#past and present bookends of life

[limnsaber]

Stammi Vicino and the events of Yuri!!! On Ice are still mind boggling to me. Where’s that post about scarcely-fathomable level of romance.

Stammi Vicino is the first skating sequence in YOI. It is the first full skating routine we are presented with and it’s the choreography we see in the very first moments of the show. Lyrically, Stammi Vicino is about a man calling out for someone to hear him, speaking of intense loneliness and decrying love. The lyrics were written by the creator of YOI, Kubo Mitsurou, and translated into Italian for the composition.

In the first episode of the show, both Yuuri and Victor skate this routine individually. Victor skates it for Worlds, and Yuuri skates it because he wants to get his love for skating back.

Unbeknownst to him, Yuuri’s performance was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, and Victor comes into his life from there (directly because of Yuuri’s SV performance).

Victor sees Yuuri’s performance and comes to meet Yuuri, and that’s the inciting incident of the show. Both of their routines were a calling out into the darkness, and they were answered. (That’s love!) Through the show, we learn that both Victor and Yuuri were in bad places at the time of the routine of the first episode, and we see them grow wonderfully together in their relationship and as people through the series.

Stammi Vicino is also known as Hanarezu Ni Soba Ni Ite in Japanese, or Stay Close to Me. This line is said by both characters throughout the show, perhaps most significantly by Yuuri in their argument in the parking garage in EP 7 (a major turning point for their relationship).

The first time Yuuri sees Victor in the flashback, we get notes of Stammi Vicino underneath the dialogue.

This song is perhaps the musical foundation for the entire show! Every aspect of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship is writ in, from calling out into the darkness to finally coming together— represented in the closing routine of the show, Stammi Vicino: Duetto.

Yuuri skates Stammi Vicino once more as the show’s final episode closes, and this time Victor joins him for a pair skate. The final episode is one where they’ve finally fully come together — they agree on their future and on their future together. It’s a beautiful bookend to the story, and represents, as the skating routines always do, their characters and their relationship.

In Duetto, the verses about condemning love are gone and the piece has two singers instead of one. Verses in both the aria and duetto say “your hands, your legs / my hands, my legs / our heartbeats / are blending together,” referencing — and they were crazy for this honestly — Plato’s theory of soulmates. At the end of the piece, the singers “leave together”.

The creator, Kubo Mitsurou, has stated in the past very explicitly and publicly that Victor and Yuuri are soulmates. Canonically! The first time Yuuri sees Victor in the flashback, we get notes of Stammi Vicino underneath the dialogue. Stammi Vicino is the musical thread of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship.

They’re engaged!! To be married!!! They’re canonically soulmates!!!

The music in YOI is deeply intertwined with the storytelling. Each routine is uniquely representative of a character, who they are as person, and their journey. The relationship between Victor and Yuuri is the core of this show, and Stammi Vicino is perhaps the most important piece representative of their relationship.

Stammi Vicino, the aria and duetto, represent a story about loneliness and calling out for love and that call being answered. That’s the thesis of Yuri on Ice.

“There’s a place you just can’t reach unless you have a dream too big to bear alone. We call everything on the ice ‘love.’”

[mangoshorthand]

A Hargreeves Christmas Carol | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader | Ch4

SUMMARY: Luther is the sort of idiot who goes around with a 'Merry Christmas' and a goofy smile on his lips. In your opinion, he should be roasted with his own turkey and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Who better to teach you the error of your ways than Luther's brother, the man who holds the power of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come in the palm of his hand? Info/Announcement Post

<< Read Chapter Three

Chapter Four (Rated M, 4.3k words)

The Last of the Spirits

As the living room cleared of his family, their Christmas ruined by the argument, Five succeeded in priming the briefcase. He reached out as if to take your upper arm and vanish with you into the previous evening, but you jumped out of his reach. 

“No Five. Show me the future! Show me the nuclear armageddon all this is supposed to cause. Because, based on what I just saw, this is your fault, not mine.” 

You reached out a finger and jabbed him hard in the chest, withdrawing quickly lest he use the opportunity to grab you. 

“You’re going home,” he said, firmly.

“I am not!” you yelled, stamping your foot in frustration, “take me to the future and prove to me that you haven’t been lying for an opportunity to get in my pants!”

Five tossed his head angrily, shaking his fists at his sides in equal frustration and making the briefcase hit him hard in the leg. 

“Don’t flatter yourself” he spat, “You think I’d do all this just for that?”

And then, after a slight pause:

“You think I’d try to scare you into fucking me, is that it?

“I don’t know what to believe!” you cried. 

Five took two or three angry breaths and chewed the inside of his cheek before he responded.

“I didn’t lie to get into your pants,” he said, sounding bitter, but slightly calmer “And, technically, I didn’t lie to you at all. I never actually said you caused nuclear armageddon. I just let you believe it.”

“WHAT?”

“I said that upsetting Luther could potentially cause nuclear armageddon, which is true: actions like those can, indirectly, lead to apocalyptic events. I never actually said it did in this case, however.”

You seized a bookend off a nearby shelf and threw it at him, hard. He, of course, blinked and reappeared a short distance away, leaving the bookend to smash against the wall. 

“I guess I would have deserved that.” Five said, eyeing the bookend as it faded back into being on the bookshelf. 

“YOU FUCKING PSYCHOPATH.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know I shouldn’t -”

“YOU BASTARD!”

“I know,” he replied, a pleading note in his voice now, “but if you just-”

“YOU ARE BARRED. TAKE ME HOME, AND THEN NEVER SHOW YOUR FACE IN MY BAR AGAIN. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!”

Five held up the hand not holding the briefcase.

“Fine, okay. I get it. But will you let me explain?”

You breathed like an angry bull, your fists clenched so hard it felt like you’d never be able to relax them again, but gave a resentful nod.

“Thank you,” he said, putting the briefcase down on one of the couches and sitting on its arm, facing you. 

“I guess it was my fault. I just…I guess I tried to blame you because that was easier than facing the fact I ruined Christmas for Luther… and for everyone else.”

You let out a huff, but his face kept you from an angry expostulation for the time being, and he continued: 

“But Sloane was right. You and I are similar. We’re both kind of misanthropic: we push the people who care about us away. It might not lead to an apocalypse, but it’s hardly gonna spell good news for us in the future.”

His expression appealed to yours, and you found it hard to maintain the same level of anger as you saw the honest-to-God anxiety in his face.

“I got a second chance to live my life,” he continued, quietly, “and I’m already fucking it up. You only got one life, and I don’t want to see you fuck it up either.”

You looked back at him, at his beautiful, infuriating, and wholly sincere face. Not for the first time that night, you felt the strange urge to cry. 

What was even stranger was the urge to cry on his shoulder. 

“I think you’re right,” he said.

“About what?” you asked, frowning.

“We should go see the future. Check in on you and I in, say, ten years time? See how bad it gets?”

The idea, though you’d been fiercely advocating for it only a minute or so earlier, suddenly filled you with a thrill of uncertain horror. Perhaps it was the effect of his speech, but to have such unnatural knowledge, impossible in the normal course of things, seemed now too terrible to comprehend. 

Nevertheless, you nodded silently, your legs starting to tremble beneath you. 

“Good,” Five said, and held out his hand. 

You took it. As he ran his thumb over the back of your hand, the fear became a little more bearable. 

“I really am sorry,” he said, seriously, still holding your eyes with his.

“I'll forgive you,” you replied, and squeezed his fingers. 

He smiled softly and let your hand go, reaching behind him for the briefcase once more.

“Okay,” he said, balancing it on one knee and playing with the dials, “since it’s still my hair in the briefcase, we may as well visit me first.”

The case clicked and whirred as, with a flourish, he finished his calibration. 

“Ready to see how shit my life gets?”

He looked up at you with a grin, took your hand again, and you both vanished into the now-familiar static.

You emerged in another living room, almost as different as it was possible to be from the one you just left. It was dingy, lit by a single bulb uncovered by any sort of shade.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Five murmured, looking around disdainfully. 

You had overcome your fear for now, and you looked around the living room with interest. 

It was clean at least, but the furnishings left a lot to be desired. There was a single recliner in the center of the carpet facing a TV mounted on the wall in front of you. There was also a squashed looking chesterfield, which seemed as if it was only there for form’s sake; a vague gesture at the idea of having guests.

Other than that, there was a small table beside the recliner and a couple of IKEA-looking bookcases, each filled to the brim with books. Otherwise, the room was empty. 

“Well, I’m definitely still single.” Five said, nodding to the sparse decor slightly bitterly, “Figures.”

“Yep, it’s not great,” you confirmed, grimacing.

He glanced down at the briefcase and then around the room again.

“It’s definitely Christmas Eve,” he said, “but I guess I got nobody to put up a tree for. What would be the point?”

There was a voice from the other room and you both fell silent.

“Oh, that’s great. Tell him I say hi.” 

It was Five’s voice, and it was followed a half second later by Five himself coming into the room. 

“Really?” the Five beside you said, a mixture of disappointment and incredulity in his voice. 

The decade-older Five was wearing a pair of pajama pants, no shirt, and was sporting a chevron mustache that didn't suit him. He held a phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, and his well-abused slippers shushed against the carpet. 

He was carrying a beer in one hand and what looked like some sort of frozen dinner in the other: constituted beef packaged into steak-esque shapes was sitting on a bed of soggy green beans. On the side, there was a dump of watery potato puree masquerading as mashed. 

“This is so depressing,” Five said, cringing at the sight of himself.

“That mustache does make you look like a child molester,” you agreed.

“Thanks." 

“Mm-hm,” said the future Five, placing his sad meal on the table and settling himself in the recliner, facing away from you, “well that’s nice to hear. Did the gifts for the kids arrive...Good, good.”

He picked up the beer and took a swig, using the remote to turn on the TV and immediately mute it, flicking through the channels as he spoke on the phone. 

“Me? Oh, I’m fine. Just relaxing, you know?”

He paused in his channel surfing on a showing of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, set down the control and watched it as he continued the conversation.

“You know me, I hate Christmas … Yeah, I’m happy as hell here.”

Five winced beside you. 

“I’m guessing that’s a lie?” you murmured, looking at your Five sidelong.

“Yup,” Five said, grimly, “the only thing I hate worse than people is being alone.”

Five’s future self lifted his dinner onto his lap and speared a limp green bean onto his fork.

“How’s Luther?” he said, “Life and soul of the party, right? … Sure, sure … good for you.”

He took a few more bites of his meal, ‘uh-huh-ing’ and ‘mm-hm-ing’ occasionally at the voice on the other end of the line. 

 Well,” he said, an almost undetectable tinge of sadness in his voice now, “maybe next year.”

His tone made it so clear that he didn’t hold out much hope that you didn’t even bother conferring with the Five beside you.

“You guys got your New Years planned? … Nice, nice … do you know what everyone else is doing?”

He stayed quiet as he listened, eating some more and throwing out another mm-hm or uh-huh as the conversation required. 

“Huh?” he said, eventually. “I’ll probably hit the bars with a couple of friends. Maybe do the big countdown in Times Square or wherever.”

“I’m lying,” Five said to you, flatly.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Five in the chair continued, “well I’ll - what? … Oh. No, that’s fine. Have fun tomorrow. I gotta go now anyway … alright … yeah, Happy Christmas. Bye Vik.”

When the call ended, he put down his knife and fork for a few moments, sighed, and then lifted his eyes back to the TV and began eating once more. 

“This is what I get.” Five said dully, watching himself finish the last third of his meal. 

You looked from the Five facing away from you in the chair to the Five beside you, his expression haunted.

“But this is just a future that might be, right?” you said, half asking, half attempting to reassure him, “This isn’t set in stone.”

“If I don’t get my shit together, this is where I’ll be.”

“But you talk like you’re past all hope,” you said, bracingly, “You just have to make a change.”

“Yeah,” he said, though not sounding convinced. 

“And even if you get like this, it’s not like it’s too late to make it right! You’re, what, in your thirties here?” 

“Over eighty,” Five said. 

“Well, whatever,” you continued, “the one thing you got is time. If that Five pulled his finger out of his ass, he could go fix it. It’s not like anyone’s dead.”

As you spoke, the older Five finished his meal and began to channel surf again.

“I was alone for a very long time.” your Five said, “It does something to you.”

You watched him in silence as he continued. 

“When my brain was developing the finer points of empathy, I didn’t have anyone around to empathize with. There was nobody real to practice on while my brain was still plastic.”

You looked from him to the Five in the chair, considering him as you listened. 

“I feel like…maybe I’m doomed.” Five continued, “This is my mind’s comfort zone; nobody around to force me to be an actual human being. Nobody to challenge me, nobody to compromise for. Nobody to force me to be better by expecting more of me.”

Your attention was suddenly caught by the television.

“Uh, Five?”

“It’s like I’m stuck in this pattern of -”

“Five, seriously.”

This got his attention, and he looked at the TV in horror.

“Oh my god!” he cried, almost dropping the briefcase.

On the screen, there were two women gyrating against one another in barely-there Santa-themed lingerie. From the chair, a rhythmic shuffling sound confirmed the worst. 

Horrified, Five grabbed you by the back of your sweater, pulled you out of the room and into a sad looking bedroom. 

“I am so, so sorry!” he said, sitting down heavily on the bed and hiding his face in his hands, “I can’t believe you had to see that!”

You tried extremely hard to keep the laughter in, but a little burst bounds despite your best efforts. 

“I’m sorry,” you said back to him, looking up at you with a red, mortified face made even worse by your reaction, “I’m really sorry to laugh, I don’t want to embarrass you. It was just so unexpected!”

He hid his head in his hands again and groaned, just as the Five from the living room gave an audible groan of his own.

This was too much, and you fell into helpless giggles.

“I’m - s-so ….sorry!” you managed, struggling to speak against laughter that had you doubled over and leaning against the wall for support, “I’m not… I’m not j-judging you, it’s j-just… really f-f-f-funny!”

You struggled to get ahold of yourself, managing it with difficulty, and Five recovered himself just enough to look up at you, mortified. 

“I’m glad one of us is enjoying this at least.”

At this, all your hard work was undone and you bent double again, breathless with laughter.

“T-t-two of us are enjoying it!” you wheezed, gesturing in the direction of Five’s counterpart. 

Five’s face crumpled, but then a pained snort forced its way out, and then he was laughing too. 

“I can’t believe I masturbate to cable porn.” he said, agony in his voice, “That’s the worst part!”

You sat down beside him on the bed and put your arm around his shoulders, giggling breathlessly, his own reluctant laughter just adding to the hilarity. 

In this manner, the laughter gradually faded, and you finished up leaning against one another, still chuckling occasionally. 

Turning to him, you looked at his expression. Though he still looked amused, there was equal humiliation and misery in the lines of his face.

“Listen to me,” you said, softly, “you’re not doomed to loneliness and cable porn. You’re not… you’re not broken, maybe just a little bent.”

“Thanks,” he murmured, bowing his head and letting it rest gently against yours. 

He let out a little breath, as if he were laying down a heavy burden he knew he would have to pick up again all too soon. 

At this close quarters, you could smell that menthol scent again; eucalyptus, perhaps a hint of citrus.

And, rather like the night you wiped salt away from his chin, your body acted without your brain’s involvement. 

You pressed your lips to his scarlet temple, and then withdrew. 

Five looked surprised, and he lifted his head to look at you, only a few inches apart. 

“Thanks,” he said, again, though he mouthed it this time, the word barely articulated.

You looked at each other, caught in this strange, frozen moment. Both of you sat there, paralysed, completely unsure what might happen next.

And then, a particularly drawn out moan from the living room snapped you both back to reality. Apparently the other Five wasn’t far off finishing his visit to the land of cable porn. 

“We should go,” Five said, quickly, drawing away from you quickly and fumbling in his breast pocket for the vial containing your hair.

“Sounds good,” you said, brightly, hiding the awkwardness with jollity. 

There were a few exquisitely embarrassing moments as Five exchanged the hairs in which his older self was putting on rather the auditory show.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Five chanted as he worked, finally succeeding in slamming the DNA housing back into place and setting the briefcase.

With no preamble, he grabbed your arm and you both thankfully vanished into the ether. 

When you rematerialized, it was to find yourself in your bar on a busy night. 

“Thank God.” Five said, still bright pink.

He looked briefly down at the briefcase:

“Yep, same night.”

The bar looked relatively unchanged, though the fixtures and fittings had been upgraded at some point in the ten years that lay between you and this permutation of Maggie’s. There was the same half-assed tinsel around the window frame as the sole concession to the fact it was Christmas Eve.

On the corner table, a group of men donning Santa hats were singing an uproarious version of Jingle Bells, their drinks up over their heads and swaying in unison. 

There you were, behind the crowded bar as usual, shaking a cocktail with one hand and pulling a pint of lager with the other, working with the same, ruthless energy you always did, face hard and steely in concentration. 

Robbie was gone, it seemed, because you didn’t recognise the two employees helping to fend off the rest of the crowd of customers baying for booze and jacked up on Christmas cheer.

“This doesn’t seem fair,” Five said, “You’re doing great, but a few miles away I’m…wanking into a TV dinner like Ebenezer Splooge!”

“I look so much older,” you said, not listening and instead eyeing the first hint of crow’s feet emerging around your eyes.

“You look great,” Five said, impatiently, “This just proves that I’m the problem. You’re perfectly happy, and I'm a mess.”

He watched you almost wistfully, both envying your future and admiring your command, as he always found himself doing whenever he visited Maggie’s. You really were a sight to see behind that bar, and ten years had only added more skill. 

As another large table began to join in with the Jingle Bells guys, you said something that Five didn’t quite catch, and he tore his eyes away from the future you to look at the you beside him.

He was surprised to see tears streaming down your face.

“I’m not happy!” 

You fell against his chest and cried tears more violent than any you’d cried that night.

Five stood there, bewildered, as your desperate tears began to soak through his shirt. 

“Okay, okay,” he said, soothingly, “I’m gonna take you home, alright?”

He fiddled with the briefcase with difficulty, peering over your shoulder to set it where he held it behind your back. With a couple of pushes of buttons, he succeeded, and you were at last standing once more in your darkened living room, the high wind buffering the windows. 

Five looked briefly down at the briefcase for confirmation.

“Ten minutes after we left,” he murmured, satisfied, “Quantum suspension engaged, so no doppelganger for me. We’re good to go from here.”

This done, he lowered you both onto the couch, letting the briefcase bump down softly onto the floor. 

For a few moments, he simply held you against him, and then he shifted his grip to hold you by the shoulders in order to look into your face. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, “Why did seeing that make you cry?”

You shook your head and closed your eyes to weep once more, sobs overtaking you.

“Hey,” Five said, shaking you gently, “given all the shit you've seen about me tonight, you can at least tell me that!”

When this didn’t yield the desired result, he sighed and pulled you back against his shoulder.

“Okay, cry it out for now, but I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

You did cry it out, sniffling against his pure white shirt without a worry for how much you might be ruining it. Right now, he felt warm and safe. His was the only comfort you could imagine taking as waves of revelation broke upon you. 

His was the only comfort you could take, you realized.

Many of your bridges were burned, others had simply rotted away from lack of maintenance, and others yet had been severed by the loss of the other side. The end result was the same: you were very short on bridges. 

In truth, Luther, Robbie, and Five’s bridges were probably the only three you had left.

Luther had maintained his well, without your help, yet earlier today you’d launched a Molotov cocktail at it, leaving it in danger of burning down if you didn’t take action.

Robbie’s was a thin and sickly little bridge, barely a bridge at all. It could have been stronger, you knew, if only you’d allowed him to build as he wanted. 

And Five’s? Right now, it was the only one that could support your weight. It was untested before tonight, yet it was standing firm beneath your feet.

“I’m not happy,” you repeated, when your sobs had subsided enough to allow you to speak, “I haven’t been happy for a long, long time.”

Five’s arms tightened around you.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Ever since my grandma died. I’ve felt…”

You broke, took a couple of breaths, and tried a different way of explaining it. 

“I looked at myself behind that bar, and I realized I have no idea who that woman is.”

Five nodded slowly, though you could tell he didn’t really understand. 

“I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want. I just know that I don’t want to be her in ten years’ time.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because she’s exactly the same as I am now!”

Five gave another of those slow nods, processing. 

“Tell me if I’m way off base,” he said, tentatively, as if he’d just drawn a tenuous red line between points in his mind, “your grandma died, and you took over Maggie’s immediately, right? When you were twenty one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that maybe you threw yourself into managing the place to avoid… actually grieving her?”

You made a small, wounded noise, a fresh wave of tears descended, and you nodded against his chest.

He reclined on the couch, taking you with him as he fumbled behind you to pull a blanket over you. It was warm, comforting, and it made you cry harder in relief.

“Maggie’s was never your baby,” he said, softly, “it was hers.”

You nodded.

“Do you even like running it?”

You shook your head, admitting it for the first time with a shuddering outward breath.

“Everything she did for me. I can’t just let that go. That bar was everything to her.”

Five shook his head.

“You think she gave you that bar so that you could chain yourself to it?”

“No.”

“Then sell it.”

“No!”

“Well, then find something in the middle!” 

You sniffled and took a few moments to regain some composure. 

“I don’t like managing the bar, but I like mixology. When I make cocktails, it reminds me of her and it feels good.”

“Then stick with mixology and ditch the rest,” he said, as if it were obvious.

You shook your head.

“I can’t let her down. If - if I don’t make it a success then… then I’ll be proving she was wrong to trust me with it.”

“Sounds like you got your thinking backwards to me,” Five scoffed. 

“What do you mean?”

“You said she always fought for you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re acting like she raised you just to make sure there would be someone around to make Maggie’s a success. Seems more likely that she worked her ass off in the bar to make sure she could leave something behind for you.”

You couldn’t help but see the logic in this, but still, something niggled:

“The bar’s her legacy. I can’t abandon it.”

“You’re her legacy, idiot.”

His logic had done little to dispel your doubts, but this emotional truth smashed through them with the force of a wrecking ball. 

You remembered her twinkling at you at fifteen as she taught you to make your first margaria, you remembered her beaming with pride when you first made a cosmo by heart, and you remembered her on her deathbed, pressing her rhinestone necklace into your hand and telling you how proud she was, how successful you’d be. 

You remembered her taking her in your arms and making you feel safe while your parents screamed. 

It wasn’t the bar, it was you. It was always you. 

And you were crying once more: hot, cleansing, healing tears.

“I miss her,” you hiccuped against Five’s chest. 

“I know,” he said, stroking your hair.

For the next several minutes, you cried yourself dry. And then you felt better. 

“I’m sorry,” you said, slightly hoarsely, “I cried all over your shirt.”

“I don’t mind,” Five said.

In truth, he could have stayed there all night with you in his arms, wet shirt or not. You stopping crying was bittersweet: your grief was over, but it meant that soon he’d have to stir himself, say his goodbyes and probably never touch you like this ever again. 

“Can I get you a nightcap?” you asked. 

“Sure.”

You extracted yourself from him and looked on the kitchen shelf that stored your private booze. 

“Tequila shot?” you asked him, with a mischievous grin. 

“Perfect,” he smiled back.

God, the pain your little grin caused him. Like a knife to his stomach. 

You returned to the couch with two shots of tequila and held one out to him. He took it with thanks, and you sat down again. 

Five raised his glass.

“To Maggie,” he said.

“To you,” you countered, “the man who said he didn’t have enough empathy.”

Five chuckled, and you clinked your glasses together before throwing them back, revelling in the heat as it went down. 

“I’d better take my leave,” Five said, when he’d recovered from the shot.

You nodded, and you both stood.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’d like you to come for Christmas tomorrow. But no pressure. I’m going to do things differently on my end this time, and none of that’s on you.”

“Thank you,” you said.

He bent, picked up the briefcase, and you followed him to your apartment door. There, he turned to look at you and held out his hand once more.

“Happy Holidays,” you said, solemnly, taking his outstretched hand.

Five raised your linked hands to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of yours.

“Happy Holidays,” he replied, and left.

Read Chapter Five >> (Final chapter!) I FEED OFF COMMENTS AND REBLOGS YUM YUM YUM

The Last of the Spirits — The Pointing Finger by John Leech, 1843 in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, first edition (1843).

Dickens' A Christmas Carol full text available here.

Read it! It's a much better than this, and you can see how many lines I stole verbatim or clumsily referenced.

Dividers used in this series by @bernardsbendystraws (garland) and @strangergraphics (lights) My husband (Mr Mango) also wishes it to be known that he came up with Ebenezer Splooge. It was him, it was him, it was all him! Here he is, at the bottom, where he belongs.

Taglist: @nevbrooke-555, @fiannee, @abeeabee6969, @chalametabingbong, @lolawassad, @icantpickanamefromonefandom @thebearmage @kaybreezy3000, @starlitflora (comment to be added or removed)

Megalist

Request info + rules

I take Five requests, I'm fairly versatile in what I write (fluff, smut, angst, psychological character study- I'll try it all) but I will consider them on a case by case basis. See request info + rules for request status and more.

[rainbowswirlything]

Sleeper, Protector, Friend and Foe – The Darkest Faerie and Jerdana

(Or: In This Essay, I Will Overanalyze A Couple of Neopets Characters)

The eleven heroes who Altador chose to help found and lead his city drew his attention in numerous ways. Siyana discovered and thwarted a plot to raid a village, Florin cured a plant blight, Marak mediated peace between his underwater village and land-dwellers they’d come into conflict with, Gordos rooted out corruption in his town…

...but two of the Protectors of Altador were chosen because they saved the life of King Altador: the Sleeper—aka the Betrayer, aka the Darkest Faerie—and Jerdana, the Protector. As it turns out, there are a few interesting parallels/contrasts between these two characters.

Recruitment Order

The way the Book of Ages is written suggests that the order in which the 12 founders are presented is the reverse of the order in which they were recruited.

For one thing, Altador’s chapter (The Hunter) is the last out of the founders, and he obviously was the first to get onboard with the city-founding plan—it was his plan to start with.

For another, in Jerdana’s chapter, which immediately precedes Altador’s, it doesn’t sound like Altador has recruited anyone else at that point—he’s alone when Jerdana first encounters him, and after she saves his life, he says "With your powers of protection, my just leadership, and the help of other strong hearts, we could make a city of legends." To me, that makes it sound like Altador didn’t yet know who the “other strong hearts” might be.

In addition, in Siyana’s chapter, which immediately precedes Florin’s, after Siyana saves Florin’s village from bandits, Florin “told her that there was a noble Lupe she should perhaps meet,” which suggests that Florin had already been recruited at this point.

If we assume that the recruitment order is indeed the reverse of the chapter order, then Jerdana and the Sleeper were the first and last recruits to Altador’s council, respectively—a pair of matching bookends.

Chance Meetings in the Wilderness

Most of the Twelve were recruited when Altador heard of some heroic deed they’d performed and deliberately sought them out.

Siyana might be one exception—in her case, Florin was the one to suggest she might be a good fit for the council, and she may have even been the one to seek Altador out at Florin's suggestion.

As for Jerdana and the Sleeper--Altador's first encounter with both was out in the wilderness, entirely by chance, and he was a direct witness to their heroic acts (for the obvious reason that said acts involved saving Altador himself).

Jerdana is stated in the Book of Ages to have been a wanderer who helped people she met in her travels but never stuck around in one place too long; however, it’s not clear exactly what the Sleeper was doing out near a monster’s lair. The Sleeper isn’t really given any backstory or any rationale for why she happened to be in Altador’s path; in fact, unlike all the other chapters, we never see the Sleeper outside of Altador’s perspective. After the introductory paragraph, the Sleeper’s chapter starts with Altador going off to hunt a monster, and the Sleeper only appears when she enters Altador’s life by killing a second monster that threatened him.

It's certainly possible that the Sleeper, too, was a wanderer--but one who found it less easy to lean on the hospitality of others. Jerdana, as a Neopet with a talent for protective magic, would have doubtless found it easier to find a warm welcome in Neopet settlements than a dark faerie.

We don't know much of Jerdana's past beyond the fact that she didn't seem to have a place she called home... until Altador found her, and created the city that became that home.

And perhaps it was the same for the Sleeper. Perhaps she, too, felt she had no greater purpose--and no true home--until Altador gave her one. (And later, of course, she attempted to make it hers in a different way--not just her home, but her conquest, her possession, her dominion, hers and hers alone.)

Regardless of where they came from or why they were in the right place at the right time—that’s indeed where they were. If not for their meeting with Altador—especially in the Sleeper’s case, since one could argue that the Werelupes only got the drop on Altador in Jerdana’s chapter because he was distracted talking to Jerdana—the Lupe who dreamed of founding a city may have met an untimely end, and the city of Altador may never have come to be at all.

Protector vs. Destroyer

Of course, the way in which Jerdana and the Sleeper save Altador’s life differs.

Jerdana saves Altador’s life by raising a magical shield to protect him from a threat—specifically, a pack of Werelupes who had snuck up on them. She holds the shield in place until the Werelupes lose interest and run off. Her actions are purely defensive—Altador draws his weapon, but she raises a magical shield.

The Sleeper, on the other hand, saves Altador’s life by using her magic to destroy the threat.

Of all the twelve Protectors, the Sleeper is the only one whose “heroic act” that got her recruited involves a clearly-depicted killing. (She and Altador are the only two of the Twelve explicitly shown killing another creature within the Book of Ages, both in the Sleeper’s chapter—even if that creature was a monster.)

Even Torakor, the champion gladiator, isn’t directly depicted as killing anyone in his chapter. We could just as easily imagine that Torakor’s single combats all ended in non-lethal takedowns and that the general he ousted was permitted to flee; the narrative doesn’t tell us otherwise. Even if we assume that, as a member of a military force, he’s probably killed people off-screen… well, that’s off-screen. The point isn’t just about who’s shed blood—it’s about who’s shown shedding blood.

It's possible that, from the Sleeper's first meeting with Altador, she felt that she had something in common between herself and Altador in that they were both ready, willing, and able to spill blood, if need be--though not quite to the same degree, in the end.

Going back to Jerdana—there isn’t really any explanation why she chooses a purely defensive approach. Magic in the world of Neopia tends to be on the “softer” side of the spectrum—magic does what it does, as the narrative requires, without a lot of hard rules to define it, and the capabilities of independent magic users are often not well-defined either. It’s certainly possible that Jerdana simply isn’t capable of using the same sort of attack magic the Sleeper does, or that she can’t use offensive and defensive magic at the same time.

But it’s also possible that Jerdana is making a deliberate choice—that she does not want to inflict harm on others even if they wish to harm her.

If so, this is a philosophy she still holds after the Sleeper becomes the Betrayer.

Protector, Not Destroyer: Jerdana’s Orb

The Doylist explanation for why the Darkest Faerie is still alive despite being a massive threat to Altador is, of course, that it was kind of necessary for the plot. Also, this is Neopets, and they don’t tend to kill off characters--villains are more likely to be defeated in a way that leaves the possibility they may return in a future story. (Even Hubrid Nox, who was unambiguously killed during the Faeries’ Ruin plot, is still hanging out in Neopia as a ghost.)

However, if we switch to a more Watsonian framing…

The Sleeper is a threat to everything that Jerdana holds dear. She was once a friend—but now she’s a bitter foe who, if not stopped, will harm all of Jerdana’s other friends. There’s one sure way to end the threat the Betrayer poses and ensure she never threatens Altador again—and that’s by ending her.

But that’s not what Jerdana does.

She doesn’t seek to destroy the Betrayer, but to contain her. She creates a magical Orb to turn the Betrayer into a statue—and the spell is very much not permanent, as shown in The Darkest Faerie PS2 game as well as The Wraith Resurgence plot.

It's true, Jerdana may have been inclined towards mercy for the fact that she and the Sleeper had spent decades as allies--as friends. But still--in her chapter of the Book of Ages, she showed no less mercy to enemies who were total strangers.

The only point at which Jerdana’s Orb causes the Darkest Faerie bodily harm is after the Darkest Faerie tries to use its remnants to make a magic ring to strengthen her powers. It's the Darkest Faerie’s influence that turns Jerdana’s Orb—designed not to do physical harm—into something that can cause harm to others... and, it turns out, to herself as well.

(That said, it seems likely, given the Darkest Faerie’s quote on her TCG card—“Fyora stole one thousand years from me, and that was about what it took for me to plan my revenge”—that the Darkest Faerie was conscious to some degree during her imprisonment… which probably wasn’t great for her mental health. But hey, her physical health seemed more-or-less intact once the Orb was removed!)

Another interesting thing to consider—in some alternate history in which Jerdana was the one to betray the other members of the council, would the Sleeper have shown the same restraint, or would she, if Jerdana became a threat to all she herself held dear, have slain Jerdana--even if she felt sorrow in doing so?

Final Thoughts

The Sleeper and Jerdana are, in a way, foils for each other. The Sleeper is the final recruit, the one who won her place through killing a threat, and the one who uses her magic to try to conquer the city; the Protector was the first recruit, won her place through protecting without killing, and is the one whose magic saves the city.

There’s a lot of empty space in the story of Altador’s Golden Age—the time during which all Twelve Protectors sat on the city’s council, faithfully serving Altador’s citizens. We know, of course, that the Sleeper became the Darkest Faerie at some point—but the details are left fairly vague.

After the on-site Altador mini-plot is completed, Jerdana says that conquering Altador “was something [the Betrayer] had secretly desired since before the kingdom was even founded.”

However, Jerdana isn’t all-knowing—and she has good reason to see the Darkest Faerie in an incredibly negative light right now, so she's not exactly an unbiased source.

So, here we venture further into my own interpretation of the Sleeper's character.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that the Sleeper was, at the beginning, genuinely friends with the others--including Jerdana--and only years later turned against them and plotted to take over the city, which then raises the question--how and why did that change happen?

It's possible that, in her frustration at being unable to steer the city in the direction she desired, she may have become increasingly resentful--and that resentment may have been colored by the events surrounding her first encounter with Altador.

Whenever her ideas were rejected—when her visions for what the city of Altador might be were refused—perhaps there was a tiny voice in the corner of her mind that whispered “But you wouldn’t even have this city if it weren’t for me! I saved Altador's life! Surely that means something!”

Except Altador was only around to save because Jerdana saved him first.

Once resentment and ambition took greater root in the Sleeper’s heart—did it begin to sting for the Sleeper to know that she wasn’t the only one to whom Altador owed his life—and that, moreover, she wasn’t even the first?

The last recruited, whose vision was rejected by King Altador when she sought to increase the city’s influence through conquest—might she have developed a particular resentment for Jerdana, the first at Altador’s side, the one whose philosophy of defense-sans-offense had been accepted as policy? (Not only her philosophy, of course, but still.)

"I saved your life, too, but you listen to her, you value her input--you value everyone else's input--you won't let me do what I'm good at--you recruited me for my power, but you won't even let me use it... well, maybe I don't need your permission!"

Of course, whatever the Sleeper/Betrayer felt towards Jerdana personally before spending a thousand-and-change years as a statue, she surely resents Jerdana after having been bound by her magic.

And Jerdana, for her part, with all her happy memories from decades spent side-by-side with the Sleeper gone sour after the latter’s betrayal, seems to believe that the Sleeper was never truly her friend at all.

[girl4music]

The really clever thing about 'The Debt' that I always paid attention to is that none of the characters surrounding Xena in her backstory are actually evil no matter what Xena goes through. They all seem to hold a "weakness" or a place of compassion in their heart somewhere and it's mainly more so the circumstances that cause them to act or behave one way or another to each other. In fact the only character that seems to be really so far gone in terms of emotional connection is Xena. That's really why the juxtaposition from Borias to Lao Ma works as well as it does because she goes from a relationship that's completely about taking and having power - using and abusing each other in order to just get what they want out of their environment regardless of the way they treat each other within it to a relationship filled with care and compassion and tolerance and love in all kinds of ways. Lao Ma always puts Xena first despite how Xena's treated her and even though Xena doesn't understand why she would help her or how she could be nice to her after what she's done to her, Lao Ma is consistent in trying to get Xena to understand that a self-serving desire does not benefit either the giver or the taker in the longterm. That she's merely just poisoning her soul all the more the more she lives for herself in this very hateful, vengeful, wilful, destructive way against humanity. Xena says it's about survival why she behaves like this. That she's only dealing out the brutality that she's been dealt back. But Lao Ma rightly points out... she's already dead spiritually, emotionally, mentally. She's really lost the will to live in the sense of allowing the world to show her that it can be kind and beautiful too. That she's not even giving it the chance to be good to her back. To treat her better because she's already resigned herself to its pains.

'The Debt' story arc is so cleverly, carefully and intentionally crafted to show you that that path Xena's carved out for herself because of Julius Caesar's betrayal in the breaking of both her legs and her spirit simultaneously is only one that will forever destroy Xena even more and in order to become the person that Lao Ma knows she's capable of being, Xena had to let go of all of that anger within so she could correct and heal not just her body but her entire soul and it's karma because if she could do that - if she allowed that to happen - then she'd finally come to the person that would provide her it all back without asking for anything in return. At the time - Xena thinks this person is Lao Ma. But no, Lao Ma is only preparing her for Gabrielle.

Then for the creators to bookend all of this with the present day betrayal of Gabrielle just makes this story arc all the more powerful because then Xena proves she's truly put aside her past and a life of death and destruction by forgiving her, by understanding her, by loving her even though Gabrielle has done an awful thing to her. She's realized that even though hurt people hurt people - there is still a choice that the individual can make if their ego can allow them to see and get passed the anguish. To choose to comfort instead. That's what 'The Debt' is about. That's what Xena and Lao Ma is about. Watch it again and notice how every character is human and shows their humanity somewhere. Even if it's not to Xena. But they show you that every character in Xena's backstory is not a monster besides one. Ming Tien - who is too young to learn any such lesson and had to be put down because his influence of power would cause far more chaos and pain than his own life was worth and Xena makes the choice to kill him - without telling Gabrielle - because she knows that she created that monster so she knows that he is beyond the pale. He cannot be saved and he cannot be left to his own devices. She makes that judgement call not out of vengeance, but mercy because at the end of the day her cause was for the greater good and the person that originally instilled that conviction into her - that even named her 'the warrior princess' - is not a man, but a woman and the only person that can keep her in that conviction and on that right path that is truly destined for Xena, is also a woman. Gabrielle. Gabrielle is her destiny. Her cornerstone to living. Her future. Her way forward in life and love.

That's the story there. That's what they're really saying in 'The Debt'.

As I've said before... this is not a TV show about heroes vs villains. It's about actions vs consequences. It's about the human conditions and circumstances. It's about doing what we can when and where we believe we should. There is no inherent good or evil, right or wrong..., it all just depends on who we are and how we react in the moment and all the people surrounding us are there to bring that out in us whether we know it at the time or not. That's how life even works. To provide that much reality and truth in an action fantasy show... wow.

I love these episodes so fucking much. I love the characters, the themes, the arcs, the sets. I love the contrasting tones of edginess and grittiness with gentleness and smoothness. I love the LIFE in it when it's otherwise showing you the lead character at her deadest because the point is for her to realize and understand it's not the end for her but she has to make those choices and take those actions and ultimately allow LIFE in again. To allow her spirit to take flight and stop corrupting and sabotaging her own goodness and beauty by constantly choosing hate and revenge and rage and destruction because there's just as much power and control in the opposite.

Lao Ma is known to be hard and soft at the same time like water because she's mastered the ability to silence her ego and will. She's so powerful and influential and disciplined in the way of her being because she's learned how to conquer herself rather than others and we all should honestly learn from her example, not just Xena because humans do get in their own way. We're made that way because we have free will. But then that means that we can choose the opposite. We can freely choose whether to perpetuate our own self-serving goals or look in the mirror and change our life by changing ourselves.

[youareinlove]

food for thought: why the fuck were “the 1” and “hoax” written the same day ??? And why was “hoax” the album closer??

oh i think about this constantly. we know she wrote the 1 first, from a folder of ideas her and aaron had, and she was just messing around and came up with something that ended up being really great. hoax followed suit and it was a harder song for her to write, and she had to call aaron for advice (i think because it was her first time really dabbling in mixed muse territory). when she sent them both to aaron, they both agreed they had to be the bookends of the album.

the 1 feels fairly cut and dry to me (it's a song about a lot of the transformations she'd made in her life at that point and it just came from a lot of musing about the past), and then hoax shortly after makes me think that musing about the past led to other kinds of musings about the past and also how things were slightly questionable in the present. i think hoax had to end folklore because of how open-ended it feels (is it sad? is it happy? is it both?) and at the time the future just felt very open-ended and like a big question mark, and folklore is supposed to be like an emotional time capsule of what that time in history was like for people who lived it

[carefulfears]

What do you think of the episodes Gillian and David wrote/directed and which one is your fav ?

i love gillian and david's episodes, i always think of this post about how they write each other's characters as they were at the beginning, as they are at the core underneath everything that builds up. david's scully as bright and joyful and curious. gillian's mulder as rash and authentic and gentle. david's msr is flirty and lighthearted and introspective; gillian's is combative and devoted, she writes love as an action, dedication as a decision.

they love these characters, and they love to explore together, and seeing them through their eyes is special.

i also really love how metaphorical and foreign david's writing is. the unique unreliable narration of the unnatural, the way that the present day setting starts to shift to question the tale that's being told. characters weave in and out of the past, the props get older, the details get fuzzier. the moral of the story is bookended, "life on this planet" being understood and sought out.

the last temptation of amor fati, choices offered that are rooted only in true purpose, in commitment to something both larger and smaller. the internal struggle to not lose sight of that.

his dancing zombies at the end of hollywood a.d., dead and forgotten, happy and in love; just like mulder and scully holding hands before them.

my favorite of them all is hollywood a.d., i just love it. i smile to think of it. it's iconic and reflective and goofy. it has practically no plot whatsoever. it has more quintessential and referenced lines than any other episode. it just got the characters, it's all about the small moments in the face of commercialized imitation. it somehow tied together jesus/judas, dostoyevsky, and ed wood. it is absurdist fluff written by someone with most of a phd in english and i adore it.

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything

I have waffled all week about what to write about this chapter. There have been some great essays about HIV and the stigma in Korea by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here, as well as how antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactics work and when they were available from @wen-kexing-apologist here. This context was all critical to understand everything Young doesn’t talk about in this section of the book. 

I’ve been stuck on so many parts of this section of the book. The way stigma holds people back from care, from maintenance, from life-saving treatment and knowledge, from understanding their condition and preventing them unnecessarily from living a full life, which @doyou000me had me thinking about with their comments about Young’s coping mechanisms of minimization and emotional distance that possibly worked in conjunction with the Korean government healthcare policies and social stigma to keep Young from being informed about his own condition. The way Young holds himself back from happiness, and how it’s so heartbreaking to watch him open up to it slowly in this section and then, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote , he let the shame and self-loathing take control again. The way this relationship feels so real; @lurkingshan wrote so eloquently on how this section describes the details of a relationship as it started to settle. The relationship with Hyung was entirely ephemeral, in the liminal period of time between when Young was visiting his mother in hospital and before everything opened again for the day. There is so much that Young and Hyung never talked about–more than was obvious in chapter 2, because he never told Hyung about Kylie. In contrast, as @bengiyo pointed out, his relationship with Gyu-Ho started with honesty and was rooted in the physical presence of their apartment, which as a beautiful metaphor was grounded and improved slowly over time through the work they put into it but was also too small for them. 

I keep thinking about how Part 3 is bookended by Young disappointing Gyu-Ho with his absence. How he leaves him at the airport both times, thinking he’s doing Gyu-Ho a favour actually–he characterizes Gyu-Ho’s trip to Japan without him as much more fun, and he imagines Gyu-Ho’s future in Singapore will be better. In both cases, Gyu-Ho was only going because of Young, because Young wanted to, and Young planned it. But our narrator cannot get past seeing himself as something that brings Gyu-Ho down, and so he sabotages his own future. I feel for Gyu-Ho, being shepherded onto a plane alone when he was envisioning his future with the man he loved. It must have been devastating to be pushed away. 

This is not related to anything but I just love the detail of Young’s split lip and how he tastes blood when he kisses Gyu-Ho while drunk at the club and not yet knowing his name, and then panics, and we as readers don’t yet know why. Brilliant storytelling. 

I can’t stop thinking about how this reveal recontextualizes everything in parts 1 and 2. How the “incident that earned me a medical discharge” means Kylie was already in Young’s life as he took the engineering student he was seeing with him to get an STD check; as he was screamed at by an ex who prophesied that Young would get sick from being promiscuous and called him a ‘dirty rag that could never be cleaned’, which Young took with stoicism. I loved @bengiyo ‘s observation in his post linked above that Kylie’s presence likely coloured his reaction to Jaehee outing him to her fiance. 

Kylie was present as he watched his coffee be stolen by Hyung, when he thought about introducing Hyung to his mother, while he was wrestling with how Hyung (and, I think the narration makes clear, how he) was ashamed at how Young couldn’t ‘pass’ and was ‘obviously gay’, when he choked Hyung in his mother’s kitchen and it was seeing his tears on Hyung’s face that made Young let go. Kylie was part of him when he drank pesticide and tried to die, while he sat by his mother’s sickbed and had her head in his lap in the park, when he said “disease can turn anyone into a completely different person”, when he said he would “hope that she would die without having known.” 

Mostly, my brain keeps getting stuck on how familiar Young is to me. His choices, his self-loathing, his refusal to take anything seriously because at his core he’s terrified of facing what his reality means. And that fear ironically gets in the way of him understanding that his reality is not as scary as he thinks it is. He functions like he has to be alone, and so much of that comes from his internalized homophobia and his HIV diagnosis. He’s been told he’s dirty, something to be cleaned but irreparable, by so many people in different ways through his life. The man he claims as his greatest love barely even liked him as a person, and didn’t fully know him. I think that’s why he was able to feel more fully with Hyung, because in a way that relationship felt safer..Gyu-Ho, the person who knew all of him, and who wanted to build a life together with that complete and full knowledge of him, must have been terrifying, and I’m not surprised it felt easier to push him away than to fight for their future together. But it breaks my heart. 

There’s something rattling in my head about the T-aras that I don’t really know how to get out onto the page. In this chapter it’s revealed that the T-aras have been around the whole time, but they weren’t mentioned in parts 1 and 2. I think the fact that Young’s life feels more rounded, filled in with other people, and rich, than in parts 1 and 2 speaks to his emotional state in this part, as well as to how his time with Gyu-Ho wasn’t obsession but was more grounded in the mundane and the everyday. The T-aras themselves feel like familiar friends. Like with Hyung and JaeHee (at first), Young is drawn to people who he can remain emotionally distant from and who remain emotionally distant from him. People who will buy the story of “ruptured disc” for why he left military service early. People who joke about being poz and won’t ask questions and who hear the news about his new boyfriend as an ‘in’ to their favourite club. People who don’t take things seriously (or in Hyung’s case take things so seriously that Young can’t take him seriously). I was so glad to find out they existed because up to this point Young felt so isolated most of the time, with his world circling around one obsession in each part. But he had the T-aras the whole time; I’m choosing to read this as he just didn’t hold their importance to him in the same way in parts 1 and 2. As was already clear in the narrative but this makes even more obvious, Young’s isolation is not only self-inflicted but it’s in some ways a lie he tells himself to feel safer. He has friends, he just refuses to acknowledge their presence or importance, or to let them in to be more important, because he is so braced for being rejected for core parts of him that cannot be excised.

[imaginespazzi]

Nivi, I know you said that chapter 7 was mostly filler so you didn’t love it, but I’d argue it had some important tidbits spread throughout that made it stand out.

Paige is finally back in Azzi’s life, but with their past it feels like she is still trying to figure out her place…hmm

Loved the way you weaved time in this chapter. Felt like maybe you might have been foreshadowing Paige pulling back/leaving a little bit. Idk the line “It’s like they’re trying to reel Paige into their world and keep her there forever, like even if she let go, they wouldn’t let her” and then Stephie waking up being scared that Paige had left without saying goodbye stood out to me. Also the fact that Paige was relieved that Azzi was still there in the morning “a promise kept” and then Stephie waking up and being scared that Paige had left and wanted Paige to promise she would never leave was a fun bit of mirroring.

Paige spiraling about sugar and utensils goes back to her still trying to figure out her place in Azzi’s life. The line “two people who’d once promised to build a world together, had spent the last couple of years, building two separate ones instead” broke my heart a little bit. Paige is gonna have to get used to what the current state of what both of their lives are like. Blending presents while still holding onto the past is tricky.

Stephie, Tullulah, Paige, and vodka was pure gold lol

Not Paige having heart eyes for Azzi when she isn’t even around 😂 The coffee shop scene was very sweet and domestic. Stephie being indecisive like her mother and Paige wanting to buy her all the cookies so she wouldn’t have to decide felt like an extension of her own relationship with Azzi. I could see Paige wanting to spoil and care for Azzi in that same way. Paige is very babygirl in this scene. Again I love soft Paige lol.

The scene with Jana, one thing Paige is always gonna do is tell on herself 😂 Jana is so the rebellious younger child, and I love Azzi and Jana’s mother daughter relationship lol.

Not Azzi trying to keep Paige a secret 😭 Doesn’t seem like they are quite on the same page. The line “But there’s something about being a secret again, that raises a bitter taste of what killed us then could kill us now” left a bit of a pit in my stomach. I know we’re gonna get the full breakup scene, but can’t help but wonder how being a secret factors into Azzi turning down Paige’s proposal. Did Paige propose to try to keep them together since she knew once she got drafted in the league they would be a part? And was Azzi not ready to make their relationship public during her senior year at UConn? This whole exchange of them going to the party together just feels like Azzi holding back. Like part of their problem before was Azzi holding back and Paige jumping head first and here they are falling back into their old pattern.

Ugh not Azzi’s ex being invited to the party and Stephie having a special bond with her. I knew the angst was gonna show up eventually, and I know I’m not ready for what’s to come 😭

The Olympic scene had so many emotions. I wanted to slap Olivia for being a grade A Bitch! The loss of what could have been between Paige and Azzi, and their 2 separate lives colliding once again 😩 Azzi’s clap back to Olivia 👏 made me smile and cheer. The contrast between Paige hyper focusing on the Clezzi edits while her wife is fighting with her, is definitely giving emotional cheating. My heart did kind of feel for Olivia in that scene. The way she just gave in resigned to knowing that she would always be second place 💔. Idk if this was the beginning of the end for them, but it felt like it. Also the contrast and bookend of that scene with Paige watching edits about how Clemence looks at Azzi and then watching an edit of how she herself looks at Azzi was just the perfect angsty touch. Just a very beautiful and raw scene.

The final scene of Paige winning the gold medal has so many emotions built in. Paige and Azzi started out as best friends so it feels natural that they would always just resort back to this even during their break. It’s just kind of their default setting. Both of them just genuinely caring for each other even if they aren’t together or particularly close at the time. And then that gives way to both of them emotionally cheating on their partners (I’m assuming Azzi and Clemence are in fact dating) It’s just very emotionally messy. It does make me wonder about the current history of Clemence and Azzi. If they did date does the team know? Obviously they don’t know about the history between Paige and Azzi. How long ago did they break up? Is this why Clemence was traded to Atlanta? Did it end in good or bad terms? Does Clemence feel about Paige the way Olivia feels about Azzi? I have so many questions lol, I guess I gotta just wait for chapter 8 😅

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to get this long but there was just so much to dive through even in a “filler” chapter. You’re just very good at world building 🙂 Anyway, thank you again for your writing and for sticking to the Monday schedule, I’m very proud of you 😊 Can’t wait to see where you take us in chapter 8, I feel a lot of angst coming and Idk if I’m ready for it 😭

——📚

Hi lovelyyyy I'm so glad you're back!

I'm so happy you caught the parallel and the *potential* foreshadowing. That line actually probably weaves itself into your next point about Paige trying to figure out her place in a world that Azzi built without her. There's so much they're trying to blend together, the past they had with each other, the past had without each other, the present they sort of have together and the future that they want with each other.

You're very hot on the money with some of these questions about the breakup!

I'm glad that y'all seem to understand that while Olivia's a bitch, she's not a bitch without a cause. I try really hard not to write anyone as an outright terrible person cause that's quite one-dimensional and so I'm very happy that, that seems to be coming through. Clémence and her role in Azzi's life will be revealed soon too!

Ah well the people did ask for angst! (but there will be fluff too!)

[stopper-my-heart]

can u make an essay or wtvr ab tori at the end of s2 ep1 bc i feel like no one talks ab how shes literally tearing up at charlies words..

That's a tough one, Anon, because that encompasses a lot. To talk about Tori specifically and her tears during her conversation with Charlie at the end of S2E1 in depth, I think I'd have to dig into Solitaire and the Heartstopper comics and novellas, which is a bit beyond the scope of my aims and abilities at the moment.

As both a fairly quick attempt and one that keeps it to the show (please excuse and/or point out any errors):

In general and from the conversation at the end of S2E1 in particular, we can assume that Tori has seen relatively firsthand how the bullying (and perhaps other things) affected Charlie, and how bad that was -- for him and very likely for her in terms of its impact on her. Note that, nevertheless, for better or for worse, Tori is careful not to centre herself in her conversations with Charlie about how he's feeling: she doesn't raise concerns about herself, and she asks Charlie questions without pushing him to change his feelings or countering with her own worries.

We can also assume that Tori has been noticing at least aspects of the behaviours that Charlie's been exhibiting throughout the show up until this conversation and has seen them before, and that she's especially concerned about the potential for them worsening and is afraid of what may happen if they do. She's also likely aware that Charlie tends to deflect, avoid, and seek to soothe and appease others -- in addition to his other coping strategies -- all at his own expense and while avoiding the issues for himself, which consequently generally prevents him from seeking help or support from others.

So Tori is tearing up almost from the moment she opens Charlie's bedroom door at the end of S2E1 because she's remembering the past and is concerned that history is likely to be repeating itself soon (or for things and/or their impact to become even worse than before).

When Charlie then asserts during that conversation that he will basically be taking on responsibility for Nick's wellbeing to an impossible degree and standard, even if it's to the detriment of his own wellbeing, and "everything's gonna be perfect", Tori's fears are confirmed. She knows that this plan is unhealthy and doomed to failure -- because, even ignoring all other problems with this, perfection is impossible to attain due to interference from life and other people -- and she's afraid of what that will mean for Charlie (and possibly for herself, their family, etc.).

Overall, Tori is scared at what she expects will be ahead and is likely feeling alone and powerless to help Charlie (and herself, her family, etc.). She very likely has her own struggles going on as well.

It's worth noting that the conversation between Tori and Charlie at the end of S2E1 not only draws attention to what's already been present but also sets up attaining and maintaining "perfect" as the undercurrent running throughout S2. Nick and Charlie's emotional conversation at the end of S2E8 (titled "Perfect") then acts as a season-bookend point of comparison and contrast.

I hope this got at what you were wanting, Anon. Thank you for asking. If you're wanting more about Tori and her mindset specifically, I recommend you read Alice's novel Solitaire (in which Tori is the main character) if you haven't already. Be aware though, if I'm remembering correctly, that it contains at least some broad mentions of big things that will happen in S3.

[rangespacer]

i've been picking away at this meta for days now, wondering why i couldn't seem to write, and i think it boils down to me blowing it way out of proportion in my mind. i don't usually participate in events, so i was making it out to be this whole Thing that had to be polished and coherent, when that's not how i operate and is also frankly not in the spirit of blosc. and so, instead, for @warpolomewdarkmatter 's blosctober, i present my stream-of-consciousness rambling.

on sadness, and grieving something that's still alive, and having to pick up the pieces of your life and reevaluate who you are. on having your foundations rocked in your thirties, and still being able to find something new. on infinite potential, and how things might come back around, with a bit of patience and understanding, though never in the same way. on sitting with loss. on new beginnings.

i'll open this by saying that blosc is a piece of media for children. sometimes it teaches kids about right and wrong but mostly it's for entertainment. like the ratio isn't even in education's favour it's majority whacky shit, and must a cartoon be educational all the time to be fun? i didn't think so, and i still don't. blosc also spawns from a franchise that used to be well known for being something that both children and adults can enjoy, with parts of the content specifically geared towards adults. while i don't think the themes i read into blosc now were ever intended to be there, i'm enjoying returning to it as an adult and seeing how i can apply what i've learned in the last two decades to it, and what it gives me in return. my general approach to media is that as long as it makes sense with what's presented in the piece, you're good. even if it contradicts someone else's reading. even if it contradicts your own! and right now, meeting it halfway from where i'm at, i'm thinking about how life goes on after a change that feels like it should be the end of the world, and coming to terms with the fact that you're going to have to keep grieving and growing for the rest of your life and it will feel fresh, every time, but will also bring joy.

what i was trying to get at in my meta, in far too many words, is how the series is bookended (maybe not perfectly, depending on how you order the episodes, but generally) by buzz losing warp, and by the two of them reaching, at the very least, a cordial acceptance of the way things are. i read more into that, i'm sure a lot of people on here do, but i'm going to keep my language neutral because i really want to dig at what the show is presenting us, factually. that said buzz and warps' romance is real to me, so sorry for the divorce and congrats on maybe getting remarried. regardless of how you read it, this is indisputable: blosc opens ( or is prequeled -- prequeled? preceded? prequeled, i'll mint that ) by establishing what buzz's life has been for the past two decades, then tearing it apart. he has, to the best of our knowledge, been partnered with warp since they were in the academy. we see how well they work together, communicating without words, enjoying each other's presence, relying wholly on one another.

this is key to me, because the show will go on to establish buzz as being fully capable of working independently, especially in episodes like lone ranger, haunted moon, and shiv katall. and i do think he's always been like this. it was the writer's intention that buzz be the most static, the most 'perfect', the ideal towards which everybody else was striving ( or the thing to destroy, and i have so, so much to say about how buzz represents star command to a detrimental degree to both himself and the alliance, but that's another post ); simultaneously, they go out of their way to show that buzz is not perfect. he has flaws, he's egotistical, prideful, at times even unreliable in some very specific, very interesting ways that we'll get back to. but i say all this because i often think about what it must have been like for buzz to have lived twenty years with warp, what deficits warp was covering, how intimately they must have known one another, and how his presence could have been taken for granted. this is some extrapolation on my part, though we do see them to continue to work well together over the course of the series, and one of zurg's goals with 'agent z' was to have someone who knew buzz well enough to defeat him. given that zurg has known buzz for at least as long as warp has ( i think of their teamwork in war and peace and war and their intuitive understanding of one another in stress test and the main event ), that's saying something. my point is, twenty years represents the majority of my life. unless you believe buzz is over forty ( he could be! but i don't think so ), it's the majority of his life. and when you meet someone young, especially in a learning environment, you grow around them like a vine. there are grooves in buzz's personality in the shape of warp. sorry that was two steps over the homosexual line and i don't know how to gracefully extract myself from this paragraph. two trucks having sex. okay moving on.

what i'm driving at is that i believe there are ways buzz, perfect ranger, recipient of the order of galactic merit first class, representative of star command at 99% efficiency when riding solo, came to rely on warp that even he didn't know. it just happened. twenty years. teenagers to well-established adults. you'd know them like you knew your right hand ( you'd blow your right arm off to extricate yourself from them ). and then warp was gone. and while the violence of that loss is not negligible when considering buzz's response, understand that it would have been violence unto buzz either way, because that was a part of him. consider the sudden feeling of vulnerability, on top of the grief. you were one half of a whole, so you, by definition, are lesser now. you'll never be as good as you were with them. you wonder how much of your partnership was just them, or the thing that was greater than the sum of your combined parts. that's two out of three on it not having been just you, which is what you're left with.

blosc loves to be genre fiction, does not matter what genre, and it dabbles in noir more than once, and more broadly police fiction -- buddy cops without the humour. it gives maltese falcon. rush hour. eddie valiant at the bar. he was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. hector kills patroclus and it's achilles' undoing. buzz has made-to-order cop backstory, and what holds this trope together in every incarnation, to me, is the depth of feeling. you cannot shrug this off and shed a single tear. you have to get pathetic with it. cry, lose your job, lose your other friends, spiral into alcoholism and debt; the loss of the partner precipitates absolute upheaval in the survivor's life.

how could a replacement compare? even if they could do everything your partner could do on paper, they don't know you. they'll never know you like that, not even if you spend twenty years together, because the person you are now is not the person you were when you first met your original partner twenty years before. this isn't inference at this point, it's not even analysis, this is textual to the film. again, genre. none of this is new. but damn if it's not done well. but what i think the movie misses, because it's busy making its actual point and not the point i want it to make, is the chance to more directly address the death of buzz's sense of self. if you have spent your adult developmental years shaped by someone, if you owe a great percentage of who you are to them, and then they're ripped away, what's left? it's barbie and ken. it's buzz and warp. in the same way there is no 'just warp', there is no 'just buzz'. it doesn't matter that buzz is the one casting the shadow that rangers like ty live in. there can only be comparison with multiple individuals. the inverse is true: for buzz to be great, someone has to be less great ( let's not say 'bad', zurg has that covered, or 'incompetent', because no ranger is, not even the rookies ). i don't think buzz ever viewed warp as lesser. that doesn't even seem to be an issue on their radar, ever, not like it is with buzz and ty. but my point is buzz's partnership with warp made him shine. what was the deciding factor in that splendour? would buzz shine alone? ( yes. ) would buzz ever shine as brightly without warp? well...

so you've lost your spouse partner. you're at least in your thirties and the routine of your life for as long as you have been an adult is gone. blown to bits. cosmic dust. you launched an empty casket into space and the pictures you picked for the memorial show you as secondary to your spouse friend. it centers them and their achievements entirely. the love you felt was all-encompassing. and now you want to be alone, to grieve, to come to terms with what happened, and to get a sense of where you stand in an unfamiliar galaxy. it's a shame, then, that life goes on. there are patrols to do and taxes to file and hyper death rays to address, and the universe cannot sit and wait for you to do things like process the greatest upheaval of your adult life. you're out of your partnered era and into... what?

you were a student and then you were someone's equal, so maybe now you should be someone's teacher! that's reasonable. that's a natural progression. there's a rookie ripe for you! she's young but she's the best in her class, smart as a whip, and she has a lot in common with you ( she always knows best! she's two times too clever for the rules she enforces ), so why not take her? no, you're still grieving. no partners. what about this guy? he's wanted to be a ranger for forever, he has passion, he's been studying up, and he idolises you! would that work? no. no partners! okay, fine, a robot, then, if you can't handle a person. the robot is just like you, the robot will idolise you, will you take this? and because the robot cannot die, sure, okay. and you open the door a crack to being a teacher. and when you and the three newbies are the only people left in the universe, no, for real, you step up, you take control, and you see what they have to offer and you appreciate it.

SIMULTANEOUSLY. you discover that the partner you've been trying to find time to grieve is not actually dead. and we veer back into hard analysis territory here, because that's another emotional undercurrent that i wish had been delved into more. i mean, there are layers to that shit. the initial grief of having to bury someone you loved. the guilt of feeling that it was your fault, that they died so you could live, in part because there is an insane person who is obsessed with you ( again, meta for another day ). and now they're alive, and the circumstances of that revelation do not soothe the grief, they transform it. there's the immediate, the obvious: the pain that comes with any betrayal, especially that of your best friend leaving you for your worst enemy. the confusion over being left to deal with all of that initial grief -- how could they do that to you, didn't they know how much it would hurt? that's rhetorical, they know you better than anybody else, they knew exactly how much it would hurt, and they did it anyways. and they seem to be happy about it. now there's anger, and disbelief, and on top of it all you still feel lost. but you still have a job to do, so you fight, and you win. you save the day. you positive-mental-attitude the universe back to normalcy despite the emotional turmoil because it needs to get done and for all your flaws you have a heart of pure gold.

and that should put a cap on that situation! but... it doesn't. because the story doesn't end there. there's a whole series to get through. so what we've seen is the death of the old status quo and the establishment of the new. zurg is still there, buzz is still the pride of star command, but now he's got three kids and warp is on the other side.

i'm struggling to put to words the feeling that that evokes in me. i think it's relatable to anyone who's lost a best friend, not to death, but to time. they're gone, but they're still there. close enough to touch, but you can't. and you know them, but they're a stranger to you. you know the way they speak ( just like they know the way you speak - 'to infinity... and beyond : /' ), how they move, how they think. you know them, but there's a new side to them, one you don't recognise. and it's sickening, in a way, because it shouldn't be there. i had this whole multi-paragraph passage planned in the original version of this post, about The Gaze as a concept, and ego( -death ) and perception and all that fun philosophical nonsense. but i am not a philosopher, and we don't have time for all that, so i'll boil it down to what's relevant. we cannot ever fully know another person because we are hamstrung by our own limited point of view. there is no way to completely bridge the gap between the totality of what somebody else is, and what we perceive them to be. and i don't even mean this in a chiding, reductive way, this isn't something we do out of malice. the fact of the matter is, we cannot live inside another person's brain the way we live inside our own. the best we can do is acknowledge that they are as nuanced as we are, and that we'll never grasp all of them because we just can't. again, such is existing via comparison, such is being individual organisms.

buzz knew warp really, really, really well, but even if warp hadn't been lying, the warp in buzz's head and the warp that exists in reality are two very different things. it's not buzz's fault, it's not even a matter of fault, it just is. buzz could only ever take all that data gathered via observation and make predictions about what warp would do next. twenty years offered up a lot of data, but the issue is, warp is a person. people can change. people can act unpredictably. people can even act willingly against their own nature. as we cannot control other people's actions, there's nothing we can do about this, and that can be maddening. when a loved one suddenly acts 'unlike themselves', the sudden shift can have a dizzying effect. you think, 'where am i,' and 'who are they,' and try to reorient yourself. but anyone can act any way, anytime. i think of one bad day, or the breaking point. you would, if you were hungry enough. you would, if you were tired enough. we are flexible creatures. what was in warp was in warp for a long time, but it didn't fully show until he let it. and buzz's feeling of vertigo is completely understandable.

and then buzz tries to cope. he swings wildly between being angry with warp, missing warp, and deluding himself into thinking that this is just a phase, that the 'old warp', the 'real' warp, will come back. think of how he exhausts the list of evil clones and mind control before even approaching considering that warp just, y'know, did that. and even past that, he thinks warp is going to come back. he wants it sooo bad. up until their very last episode together ( ancient evil ) he wants it, and booster gets to spell that out for xr and the audience. but... this is wrong. i did not go into all of the above to crank my own hog, i wanted to make a point: buzz is seething sick because his image of warp does not line up with the reality of warp, and that's a major shortcoming that he's going to have to buck by the end of their mutual arc. because, morality and the idea of objective good aside, warp is not brainwashed, and he isn't being coerced. this is a choice he made with a clear head and time to consider the pros and cons. he says as much repeatedly, and buzz does not want to hear it. he's understandable! he's relatable! but he's also unfair here. he loves warp very much -- i'll even argue that he loves parts of warp that warp himself doesn't want to acknowledge -- but this is who warp is, and as long as buzz keeps rejecting that, they aren't going to be able to move past the break.

and buzz isn't the only one fucking up. oh, warp wants so badly to put star command behind him. he wants it to have been a front. he wants to be Thee Bad Boy, and sure, he's good at being bad, but on the scale of evil motivation in this show where zurg and nos-4-a2 and evilyear exist, warp's really boils down to, 'i want as much money as possible as quickly as possible so i can enjoy myself as soon as possible.' and is he willing to do fucked up shit to accomplish that? oh, yes. but post-movie, he never does anything quite as bad as the unimind. his goal isn't to cause pain, he's just willing to do that to get what he wants. splitting hairs? yeah, maybe, but there is a substantial difference between a sadist and someone without many qualms. and here's the thing. as much as buzz's perception of warp is a construct, it isn't a baseless one. buzz is insane! and we love him for it! but his understanding of who warp is is based off of observation, he's not pulling the veneer of nobility out of his ass. warp did the job for twenty years. and he dealt with zurg behind the scenes, sold weapons, sold information, but he also earned the order of galactic merit second class and the bronze cluster. he had buzz, who worked with him on a daily basis, convinced that he was not just good, but dedicated to the galactic alliance. there were positive, tangible results of his actions as a space ranger, and by my count, harm and help do not cancel each other out barring specific circumstances. you cannot unrescue that cat from that tree. you cannot unhelp that old lady across the street. 'you can't take it back, your actions have consequences' applies to the good as well as the bad, and isn't that a blessed relief.

and our actions make up who we are. so as much as warp wants to pretend that he has always been bad to the bone, we know that that isn't true. and buzz knows that that isn't true. so buzz has one half of the picture and refuses to see the other, and the same for warp on the opposite side. and their progression throughout the series, especially from tag team to ancient evil, is, to me, them slowly coming to terms with what they have become -- and more importantly, growing to understand one another better and in ways that their partnership in star command could not have allowed. yes, buzz has lost his routine, and some comfort with it, but he has gained a truer, fuller understanding of who warp is, and that in and of itself is rewarding. buzz didn't not know warp, but he also didn't have all the facts; there was a lie at the core of their relationship, and they couldn't be completely honest with one another so long as warp was a ranger, because warp just doesn't want to be part of star command. ( and good for him! good for him! ) if warp had stayed for buzz's sake, he would have been betraying himself, and even if they'd been happy, i think they're better off with everything out in the open. i think their relationship is stronger and more genuine for it.

buzz spends the series struggling with his rookies ( and maybe i'll make a different post, because this one is already too long, about buzz as a teacher and how that's a learning experience for him too ), but, eventually, he gets it down -- or he's on the road to getting it down. he isn't the buzz he was with warp, he's a different buzz, but not a worse buzz. not lesser. can buzz shine as brightly without warp? yes! differently. it will never be the same, but that doesn't mean it won't be good. and in the end, in ancient evil, when buzz literally gets 'old warp' and it's horrible and nearly kills him and their victory is reliant on letting warp be his sneaky self to steal the youth back from natron, they come back together. and it's good. it's real good.

man. i don't know. the older you get the more you will grieve experiences. we were too young to know, before. we learn how to deal with death, and then we learn how to deal with not-death, with the loss of someone who's still around, but they're not a part of your life anymore. maybe a relationship will change and you will grieve the empty space where someone used to be. and maybe they'll come back into your life and create a different space for themselves, and you will simultaneously mourn the old and celebrate the new. you'll make room to feel both at once and accept the contradiction. it's a feeling i've had as i've gotten older, nostalgic grief, and i'm starting to come to terms with the fact that i will keep feeling it, and keep changing. that i will grow accustomed to something and it might last twenty years but it won't last forever. that i will be uprooted at some point and that it will be painful and that i will survive it. i watched blosc when i was a child and i came back to it and i'm glad i can still get something from it. i'm glad the children's show has an adult protagonist who's going through some sort of quarter- / mid-life crisis. i'm glad it told the gayest love story of our time for no reason. i'm glad this tag is still active. i'm glad this post is over.

[noodleblade]

Birds of a Feather, Part 3/?

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Starscream should not have been surprised to find Laserbeak waiting outside his habsuite the following cycle. Before returning to his hab the night prior, he had directed her to do the same. The one-off instance of berth sharing was not one he was eager to repeat. While Laserbeak had seemed disappointed in this, she had not pressed and left. Starscream hoped she went back to the hab she shared with Soundwave but didn’t want to check the security camera to see if he had been proven wrong.

Whatever the case may be, he awoke to no alerts of sneaking drones in the medbay and an empty habsuite. Empty in more ways than just uninvited guests. 

Starscream sneered at his lack of furnishings. In the past, the hab had been cluttered. Skywarp had a horrible knack for collecting random bits and baubles and Thundercracker left half read datapads all about. Not to mention Starscream’s own projects had taken up any available surface. In their passing, the influx of items had stopped and within a couple of vorns, the clutter had dwindled away to the bare and empty room it now was. He had never really thought to pay attention to the current state of his hab but now that he had, his optics couldn’t help but mark all the ways it had lost any sort of life. 

It’s just a room , Starscream reminded himself bitterly as he left the hab and nearly ran into Laserbeak. 

If she sensed his bitter mood, she didn’t show it, greeting him with a chirp and bob of her helm. 

::Recharge well?::

No, he hadn’t. Like the cycle before, it had been fraught with restlessness and nightmares. His processor was eager to dig through old memory files, linking them to the ever-present grief that hung in Laserbeak’s field. 

‘That’s just sympathy, Star,’ Thundercracker’s voice echoed in his audials, followed by Skywarp’s teasing laughter, ‘ As if he knows what that is .’

Starscream scrubbed his faceplates, agitation pinching at his transformation seams. 

“I’m fine,” he spat out. 

Laserbeak whistled unbelieving but let the remark slide all the same. ::We have time to refuel and visit Soundwave before shift start.::

“Is this going to become a habit?”

Laserbeak hovered closer, optics piercing in what Starscream could only imagine as a glare. ::Until Soundwave is back.::

Starscream glared back. “I don’t have time to check on Soundwave every cycle.”

::Actually, you do.::

Following the comm, an attachment was sent showing a timetable, Starscream shift block highlighted and bookended with a refuel and a medbay check in. Starscream raised his optic ridge at this. 

“You know there aren’t going to be updates if we keep pestering Knock Out.”

Laserbeak let out an agitated burst of static. ::We need to make sure the medic stays on track.::

Starscream laughed hauntingly. Normally he would agree but, “Knock Out may exhibit bouts of lethargy and boredom but Megatron has marked Soundwave’s recovery efforts as the highest priority. Knock Out can be distracted easily but he’s hardly an idiot. He knows better than to anger our dear leader.”

Laserbeak considered this, rocking slightly in the air as she mulled it over. ::Can we still check on him?::  

There’s that ‘we’ again. The line between having Laserbeak’s loyalty and being chained to the drone was a tricky one to navigate with her turbulent emotions. He needed to remain in control, needed to keep firm just as much as he needed to concede to the cassette to get her unconditional trust. 

“Fine,” he finally muttered. “But I’m telling you, Knock Out’s not going to have any new information.”

Laserbeak didn’t seem to care, her field bursting with unrestrained gratitude. 

--

Starscream’s shift had gone without incident, mostly putting out fires and working on strategies to make sure their next run-in with the Autobots was a success. Playing clean up for the disaster that had been their last mission only allowed Starscream to analyze where everything went wrong to prevent fatal error from happening again. They couldn’t afford a repeat incident. 

His typical meeting with Megatron had been as unproductive and frustrating as ever, however, a new horrible realization had hit about halfway through the meeting as another smashed data pad was thrown, courtesy of the warlord. Without Soundwave’s subtle, quiet presence, there was no barrier between himself and Megatron and no one to put them back on track. What had been a simple issue of mining equipment repairs had derailed them into a screaming match and a sea of broken data pads and overturned chairs. 

Starscream was just happy to come out of the meeting unscathed. Even in the midst of his fury, Megatron was more than aware that having two of his High Command out of commission was a death sentence. A silver lining, he supposed, in the dark cloud that was Soundwave’s grave injury.

Agitation still rattled his frame as he stalked out of the main deck, leaving Megatron’s snarling words and his war room far behind. He paid the vehicons no mind as he marched through the wide doors. In his blinded rage, he hadn’t seen the minicon, nearly crashing into the hovering cassette for a second time that day. Thankfully, Laserbeak, much like her host, was far more observant.

The cassette dodged Starscream and hovered over his helm as the seeker glared. Starscream’s optics flared a menacing red that reflected on the mini’s smooth, slick plating. 

“What?” he snapped, unable to keep his frustrations of Megatron out of his tone.

Laserbeak made a lazy circle around him. Quiet and evaluating, another fun imitation of Soundwave. 

::You seem agitated. Perhaps a flight exercise is in order.::

Starscream stared at the minicon, optic ridges raised. He wouldn’t call it a secret that when stressed and overworked, Starscream liked to vent his frustrations with a quick fly, even if this miserable planet’s atmosphere was grating on his plating at too high an altitude. However, he didn’t think anyone had noticed, much less Laserbeak .

As if sensing his surprise, the cassette landed nimbly on his shoulder pauldron and comm’d, ::It's in your notes.::

“My what ?”

The cassette gave a nervous beep as she realized her error. She extended her wings to fly away but Starscream rested a heavy servo on Laserbeak’s back strut to keep the cassette firmly in place. 

“What notes?” Laserbeak was hesitant to respond but after an impatient tap of Starscream’s claws on her frame, she elaborated, ::Soundwave has notes on all mechs, included Starscream.::

It wasn’t surprising nor out of character for Soundwave. Starscream almost wanted to laugh at how Soundwave the action was. It was almost comforting that Soundwave’s presence still lingered on the ship despite his current inoperable status.

However, the very notion that Laserbeak was privy to this information was a little uncomfortable. Soundwave had his own thoughts and Starscream could guess they never quite framed him in the best light if their history had anything to say by it. He couldn’t imagine that as objective as Soundwave wanted to appear that his own opinions didn’t marr the notes he made of each and every mech. Even if the cassette was connected to Soundwave in a bond Starscream only vaguely understood, it unnerved him to know the biased information had seeped into the minicon’s processor. 

“Well,” Starscream drawled, “what do my notes say?”

Laserbeak gave another nervous series of beeps. ::Records indicate Commander Starscream’s mood and productivity increase with leisure flights.::

Starscream released Laserbeak and she wasted no time in taking flight to hover just out of reach from Starscream. 

“Did you take that directly?”

Laserbeak bobbed her helm in a stiff, nervous nod. 

Starscream couldn’t help the smirk that came to his faceplates. Nevermind that Soundwave had recorded him and probably had seen each and every time Starscream had snuck to the flight deck unauthorized. In truth, that was not so much a revelation but a reminder that the Third in Command watched everything and everyone. However, the very confirmation that Soundwave referred to him with his title in his notes was almost enough to dispel any lingering anger towards him. Even in the privacy of his own personal thoughts, Soundwave still was forced to acknowledge Starscream’s superiority. 

Oh, how that must grind his gears.

With a little pep in his pede, Starscream headed towards the flightdeck. Laserbeak hesitantly followed behind. Her confusion nudged against Starscream’s smug field, silently asking for a question Starscream thought left better unanswered. 

Instead, he redirected. “Following me?”

The confusion drifted off Laserbeak’s field and was replaced with a quieter, subtle admission of honesty. ::I miss flying with Soundwave. You will have to do.::

Starscream, in all his years of knowing Soundwave, had never known the mech to do anything leisurely. Then again, Starscream was beginning to realize there was quite a bit he didn’t know about Megatron’s silent shadow. In the scant few cycles since Soundwave’s fall, Starscream had learned more about the mech than he had in the last millennia they had served together. 

“Fine, whatever.” Starscream hardly cared if the minicon wanted to tag along. He wouldn’t admit the idea of not flying alone for a change was almost nice…even if he was only serving as a temporary replacement.

As they reached the flight deck, no one paid them mind. If anything, most of the crew kept their optics glued to their tasks, avoiding even looking in their direction. It suited Starscream all the same as he reached the opening of the deck, the swirl of clouds obscuring the horrid waste of a planet that lay below. 

Laserbeak was still hovering beside him, fully intent on following Starscream on this flight. Starscream let his optics drag over the little cassette’s drone form. Not exactly built for speed but if she wanted to try, so be it.

“Keep up,” was all the warning Starscream gave as he let himself fall from the platform, reveling in the rush of air that surrounded him as he dropped. Distantly, he could feel Laserbeak’s distress over the maneuver but it quickly abated as Starscream shifted into his alt and soared upward, past the flight deck and above the Nemesis. At that, the minicon took her cue to follow.

::Fancy flying.:: came Laserbeak’s comm. The attached subglyths were sarcastic in nature but Starscream could feel awe in the edges of her field as Laserbeak caught up.

::Just because your creator does everything minimally and practically, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to subject ourselves to such a dull existence.::

Starscream was surprised to receive laughter back, the minicon in agreement. 

::He is too uptight.:: she admitted, the subglyphs both fond and sorrowful. ::He needs a vacation.::

Starscream snorted derisively. ::To suggest such a thing might offline him for real.::

Laserbeak’s laugh echoed as Starscream took a sharp dive down, reveling in the wind streaming off his wings. He hadn’t been able to stretch his wings like this in a while and took the chance greedily; twisting, rolling and spinning in the air as his frustrations melted away.

::Show off.::

Starscream sneered playfully, his mood already lightening, ::Don’t be jealous. It’s unbecoming. Whatever will Soundwave think when he comes back.::

Laserbeak squawked in a loud affronted beep, but it was mostly eaten up by the wind as Starscream turned towards the sky and climbed, thrusters kicking to propel himself up, up, up. 

He continued to climb, the Nemesis and Laserbeak falling behind as he passed layer after layer of cloud cover until there was nothing left and Starscream was alone to the universe above him. The atmosphere was thin here, biting and brittle against his frame but Starscream pushed on a few nanokliks more before he cut his thrusters and forced stalled his engine. 

For one glorious moment, the universe and all of existence came still, Starscream frozen in place and time as his momentum came to a halt and gravity hadn’t quite kicked in yet. No Megatron, no war, no bitlet biting at his thrusters, no empty holes in ally’s chassis: nothing beyond the floating between flying and falling. It was so rare to find such stillness, such peace. Having it, even for a modicum of time quelled the flurry of stress in his spark.

But as quickly as it came, it was gone; time never truly stopped and pressed forward with unerring persistence. Starscream began to free-fall, the biting atmosphere rushing past him as he gained momentum and speed. He lazily engaged his engine as he turned his nose to the ground, letting gravity do the majority of work for him until the Nemesis came back in his slights. He pulled out of the dive, letting himself glide lazily around the ship. The minicon was quick to come back to his side, field awash in unrestricted delight. 

::Very reckless:: though there were no subglyphs of reprimand, rather absolutely wonder. 

::Very fun, unfortunately, not very suitable for your frame type.::  

If Laserbeak was dejected by this at all, she didn’t show it, simply content to remain close; floating on the updraft from Starscream’s wings and feeding off the unbound ease and tranquility in their intermingled fields. 

They made four lazy circles around the Nemesis before Starscream’s HUD notified him his fuel had dipped below 50%. With rations as low as they were, it would be truly a fool’s errand to deplete his levels anymore with no hope of his ration being able to compensate, not when he could be out on the field at a moment’s notice. Laserbeak must have picked up on the subtle shift in the energy and pushed their flight pattern back towards the Nemesis. 

In unison, both mechs returned to the flight deck. Starscream shifted to his root form to land on the deck elegantly. Laserbeak hovered beside him, unable to mask her admiration at the display. She circled Starscream in a buzzing sort of excitement that Starscream basked in. It had been a long time since he’d had such an… avid supporter .

:Refuel?:: Laserbeak inquired, probably noting her own lowered fuel levels. 

It was about time for their second ration so wordlessly, Starscream led the way to the refuel station.

In what had become routine, Starscream was quick to grab the two rations for himself and Laserbeak and did not linger in the mess hall. He went mostly ignored by the vehicons huddled at the various tables, but conversation once again quieted as he walked by, only to pick up when he was out of hearing range. This time, instead of ignoring it, Laserbeak inquired about it.

::Do you refuel alone every time?::

Whether the minicon intended the sting that came with the question, Starscream didn’t know. He still gritted his denta.

“I have no desire to waste my free time with scrap like them.”

::Not even the grounders.:: The subglyph of disdain was a clear indication of which grounders Laserbeak was referring to. Starscream felt the tension in his frame lighten in amusement at the cassette’s obvious dislike. 

“I don’t care much for the brute,” Starscream sneered as he reached his habsuite, keying in the entry to let them in. Laserbeak was barely able to conceal her delight in being granted entry. “But Knock Out has proven to be entertaining at the very least, if not a fine intellectual sparring partner.”

Laserbeak let out a long, drawn out beep which Starscream took as her sarcastic retort. 

“One does wonder how you fill so much hatred in such a small frame. Mass displacer? Does Soundwave know he’s fostering such an angry, grudging drone?”

Laserbeak let out the trilling, beeping laugh of hers as Starscream set one of the energon cubes on his desk for Laserbeak. He kept the one for himself in servo, sipping it as the cassette landed softly on the desk. 

::Soundwave likes my wit.::

Starscream let out a snort. Every little factoid Laserbeak slipped contradicted the emotionless, stationary mech Starscream had come to associate Soundwave with. Even his own experience could contradict this notion but it was much easier to view Soundwave as a passive bystander to the usual chaos on the Nemesis. If anything, Starscream was already aware of the hints of sass and sarcasm Soundwave exhibited every now and then. To know it went much deeper was like seeing through the cracks of his armored plating. Soundwave prided himself on being unreadable, that much was obvious. To know a few words from his precious cassette could reveal so much was gratifying. To know Starscream was now in the small number of mechs that knew this was even better. 

::Are they your friends?::

Starscream blinked, looking down to where Laserbeak was sipping her cube. It took him a moment to realize exactly whom she was referring to, the sudden shift in conversation unexpected. However, Laserbeak’s optics were bright and alert, watching curiously. 

Starscream raised an optic ridge at the minicon. It was an innocent, naive question, but Starscream could only picture Soundwave’s little notes and wondered how much value their spymaster could glean from a question like that. As much as he wanted to think of Laserbeak as a pathetic, sniveling whelp, there was no denying she was far more capable than Starscream had previously given credit for and she took after her carrier perhaps a tad too much. 

“How many Decepticons do you know that have friends?” he countered coolly. 

Laserbeak gave Starscream a long appraising look, clearly not impressed with his deflection of the topic. There was a silent point being made in the cassette’s gaze but Starscream ignored it, turning away to down the rest of his ration in one quick gulp. He barely tasted it as he emptied the cube and tossed it into the nearby receptacle. 

With no further comms coming from Laserbeak, the cassette’s attention turned to her own energon. Eager to let the conversation be forgotten, Starscream busied himself. Beside his berth were a stack of datapads he’d been pushing off reading. He probably would have continued to do so but the notion of having to face any more of Laserbeak’s pointed questions soured his tanks. He much rather diligently work than have any more spark to spark conversations for the cycle. 

He grabbed the first data pad in the stack: a mining report for Mine Beta. It was a dull read, but Starscream suspected it wouldn’t be long before he hit recharge. Between the long day, the flight, and the general mental exhaustion of having a small shadow, he suspected he’d only get through a few lines, if even.

“See yourself out. We’ll meet tomorrow,” Starscream waved off as he climbed into his berth, optics on the datapad. He trailed over the words, processor barely absorbing them. 

His request received no answer but he did hear the hab doors open and close with a soundly click.

--

There was energon everywhere, soaked into the ground beneath him and coating his plating, seeping into his transformation seams. Warm and sticky and so, so much of it. 

A pile of crumpled plating was before him, purple and blue amour in tattered, broken pieces. Dull, cracked red optics staring at nothing and everything. One helm was completely crushed, blue plating cracked down the middle to expose what little remained of a core processor. 

Ash rained down from the sky, a maelstrom of fire and destruction swirling around them like the eye of a hurricane. Burnt metal and electric fire sting his olfactory senses, optics slitting to keep themselves clear of the spinning debris. Bodies littered the battlefield, both familiar and not, but his optics were locked on the two pressed together in the center of the crater, sitting in a pool of crumbled earth and energon. 

Starscream reached for them. Square blue digits brushing against a shattered glass cockpit-

A nudge against his chin made Starscream’s optic online in an instant. 

The dark, stale air of the Nemesis greeted him. His spark had jumped up his intake as his optics darted across the ceiling of his hab. Slowly, his senses came to him in rolling waves.

There was no wasted battlefield. No bodies. No broken mechs. Slowly he raised his servos up, sharp clawed digits trembling before him. Chrome, not blue. 

::Oh good, you’re awake.::

Immediately Laserbeak’s helm filled his vision, the cassette firmly planted on his chassis. Tiny red optics stared him down.

“What are you doing here?” Starscream croaked. His vocalizer hissed, as if it had been strained. 

::You were experiencing a nightmare. I could feel your EM field outside the doors. You were crying-::

“ How- ” Starscream interrupted with a snarling hiss “-did you get in here?”

::Security override.::

Laserbeak did not remove herself from atop his chassis, rather settling in. Her tiny engine vibrated against him in a move Starscream assumed was supposed to be comforting. He wasn’t sure it achieved that, but it was disarming. At enough to stall his action in sending the cassette flying across the room. 

“Soundwave does not outrank me.”

Laserbeak was nonplussed by this. ::Megatron does.::

“ You have Megatron’s access codes?”

::Soundwave has them stored for emergencies.::

Starscream snapped his mouth shut, sinking further into his berth. 

In no way did this constitute an emergency. Even if he was in distress, there is no reason for the minicon to go so far for him. Any indignation Starscream had about Laserbeak entering his hab was conflicted by a puzzling feeling coiling around his spark. He couldn’t identify it, the emotion too foreign. He felt… exposed and there was little he could do to build his walls back up. He felt cornered, trapped. The weight of the minicon suddenly felt as if he had a tank pressing him down rather than the tiny drone.

It had just been a nightmare, a glitch in his recharge defrag sequences. It wasn’t a memory nor was it referential to an actual event. He had not been present when Skywarp and Thundercracker offlined. He had been stationed on the bridge, only able to watch their spark indications vanish from radar, their comms go silent. Whatever his processor was trying to work through, Starscream was tired of it using his dead trine as a method to do so. He’d mourned enough. 

::You are in distress.:: Laserbeak gently nudged his chin again with her helm. ::Shall I deploy relaxation protocols?::

The line of question swirled around his processor for a solid klik before he croaked out a, “What?”

In lieu of a response, Laserbeak sat up tall on his chassis. Her wings folded in, half transformed between her drone form and the stored cassette mode when she was docked in Soundwave. Faint purple biolights lit up across her frame as soft music echoed in his hab.

Starscream stared, unsure what was even happening. Laserbeak’s field was calm, pressing against Starscream’s like a blanket. The music was foreign to him. He could detect it as Cybertronian in nature but he had never found himself fond of the art. Sensing his curiosity, Laserbeak was all too happy to inform.

::A folk song from Tarn. The beats were later used in the revolution chants, though the lyrics were changed. The roots are ingrained in the working class, the rhythms free flowing and without the standardized formula that was used in the High Theaters of Iacon. The composition changed from player to player, as it was never formally recorded, but all followed roughly the same notes.::

“Why?”

::A lack of formalized education. Music was passed on from mech to mech through audial receptors rather than taught in institutions that specialized in functionality-::

“No,” Starscream interrupted again, but softer, less abrasive. “Why are you playing it?”

::Soundwave often finds comfort in music. I had hoped it would have the same effects for you. I selected a favorite of his. I have a large repertoire to select from if it is not to your taste.::

Starscream let the information sink in, offlining his optics in the process. Soundwave had always favored media based forms. Starscream could briefly remember when he had adapted to that of a music player. It should be no surprise those were rooted in a personal preference for the art form, just as Starscream’s own alt reflected his Vosian roots. 

It was another glimpse into Soundwave, perhaps one too personal to dig into further. 

::Would you like me to continue playing it?::

It was not…terrible. Actually, Starscream felt the dredge of panic melt away as his processor mapped out the notes into identifiable patterns. 

“You can keep playing it.”

Laserbeak chirped in delight, happiness blooming across her field.

::I’ll play my favorite next. It’s from Vos. You may know it.::

Starscream hummed in agreement. Thundercracker had enjoyed music, often playing it when he was working on projects in close proximity to Starscream’s own. 

Before he knew it, one melody drifted off and another one quickly took its place. The pattern repeated for several kliks, Laserbeak silently queuing up one after another. Some Starscream felt were familiar, some were completely foreign. There were some in the mix that Starscream suspected might even be Earth based, the instruments completely different than anything he’d heard before. 

He kept his optics offline as he felt himself drift off. His processor churned sluggishly, lazy. It brought up the image of Soundwave, stationed stiffly at the central console. Starscream wondered how many times the TIC had been absorbed in his secretive collection of melodies. An absurd thought flickered across his mind of Soundwave dancing , spindle arms and tentacles moving to the beat in strangely fluid motions. The vision dispelled as the next song drifted in, just as slow and soft as the first had been. 

Above him, Laserbeak settled against him, still in her half-transformed mode, but her field sleepy, melding in his own. He fell into recharge to the quiet, swaying rhythms, chassis warm and processor empty of any terrors. 

[sixty-silver-wishes]

living through history is wild man

like . you can go on wikipedia and look up whatever era of history, and you can see so much human culture and suffering and life and death neatly bookended between two dates and a couple paragraphs. You can spend five minutes reading a basic summary of, for instance, ww2.

and then when you live in the present day, you don’t know when that other bookend will be. and you think about all those people in the past, and how years of unimaginable agony somehow became a five-minute read on the internet. there’s no way to look up something in the future and read about how it ended. you have to live through every single second of it, until that era ends and another begins. it haunts me.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — This past week we entered the Hebrew month of Kislev, the month here in the Northern Hemisphere when we often experience the longest, darkest nights of the year. As the light contracts each day, I experience a tightening in my gut, an anxious fluttering of the heart. Time feels compressed, as if there aren’t enough hours in a day to do everything that needs doing. When the light fades at the end of these foreshortened days, I draw the blinds and turn on the lamps, wanting to make my home into an island of warmth and light in the face of the encroaching darkness.

My trepidation at the onset of night echoes the primal fear of the dark ascribed to the first mythic humans, Adam and Eve. A talmudic tale, found in Avodah Zarah 8a, imagines the two of them becoming frantic as darkness falls at the close of the first day of their lives. They’ve disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and now they’re terror stricken. “Woe is me,” Adam wails, “that because I’ve sinned, the world is darkening around me! The world will return to chaos and emptiness; this is heaven’s death sentence upon me!”

In this midrash, Adam experiences the arrival of darkness as punishment. His words conjure up the kind of existential shudder that can overtake a person in the dark, as the familiar shapes and colors of the daytime world dissolve into the trackless night. No wonder that darkness is often a metaphor for the scariest of times, times like the present, when awash in grief, fear and anger, we bear witness to the atrocities of war, to hatred unleashed and suffering magnified, to shattered dreams and dampened hopes. “These are dark times,” we tell one another.

Perhaps it’s only natural that humans try to beat back the dark with our hearths, campfires and brilliant winter light displays. We Jews do this beginning on the 25th of Kislev, when we kindle Hanukkah candles in remembrance of the Hasmoneans’ military victory over the Seleucid Greeks and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple. But on a more primal level, we do this to remind ourselves that even a tiny flame instantly dispels the deepest dark, offering hope, a light at the end of the tunnel.

And yet it strikes me that many of our tradition’s most transformational and transcendent moments unfold in the dark, in a dream space rich with spiritual potency. In Toldot, this week’s Torah portion, for instance, we meet Jacob, whose journey toward self-realization is bookended by two stirring night episodes. Fleeing from his wrathful brother, he has a prophetic dream in which angels ascend and descend a ladder stretching between heaven and earth while God looms over him, promising protection. Returning home some 20 years later, he engages in an all-night wrestling match with a mysterious being, perhaps his own shadow self, who ultimately blesses him as the dawn breaks, renaming him Israel, the one who strives with God and prevails.

Despite the anguish that darkness evokes, the dark times offer unique opportunities. They slow us down, inviting us to rest in the moment. Sometimes they force us to face painful truths. They challenge us to deepen our prayer life, strengthen our faith and resolve, and discover inner resources and possibilities for transformation we might not know we possess.

Years ago, I practiced walking in the woods at night without a flashlight and discovered that when I could breathe deeply and relax into the darkness, over time my eyes would adjust and I could see much more than I thought possible. Not just my eyes, but my whole body began to see in the dark in ways that I couldn’t in the light of day. I could find my way.

Adam and Eve, so the story goes, sat across from one another on that first traumatic night, fasting and weeping. When the dawn finally broke, they realized that the freshly created world was not coming to an end and that the alternation of light and dark, day and night, was simply the way of the world. Had they not felt so guilty and terrified they might have been able to look around with curiosity as the light waned, noticing how their eyes were primed to pick up many subtle shades of gray, the palette of darkness. Their vision might have gradually adjusted to the dark and, in the subtle glow of starlight, they might have been able to pick out the familiar, reassuring features of the other’s face and been calmed and comforted, even in the midst of their distress.

Could it be that in our yearning for the resurgence of the light, we fail to recognize and fully receive the gifts of darkness? That in drawing my blinds against the terrors of the night, I also shut out the vastness of the cosmos, the glimmering pinpoints of distant stars, the radiant winter moon, and the intimate, enveloping quiet of the dark?

[lunapwrites]

Monthly Reading - June

I completely neglected to post my May reading, though admittedly that one got a little personal (yes more than this one), so probably for the best lol. Either way, we're back at it again with my reading for this month, which... is a bit interesting, to tell you the honest truth.

First thing that jumps out at me here is the tarot cards: three of the more "negative" cups cards bookended by two strong intellectual cards. We're dealing with emotional turmoil this month, folks! But the presence and position of the King and Emperor is heartening - this is manageable, and we're going to keep it together.

So, on to the reading proper...

Let's start from the top, shall we? The first rune is Sowilo - the sun. It's indicating joy, success, and good health: a very positive rune, particularly when the most imminent struggle on the horizon is Beansgiving.

The next rune, appropriately enough, is Hagalaz - hail. It's indicating chaos and sudden life-changing transformation, entirely out of my control. Particularly one in which I am being forced to alter my approach to it. [Gestures at Bean, who is still stubbornly slamming that snooze button.] Yeah, uh. Noted.

Finally we have Elhaz - the elk - in the reversed position. Not really the best one to see flipped like this, in context, but not the worst. Normally Elhaz is a rune of protection and good luck. Reversed, however, it's a warning to be on my guard for potential threats and negative influences, particularly from directions I would not normally expect.

The cards, as I mentioned, are telling a story of some inner turmoil on my part, which makes sense given the whole... you know... Bean thing. But going into this in more detail, I really can't separate the King of Swords from the Emperor here because they're kind of the same picture. They're calling for cool logic, and a general masc presence that's almost definitely pointing to my partner, who very much embodies this image entirely. But we're also going to be continuing therapy, which is by nature a compassionate but logical process, so there's a bit of that here too.

Speaking of anxiety, let's take a look at these cups, shall we? Five: we're so fixated on the negatives we can't see the good in front of us. This is in the present position, so... [stares in "past due"] yeah. I'm being the whiniest little bitch right now actually, and having a miserable time. Fight me. Four: this is the depression light card - we're withdrawing from things, we're lacking energy, we're not ready to accept the good in life because we just need some time to wallow and take a long nap, damnit. Being in the future position, yeah I can see why I might want all naps and no socialization. But it is important to remember that people do require basic things like social contact and touching grass, so... hopefully that works out for us lol. Seven: hey remember that time when you said you were going to play this all by ear and not have any expectations? Hahahaha you liar. We still have some wishful thinking to deal with here. Now, that said: this is also a shattering of negative illusions, too. It's a neat little trick we call "reality" and you're about to get checked. In this particular position, the card is indicating this will be a useful tool for me to use one way or the other, likely to help drag myself out of my emotional blergh and connect with my family and friends.

Finally, we have the oracle cards, which are pointing more in that positive direction again (and reinforcing the fact that the Bad is pretty much all in my head.)

Inspire/Wren - the healing power of music cannot and should not be underestimated. Additionally, there's going to be a lot of nonverbal communication and practice with our intuition - makes sense, given that Bean can't just tell us with words what they need/want/feel. We gotta figure that out together.

Play/Monkey - get in bitches, we're healing our childhood traumas. [Points at therapy noted above, and at the entire concept of cycle breaking.] And, pretty obviously, we're being advised to embrace the silly with Bean. Live a little. Play.

And that's all! Overall, not a bad month ahead despite the fully expected and reasonable emotional turmoil and general upheaval, which one way or another will begin this week lol. Fingers crossed everything goes well - wish us luck!

[sludgefriend]

We now interrupt your usual posting to bring you an extraordinary… and true tale of the bizarre and unexplained! Though the following passage is dramatized through the usage of emotional language, it remains a complete, truthful account of the feelings and experiences of yours truly.

Events of July 29th, 2023

I was running some Grubhub to try and make some extra cash when I was struck by this overwhelming sense of hyper-reality. The sun had just set, and over the course of a few moments, all of my senses felt suddenly sharpened. Lights were brighter, lines were cleaner, sounds were clearer. I had this sense that something strange and amazing was coming. I tried to continue on about my business as usual, but as I neared a road I’d never been down before in my entire life, I felt as though something was calling me down it. I obliged.

This road would lead up into the nearby mountains. Population is sparse out there, but present. I rolled down my windows, turned off my music, and listened to the bustling nightlife of the Colorado wilderness. It was nearly 10:30 at this time, so the dark, winding roads were illuminated only by my headlights and the glow of the nearly full moon.

Looking at my gas tank, I realized I was reaching a distance at which I might not be able to return from if I kept going for too much longer. I had to pick a spot and stop there. I decided to stop at the next pull-off that I could. I stopped the car, exited my vehicle, and took in the sights and sounds. An owl hooted, a hawk screeched, insects chirped, but oddly, so did a flock of birds that I’d usually associate with the early morning.

To the side of the road on which I’d parked was a vast, open field bookended by a higher ridge, and to the other was an even higher, but closer ridge. I stood there for a few moments, transfixed by the ever-present beauty of nature in the late evening. I turned every light off that I could, and soaked it in. But, that’s when I noticed something peculiar.

At first I thought it might have been an illusion. There’s no way I could have seen what I’d just seen. It must have been my mind playing tricks on me. Looking into the night sky, I could have sworn that… maybe some of the stars up there weren’t quite as stationary as they ought to be. They seemed to flutter and flicker around certain spaces, occasionally fully ascending or descending past the ridge lines.

I thought to pull out my phone to record the lights, guarantee to myself that what I thought must be some mistake. Though I was still in disbelief, some part of me had the feeling that if I pull my phone out now and start recording, these things, if they’re real, would go away. I pointed my phone at the one buzzing around the ridge across the field. Sure enough, it suddenly faded.

Disappointed and confused, I felt a great desire within myself. “Come back”, I pleaded, desperate to confirm or deny the experience for myself. Sure enough, it did. It rose back above the ridge line, like a sentient star. I grabbed some footage of it, confirmed that it was in fact moving, and stood there in awe. Shortly afterwards I’d notice, there’s not just one of these things, there’s not two, there’s at least six of them that I can tell for sure that are moving.

One over the far ridge. Two somewhere in the middle. Three more over the closer ridge line assorting themselves into a triangle, perpendicular to my perspective. The former three flitting around in a manner that I can only describe as insect-like, taking time to zoom back and forth over one area and then suddenly zip in another direction. It seemed almost… purposeless, but it felt in my soul like I was being given a show.

Without my realizing it, nearly two hours had gone by as I watched these lights dance in the sky. At that time, I found myself thinking, “Please come closer, please come just a little closer”. I got what I had asked for, but I certainly wasn’t as ready for it as I’d thought.

Suddenly, two orange lights came over the ridge and floated over the tree-line. You could see the light that they emitted start to blanket the old growth pines. I stood there bewildered, in awe, and terrified. These things, though still far away were much closer than the ones in the sky. Not only that, but given the scale of the trees, they had to be massive. The one to the left’s light suddenly grew in intensity, eventually resembling a miniature sun whose light was so intense and radiant that it momentarily reverted my night vision and forced me to look away before reverting to its previous brightness.

Taken aback by what had just happened and somewhat shaken, I got back in my car. I thought to myself “I should really go home… but then again, I’ve been here for two hours. If I’m lucky, I might be able to get someone else up here by the time these things go away.” I pulled out my phone, and called a friend.

Ok im going to the bar now so I’ll finish the rest later. Btw I have pics and vids that I’ll post :)

[padmerrie]

Odds and (Book)ends [ongoing ; AO3 link HERE]

Various unconnected snippets set in the Bookends universe, updated whenever inspiration strikes.

Series summary: Kakashi Hatake and Sasuke Uchiha have big ambitions despite their small town roots. So when Sasuke is accepted into a prestigious private high school, Kakashi will do anything to get him there - including reconnecting with Sasuke’s wealthy, estranged grandparents, Madara and Hashirama, and asking them for a big favor: money to pay for the school’s pricey tuition. Presented with the opportunity to become a part of Sasuke’s life again, they're eager to help… but on one condition: in exchange for Sasuke’s tuition, Kakashi and Sasuke must attend a weekly Friday night dinner at their estate. Forced to face their differences and complicated past, Kakashi and Sasuke learn to navigate a new normal all the while trying not to get tangled in the ties that bind.

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    

Charity

“It’s going to rain.  I just know it.”

Kakashi didn’t bother looking up at the darkening sky.  Ominous gray clouds appeared on the horizon less than a half ago, rolling steadily towards them, and all Iruka had done since then was track their progress with the same enthusiasm as Channel 7’s meteorologist, Sayaka Mori.  Any minute now he was going to ask Kakashi to film his audition tape for a national news network.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Kakashi mused.  “When we’re raising money to fix the gymnasium’s roof?  At this point it would be easier to convert the gym into a swimming pool.”

His light attempt at humor was, unsurprisingly, lost on Iruka.  “I can’t believe it’s going to rain.”

“Iruka, there are a hundred or so days left in the school year.  I’m sure it won’t be raining on at least one of them.”

Iruka groaned miserably.  “I don’t want to reschedule.”

Now, Kakashi looked up.  “You’re really going to make those kids stand in the pouring rain and beg people to cough up a couple bucks to get their car washed when Mother Nature is already getting the job done for free?"

“But look how excited they are,” Iruka argued, looking over at the student volunteers set up in the school parking lot. 

Excited wasn’t the word Kakashi would use.  A cluster of students sporting identical, homemade t-shirts advertising the charity car wash stood huddled against the cold.  Sasuke was easy to spot, the only one not courageously sacrificing his comfort for the sake of school spirit.  The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled down low over his head, the front zipped all the way up to his neck.  Even with the added layer, Kakashi could tell that he was shivering.  Next to him, Sakura and Naruto talked animatedly to each other and a couple other classmates Kakashi recognized but didn’t know by name.  The comatose expression on Sasuke’s face gave him the distinct impression that he mentally checked out of the conversation a while ago; the only thing keeping him tethered to this mortal plane was the to-go coffee cup clutched in his hands. 

As if sensing him, Sasuke looked up and their eyes met.  He gave an imperceptible shake of his head, his hollow stare mirroring exactly how Kakashi felt.  

We gave up our Saturday for this?

The most Kakashi could do without offending Iruka was nod somberly in solidarity.  

“Oh, I don’t know,” Iruka groused out loud more to himself than to Kakashi as he squinted up at the dark clouds.

“I’ll do whatever you want to do,” Kakashi simply said, and thought to himself, if it wasn’t going to rain, the least Mother Nature could do was save him from Iruka’s chronic indecisiveness.    

A drop of rain hit his head.