#perhaps being the ones to draw out the diagram

[midavalanche]

Jazz was visiting her new niece when Jason walked in to complain about bats to his Scary Assassin Mom(TM) (as his goons call her). They hit it off without realizing any of the other connections between their families.

The web of relationships gets debated on when everyone ends up in the same room and start pointing fingers at each other. Danny’s rogue gallery is highly entertained and provide a chalk board for drawing the family tree out.

Batfamily is thrown off enough that it takes a few minutes for them to question the randomly appearing chalkboard.

DPxDC Prompt #7

Danny is a clone.

But not of Bruce. Nor Tim. Nor Damian, Jason, or Dick. Not Clark or Diana or any of those usual suspects.

No, no.

You see, when Ra's realized that he was running out of Pits to revive himself with, before he resorted to allowing Talia to give him a grandson with the Detective, Ra's tried to clone

Himself.

After all, who better to be his Heir(/Vessel to Possess) when this body ultimately fails him.

But he failed. Repeated use of the Lazarus Pits had done something to his DNA. Changed or degraded it. All of the clones were unstable from the start. None surviving past the embryonic stage.

All but one.

Ra's last attempt before deeming the project a failure developed all the way to standard 40 weeks before flatlining.

In a last ditch effort to salvage it, Ra's instructed for the clone to be dipped in the Pit. Only to have the Lazarus Waters rip the stillborn infant away and down down down into it's depths.

Immediately following that last failure, Ra's finally relented and gave Talia permission to inseminate herself and bear him an Heir of his and the Detective's blood.

.

Meanwhile, in the Infinite Realms, an Old Clock finds a mortal infant choking on his first living breaths through the Corrupted Ectoplasm in his lungs which gave him life and brought him here. The Ancient smiles. The Realms has chosen her next King. And what a Great One he shall be. Now the Time Keeper needs only deliver the infant where he needs to be to become who he must become.

[darlinluxx]

𝐒𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐑 | 𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐀𝐄 𝐁𝐘𝐄𝐎𝐊 ౨ৎ

pairing : saebyeok x fem!reader

fluff

warnings : none

summary : Cheol starts seeing you as a mother figure

a/n : inspired by @karli6 comment on one of my posts bc it’s so cute i couldn’t not write about it

𝐓he scent of lavender fills your small apartment, a comforting aroma that’s become synonymous with Saebyeok. it’s a stark contrast to the grit of her life, the harsh edges that you know so well, and a gentle reminder of the soft woman beneath. you’re perched on the edge of the couch, a half-finished crossword puzzle abandoned in your lap. Saebyeok is at the small table, her brow furrowed in concentration as she counts the meager money spread out before her.

you watch her, a fondness blossoming in your chest. you love that even in her moments of vulnerability, there’s a strength that radiates from her. it’s the same strength that protects her younger brother, Cheol.

speaking of Cheol, a small, hesitant cough echoes from the doorway. you look up and see him, his backpack slung low on his shoulders, his eyes large and uncertain. he’s holding out a crumpled sheet of paper.

“i… i need some help.” he mumbles, his gaze darting between you and Saebyeok.

Saebyeok glances up, her expression softening as she notices Cheol. “homework again?” she sighs, a hint of exasperation in her voice. she picks up a pen, ready to tackle the task at hand. but Cheol shakes his head, his focus locked on you.

“not for you.” she shuffled closer, his gaze imploring. “can you help me, please?”

your heart melts. it’s not that Saebyeok isn’t good at academics, but her way of teaching sometimes involves a lot of direct answers, whereas you prefer a more patient, guiding approach. you know that Cheol can be easily intimated, and perhaps you offer a calmer space for him to learn.

you set aside your crossword and smile, beckoning him closer. “of course, Cheol. let me see.”

he practically barrels himself into the space next to you on the couch, his small body warm against your side. as you smooth out the paper, you see it’s a math problem involving fractions, a subject dreaded by many young students.

“okay,” you say, pointing to the equation with a pen. “this looks a little tricky, but we can break it down. what do you think about first finding the common denominator?”

you spend the next half hour patiently explaining the concepts, drawing diagrams on scrap paper, and gently nudging him towards the solution. you praise him for every small victory, and his eyes light up each time he grasps a new idea. you realize these moments are precious. you enjoy being able to support and teach him.

Saebyeok watches from the table, a subtle smile playing on her lips. when you finally help Cheol arrive at the correct answer, he bursts into a grin, his satisfaction radiating through the room.

“thanks! you’re the best!” he declares, his eyes shining with newfound confidence. he scrambles off the couch, heading to his room, leaving a trail of discarded papers in his wake.

you turn to Saebyeok, a warm feeling settling in your chest. “he’s a smart kid, just needs a little encouragement.”

she nods, her eyes holding a complex mix of affection and almost… relief? “yeah.” she says quietly, returning to the money.

over the next few weeks, you notice a pattern forming. Cheol starts seeking you out for help with his homework more often. it’s never forced, always a gentle request. and you never refuse. you find yourself looking forward to the quiet evenings spent poring over textbooks and diagrams with Cheol. it’s a nice change of pace from the anxiety and fear that usually permeates both his and Saebyeok’s lives.

sometimes. he even asks for help with things beyond schoolwork. it’s in these seemingly mundane moments, as you help him, that you feel a strange connection to Cheol, like you’re something more than just his sister’s girlfriend.

one evening, as you’re helping him with a particularly challenging history assignment, Cheol pauses, his small fingers tracing the outline of an illustration in his textbook. he looks up at you, his eyes wide and earnest.

“you’re like mom,” he says, the words spilling out before he can think them through. “she used to help me with my homework too.”

a wave of emotion washes over you. it’s not even a conscious decision, but you pull him into a gentle hug, holding him close. it’s a bittersweet revelation. his mother is a gaping hole in both their lives, a void you can’t ever hope to truly fill. but if you can offer him a semblance of stability, of care, it’s something you desperately want to do.

you feel Saebyeok’s eyes on you from across the room. you look up and lock her eyes. she’s watching you with a soft smile on her face, a silent understanding passing between you. she knows the weight you carry with Cheol’s words, and she knows the strength you hold within as well.

you squeeze Cheol gently, kissing the top of his head. “well, i’ll try my best, okay?” you say, before returning to the history book, a different kind of warmth filling the space within your small, lavender-scented apartment. it’s more than just homework, it’s the beginning of something that feels like family. and you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

[mother-giselles-hat]

Do you think Emmrich keeps a little notebook. Do you think when he was an uncertain young boy, terrified of the dark and the gloom and the inescapable inevitability of death being so very in front of him so shortly after a devastating loss, he needed an outlet? And perhaps an older, kinder Mourn Watch member who themselves did not choose their path but rather stumbled upon it gave the gangly youth before them a small collection of pages to work through his racing thoughts in?

I'm picturing clumsy doodles of flowers from graveyards that as one flips through the years of journals kept neatly on a personal bookshelf turn into masterful sketches worthy of publication in a scientific journal. Rough strokes with lots of pressure behind them, intent on getting the repeatedly written rituals correct so that he no longer has to reference a cheat sheet. Maybe even a list of names, pages upon pages worth crossed out until at last, underlined so strongly the pen tore through paper, we find the name Manfred.

And I like to think that he goes through at least a journal and a half while getting to speak with so many companions from so many parts of the world he has previously never dreamed of traveling to himself, not when there's so much to be done at home. Recipes are scrawled out in Bellara's and Lucanis' handwriting and pasted into the back. There are attempts at drawing the anatomy of Assan, a list of what snacks Halla like best courtesy of Davrin. Even a carefully curated, bullet-pointed selection of topics that seem to work best when trying to get Taash to let down their guard. And of course, a cross-sectioned diagram of the Yam-And-Jam-Slam.

And then, permit me if you will, the opportunity to ruminate on human Emmrich, on a day yet to pass, in which a romanced Rook that never violated their love's privacy finally feels brave enough to go through some of his untouched belongings to see what they want to keep, and finding such lovely records of their first months together. And despite the ache in their chest and the tightness in their throat, they don't stop at the first sign of something more, a little scribbled observation about how much sadness this Rook has in their eyes for someone so new to the field. And then they find the portraits, the loving detail put into the light of the fade reflecting off their cheekbones, their eyes. The carefully crafted notes on what sort of jewelry might do them justice, small scenes of a man, his beloved, and a skeleton strolling across sandy beaches, through shadowed forests, across snowy mountain peaks and through bustling city streets. Until they blink, wipe the tears from their eyes, reach the end of the last journal in what feels like mere minutes (but in all reality is probably something closer to hours).

The handwriting is less structured, the pen doesn't press quite so insistently as it once did. But the sentiment, the sincerity, of the final entry could only be his.

Death is not so frightening knowing how fiercely I have lived. Nothing it could take is greater than all I have been given.

Idk. Just wondering.

[homestuckreplay]

chemicals in wv’s bunker turning all the frogs gay!!

(page 1407-1429)

Every thread of this story is so cool right now that I can’t decide which one I most want to go back to, and I’m not mad about any of the sudden switches. Also, 22 pages today, which is the new record for most pages in a single day.

Yesterday we caught our first glimpse of the Land of Light and Rain, the planet where Rose has landed in the Medium. Like John, Rose’s house (including immediate surroundings, like the waterfall) has been plucked from Earth and placed on an Incipisphere planet, but where John’s house was high above the planet’s surface, Rose’s is level. LOLAR looks like a kids’ Easter craft party (complimentary) with butter yellow clouds, bright blue skies, artistically sculpted limestone or marble (?) formations, and a sea of swirled, pastel pink, blue and yellow.

It’s very pretty to me, although not quite as magical as the spooky bioluminescence of LOWAS in my opinion. But I’m thinking about how Rose defaced a Squiddles T-shirt so that the sweet cartoon looks evil, and knit her princess doll a tentacled face and arms, and simply refused to acknowledge an absurd pink tea set. Rose has a lot of resistance to things that are pastel, youthful and girly, so I’m surprised by her ‘I think I like it here’ (p.1402) unless she already has plans to twist this land to her dark ways. Like if John’s quest is to slay The Slumbering One such that the Breeze can flow through the Pipes (p.1358), restoring the Wind to the Land of Wind and Shade… LOLAR already has plenty of light, so could Rose’s quest be about balancing out the light with some more darkness? I think that’d be very fitting for her.

Nannasprite confirmed that John is the Heir of Breath (p.1358) and his land is wind-themed, so, Rose’s land being light-themed probably means she’s the Seer of Light, instead of Witch of Space like most people have theorized. Which is really surprising, and is probably going to put both Rose and Jade (who must now be the Witch) in unfamiliar situations.

The loading screen on this flash is part of a diagram we’ve previously seen in WV’s bunker on page 733, which presumably lays out all four kids’ planets after they’ve all entered the Medium. Meanwhile, there’s an 8-planet session displayed in the Skaianet Laboratory in page 874. Is it possible this corresponds to the trolls’ session and only eight of them had yet entered at that moment? That doesn’t feel quite right, because it’s not set up with 4 gaps for more planets – so it could be that some of the trolls didn’t manage to enter? Or it could be another session entirely, perhaps winnie the poop 2 from GameFAQs (p.249).

This update also explicitly reminds the reader about the planets WV drew on page 703, showing the exact same panel (with bonus PM – what will she draw??) on page 1413 in case anyone hadn’t made the link with John and Rose’s lands. The update also features PM recapping the LOWAS walkaround and confirming which parts of that are ‘canon’ in the sense of impacting John’s ongoing story – in this case, his placing a shoe and hat in the Parcel Pyxis, and obtaining a chisel and uncarved minitablet. These recaps add some interesting context, and I overall like that the story is making concessions to casual readers who aren’t constantly rereading old pages. I guess this is similar to when a sequel/later book in a series will have characters discuss the events of the previous book, just for a continuously updating story instead of one in discrete chunks.

Anyway this whole thing smacks of Gender, and there’s a big focus on PM Being A Woman which continues to make no sense to me. WV thinks that ‘ladies like squishy useless things’ (p.1409) and that ‘they are a riddle draped in a mystery wrapped in post-apocalyptic shroudwear’ (p.1413). In the early acts gender wasn’t explicitly discussed amongst the kids, and it took months for PM’s being a woman to even come up – but since Snowman’s introduction things have felt more gendered, impacting Rose’s pesterlogs (p.1401) and WV’s pages today. Drawing attention to PM’s ‘lovely white complexion’ is also a little weird to me; I think it’d be better for the comic to stay away from lines like that in its black/white chess dichotomy.

I am annoyed by gender but not made about WV and PM’s silly date sequence. WV is still shown as naive and foolish but in an affectionate way, and his ‘big computer with the weird boy on it’ is a funny line. He basically invites PM over to play video games and shows off his cool computer and lets her have a turn, which is apparently a classic dating move in both the human 2000s and chess piece 2420s.

We glimpse the third room of the bunker, which does not have a sendificator like I expected. Instead there’s a spirograph shaped keyhole like the one on page 733, only instead of switching between Earth and the Incipisphere, this one switches between two identical spirographs and a Big Frog. I get so excited when frogs show up, not because of their importance to the lore or anything, I just like frogs. Below that dial is a single blue button, and there’s a large spirograph platform in the center of the room. We strategically don’t see the other side.

Honestly I got nothing for this – the frog has an arrow to each spirograph, so it’s not like switching frogs on or off. The mystic ruins are frog shaped and are where the bunker is attuned to for its ‘HOME’ function, so could it be switching between two sets of mystic ruins? But if so, where would the other set be? Somewhere in the Incipisphere?

We learn that John is familiar to PM, as presumably they meet after John wakes up on Prospit, which is in the past for PM but the future for John. It’s confirmed that she’s the source of instructions in the LOWAS walkaround (p.1358), and we see the narrator act as an intermediary between them, just like with John and WV (p.254, for example). It seems like commands only have control over John, or go through to him directly, when they’re phrased as instructions. It also seems like the bunker command terminals are keyed to players, as they have these commanding abilities, while server players are keyed to locations, as their role is to build – Rose mentions on page 1402 that she can only see John’s empty house.

These screenshots of the LOWAS walkaround still show the game interface controller, restart button, etc) and cursor, and the narrator mentions that ‘this may or may not mean anything to you depending on your current perspective’ (p.1419). Later when a screenshot shows the narrative text within the panel (‘You got a CHUNK OF AMBER!’), the narrator says, ‘You got a CHUNK OF… Why am I repeating myself?’ (p.1427), all of which draw attention to the flash game and webcomic formats. That’s always interesting to me, especially now that we have multiple sub-games and webcomics within a webcomic that’s both about a game and set up as a different sort of game. All those things are going to rub up against each other at some point, and that’s massively influenced John’s character – he has to be ignorant of a lot of things so that he can be explained to in place of the reader, so that he can demonstrate the consequences of failure before getting to succeed, and so that he can be the playable character in a Flash game and interact with things for seemingly the first time. So his character development is very constrained by his role in these mediums, and I like that this conflict shows up with John specifically.

Anyway I need to remind myself that mind control is still bad even when it is the Peregrine Mendicant doing it. This is a moral wrong even when she is being harmlessly enthusiastic about the mail and when I love her very much. But wow are her mail themed commands fun now that we know their full origin and PM’s genuine delight, especially if this is the first time she’s visited LOWAS.

Finally, I love the decision to recap the Secret Wizard and Crumplehat. They might not be plot important (??) but they definitely establish character for the salamanders as a species and set a whimsical fantasy tone for LOWAS, and they are the true stars of the walkaround. Also this is the title of my posts document right now.

And hey! The full view of John’s house high above LOWAS on page 1429. From the salamanders’ perspective, I totally get it. See something like that appear in the sky out of nowhere, and something strange and magical is definitely going on.

[relaxxattack]

Hi i want to thank you for the QPR vs Moirail venn diagram. Its a rly excellent way of showing the difference. My gripe is about human romance, and how people will either 1- conflate it in a 1:1 ratio with Matesprit, or 2- claim it is “all the quadrants”. I personally feel both are false equivalency, and that the human romance is similar to both pale and red rom* and SO i was wondering if you agreed w that assessment, or if not, if you have the time to explain your thoughts on human traditional romance vs the quadrants (perhaps w another nifty graph)?

* which is why Rose’s destructive tendencies during sburb & her descent into addiction on the meteor were not addressed by kanaya, who feared palezoning herself like she did with vriska

OH MY GOD! YES!!!! why am i getting such great asks today?!

no, you're EXACTLY right. people are constantly conflating matespritship in those two ways; "all of the quadrants" being especially irritating (since Some humans occasionally argue, Occasionally in a kinky way, and i guess that means that they totally have all of kismesissitude covered?? :/).

matespritship is its very own thing. of the two interpretations above, i feel the idea that it's 1:1 to human romance is the closest to true. i mean, that's what they literally say in the comic, for gog's sake.

humans do not truly incorporate moirallegiance, kismesissitude, or auspisticism into their lives in any meaningful way. while it's possible for humans to sometimes have romances that might seem more like one of those than matespritship, they're considered abnormal or toxic-- and they often ARE, because humans do not have the same sort of biological drives or social understanding of these things that trolls do. humans do not understand the true needs and ramifications, or even the ROMANCE of moirallegiance. humans would be hard pressed to understand a kismesissitude in a 'healthy' way. i don't even need to mention how auspisticism flies over people's heads.

so, yes, humans only have the one quadrant. (and karkat vantas, i am sorry to say, is not going to "human date" anyone as the "solution to his quadrant problems". this would literally be the same as him trying to stick only to matespritship, and we all know exactly how that turned out.)

however! matespritship is not an exact 1:1 on human romance either. the direct quote from the comic is;

"[It's] the closest parallel to the human concept of romance trolls have." [x]

this is not really expanded on much in the text, honestly-- the intricacies of the social and biological traits of matespritship aren't shown enough for us to draw clear distinctions between them and human romance.

however, i think you're right that rose and kanaya are the best example we have of that-- despite them both aiming for matespritship, they have cultural misunderstanding quite often from some of rose's flirting, or even just her needs, crossing wires into a pale threshold that kanaya is weary of.

it's entirely possible that the differences between troll and human "hearts" might have made it difficult for kanaya to really connect with rose's problems and discuss them with her.

which might explain why when things go "better" for them in the retcon, they're portrayed reading a book on troll romance together:

it could be implied here that searching for a more in-depth understanding of quadrants actually helped rose with her ability to connect to kanaya-- and maybe, reading into it a little too hard here, this also could have been an opportunity for kanaya to work through her vriska-based hangups with the pale quadrant. that's entirely speculation on my part, though.

at the end of the day, we don't really KNOW enough about the details of quadrants for me to paint a clear picture of how matespritship differs from human romance. i mean, i could try, but it would certainly be more of a headcanon post than an analysis one!

[chameleonsd1sh]

BEGGING marauders fans to think abt remus' scars for a minute before drawing them.

once the marauders become animagi in fifth year, he no longer destroys himself. but he's had most of a lifetime to do serious damage. what does repeated trauma on the same spots do?

which legs would he use to scratch himself most, and where?

he bites himself too, imo probably more than scratching. where would he bite?

where can he reach easily? how about not easily? with momentum? quick, scrappy bites? throwing himself into it for a moment and then ripping away?

can he even reach his face easily? he likely does not have scars there, as harry never mentioned them despite describing the scars of others, like moody and bill, in great detail

what do wolf bites look like? look it up! there's diagrams easily accessible!

would the angle of the bite change its appearance? how?

how do different types of scars heal? why do they heal that way? are they pushing out like ridges or cutting in like ravines? what colour are they? why? are newer scars different from old ones? these are all easy things to find out on medical sites.

how would him being a werewolf affect his wounds? they can be closed with silver and dittany, but they scar aggressively as werewolf bites do. what does that mean?

my remus is tattered and torn from the neck down. he wears turtle-necks, high-collared shirts, scarves, and other such things to hide the scars on his neck.

when transforming he'd curl up in agony and likely wouldn't attack himself, instead just trying to get through the experience. but after the excruciating transformation, "[he] was separated from humans to bite, so [he] bit and scratched [himself] instead."

he'd rip at his thighs with his teeth, he'd twist to reach his lower back and scrape his teeth on it, snap at it before whirling around again, gnawing at his front legs terribly and nearly taking a finger off once.

he could get his snout with his front paws, but the angle was slightly awkward. he could bury his snout in his front paws, scrape through and cause scratches up his nose, but i find it unlikely he would do this much, if at all. not often or hard enough to cause scars, clearly, since he doesn't have any on his face. so he probably doesn't do it at all. if he could easily it would be fiercely.

he could scratch his neck and the sides and top of his head with his hind legs, and has striped patches where his hair does not grow. he covers it best he can with the hair he does have, and that's all he can do.

how about his tail? he'd gnaw at it. it's been broken many times. would skele-gro fix it? he drinks it in human form. does the skele-gro know it was there? can it fix bones not currently present? perhaps it would shrink to his tailbone and the damage was concentrated there. something too much of this. either way, the flesh is twisted and mangled and it's more tufts of hair than anything resembling the full fur of a wolf.

his hands are stiff and gnarled with scars. his thighs have borne the brunt of the damage. the depth of the wounds expected from a werewolf tearing itself apart are such that he'd probably have muscle damage causing an odd gait, as well as stiffness, trouble walking, bad pain every day...

i'm not an expert on wolves or wolf behaviour, so there may be mistakes here. i'm always learning new stuff! but it's just really interesting to think about, and doing even a little bit of googling helps a LOT in portraying him more accurately.

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 2.5.2025

So, where we left this last week was that I felt like shit and had decided I needed force myself back into writing. The thing I would like to get done the most is a little in love, because I feel extremely guilty about it not being done. I did a thing I hate doing, which is to read some writing advice. I think it might be a tension issue, so I started there and something I read brought up the five-act play. I have one of those! I said to myself, and then read up on the theory of the five-act play. Unfortunately, my outline, as it stands and is not working, is the very model of a five-act play. I am supposed to be doing falling action at this point. Right now, it's so boring and draggy I want to puke, and I had been trying to think up ways to jazz it up, but, uh. I guess. not. I think maybe my only choice is to trim it down, so at least it's shorter. Intellectually, I do not think this is true, but I feel like I need to throw out the 20k words of act iv I have already written and start again from scratch. The real thing I think I need to do is write a few of the scenes from Act V, and then hopefully it will be easier to get from here to there. I've been planning to do this since Christmas, and I still haven't gotten around to doing it.

What I did instead was to read As You Like It, which is a five-act play and a romantic comedy. I hadn't read a Shakespeare in a long time and it seemed like a fun and inspirational thing to do. Reader, it was not. I mean, it was fine. It's just that, uh, sorry Bill, but it's just not the most inspirational of your works. It was 75% cuckold jokes, and then the main plot got solved by some guy changing his mind off-screen.

That's great, Poly, you say. Did you get back to the fanfic? No. What happened somewhere in the middle of that, while I was being bored of Touchstone's clowning was that I decided I wanted to re-read the two scraps of Academy fic I wrote two summers ago. The first scrap is based on the filler parts of Episode 46. Namely, we see how Renji and Kira meet, but I wanted to write about how Renji and Hinamori meet. Halfway through writing that, though, I got another really weird Academy story idea, so I wrote that up. I had the idea at the time that maybe I would write a number of loosely-related Academy vignettes and publish them together. I was working on something else at the time, though, (the tattoo artist AU maybe?? I don't feel like looking it up) and I decided it was more important to work on that. Anyway, this week, because I felt like it, I started on the b-part of the second Academy vignette. It's 1500 words of Rukia and Renji being insane about each other in a way. I do not foresee publishing it anytime soon, or perhaps, even ever. I would have to finish and post the first vignette first, and then come up with some more, which seems unlikely to happen (but who knows??) In theory, I could post this on its own, but it really hinges on the Kira->Hinamori->Renji->Rukia non-situationship being incredibly messy and yet simultaneously extremely repressed (there should be more arrows in there, but I don't feel like making a whole-ass diagram). Perhaps there is an audience for this beyond myself, but I just...I don't know, I feel like someone is going to be like "this is so weird they would not do this" and I don't have the energy in me to face that.

Anyway. It's fine. I can noodle around on stuff that's just for me and never finish it. It's good enough to keep my brain from capsizing.

I've also still be drawing nearly every day, so good job to me for that. I will try to do something that passes for an actual piece of art in February, I promise.

[hannahssimblr]

And so, begins an intense drive for work like I have never experienced. Perhaps work is the wrong word, as not much about creating art feels that way. Never before with ordinary, academically focussed work have I adopted this kind of extraordinary discipline to the point that I simply get through the motions of the ins and outs of my ordinary days, looking forward to the moment that I can lock myself away in my bedroom and draw for the evenings and into the night.

I draw everything in sight. I study fabric; the crinkle of the duvet, the crease in my pillows and the piles of discarded clothing on my bedroom floor. I draw the curtains from ten positions, then ten more. I study the exacting edges of man made objects. The hard, smooth ceramic of the mugs I should have brought back to the kitchen days ago, the individual keys of my laptop, a tastefully arranged stack of books from dad’s library that he surely won’t notice are missing unless he has a sudden urge to read about the battle of the bulge or Haguenau for the thousandth time. 

Mostly I study myself, my own anatomy, feet, legs, arms and fingers and all of the weird little bits of me that move about beneath the skin. I fill pages and pages this way, so many that I run out of paper and start drawing in between all of the drawings I’ve already done, overlapping like the work of an obsessed madman. Maybe I am. 

Have I eaten today? 

Often I pull up a mirror and study my own face in different ways. I pull different expressions or control the lighting so that I can create soft, diffused light in the early morning, or cast angular shadows over my cheek with the artificial glow of a desk light when the sun sets and the room around me is black like spilled ink. 

At school when I lay my work on the table for Miss O’Reilly I’m embarrassed by how many drawings of my own likeness cram the bursting pages of my sketchbooks. They look like the journals of a raving egomaniac to me, but to her it resembles art. She tells me that I show a lot of real promise, and that I have more to learn. I agree with her, and spend lunchtime in the library.

Art and science, it seems, go hand in hand. Hunched in a dark corner where nobody can see how uncool I have become, I pore over anatomy diagrams and look at muscles and tendons and bones. I learn what everything is called and the shape it makes when the skin is pulled taut over it. 

When it is curved on one side, it’s straight on the other, I observe, as I draw my finger down the length of an illustrated thigh on page sixty four of Biology Plus for Leaving Cert, trying not to think about how this is probably the closest I’ve come to intimacy with another human being in months, and as someone as uncontrollably and constantly horny as I am it’s becoming difficult to ignore. Maybe I should text Tara Neary and ask if she’ll help me study biology…

No.

I hastily skip over the pages about reproduction and start reading about something called the Cephalic vein instead. Sexy. 

I even log into the library computers and watch disgusting medical videos of dissections which make me feel so ill that I think I might lose my lunch, but they are informative as much as they make me feel like I am displaying psychopathic behaviour and worry that I am on a slippery slope towards becoming one of those people that murders cats and rabbits just so that he can cut them up and peer at their insides. What’s next? Robbing graves?

“Look up blue waffle next.”

I jump, and spin around to Jen who is leaning over my shoulder, and I quickly close all windows from the Video Atlas of Human Anatomy website. “And that’s fucking sick, whatever that is.” 

“Jesus, Jen, you scared me.”

“Only because I caught you looking at something you shouldn’t.” 

“It’s just biology,” I grumble, and she pinches my arm before pulling up a seat and slumping into it, “I didn’t think I’d find you here of all places. The elusive Jude Turner.”

“Is that what they call me now?”

“I’m afraid so. But honestly I thought you were doing something way more interesting with all your alone time these days.”

“I’m studying.”

“Do you know how to study?”

“Clearly.” 

She sighs, “Well can you give it a rest? I miss you. We don’t hang out enough lately.”

“It’s not because I hate you or something…”

“I know, you’re busy, busy, busy, drawing all the time. Ugh. I get it. Is this how you’re going to be all summer too? Down on the beach in Wexford drawing scabby seagulls?”

“If you wanted to hang out you could always come over to my house and let me draw you again, as long as you won’t move around so much this time.”

“I can’t not move!” She says in outrage, and as the librarian promptly shushes her she lowers the volume, “It’s so boring just to sit there and do nothing, I can’t think of anything worse. Oh no wait, I can, it’s hanging out with Michelle and Evan without you there to laugh at them with me. And now that it’s getting warmer and the days are longer I just want to be outside, but my only options are to sit in the park and watch them kiss or go for a sad walk all on my own, Judie,” she takes my hands, “Please, give it a rest. Down the pencils, I’m begging you.”

“I just really like learning about this.”

“Yes, but can you like it six days a week instead of seven? Can you give me a day? A measly day for old Jenny?”

“I see you Tuesdays still,” I point out, though I know that grilling her with maths questions while she groans in despair into her pillow isn’t exactly her definition of fun, but can’t she see that this is important to me? I can’t forgo my Ivy duties or rugby, so I must forgo my social evenings instead. Something's got to give, and now it has, and for the good of my future I have stopped texting everyone back. 

“We’re having a bonfire night at the weekend, will you come?”

“Who is?”

“Me and my friends.”

“The emos.”

“Yeah, the emos. What other friends do I have? Now that it’s finally semi-warm-ish we thought we’d have a fun night up by the beach and just sit around and chat by the fire. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Well, yeah,” I admit reluctantly. “I do like a bonfire.”

“Of course you do, my little arsonist. So come. It’ll be good for you to get out and do something. You’re an extrovert, you’re not meant to be so cooped up.”

I begin to protest that I don’t feel cooped up, even, astoundingly, when I’m at home with my family. I feel alive and free in my artistic pursuits since I’ve unlocked this new exciting part of myself. I’m capable of focussing on something, doesn’t Jen understand how significant that is? But then again,  maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s abnormal not to socialise with other teenagers for three weeks in a row. 

“Alright, I’ll come then.”

“That’s more like it,” Jen ruffles my hair, no doubt getting it all out of place, but it’s fine, I’ll fix it later in the mirror when I’m back drawing my nose or my chin for the umpteenth time. “We’ll have a lovely time! I’m excited now!”

“Yeah, don’t get too excited, I feel like the librarian might have something to say about that.”

Jen peers around to see the daggers being shot her way, “Okay, fine. I’ll leave you alone.”

“You promise?”

“Yes! Look, I’m going!” She untangles her legs from the chair and does a whole show of sneaking away as quietly as humanly possible while watching the librarian with performative caution, “Hey,” She hisses from the door, just when I had started to believe she was truly gone, “Don't forget to look up blue waffle. Trust me.”

“Get out of here!”

Beginning // Prev // Next

[chaoswalkingsblog]

It's September 1st 1991, and Regulus has been washing the same dish over and over. James walks toward him, takes the plate off his hands, and sets it down."I think it's clean enough, love." He kisses Regulus' cheek.

Regulus turns his body towards James and hugs him. "The house has never been so quiet." To Regulus, it feels almost painfully quiet. It hurts to know that things for their three-person family would never be the same. They had not been ready to be parents when Harry was born, and now they are not ready to watch their son grow up. Regulus worries for Harry's well-being. Was he eating enough? Was he going to sleep at a good time? Would he do well in his classes? Would he be bullied? Would he be the bully?

James feels the emptiness of Harry's absence differently. They had raised such a wonderful child, and he knew Harry would be okay, whoever he became, wherever he ended up. He knows in his bones that Harry would do well. Perhaps he would turn into the youngest Quidditch player ever. Perhaps he would be at the top of his class.

James thinks they did such a great job with Harry that they could do it again. They are young enough for it, the baby food on their clothes, the accidental magic, the late nights. And so why not do it again? "What if we have another baby?"

Regulus feels like he was too busy worrying over Harry to have heard James right. "Have what?" He asks, pushing James enough to look at his beautiful brown eyes.

James smiles. "We could do it again, Reg. We could raise another wonderful child together."

"A— a baby?" Regulus asks. Coming to the realization that three was not as nice of a number as four, how he could retire from his job at the Ministry and be a stay at home father this time around. How they could turn the one empty room they had never had anything to do with into a nursery. It was the perfect room for a nursery, really.

"Yes, Reg a baby." James could not contain his excitement. He recognized the look on his husband's face. He knew Regulus was already planning the adjustments they would have to make to welcome in their baby into the world.

"Okay," Regulus says carefully. If there was any hesitation, it was gone as soon as it came.

"Okay?"

Regulus smiles. "Yes, okay! Let's have a baby!"

James hugs Regulus and starts to laugh. "We are having a baby!" He says excitedly, almost as if it wasn't he who suggested it.

Both laugh and kiss and exchange words of love and support. They talk about their hopes for the future and can't stop smiling at the idea of raising another child. They spend hours talking about the nursery, and they argue over wallpaper. At some point, Regulus fetches a pen and paper and starts to draw a diagram of the nursery. James starts to make suggestions that Regulus writes down and implements into the already formed vision he had for the nursery. They talk about buying toys and clothes. They argue over who will teach their child to fly, Jame, who had thought Harry and had experience? Or Regulus, who had not been present when Harry learned? But most importantly, they talk about how loved their baby will be. How this baby is going to be born into a large and wonderful family, with aunts and uncles and cousins. How their child would be born into a world of peace and kindness.

Hours go by.

They don't notice the time go by so quickly.

They don't notice the beautiful snowy white owl come into the house through the window until she's standing right in front of them and, taps her foot onto the wood hard enough to get James' attention.

"Oh! Hello beautiful girl, did you bring a letter from Harry?" Asks James, while Regulus mutters under his breath the books, he must buy their baby before they are born and furiously writes the titles down.

The owl nods and offers her leg to James to take the letter. And he gives her a few treats then thanks her for the letter before she goes. "Reg, Harry sent a letter. Would you like to read it out loud for us?"

"Shhhhh, I'm making a very important list for our child's development. They must read all the classics before they turn eleven!" Regulus exclaims, looking up briefly to scold his husband for interrupting.

James laughs and opens the letter. He quickly reads about the smart, muggle-born girl he met on the train. About the candies he purchased for his friends. James feels like crying of happiness. Harry's letter makes him nostalgic for his years at school. When he reaches the last few lines, he smiles victoriously. He knew since Harry was but a toddler what house he would be sorted into.

"You owe me 50 galleons!" James points at Regulus.

"James, I can't plan our child's upbringing if you continue to—" Regulus looks from his husband to the letter and then to James again. And the horrible realization dawns upon him. "Oh, no," he whispers under his breath.

James smiles maniacally and nods. "Oh, yeah, I won!"

"But, but—" Regulus does not know what to say. He has done everything right to ensure his child would sort into the right house!

"You were so stubborn too, I had told you so since that child was a toddler, and you wouldn't believe me. You have nothing to say now, do you!"James says, feeling vindicated.

Regulus glares at James, unable to admit defeat. "Double or nothing."

[endwithajadestrick]

Who Is Fucking In Star Wars? A Non-Comprehensive List

So in honor(?) of the DDoS attack on Ao3 preventing us all from mainlining slash fic, I've decided to go horny on main and list off my opinion about 3 traits of all Star Wars characters. Our beloved Galaxy Far Far Away is a usually (tragically) chaste place, which may lead us to ponder about our faves:

Do they even know what sex is?

Have they ever actually HAD sex?

Are they any good at it?

We will not be including characters who are minors in this list. Obviously. Judgements are based somewhat on the lore, but really more on vibes. Perhaps it goes without saying, this will be lightly NSFW.

This is probably gonna take a while and stop feeling like a good idea halfway through. Which of your exes does that describe? Let's Go!!!

Starting with the big three:

Han Solo

Always begin with an easy one.

Does he even know what sex is? Yes, unlike a surprising number of people in this galaxy, Han knows how to do the do.

Has he ever had sex before? Sure (but not as often as he wants you to think). Do you, uh . . . maybe wanna get out of here and come back to his ship? She's called the Millenium Falcon.

Is he good at sex? Look. It's not going to be good the first time. He's gonna keep insisting that he "knows what he's doing," but you wish he would just let you explain what you like. He needs to be girlbossed around a little bit. And it is mostly girls for him, though the occasional guy and non-binary being has mounted that loading ramp too. His bedroom does smell kind of funny.

Luke Skywalker

This one may be controversial for some people.

Does he know what sex is? Nope. Farm boy didn't go to schmool. Skool? Am I saying that right? There were no copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves lying around the rebellion base, and you better believe the Sacred Jedi Texts did not include some kind of version of the Space Kama Sutra. Han wasn't gonna draw him a diagram either; that would be too embarrassing. This man is not learned in the pleasures of the flesh.

Has he ever had sex? Also no. He got into some light over-the-clothes action with Biggs Darklighter when they were teens, but nothing ever went any farther than that.

Is he good at sex? I'm sure a real earnest effort would be made, but we'll never know, will we. Because he DOES NOT KNOW what sex is.

Princess/General Leia Organa

Does she even know what sex is? Oh, absolutely. This woman was treated to an actual formal education. She probably even got a nice, progressive version of SexEd that talked about pleasure and consent and not just all the weird diseases you could get--assuming the Empire didn't nix that sort of thing on Alderaan, which, honestly, they might have.

Has she ever had sex? Of course. And despite being a princess, she's not that precious about courtship either. Casual flings are totally fine and normal.

Is she good at sex? Leia is mature but, like her hairstyles, can be a little tightly wound. Once you get over any initial awkwardness, though, it's sure to be a fun flirty time.

And this is Star Wars, so sooner or later we have to address--

Chewbacca

--the aliens of it all. Welcome, monster fuckers! It's not even weird in this universe!

Does he know what sex is? Chewy is canonically 234 years old as of TLJ, so I'm going to give this a definite yes. Also, he hangs out with Han Solo and all the doors in this universe appear to be panel-controlled. There are no door knobs to stick a sock on; he's SEEN some things.

Has he ever had sex? Again, 234 years old, and Chewy has never seemed like a wallflower. This is also a yes.

Is he good at it? Maz Kanata seems to think so? I don't pretend I have the predilections/imagination to get the appeal (though I honor those that do), but I'm gonna take a swing and say, yes, Chewbacca is a good lover. Solid stamina, surprisingly tender after-care.

Lando Calrissian

Does he know what sex is? Yes, and not just on a mechanical level. If anyone in this universe HAS read the Space Kama Sutra, it's Lando.

Has he ever had sex? He has. And he doesn't keep a list of all his past sexual partners because that would be crass. But he COULD tell you about each of them, names, dates, locations. But he won't. But he could.

Is he good at it? Surprisingly, yes! He may come across as a guy who is all talk, but Lando is an artist at heart and the democratically elected President of Consent. He has mood lighting set up and a tastefully curated playlist. The atmosphere is fun, the oral is enthusiastic. When you're done--wow!--there's a mini bar right near the bed. And would you like to borrow a silk robe?

Your magical evening will not prevent him from cheating you at cards later, though.

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Does he know what sex is? No. He learned once, but has since memory-holed the information. Otherwise he might accidentally experience some pleasure from the stick up his bum.

Has he ever had sex? Many beings have made valiant efforts to claim this beautiful man as a conquest. All have failed, but there was much exquisite yearning along the way.

Is he good at it? Hypothetically? Alas, my heart wants to say yes, but my head says no.

Padmé Amidala

Does she know what sex is? Look at this dress. This dress is a CHOICE, a ruthless tactical decision made by someone who definitely knows what sex is.

Has she ever had sex? Yes, but her taste in men--oh, honey.

Is she good at it? A pillow princess if there ever was one. You will be doing all the work.

Anakin Skywalker

Does he know what sex is? No.

Has he ever had sex? Yes.

Is he good at it? . . . and I know those answers seem contradictory, but it's true. This is a man who has had normal, consensual adult sex. However, baby boy's brain is full of more holes than a colander. He is dummy thick actually in the head region. He is incapable of retaining complex thoughts such as the nuances of sexuality.

That said, he is a creature of pure instinct and, like, yeah, the lovemaking is pretty hot.

Mace Windu

Does he know what sex is? Yes.

Has he ever had sex? No.

Is he good at it? If it ever happened, which it won't? No, and Mace is possibly the only Sammy J character for whom this holds true. It would be strictly procreative missionary. No fun allowed.

Yoda

Does he know what sex is? Yes, he is aware. Knowledge is this little frog man's burden; Yoda is too in touch with the Force, the life energy of the universe, not to know. He WOULD not know if he could, but he has had to settle for just ignoring the information.

Has he ever had sex? You know I am genuinely stumped on this one. On one hand, he is the perfect ascetic Jedi sage. On the other hand, a nine hundred year lifespan is a long time . . . anything could have happened to this lilliputian enigma.

Is he good at it? Size matters not.

The Mandalorian

Yeah I know his name is "Din Djarin." Shush.

Does he know what sex is? I'm pretty sure this guy thinks that babies are found, not made. He does not know what sex is.

Has he ever had sex? I don't care what season one implied about Mando and that toothsome twi'lek, it's never happened. The helmet doesn't come off and the trousers don't drop.

Is he good at it? And here's the tragedy of it all, right? Because we know that underneath that impenetrable layer of beskar lies such a man. I don't even care if he's an ace, as seems plausible. Just the chance to look him in the eye would mean worlds.

Finn

Does he know what sex is? Negative, Ghost Rider. It's not something the First Order teaches their child soldiers, and the Resistance, like the rebellion of old, has bigger fish to fry. Poe wants to explain it to him, but feels like he has a dog in that race and it wouldn't be right.

Has he ever had sex? Men, women, and other beings are lining up around the corner for a shot at this man, but he only has eyes for one woman, and she in turn may be legitimately the only person in the galaxy who does not pine for him. Hang in there, Finn! Maybe one day she'll become emotionally available.

Is he good at it? While we have seen Finn makes some selfish moves along his journey--mainly because of, y'know, all the trauma--he has done a lot of growing and is an essentially generous spirit. This gets a yes.

Rey Skywalker

Does she know what sex is? Not in either The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, but before Rise of Skywalker Leia explained it to her. She's the future of the Jedi after all, and this is basic stuff, goddammit Luke!

Has she ever had sex? Hmm, what's that? Sorry, she's super busy right now with, like, destiny and stuff.

Is she good at it? Rey seems to pick most things up fairly quickly, so you have to imagine that would hold true for l'amour as well, except that she'll also be a bit of a try-hard. Do less, sweety. Really, it's fine.

Lightning Round

Asajj Ventress

Yes, yes, and it depends on the answer to one question: do you enjoy pain?

L3-37

It Works.

Cinta Kaz

Yes, yes, and not just good but so good it will politically radicalize you.

Karis Nemik

No, which is a shame because you know that he would have made sex-positive feminism and queer theory a huge part of his manifesto.

Count Dooku

Gay, and pulled legendary numbers of exquisite vintage ass across the galaxy. It's the real reason Sidious traded him in for simple, pussy-whipped Anakin. He just couldn't take it anymore.

Luthen Rael

Hope you like role-play.

Armitage Hux

Yes, it's true; this man has no dick.

Qi'ra

Yes, yes, and good but maybe in a dangerous way? Like drugs, it's possible that you--maybe even most people--could have a healthy, well-adjusted relationship to it. But there's a chance also that it will alter your brain chemistry, fundamentally shift your priorities, and ruin your life. The only way for sure to be safe is not to try it, not even once!

The Bendu

The One in the Middle. So in this case, would that be, like, the taint?

Reva Sevander

I mean, do you like it freaky? How freaky do you like it? There are levels to this sort of thing, and you, through no fault of your own, may not be ready for this ride.

Cassian Andor

Cassian Andor fucks.

The Armorer

I tried to get a read on this one, and all I picked up was radio static. We'll never know. We'll just never know.

Rose Tico

Rose appears naive at first, but she's actually quite worldly and will rock yours.

Bo-Katan Kryze

I daresay more than 2% of us want her to sit on our face. Ms. Sackoff was really lowballing it. Bo does not know what sex is, however, and is rarely in listening-mode, so that's a hurdle we'll have to overcome.

But it's more than 2%.

Poe Dameron

Yes, yes, and does it even matter? It would be an honor just to be considered, sir.

Hera Syndulla

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Apparently what Lola wants is an inexperienced, sexually repressed Jedi hotty. In this way, she is the true queen of Star Wars fandom. Captain our ship, Hera!

And Finally:

Kylo Ren

I do not understand the hold this man has on some of you--which is fine; you don't need me to understand it. He does not know what sex is, he is so horny and angry all the time. And sure, maybe you CAN fix him by completing his education. Blessings, angels. Live your fantasy.

Just promise me you'll use protection? And I don't mean a condom, I mean body armor.

[talonabraxas]

A Color Diagram

(From book, "The Anatomy of the Body of God")

The Geometry of the Tree

The drawing itself is a meditation, as anyone who has experimented with the quasi-spiritual exercise of exploring the results of drawing with a compass and a straight edge. These are the tools of Euclid and Pythagoras, the early Greek mathematicians, and also probably were used much earlier by the unnamed architects who built the pyramids and other structures. The game here is to intuitively contemplate the analogies–remembering that what's at stake is also the frontier of in here and out there, of mind and so-called objective reality.

It begins with a contemplation of the empty page. Yet there is the contemplator, who is also the potential artist. There is the idea of doing something–perhaps not even clear what–just something, of drawing. There is the idea of making a mark, of having a mark-maker, a pencil or its equivalent, a finger on sand. Not in the air–part of this paper-and-pencil idea has to do with a mark that will stay still, that will sit there, an extension of mind, an expression of will, a putting out there so that it sticks what is only glimmeringly becoming in the mind. So a toddler may experience the miracle of a crayon and paper–or before that, what? His own poop and a wall?

What if, as the esoteric students of many millennia suggested, what we do is in the "image of God," not just humans, but actions, and all the world. What exists in the divine milieu, the essential underlying principles, is manifested in what we call reality–even if that manifestation is only partial, only a tiny shadow of the greatness that expresses us. Thus, artists are known to express their frustration that their best efforts are only incomplete gestures, mere efforts at capturing the magnificence, the numinosity, of their mystical experience.

What if, speaking poetically, God wanted to express in a relatively static, dense context, in a form that wouldn't dissolve, like dreams, like water, a creative inspiration. She might begin by making a figurative mark on a figurative piece of paper. The paper is space-time, the mark is–well, we call it the "big bang." But at first it was just a mark, a gesture of God.

By the way, this initial point is the beginning of drawing the tree of life diagram. It is the first sphere, a radiating sphere–like a very dense ink on a very absorbent paper–starting infinitely small, but being Divine, almost infinitely energetic, and spreading over a billion or more years.

Becoming, yet going nowhere. That calls for a second geometric event: the extension of a point as a line. In geometry, this moves from zero dimensions to one dimension. A line–but a line can be of any length, it can be infinitely long. There is no defined space yet. There's a sort of direction, but no form. It's perhaps poetically related to the light in the darkness described in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, or that wonderfully ambiguous word, "firmament." The kabbalists really contemplated this creation story, seeking the deepest meanings, including the ingenious idea that we are constantly, every moment, creating and being re-created as part of this divine process. It didn't just happen then. Like here and there, then and now may be equally an expression of our deepest habits of thought.

We don't even begin to have a diagram yet, we're just setting the stage for a process of diagraming, but pausing to contemplate how necessary it is to set this stage, to have a pen, a piece of paper, one who makes the mark, who moves, who stays involved in the creative process, proceeding from one step to the next. Each of these elements may have metaphysical meanings, equivalents.

(What have I been smoking? Naw. You see, when you really think about it, you don't need to alter your state of consciousness; the science-fiction / poetry activity is a stretching agent enough.)

Okay, so you point, line, and at some point, you say–wait, something else is needed. At least let's pick another point so that the line has a limit. A limit? Well, if you want to draw anything, you've got to have a limit. Two points. A beginning and an end. Oooh. Okay, let's stop this line...here. Wow, in all the time we've been talking, you've made the line really, really long. Depending on divine perspective and your belief in the limitations of the speed of light, let's just say that this line is... well, what? Several billions of miles long? Whatever, it won't fit on the paper. So let's have just you make it, not God, and let it be, say, four or five inches. We can work with that. Two parts of a line–pen, straight edge. Now what. Well, pick up the compass. A new tool–really, it could even be just the straight edge, the line itself, only able to move in a new way, in another dimension, off of the line. The line makes an angle, and fools around. A little angle, a bigger angle, a 90 degree angle, hey, why not go all around.... oooh, look what you made, a circle.

Circles are very heavy, very primal, very magical. People have written a lot just about the circle. It's one of the first designs kids make as they learn to draw. And it defines a space. It's very two-dimensional. No longer just a one-dimensional line. It's got two dimensions. A little bending here and there and you could make a triangle, a square, a figure with all kinds of edges and curves. But let's stay with the circle.

For now, we'll stop. The construction of the diagram deserves a separate paper from here, the compounding of circles, edges, angles, triangles, cross-connections. But it's very elegant, and its construction partakes of what the ancient yogis called the making of mainly circular (sometimes square or triangular) diagrams for meditation called "yantras." The point is to contemplate the "deeper"meanings of such configurations, what dimensionality, space, regularity, symmetry, and other fairly basic categories mean, and why, in a world suffused with chaos, we nevertheless also find amazingly widespread evidences of the operations of mathematical expressions in space–i.e., geometry.

[marinemammal]

thank you for sharing that part of your life with me! I love the way you think about things and incorporate animals into your spirituality. like the bear and hibernation while you rest during the winter, the boar for endurance, and the whale while in the bath. I also do not fit in any religion(always just called myself an atheist), but I crave my own spirituality. I’m drawn to nature/planet worship(?) and thinking more of that and the whole universe as the equivalent to gods/the divine rather than literal and humanoid beings. I love the concept of animism, but I’m not sure if I believe in souls, so I don’t know if that disqualifies me from it. I also worried about accidentally appropriating somehow. I heard someone say that animism means believing everything has a spiritual essence. and I feel like I can see nature in a spiritual way, but then I wonder what it means to see/feel things spiritually? how do I know that’s how I’m feeling and not me just calling it that? If that makes sense. I’m trying to figure out what to make of my spirituality and how to expand it. rambling lol. but I loved hearing what you had to say about yours! and it made me gain another perspective.

I love hearing about those with a connection to the planets! I hope to build a stronger connection to them someday. And I completely understand preferring to work with the universe itself, I was never able to feel genuine about it when I was looking into pantheons. We are on the same page with thinking of the universe and its parts as our equivalent to gods, that is a fundamental truth to me!

As far as I am aware, animism is a characteristic of a religion instead of being any specific religion itself, so I think it would be very difficult to misuse the term if you feel it fits! Honestly, I think it’s up to you to decide what a ‘soul’ even is, and what it feels like when you experience something divine. For me, it’s something that makes me feel alive. Even a tiny spark of appreciation or connection to the universe around me, I get this sappy twinge in my heart and I just want to dwell on what inspired it. Yours may be entirely different! Perhaps you can see the divine in choosing to trust your instincts as an animal (and therefore, to me, divine in your own right) that can interpret it’s own experiences? It’s okay if not, but I hope you will choose to do so anyways.

I also want to say that animism is considered one of the oldest forms of religion, and it appears in multiple different religions today, so anyone giving you one singular definition of it is VASTLY simplifying things! I choose to believe it is a nature-given right to develop your own spiritual viewpoint on the universe.

It was a real struggle for me to communicate my beliefs, I always got stuck worrying about whether people could understand me, and if I was using the right words, and worrying about what people would say if they thought I wasn’t allowed to use a certain term… but after a while, I came to believe that if someone is worth explaining myself to, they will already have come to me from a place of trying to understand, and will hopefully listen to what I mean rather than getting stuck on our difference of word choice. (Also, I have gone back in my journal and revised things plenty if I decide I didn’t communicate my intentions well! I keep it digitally so I can easily update it to my current understanding)

I know I certainly had to work from the inside out at the start of this. After I identified what ‘spiritual’ felt like to me and tried to trust myself on that, I chose terms that made sense to me as a beginner and allowed me to keep my ideas straight. I began to write out and draw diagrams of my instinctual understanding of the universe, and from there I looked for consistent trends across my varying beliefs, and went looking for basic words to describe those trends. I still haven’t found the perfect words for me, but it’s enough to communicate!

I hope you find your way with things, and that you’ll come back and let me know if you do start to recognize what feels best for you!

[ripplingcurrent]

RC is researching, perhaps poorly, but they’re trying. 

Papers are strewn over the floor; it’s messy, but a conscious choice. They had drawn the line and moved operations to the floor after the hole in the table had swallowed two important notes and a pen. By now, after a good few hours of kneeling, jotting notes, and searching through blogs, an ache thrums up their tingling legs and sits in their lower back. Nearby on the floor is a plastic water bottle, half drained. They’d considered getting a drink from the tap, but after it spat out rust-coloured water for a solid thirty seconds, they’d decided to simply drink out of their supplies. They should have a few days worth still, and that should be more than plenty to wait until Webby gets back from wherever he’s gone. 

If they get really desperate, they could always break out the water purification tablets. Or the life straw. Though as much as the emergency supplies could do for turning water drinkable, they didn’t exactly clear it of bad taste. At the time of packing, it felt a little excessive. However, now they’re just glad to have brought it as an option.

They hadn’t exactly planned or anticipated this when packing supplies. They’d prepared for human threats. Even some robotics, seeing how much Showfall Media seemed to invest into electronics. But a time-travel vehicle? A deal with an entity that was reminiscent of ancient gods? RC hasn’t planned for that. Even the hatchet in the dufflebag is unlikely to help much with that. 

So it’s back to the drawing board. Or well, their drawing board is still at home, thousands of kilometres away. They’d taken pictures of it, those pictures now transcribed onto the papers or simply on the phone, which lay open next to them. Now they’re surrounded by what feels like a sea of notes. 

Webby’s words echo in their skull. He wasn’t wrong when he pointed out that RC liked their plans. They liked having failsafes, contingencies, and worst-case scenarios ready to be tackled. They wanted a manual, but unfortunately, no one had seemed to have gotten around to write one yet. And so, it was up to them, it seemed. 

They have a list of leads. Or potential leads. There are too many blogs to sift through, and many of them are patchworks of information. There’s a few from people inside the facility, and already they have noted a few potential candidates to contact. Many of the actors and former actors seem to have escaped. At least, their blogs imply so; seemingly they now reside at the hospital Webby and RC first found themselves at. Again, they will have to sort through to find the most stable and suitable for their cause. 

Finally, there’s the others. People who were not quite actors but have ties to Showfall regardless. Some seem to be like Webby. Other beings. And yet more seem to be at least human adjacent. But RC can’t really be certain, not anymore. One, seemingly the sibling to a former actor, has an aching familiarity with RC’s own situation, and that lead is promptly noted down. It looks promising. Another potential person often speaks in code, and while they can indeed understand the sentiment, it’s extremely time-consuming to break them. Especially if it’s simply in the hope it will be something relevant. 

It gives RC a headache that they’re doing their best to ignore. The thin plastic of the water bottle crinkles as they unscrew the cap and take a sip. It’s a thin hope that hydrating will help ease the pain. 

Then it’s back to the grind, so to speak. They have yet to sort importance and who to contact first, but they have a growing list of names. More notes are grouped into rough sections of "anons," "actors," and "people." A frown lines their brow as they look at it. The lines are infuriatingly blurry between the three, feeling more like a Venn diagram than three distinct categories. They try not to think about how Webby doesn’t simply fit in any one of the categories. 

Apart from the current anomaly they’re sharing a house with, a few others have caught their eye. There’s the rope or knot entity who was at least helpful. They seemed nice enough, apart from the fake snake that had given them a minor scare. Perhaps if they can find a way to contact them, they may be of help in their goal. 

Otherwise, it’s been quiet. A few messages had come in at the start, with the masked anon and the others who had left vague and unsettling messages. But for the most part it’s quieted down; apart from the most recent one, an anon who spoke of lasagne, and who RC had dubbed "Garfield." 

It felt a little like being on a screen, and to be honest, RC kinda hated the nagging feeling of being watched. A "show,” some of them had said. Even Webby had made comparisons to that, with his nickname of “Spots” or “spotlight” for them. 

A groan falls from their lips. They scrub their eyes. RC has slowly adjusted to the blurriness of their surroundings, but it’s still prevalent. Notes they could once skim over quickly have to be written larger or held up to their face to be properly seen. 

It’s frustrating, it’s tiresome, it’s too much right now. 

Their legs move automatically, pushing them up and out of the crouched goblin position they’d slipped into at some point. Joints crackle and pop as they straighten and stretch out. For a brief moment, their head tingles and they sway, and instinctively, they brace themselves on the coffee table nearby. As they wait for the dizziness to pass, they stare at the hole on the table. The faintest of noises seem to come from it. 

A shudder and RC drags themself away from the table. They begin to walk, grimacing at the pins and needles running through their legs at the blood returning to normal. They need a break. While they’ve been napping on and off for the past day, they’ve been up working on this nonstop in the time they’ve been awake. 

They’ve gotten more accustomed to the constant blue of their vision. They’re not fumbling over their own hands anymore, but they still occasionally bump into furniture. The lost pile in the corner isn’t helping. It grows and shrinks in size, never when RC is looking at it, but undoubtedly it shifts and changes between glances at it. They’re still not exactly sure how it operates, but they do keep an eye on it for anything that seems like it may be useful. 

Their gaze falls from the pile to the papers on the floor. They need a break. Desperately.

It is about time they’ve explored a little more. 

[anthrofreshtodeath]

More Crossover Business

Will this fic actually ever materialize in chapter format? who knows. Find previous snippets here and here.

Booth checks his watch for the third time since the four of them arrived at the scene. The man whose dog had found the shallow grave Doctors Brennan and Isles kneel in now is long gone, and the clearing crawls with scene techs and uniforms. Booth licks his lips, taps his pen on the tops of his index cards and straightens his tie.

“Don’t rush the science,” Brennan calls over her shoulder, waving her brush in his direction even though she’s not looking at him. She doesn’t have to.

“I didn’t say anything!” Booth hangs his arms out like making himself bigger will prove his point. 

Brennan shrugs. “You didn’t have to,” she says when she hands a magnifying glass to Maura, who has brushed away the soil covering what looks like a second femoral head. “Your psychomotor agitation says it all.”

“We’re uh, we’re not rushing,” Booth argues, though apparently he’s willing to concede the point that he was in fact motoring in some kind of way. It’s late morning, which will fly right into early afternoon, which is cutting it real close… “We’d just like to, you know, expedite things as much as they can be expedited.”

Jane snickers from where she stands, drawing a little diagram on her notepad to remind herself how exactly they found the body, its bones, while she waits for developed scene photos. She’s just finished questioning the state police, too, those first on scene when the body was called in, so she’s operating on the high that comes from a plethora of initial information. When Booth throws up his hands, she clears her throat. “It’s just that the Sixers are in town, and we may or may not have tickets.”

“No may or may not about it,” Booth says, stepping forward. “We definitely have tickets. So, the quicker the better.”

“You should not have done that,” Maura, in heels and a black trench coat over a navy dress, raises her eyebrow. She runs a gloved finger over the fabric of the decedent’s shirt sleeve, a blouse in a rich purple color she perhaps would have picked for herself, now stained and torn by the elements. “Not when we’re in the middle of all this.”

“This is about sports?” Brennan is flabbergasted, though by all accounts she should not be. “I’m not rushing the science for sports.”

Jane, in the middle of her sketch, her visual brain whirring, snaps her head up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She says, just a little louder than she should be. 

Brennan looks up, eyes right on Jane’s, blinking. Her throat is long and that deepens her voice when she asks, “What?”

“You said that kinda funny,” Jane curls one brow up and snarls. She blows right through Booth’s stop sign, the waving of his fingers under his chin. The shaking of his head and the forward press of his lips. “Why you gotta say sports like that?”

Maura bolts up. “I- I’m sure Doctor Brennan means that it’s hard to imagine sports being more important than this case,” she says diplomatically to Booth. When she turns to Jane, the diplomacy dwindles into passive aggression. “It’s hard to imagine anything being more important than this case; I’m sure you’d agree.”

Jane also blows right through the insinuation that she’s put this case above their relationship and waves Maura off. “No, no, wait a minute, here-”

Brennan dusts off her coveralls at the knee. She doesn’t give Jane’s venom a chance, and supplies some of her own instead. “Oh no, I meant that sports in general are a waste of time.”

“Oh man,” Booth mumbles. “Bones, don’t-”

Brennan does wait for him, either. “Sports shouldn’t have the importance it does to society, let alone the importance it apparently has to this unit right now,” she starts. Maura sucks her teeth and smirks. It is the first, albeit tiny, sign that Brennan views this budding crime-fighting enterprise as a team. Not a consult, not a service to be provided, but a team. Well, maybe all of the above, but most definitely the latter. 

Jane is going to explode. 

“Rizzoli-” Booth taps her elbow and Jane yanks away. 

“Are you kiddin’ me? You get trash canned by some jocks in high school? You think you’re some kinda evolved being because you don’t like sports?”

“No, no, and exactl-”

This time, it’s Booth that cuts in on his partner. “Bones, she, y’know, she has this thing. This… she thinks sports are…” he wiggles his fingers in front of his mouth, “for kids. And that the people who play them are basically, well, overgrown kids.”

“Again, are you serious?! Didn’t you-? I-” Jane flails, going red, unable to complete a damn sentence. 

Booth doesn’t need her to. “Yeah, I did. Football. Trust me, I’ve registered my complaints with the whole idea.”

“But anthropologically speaking, it’s true!” as distanced from emotion as she boasts about being, Brennan registers the heat of an argument and latches onto it. And Jane, well, she fights fire with fire. They face off close enough to share air. “Not only are athletes arrested developmentally, but so are the adults that watch them. In fact, I find that even worse.”

“Well, let me talk in a way you’ll understand: anthropologically speaking, sports are the entire skeleton of the city of Boston. Peel back the superficial layers, and the backbone looks a whole hell of a lot like the iron of Fenway,” Jane pushes her index finger in the air like she’s threatening to use it against the shoulder of the world’s foremost anthropologist, forensic or otherwise.

“That makes no sense,” Brennan posits. Maura blinks. There’s more finesse, more bite to Brennan than she originally thought. To wield passion and cold disinterest with such oscillation, such ease, requires knowledge. Intent. Despite her best intentions, Maura’s heart begins to thump for Jane. 

“Maybe not in the strictest of terms, but it’s true,” Maura tells her counterpart. “Boston makes sports a religion. Anthropologically, you can understand that, surely.”

“I’m not sure that makes it any better,” Brennan chides. 

Booth blinks, unsure what to be offended at more. “Listen, Doctor Burn-in-hell, some of us actually care about this stuff-”

“You’re comin’ for God, too?! Who pissed in your-” Jane is about to lunge, but Booth pulls her towards him.

“Ok, ok, you know what? We’re gonna go. We’re gonna go back to the city, and we’re gonna take a little break, from all the crime fighting here. You two are gonna get things ok’d to go back to the lab, and well, we’ll maybe see you before we head out. Game’s at 7:30,” says Booth, pushing Jane’s shoulders toward his car up the hill.

“I’m gonna go postal, kid, she says one more thing,” Jane growls just for him to hear, and Booth sighs, big and airy out of his rib cage.

“Yeah, I know,” he grumbles. “Just trust the process. Trust my process.”

“Really? She shits all over our entire lives and you’re gonna give me the sixer’s mantra?”

“Keep walkin’.”

—-

Maura stands over the bones they discovered this morning, having beat them to the morgue by just minutes. Now, she’s scrubbed up, with her hair pulled back with a clip, and she wears her white coat.

It is her clinician’s ensemble. 

Brennan wears loaner blue scrubs because she cares about the integrity of evidence, and because even though Maura has offered her one of the blue coats of the crime lab, it’s not her blue coat. Not the one from the Jeffersonian.

Maura supposes she understands that. 

She’s not even sure how she’d feel in Brennan’s shoes at the moment. She’s consulted, practiced medicine in corners of the world very near to the ones Brennan’s practiced forensic anthropology in. And yet, she sees how dogged Brennan is, how committed to both her cases and the pursuit of her scholarship, and she doesn’t know if she could keep up. Could she leave Boston for months at a time to consult on a case for the FBI, seeing her friends and loved ones only sporadically, if ever? Could she just up and go, pack all her belongings and live out of a suitcase in a motel for weeks at a time? Maura doesn’t have to, but in Brennan she sees a person she once was and needs to conjure up wisps of again. “I admire you,” she says nakedly as Brennan readies her station.

“Thank you,” says Brennan with the utmost confidence, looking not at Maura but at her array of instruments. Then she falters with a smile. “Why is that?”

“Well, you can uproot your life for the cause, if that makes sense,” Maura tells her. “Your commitment to the truth and to the science is… unmatched and you are the best at what you do.”

“I agree with that assessment,” Brennan says, back to her task. She snaps on a pair of purple gloves and puts on her protective eyewear. There is a long pause. “And I admire you, too.”

Maura brightens considerably, a blush spreading over her tight, grinning cheeks. “Really?”

“Yes,” Brennan says like it’s obvious, especially for two geniuses in the room. “Your position is a political one. You could let the powers that be sway you, but you make decisions based solely on the evidence in front of you and your clinical expertise. That call with the governor? I’ve seen men twice your size crumble under that kind of pressure.”

Maura thinks maybe Brennan is right. At least, it may do her well to think about herself more like Brennan does, with assuredness in her ability and a fuck-everyone-else-because-their-IQ-is-lower attitude. “I try. I can’t say I always succeed, but I do try. Working with Jane and her brother helps. Everything is like an honor competition with them,” she says, then she picks up a phalanx and arranges it on the right hand. “I’m going to have to talk about Criminalist Roberts about his eye for detail. This is unacceptable.” 

Brennan peers over Maura’s shoulder and nods in approval even though Maura can’t see her. “I usually have interns to do it, and even then I have to run through the bones again,” she tells Maura. “So this is… to be expected. Or at least, easily remedied.” She walks back to the left foot, makes another couple of changes, and sighs, picking up the fibula and staring down it like the barrel of a rifle. “Just two more. Not bad. There’s something here,” she comments, eyes zeroed in. “Booth thinks you’re sleeping together.”

Maura chokes. She sputters, with barely enough wherewithal to turn away from the bones. 

“Doctor Isles? Are - are you alright? Are you choking? Let me-” Brennan crosses the distance between them in a flash, but by then Maura has stiff-armed her.

“No no,” Maura wheezes. Then, she regains a little bit of breath. “I’m fine. I’m sorry - Booth thinks what?”

“He thinks that you and Jane are sleeping together. I told him that you were divorced,” Brennan states. 

“Well…” Maura pauses. Were they that obvious? Their private moments had been very private, and she’d been especially caustic with Jane recently. The sex brought out the bitterness. How could he…? “Agent Booth should mind his own business,” she settles on, though she knows it sounds weak off her lips.

Brennan thankfully turns back to their work. She speaks a note into her recorder then sets it back down on her work station. “He’s incapable. You know, speaking of sports, looking at this irregularity and the wear and tear on her other ankle, I’d posit she received an ORIF for this break. Booth and I have had this conversation before.”

Maura walks over to see exactly what Brennan has seen, and leans in close. “You’ve had this conversation about my marriage? Oh yes. Basketball injury almost certainly. The wire is gone, but the hole is definitely there.”

“What? No, about sports. And you aren’t married,” Brennan says.

“My previous marriage, then,” Maura tells her. “And I think it’s a right of passage between partners to argue about sports.”

Before Brennan can comment further, the doors to the autopsy suite burst open to reveal Jane. “Hey,” Jane breathes out, like every moment is of the utmost importance. She adjusts her belt around her tucked-in shirt and leans on the table closest to the door, the one next to the one occupied by their victim. “Anything yet?”

“Do you often interrupt the autopsy process?” Brennan, face schooled into cold curiosity, cocks her head at Jane when she asks.

Jane stops. She had crossed her arms, but drops them at the question. She knows her arms are long and that they’re intimidating when they’re left to rest by her sides. “You and me got a problem?” she responds, one foot forward.

Maura cuts in. “Well, Doctor Brennan found evidence of a repaired broken ankle,” she tells Jane. “And based on healed injuries on the left ankle, we’re looking at a sports injury. Probably basketball.”

“That, that girl,” Jane, suddenly uninterested in Brennan, taps her mouth with her knuckle when she turns to Maura. “The college hoops player - what was her name? The one that went missing in Amherst? Charlotte Strand. This has gotta be her.”

“Well-” starts Maura, though Brennan finishes.

“Conjecture at the table can cloud objectivity and bias the mind toward desired conclusions, not accurate ones,” she says. “We have no idea who this is yet.”

“Oh, so we do have a problem,” Jane growls. “You know, you-”

Brennan stands, unphased, unafraid, with a long bone in her hands. 

“It’s ok,” Maura literally gets between them. Jane runs extra hot, and Maura curls an eyebrow. “She’s merely pointing out what I’ve always told you. So, you can either stay objective, or stay quiet. But you are allowed to stay.” And apparently, Booth and Brennan know about the current status of their relations, so she straightens the buttons on Jane’s shirt. “If you’re good.”

Jane gives Maura a dark stare, one that Maura knows as lustful, appreciative, and angry all at once. Then, she turns that stare on Brennan. “I’m gonna go back upstairs. Please call me to discuss your pathology findings as soon as you can. I know when the hell I’m not wanted.”

And with that, Jane leaves, Maura assuming it will be the last time they see each other until the morning. There are those tickets she and Booth have. Maura checks her watch. They’ll be leaving in an hour or two. 

The door slams with as much clamor as it opened.

“She’s quite abrasive,” says Brennan.

Maura smirks, shaking her head softly as if to say really? “She’s… dedicated. As dedicated as you or me. She wants to find the answers as much as we do.”

“So I shouldn’t take it personally?”

“Oh, she means it very personally,” Maura counters. When Brennan grows quiet, grows pensive, looks at the ground when she thinks Maura doesn’t see her, Maura softens. “It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like you.”

“I upset her,” says Brennan finally. “Even if I think what I do about athletes. And conjecture.”

Maura chuckles. “Yes, you did,” she says. “But it doesn’t take much, Doctor Brennan. You’ll probably do it again.”

___

Brennan has snapped off her gloves and changed out of her loaner scrubs, back into her jeans and blouse. She buttons her blazer at the middle, and pushes the number 3 on the elevator, instead of the 1, which would have taken her to the parking garage where her rental car was housed.

She is not… unfeeling. She also is not stupid. And a rift in the fabric of the team, of any team, doesn’t bode well for results. She knows this from her time at the Jeffersonian, she knows it from her time in Guatemala, and she knows it will apply now. Booth is here to assist, and so is she, but Jane leads this case. And, Brennan has to admit, Jane is good at leading the case. Just like Maura had said, she shows a singular dedication, a competence for procedural work that Brennan admires even if it’s based on speculation and law enforcement’s seeming obsession with the gut. 

So, Brennan must find Jane.

Luckily, Jane sits at her desk, poring over those now-developed photographs from the morning. Even more luckily, so that he doesn’t have to see this, Booth isn’t anywhere to be found in the bullpen. She pulls open the glass door quickly, hoping that she can be done before he returns. 

Jane looks up. “Hey, you uh, you here to shit on paper football next? Because Booth and I are probably going to start that up when he gets back. Kill time before we Uber to the Garden,” she grouses when she sees Brennan.

Brennan pulls her lips into a flat line and one hand fiddles with the strap of the bag over her shoulder. “I don’t know what that is. You shouldn’t play football though. Your brain-“

“Yeah yeah, the CTE. Preachin’ to the choir, here, but paper football doesn’t even require gettin’ up from your desk,” Jane says. And when Brennan stands there, all unsure and, well, fidgety, she drops the file on her desk and motions over to the chair next to it. “C’mere, I’ll show ya.”

Brennan keeps the original purpose of her visit in mind, and then takes the seat. She sets her bag on the floor when Jane brandishes the paper triangle. “This - is the football,” she announces.

“It’s a piece of paper,” Brennan curls a brow - she may have in fact overestimated Jane.

“Yes. That has been folded into a football. So, the goal here is a touchdown. And how you do that is you prop it up like this…” Jane pauses, sets up her attempt, “and bam! You flick it…” she does, and watches where it goes. “And if it gets to the edge without going over, that’s a touchdown. Wanna try?”

Jane is asking because Jane got a touchdown on her first attempt. Suddenly, Brennan is giggly and a little nervous. “Just… ok,” she thinks through it, taking the football and holding it with her index finger on the table. “Like this?”

“Somethin’ like that, yeah,” Jane tells her. “Don’t think about it, just go for it.”

“That’s impossible. I-“ 

“Just do it, Doc,” Jane orders.

Something about the authority in Jane’s register spurs Brennan forward. She does it, and flicks it right over the desk on the other side of them. “Hey! Wow! That’s good, right? It went way over!”

Jane shakes her head, but she’s laughing. Smiling. “No, kid, no points. Part of the skill is the finesse. You put too much on it. But hey, pretty good for your first try.”

Brennan licks her lips. Jane has called Booth kid several times, even though he is not a child. It appears endearing? Her stomach churns, flutters in response. “I… I came up here to apologize,” she says so she doesn’t have to pay attention to the feeling.

Jane leans back, but drops her clasped hands between her spread knees. She taps one toe on the linoleum. “Oh?”

“I find that, even if I don’t regret the content of what I said, I do regret that things feel contentious between us,” continues Brennan.

“Contentious, huh?” Jane prods.

Brennan chuckles once. “You sound like my psychologist. Well, a psychologist who is my friend. Who I suppose is also my psychologist. But yes, contentious. It isn’t conducive to teamwork.”  

“I think it can be, sometimes,” Jane counters. “Gets the blood boiling, the wheels turning.”

“I know that sports are important to you. And while I don’t understand why, I can understand that it might hurt your feelings for me to constantly dismantle their merits,” says Brennan.

Jane’s mouth drops open just a bit. “That’s a little far… but you know what? Apology accepted. Things are good.”

“They’re good?” Asks Brennan, more relieved than she thought she’d be.

Jane puts her hands up in a ceasefire. “All good,” she says.

It is then that Brennan sees the scars, reminded of the wounds that must have caused them. Her face narrows into clinical concentration. “It must have been very painful,” she says, softly and with authority. She had read about Charles Hoyt and the detective who ended him. “The number of transected nerves. You seem to carry tightness even now.”

Jane’s hands drop down again. There is less shame now, but not none. “Uh, you know, I hardly think about it anymore,” she lies.

Brennan reaches for a hand anyway. “Can I see?”

Jane folds her hands in her lap and scoots back her chair. When Brennan looks up, she sees that Boothian smile, extra handsome because it hides a lot of pain for her benefit. “No can do, Doctor Brennan.”

“Why? I can help,” Brennan reasons.

Jane sighs. She crosses her arms and leans her elbows on her desk to get closer to Brennan. “No, thank you. The last forensic scientist I let touch my hands, I ended up marryin’ ‘em. And look how well that turned out.”

Brennan laughs quietly. “Well, I can assure you we won’t be getting married. I won’t be marrying anyone,” she says.

“Oh yeah?” Asks Jane. She looks over at the desk across from her because Booth flashes in her mind and she frowns. “Why’s that?”

“Marriage is an antiquated social contract that operates on the principle that women are property, not people. I don’t need marriage to prove my love for someone,” Brennan answers with a straight spine and some conviction. 

Jane shrugs. “To each their own, I guess. I can see why Maura likes you. You have the same way of thinking about a lot of things.”

“But she married you,” Brennan counters, but it is almost kind. Caring.

“She did. Think she regrets that one, though,” Jane smirks. Brennan hears the bitterness in the vowel formants. Jane is burdened by a sadness that looks old on her. She hunches when she reads her file because it is heavy - not the information, but the melancholy. It doesn’t make empirical sense, but Brennan knows it because it’s not the first pair of strong shoulders she has watched round before her in brokenness. A few seconds of silence pass, and Jane wakes up her computer again. “Booth and Korsak are out talking to potential witnesses, but they should be back soon, if you wanna wait here for him.”

Brennan nods, but blows past it. “You know, I’ve kissed several women before.”

Jane drops the file to her desk, but recovers with just a cough or two. “Hmm, me too,” she says.

Brennan smiles wryly. “Oh, that’s funny, because you’re out and you were married to a woman.”

“You got it,” laughs Jane, who cannot help but think of Maura, “even if the past tense hurts me a little bit.”

“While I overall prefer sex with men almost exclusively, I can admit there was certain appeal in the touch of a woman. More tender. There’s more understanding,” Brennan continues.

“Sometimes,” says Jane. At that moment, the elevator doors open and she can see Booth and Korsak emerging. She tosses a glance in that direction. “Hey look, there they are. Good chat, huh? Thanks for comin’ up here. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I think I did,” Brennan says when they both stand. She touches Jane’s elbow and Jane nods. 

“Fair enough. Take this,” Jane says when she produces the paper football. “When we get back from the game tonight, make Booth teach you the rest of the rules.”

Brennan takes the paper, turning it between her fingers, surprised by the sturdiness of the simple design. “Ok,” she says, “I will.”

[thelavenderelf]

Unstable Chapter 7 WIP

This chapter is taking SO LONG to write, and it's even more monstrous than the last one (currently looking at over 8500 words and I'm still not done writing). There is also a hint of what the sequel to Unstable will entail ;D So please enjoy the unedited part 1 of this chapter:

The first time Sylvana visited Nightingale Hall, it was dilapidated and cold. Memories that weren’t hers seeped from every crack in the stone walls, reaching out to her like the frail hands of a beggar, yet she was the desperate one. It feels like every time she’s here, she’s desperate; ready to sign her soul away just to get through the situation she is in. And here she is once again, sitting in the hall desperate for a solution, but at least she is in much cozier surroundings. It now feels like a proper home with the candle light and much cushier furnishings. 

“I can't thank you enough for doing this,” Sylvana says as she watches Karliah flip open a journal filled with sketches and notes on botany and potions. Each diagram is meticulously detailed with curly handwriting, explaining alchemical knowledge far beyond her simple understanding. What little she knows is from Karliah herself, the amazing woman she looks up to for so much. She’s able to pick out a few words as she props her head up on the table they sit at in Nightingale Hall. 

“You don’t have to. Kaidan is a friend,” Karliah states as she sets the journal open on a page of anatomical drawings of the effects of a type of poison on the body. “I won't be able to concoct a true antidote without knowing the exact ingredients, but I may be able to make something that will help based on his symptoms. Now, was his tongue blue?”

“Um, not that I saw,” Sylvana answers as she twirls a strand of hair around her finger, slightly tugging at it.  

“Okay, any purple crust around the entrance wound?” 

“No.” 

“Spots on the back of his neck?” 

Sylvana shakes her head. She can barely remember anything peculiar about Kaidan, but she chalks it up to being too distracted by the fact that he wasn’t waking up. 

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“This may be a bit of a stretch, but I think I may have been struck with a similar knockout poison. The only thing that really stood out to me was that I dreamed.” 

“You dreamed?” Karliah raises a brow as she shuts her journal. “Are you sure you were poisoned?”

“I’m certain. I even found the bottle.” Sylvana pulls it out of her pouch and hands it over. 

Karliah uncorks it before taking a sniff, instantly recoiling from it. “Ugh, imp stool.”

“Yeah, it’s nasty.” 

“Hmm, I think there is a hint of mugwort which is strange, but it could explain the dreaming. An odd choice for a coma poison though.”

Sylvana’s eyes drift to the side, thinking of the strange Dunmer she met in Dawnstar. If anyone were to know a thing or two about dreams, it would be an ex-priest of Vaermina. Perhaps she should send Erandur a letter. “If only we could ask who made it.”

“Well, most alchemists add a hidden signature onto the bottle as a way to track them. If we’re lucky, we might be able to tell if this was bought at a shop or not.”  Karliah says before holding the small bottle up to a torch. “Ah, see! There is a bee scratched onto the bottom of the bottle.”

“A bee? As in the letter or the insect?” 

“The insect! Look!” Karliah passes the bottle back and Sylvana holds it up, scanning the crudely drawn bumblebee scratched onto it. 

“Do you recognize it?” 

“I don't, but it is a bit of a lead. Where did you get this?” 

“Silverhand,” Sylvana sighs. 

“Silverhand? What are they doing going after you?”

“I’ll spare you the gory details, but I raided a base of theirs, and turns out they all got sticks up their ass.”

“Was it at least worth it?” 

“As long as Kaidan lives? Yes.”

“I will do what I can to make sure of that, but I do want to examine him myself before attempting to make an antidote. I’ll head out in the morning, but there are a few stops I need to make before I go to Whiterun.” 

“Again, thank you. This means a lot.”

“Of course! And it’s good to see you again, even if it’s due to unfortunate circumstances.” Karliah smiles and grabs Sylvana’s shoulders before pulling her into a hug. 

“I know, I’m sorry it’s been so long. Everything has just been crazy, I can hardly keep up myself.” Sylvi relaxes in the embrace of her friend, letting everything go for just a moment. 

Karliah pulls back, only to cup Sylvana’s face to examine it like a doting mother. “I see that. You look tired, my dear. Have you been taking care of yourself?” 

“I’m alive, aren't I?” She offers a tired smile, but it only makes Karliah tut and shake her head. 

“Well, that is better than dead,” Karliah says as she pats Sylvana’s cheek. She moves to the other side of the room where she grabs a rucksack and begins to pack it. “Have you spoken to Brynjolf yet?” 

“Karliah!” 

“What? He’s been a mopey, neurotic mess who won't leave me alone since you’ve left. I’m surprised he didn't follow you out here.”

“I’m sure he’s not far behind,” Sylvana groans, plopping her head onto the table. She shouldn’t be surprised he’s acting this way despite the way they left things. He may present himself as this carefree man, but underneath is a graveyard of memories buried under mounds of anxiety that make him believe everything can fall apart in a moment. It’s been especially bad ever since Mercer betrayed the guild. The worst part is that she only adds to it. 

“He told me what happened, and I let him know what a fucking s’wit he is.” Karliah puts her journal into her bag, closes it up, and places the whole thing carefully near her bed. “I just don't understand what that boy was thinking, but that’s not why I ask. Maven’s been trying to move in since your disappearance, claiming that your absence nulls the contract.” 

“That contract has been nulled since we repaid our debt.” 

“She claims we still owe her, and I fear that she will continue to do so until she owns the entire guild.” 

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Sylvi, it was Maven who set you and your friends up on that job. She’s going to do everything she can to make sure it does happen. Look, I know you have a lot on your plate, but don’t forget about the responsibility you have to the guild.  And don’t forget that the guild is here to help you too. You’re not alone in this.”

Sylvana rubs her brow, attempting to soothe the headache starting to bloom. Of course, it was Maven, she should have known. This is perfect, just another problem to deal with. 

Fuck, she needs a drink. 

[starleska]

Zundapp anon here: maybe a Zündapp x car!Reader one or make ‘em both human. Aaaa I can’t choose lol

hahaha fantastic!! 🔥

tell you what, how about we split the difference? let's make an originally human Reader who has, by some impossible plot point i will not discern, become a car...and is not coping with it well. i'm not sure anyone would 😂

Professor Zündapp x Originally Human, now Car!Reader headcanons

🚘 when first confronted with you - a so-called 'human', unable to come to terms with your new form, Professor Zündapp is exasperated. it isn't that he doesn't believe your story: a vehicle of his intelligence has long contemplated the possibility of a world inhabited by creatures quite unlike the cars and trucks and planes he knows so well. it's that you are new territory: a scared, vulnerable creature who barely knows how to operate their windshield wipers, let alone serve a purpose in his grandiose schemes. Professor Zündapp agrees to house you, sheltering you from the outside world and allowing you access to a variety of books, journals and documentaries to bring you up to speed on a car-dominated world. in those early days, he takes to calling you, "Einfaltspinsel," - the delightfully German way of calling you a simpleton. it isn't until you bite back with a, "Spaßbremse," - technically killjoy, but literally, 'fun-brake' - that the Professor realises you are not as dense as you seem...and you have a wicked sense of humour.

🚘 against his better judgement, it doesn't take long for Professor Zündapp to become attached. as you learn about his world and your car-body (or would that be chassis?), you draw crude diagrams of your human self with a pen clutched between your new, metallic 'lips'. the Professor observes your tenacity and resolve, and admires it quietly - how, despite your being thrust into this impossible situation, you have jumped into action, ready to learn and problem-solve. in time, the Professor is presented with a fascinating conundrum: although you may not be from this world, you will be a Lemon in the eyes of all who know the truth about your origins. outside of Professor Zündapp's bubble of protection, you would be helpless - left to the whims of able-bodied cars who may or may not decide you pose a threat to international security, and not least because you have unwittingly become involved with a wanted weapons designer. not only does Zündapp want to protect you - he feels it's his responsibility to protect you.

🚘 in no time at all, you are elevated from a burden, to Professor Zündapp's protégé. you start by asking questions about Zündapp's plans, and realise his ideals align with yours: he's fighting against an inequality inherent in this society, using force where necessary. at first you just listen - but then, you end up providing suggestions to his schematics. you are a fast learner, and it turns out that having a human perspective on car-built weaponry provides Zündapp's designs with a new, unexpected edge. whilst as a human your knowledge of weaponry, international politics and espionage was slim to none, you have a talent for spotting design flaws and developing theoretical covert operations. Professor Zündapp is floored when you identify a dangerous fault in the chamber of a gun to be hidden in a Lemon operative's number plate. "Du bist sehr intelligent," Zündapp chuckles. "Perhaps I shall have some use for you after all."

i hope this was what you were looking for, anon - i certainly had fun writing it! 🙈💖 honestly, this should be a full fic...👀