#poor mac was stuck playing middle man

[art-by-micket]

pov early season 1

a little doodle based on a draw the squad by @artisticmaniacwithapen!

[infinitestarsintheskye]

The Lady and the Chauffeur Name Thing

So at the end of my LAST installment of my FS Downton Abbey AU, Christmas at the Abbey, I promised that if ONE person wanted an explanation of the many new names that popped up I would write it. Well many weeks ago now the lovely @valentinaonthemoon asked for such a list, and I am a woman of my word, even if I completely forgot about and only remembered about it just now. I’m going to pop it under a read more bc it is going to get LONG  and also contain ALL OF THE SPOILERS for that series. 

OKAY SO

We’ll do this in birth order I think. Nicknames are in () 

Eilidh May FitzSimmons, born December 12th 1919 - The first of the many babies!! As many of you will know if you have been following me for a while, Eilidh May was, pre-finale of course, my utter ride or die name for baby girl Fitzsimmons. I think I have like three or four fics with this particular name in it, I loved it so much. Eilidh is the Scottish variation of Helen, and means sun-ray, which ugh wouldn’t that just be so perfect for a little FitzSimmons baby. I was just utterly in love with the idea of FS giving their baby a Scottish name (as you will see in the NEXT FS baby) and the fact that this had a space/star/sun/celestial twist to it just absolutely SOLD IT for me. I should add, for all my non-scottish followers that Eilidh is pronounced Ay-Lee. I have no idea how gaelic pronunciation works, I just know how to say it.  Her middle name, May, doesn’t need much explanation. I just loved the idea of them giving their little girl a middle name after someone on the team. 

George (Georgie) Lincoln Campbell, born 2nd October 1921 - Okay ngl, I got real lazy with this name. Mary and Matthew’s (who Daisy and Lincoln were in the place of in this fic) son was also named George, and I liked it, I thought it would be cute if he was called Georgie, as a bit of a variation. His middle name comes from his father, obvi, who, in keeping with BOTH canons (the noise I made when I figured out I could do that I swear. I’m so sorry Lincoln it was just far too good an opportunity to pass up), I killed off on the day he was born. My apologies. 

Hamish Phillip FitzSimmons, born 6th January 1922 - Oh this name. A lot of people REALLY don’t like this name, which is fine. As I said with Eilidh, I was really on a kick of giving FS babies Scottish names. I originally dismissed Hamish, and it just wouldn’t leave me alone, and just utterly grew on me. I actually went to school with a Hamish, he was a fair few years below me and he was just the tiniest, most adorable little toot! From what I can gather, Hamish is an anglicised version of Seamus or Seumus, which is the gaelic version of James, which is a very long and roundabout way of honouring Fitz’s middle name, but I still love having that connection. The middle name, Phillip, again, this name was a love of mine before this fic came about and it just seemed so natural to me that they would name their son after Coulson, and there was just no other name I liked so much with Hamish 

 Kathleen (Kathy) Skye FitzSimmons, born 30th May 1925 - I have no really grand explanation for this name, other than Kathleen is a special name to me, and I love using it in stories. It fit in well I thought with the 1920′s style of naming (yes I did that extensive googling) and as I say it is a very dear name to me and FitzSimmons are deserving of it. Skye, again, I’m just going through the checklist of names from the team. This was in NO WAY  a narcissistic naming, I promise, I just really think they’d give their child that as a middle name, as also this was my way of slipping a lil bit of Scottish into her name too. Just a smidge :)

 Hazel June Sousa, born 14th October 1926 - Oh Hazel. Hazel is just a name I really love. It is also the name of a dear friend of mine who I don’t get to see very often, and I just love it. Honestly I was just trying to find names that worked with the last name Sousa and Hazel just popped into my head. Again it works with 1920′s naming trends, (again with the googling) and yeah I just really love it. The middle name June comes from the fact that in this fic, Daisy and Sousa get married in the month of June. I thought that was a nice way of honouring their relationship, through their daughters name :)

Finley (Flint) Alphonso Mackenzie, born 28th May 1927 - So Mack and Elena adopting Flint is basically canon isn’t it??!?!? He is their son I will have no arguments. SO finding a name that Flint would work for as a nickname, bc lets be real no one was naming their child Flint in 1926, I had to find a roundabout way, was NOT EASY. I still have no idea how Flint could come from Finley, but it is close enough to make sense. By the time I got to Flint I had already named five children and was getting a bit lazy, and so his middle name is just the same as his fathers first name, which is still a very common middle name tactic. 

Emily Lorna FitzSimmons, born 12th October 1927 - Again, by the time I got to poor little Emily, I had named six children already. Emily I just like. Every Emily I have ever met has honestly been the nicest and sweetest person I have ever known. It has a good track record for me and it just sounds so nice with Fitzsimmons. Lorna, Lorna comes from my own personal headcanon for Fitz’s mum’s name, and so I think that’s where Lorna comes from, as a way of honouring Fitz’s mum.  It is also believed to derive from the name of the Scottish town Lorne, so snuck another bit of Scotland into baby FitzSimmons’s name :) 

Arthur (Archie) James FitzSimmons, born 14th August 1929 - If you all cast your minds back, at the very start of the Lady and the Chauffeur, I named Jemma’s dad, Lord Shieldshire, Arthur Simmons. So this was my way of honouring dear old Donk, but they call him Archie, just so he’s his own wee man. James, again, got a bit lazy, same middle name as Fitz. Also v Scottish name, we are 5/5 for Scottish baby FitzSimmons :)

Eve Margaret Sousa, born December 24th 1929 - Eve, well, she was born on Christmas Eve. I cast around for ages trying to find Christmasy names. She was Robyn for a little while, I considered Noel, but that felt a little too contemporary, so she was Eve! And yes, Margaret is my little wink to Agent Carter. I couldn’t help myself. 

Violet Faith Mackenzie, born 6th April 1930 - I actually had a lot of fun finding this name. I briefly considered calling her Hope, but no, that felt a little too on the nose for me. The name Violet comes from obviously the little purple flower, but the flower itself means hope, which I liked. Out of the three surnames, I feel like Mackenzie is the easiest out of all of them to find names for, (maybe it’s because I’m Scottish and know a fair few people with that Mac/Mc sound at the start of their surname) and I played around with a few possibilities, but honestly I just fell in love with Violet. Faith comes from the fact that faith is very important to both Mack and Elena and I wanted to consider that and honour that in the naming of their little girl. 

 Edward (Teddy) Donald FitzSimmons, born December 1st 1932 - The last (for real this time) little FitzSimmons baby of this verse. Blame Fitz being forever broody and Jemma just loving their babies so much, and also being an easy burst when it comes to Fitz and their babies. This name, boy oh boy, this name was HARD. Girls names for FitzSimmons babies, for some reason, easy as pie for me, I have a list as long as my arm of girls names I love for them. As for boys names, Hamish is the only one that has really stuck long term for me. All of the names I found for this poor wee boy that I liked were just a bit too modern, so I had to go searching again. I saw Edward, realised it could be shortened to Teddy and fell in LOVE. Only in this verse would I really get away with calling a baby Teddy so I took the chance and ran with it, and now little dark haired blue eyed Teddy FitzSimmons runs around rent free in my brain. His middle name, is not really obvious why I chose it at first glance. Again I struggled. I couldn’t really find any more Scottish names that I liked, or at least ones that i could give poor Simmons a fighting chance of pronouncing properly (Lachlan is still on my list and I have NEVER heard anyone not Scottish pronounce that first syllable properly). So Scottish was out, and so I went to my next mainstain of family names. And Deke or Enoch were the only two male names I hadn’t touched. Enoch was going to be impossible to find a link (trust me I tried) but DEKE, comes from a common nickname for Donald. So Donald he was. 

I hope you enjoyed this little (haha) list! I just love putting thought and meaning into names, and this kind of gives you a little glimpse into my naming process. Yes I know I will be a nightmare if I ever have children. That is a whole SEPARATE and ever changing and evolving list. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep8: Magic Mai

So fun fact, I was out of town around this Thanksgiving and I grabbed a laptop from my Dad’s stack of machinery he’s sort of collected over the years and lo and behold--he put Linux on it.

Like I dunno if you all can relate to this problem, but everything he touches turns into Linux and he’s trying to live this Windows free/Mac free lifestyle, and I get it, I’m friends with so many vegetarians, but like I hate this laptop. I'm using Gimp to make these screenshots...So I can re-do them later in Photoshop because...it just doesn’t feel right to put Papyrus on this computer. It already has Linux. This poor machine has suffered enough. Long story short, this’ll be a small update because right clicking on linux is ass.

Also, because I was on a laptop and realized how small my blog is for the first time--I don’t have control over the size of pictures in text posts, tumblr does, and in this particular theme it’s not allowing me to change the size, and so do me a favor. Click ctrl and + at the same time a couple times (I’m assuming most of you are on firefox). There. the pictures are the right size now. If you hated that, you can click ctrl and - but like lets be real, my font is occasionally...tiny.

Anyway, we start discussing this episode on the confusing legs of the last one, where Mai is evil now, and it’s really not entirely clear if she’s possessed or if she’s just always been this way, or if she just FEELS like it.

And that’s all this episode is about, start to finish--is this Mai’s choice or was this not Mai’s choice? The answer is the same as it would be for a normal person: it’s complicated. Maybe it’s everybody’s choice. Maybe it was because no one did anything that Mai went completely haywire? Maybe it was because Mai hid how she was feeling so no one had any idea she needed help? Or, overall, maybe Mai is kind of a toxic person and wanted to be this way? Especially while she’s on children’s cartoon card drugs?

(read more under the cut)

So to start off, a weird thing happened at the beginning of this episode. After about 4 seasons, someone finally mentioned this:

How many seasons has Yugi been talking to himself? Like, out loud. In front of everyone and Kaiba? This whole time, right? Like Valon just dashed my headcanon where I figured Yugi was smart enough to think his thoughts instead of speak his thoughts. He’s just not that smart, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, Mai has managed to attract this other (teenager?) guy and like...to go worse than Joey so quickly is kind of shocking. Mai just seems embarrassed by the amount of very young boys in love with her. And she’s not even a cougar about it, she doesn’t really seem to want this to happen but it keeps on happening.

And although he is essentially the card form of a drug pusher, Valon has this soft spot for a girl I guess to give him some sort of redeemable flaw. However, she only wears tube tops and minis and spends like hundreds of dollars on her hair, so it doesn’t really make him seem any less shallow, tbh.

PS I’m surprised, that unlike all the other characters on Yugioh, I can’t just type in Valon’s name into Google and get his age and weight. No idea what his age is, and if you know, feel free to tell me but he just seems...exactly the same age as Joey. He seems very 17. Maybe it’s the obsession with motorcycles and children’s playing cards? Maybe it’s his big ol childlike eyes? He just seems young and niave like how a teenager who just fell in love with a very angry older woman would.

Joey tries to remind everyone, multiple times, that this game is the worst idea ever since it requires one of them to super die, but Mai is on card drugs so I don't know why they bothered. Also, why is Joey still surprised by this after 4 seasons of this?

Yo it’s S4 and Mai witnesses magic non-stop but still has basically no idea how it works. She really did say “I have no soul” and it was like...I’m 90% certain she literally thinks she has no soul right now. Which I guess, statistically speaking, is rare to actually have a still intact soul after hanging out with the main villain, with the way this show typically goes.

Meanwhile, last episode it really sounded like Duke Devlin was driving to Pegasus’ company building. It really sounded like he would have gone directly there, since Weevil and Rex told him that Yugi was going to Pegasus.

Remember that Duke Devlin works for Pegasus and probably has his own parking spot.

So where did he go instead?

You know how there’s only one gas station in the entirety of America?

I can’t believe it blew up.

Y’all what is the red splotch in the middle of the pile ps? That is legitimately a pile of blood, right? I didn’t shop that in. There’s just a red puddle in this kid’s show.

Y’all what is that? Like was there a scene with a red handkerchief that I missed? Is that a red handkerchief?

But to move past the mysterious pool of blood that confirms those bikers are so hella dead, I have no idea why Duke was here, I have no idea how he got the tip off that Yugi visited this place, but then he turned around and went back to SF so like...I guess he’ll arrive 3 days from now because again, they are in Arizona. They keep telling me this is right outside SF but like--Mesas. There’s Mesas.

And then this happened.

That one guy on the writing staff who just stans Seto Kaiba so hard got into the drawing room, I see.

PS someone had to pose for this shot for them to draw this shot from this angle.

Meanwhile, lets see why Mai turned evil. Ah, because it is Yugioh, the biggest reason is that she has no friends (probably because she’s got the most acidic personality known to man) and isn’t card popular enough and got super bitter and jealous.

Speaking as an artist who is online, I can understand the frustration here. Sometimes (99% of the time) you work really hard and no one cares and you get like 2 notes. And honestly, why should they? Like, why do you do it in the first place?

Mai echoes a lot of the issues of Seto last season, where she wants so badly to be the absolute best to prove herself to the ghosts of her past who really don’t care any more.

But, since Mai was in a coma when Seto got through all of that, I guess she never got the memo and still seems stuck on just wanting to be the best with no other reason than “to be the best” which again, sounds so much like art school problems. This is everyone who has ever had an interest in animation. We all go through that phase.

Generally we don’t take peoples souls as a reaction to that type of discouragement, but then Mai made sure to mention in almost a foot note that she did spend like an entire season and a half trapped in Marik's shadow realm. And that kind of effed her up in a really big way.

Thanks, Marik.

Really feels like Marik should be dealing with this problem--really feels like maybe Marik is the only person that we can actually point to and say “Oh yeah, that guy is to blame for Mai right now” And he is the only person that Mai does not actively go out and try to kill.

And I’ll have you know I just deleted like a 15 K word rant about the difference between character assassination and your character just--evolving into a jackass, and how it’s OK to have your character change into a jackass, especially after trauma. I felt this need to really have to defend this ancient writing technique that people have been using since about as long as stories have been around.

Then I remembered “Oh yeah, I’m just making this point because a few number of very loud idiots on the internet want to have very lukewarm hot-takes about popular characters solely because they enjoy baiting people on twitter into getting into week-long arguments that don’t go anywhere.” and I just...let it go. I let it just...go into the ether. Ah. The peace that comes when you already know you’re right.

But anyway, back to Yugioh, which thankfully doesn’t take a stance on this nuanced subject, and only presents this very serious problem without actually offering a solution (because there isn’t a one fit’s all solution to falling off the deep end and getting into drugs and murder), Mai decides to just go and blame this decision she made on anyone else. Because, why take responsibility for your actions, when you can pin it on people who were on the other side of the freakin planet when it happened?

Like, I just want to remind y’all that she was in ATLANTIS.

I wonder how good the cell reception is in ATLANTIS.

I just...Mai is like in her mid twenties maybe thirty’s. She’s so arbitrarily old that she plays Yugi’s Mom in the video game spinoff where they’re reincarnations of medieval times. That’s how old she is.

Imagine if you made some epically BAD decisions because you were jealous of some teenager’s success and didn’t want to be weak anymore, and then you confronted those teens, and said “This is all your fault.”

Imagine looking someone as dysfunctional as Joey Wheeler and telling him “You made me like this” because lollllllll

And I present this as a joke but like basically this happens all freakin time. We’ve all had a friend like Mai. Past tense of course, because it’s really hard to keep a friend like Mai for very long. (One of my friend’s who went Mai destroyed my apartment one summer and then literally blamed it on me for going to California for 2 months and leaving her unattended.) But like...don’t let Mai’s do it to you. They can get better, but only if it’s their choice, really. You can’t force them to save themselves.

But, as Mai was finally ready to give up cards and probably improve her quality of life by a huge degree, unfortunately, she got sucked right back into the trap.

Bro note: being a serial murderer cultist is basically working at McDonald's in this universe so maybe this wasn’t even that weird?

But that aside, this is alllllmost like a dark version of “Mai got into an abusive relationship to fill the void in her heart” except she’s not even really dating this guy? Like she hates this guy? He’s just kinda there?

Y’all I really can’t tell if Valon is in an abusive relationship with Mai who is using him for power or if she’s in an abusive relationship with him because he only wants her pretty face and wants to kill Joey because Joey liked her once--and maybe it’s both? Maybe both of these people are just...really bad for each other?

Overall Joey is kind of tossed into this not-a-love-triangle and I’m like

“Hey show? show? Am I supposed to....were any these people ever dating? Is there supposed to be an implied history? Am I supposed to get attached to this?” because I mean...the only character who was able to get some actual physical romance on this show was Pegasus when he macked the ghost of his dead wife because, again, Pegasus is the freakin king of this entire show. Of course HE can do it.

But have this show clarify what the hell is happening between Valon and Mai? I’m gonna take a bet that we will never get to see it beyond Valon being like “Ain’t she a beaut!” Like Steve Irwin talking to an alligator, and Mai just pretending he doesn’t exist. Yugioh romances are so completely one way every single time. If something more than that happens, I’ll be

shook.

Anyway, as all the children on the show keep repeating over and over again, they haven’t had any contact with Mai since she left the freakin country and they went back to High School.

And so someone threatens to kill himself, as is Yugioh tradition, and someone else barks at him to NOT kill himself, as is also tradition, and they decide to play real cards next episode.

This whole entire episode, PS, Joey went out of his way to just...not play cards. that was this whole episode. Way to draw out a card game over three episodes, I guess.

Anyway if you want to read these from the start you can do so by clicking the link here

[daniactuallysnuffledthatpopcorn]

Night People

Summary: Dan is put on the night shift at McDonalds with the new kid.

Word count: 3.3K

[A/N] This is rated M for Mature. Read at your own risk.

Dan came into work at a quarter to ten that evening. It was bound to be a long night, so he had downed four cups of coffee in a span of 70 minutes before coming. Maybe four had been a bit much, but least he felt like he could dance the tango for two hours straight rather than like he was ready to die dramatically in the gross kitchen of the McDonalds he worked at.

 The evening shifters were just cleaning up their things when he walked past the counter and into the breakroom. At the table in the corner was a boy he had not seen before. His manager was stood on the other side of the room, squinting at the roster on the corkboard. He turned around when he heard the door open and gave Dan a nod. Dan had worked here long enough to remember when his manager first started; when his eyes lit up every time he saw one of his employees come in. That was now a year and a half ago and boy, had this job sobered him up.

 “Hi Derek.” Dan said as he stood still just in front of the door, reluctant to go sit with the stranger at the table.

 “Hi Dan.” Derek had gone back to staring at the corkboard. A few long, awkward seconds past during which no one said anything. Then finally the boy at the table spoke up.

 “Hi, I‘m Phil.”

 “I’m Dan.” Dan responded. He mustered up the courage to go over and sit opposite Phil. He sank down onto one of the hard plastic chairs and gave Phil what he hoped was a friendly smile.

 Derek finally turned around and walked over to them too, “Dan, you’ll be showing Phil the ropes tonight. This is his second shift, so be nice to him.”

 “As if I’d ever be mean.” Dan joked. Derek didn’t laugh but Phil shot him a grin.

 “I need you to properly mop the floors tonight and clean the toilets. That’s all. The day crew did most of the jobs as it was a very quiet day, so I’m expecting an even quieter night.”

 “Fantastic.” Phil responded. Dan wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or not, but he laughed anyway.

 Derek left the room and Dan and Phil were left alone. Dan uncomfortably fixed the collar of his shirt and coughed. “So,” He began, “First night shift?”

 “Yeah.” Phil responded. He shifted in his seat. “I worked the morning shift yesterday. Hectic.”

 “Don’t expect that tonight. We’ll be lucky if we see one person per hour.”

 “Who the heck even comes into a McDonalds in the middle of the night on Monday?”

 “Some drunks and the occasional student who forgot that no one goes out on Monday nights.”

 Phil groaned.

 --

 As they were walking out of the breakroom, Dan fastening the hideous apron behind his back, he thought of the things he’d have to show Phil. “So you know how the register works and how to make fries and stuff?”

 “I know where the bags of fries are and how to throw them into the fryer, yes. Don’t make it sound more like a real restaurant than it is.”

 “Already a good dose of cynicism towards your workplace. Good start.”

 The evening shifters wished them good luck as they started leaving one by one, until only Dan and Phil were left behind the counter. The first hour or two were okay. A few lost people trickled in and had some late-night hamburgers. Phil got to sweep the floor after a bunch of tween girls on a sleepover accidentally knocked into a table and sent a tray full of fries flying, and Dan got to engage in his favourite activity: watching other people do the crappy jobs while he stood safely behind his cash register.

 A couple came in just after midnight, and by the time they left no one new had come in. “It’s started.” Dan announced. He wiped some imaginary dirt of the counter and leaned over, elbows on the counter and head in his hands. “Getting paid for doing nothing is worse than getting paid for actually working at McDonalds.”

“Derek did give us jobs to do.” Phil offered.

 “No, my young friend, the trick is to leave the jobs you have been given until the moment you almost can’t stand the boredom anymore. If you do the jobs now you’ll just get bored again way too soon and spend more time than necessary in extreme agony.”

“Great, so now what?”

 “Now we wait.” Dan said.

 “Wait for what?”

 “We will know that when it happens.”

 Phil sighed and sat down at one of the tables.

 “My buddy Ben and I like to play a game called ‘Guess the Stain’. Shall I introduce you?”

 Phil raised his eyebrows, but nodded. Dan took him to the playroom for children, rummaged through the ball pit until he found what he was looking for, and then picked up a ball. It had a brownish stain on it that covered about half the surface. Phil pulled a face and took a step back. “Don’t touch that! Are you crazy?”

 “No, I’m keeping us occupied so we don’t go crazy. Now what do you think this stain is?”

 “It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.”

 “Try harder.”

 “God, chicken nugget sauce maybe?”

 “Good one. Ben thought maybe poop, my money was on years of skin cells mushed together.” He dropped the ball and pointed to the ceiling. “Now what about that one?”

 Phil looked at the stain on the white ceiling boards and shrugged, “Looks like a simple leakage.”

 “See, we thought so too, until Derek told us that there’s apparently been a family of weasels living in the roof for the past five years. Now we think it might be weasel pee.”

 “This is a restaurant!”

 “You just said at the start of our shift not to call McDonalds a restaurant.”

 “God, you know what I mean.”

 1AM

Dan and Phil were playing dodgeball with the ball pit balls. It had taken Phil exactly 38 minutes of boredom to get over his disgust of the balls and get desperate enough to play a game with them. At ten past one a lone man walked into the restaurant. Dan peeked his head out of the playroom and announced: “We are back in business!” He hurried to the counter to help the customer. Unfortunately, the man only ordered a milkshake – which the boys argued over who could make it -  and then left. They were alone again.

 Phil swept the floor for a few minutes while Dan unnecessarily cleaned the milkshake machine. “The trick to a truly good sweep is moving all the furniture out of the way.” Phil said as he did the exact opposite.

 “A good sweep.” Dan repeated. He tossed the dishtowel into the laundry bin and motioned Phil back into the playroom for another round of dodgeball.

 2AM

Phil got stuck on the slide in the playroom. Four minutes into trying to free him, a customer came in and Dan laughed heartily before telling Phil to “stay strong” and running off. Phil stayed put in the slide for the ten minutes it took Dan to handle the customer and get the guy his Big Mac and get back into the playroom.

 “Save me.” Phil’s muffled voice came through the plastic slide. Dan had to try his best not to start laughing.

 “Don’t worry, my brave friend, I will get you out of there. I will pour some frying oil down to make it all more slippery. You’ll be down in no time.”

 “Don’t you dare!” Phil shouted. A weak threat coming from someone who was stuck in a children’s slide.

 “I’ll slide in too and push you out.” Dan then said. He climbed up on the structure and into the slide. His torso wasn’t even inside the slide yet when his feet already hit Phil’s shoulders.

 “Push!”

 Dan was in hysterics again. “I’m giving birth!” He cried.

 “Come on, you buffoon!”

 Dan finally started pushing down with his feet and felt Phil go further and further down. He managed to grab a hold of the outer rim of the slide just in time to prevent himself from falling down too. Phil scrambled to his feet down on the floor and gave Dan a thumbs up.

 “No more playing in the slide.” Dan said.

 A customer came in.

 3AM

“I think if aliens exist, they would never contact us, you know.”

 Dan was lying on his back on the counter. Phil was sat beside his head, drinking a smoothie.

 “Yeah, I mean we’re only messing everything up. Why would they want to alert us to the existence of their perfectly good planet so we could come over and ruin that one too?” Phil responded.

 Dan nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s a bad idea indeed. But would they be intelligent enough to have devices to communicate with?”

 “I think it’s more a question of ‘do they have the same type of communication materials as we do’. We keep scorching outer space with our machines that detect radio waves and stuff, but we never stop to think that maybe aliens don’t even use radio waves.” Phil put his empty smoothie cup down and leaned back a little.

 “Excellent point. However, I think we would’ve found a different way to communicate by now too, if there was one.”

 “Why would we? This one works just fine for us. Plus, we don’t have the same kind of technology.” As he thought about it, Phil moved his hand and instead of a counter to lean on found Dan’s head. His subconscious didn’t register it properly and before he realised what he was doing he’d been playing with Dan’s hair for ten seconds. Dan hadn’t even said anything about it.

 “Do you think aliens have internet?” He asked.

 Phil laughed, “Maybe a form of it. Probably not in the same way we do. I mean, our internet is not exactly what the makers intended it to be, I don’t think.” He kept his hand in Dan’s hair.

 “True, true. Aliens probably don’t have a dark web.”

 The thought of an Alien dark web had them speculating for a good half an hour before another two customers finally strolled in and both ordered – in drunk slurred speech – a 20 piece of chicken nuggets with extra sauce.

 4AM

Dan had started cleaning the toilets, allowing Phil to take the slightly less unpleasant job of mopping the floors. They’d started singing High School Musical twenty minutes ago but were still not through all the songs they knew.

 Everything seemed surreal. Like the feeling you get when you’re in school on a Saturday or in a shop after closing time. Dan was used to this feeling by now; he’d worked enough night shifts in his time. Phil was acting like he was Cinderella in a poor remake of the movie, so either his mind had been taken over by the surreality of being in a McDonalds in the middle of the night, or the exhaustion had started kicking in. Dan figured probably the latter.

 When he finished cleaning the toilets and had dumped the cleaning supplies back in the closet, he washed his hands thoroughly and sat on a random table. Phil was almost done mopping the floor and everything looked wet and shiny.

 As he went to put the mop away, Phil announced, “I literally feel like if I closed my eyes right now I would fall asleep just standing up.”

 “Ah, my sleepiness usually kicks in during the last hour. You’re a bit earlier, but it’s okay. You’re just a beginner.”

 They sat on the counter together and looked at the door. These were the most quiet hours; people would start coming in again just before six, so the people on morning shifts could get their McCoffee and hashbrowns before work.

 Phil rubbed his eyes and murmured, “I don’t know if I’m high on a lack of sleep, but I really want to kiss you right now.”

 That had Dan searching desperately for words for a few seconds. “You’re probably really sleep drunk.”

 “Yeah, probably.” Phil lay down on his back and closed his eyes. He didn’t even seem to realise how seriously Dan was taking his words.

 5AM

Dan had just served the first early customer of the morning rush. She had told Dan she was a garbage collector and her shift started at five thirty. Dan wished her a sincere good luck as he handed her her coffee.

 Phil was in the kitchen somewhere, doing God knew what. Possibly sleeping. When Dan was sure no other customers would come in for at least a few minutes, he went to go check up on his co-worker. He found Phil drinking some coffee by the fridges, his eyes much wider than they’d been before.

 “Woken up a little?”

 “I just kind of feel like I’m high on adrenaline now.” Phil responded.

 Dan was still thinking about what Phil had said earlier and he couldn’t help but glance at Phil’s lips. He had to admit he had been thinking about it too. When Phil was playing with his hair as they lay on the counter and when they were singing High School Musical together. He’d felt warm and fuzzy inside and the feeling kind of scared him. He’d only ever felt this way about a girl before. So why hadn’t he been taken aback when Phil said he wanted to kiss him? Surely that would’ve been a normal reaction. But he hadn’t been. Rather, he’d considered actually kissing him for a second before dismissing the thought and figuring Phil was too tired to be held accountable for his words.

 Now that Phil seemed awake and sobered up again, Dan wasn’t sure if he would still want to kiss him. Maybe he didn’t even remember saying it. But he could see that Phil did remember in the way he was looking at him.

 “You’re thinking about it too, aren’t you?” Phil asked, startling Dan.

 He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what the other was talking about, so he just nodded.

 “You said the rush starts just before six, right?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Well, I’d say we have about twenty minutes, and I guess we’d better make the most of it.”

 Dan wasn’t sure what he meant by that for a moment, until Phil put down his coffee cup and bridged the distance between them. He stepped much closer than would be platonically acceptable, and that was really the only warning Dan got before Phil pressed their lips together.

 Phil tasted like coffee and his shirt was soft when Dan clutched it in his fist. They were both a bit drowsy and slow from the lack of sleep, which made the kiss a bit odd but not in a bad way. It was just much slower than Dan would’ve usually done.

 Phil’s hands were going through his hair and then down his back, stopping just before Dan’s butt. He hooked his fingers behind the belt. Dan tensed up and caught himself hoping he would go further, knowing he would never have the courage to initiate it himself.

 And then finally, after what felt like hours, Phil moved his hands again. This time to the front of Dan’s jeans, where he once again hooked his thumbs behind the belt. Dan clutched Phil’s shirt tighter and kissed him harder, hoping it would convey his message of ‘please continue’. It did. Phil got to undoing Dan’s belt, breaking the kiss to look at him to make sure it was okay. Dan just pulled him back into him.

 “Wait.” Phil said, stepping away again. Dan stopped himself from groaning impatiently. “We can’t do this here. That’s actually disgusting.”

 Dan felt like he’d awoken from a haze as he realised where he was. Right. The McDonalds kitchen.

 Phil went to check if there were any customers waiting for them at the counter – there weren’t- and then they went into the breakroom, which was the least bad place they could think of. They went into the bathroom and locked the door.

 Dan had Phil against the wall within a second of the lock clicking into place, and Phil’s hands were back on his belt, making quick work of it now. He fumbled with the button of Dan’s jeans for a moment before Dan pushed his hands out of the way and undid them himself, pulling them down quickly.

 Phil’s hands were on him, palming him through his pants. Dan’s breath got caught in his throat and came out as a soft moan instead. His own hands were in Phil’s soft black hair, that was getting sweatier by the second.

 The changed positions. Dan against the wall and Phil keeping him in place. Their heads were resting against each other, their breaths coming out in short bursts and colliding in the small space between them. They had given up on kissing as neither of them could keep a steady rhythm going like this.

 Dan’s underwear was pulled down and Dan let out a desperate sound as Phil’s hand touched his bare skin. He explored Dan for a minute or two, seeing what the other responded well to, which was pretty much everything as long as he was touching him, before he started moving at a steady rhythm. Dan’s knees buckled but he kept himself standing. He was holding on to Phil’s shoulders now, as if they were the only thing holding him up, and maybe they were.

 Just as Dan started getting close to coming, a bell rang. Both of them stopped dead in their tracks and weren’t sure what the sound was for a moment, until Phil whispered under his breath, “Customer.”

 “Fuck.” Dan responded. He pulled up his pants and attempted to fix his hair a little, while Phil furiously washed his hands with way too much soap.

 “Do I look presentable?” Dan asked, still out of breath.

 “Not really, but go. They don’t want me touching their food with these hands right now.”

 “Valid point.” Dan quickly put his hands under the tap to wash off the sweat and then dashed out of the bathroom, through the breakroom, and into the restaurant. “Hello, sorry for the wait, how can I help you?” He put on his best smile, but he knew he looked exactly how he felt: his face red and his hair sweaty and ruffled.

 “Can I just have a muffin and a coffee?” Fortunately it was only one woman. There was no line and the rest of the restaurant was still empty. Dan quickly fixed her food for her, and he didn’t even wait till the door had closed behind her before he went back into the breakroom.

 “That was a wild ride.” Phil grinned at him. He was done washing his hands and was now standing in front of the mirror, trying to save what was left of hair by putting water in it.

 Dan’s hair had already gotten a bit curly from the sweat, and he knew that putting in more water would only make it curlier. He washed his face and tried to get his hair back in order with dry hands.

 “So,” He said carefully, “What was that?”

 Phil lost a bit of his confidence when he said that. His face fell. “You regret it?”

 “No, definitely not. It’s more of a ‘what does this mean’.” Dan said.

 Phil nodded, relieved. “I don’t really care about what it means. All I know is that I would really like to finish it.”

 “Well,” Dan glanced at his watch, “I don’t know about you, but I’m suddenly not very tired anymore, our shift is over in twelve minutes, and my parents aren’t home.”

 Phil ran a last hand through his hair and then turned to the other, “I can work with that.”

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: NAM BITNA ...

STATS

name / nam bitna d.o.b. / 11.11.94 age / 24 pronouns / she/her job / freelance audio technician & psychic shop receptionist societies / here groups / vlog › audio tech

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

the sound.

growing up is loud.

it’s a cramped house full of three generations worth of people and it’s racing to fill your plate at dinner because there might not be enough for everyone; it’s creaking floorboards and thin walls and screaming in the night and - swearing to every god and deity that you weren’t making it up when you told the story of the night before over breakfast. it’s a glowering black figure in the corner of her room that keeps her up at night. it’s crying herself to sleep when the bills are overdue and her night light doesn’t shine and her only source of light is the glow of the moon. “shh,” says her father, tells her to cover her ears and shut her eyes, count backwards from ninety; that things are never as bad as they seem.

when she’s ten, her dad scrapes together enough to buy her a walkman at a pawn shop during an obligatory trip into town. the first song she hears through the clunky headphones that go with it, on a blank cassette that she can’t pry out, is something beautiful. it’s in old korean and she doesn’t understand a word of it but she plays it to the end and then again and again, stares into the corner where the black blob lives and watches it move. she stares and she stares, but it’s not half as scary when she can’t hear the groan of the house and the brush of wind on the trees outside her window, the big empty whispers of the souls that live in the walls. she feels safe. it’s the first time she sleeps through the night and from that point forward bitna is never seen without it - her walkman, black and bulky and covered in residue from stickers stuck on and scraped away by its previous owner, the cassette that doesn’t budge. the songs, sometimes voices, that never end, the batteries that never seem to need a change.

everyone other than bitna and her father that’s ever tried to take a listen says one thing -

it’s quiet.

“shh,” says her father.

he dies. she doesn’t listen to it much anymore. she’s scared of what she’ll hear.

WHATS YOUR STORY?

TAPE #001, TRACK 0:

seven wonders, fleetwood mac.

bitna’s mother, songhee, is the daughter of a politician, she’s well-off and high up in the hierarchy of junae’s youth. she’s beautiful, intelligent, the kind of girl who can have any man she set her sights on but she throws it all away to become a poor man’s wife. enter romeo. bitna’s father, hanbin, who comes from rags, a long line of workers that struggle to make ends meet and keep food on the table; he makes extra pocket money on his own by busking around the town with his homegrown magic tricks that he never shares the secrets to but lacks drive and ambition. he never leaves the library once he’s in it, rarely even to shower. he bites the peels off his oranges, hands sticky with juice and filthy with dust and residue.

they’re not supposed to meet, should’ve never crossed paths to begin with, but in true romeo and juliet form: they do anyway. it starts as a run-in near town hall and turns into them meeting weekly, in the outskirts of town when the night is pitch black and inky enough that their shadows don’t give them away. they trade secrets and the little bit of knowledge they possess to the tune of cicadas and festival excitement.

bitna: is conceived on a fallen log in the forest, fitted with a discolored gingham blanket, the scene lit by fireflies and the stars in the sky. her mother always makes it sound more romantic than the thrust-and-go it’d really been, a rushed moment of passion after they’d promised to run away together - into the horizon, over the mountains and beyond. it’s funny then, that bitna’s born where they both had been raised: in the quiet, sheltered middle of bumfuck nowhere.

they get married young and they struggle, make empty, endless promises to make it out and somewhere bigger for bitna’s sake, but they never do.

god, they never do.

TAPE #015, TRACK 6:

boogie shoes, kc & the sunshine band.

she grows up in a house packed full with her grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and her mom and dad, and it’s an overwhelm of sound.

she picks up on every shift in tone and pitch, catches every impact and imbalance. she thrives on sound, the way it feels when it’s low and rumbling, the shrillness of it when it’s so high you can only feel the rattle of it in your eardrums and the air. she’s born screaming her head off, says her first words early and loves the sound of her granddad’s vinyl records when it’s close to bedtime and she’s slow to soothe.

it’s a cruel kind of irony then that, with how sensitive she is to the audio of the world around her, she’s born deaf in one ear.

they can’t afford a hearing aid, least of all when she’s still growing, so she finds other ways to hear with clarity, certainty. it starts with sitting in her grandparents’ lounge room and pressing her tiny hands against the speaker of their well-loved record player and evolves into her learning how to use audio software and watching the fluctuations of the waves on the screen of the family’s brick computer with a carelessly (and excruciatingly) torrented program that did, in fact, have a virus just like her older cousin had told her it would and did (in fact) crash the system altogether. she takes thrifted speakers apart to see what’s inside and follows her dad to junk sales to find scrap pieces of old electronics to make them better. she hates junk sales but it almost feels worth it for the way her hair stands up on end around certain items, certain homes and alleyways, when neighbors ask her for help with fixing their set-ups, when she’s known as a mini audio tech guru as young as she is, despite her disability. almost worth the voices, the noises again. almost.

kids are rude about it sometimes and, when they’re old enough to know better and not care, make a show of walking around to her left side to talk shit. (about her daddy being weird and her mama being a peach that fell real far from the orchard - it’s all things they’ve heard their parents say about them, things that keep them from having playdates with bitna, things that make her cousins walk ahead of her on the way home. things.)

her fist serves as a decent reminder that she can still hear with her right ear and manages to shut up the terrible few before it becomes a bigger problem, but she drowns it out with her headphones and the eerie, nameless music her walkman plays, anyway. she doesn’t hear much else. she doesn’t need them.

(she doesn’t.)

but bitna, a natural sponge, collects friends and enemies with every breath she takes - unapologetic and ambitious and deluded into thinking that she’s better somehow. (she goes to the same school (church, doctor, grocer, park, lake) that everyone else goes to, looks nowhere but up and wonders what better is,) keeps mostly to her work and her plans - anticipates, really, to be the exception to the frightening notion that nobody in junae makes it very far away from town. her grandmother tells her that people almost always come back, that there’s something in the water and the air. ask your daddy, she always says. bitna never finds the time.

but she is one of a hefty handful who make it out. she goes to college in the big city long enough to start a life and get a degree but winds up right back where she’d started when her dad dies.

it’s sudden. loud.

she gives up a tech job opportunity in seoul to help her mother pick up the pieces of her heart and plan a tasteful sendoff; watches her cousins move out of the stupid house they’d all grown up in at their own leisure, starting their lives as functioning members of the community - seemingly content with going absolutely nowhere.

her mother reconnects with her parents in her agony, old and retired and withered down by life and then she’s gone, too - in the middle of the night on a patch of grass in the forest. bitna doesn’t waste time wondering what she’d been doing that far out of town in the first place and grieves the loss of both her parents in such close proximity. it doesn’t make any sense.

she could leave but she stays behind to keep her father’s parents company. it’s what she tells herself, at least, when she struggles to find a place for herself in the home she’d worked so hard to leave, lost without the anchors she’d always counted on being there. poor and thrust into independence, really, with no net.

it makes her angry, bitter. she simmers and - she ponders. the lack of surprise surrounding her parents’ deaths from anyone else rattles her: the way her father’s best friend can’t look her in the eyes; the way her maternal grandparents screw their mouths up at the mention of how her parents had met, don’t dare to look at bitna lest they be reminded of what she represents; her uncle burns her daddy’s journals in the backyard, locks his foggy glass jars in the attic and nails the door shut.

they’d known, then.

she finally finds the voice to ask the questions she’s always been meaning to ask and the answers are gone, buried with her parents in junae’s cemetery. or, kept, rather, by the only other people they’d dared to tell.

she wishes she’d been one of them.

TAPE #054, TRACK 9

soda city funk, tim legend.

it’s two years of this.

bitna, though a typically optimistic (read: fatalistic) and (mostly) (sometimes) (tries-to-be) warm individual, falls into a depression perpetuated by the lack of forward movement in her career, which serves as a convenient cloak for her anxiety over a lack of closure. her simmering bubbles into a boil and she wallows in the heat of it. her wallowing leads to drinking alone and late nights out, drunken wandering around the library for a window to sneak in through, making it as far as the rusted back door before she falls asleep on the steps. other times it’s waking up in the middle of the night and wandering to where her mother’s body had been found. she explores in the cover of the night until she loses her nerve.

she takes odd jobs to keep bills paid and food on the table, lengthy repairs and school assemblies, music for birthday gigs when the going gets tough, a wealthy man’s lap when she’s desperate. it’s all a means to an end.

between job interviews (and bad decisions), she takes a trip to the tarot shop for a reading. she finds herself in this position a lot, lingering in front of the heavily draped doorway with words hanging off the tip of her tongue. usually, she walks away, but something compels her to stay. she goes in with the intention of asking about her parents’ deaths but chickens out and asks for help instead.

it’s two parts desperation for a raft to hold onto and one part curiosity that pulls her in, it costs her a coffee but she feels vindicated when the first card she touches when they begin is death upright.

change and transformation, the woman at the helm assures her, and maybe bitna should be more embarrassed that it takes a woman in a dusty robe and tacky jewelry telling her to let go of her worldly woes to get her to unclench but it works.

in fact, it resonates with her on such a personal level that she starts working there as a receptionist, letting go of the notion of her dream job falling face first into her lap and holding onto a new belief. the cards become law; she cleanses her aura with funky teas and yoga, sits with her worn down walkman and listens until hours turn into days when she feels the need to be on her own. she waits and works and doesn’t stress over the future. (except maybe she does, just more quietly and mostly in her journal,) but it’s the first time in her life that she lets life happen and explores the town she’d never truly given a chance and - it’s almost fate that the like-minded vlog squad opportunity arises when it does. when she’s faced with all of these questions that she doesn’t have the answers to and a desire to find them.  

(it rumbles.)

[baabaathegoat]

Burlesque

Part One: Cock and Bull Pub, Edinburgh

Jamie stared into his glass, the whisky almost gone. There was just enough liquid left for his melting ice cubes to slide around the glass with ease. He stared at them, transfixed as the icy blocks glided around the edges of the circle, then twisted slowly as they became drawn towards each other again, rocking together slightly as they joined in the middle of the glass, melded together in a dance. That is until Jamie’s finger pressed down to force them apart again, sending the ice cubes scuttling towards the edges once more.

Rupert’s jovial voice muttered in his ear “I s'pose ye think those wee icicles are some grand metaphor for you and some lass then aye?”

Jamie turned his head slightly in the direction of Rupert’s voice, his eyes remaining on the swirling ice, ready to push them apart again. "What lass?" he asked Rupert, trying to sound nonchalant. A proper glance at his cousin's smug face and Jamie felt compelled to add with some exasperation “I dinna know what ye think ye know so how about ye just shut yer lousy gob and leave me be?”

Unaffected by Jamie’s response, Rupert ventured “I’m just sayin’ that a lass who makes ye think of grand metaphors in yer whisky glass is trouble. That’s about the size of it”.

“Oh aye?” Jamie responded then quietly muttered to himself “Grand indeed. All without speaking a word to each other”.

"So out with it man. What filly has ye cahonas in a twiddle?” Rupert asked, interrupting Jamie's renewed absorption on the dancing ice cubes.

“Och I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing man, that bar girl over yonder has been pulling her top lower and lower all evening to get yer attention. As it is even blind Duncan in the corner knows we’re one tug away from seeing her topless and it’s all for your benefit. Ye only grunted to the childe so far tonight. Usually ye throw her a kind word when she serves ye drink, but tonight she’s going down a desperate path to get ye to notice her all because yer fixatin’ on some other lassie.”

Jamie briefly glanced in the direction of the young girl in question, unconvinced of Rupert's assessment, then looked away even more quickly once he surmised that the assessment of the young lasses top was, in fact, quite accurate.

Rupert now had his eyes trained on his cousin “Ah so whoever she is, she’s got ye by the short and curlies me lad. Time to tell all.”

There was little point in delaying the story. Rupert had always been able to gain the measure of a situation with ease, and he had a relentlessly nosey nature. If he didn't hear what was eating Jamie now, he wouldn't rest until he had all the information.

After a brief contemplative pause, Jamie began. "I met a girl".

"Christ alive son. I got that. What of it?"

With a small sigh of exasperation directed at Rupert, Jamie continued "I went to take a new order from the Theatre Royale today. When I got there the manager, Old Mac, was on the phone, so I wandered around the foyer for a bit. After a few minutes I noticed there was music coming from inside the theatre so I stuck my head through the door just because I was curious.”

"And bored shitless.”

"No, curious. Old Mac isn't known for sticking to a schedule when it comes to business and I'd never spent much time in a theatre afore".

"Aye so ye were bored and looked in the theatre and now you're telling me ye canna live without ballet and thats yer new mistress, aye?"

"Do you want to hear this or not?" Jamie asked, raising his eyebrows in annoyance.

Rupert sighed. "Fine, just get to the good stuff quick smart like. I reckon I've got a real chance with the redhead two tables over tonight as long as ye finish befor she leaves.”

Jamie shook his head in resignation at his cousin. "There were three girls up on the stage. One was French, another was a tiny little thing and the last one ... the last one was incredible. Gorgeous. Legs a mile long with this incredible smile that lit up the stage and a laugh that made me feel ... wow!"

"Oh aye? And what name does this hot mummy-long-legs go by?"

"I didn't get to find out. The French girl seemed to be teaching them how to do a striptease on stage, and after a minute or two she told them all to take off their robes which is when I saw her fully. She was wearing this red and black striped corset, with these red satin panties and fish net tights held up by a garter, and heels, a choker and long satin gloves. She looked incredible. Sinful. A goddamn temptress. Then the music started over and they began to dance. Slow and sensuous at first, then building up to more raunchy dance with thrusting moves before they began to slowly take off items of clothing".

"Jaysus man. Why do I always miss out on the good stuff?" Rupert countered, now giving his full attention to Jamie, who continued.

"I was dead set rooted to the spot. There was nothing on earth that could have compelled me to leave at that point. Completely transfixed like I was having an out of body experience. She was glorious. Those heels made her legs look like they would never end. I was almost begging for her corset to come off and when it did..."

"Aye?" Rupert interjected eagerly leaning in, then noticing Jamie's euphoric smile he added "that good?"

"Oh Rupert. This woman is ... she's... she's just...God there is no word to describe her."

"So ye've fallen for a stripper then?"

"No. Well, I don't think so. When the corset came off she was wearing tassles on her... you know... and her wee underpants stayed on. So she never got fully naked. But dear heaven she was so tantalising and I was so turned on I couldna hardly see right. Ach Rupert, she left stuff to the imagination and I cannae stop imagining now.”

"So what happened when you spoke to her?"

"Weeeel just as they finished some man snuck up behind her, smacked her on the arse, grabbed her around the waist then lifted her up so her legs were kicking in the air all while she was laughing and carrying on with the little twerp. She dinna seem unhappy at his attentions so I left."

"Ah so the poor little ice cubes ye were playing with so attentively afore was not you and her together, but ye pushing her and the ass slapper apart?"

Jamie looked at Rupert with a start "How did ye- Damn you don’t miss a trick do ye-"

"So ye left?" Rupert continued, fully engrossed in the story and ignoring Jamie’s side commentary. "Did ye even speak to old Mac in the end about the job?"

"Oh aye. Briefly. He handed me a folder just as I scarpered. Said all the details were in there. Told him I'd get some proofs sent over in the morning."

"Sent over? Sent over?? Oh no me lad. A job for an old client like Mac deserves that personal touch. You, my big red bundle of puppy love are going to deliver those proofs in person tomorrow to the theatre. Don't be confusing old Mac with ye fancy pdfs and gifs and pricing options online. Give him the personal touch. And then go find ye lassie and personally touch her."

Jamie rolled his eyes. "Yer a crass man and a daft git. A girl, nay, a woman like that deserves the finest of everything and I can't just go sniffing around like a desperate fool, she deserves better."

"Son. If what ye say about her is true then I'd reckon the lass has met many a desperate fool in her lifetime. Now I've seen ye face when ye talk about this one. She's yer wumman. Go get yer wumman".