming videos in Homestuck, Explained, but the basic breakdown is that all of these concepts are linked under the Light banner through the main Gnostic Creation Myth. Gnosticism, for those unaware, is the source of Abraxas, Yaldabaoth, and the Seven Gates above each player’s houses in Sburb. It’s a prominent undercurrent to Homestuck’s themes, which I’ll be breaking down in detail.

The Gnostic creation myth goes like this: In the realm of nothingness, where all that exists is ideas, there existed pairs of concepts called Aeons meant to create reality by working together. Sophia, the Aeon of Wisdom, wished to “know that which could not be known” by the formless ideas, and so interacted with the Material World without her partner Aeon. 

In doing so, she creates the Demiurge--also known as Yaldabaoth, this is described as a sightless God because he cannot perceive the realm of ideas that created him in the first place. 

Seeing nothing around but himself in the Material world, Yaldabaoth declares himself God and sets about creating humanity and the contents of reality--explaining why pain and suffering exist: The physical world is a product of a being of evil. 

Feeling sympathy for the plight of us mortals subjected to suffering, Sophia Descends from the plane of ideas into the physical realm, imbuing in us the power of her Light, also described as Pleroma, granting us the power to perceive the world of Ideas...and thus, climb endlessly upwards to achieve Enlightenment. 

Homestuck’s design adds an extra stipulation to this quest for Enlightenment: That the path to Englightenment comes is paved by working and connecting to other people. The willingness to form bonds and change as a result of relationships is what makes Heroes Heroes in Homestuck, and renders Villains as Villains as well. 

The only other thing you need to understand before we get into the details is this: The Aspect of Light is an idea that creates all sorts of things in Homestuck’s universe, not a static set of superpowers. The Aspects make up all of Homestuck’s reality, as we’re told by Alt!Calliope, and so any manifestation that can be understood under a given Aspect’s banner can in fact be considered a symbol for that Aspect. 

This breakdown over with, let’s go over the biggest Homestuck relationships real quick: Those between  Rose and Kanaya, Roxy and Calliope, Dirk and Jake, and Terezi and Vriska. 

Jade and Davepeta will come later, since I need to write a whole bunch about Jade alone to make my point there. Dave and Karkat are largely about cultural forces, not metaphysical ones, so Light isn’t a strong motif for them...but their getting together is taken as a sign of good fortune, linking their health and the health of their timeline to Light. 

Without further ado, then:

Rose and Kanaya

Rose is the easiest to start with because she is, for all intents and purposes, Sophia made flesh--and under a Gnostic reading, she also fills the role of a Jesus analog quite easily. 

Rose is the Seer of Light: one who knows Light, or knows through Light. If you’ve ever wondered why Rose--even among the girls, who typically get less focus on their sexualities in Homestuck--uniquely never seems to even question or struggle with her attraction to women, well, Here’s why: 

Rose has an innate sense that human culture’s scruples about sexuality are inherently unimportant, and she never feels the need to take it seriously for a second. She sees no Light in them, and so nothing worth considering. (Author’s Note: To be clear, this is just how I read this particular point. If this is really what the comic was going for, it still would’ve been nice for Rose to...you know...Talk about it >_>, and I think the criticisms wlw have had for the comic are on point about this. Also, I’m a dude, I’d defer to them regardless, and you should be listening to them about this primarily anyway.)

What Rose DOES find herself wrestling with is Skaia’s predestined self-actualization, and especially during the Beta session, with the inherent doom and damnation the Session gives her as fact. 

These are intellectual challenges Rose cannot see through, and when she’s forced to accept them as fact she reacts with anger, regarding the world as having inherently failed her and her friends. 

In a sense, this echoes her relationship with Mom--again, she cannot view the bigger picture of Mom as a child, and regards Mom’s arbitrary and erratic nature contentiously. Rose seeks the ability to understand things on an intellectual level, and lashes out when she’s unable to. 

The point is that early Rose has a fundamentally uncomfortable relationship with material reality--and escapes and challenges that reality by relying on the power of her Ideas. 

Once she creates the Green Sun and survives, some of that conflict is assuaged for her, and some of that might have to do with having survived all of Sburb’s ordeals after all giving her a more optimistic outlook, but it mostly has to do with...

Her relationship with Kanaya, who manifests the Light Rose finds herself seeking as a product of her physical nature. This gets into the root of their romance--Rose falls for Kanaya because her clever but literal and earthly nature keeps Rose grounded in reality, even as she seeks more and more intense ideas pertaining to her existential reality. 

Once she starts dating Kanaya, Rose begins experimenting with physical reality, regarding it less like an enemy and more like a tool--her experiments with drinking don’t end well, but Kanaya helps re-ground her and she gets a better idea of what her Mom was really like. She also seems to take to deconstructing the practice of Alchemy as a hobby, both in terms of engineering and philosophically. 

And when Rose is at a loss for what to do about a problem in her head, Kanaya is the one who offers a practical and actionable solution--even if Rose doesn’t end up executing it well. 

Then there’s the fact that what Kanaya likes about Rose is specifically her clarity of vision, insight and ideas. When Kanaya is at her darkest and has lost all desire for relevance or existing in material reality, it’s Rose who lights a path for her and promises to guide the way--just as she did originally when Kanaya admired Rose from afar through her gamefaqs guide. 

Rose achieves this immediately by charting a path of Light through which to guide her friends through endless Void, to the higher plane of ideas contained within the Alpha session and the peace that grappling with those ideas will provide. In essence, Rose acts as a Gnostic version of Jesus leading the dead out of Hell--a point I’ll DEFINITELY need to flesh out in dedicated form later. 

In essence, Kanaya heals Rose’s relationship with Space--physical reality--while Rose helps Kanaya see past the mundane and into the world of Light--ideas. Together, their romantic narrative suggests that Enlightenment isn’t just about having really good ideas and becoming disattached from the physical, but about striking a balance between clarity of mental vision and a willingness to engage with that’s physically real. 

Roxy and Calliope

Neither Roxy nor Calliope are Light players, but the concept still features heavily in their relationship. 

Roxy’s angst surrounding her friends centers largely on feeling marginal and unconsidered in their romantic drama, even as she goes about trying to help them all. 

She doesn’t have this struggle with Calliope, though--Calliope notably always greatly values and adores Roxy for what she does from the very beginning of their time together, even putting her in the spotlight in a sense by presenting her artistically, which Roxy reacts to much more strongly than Dirk. 

She also overfocuses onto the idea of a relationship with Dirk, buying into the ideas of heteronormativity that Rose effortlessly discarded early on--these ideas are explicitly false information in Homestuck, giving them Voidy qualities. (This, by the way, complements Calliope buying into her species’ inability to experience red romance. Biological determinism is bullshit in Homestuck, hope you’re taking notes.)

Calliope also confides in Roxy her Ultimate Secret (withheld information--Void). This ultimately puts Roxy on the search that makes up the majority of her quest--leading her to finding Calliope for the first time in a spiral made of Light.

Where Calliope goes on to provide Roxy with an absolutely massive amount of True Information--Enlightening her as to her own fate, the kids’ goals, the ways Lord English has attacked them, and the need to find Alt!Calliope...not to mention setting Roxy on the path to eventually claiming the Ring of Life through John. 

Calliope is an analog for the reader of fiction, who casts light onto the story they experience by having ideas about the reality within the fiction. The reader themselves is not included in this ideascape, however--and so remain in shadow, outside the reality of the story. 

Roxy steals the Void out of Calliope’s role in the story, taking her out of the Void and into the Light-filled realm of the waking world. Thus allowing Calliope to reach the same conclusion Rose does--she does not have to be outside reality to enjoy the ideas inherent to it. Like Rose embraces the physical, Calliope is able to embrace herself as a valid part of her reality, consume the fruits of her own existence...and live. 

Dirk and Jake

God knows I’ve written about Dirk and Jake enough lately, so I’m not going to linger here. The bottom line is Dirkjake is one of the most romantic and fulfilling relationships in this goddamn comic, and I’ll make you all see it if my fingers have to go numb from typing. In the interest of accomplishing this, a couple notes:

All I want to point out here is that just as Rose ties into Sophia, Dirk ties into Yaldabaoth and Jake into Abraxas--the three main deities of the Gnostic myth.

There’s the Denizens, obviously, but Dirk’s chumhandle--timaeusTestified--refers to Timaeus’ Testimony, a Greek text where the Demiurge(the same deity as Yaldabaoth by a different name) is described in detail.

Abraxas, meanwhile, is described as the Great Unseen, the hidden invisible God beyond Good and Evil who combines all opposites into one being. It’s also described as the lord of frogs and toads, casting a  new light on Jake and Dirk’s consort kingdom. 

The motifs tie into Dirk and Jake’s relationships to themselves and each other. Dirk stresses about his potential as an inherently evil being--primarily for an act of creation, as if he were a potential Yaldabaoth. A version of Dirk even literally becomes a Yaldabaoth by fusing with Lord English. 

Dirk is profoundly occupied with his own inherent evil, as opposed to Rose who is occupied with the evil of the world. But like Rose, he finds an answer through romance--specifically, in Jake, a boy who believes in all possibilities and touches Dirk’s heart by believing in his potential to be helpful and good. 

And just as Abraxas generates the Aeons to create reality on it’s behalf, so too Jake largely relies on Dirk to help him navigate any part of reality he doesn’t want to deal with. Jake wants life to be a fun, exciting adventure--and he doesn’t sweat the small stuff so long as Dirk is around to keep him safe. 

This dynamic is, again, stressed through Light. When Jake kisses Dirk’s head, Dirk comes alive in a way no other corpsesmooch causes--his Heart filling up with overbearing Light-- as well as the lamp that represents Dirk’s life, the lamp in particular growing so bright it in fact cannot contain the force of Dirk’s emotion and simply shatters. (This moment is pretty much the only reason these lanterns exist, by the way--they only light up like thiss again when the kids God Tier--that is to say, Ascend.)

When Aranea lights Jake up, his only response is to summon his perfect, idealized Dirk, quoting his favorite movie (one that perfectly encapsulates the nature of their relationship as well as Jake’s arc), calling himself his boyfriend (post break-up), and coming to save him from the entities making him feel unsafe. 

For both boys, Light results in coming closer together--Dirk rushes to Jake’s side, and Jake calls Dirk right to him. It’s a symbiotic arrangement that results in both achieving peace with their lives--Jake reassuring Dirk’s existential angst, Dirk making Jake’s adventures and life stress-free and enjoyable. 

Terezi and Vriska

This one is a little complicated, since they haven’t technically ended up together in the Alpha (but like, you know, I believe in them?) but all of the Light symbolism is there, and the imagery is some of the most interesting and compelling.

Plenty of people have pointed out how as a Light player, Vriska steals the spotlight. But the Mind aspect is represented through neurons carrying streaks of thought represented as Light, and this evokes her relationship with Terezi as well--Vriska steals the spotlight in Terezi’s thoughts, too, Terezi considering her both the most important person in her life and the riddle she most needs to solve to reach Understanding. 

To Terezi, understanding Vriska is necessary to understanding herself is necessary to understanding reality, so it’s no surprise she ends up caught off balance and unable to reach real conclusions or catharsis whether Vriska is alive or dead--in either case, Terezi simply does not consider making the one choice that might give her true insight: Being honest with herself and Vriska about how she feels about her. Being true to her Heart. 

Until, of course, she does. The moment Terezi is finally honest about what she desires--that she wants Vriska, that she wants to remember her alternate self, that she wants the truth about what Vriska really thinks of her...she gets it. Her Seer of Mind powers manifest in full, giving her access to her Game Over self’s memories after her death, bringing her face to face with...

Vriska. The Mind symbol in [S] Remem8er literally fades into Vriska. 

And not JUST a Vriska, but a Vriska uniquely positioned to give her the truth--a Vriska who’s had time and space to put down her swords and masks, a Vriska who’s learned how to love and then been abandoned, a Vriska who’s been forced to reconsider what’s important, and a Vriska who’s thoughts ultimately lead her to...

Terezi again, and to both of them meeting honestly on a bright red quadrant, no less (in case you were wondering whether this is all romantic: the answer’s yes). This is a Vriska who is uniquely positioned to make a different choice with Terezi, and simply be honest about her feelings. 

And what do they do together once they exchange those feelings?

Gaze into the light together. Finally able to understand each other and themselves, Terezi and Vriska are finally able to understand reality, as well. Again, reaching Enlightenment and inner peace is linked to connecting to those you care about. 

And Alpha Terezi is privy to all this. She gets to see the truth she wanted so badly. So it’s no surprise she decides Vriska is worth going back into the Void for--she already knows how she feels.

The only question, then, is if and how Vriska herself will realize it. I suppose it’s also possible (Vriska) and (Terezi) are still alive, and some kind of merger will take place--many people think they died in that bubble, but I think it’s ambiguous for a reason. In any case I do think SOME version of Vriska and SOME version of Terezi will end up together and live. Or at least...I hope so. 

I’m really excited for the fucking epilogue. 

Anyway everyone in homestuck is lgbt, dirkjake and vrisrezi are canon, all these ships are great and canon treats them great and I dearly hope to god we can someday just celebrate them all. Hopefully this post will give you new stuff to love about each one.

Happy 4/13, guys. I love you. Even those of you wrong about dirkjake. 

This series of meta posts is a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.

If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.

See you again soon, everyone. Until then,

Keep rising.

[placetobenation]

SmackDown on Fox Episode #10 SmackDown Episode # 1,059 Fayetteville, NC – Crown Coliseum 12/6/19

We open the show with a video highlighting everything that happened last week between Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt.  The Miz will be kicking off the show tonight. Miz talks about how he was supposed to have Daniel Bryan as his guest on Miz TV, however, nobody has heard from Bryan since The Fiend got a hold of him last week. The Miz says that while he still doesn’t like Bryan he realizes how much Bryan means to both the fans and the rest of the boys in the locker room, The Miz vows to find out what happened to Bryan.  Wyatt then appears on the screen and says that The Fiend may not be done with Bryan and that The Miz doesn’t want to know what The Fiend did to Bryan. Wyatt alludes that Bryan may not make it to TLC and asks Miz if he wants to play instead. Wyatt talks about how he used to have a family (as we see flashes of the Wyatt Family) but now he has a chance to join a new family as he holds up a picture of The Miz and his family. Wyatt then asks The Miz if he wants to play now as Miz marches up the ramp with a purpose and we go to commercial. As we come back from commercial we see The Miz talking to Maryse on the phone and telling her to lock up the house as Bray is unpredictable. Miz tells Maryse that he is leaving the arena immediately and will be headed home.  Match #1 Mandy Rose w/ Sonya Deville vs Alexa Bliss w/ Nikki Cross As Alexa makes her way to the ring we see two giant 3D yellow heads that are supposed to be Alexa and Nikki that were equally cute and ridiculous looking. Also worth noting that Jessika Carr is refereeing this match and will now be a permanent member of SmackDown’s referee roster. The two women lock up and Alexa takes down Mandy and holds her down until Mandy throws her off and tells Alexa not to touch her face. Alexa gets out of a rear waist lock with a back elbow and a drop toe hold which causes Mandy to roll outside and take a powder. Mandy moves out of the way as Alexa attempts a baseball slide and then she nails Alexa with a bicycle knee strikes that she thankfully landed this week. Mandy slams the face of Alexa on the apron before rolling her back into the ring where she gets a 2 count on a pinfall attempt. Mandy grounds Alexa and then rubs her forearm across the face of Alexa. Mandy then removes Alexa’s eyelashes as the announcers freak out as if they had never seen fake eyelashes before.  Alexa tries to make a comeback but Mandy takes her down with a dropkick and then goes for a cover, but the referee won’t count as Mandy’s foot is outside the ring. Mandy looks to hit the Bed of Roses but Alexa blocks it and then turns an attempted bicycle knee into a roll-up that gets a 2 count. Mandy starts smacking Alexa around while talking trash and saying Alexa will never look like her, eventually, Alexa has had enough as she grabs Mandy by the throat. Alexa has a look on her face that reminds you why they call her the “5 Feet of Fury” as she slams Mandy to the mat. Alexa hits Mandy with a couple of nice right hands and follows up with a basement dropkick. Alexa steps onto Mandy’s body while she uses her foot to repeatedly bash Mandy’s face into the mat. Alexa hits the first part of Insult to Injury but then has to knock Sonya off the apron, Nikki takes care of Sonya with a crossbody off the steps. Mandy tries to pick up a win with an O’Connor roll but Alexa kicks out and then hits Mandy with a wrap-around DDT that didn’t look good at all as Mandy bumps a second before she is supposed to. Alexa goes up top and hits Twisted Bliss to pick up the win in her first match back. Winner: Alexa Bliss via Pinfall    Match Rating: ** First off, I declare this match to be known as “The Battle of the Buns”. It was great to see Alexa back and even better she is back as a 100% babyface (I know she was a babyface before she left but it feels more concrete now than it did then) although she has always been a babyface in my heart. I liked the eyelashes spot as it was something different and actually got the crowd into the match. I was glad to see Mandy hit the bicycle knee this week as that is one of my favorite moves and more times than not she is able to hit it with perfection. I’m curious what they have planned in the future for all four women in this match as it feels like this feud is just a holdover to get through the holidays and hopefully as the new year rolls around they have something bigger planned, but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if all four of them are in the battle royal at WrestleMania.   We go to the back where Drake Maverick approaches Dana Brooke once again and asks what Dave Bautista has that he doesn’t, this leads to Elias coming into the picture and singing a song about Drake not being able to get any nookie and then ends the song talking about Drake’s wife in his bed. Drake slaps Elias and then walks off.  As we come back from a commercial break Drake Maverick is in the ring and is tired of everyone making a mockery of him and his marriage, he wants to fight Elias. Elias comes out and as Maverick charges toward him, Elias is able to hold him off with one hand before bending him over his knee and giving him a spanking before literally kicking him in the butt and sending him out of the ring. Dana throws Maverick back into the ring and Elias hits him with the Drift Away, Dana comes in and puts her foot on Maverick’s chest while Elias counts to 3.

I honestly don’t know what to say about this segment other than why? I have to imagine this leads to a Batista appearance in the future, I could see a segment where Maverick convinces Batista to beat up Elias and then after he does that he turns around and takes out Maverick as well leading to Batista and Dana kissing in the middle of the ring. It’s either that or Maverick and Renee Michelle are revealed to be swingers and they swing with Dana and Batista, that sounds like a crazy idea but at the rate, WWE is going right now I wouldn’t be surprised.  We then go back to The Miz who is on his way out of the building when he is stopped in his tracks as out of the corner of his eye he sees a mysterious room with red lighting, as Miz enters the room he sees the same picture that Wyatt showed earlier only this time it was Bray in the picture instead of The Miz. Bray (who is in his Funhouse gear and not dressed as The Fiend) tells The Miz to say cheese and then lays him out with a Sister Abigail before singing a song about being home for the holidays.  I like how they have changed things up from what we expected as I’m sure everyone was expecting The Fiend vs Daniel Bryan at TLC but instead they were able to build a side feud with Wyatt vs Miz to get through the rest of the year so they can save the big rematch between Bray and Bryan for the Rumble. I like how they are involving Miz’s family in this as it gives the viewers some reason to want to see the match despite knowing for sure that Miz is not winning the match. The most noteworthy thing coming out of the interactions tonight between Miz and Wyatt was the fact that for the first time it was Wyatt attacking someone and not The Fiend, this is a new wrinkle to the story of Bray Wyatt and The Fiend that I am interested in seeing develop. As we come back from commercial we see a referee helping The Miz out as Miz wonders where the picture of his family went. We see the first of two plugs for Tribute to the Troops that they put on earlier that day and I assume will be shown on TV in the next couple of weeks.  New Day makes their way out as they will be on commentary for the next match where the winners will face New Day at TLC for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship. 

Match #2: Mustafa Ali & Shorty G vs Heavy Machinery vs Lucha House Party vs The Revival (4 Way Elimination Match) Shorty and Metalik start the match out with some nice chain wrestling before Shorty makes the tag to Ali. If the pace wasn’t quick enough already Ali and Metalik turned it up to max speed as they did a sequence where they were countering and dodging each other’s moves, the sequences ended with Metalik cartwheeling out of a running hurricanrana from Ali. Metalik tags in Dorado and then Tucker tags himself in. Tucker shows his agility by flipping over Dorado on a drop-down and then both men hit simultaneous dropkicks. Tucker and Dorado show respect to each other which draws the ire of The Revival who come in and are quickly taken down by Tucker and Dorado with dropkicks. Tucker picks up Dorado in a back suplex position and uses him as a battering ram to knock the other teams off the apron. Dorado hits a handspring stunner on Tucker and then both men make tags to their respective partners. Dorado takes Otis down with a dropkick and then Lucha House Party hit simultaneous moonsaults to the outside onto their opponents. Dawson hits Dorado with a suplex on the outside and then Metalik springboards into the arms of Otis and this leads to Heavy Machinery hitting the Compactor to eliminate Lucha House Party and this sends us to commercial. As we come back from commercial Shorty is working over the arm of Tucker until Tucker makes a comeback and slams Shorty. Wilder tags himself in and then cuts off Tucker before he can make a tag, Wilder takes Tucker down with a double leg only to get pushed back into the corner which allows Shorty to tag himself back in. Shorty runs into a big hip toss from Tucker and as he rolls into The Revival’s corner Dawson tags himself in. Dawson gets hits with a back body drop and this allows Tucker to finally make the hot tag to Otis. Otis slams Dawson and then gives us a striptease as he pulls his shirt off, Otis then Hulks up and suplexes Dawson across the ring. Otis hits Dawson with an avalanche in the corner and as he does Wilder makes the blind tag. Otis hits the Caterpillar elbow drop on Dawson but as soon as he does Wilder catches him with a sunset flip which is enough for the 3 count and just like that Heavy Machinery is eliminated. There is a staredown between the two remaining teams that turns into a brawl that goes to the outside. The Revival taunt New Day and try to throw Shorty and Ali back in the ring but the babyfaces counter and end up sending The Revival over the top of the announce table and into New Day. We go to commercial as all three teams are arguing at ringside.

As we come back from the break we see that Dawson has Shorty in a Gory special which Shorty turns into a roll-up for 2. Dawson makes a tag to Wilder who cuts Shorty off from making the tag, but this would end up backfiring as Shorty hits a German suplex on both men. Ali tags himself in and we get a German suplex and superkick double team spot on Wilder that got them another 2 count as Dawson broke up the pin. Shorty knocks Dawson and himself over the top rope and to the floor with a running crossbody. Ali tries for the roll-through X-Factor but is caught with a nice lariat by Wilder, Ali then tries for the tornado DDT but Wilder turns that into a power slam. Wilder tries for a suplex but Ali is able to escape and get Wilder in a pinning position only to be kicked straight into the corner where this time Ali hits the tornado DDT.  Ali goes up top looking for the 450 but Dawson pulls Wilder out of the ring at the right time but instead of crashing to the mat Ali is able to roll through it. Ali gets caught on a tope attempt and is tossed into the timekeeper area only for Shorty to take The Revival down moments later by diving off the apron. Shorty looks to hit a top rope moonsault but Wilder gets his foot up only for Shorty to catch the foot and lock in the ankle lock. Wilder rolls through to get out of the ankle lock and sends Shorty right into an uppercut from Dawson and then moments later The Revival hit the Shatter Machine to pick up the win. Winners: The Revival via Pinfall    Match Rating: ***¼

I really enjoyed this match as it was action-packed and ever never slowed down. I really liked everything in the match involving Lucha House party especially when Metalik and Ali were in there together. I really hope in the future once they decide to split the Lucha House Party that they give Metalik a decent push as he is so good and deserves a bigger spotlight be shown on him. I look forward to the New Day vs The Revival match at TLC as I feel these two teams have yet to have that classic match that has everyone talking.

After the match, The Revival cut a passionate promo about being sick of the New Day’s jokes and silliness but that will end when they become SmackDown Tag Team Champions. The Revival vow to take things back to the old-school with some old-school tag team wrestling. The Revival tells New Day they can go back to doing their podcast so they can tell the world they just got beat by the best team in the company. 

We get a video recapping what happened last week with Reigns delivering a proper ass whooping to Robert Roode. Roman is interviewed backstage and says that he plans on embarrassing Corbin in their TLC match at the TLC PPV. Michael Cole hypes the fact that CM Punk will be back on WWE Backstage next week.

We see another video from Sheamus to hype his return. Match #3: Lacey Evans vs Haley Jones Lacey’s opponent for this match must have come straight from her day job of being the ringmaster at the circus. They lock up and Lacey tosses Haley down and then hits her with an arm drag which leads to Lacey working on the arm for a minute. Haley gets to her feet but Lacey slams her right back down to the mat. They lock up again and Lacey backs Haley into the corner which leads to Haley trying to make a comeback with some weak forearms. Lacey counters a whip to the ropes and hits the Woman’s Right to pick up the win. Winner: Lacey Evans via Pinfall  Match Rating: DUD

After the match, Sasha Banks comes out and says that Lacey had better not lay a finger on her or Bayley again and mentions something about Lacey’s daughter which gets an instant reaction of Lacey who tells Sasha that she better never mention her daughter again. Lacey talks about being a marine and says she will drop Sasha where she stands. Lacey throws a feint woman’s right and Sasha falls back as she was anticipating the punch, but instead, all she got was an embarrassment. As Lacey is walking up the ramp she is attacked by Bayley, the Boss N Hug Connection beatdown the Sassy Southern Belle and stand tall above Lacey.

After two weeks I have to say I am liking babyface Lacey and according to tonight’s crowd, the fans are liking it as well as they chanted Nasty toward Sasha. I thought Lacey cut a really good promo and I’m happy to hear that she is talking more natural and no longer has the long drawn out cadence to her promos. I liked how Lacey got some shine on Sasha by making her look a fool while and then immediately turns around and gets her heat back as she helps Bayley beat down Lacey, as all three women got over in the segment. This is one of the matches I’m looking forward to at TLC. I couldn’t help but laugh a little when Lacey said something about not only being a mother but also being a marine because there is a commercial that I see for an attorney that is based here in South Carolina (as well as Georgia) where the main selling point as to why you should come to him is that he is a former marine, all she had to do was tell us to call 999-9999 and she would’ve just done a commercial for George Sink.  After a commercial break, we get another video package focussing on Tribute to the Troops.  Match #4: Roman Reigns vs Dolph Ziggler The tights that Ziggler wore in this match looked like they came straight from Brutus Beefcake’s closet. Ziggler tries to go for a single leg takedown but Reigns grabs a front face lock which gets broken when Ziggler reaches the ropes. Ziggler kicks Reigns in the knee and then delivers a neck breaker for a near fall. Ziggler rakes the eyes of Reigns before grounding him with a rest hold until Reigns fights back and gets to his feet only for Ziggler to slam him back down to the mat by his hair. Ziggler waits for Reigns to get up so he can hit a stinger splash in the corner, but instead, he is met with an uppercut from Reigns. Ziggler rolls to the outside so he can sucker in Reigns and sure enough, it works as Ziggler dodges an attempted Drive-By and sends Reigns into the steps as we go to commercial.

We come back from break and see that Ziggler has Reigns grounded and is working on the arm, Reigns tries for a roll-up out of nowhere that gets a near fall and then Reigns is hit with a dropkick. Ziggler then starts toying around with Reigns which only fires Reigns up as he comes back with a couple of uppercuts before he is sent face-first into the middle turnbuckle. Reigns rolls outside which allows Ziggler to throw him into the barricade and then right back into the ring where he gets a 2 count off a pin attempt. Ziggler grounds Reigns once again with a chin lock, eventually, Reigns escapes the hold and delivers a couple of clotheslines one of which takes Ziggler over the top rope to the floor. Reigns leaps off the steps looking for a Superman Punch but ate a superkick instead. While both men are down at ringside we get the arrival of King Corbin who is being carried down to the ring on the royal sedan as we go to commercial.

We come back to Reigns signaling for the Superman Punch but Ziggler dodges it and then Reigns catches the foot of Ziggler on a superkick attempt only for Ziggler to dodge an uppercut and hit a big jumping DDT that gets a 2 count. Ziggler waits for Reigns to get to his feet and when he does Ziggler goes to hit the Zig Zag, but Reigns hangs onto the top rope only for Ziggler to hit a sunset flip for a 2 count. Reigns finally hit the Superman Punch but it only gets him a 2 count. Reigns goes for the Spear but Ziggler cut him off with a kick to the head and then throws Reigns into the corner shoulder first. Ziggler is able to hit the Zig-Zag finally but that isn’t enough to get the job done. At this point, Corbin comes down from his sedan and gets on the apron to distract the referee only for Reigns to knock him back down to the floor with a Superman Punch. Ziggler tries for a roll-up but Reigns kicks out and then hits Ziggler with a Spear to get the win. Winners: Roman Reigns via Pinfall   Match Rating: ***

After the match, the men who carried Corbin to the ring on the sedan attack Reigns and after fighting them off Reigns is attacked by Corbin momentarily before Reigns fights him off only to be hit with a superkick from Ziggler. Ziggler grabs a set of handcuffs from under the ring and with a 6-on-1 advantage, the heels handcuff Reigns to the ring post in a position where his arms are held up over his head. Ziggler then reaches under the ring once again and this time he pulls out cans of dog food and just as you would expect they poor the dog food all over Reigns and rub it into his face, Corbin delivers the final blow when he hits Reigns with the scepter. The show ends with a handcuffed Reigns covered in dog food and screaming out in anger. I thought I was going to be able to write a review about a good episode of SmackDown, but as expected WWE screws that up as they took two steps backward by booking Reigns to be the sympathetic (and this week you can add humiliated) babyface rather than continuing on from last week where he looked like a badass. The logical booking for this week should’ve seen Reigns taking out Ziggler so that Corbin would be on his own at TLC, however this is WWE and they rarely think logically for long periods of time so instead we got Reigns handcuffed to the ring post and being covered in dog food (I guess we can be thankful it wasn’t dog shit, shoutout to the feud between the British Bulldog and The Rock back in 1999) because that is a sure way to get people to want to see this match. It sucks for both Reigns and Ziggler that people will be talking about how bad the post-match stuff was and completely forget the match they had that was good. With the exception of the dog food part at the end of the show I think this was one of the better shows I have reviewed, there were two good matches, we got more acquainted with babyface Lacey Evans and she is doing great in that role so far, we got the first Alexa Bliss match on SmackDown since she returned last week, and probably most importantly we got a segment that added to the Wyatt character as he attacked someone not dressed as The Fiend. 

That’s it for this week I hope you enjoy the first review that I wrote from my new Microsoft Surface Pro X which was a Christmas present from my mom. 

[mozart-and-mocha]

Major key with 1 flat

I ran into Rafaela again, this time outside a café near her school. Or rather, she ran into me. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really notice her in the crowd. But since we were in the same place, we might as well sit down for coffee.

“So, uh, what do I call you in public? It’s not like I can shout ‘F major’ outside of a musical context. I really don’t need people thinking I’m crazy,” she explained. This kid did have a point. I thought for a moment. “Okay, there’s no easy way out of this. Unlike my relative minor and her parallel major, I do not have a name that could pass for normal, by your standards.” I winked at her. “You don’t have to call me by name in public. As long as I know you’re talking to me, that should be fine.”

“Okay,” she shrugged. “Anyway, I stumbled upon this series on the internet personifying you and the 23 other keys. I listened to some of it with Dave. So how it works is that there are 24 episodes, one for each key. Each episode is about 4-5 minutes long, and it tells a story using classical music written in that key. There’s a bit of pop music too, but only in 3 episodes.”

How had I not known about this before? At least it showed that humans have been personifying us for ages. 

“Interesting.” I paused for a moment, wondering if I should ask her if she had listened to the episode describing me. Then I decided against it. I wasn’t so sure I really wanted to hear conflicting aspects of my character, which there were bound to be. “So which did you listen to?”

“Dave was the one who introduced it to me. We listened to the D minor and A major episodes together, at least that I can remember, since those were the keys that the two of us had met.” Rafaela hesitated. “Dave might have listened to other episodes on his own. And in case you’re wondering, I listened to the F major episode. At home, without Dave. I don’t think you’ve met him.”

I was curious to know how I was described in the episode about me. But first, I wanted to be sure who Dave was. “Is he the one who confessed to my relative minor?” I asked.

A look of horror crossed Rafaela’s face. “Oh no. How did you-” her voice trailed off as she understood. “Re would’ve told you, right? Dave kinda let it slip. I didn’t know he liked her until after he showed me that series!” By then, she was blushing. 

I couldn’t say I was surprised. Many people have been drawn to the key of D minor. She’s just hauntingly sad. And maybe furious at times. And possibly a reminder of gloom. Mozart’s requiem, Beethoven’s ninth symphony, Bruckner. In fact, Bruckner was apprehensive about writing his ninth symphony in D minor, the same key that Beethoven wrote his ninth in. 

“How did the episode about me describe me?” I decided to change the subject. I took a sip of my latte, bracing myself for whatever characteristics I was purported to have. I looked at Rafaela, and for a brief moment, we made eye contact, before she looked away and lifted her own cup to her lips.

“You are beautiful,” she began. “Really attractive, but you don’t know it. And you walk barefoot on the grass, with sunlight grazing your shoulders. Also, you have some sadness in you.”

I was not sure the part describing my physical appearance was entirely accurate. I don’t think I’m unattractive, it’s that I don’t particularly think I’m outstanding in the looks department. If you asked me, I’d say that A major was easily one of the better looking ones. I suppose it was somewhat true, I enjoyed walking in the sun. But I usually wore a T-shirt, not one of those things that exposed the shoulders. I don’t even know what they’re called. And sadness? I had always known I wasn’t the happiest of major keys, but I didn’t know to what extent the sadness in me showed through.

“According to the episode, you had a rough childhood, but you overcame the past. And, I quote, ‘now she stands tall’. So maybe you’re good at moving on. Also, it says that you’re a mom.”

“Excuse me?” I hiccuped. “What do you mean, I’m a mother?” What I did not mention is that I’ve been called a tomboy, made fun of, and shoved into the mud many times, for not being feminine enough. I was too much of a boy. If the people I had encountered in the past had heard this, they would be roaring in laughter. My past hadn’t exactly been a bed of roses. I've even been told to stay single to spare anyone the thought of being with me, much less be a mother. They said I was too messed up to be a mum. While the prospect of being childless did not bother me, something else about that comment did.

“There was something about you cradling your baby and your heart swelling with gratitude,” Rafaela said. “Look, I’m not the one who came up with these characteristics. And that reminds me, you seem like the kind of person who gets impatient at times, but you have a good heart. Teasing your loved ones, throwing dinner parties. And you were characterised as someone who would never leave me.”

“That last bit seems way more accurate than the bit about me being a mother,” I grumbled. “You got me there, I do enjoy a good dinner party. And hanging out with my friends. But being a mum? Really?” I couldn’t keep the incredibility out of my voice. I glanced at Rafaela, who had a weird expression on her face. “That’s like calling Dr James Barry a woman, when he clearly wasn’t one."

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she demanded. “Also, who is Dr James Barry?”

“Hey now, that’s personal,” I said as lightly as I could. “And go google him. I don’t want to reveal everything about myself based on what you think I know.”

“I was discussing this whole synesthesia thing with a friend who isn’t Dave, and she agreed that if F major were a guy, he wouldn’t be very macho.” Rafaela changed the subject, without really changing it. “You just seem like the sort of guy who has no time for toxic masculinity.”

"Is that what I look like to you?” Inside, however, I was beaming.

Rafaela finished the last of her drink. “What do other people think of you?” she replied. “Maybe that’s your answer.”

Later that day, when the sun was about to set, I stopped by to check in on my relative minor. I didn’t really worry about my parallel minor, because I knew F minor was usually engaged in some sports event. But the sad key of D minor? That was a different story.

When I walked in, I saw D major sitting at the dining table, marking papers. “If not for the past few centuries in which I know my relative minor, I would’ve thought I’m in the wrong place,” I quipped.

D major nodded towards the master bedroom. “She’s in there,” she said noncommittally. “How was your day?”

“It was okay, I guess. Had a talk with that kid, Rafaela,” I answered. D major looked at me. “That kid is in my math class,” she said.

“I feel like I should be surprised, but honestly, I’m not,” I laughed. “Looks like C major is doing a superb job, assigning groups of us to the same place.” “Yeah, I guess so,” came the reply, as I walked into the master bedroom.

D minor was lying on the bed, reading, with her phone beside her. “Hey. How are you feeling?” I enquired. “Wanna grab some dinner?”

She sat up and swung her legs to the side of the bed. “Feel like I could sleep any moment,” she complained. "Do I even want to get up again when I know the world would be better off without me, seeing how everyone has turned against me all these years?" I bent down, and she took my hand. I pulled her to her feet and turned to leave the room.

“Rafaela seems horrified that her friend Dave has taken a liking to you.” I tried to keep the atmosphere casual.

“Oh, so that’s his name. The guy who confessed to me while I was looking at scores in the library some time ago.” 

“I hope you weren’t too creeped out,” I said, now in the living room. She followed me, seemingly hesitant. D major was packing up the last of the papers she had to mark. “Teachers need a weekend, too,” she groaned as she walked out the door.

“So much for living a normal life,” D minor muttered beside me. 

“I don’t think depression is normal, either. Sure, it may be common, but it’s something you shouldn’t have to suffer through. There’s a difference between what’s common and what’s normal, and I remember learning that in a psychology class.” I glanced at her as she sank down on a couch. Her face was blank, and I admired her dark eyes, which were gazing into the distance. I sat down next to her. F major and D minor, was this a representation of how we modulated into one another in many pieces with either of us as the home key?

“A rope ends it is an anagram of desperation, and whoever came up with it is very relatable,” she said, her head resting on my shoulder as I stared at the TV.

I reached for her hand, and as I did so, I was suddenly aware of her breathing. “You okay?”

“Do you even know what it’s like, living like this?” she sighed. “At least you swung by tonight.” By then, it had started pouring. Rain was hammering on the roof and windows. I imagined the Raindrop Prelude playing in the background. A random thought of D-flat major flashed through my mind. I hadn’t seen D-flat major in a while, and I hoped she was doing okay. A thud jolted me out of my thoughts. D minor had fallen asleep, and the TV remote hit the floor. 

I lifted her from the couch and carried her to bed. Wow, I’m getting stronger, I thought. F minor would be proud. When I set her down on her bed, D minor woke up and looked at me, through the darkness and the pain I knew she was going through. I knew, because I had experienced it myself, and seen that same darkness in her eyes. A pain that most major keys would not ever experience. “Is something bothering you?” I asked. “Like this whole, atonality war, government cracking down on the arts, us needing synaesthetic musicians, thing?”

My relative minor shrugged. “Probably.” She looked away from me. 

“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” I decided. “Now get some sleep.” 

Even as the two of us drifted off, I knew that there was a bigger issue that had not been explicitly mentioned. It wasn’t about her, or whatever it was that she wasn’t telling me. I hated admitting it, but there was something I felt she deserved to know.