#prefacing this as usual by saying that i love my job. but also… every single situation. EVERY situation. is a primal situation in one way. l

[pepprs]

im discontent and tired but like too discontent and tired to put it into words i think. lol

[mysticalnightenthusiast]

NSFW Alphabet-Valtteri Bottas

********************************************************************** This is for my friend in the fandom @an-ocean-blue​.  She helped me so much in writing this alphabet I wanted to credit her as an author but she said it wasn’t necessary.  I hope you all like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**********************************************************************

a-aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

After a bit of a cuddle he’ll always get up and fetch you a towel or a washcloth from the bathroom.  He’ll then allow you to snuggle up to him and doze off.  Then after waking up he’ll tease you about snoring.

b-body part (their favorite body part of their partner’s)

Val loves his eyes, more specifically the colour.  On you it’s all your curves and soft bits, you’re not a stick insect and he likes that.

c-cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Inside you.  Every-single-time.

d-dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Val doesn’t keep secrets from you; you’ve got an open relationship in that regard. Communication is both of your strong suits.

e-experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

The man is experienced AF and has a lot of partners though only a couple of long term relationships

f-favorite position (this goes without saying)

Missionary or cowgirl.  Missionary allows him to look into your eyes as you come and cowgirl allows him to grab your hips or boobs as you ride him.

g-goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

In the moment Val is serious AF.  It’s on the comedown when he playfully tickles your sides that things get a bit goofy.

h-hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Not hairless.  Has never waved or shaved but keeps things very short and trimmed neatly.

i-intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Off the fucking charts

j-jack off (masturbation headcanon)

If the mood strikes Val doesn’t mind jerkin’ the gherkin but prefers you to be in the same room or at least on Facetime.

k-kink (one or more of their kinks)

Outdoor sex.  His house in Finland is semi-rural and the nearest neighbour is miles away so getting it on on a picnic rug down by the lake in front of his sauna house gets him off particularly intensely.

l-location (favorite places to do the do)

Same as K but not like ‘Hey how abut we have sex outside today?” outdoor sex will always be prefaced by a nice walk outside that ends with him fucking you up against a tree or on a rug after a nice lakeside picnic.

m-motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Sweet dirty talk.  Valtteri Bottas is a true romantic but knows when a bit of dirty talk is appropriate, usually a whisper in your ear whilst at the track or whilst you’re doing something horribly domestic like the dishes after dinner.  He also really likes it when you whisper naughty sweet nothings in his ear just before he goes into a strategy meeting or when you’re relaxing on the couch after a long day at work.

n-no (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Pain.  Val doesn’t like receiving or inflicting it.  A bit of spanking in the moment is fine but he’ll never bite, hit or scratch you.

o-oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Always prefers penetrative sex but would ever turn down a blow job.

p-pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Whatever the mood calls for.  Mostly slow and sensual.  He wants you to feel everything and wants to feel everything.

q-quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Not his favourite way of getting laid, much prefers to take his time to take you apart bit by bit.

r-risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

In terms of experimenting with new positions or locations sure he’ll try things (you never know when you’ll unlock anew kink hey?) but he’s not into taking risks for the sake of taking risks especially with you.

s-stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Ah-may-zing stamina, he lasts the longest of anyone you’ve ever been with but once he’s come himself that’s usually it for him for the night but he always makes sure its after you.

t-toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Has used them with you in the past but you much prefer just him and his skill (Those fingers man!)

u-unfair (how much they like to tease)

Not a tease as such but he definitely believes slow and steady wins the race and oh boy what a race it usually is!

v-volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Definitely not a screamer/bellower, soft and mellow like his public persona.

w-wild card (a random headcanon for the character) 

Once after joining Valtteri in the gym you two retreated to his sauna room for a bit of post workout r&r and things quickly got hot and heavy (in the figurative a literal sense) you were already naked and fairly soon after closing the door behind you Valtteri had you bent over the bench and was railing you from behind both hands around your throat.  Now the sauna is a favourite spot for both of you to get it ooooooooooooon.

x-x-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Definitely nothing to be embarrassed about.  He’s happy with what he’s packing for sure. 

y-yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

You and Valtteri match each other perfectly.  He’ll happily give you a sensual massage and will get you off with his fingers and mouth and then cuddle you afterward.  Not every erection needs an orgasm.

z-zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Valtteri often falls asleep before you but only because your lovemaking is usually so intense and that takes a lot out of a guy.  He always apologises for it and you always tell him he doesn’t need to.

**********************************************************************

A/N2:  Please like or re-blog if you liked this installment!  A masterlist will soon be up and the other drivers and a few other F1 personalities alphabets are planned.  If you have an idea for a NSFW alphabet please hit up my inbox!

**********************************************************************

[madswonders]

A Lesson In Romance #10: Thoughts

Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU!Reader

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Warnings: Implied anxiety, Mentions of canon-typical violence

Word Count: 2.5k

Plot: Reader keeps getting caught in rom-com situations with Spencer Reid. This time, they're paired together on a case.

A/N: I know that the BAU's conference room has big-ass glass windows but just imagine that the blinds are closed for the entirety of this chapter aha. Also this chapter is a doozy... like 1k words longer than usual, so enjoy!

Masterlist | All chapters here!

---------

As Peter Gizzi once described the phenomena of love, "About you there is nothing I wouldn’t want to know / With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler."

In high school, your reputation always preceded you. The cynic that never had a boyfriend, much less a drunken one-night stand; a prude who waited over ten dates to have her first kiss; or the "ice queen" who kept her emotions locked up and threw away the key.

If they saw you now, you wondered if they would laugh at how you've changed; because these days, you looked like you were keeping the best secret in the world, one that threatened to burst from your lips every time you smiled.

What you didn’t know, is that you didn't need to be a profiler to see it. From the bubbling laughter and whispered conversations, to the not-so-secret longing glances. You and Spencer disappeared into your own world when you were together, and everybody knew it.

And for the first few weeks, that was enough. You found it easier than usual to ignore the thoughts that lurked in the back of your mind. That is, until you couldn't.

"... I want you and Spencer to work on the geographic profile." Hotch had announced, and you remembered the feeling of your blood running cold.

There were two reasons for this. First was the fact that this case linked twenty homicides across three years to a single unsub. If there was any case that required the two nerdiest members of the BAU to team up, this was it.

Unfortunately, that fact was closely followed by an overwhelming fear — and you wanted to preface this by saying that you were usually a woman of logic and science — but, somehow, you couldn't shake the thought that something bad was going to happen to you and Spencer, and you weren't ready for it.

Leaning against the cool conference room wall, you tapped your toes in an impatient rhythm against the carpeted floor. You were trying to recite what you learned from your PhD; that your mind was jumping to conclusions and that it was normal to be nervous. It was normal to feel this way. You were normal.

"Are you okay?" Spencer asked, jolting you out of your mantra.

You realised your boyfriend had been talking to you for awhile now, but clearly, you weren't listening. You shook your head apologetically.

"Sorry, I was just thinking. Could you say that again?"

"I was just saying, you can start by pinning the names and locations of the victims, and I'll put up the crime scene photos... but are you sure you're okay?" He asked again, this time shooting you those puppy dog eyes that made you weak.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Let's get to work." You said firmly, grabbing the box of push pins. You felt his gaze linger on you for a second, before he began picking up his own stack of pictures.

The first hour sped by quickly as you and Spencer listed out all of the unsub’s possible motives and next victims. At the half hour mark, Hotch dropped in to check on your progress, bringing takeaway coffee and leaving with a rare smile.

At the second hour, the rest of the team returned with some new leads, and unfortunately, new bodies, but nothing that helped solidify the profile any further than what you already had.

At the fifth hour, there was no denying it. The team had hit a wall. While the rest of them were back in the field investigating more leads, you sipped on your second cup of coffee while staring at the evidence board. Spencer paced the room behind you.

"The messy dump sites. The carvings onto the victims' chests. One points to the unsub being disorganised and inexperienced, but the other is a clear, almost narcissistic ritual." The doctor thought aloud.

"Usually that means the unsub is trying to make a statement, but he killed his first ten victims before the police found out, then killed another seven and three right under their noses before going dormant. If he wanted to make a statement, why wouldn't he tip off the police or media sooner?" He grumbled.

"Are we sure it's not a taunt to the local police’s competency? Many of his first victims were found in secluded areas with limited police support." You pointed out, tapping the edge of your cup in thought.

"No, the victimology and locations are too wide spread. A taunt would present a clearer message." He said.

You turned around suddenly, causing him to halt in his steps. "Here's something completely off the wall — but what if the unsub was trying to achieve a specific pattern with his kills?" You said, gesturing with your cup.

Tap, tap-tap, tap, you created the rhythm with your finger.

"That would explain why he isn't acting like a narcissist. Maybe he's suffering a mental condition that compels him to complete a certain pattern, and subsequently, ritual with his kills. Could be rhythmical, musical, numerical..." You explained.

"Numerical. That's it!" Spencer squeaked, rushing to the board with a marker. "I thought these numbers seemed familiar earlier, that's because they make up prime numbers!"

He backed away from the board to reveal what he wrote. The numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. A lightbulb turned on in your head.

"2, 3 and 5 make up the first ten kills. 7 is the next, which he managed to complete perfectly, but something happened to the unsub at 11." Spencer voiced your thoughts.

"He might have been incarcerated, or injured. But we can't rule out the possibility that he might have moved out of town and resumed the pattern elsewhere. So either we can expect 8 more victims here, or the unsub has already moved onto the next number: 13." You quickly finished the train of thought.

"Love, you're a genius!" Spencer rushed over to pick you up by the waist, twirling you as you laughed in relief. But the relief turned to surprise when he kissed you deeply.

God, he was good at this. Even when your feet touched the ground, it felt like you were seeing stars. Though it was only when your lips parted that he had the decency to blush.

"Love?" You breathed.

Spencer's cheeks turned crimson in embarrassment, but he didn't back away. Instead, he leaned forward, bumping your foreheads together gently.

"I didn't know you had that in you, doctor." You teased.

"Well, my mother did school me in classic romance literature from a young age. Not to mention, I happen to be a genius at most things..." You could hear the smile in his voice, and you giggled.

The doctor pulled away then, an adoring smile still plastered across his face. "Are you fee—" He began, but his voice died in his throat as his gaze fixated on something behind you.

"Ooooh, am I interrupting something?" You turned around to see none other than Penelope smiling coyly from the doorway, and the two of you jumped apart.

"N-no, nothing!" Spencer blurted out.

"All fine and dandy here." You added on, blushing furiously.

The tech analyst smiled deviously. "Well, I thought I'd come and check on my two favourite lovebirds. Anything else from the case for me to chew on? Except whatever that was earlier." She teased.

"Actually, there is." You cleared your throat awkwardly, while the good doctor looked like he wanted to melt into the carpet.

"We need you to search up murders in neighbouring cities that match the mutilation by our unsub, then cross-reference the time frame with any new residents. We suspect he might be trying to complete a pattern, and that he may have done it somewhere other than here." You said.

"On it, future-Mrs-Genius. I will get back to you so fast that you won't even have time to get down and dirty." She half-yelled that last bit, heels clicking as she walked back to her office. Before you could even formulate a response, she was gone.

You felt your boyfriend wrap his arms around you from the back. "Now, where were we?" He whispered.

You giggled, leaning back into the doctor's chest while he rocked your bodies side to side. "Are you feeling better now?" He asked.

"Next time someone says it's not as intense in here as it is out there, I'm going to give them a stern talking to." You joked.

"You know what I mean, love." Spencer reiterated gently, the pet name falling from his lips like it was the most natural thing in the world. "If you tell me about it, I can help you. You know I'm always here for you."

You sighed softly, blinking back tears that threatened to spill.

"It's something stupid. I-I'm fine."

He turned you around, brows furrowing in concern when a tear rolled down your cheek. "What's wrong?" He asked, wiping it away tenderly.

"I— I was worried about us working together." You admitted. "And it's not because I don't like working with you, but I just— I just couldn't—"

"Take a deep breath, love. Slowly." He held your shoulders as you breathed in and out, once, twice.

"I've been afraid this whole day — no, for awhile now — that something was going to happen to our relationship." You confessed shakily. "And it's not about our jobs — although I worry about that too — but I'm scared that one day you'll wake up and realise that I'm not worth the trouble."

You looked up at the ceiling, trying to stop the next wave of tears.

"A-and it's only gotten worse because I've never been so h-happy with another person before. Only you've made me feel this way, and I'm t-terrified that I'll lose what we have."

There was a brief silence as Spencer pulled you close to his chest, one hand stroking your hair carefully. You could hear his heart beating fast.

"Do you remember when the team tricked us into sharing a bed?" He whispered, a hint of a smile trickling into his voice. "I think about it every single time we're about to go into the field. Because you said you'd never leave me, and now, whenever we're out there, I know I'm not alone."

He breathed in deeply, your head gently rising and falling together with his chest.

"You've given me someone to come home to, love. What we have, you'll never lose it, okay?" He whispered.

"Baby, I—" Your voice halted. Crap.

"Wait. Baby?" Spencer repeated back to you, a teasing lilt in his voice. Your face flushed, and you unwinded your arms from your boyfriend to cover your face.

"Oh god, can we pretend that didn't just happen?"

"I have an eidetic memory." He pointed out. You let out a watery laugh, knowing when you had lost.

"Alright, alright. But I do have another ide—"

Then, the conference room phone rang. It was Emily. "Hey guys, Garcia managed to narrow down the unsub and we're 10 out, but we'll need some back-up."

"Be there in 15." You replied, while Spencer shot you an amused look, Luckily, he waited for the call to end before saying the next words.

"Let's go, baby." He wiggled his eyebrows.

You rolled your eyes and laughed, already strapping on your kevlar. "That's it. You're not driving."

"Aww!"

---------

After the major breakthrough in the case — all thanks to Nerd 1 and Nerd 2, as Derek fondly called the two of you — the case managed to wrap up neatly and the BAU found themselves in a rare position. Ready to end the work day, on time.

Not that anybody was packing up to leave just yet, although you wished they would, because Penelope had decided to start enthusiastically retelling how she found the BAU's resident lovebirds in the conference room, unable to keep their hands off each other.

"Last I heard, pet names aren't a crime — and how long were you standing there anyway?" You accused, blushing.

"Firstly, they are. Criminally cute, that is!" Penelope squealed, while the rest were in fits of laughter. "And secondly, you should never underestimate my awesome ninja abilities, because I heard everything that I needed to hear."

"Do I even want to know?" Spencers winced.

"I don't think you do, pretty boy." Derek laughed, clapping the genius on the back.

"Wait, wait, wait. Can we go back to how Spencer's pet name of choice is love?" Emily gasped in laughter.

"You've got to admit it's kind of cute, Emily." JJ smiled.

"Sure. If you're courting Mr. Darcy and attending cotillions."

"C'mon, Prentiss. All that means is that our boy's got style." Derek added to laughter, while Spencer whined in protest.

The door to Hotch's office opened suddenly, both him and Rossi stepping out with expressions of urgency on their faces.

“Sorry to break up the fun, kiddos. But there's been an update to the case.” Rossi announced, following right behind Hotch to the conference room.

The laughs were wiped off everybody's faces as you traded concerned looks. As you filed into the room, Hotch had already begun speaking.

“Another body was found half an hour ago. Same MO, same random victimology, and same kind of dumpsite. And the unsub just told us where to find his copycat.”

“Wait, we never profiled a second unsub.” Derek interjected.

"It doesn't makes sense — the first unsub is a control freak. He didn't like the idea of anybody messing with his sequence. Wouldn't he have done something if he knew somebody else was copying his pattern?" You asked.

"We profiled that he wouldn't be able to deviate from his pattern. What if he had to continue, even when somebody else was committing some of the crimes for him?" Spencer countered.

“Hold on, you said the unsub gave us a location?” Emily asked.

"And a time." Rossi voiced up. “8pm tonight at The Basil. The first unsub claims that's where the copycat finds his next targets."

"How do we know if we can trust him?" Derek asked.

"We don't. But he didn't display any telltale signs of doubt when he told us, and this is the only lead we have." Hotch's frown deepened. You had a feeling he didn't like the idea of this either, but the team didn't have a choice.

"Okay, if we're doing this, he can't know we're onto him," Emily thought aloud, "and we'll need precautions in case it's a trap. That means..."

"Undercover agents... and the bait." Hotch said with finality.

“And who did you have in mind for that?” You piped up, and everyone turned their eyes to you.

“You and Reid.” He stated the obvious.

“B-b-but, I’ve never gone—"

“You’ve more than proven your abilities in the field since you joined us, and having natural chemistry will make it less suspicious to the unsub.”

You opened your mouth, but no words fell from it. Hotch was right. Of course he was right.

As if hearing your thoughts, Spencer took your hand in his and squeezed, and you felt a little calmer already. “Ok, I’ll do it.” You said determinedly, while the doctor echoed your sentiment.

Hotch nodded, beginning to assign roles to the rest of the team while you squeezed your boyfriend's hand tighter, a new mantra forming in your head.

Everything is going to be okay. Everything will be okay.

----------

Tag List:

@blue-space-porgs @nobutalsoyes @lady-loves-a-lot @queen-flower @agentcarterisgay @totalmess191 @sapphic-prentiss @oops-all-ajs @spottedzebrasinpartyhats @mellowalieneggsknight @kenny-0909 || @averyhotchner @amesandpineapples @willowrose99

[putschki1969]

Thoughts on "LiSA - Akeboshi" ? Since the guitar riff at the end of the song suddenly rings me back to Kalafina. Progressive, to be exact.

Oh, I KNEW this was coming XD I have honestly not listened to the song yet but I have seen the pretty big debate it caused on Japanese Twitter when it first got released. On the day the full digital track came out, "Kalafina" actually started trending and you know why? Because quite a few people were tweeting stuff like: "Kalafina should have sung this!" "This was obviously written for Kalafina because it literally sounds like a Kalafina song." "Kalafina would do a much better job at singing this." "I want Kalafina back!" etc...

Now this is certainly nothing new and it happens pretty much every time a new YK comes out BUT for some reason, there was a considerable backlash this time around. I saw a lot of tweets telling people to finally shut up about Kalafina because it's disrespectful to both YK as well as LiSA to keep saying inconsiderable stuff like that. Many people agreed with that sentiment, even among the Kalafina fandom. Personally I am a little torn and on the fence about it. In theory I agree that it is kinda rude to LiSA and YK to make complaints about this but as a hardcore Kala-stan I cannot help but understand where people are coming from when they keep bringing up Kalafina in situations like that.

Anyways, you wanted to hear my thoughts about “Akeboshi” so here we go 〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

Let me preface this mini-review by saying that I do not watch the anime so I have zero emotional attachment to any of those songs. Also, I am not a big fan of LiSA’s voice so the song must be REALLY good for me to even consider liking it. So far, “Homura” has been the only new YK release to outright impress me with its gorgeous composition, LiSA’s generic singing style notwithstanding.

I have now listened twice to “Akeboshi” and this is what I can say:

From an objective point of view: I love the sound of the verses and bridge, this is YK at her best creating a haunting, almost nightmarish atmosphere with a well-balanced mixture of hard rock/gothic metal and symphonic elements. LiSA doesn’t even sound like herself with the filter (?) they used during some parts of the verses, for a second there I thought it wasn’t even her. Or maybe it’s just me being not very familiar with her voice :P The chorus is much brighter, uplifting and generally more pop-ish, although I am not sure I like the overly stark contrast here. While YK’s choruses are almost always filled with more hopeful elements, most choruses of her particularly dark songs will usually retain some of the overall darkness and edginess to keep the flow of the song at least somewhat consistent. This isn’t really the case here...It’s like YK just randomly stitched together two different types of her songs and I am not sure I am into it. The chorus definitely has potential to grow on me but as of right now, I am not a huge fan, it’s just meh. It’s certainly not like “Homura”‘s chorus which immediately hit me right in the feels without even knowing a single thing about the anime. All in all, I would still say it is a solid song and it already seems to be a big success so yay, good for them.

From the point of view of a dedicated Kalafina fan: Feel free to skip this part as a loyal LiSA fan. Do I think YK has written this with Kalafina in mind? No, not necessarily. I think we are past that. However, the song is very reminiscent of certain Kalafina pieces. There is no denying that YK has a very distinct style so her work will always have a “familiar” sound. Personally, I was immediately reminded of Yami no Uta (or even Mata Kaze ga Tsuyoku Natta) but I am sure it’s different for everyone. Do I think the song would have sounded better with Kalafina singing it? 100% YES, absolutely! I am sorry LiSA but your voice does NOTHING for me, I do not see the appeal at all. Keiko and Hikaru would have KILLED those verses, just imagining how epic their version would have sounded makes me wanna cry. Then throw in some higher harmonies by Wakana in the verses to highlight those symphonic elements and have her lead the chorus with her trademark bright-yet-tragic voice and we have the perfect formula for a Kala-song (preferably with a slightly less pop-ish chorus). While I know it is pointless to think this way, I cannot help but feel sad that the Kala-girls are being denied these opportunities.

[pokecraftking]

Something I've wanted to adress to Tumblr for a while about the way they've handled MCYT, sometimes very poorly and misinformed.

1. MCYT is a GIANT category

MCYT literally stands for Minecraft YouTube. This applies to LITERALLY ANYONE WHO HAS EVER POSTED A MINECRAFT VIDEO! Hermitcraft? Mcyt. Dream smp? Mcyt. Any lets player or game focused channel who's played Minecraft in a single video or series? Mcyt. Old channels who stopped posting Minecraft years ago like yogscast and skydoesminecraft? Mcyt. Random 13 year old posting a video on their phone? MCYT. Are there bad apples in that group? Yes, but don't let that take away from the thriving communities and wonderful creators also on the platform, many of which content creation is their job and source of income.

2. MCC (Minecraft champions)

Mcc is a completely non profit event designed solely for entertainment with preassigned teams. If you don't like a player being grouped with another, or hate a single player in the event, don't try to drag the whole event down with it. This is, in all honesty, an awe inspiring event. One tournament can have more viewers than the OLYMPICS, and have had tournaments where all procedes from streamers go to charity. Dismissing or hating the event for one individual goes against the good and the wonder such an event has created.

3. Dream smp, and the lack of information and respect it is given.

A lot of people complain "it's just a bunch of chist white men" which is both 1. Disrespect and 2. Objectively wrong. This actively disregards any female (ninachu, captain puffy, etc), LGBTQ (eret, antfrost, ninachu, etc), and minority (skeppy, ponk, quackity, etc) content creators. Additionally, a vast majority of the content creators heavily support their communities, especially their lgbtq fans, like philza, tommyinnit, and technoblade. These people have made a community where channels have grown exponentially (some even appearing on the news!), communities have flourished (theres a reason it is usually the one that glitches into 1st place on trending, hell, full songs and multi millions view animatics exist on YouTube), and friends have been made both in the server and the community, all of this without even mentioning the hard work put into the server's story and events.

4. Dream, and his impact on mcyt...

I'll preface this by saying: i don't personally like dream as a person. I disagree with his political opinions and he has done and said messed up things. If we are talking about his impact on mcyt though? He's an (unfortunately) vital player. His large subscriber and viewer count helped not only revive minecraft for the general public, but actively helped and continues to help grow the channels of the people he plays with (the dream team, all dream smp members, any mcc team mates, etc). His precense in videos also MASSIVELY increases success by nearly every recordable statistic for anyone who joins his server (ranboo, philza, ponk, quackity, technoblade, etc etc etc), many of which had a significantly lower subscriber and viewer count before the smp. The same can be said for events he's in, such as mcc. Finally, his role in the dream smp. He's by no means a main character, hell, he's not only the main villain, but has been locked in the servers prison for months now with maybe an appearance in a stream once every month or 2. Additionally, he never streams specifically to avoid taking away the spotlight from other creators in the server. Do I agree with a lot of the things he's said or done? No. Do I think his wrongdoings should drag down a large group of extraordinary talented players and content creators, all of which part of one connected story they all put together with love and care, with a massive wonderful community full of loving and talented individuals? Absolutely not.

Basically, all the "dream smp fans don't interact" should be "dream stans and apologists don't interact" or something along those lines, dont drag down a whole community due to one bad apple, especially when half of them dont even know about or like said bad apple.

(Also side note i didn't know where to put. The fact it occasionally glitches out BLM and SAH is bullshit, but don't pretend that it's a MCYT exclusive thing. Shows and movies, video games, sports, and irl events have all taken it's place due to the glitchy unoptimized way tumblr pins those topics. In my opinion those 2 should have a whole separate page or area so they can't ever be unpinned via any large event like they currently do every day or 2. Tumblr thrives of of fandoms and the interactions in said fandoms (why supernatural, undertale, the lorax, etc. Became associated with tumblr to a degree), causing them to lose traction and feel out of place in a "trending tab" format, also fixing the "it glitching out of trending" issue.)

(Also you don't have to but please share this so more people know this and learn, lot of missinformatuon and straight up lies are spread about mcyt as a whole, commonly on blw and sah for some reason? Not blaming them at all, just a trend I've noticed)

[magdaclaire]

It’s Gabriel Day! 

Prompts: Spontaneity and Music. 

I also filled my square of Time Loops and Secret Caretaking for the Heaven and Hell Bingo and the Bad Things Happen Bingo respectively, so I’m prefacing the fic with the minutiae for the bingos first. 

Link: Find it on Ao3

Square Filled: Time Loops (Heaven and Hell Bingo) and Secret Caretaking (Bad Things Happen Bingo)

Ship: Gabriel & Raphael

Rating: Gen

Tags: Archangels, Time Loop, Secret Caretaking, Light Angst, Yearning, Nostalgia

Summary: Long before the days of Sam and Dean Winchester, the first being that the archangel Gabriel (and part time trickster Loki, if one would like to get technical) put into time loops was himself.

Word Count: 1050

Created for @spnarchangelweek & @heavenandhellbingo & @badthingshappenbingo​

Fic under the cut!

hiraeth

Long before the days of Sam and Dean Winchester, the first being that the archangel Gabriel (and part time trickster Loki, if one would like to get technical) put into time loops was himself. And Raphael, though he would argue that she doesn’t really count. She’s his brother. His twin. The other side of his truly charming coin. She perfected her healing on the inside of one of his time pockets, given years padded into the cozy space of one of Heaven’s dreary afternoons. The time pockets, as they are, are perfectly safe, Michael. For his younger years, Gabriel mostly uses them as a method of developing his skills; he’s not one for being unskilled in things in front of any of the angels, as he knows that they see the archangels as unbridled authority figures under their Father. He’d hate to break that kind of… borderline idolization. It’s nice to be loved like that. 

When his brothers go to war and there is more fighting in Heaven than Gabriel ever thought there could be (there has always been war in Heaven, angels have always been soldiers, but Lucifer was a lawyer, Michael raised them), his pockets of time, their looping safety, become a haven. He creates them in fits of spontaneity, unable to flit further across Heaven and deliver another death notification, wanting to cut off the communication streaming endlessly in his head for just a moment. He plays his music, picks instruments that Lucifer would love the sound of and tells himself that he does not miss his betrayer brother (he had always been Lucifer’s favorite, he thinks), and tries not to sob. He plays music until he feels some semblance of calm again, and then he leaves. The looping of time makes sure that it hasn’t been any more than an hour by the time he returns. 

One particular time, Raphael catches on the edges of his wings, and she follows him into the loop. It figures that she knows about them. She probably knows every single thought in his head, if he’s not careful about it. She probably knows everything about everything, honestly. Even though they had always been the same age, she had taught him things since they were fledglings, taught him how to fly when Lucifer had made games of pushing them off of ledges (he had never meant anything by it, he had just wanted them to fly too, he was such a small thing, a bright thing, nothing but a puff of feathers himself). Michael likely thinks he holds secrets from her, but Gabriel doubts it. Raphael has always been their wisest brother. 

“Gabriel, I’m unsure how long this can continue,” she says as soon as the loop settles around them, the tiny setting of the log cabin he usually chooses shivering around the unexpected weight of holding both of their large forms. It’s not strictly a real place, just one he crafts, so it adjusts after a moment of this, the extension of his grace flourishing under the larger piece of it he allows it to take. He focuses back on his brother. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, though he can likely guess. Michael had never liked it when he played with time. If he has any idea, his temper is already short these days. Raphael sighs. 

“I’ve done as much as I can to keep this under the scope of Michael’s attention, but there is only so much I can do,” she says, the words coming out as if they strain her to say, as if they are an admission she is loath to give to him. In this bitterness that the war has given him, he’s forgotten just how much his brother has always protected him. With this great weakness within him, he misses the days in which one could not look between his wings without finding Raphael, and vice versa given that they were always so close. The days when they were fledglings and Michael could hardly drag them apart to bathe them, to carry them upon his great heights (he hardly seems so much larger now, he used to be so much larger), to make everything such an adventure just so that they would separate. Gabriel misses the days when they would never separate. 

“How long have you known?” he asks, curiosity more than anything, but he has a feeling he knows. She smiles. 

“I felt it the first time you slipped through one without telling me. The displacement of you, however subtle you think you may be, is hard to miss,” she replies, and then her smile slips. His gaze hits the floor before he can help it. “Soon, even in his occupation, Michael will begin to realize as well, you know. I have deceived him where I could, but Gabriel-” 

“You deceived Michael for me?” he interrupts, looking at her once again, open vulnerability cracking open his expression in a manner that he cannot shutter. He and Raphael, they are- they’ve always been- but Michael. He is their viceroy. There is no deceiving their viceroy. Raphael holds his gaze. 

“Where I could. He is not in his right mind of current, Gabriel. It is his job to lead, and yours to carry the word, but it is mine to assure that there is something left standing when all of it is done. What that looks like, that is up to me. That is my discretion,” she says, her voice a stone thing, and Gabriel looks at where his twin once stood and sees an archangel grown from a circumstance he thinks he might be tired of living through. That is not a very angelic thought, however. He pushes it off. For now. 

“You think I need to get different hobbies, huh?” Gabriel replies, injecting levity into a conversation that has absolutely none, because that’s what he does, because actually engaging with things on a genuine level might kill him one day. Hell, it might even do it twice. Raphael graces him with a roll of her eyes (as many of them as there are), and a snort of what might be piteous laughter. He’ll take it. 

“Sure, brother. Different hobbies,” she says, and then she drags him out of his own time loop. Rude. 

[meichenxi]

Obsession, ‘productivity’ and habits vs routines: starting learning in a healthier way

cw: perfectionism, obsessiveness, allusion to eating disorders, depression, anxiety (very non-explicit) I’m going to be writing a series of posts from some asks I’ve had waiting for me, on how to build a cohesive language learning routine, but I wanted to preface that first with something we talk about less than we should in the language learning community: obsessiveness, perfectionism, recovery from mental health, and how to approach language learning in a better way. If the personal stuff bores you, feel free to skip the first two paragraphs. 

I have been trying to ‘be more productive’ - in healthy ways, and unhealthy ways - since I was about ten. If you don’t fit in, for whatever reason, hobbies - and especially creative or ‘productive’ ones - are a wonderful escape. They make you feel that it’s ok not to have friends; they let you look down on all those other stupid children with all the misplaced arrogance of every single bored, clever pre-teen. When I was twelve, I realised there was no point eating with people that didn’t like me and went to the library instead, because that was ‘dead time’. When I was fourteen, I realised getting the bus was ‘dead time’, and started doing Anki for two hours a day. When I was sixteen, I realised walking was ‘dead time’, and started either listening to podcasts or talking out loud. By the time I was eighteen, I was doing four A-levels in school, an EPQ, teaching myself an extra Latin GCSE, and taught myself the Spanish A-level in 3 months right before the exam. I also worked out for two hours a day - because eating lunch was ‘dead time’, and sleeping was ‘dead time’ - trained martial arts four evenings a week, tutored twice a week, had a part-time job as a waitress, played the flute in a prestigious orchestra, and was 150,000 words deep in the first draft of a very gay, Norse-mythology inspired fantasy novel. 

I had it all under control. My marks were excellent; I was a well-rounded person, musical and sporty and already decently on the way to becoming a polyglot, I was training to be a teacher, and I had plans to publish my novel. My home life was painful, but I was painfully independent with what I now like to call the ‘Elsa complex’. Or, actually, like Zuko: I could look after myself, by myself. It was all under control. 

I guess everyone can see where this is going. School ended, and with it came endless, open days. I fell apart. 

With endless surprise, I can now say that, four years later, I think I’ve come through the worst of it. I still have tendencies to get obsessive, but my anxiety and perfectionism are a lot better, I don’t dissociate, and I have - gasp! shock! - actual interest in life again. I never wrote that novel, but I’m still gay and still love Norse mythology, so I’m slowly finding my way towards writing again. What people don’t tell you about getting better, though, is that trying to define yourself, trying to find yourself, as a person who exists without mental illness, is very, very hard. Many of the things that you used to identify as core components of your personality or important values may have changed, and you may be hesitant about trying to take up hobbies that you used to enjoy because you recognise - and rightly so - that the incessant drive to be doing something, all the time, didn’t necessarily come from anywhere healthy. That those things which you clung to and which protected you may actually have ended up harming you in the end. A lot of figuring out old patterns of unhelpful thoughts involves realising that the things that you defended or framed as helping - weren’t. That’s a hard thought, especially because those mechanisms developed to try and protect you, one that’s immeasurably sad. 

Seperating your reasons for doing something obsessively and your love of it in the first place, before it became unhealthy, is difficult. And it means that when you feel - finally, finally - ready to start tackling something like language learning again, you end up sorting of approaching it sideways, shiftily, as if you’re hoping to trick yourself into it. It’s a delicate thing, like a baby bird, and it’s dangerous too, because if you do everything which you did before - the only thing you know how to do - it’s not going to work. And every time it fails is personal, because being able to do it again represents getting better, and reclaiming parts of your identity mental illness stole, and it hurts.

I’m writing this post because somebody asked me about my approach to creating a successful language learning routine. And I do have a lot of thoughts - but I wanted to preface that post with this one, to say:

If you are reading this to be more productive, if it is becoming obsessive, if you want to fit the most possible language learning into the tightest schedule possible, STOP. Take care of yourself. These tips for ‘productivity’ are for people who want to learn a little bit more about organising their time, and are in the right space to add more learning to their life. If you are only defined by what many hours you get done a day, if that’s what motivates you, these tips are not for you. Look after yourself. 

And on that note, here’s a confession: I don’t have - have never had - a successful language learning routine. Because of what happened, the only way I can keep going and prevent myself from falling into bad habits is if I approach it sideways, if I pretend I’m not taking it seriously, because I know if I don’t things will go wrong. But I want to be honest and upfront because I know a lot of people read my posts for advice and say that this doesn’t work for me. It might not work for you either. I especially know there are a lot of conceptions of successful langblrs with 7, 8, 9 etc languages in the title - that that we spend 5 hours a day on Anki, fall asleep to Glossika, and so on. And it’s especially important to mention now, because I feel like my language learning habits have only started being healthy in the last year or so - essentially since I started actually enjoying Chinese media. I could teach you how to cram every spare second with language learning, or how to successfully pass an A-level in 3 months with no teachers. I was good (and arrogant, and cocky, and needed bringing down a peg or two). But I won’t.

What I do have are succesful language learning habits. Apart from being a generally more flexible appraoch for all learners, the advantage of building successful habits over a fixed routine is that it allows for learning according to different in energy levels, how busy you are, what you find difficult and what else is going on in your life. Most crucially for me is that it is always a much healthier approach, because what I do is not based on number of hours, or number of units a week, or anything quantifiable that allows me to get obsessive again or frustrated that I’m not doing enough. 

Routine is important, especially when it comes to routinising daily tasks. The only thing I have is that sometimes - on good weeks, and once or twice even shockingly on good months - I have a decent Anki streak going. That’s it. I don’t listen every day - I don’t read every day - I certainly don’t do grammar every day. There’s nothing specific I do every day, though I usually rack up a good few hours of immersion or study - to be honest, I fail at Anki probably at least 60% of the time. Everything else - all these tips I have written about - I do as and when. Framing it in such vague terms makes it sound like I must have an extraordinary amount of motivation to keep going, that maybe I’m just lucky to be interested etc, but that’s really not the case. What I have done to keep learning regularly and somewhat successfully (I hope!!) without limiting myself to a routine which I know I will starting obsessing over is tying specific language learning behaviour to certain moods or levels of concentration. 

All routine is just habit. Habit, with a ribbon and packaged nicely. But allowing yourself to adapt your learning to the circumstances gives you more flexibility than any strict routine, and is more sustainable in the long term. What building habits rather than a specific routine does is allow you to learn what works best when, what works when you’re tired, and what is best to do when you have energy, or when you want to watch a show, or talk to people. It puts you at the centre of your language learning, rather than framing language learning as a central part of you. 

So how can we build healthy habits? How can we utilise ‘dead time’ whilst keeping it light, and fun? How can we adapt our language learning for times when we are tired, and stressed? Or what about when we don’t have time to give 100% of our attention or concentration? How can we identify our own strengths, our own weaknesses, and unite these with our personal goals to figure out what to prioritise in active studying, and what to do when we don’t have the energy for that? 

I’ll give my thoughts on all of these over the next couple of weeks, in what I hope will be a comprehensive overview of how best to practice, addressing everything from how to practice speaking to how to start as a complete beginner. If you have any thoughts or interim questions, or if you’d like to add your own experience to anything I have said, please feel free to!

In the mean time - 

chenxi out. 

[birdkoskincare]

medik8 crystal retinal 3 review, aka, falling in love with a retinol for the first time.

it’s been almost a month since i started using this product, and i have to say i’m impressed. i got it with my birthday discount on cult beauty, but even with the 15% off it was on the pricier side. for 53€ per 30 mL (pre-discount), it is far more expensive than, say, the ordinary’s 0.5% retinol in squalane, by about 10x. in my opinion, though, it’s worth it.

a preface: i have sensitivity- and redness-prone skin, and the ordinary retinoids have irritated it to the point of red, scaly patches. that put me off retinoids for a while, even as i touted the fact that they’re the one ingredient group with the most solid evidence for their effectiveness (against acne, fine lines and premature signs of aging, hyperpigmentation and texture, no less!). i told myself i’d just had a bad experience with formulations that weren’t optimized for skin friendliness. one day, i’d try a retinol product so good that i’d never go back, and i’d finally practice what i preach.

the medik8 crystal retinal line was recommended to me by a fellow skinstagrammer, whose before/after pictures were, as usual for the platform, impressive. i tempered my expectations with a healthy dose of skepticism, but still ordered their crystal retinal 3, the second-lowest concentration in a range that includes 1 (0.01% encapsulated retinaldehyde), 3 (0.03%), 6 (0.06%) and 10 (0.1%). these concentrations may seem low, but keep in mind that retinaldehyde is one conversion step closer to retinoic acid (the form of vitamin A that our skin actually responds to) than retinol, and therefore it is stronger and more effective. you don’t want to make the same mistake i did and introduce yourself to retinoids with a high concentration, which is why medik8′s “level up” system seems so ideal for beginners to me.

the brand advises using this serum-cream (it does feel like a light, slightly siliconey cream to me, with a strong almond smell) at night, on clean, dry skin after cleansing, and following up with a moisturizer if you so desire. i’ve been following these instructions, though i don’t always top it with a moisturizer. i’ve also followed their frequency directions: twice a week for two weeks, once every other day for two weeks, and then you may use it nightly. i don’t think i’ll use it more than once every other day, to make my money stretch further, and also to alternate it with other actives; i don’t feel the need for everyday retinoid use, though i believe this product would be gentle enough for that. 

another instruction to note: sunscreen use should be religiously observed. i’ve been using the la roche posay anthelios SPF 50+ shaka fluid every single morning, no matter what. you really have to be strict while using retinoids of any sort; you don’t want to undo whatever benefits they gain you with sun damage.

i experienced very little in the way of a retinization process: no redness or flakiness, only mild purging on areas that had closed comedones already. the retinoid only helped them come up faster. each night after use, i woke up with very smooth-looking skin, and over the first few weeks i noticed a marked improvement in texture, which had been an issue for me recently. i’m still getting acne (mostly maskne, since my lab job requires me to use a mask every day), but it seems to resolve and dry up faster than usual. my skin also feels a smidgen more dry (i am normally a textbook combination type).

overall, i’m extremely pleased so far, and i’ll be updating you when i finish this tube; if all goes well, this may be my new go-to retinol for long-term premature aging prevention and anti-acne purposes. even though it’s on the upper end of my preferred price range, i am personally comfortable allocating a higher percentage of my skincare budget to retinoids given their well-researched effectiveness. i hope to use each level for a couple of years before graduating to the next — no need to overwhelm my skin or wallet when this one seems to be doing a gentle and efficient job.

[crystxlclear]

sudden desire

chapter six: previously on: chaotic stupid

part seven of sudden desire

prologue / one / two / three / four / five / masterlist

in which two best friends won’t admit they’re in love so decide to have a baby together instead.

pairing: marcus pike x original female character (coraline meyer)

word count: 8.2k (oh yikes)

warnings: no beta read, brief mentions of pregnancy i guess?

author’s note: this took me weeks to write oh my god

Coraline hasn’t told anyone about Marcus’ offer. Not even Loren, when they’d met for the first time in months, when her boyfriend finally got a night off work to look after Maisie. Not even when they’d drunk too much wine and her head was so fuzzy that she probably would have told anyone anything, if they’d asked. She’s not even sure where she’d start. 

Coraline has never been the best at keeping secrets. At least, not her own, and definitely not when she was younger, and she’s always wondering whether that’s why the media seem to think she’s easy prey for their rumours. It never seemed to bother Scott; he was the same, so open and willing to talk about anything and everything with anyone who asked. But it’s different with Marcus. He’s private by necessity but he’s also private by choice, too. She wonders if he’s always been like that, if before the heartbreak he’d told her about occurred, if he’d opened up to people. If what had happened to him had made him closed off. He’s never seemed like a closed book before (and, hell, maybe he isn’t, maybe he just doesn’t want to relive those times; and he doesn’t have to tell her anything, anyway) but he’d opened up to her after he’d made his ‘baby suggestion’. And all she can think of now, since he’d recounted the stories, was that those women - the ex-wife who’d claimed he was too ‘nice’, who’d claimed he was too ‘clingy’ and ‘needy’, and all that utter bullshit, and the one who’d left him for another man, left him alone in D.C. without a single person to lean on - must be completely insane to think that he isn’t good enough for them. Marcus Pike is too good for anyone, she thinks. He’s the best person she knows. Marcus Pike makes Coraline want to be a better person. They didn’t end up ordering takeout that night, like they always did. Coraline had found herself reaching to the back of her cupboards, searching blindly for some ingredients she wasn’t even sure she had, just for him. Marcus loves breakfast. Like, he really loves it, she’s come to find. And at any time of the day, really. And there’s a diner he frequents; it’s near his office, on the other side of town, tucked away just out of Cora’s reach. Though, he has taken her there once before - just after they first met, when she’d tagged along with her older brother to the FBI debriefing, to check his gallery was secure; she’d thought it was a date, until he’d prefaced his offer with an insistence that it was ‘just as friends’; Marcus had spent the whole time raving about the pancakes he ate every Friday — a treat for a long week’s worth and a change from his usual burger and fries — how he’d found the place by accident and it was part of his daily routine, now, until Coraline had given in and let him order for her, since he knew the place better than she did - most of the time, they see each other when it’s late, when he’s already been for his almost daily pancake-fix and she’s collapsed to the sofa with her legs draped over the armrest. They haven’t been back since, though she’d jump at the chance if he ever asked again. Coraline may be a pretty awful cook, and she may not be able to make pancakes as good as the ones he likes, but surely it’s just the sentiment that counts. He’s spent far too many evenings eating greasy Chinese food at her behest, insisting that he’s fine with it, because it makes her feel better. It’s the least she could do. She’d spent an hour making perhaps the world’s worst pancakes - even as Marcus insisted that she didn’t have to cook for him, that they could just order pizza or something if they wanted a change - pancakes so bad that she’d had to drench the damn things in syrup just to disguise the odd sour taste that somehow tinged every mouthful. Marcus had eaten it without issue, even as she’d apologised endlessly for her dreadful culinary skills and insisted that he didn’t have to eat them if he didn’t like them. They’d made him smile, though. And it melted away the last dregs of awkwardness between them. That was the pancakes’ purpose. It didn’t matter that they were utterly terrible, borderline inedible and a little lumpy. 

But, when Monday rolls around and her older brother, Daniel, comes to her with his regular insistence that she brings that ‘nice FBI agent she’d made friends with’ to their weekly dinner at his house, she took him up on the offer, for a change. She’s never asked because she’s always assumed he would say no; they weren’t dating and it was a little weird. Surely an invite to weekly family dinners was something couples did.

She always ignores Daniel, used to the persistent insistence to ask him. Relenting — finally — comes with the sense that she feels as if she owes him now, though. To make it up for her dreadful pancakes with Daniel’s wife’s cooking, which was always amazing. To make up for the week of unforgivable ignorance. To help them move past the ill-thought-out offer of a baby. She’s sure he’ll still say no, when she calls him on his lunch break, when she knows he’ll be sat at the counter in that same diner, enjoying that brief moment of time away from paperwork. Their lunch breaks line up, those rare and all-too-rare moments when they have time to relax, the tension in their shoulders owed entirely to their morning workloads melting away at the soft sounds of the other’s voice. 

His voice is pleasant, like it always is; Marcus Pike’s voice is like serenity to her, all gentle and familiar, and, this time, he sounds amused when he answers the phone. “Well, this is a nice surprise.” His voice crackles through the phone. The reception in the diner is terrible - it’s the only thing he ever seems to complain about - but she can still make out the sound of the smile in his voice. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Good afternoon to you, too, Marcus.” Coraline hums, shoving the last of her laundry into the washing machine, her phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. “I’m calling with an invitation.”

“An invitation?” He ponders, musing over the idea. “To one of those glamorous celebrity parties you’re always telling me about?”

She scoffs. “Oh, you wish, Pike. It’s an invite to my brother’s for dinner. Incredibly glamorous, I know.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a few moments. She almost regrets asking. She does when he replies. “Are you sure?” He questions. “I’m not sure-”

Coraline nods as if he can somehow see her through the phone. “I’m sure,” she insists, “Besides, Daniel and Kimmy want you to come.”

“Coraline, I don’t know-”

“Marcus, don’t make me beg.” She chuckles, but it’s a nervous chuckle. She knew he would say no; that’s why she hasn’t asked him, to avoid this awkward conversation between them when he was uncomfortable and looking for a subtle way to turn her down without hurting her feelings. “Please.”

There’s another pause as he lets out another muffled laugh. His tone is teasing when he speaks again; she can practically see the smirk as he sips his coffee. “And what’s in it for me?”

She bites the inside of her cheek, stifling a giggle. 

She could think of a lot of ways to repay the favour. 

Cora pushes through the onslaught of entirely… inappropriate thoughts, especially to have about your best friend and offers up the most innocent of offerings, though her voice slips to find that low, rumbling register reserved only for the discrete. Mundane words tipped in something intriguing. “I’ll never make you pancakes again.”

“Deal.” He snaps far too quickly through the phone. 

Her mouth falls open. “Marcus,” she gasps, mock offence in her voice. 

There’s silence for a moment. “Sunshine,” Marcus calls out through the static, like he’s sure he’s actually offended her. Like he could ever do that. “I thought your pancakes were great.”

Even a lie sounds like the truth coming from his lips. 

“Damn right they were,” she insists. 

When she lies, even when it’s laced with laughter, it sounds like one. She’s glaringly aware that’s a complete contradiction, given her job.

“Pancakes- real pancakes, diner pancakes- on me for a month.”

“Tempting.”

“...Two months?”

“Fine, fine. If you insist.”

The rush of breath that escapes her in relief is so embarrassingly loud, she’s sure he can hear her. She’s glad he’s not there, watching her, so he can’t see the wide, uncontrollable, entirely tooth-filled grin that splits across her face; she’s sure she looks maniacal, sat in her trailer on set, covered in thick dustings of fake mud from that morning’s scenes. 

She’s never been more thankful for the solitude of a phone call before. 

“I do insist. I’ll pick you up at five.”

Amusement, again, peeks through in his tone. She’s sure he’s eating pancakes — those blueberry pancakes with mountains of ice cream — because they’re the only thing that makes him happy like this, especially on a heavy workday. “In that super-fancy car of yours?”

She’s had her car for twelve-years. But it’s even older than that, fixed up by her father in his garage for what seemed like years. It’s an old run-down black Camaro from the seventies that she’s had since she was sixteen; far too trusty and sentimental to let go of, driving her cross-country from LA to DC without a hitch those six-months ago. It lives in the private parking lot down the street from her apartment complex, tucked away, out of use most days, because the traffic of DC is far too heavy in the mornings and it’s easier to walk or take the Metro instead. Weekly nights spent at Daniel’s on the opposite end of the city gave her an excuse to pull her car from its designated parking space and navigate the busy streets to the comforting hum of the engine.

Coraline knows Marcus loves her car, as much as he jokes about it. It’s evident in the way his face lights up when he sees her sat there, parked down the street outside the FBI headquarters; his smile illuminated by the harsh street lamps overhead, cutting through the darkness alongside the bright nearby office lights and flickering neon signs that cast stained glass shadows on the sidewalk. He’s watching her as she taps her fingers in time to a song she doesn’t recognise on the radio. 

Marcus ducks into the car with a ‘hello’ lingering on his lips and ducks to kiss Coraline’s cheek; it’s a friendly gesture that lingers, not unfamiliar as a display of friendly affection between them, but still swelling that giddy sense of happiness in her chest like it’s the first time. 

“I brought the beer.”

Coraline glances over at him warmly as she starts up the car. The engine rumbles to life, almost sounding unhealthy. She reaches over and squeezes his shoulder a little, fingers falling down his arms. 

Marcus had insisted he bring something; a repayment for dinner, for Daniel and Kimmy inviting him over. She’d insisted he didn’t need to — neither of them would mind; they just wanted to meet the lead in so many of Coraline’s stories, for real this time — but then he’d insisted that he had to, that his mother would never let him live it down if she found out he forgot his manners and turned up without a thank you gift. So she’d told him to bring beer (not wine, definitely not wine, for Daniel’s sanity’s sake). And he’d obliged. 

Not just that cheap beer, either. But the expensive kind, the kind you could only find in certain places if you were looking for it. He’s spared no expense. 

He doesn’t need to impress them, though. They already like him well enough, on the basis of Coraline’s endless stories. 

“Is what I’m wearing okay?” He questions as he smooths his hands over the front of his suit jacket. “I didn’t have time to change.”

He’s still wearing his work clothes — somehow still relatively undisturbed even after hours of the paperwork he’d been half-complaining about to her the night before — yet he still looks great. He’d probably look great in just about anything. Coraline looks entirely underdressed next to him; just blue jeans and a white shirt, and the thin golden pendant her mom had given her the night before her wedding hangs against her chest. She doesn’t wear it much anymore, not since the divorce. But Marcus had seen it the other day, while he was waiting for her to finish getting ready, perusing the expanse of her drawers, intrigued by the jewellery that hung from a stand. He’d said it was beautiful - with the delicately carved bird in the middle, surrounded by flowers - and she found herself reaching for it every morning since. 

She’s not sure why. She just likes to wear it, now.

“You look great.” As always.

He scans what she’s wearing, casual and, as the wheels being their customary groan when she sets the car in reverse. “It’s not too much?” He’s shuffling awkwardly, hands tugging at the lapels of his suit jacket. Is he nervous?

She watches as he moves, shifting slightly in his seat; she’s watching from the corner of her eyes, half her focus on Marcus, the other on pulling out onto the busy road. He’s staring straight ahead, out at the car ahead of them, like the license plate is somehow the most interesting thing in the world right now. His brows are furrowed. The air between them is thick with anticipation and it’s like something has changed; for good or bad, she’s never sure with them anymore, not these past few months, but his hand is gripping his knee and somehow everything seems heavy again. 

He’s met Daniel before, it’s not that. Briefly, sure. But that couldn’t be it. He’s usually so relaxed and laid back, especially around her, never worried about making a joke or goofing off. She doesn’t like seeing him like this.

She reaches over and squeezes his hand; he steadies himself and tilts his head towards her. Her smile is warm and bright and comforting, and the gentle brush of her fingers over the hand that grips his knee relieves the inexplicable anxiety that has strangled him from the moment she’d invited him to dinner. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know what it means, what any of it means. Why things are suddenly so different between them after six months of being nothing but friends. 

Why he, for some godforsaken reason, thought suggesting they have a baby together was a good idea.

Did he really want that? 

Either way, he’s pretty sure Coraline doesn’t. Not with him, at least.

Cora hums, eyes dropping to herself and the wrinkled jeans she’d fished out from the back of her wardrobe. “Least you made an effort.”

…

Daniel Meyer is seven years older than Coraline. He’d always been fiercely protective of his younger sister when they were growing up; not in that abrasive, overbearing and destructive way, the way when your life is governed strict and rigid, but Daniel Meyer didn’t take kindly to people hurting his sister. Growing up, he helped her deal with things - the bullying in high school, the heartbreak of her first breakup - so it only seemed fitting that, when she’d moved to D.C., the same place he’d called home with his family for eight years, that he would do the same. That’s how their weekly family dinners were born, from his insistence to help his younger sister settle into her new home, in a new city she barely knew.

For the longest time, Scott Meyer was public enemy number one to him. Sometimes she wonders, now that it’s all over, the divorce is final - now that he’s out of her life for good - if he still is. Or if they’ve really all moved on like she thinks they have.

The second they arrive at his front door, greeted warmly by the smell of pie and a grinning Kimmy, wearing an apron and slightly flustered, looking just as welcoming as always. Her blonde waves - the waves Coraline has always been so jealous of - are pinned up haphazardly out of her face, half-spilling down her back from the clip that tries to hold it in place. 

“Good evening.” Her voice sounds like a song, light and sweet, and her smile is even wider than usual as she glances between her sister-in-law and Marcus, who stands a little behind her, radiating that familiar confidence that Coraline is used to. The half-hour drive had relaxed him enough that, now he’s met with Kimmy’s friendly face, he’s the one that’s comforting her, with a gentle hand on her back and the silent reassurance that things will be okay.

Coraline is mostly worried about him. She's still not entirely sure he wants to be here. She doesn’t blame him. 

Kimmy leans forward and kisses Coraline’s cheek in greeting, the usual gesture. 

“This- well, you know Marcus.” Cora ushers towards her best friend beside her when she pulls back.

“Marcus, of course!” Her face lights up even more. “I’ve heard a lot about you since we last met.” Kimmy’s tone is amused. Her eyes waver towards Coraline, a knowing look in her eyes. 

“It’s great to finally meet you, for real this time.” 

Kimmy’s eyebrow quirks up at Coraline for a moment, the hint of a smirk as Marcus introduces himself, that same FBI Agent-trained surety tipping the edges of his voice, before she finally ushers them inside. It’s starting to get cold; the evening chill is creeping in from the river beside the house, reaching out towards them. Coraline is glad she’d tossed a coat onto the backseat of her car before she’d left and Marcus tugs his suit jacket tighter around himself. “Come in before you both freeze to death.”

The house is alive with the joyous yet shrill screams of children. Coraline’s nephews, to be exact. It always is. Every night. Every week she turns up and they’re running around, playing whatever game they deem fit that evening. Half the time, Coraline gets pulled into their games, whenever she’s not helping Kimmy in the kitchen (which isn’t often, because she’s hopeless at it). Of course, today’s no different.

The two of them are darting around the living room, screaming bloody murder as they wear themselves out; Finley, the oldest, is chasing Elliot, his curls falling haphazardly over his eyes. She can’t tell what they’re yelling about - she never can; it’s just a tangled mess of screamed words - but Elliot is giggling so much that he has to stop every couple of minutes to catch his breath. Finley stops with him, pulling himself from their games for a second to wait as they both regain their composure and carry on. They wear themselves out before dinner and then everything seems to go off without a hitch.

Cora hangs her coat on the hooks by the door and kicks off her sneakers, and Marcus follows suit with his jacket and dress shoes. He looks to her for guidance, that immediately understandable hesitation of being in an unfamiliar house, and this silent agreement settles between them as she sweeps her way into the living room. Her footsteps were light; so light, in fact, that she reached her nephews without disturbing them, startling Elliot when she scooped him up in her arms and spun him around. He complains at first, ducking his head away as she tries to kiss his cheek, letting out the most dramatic and exaggerated noises. Eventually, he gives in and curls his arms around her neck, pulling her close for a second, before he starts to kick again, restless in her arms. 

Finley takes to wrapping himself around her right leg and suddenly the three of them end up sprawled out and giggling brightly on the carpet.

Marcus watches from the doorway. He thinks she’ll be a great mom someday. It’s the little things she takes in her stride.

“Hello to you too, Cora.” The low, amused voice of Coraline’s brother, Daniel, comes from inside the living room. 

“Hey there.” She’s still giggling. She can’t help it. Finley and Elliot unhook themselves from her and each other and resume their endless laps of the couch. 

Daniel stands over her with raised eyebrows. His tie has long-since been discarded and he cuts a casual figure as he cradles the youngest of the Meyers, Piper. She’s only six months and the smiliest baby Cora has ever seen. Usually, she’s asleep by the time Coraline arrives, either cradled in her father’s arms or tucked away in the crib upstairs; today, her legs are kicking back and forth and her hands are fisting into his dress shirt. She’s restless - she knows sometimes that she is, that when they finally cradle her to sleep, it’s best that they leave her or risk jolting her awake for the rest of the night - but she’ll let her wriggle around in her arms for hours if it means catching up on the time she’s missed with her niece all those nights she’s been asleep.

“I brought Marcus.” Cora points towards Marcus as he leans against the doorframe, watching her with fond eyes. She tilts her head back to look at him; he’s smiling and she wants to reach for him. She reaches for Daniel’s extended hand instead, pulling herself up from the floor. She groans uncomfortably, her back aching a little. “Marcus, you’ve met my brother, Daniel.”

Coraline reaches out for her niece; that brooding feeling swells bright and burning again when she takes her, cradling her close into her chest, and she can’t help but glance up at Marcus as Daniel moves to greet him - just barely acquaintances but familiar enough to avoid those awkward initial introductions. He’s watching her, still, as she says ‘hello’ to her niece and gently rests her cheek against the top of Piper’s head. It’s like they’re both wrapped up in that moment where it’s just the two of them - all too fleeting, cut short by Daniel’s greeting and the persistent shouting of children - but it feels lovely. Even if this moment is all they’ll ever get.

Coraline savours the moment with her niece because it’s rare and often fleeting; her, Daniel and Kimmy’s schedules are crammed tight with work and unavoidable commitments and that weekly dinner is the only time each week they can spare to see each other. If Piper is asleep, then Coraline won’t get to say ‘hi’ to her niece. It’s an unfortunate consequence of their careers.

“That’s Elliot-” She points her finger at her smallest nephew. “-and that’s Finley-” Then to the tallest of the two. “-and this… this is Piper.” She bounces the tiny baby lightly in her arms, turning her body so Marcus could get a glimpse at the small smile that pulled at Piper’s lips as her small fist grabbed at Coraline’s shirt.

She’s already told him about them all before. He knows their names. But this is the first time he’s ever met the kids. And it’s somehow maybe the most terrifying thing he’s done in a long time, including that one warehouse shootout his team found themselves in a few weeks earlier.

He feels overdressed and a little ridiculous, just stood there, looking like a lost puppy in the entryway, in his suit and tie. Unsure what to do with his hands or his eyes, or what the hell to say to cut through his quiet. He usually brought a change of clothes to the office if he knows he has somewhere to be but, somehow, in his blind panic at the idea of meeting the family, he’d forgotten to grab anything to change into. And that ease in meeting new people, that effortless skill he’d built up over years of practice, the perks of the job, just seems to have melted away the second he stepped into the house behind Coraline, under the well-meaning scrutiny of Kimmy. This is all normal for her - this weekly routine she’s fallen into - but it’s unfamiliar territory for him. 

It almost feels like something it isn’t. Meeting the family. That point in a relationship when you first realise things are serious. Only this isn’t a relationship. And he’s already met Daniel and Kimmy before, even if it was briefly, and while he was working and distracted with planning a stakeout. And Coraline. Always Coraline. But something about her smile just commanded attention, back then - it still does - even when she tries to blend into the background. Once he noticed her. Sat alone at an empty conference table, comically-oversized name badge pinned to the front of her dress, her lips curling up a little as she sipped the sour FBI coffee.

Everyone else had passed the glass-walled room without even a second glance. 

He, on the other hand, was convinced he’d just seen a ghost. She’d almost startled him, breath leaving his chest. An utter cliche. 

Marcus had recognised her face from TV - though, admittedly, he wasn’t really up-to-date on pop culture, definitely lingering a couple of decades behind, age and time catching up on him, spare time buried beneath a mountain of paperwork to distract himself from Teresa and the unfamiliarity of D.C. - but he always remembers thinking she was pretty. Really pretty. But he always finds it a little embarrassing how much she a hold over him that day, how he’d had to take a second to psych himself up, talk himself down from that nervous ledge he was staring over, before he even thought about entering the room.

It’s weird, looking back, thinking how much has changed. But the changes keep coming, thick and fast, and sometimes it becomes less and less obvious what they are anymore.

“Marcus.” Daniel reaches out a hand for him to shake. He shakes it graciously and says his hellos. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

That’s the second time he’s heard that today. Coraline rolls her eyes a little. It’s not the first time she’s heard it, either. It almost makes Marcus laugh but then she smiles again, half-concealing a grin, and he forgets what he’s thinking about for a moment.

But then he wonders what she tells them about. Whether those stories are good or bad, whether they paint him in colour or in black and white.

With Coraline, he figures it’s probably the brightest landscape of technicolour, regardless of who she’s talking about.

“I’m glad Cora finally asked you to come.”

“Well, you talk too much. I didn’t want to bore him.” Cora shrugs, her full attention on Piper. 

“More like scare him away.”

He’s not sure she could ever scare him away.

“Finley is terrifying,” she admits with a giggle but she seems distant. She looks up to raise an eyebrow at him again. Her words are slow, almost drawn out. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to get out while you still can.” It’s meant to be light and joking, and Daniel laughs at her words. Given the way she’s looking at him, he’s not sure.

She just keeps looking at him like there’s no one else around.

She can’t help it. She keeps trying. It isn’t working.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Daniel insists as the boys rush past Marcus; he has to step out of the way to avoid them, smiling as they manoeuvre around him and race out of sight into the back of the house. He smiles fondly as they pass. “They’ll calm down in a second.”

“You hope they’ll calm down.” Coraline jabs her older brother in the ribs playfully. He chuckles as lightly as he can but it's obvious he’s tired; his shoulders slump and his eyes linger closed a little longer than normal, Coraline notices. He’s been working flat-out at his gallery every day, then running home to help with the kids. And Piper is a restless baby - difficult to get to sleep which means that, if she’s asleep when she arrives, she can’t say hello for risk of waking her up - so, unless Daniel or Kimmy are holding her while the house is still alive and humming around her, she refuses to fall asleep. “I think-” She looks towards Marcus. He’s inched closer into the room, now, but he’s still lingering like he needs to be invited in. “-you’ll just have to get used to it.” She hums.

“I’m still not used to it and they’re my kids,” Daniel grumbles, almost to himself. 

“Piper seems okay with it.” Marcus points out. He watches as his best friend cuddles the tiny baby close to her chest. 

Piper’s looking up at Cora with the brightest eyes. They’re Coraline’s eyes - Daniel’s too, he assumes - that light emerald green that sparkles beneath the warm living room light. Her mouth is in an ‘o’ shape, fascinated, as she stares. She looks utterly transfixed by her aunt’s face as she carries on their idle, gentle conversation, lightly bobbing her up and down, cradling her softly to sleep. Her eyelids were drooping, sleep gently pulling her in. She’s humming gently, whenever she’s not speaking; Marcus isn’t even sure she realises she’s doing it. That it’s just some subconscious instinct inside her, telling her to sing to the baby so she can sleep. She’s drawing gentle circles on her back through her onesie. Slow, idle circles that slow the wriggles and the kicking of his legs, lulling her off to sleep ever-so-slowly. 

It’s like she’s a natural. She knows exactly what to do every time; with Piper, with Maisie. It’s like second nature and there’s this even brighter glow, brighter than usual, when she settles into the role. She takes it all in her stride and seems to forget the world around her just for a moment. 

“How do you do that every time? Can you come and do that every night?” He jokes. But he doesn’t seem to be entirely joking. 

She hums. “Perhaps-” She rests her cheek against the top of her head as lightly as she dares without disturbing her. “Perhaps I’m just a superhero.”

The yells of kids echo through the house, the hammering of feet pounding against the wood floor. Kimmy’s muffled exasperated calls for quiet come from the kitchen, falling on deaf ears as the boys continue to charge through the back of the house. 

Coraline catches her brother’s gaze. “Go and help.” She’s noticed the way he’s been watching his daughter anxiously, worried that she won’t fall asleep through all the noise and excitement and the gentle hum of Coraline’s made-up song. “I’ve got her,” she insists. 

“Are you sure?”

Piper is slowly drifting off to sleep, even despite the noise. Just at the warmth of her aunt cradling her and the gentle hum of her sweet voice lulling her asleep. “I’ve got her,” she repeats. “Go and help Kimmy.”

Daniel’s shoulders slump in relaxation. He mouths a ‘thank you’ as he jogs from the room, calling out to his sons to stop them from charging around, insisting that they wash their hands and settle down for the sake of their sister. 

Now, it’s just Coraline, Marcus and a half-asleep Piper left alone in the living room. 

The tension in the air is thick and heavy for a moment. 

“Marcus, you’re staring,” she points out. She’s not even looking at him, just can just feel the weight of his kind gaze and it sets her heart racing at a hundred miles an hour. “I’d let you hold her-“ She says as he steps a little closer; now Daniel is out of the room, he’s relaxed. It’s like, without him there, he can pretend it’s just the two of them and Piper curled up content against Cora’s chest, even despite the yell of children’s voices and the unfamiliar surroundings. “-but, if I did that, we’d never get her off to sleep.”

“It’s alright,” he whispers, “I think she’s happier with you.” He settles beside her.

Coraline’s thumb brushes over Piper’s cheek and the baby smiles a tiny smile, eyes still close and fisting her hands tighter into the white material of her shirt. There’s a blissful silence that settles between the three of them — just for a moment — when she looks up at him beside her, watching the pair of them sway gently to a seemingly silent song. The weight of the moment engulfs them like a tidal wave. 

“Marcus-“ she breathes out, barely loud enough for him to hear. But he does, in the relative silence, and the way she says his name rips the air from his lungs, like the first time she’d surprised him the day they’d met. Her green eyes are wide and wild and she’s looking between him and Piper like they’re the only things left in the world. 

They could do it.

He knows what she’s going to say, if she had the chance. If Daniel hadn’t returned, calling out to them that dinner was ready.

They could do it. He knows they could, she knows they could. They could have this fleeting moment for as long as they both live. Their own little version of paradise, together. No matter how terrible the idea seems to be, they could. But Coraline knows she can’t stay in that world forever. It’s temporary and, as much as she wants that, all day, every day, for herself and not through someone else, she knows she can’t let herself get too in over her head. 

Still, Marcus really does think she’ll be an amazing mom.

...

After much persuasion — and the promise of candy after dinner — Finley and Elliot finally settled down long enough for them to eat. Coraline had set Piper down to sleep in her crib upstairs, lingering perhaps a little too long to marvel down at her only niece, wondering what it would be like if she was looking down at her own daughter. 

She knows it’s a hopelessly bad idea. That the feelings will catch up with her and pull her under again. Sometimes she just can’t help it.

She returns with that fake smile Marcus has become a pro at noticing. She looks wistful, longing in her eyes, disguised by the small smile that takes over her face when she slides into the seat at the dinner table beside him. She smooths out her shirt and jeans, wrinkled from the baby. Another smile, an assurance that Piper is okay and sleeping soundly upstairs, and the conversation moves on to mostly idle chatter, and Daniel asking Marcus questions about himself. Coraline keeps shooting her brother glances whenever he asks a new question that almost seems too personal. He doesn’t mind one bit, though.

Marcus finds Coraline’s free hand under the table and squeezes at some point. She doesn’t want him to let go. 

“Auntie Cora?” Finley asks, leaning his chin on his hand to stretch across the table. His questioning call of her name breaks through the idle conversation they’re all having, like he’s demanding all their attention, and not just Coraline’s.

It steals a moment of quiet between them all.

“Nephew Finley?” She replies, mimicking his stance and the curious, furrowed-browed expression on his face. 

“When are you going to have a baby, like Piper?”

It’s a loaded yet completely innocent question on his behalf. He’s merely a curious five-year-old with no ill intentions, and no reason to believe it’s anything other than a normal question; Coraline doesn’t even flinch, even when Kimmy scolds her son sharply and insists he eats the rest of his dinner. Though, Marcus still sees the flicker of hesitation in her eyes. Instead, she just smiles and laughs that brightly enchanting laugh, tilting her head to the side in response to her nephew as he sinks back into his chair and pokes at his potatoes.

“Well, I don’t know,” she replies truthfully, “Soon, maybe.”

Marcus almost thinks her eyes waver towards him but it’s so quick that he reasons that, perhaps, he’s seeing things. 

“Soon?” Daniel catches up with her words. “You seeing someone?”

“Oh-“ Coraline swallows thickly. She shakes her head. “No, no, not at all. I’m just- optimistic, I guess.”

“I’m sure there’s someone out there for you,” Kimmy poses.

Coraline hums. Marcus doesn’t see the way her gaze trails towards him. “I’m sure there is.”

...

The rest of dinner passed without any more questions on the matter, Finley’s attention switching towards Marcus instead. He was persistent, firing questions at him across the dinner table like he was leading an interrogation, but Marcus kept answering just as enthusiastically as the first time. He’d skirted around the facts a little - it wasn’t exactly a great idea to tell a child, seemingly without a filter, that you were an FBI agent - but the whole exchange had been wonderful. Coraline was sad to see it finish when Kimmy announced the boys could have dessert and they'd leapt from their seats to race towards the cookie jar. 

Marcus had offered to help Kimmy wash up as a thank you but she’d brushed him off, and, eventually, he’d resigned to the living room with Daniel. It had taken Coraline months to convince Kimmy that she should let her help clean up, there was no way she would have accepted Marcus’ offer immediately.

Instead, it’s just Coraline and Kimmy, working in tandem to clean the dishes, while Daniel spends time with the kids after a long day at work, and pulls Marcus into their conversation like an old friend. 

“I’m sorry about Finn. He’s-” Kimmy shakes her head as she sets another plate down in the drying rack. “He’s been going through one of those... phases lately.”

“It’s fine, Kim, truly.” Coraline sets a couple of dry plates down on the counter and turns to smile at her, before carrying on her job. Sometimes Kimmy jokes about how ridiculous it is that they use so many plates since Piper was born. “He’s just curious,” she insists. “And he makes everything a little more colourful.” 

Kimmy chuckles. “That he does.” She washes down another plate. “So, Marcus is great.” She hums, changing the subject towards her with a quirk of an eyebrow and a small, knowing smirk on her face.

Coraline smiles. Though, it’s more to herself than Kimmy. “He really is, isn’t he?”

“Are you two… y’know… is there anything there or-?” 

“Oh, no! No, no. We’re just-” Friends. “Just friends.”

“Well-“ She quirks an eyebrow at her sister-in-law. “-maybe you should? Just see how it goes. One date at a time.” Kimmy’s suggestion is as innocent as Finley’s question over dinner. She doesn’t understand the weight it holds. And she doesn’t expect her to, anyway. They’re close but just barely close enough. “Things might surprise you and it’ll do you good to get back out there again after, y’know-“

“No, we-” She shakes her head and turns to finish putting away the plates in the cabinet. In the quiet, she hears Marcus laugh from the living room. It’s one of those whole-hearted laughs, when his head lulls back and his eyes screw shut and crinkle at the corner. She wonders which one of them made him laugh like that, or what made him laugh like that. She hopes Daniel hasn’t pulled out the picture albums; he’s worse for that then their parents. But, since Daniel had made his fortune as an art buyer, eventually to the point he’d made enough to buy his own art gallery, a year ago, Coraline should have known that he and Marcus would get on. They had a lot in common. She’s so glad he likes him, though she can’t imagine a reason why he wouldn’t. “Friends. Friends.”

There’s another silence and she can feel Kimmy’s eyes burning into the back of her head. She turns to see the tail-end of a raised eyebrowed glare, amusement tugging at the corner of her lips. “Well, you never know unless you try, Cora.”

“There will be no trying,” Coraline insists, jabbing Kimmy in the side with her nail. She grins and lets her blonde tresses fall over her shoulder. “Of any kind. He doesn’t see me that way.” She finishes. 

“Do you see him that way?”

Another pause. 

“No.”

Maybe that’s a lie. 

Maybe Kimmy knows that. 

Maybe Marcus knows that. 

Coraline isn’t sure whether she knows that, though. 

“Sure about that?”

Coraline scoffs and turns to continue packing dried, clean plates into the cupboards. “You’re worse than Dan, sometimes.” 

“Oh, I take offence to that.”

“Shut up and finish the dishes.” Coraline chuckles, crossing her arms and scowling at the lack of crockery left to dry. 

“Just don’t write things off so quickly,” she insists, “It might surprise you.”

...

Daniel and Kimmy had tried to persuade them to stay for drinks late into the evening. The boys were shipped off to bed at the usual time, complaining that they wanted to stay up instead, as usual. But Marcus has work in the morning and Coraline has a long string of interviews; the idea of a late-night sounds less than ideal, her eyes already stinging at the idea of staying up any later than they had it.

Instead, they’d make their excuses and leave, ducking away into Coraline’s car with an exhausted groan. The boys had run wild right up until they went to sleep, nagging Coraline and Marcus to play with them every five minutes, even as Kimmy and Daniel insisted that they settle down and get ready for bed. It’s still late when they leave, though. D.C is eerily quiet as they weave through the roads, small crowds of people scattered through the repeating streets of suburbia.

The car ride home is silent of their voices. Not that uncomfortable silence, from before, when things had been awkward between them and neither of them were sure where the other stood. But that kind of satiated, happy and, admittedly exhausted, silence that pools over them. The low hum of the car engine and the radio is persistent in the space between them. Marcus keeps stealing glances over at her as she drives; he can’t help it, but he doesn’t think she notices, her eyes far too focused on the road ahead of her. And, if she does, she doesn’t mention it. Just keeps letting him glance over at her as the street lights illuminate the gentle angles of her face.

He’s glad she never mentions anything. He’d be too embarrassed if she did.

Instead, she’s lost in the music. That blissful flicker of emotion that crosses her face when she hears a song she likes, when her eyes light up at the sound of one of her favourite songs. Her radio is always tuned into some old rock station - he has no idea what it’s called, it’s usually just a continuous loop of different songs cut with the low gravelly voice of a man who sounded like he’d smoked one too many cigars - and most of the songs are the same songs she’s playing on her record player when he arrives at her apartment and she’s dancing around the kitchen while she cooks. He recognises a lot of them from his college days, songs he used to play with his band. It makes him feel old, sometimes, when she tells him they’re songs she spent her teen years with, even though there aren’t too many years between them. 

It’s I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing that plays now; she’s a sucker for those objectively-cheesy rock ballads. They’re her mom’s favourites, too. And, maybe he won’t admit it, but Marcus has heard her favourites enough to count them amongst his, now. Maybe he just likes the way they make her smile. Coraline is humming along, her fingers drumming a steady rhythm against the top of the steering wheel idly as her eyes follow the road ahead. Every so often, a flicker of neon tints her in colour when they pass a takeout, the only things still open and busy. The curve of her profile and each curl of her hair is highlighted in red.

It’s these moments of distracted bliss, when everything seems to exist without a care in the world, that he likes the most.

It never lasts long enough.

He insists she just parks in the garage she usually uses, by her apartment building, and he’ll walk her home. She protests - because of course she does - offering to drive him all the way home instead, but it’s dark and even in this quiet, well-off part of town where the streets should be safe, you never know who might be lurking. Maybe it’s the things he’s seen and heard of in the FBI - everything he’s seen during his training, heard through whispers and stories in the office - but sometimes he can’t shake the simple action of making sure someone is safe. 

It’s still silent between them as they near Coraline’s apartment complex. That short two minute walk down the quiet, tree-lined street that sparkles with chains of fairy lights. It’s lethargic and lingering, each step heavy with the weight of something that echoes through the quiet neighbourhood.

“Cora, I’m sorry.”

It comes out of nowhere and it worries her. And Coraline has absolutely no idea why Marcus is apologising to her. As far as she’s concerned, he hasn’t done anything wrong. At least, not that she knows of. 

“For what?” She questions, brow furrowing up at him as they walk. Their hands keep brushing but she doesn’t have it in her to move her hand away.

“I had no right to drop the baby bomb on you like that,” he admits. He reaches up to scratch the back of his neck uncomfortably. When his hand drops, his fingers brush against her knuckles. “I’m sorry if I made you feel trapped. It was a terrible idea. I should have thought-“

“Yes,” she blurts it out before she can stop herself. She’s not entirely sure she’s thought this through. But she can’t help it.

“Yes, what?”

“The offer.” Her whisper is loud in the suddenly-stifling silence of the street. “If it’s still on the table- yes. I’ll have a baby with you.”

“Coraline-” He gulps and stops dead in his tracks. They’re outside her gate, now. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And you won’t.” Coraline insists. She steps closer to him, sea-green eyes staring up at him with heavy expectation. He’s the one that suggested it. He’s the one that had laid in bed until the early hours of the morning, losing precious moments of sleep as his brain swam with questions, wondering whether he should suggest this to her in the first place, or if it was an awful idea. But, somehow, he can’t seem to convince himself that this is a bad idea, that he should just let her down easy, now. It’s seeing her with Piper, seeing her with Maisie, seeing how she lights up around them. 

If he can make her that happy, every single day, why the hell would he turn that opportunity down? 

Besides, he’s pretty sure it would make him equally as happy. He’s thought about having kids since he was just a kid himself. And god knows the world seemed to have it out for him when it came to love, things aren’t happening any time soon; he can’t really think of anyone better than Coraline to have a baby with.

And, as much as Coraline knows how recklessly stupid the whole idea is, she can’t bring herself to want anything more or less than this. Than him. “It is a terrible idea, y’know?”  She finds herself insisting, blinking up at him with those beautifully-wide eyes.

“Truly awful.” 

“And there are a hundred different things that could go wrong.”

“Hundreds.”

“But-“

“But-“

“Maybe we should… try? Maybe just for a little while. See what happens.” 

“Maybe we should.” He exhales long and deep out of his nose. “Maybe…” He tilts her chin up towards his with one finger and suddenly he’s kissing her. His fingers brush her jaw, curving up towards her ear and brushing into her hairline at the nape of her neck. Even the soft touch of his hand against hers as they walked was driving her insane but this, this is on another level.

It’s more than the first time they kissed. Less of a brief touch of lips, more of a wave of relief flooding through them both, unfamiliar feelings surging up inside them. This kiss is full of urging anticipation. She’s pulling him closer to her before she can stop herself, their chests flush, lips and hands strong and insistent against each other. 

The fumble to her front door seems like the most practised thing they’ve ever done. Familiar when it shouldn’t be, even as they bump into things on their way.

taglist: @wheresthewater

[echidnana]

hey logan ! i’m thinking of getting into re8, so here i am at the re8 expert’s door for any lore and headcanon’s you have for any of the characters/place settings (i’m fine with ‘spoilers’!) :]

OMG OMG JACK HELLO I AM SO HAPPY TO OBLIGE

i’m adding a cut because i started rambling so the post ended up being a bit long. i tried to organize all the ideas as best i could and made some smaller sections to make it easier to process

also, i wrote this operating on the assumption that this is your first re game. so i might go too in depth for some stuff that you might already know i just like talking about re

TO PREFACE: i haven’t played 8, and i’m not sure if i’ll ever be able to. i’ve watched a bunch of edited play throughs and am currently about 2/3 of the way thorough snapcube’s full play through!

ok so. in my opinion 8 is VERY different from a lot of the other resident evil games in terms of atmosphere/setting. while most of the games before had been very ‘zombie/virus/mad science’ feeling, this game is closer to a fantasy type vibe (although it is all explained by science).

just to give a brief synopsis- ethan winters is the protagonist. his main motive is to rescue his daughter, who was taken into this village that is overrun by monsters. the village is run by mother miranda, who’s sort of a deity to the people of the village. the rest of the land is divided up amongst the four lords. i’m order to save his daughter, ethan has to fight through each of the lords.

my favorite lords

my favorite lords are donna beneviento and karl heisenberg. i hc them both to be trans and autistic :) to be honest, i hc every single resident evil character to be trans lmao

anyways. donna beneviento. she’s the doll maker and her portion of the game is probably my favorite. she only speaks once in the game, and you only see her face once. she’s very reclusive and typically speaks through her dolls. i also personally think she’s the most compassionate of the lords, despite her section being one of the most horrifying. her abilities rely mostly on causing someone’s own mind to sort of turn on itself and feeds into the person’s fears. but yeah, i love her and hc her as autistic :)

karl heisenberg is the magneto dude lmao. i love his parts in the game because he feels very… genuinely unhinged. like he’s HILARIOUS but not really on purpose, he’s just being really showy and dramatic. i personally wasn’t a fan with how they ended his part on the story bc i want to see more of him lmao

ok also. she isn’t a lord, but i adore daniela dimitrescu. she’s one of the daughters of the Tall Vampire Lady and she’s TOTALLY unhinged. even though i have favorite parts of the game, i love all of it. i wasn’t expecting to care that much about the dimitrescu section of the game but honestly all of it was so enjoyable

ethan winters

ethan winters is probably my favorite playable character of resident evil because he’s so… i don’t wanna say stupid, but he’s a dumbass

he’s like a horror movie protagonist that is in the situation they’re in because they made a dumb decision. but i think that’s so funny, especially for resident evil. his character in 7 vs 8 is pretty much the same- his objective is always to protect his family, and i think that’s really good for resident evil as well. most of the past characters’ motives were taking down huge corporations or stopping the spread of a virus, but ethan’s is just to protect his family and get somewhere safe.

tie ins to other games

i figured i’d add a section about this since i love all of the re games so much!

so the first obvious one- chris redfield is a relatively main character in this. he’s the co-protagonist of the original resident evil, so he’s definitely still involved with plot lmao. he was 25 in the first game, so in re8, he’s nearing 50.

at the end of re7, ethan winters meets chris redfield after escaping the baker’s residence. chris was working with blue umbrella at the time I THINK i’m gonna be honest i don’t keep up with what organization he’s with because he switches around so many times. basically he takes ethan and his wife and move them to europe as a sort of witness protection program. i like to think chris became close with them and would go over for dinner

anyways in re8 he gets tangled up in the plot in pretty significant ways. he’s one of the ogs of re so it was definitely fun to see him fighting monsters well into his 40s

there’s a few references to other games throughout re8. my favorites are

- the duke (who is the shop keep) has a line where he says something along the lines of ‘what’re ya buying? heh, just something a friend of mine says.’ this is a reference to re4’s merchant, who would say that when you opened his inventory. i thought this was a really funny implication- that the duke and the merchant know each other.

- one of heisenberg’s lines refers to chris as a ‘boulder-punching asshole’ which is capcom making a joke about themselves. in resident evil 5, there’s a scene where chris redfield literally punches a boulder into an active volcano. it was memed a lot because it was such a ridiculous scene, so this line is capcom acknowledging it

general/setting

i think resident evil 8 did a good job being a great game but also keeping the core resident evil elements. like the plot’s connection to the overall re universe is dumb as hell but it feels very resident evil. personally i feel like it’s super similar to re4 in the sense that it takes the typical zombie genre but gives it a completely different setting or tone than you’d usually expect. like, castles in a zombie survival horror game is BRILLIANT and not something i’d ever expect.

i’m also a huge fan of the sort of ‘mutating into something that isn’t human’ trope and resident evil 8 has SO MUCH of that. all of the lords are basically infected by a parasite that affected them all in a different way. so heisenberg can control metal while donna causes hallucinations and shit.

———

ok i think that’s most of my thoughts on it… re8 is such a good game and even though the plot can be dumb and full of contradictions the campiness and seriousness is balanced near perfectly in re8. one of the issues some of the past re games had is they took themselves too seriously. re8 does a great job at not taking itself too seriously in order to be a fun game.

i hope this wasn’t too long! i love re8 to death and will always jump to talk abt it lol. ethan winters is one of my favorite re characters ever, and this game is full of great ethan moments. i hope you enjoy it!! it’s definitely a great experience regardless of if you care about the lord and connections to other games.

[aliciameade]

A Thousand Cuts

Title: A Thousand Cuts Author: aliciameade Rating: M for alcoholism and angst Pairing: Beca/Chloe Summary: Beca doesn't realize she needs to get her shit together until it's too late, or, my take on a prompt I was sent to write something based on Taylor Swift’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts.”

Also on AO3

My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch

Gave up on me like I was a bad drug / Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club

Our songs, our films, united, we stand / Our country, guess it was a lawless land 

Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand / Paper cut stings from my paper-thin plans 

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust / Trying to find a part of me you didn't take up 

Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough / But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

“You don’t mean that.” Beca’s voice cracks over the words; she’s moments from crying and she knows it.

Chloe’s already crying. “The hell I don’t.” Her voice is steady despite the tears. Her jaw is set, the muscles in her left cheek tensing with how hard she’s clenching it.

“Where am I supposed to go?” That’s when the first tear finally hits Beca’s cheek. They don’t stop after that and she doesn’t bother trying to wipe them away. “I don’t know anyone else here!”

“That’s not my problem.” Chloe walks away so abruptly, steps so heavy it makes Beca jump. She’s digging through the trunk that sits at the foot of their bed and pulls out Beca’s duffel bag to toss it onto the bed. “Pack. And get the rest of your shit out before the end of the month whenever I’m not here or I’m throwing it all away.”

Beca’s sure this must be what it feels like for the earth to swallow one whole. Her world’s been ripped out from beneath her feet.

The thing is, it’s her fault. She can’t argue that it’s not. She could have tried harder, not allowed herself to grow complacent. Chloe was someone who loves with her entire being, every inch of her soul. And Beca adores her. Loves her. But she has struggled to keep up with just how much Chloe needs from her in return for all the love she gives Beca. Truth be told, it’s scared the shit out of Beca since the day they exchanged their first ‘I love yous.’ She had even prefaced her confession by saying she will probably mess it all up.

Fucking self-fulfilling prophecies.

“I’m going for a walk,” Chloe says as she pushes past Beca more physically than necessary. “Don’t be here when I get back.”

When the door slams behind her, Beca fights the urge to crumple onto their bed and weep. They’d just made love on it this morning and she thinks if she touches it, it may burn her flesh.

Instead, she grabs the bag Chloe threw onto it and starts stuffing clothes and toiletries into it. Her head pounds and her chest aches with the need to sob but she won’t give this tiny apartment, their first home together as a couple. She fills the bag until she can’t zip it and throws her laptop into its case to swing them both over her shoulder.

On her way out the door, she rips a photo of the two of them in front of their Christmas tree last year off the fridge—not to destroy it, but to stuff it into her bag.

She wonders if Chloe will even notice it’s gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beca takes the train into Manhattan. Brooklyn feels too small, too familiar. She wants the city to swallow her since the earth only pretended to. She doesn’t have a single New York-based contact in her phone except for the ramen house Chloe and she love and the main number for her office. She doesn’t particularly like her job and has made no effort to get to know anyone there. 

In the future, she’ll realize this could be a theme in her life.

She ends up at a hotel by Union Square. She can’t afford it. It’s nearly $200 for the night and it goes on an already precariously charged-up credit card. She’ll move to a hostel tomorrow; tonight, she needs privacy and space and the freedom to have the breakdown she’s been staving off for the two hours it’s been since Chloe told her it was over and threw her out of their home.

Once she gets to her room, she drops her bags on the floor and immediately throws up.

It’s the longest night of Beca’s life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She doesn’t get the rest of her belongings back. She’s living in a hostel in a room she shares with five other people, at least one of which is new every night. She has to wait her turn to use the bathroom and to shower and most of the time, there’s no hot water.

The good thing, she supposes as she tries day after day to find a single good thing in her life, is that at $35 per day, she can actually afford her room and board and even feed herself twice a day and keep her phone bill paid.

Thank God for ubiquitous free WiFi.

But that one good thing, just keeping herself in room and board, doesn’t do anything to outweigh all the bad.

She hasn’t spoken to or heard from Chloe in two months. There was no final warning about coming to get her belongings or they’d be trashed. Chloe hasn’t checked in with her a single time.

Not that Beca’s reached out to Chloe either.

She’d thought escaping Brooklyn would help protect herself. Far from away all their usual haunts, she would be safer from the constant reminders of all the moments she and Chloe shared in the year-and-a-half they spent living together there.

Instead, she’s faced with bigger reminders in Manhattan. So many date nights spent there at restaurants and concert venues and theatres and sunset strolls through parks.

“Oh, my gosh, baby, this is so romantic, we have to take a selfie,” Chloe said as she grabbed Beca’s hands to spin them in a circle that almost had Beca tripping over her own feet. “Wait, no! Excuse me, sir?” Chloe asked a passerby. “Would you take our picture, please?”

“Sure,” he said as Chloe handed him her phone. “Tell me when.”

“Just take a bunch,” Chloe answered before Beca had even had a chance to weakly and pointlessly protest the impromptu photoshoot.

Then they were kissing on Gapstow Bridge with Central Park and the New York skyline behind them and Beca forgot why she would ever want to protest such a thing.

She can’t even walk through Times Square without her eyes pricking with tears at the memory of Chloe dragging Beca up the red stairs in the middle of a snowstorm to take a selfie at the top while they kissed wearing beanies and scarves and gloves.

The photo came out looking like they were in a snow globe and felt as magical as it looked. It’s saved in her favorites on her phone, but she refuses to let herself look through that album.

Even when she’s alone at night in a strange place that is her home but feels nothing like it, Chloe is everywhere. She can feel her phantom arms around her waist to pull Beca back against her to settle into sleep. In the shower, her hands travel over her body and she remembers all the times and all the ways Chloe has touched her here, and here, and here.

Alcohol doesn’t help, though Beca gives it her best shot.

It leads to her waking up in the beds of people whose names she only sometimes remembers.

A man she goes home with makes her leave when she won’t stop crying when he tries to touch her.

A woman she goes home with spends the night holding her. They even have sex, finally, in the early hours of the morning. But all Beca can think about is how it’s not right. How she isn’t Chloe and she doesn’t know how to touch Beca as Chloe does. It does nothing to help Beca forget or move on. In fact, it only makes her miss Chloe more.

She stops trying to escape into other people and goes back to drinking alone. It’s cheaper that way, too, which is a nice bonus. One bottle of whiskey runs her $40 which gives her far more drinks for her dollar compared to going to bars.

Eventually, she finds someone in need of a roommate through a coworker and she has a room to herself in Washington Heights. Her roommate is nice, a few years older than Beca, and works for the city’s child services department. She’s a good listener on the rare occasions Beca confides in her when her emotions become too much to take alone.

It turns into a relationship of convenience. They both acknowledge that’s what it is and that they’re setting themselves up for disaster if (when) it ends because someone (Beca) is going to have to move out when things become too messy.

But until that happens, it’s nice to feel at least somewhat normal again. She doesn’t feel like she’s ready to fall apart if someone looks at her the wrong way on the street.

She still thinks about Chloe at least once every minute when she’s conscious.

And usually, even when she’s not.

She knows she’s fixating. It’s too hard to not spend as much energy as she can berating herself for messing up and losing Chloe. It’s delicious torture to hate herself so much and replay the details of every moment of their relationship and pick out every time she fucked up and think about how she could have done it differently, how she would do it differently if she had the chance.

What’s most irritating of all is that there is no one singular cataclysmic event she can blame. It was her series of micro-aggressions, so seemingly small (to Beca), that piled up until replying to Chloe’s multi-scroll-long text message telling Beca that she needed more from her with “k” got her thrown out on the street.

And she knew—knows—she deserved it.

She wishes she could go back in time and slap herself and tell her to get her shit together before she loses the best thing to ever happen to her.

But she can’t. She keeps drinking and it’s never enough to forget Chloe.

Eventually, her behavior lands her out on her ass again, but this time, she expects it. What girl wants her not-girlfriend crying about her ex every time they have sex? At least there’s a discussion first and she’s allowed a couple of weeks to find a new place to live.

A year has passed since she fucked up her relationship with Chloe but, somehow, she’s managed to get her professional life into something resembling moderate success. She’s surprised when she downloads bank statements at the balance in her account to have when she goes apartment hunting. She’s done nothing but pay rent to her now-ex-roommate and buy what few things she’s needed to get by (mostly alcohol). She thinks she remembers an email from HR about a bonus or royalty payout around Christmas…?

It affords her the ability to get her own apartment, a one-bedroom in Harlem.

It also affords her the freedom to indulge in all her vices without someone passing judgment. She can drink herself to blackout. She can have anonymous sex. She can cry until she’s sick or lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling all night in a drug-and-alcohol-induced stupor. None of it really matters, anyway.

She fits right in with the people she’s finding herself forced to be around more often. She gets wasted with colleagues and A-listers under the guise of networking. She impresses men with her ability to out-drink them despite her stature. And if one of them offers cocaine? She can be the last one standing in the early hours of the morning.

She prides herself on her endurance, though not more than she prides herself on the fact that no matter how hammered she gets, not once has she drunk-dialed Chloe to beg forgiveness.

She hasn’t dialed her at all, for that matter.

She’s never apologized.

She wants to point out that showing up at her former apartment building when it’s dark and the streets are empty repeatedly pressing the buzzer for what used to be her apartment is not drunk-dialing nor drunk-texting.

“Hello?” Chloe’s voice crackles through the shitty speaker and Beca slumps against the wall next to the metal intercom at the sound of it. “Is anyone there? I swear if you kids are pulling this shit again, I’m calling the cops.”

Beca laughs to herself, memories of a group of teenagers that roams the neighborhood raising havoc of the relatively painless variety. Things like Ding Dong Ditch and hiding delivered packages from their recipients. It always infuriated Chloe and made Beca laugh and tell her to calm down, they’re just kids and they could be getting into much worse kinds of trouble.

She considers continuing to ring the buzzer just to keep Chloe on the line; it’s been so long since she’s heard her voice. Maybe she could just sleep on the building’s stoop?

She’s still thinking about it when she hears the familiar squeak of the door opening.

“Beca?”

She wonders if maybe she finally passed out to slip into dreamland because Chloe’s standing in front of her in plaid sleep shorts and Beca’s favorite vintage David Bowie tee.

“Hey, babe,” she slurs.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe takes half a step out of the door and starts to reach for her but stops short. “Are you drunk?”

“What if I am?” she says as she pushes herself away from the wall to stand upright again, though everything feels like it’s tilting. She points. “That’s my shirt.”

Chloe crosses her arms over her chest as if that will hide it. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

Beca has to think hard. She doesn’t remember how she got to Brooklyn. She doesn’t know what time it is. “I’m tired,” she answers. “I came home.”

“You don’t live here anymore.”

“I didn’t say I live here. I said I came home.” She tries to walk forward but trips and finds herself caught by Chloe before she hurts herself. “Cat-like reflexes,” she says with a chuckle before catching the scent of the laundry detergent and lotion Chloe always uses and the tears come out of nowhere.

She’s vaguely aware that Chloe’s helping her walk and it’s up the stairs and into the apartment they once shared, not out to the curb.

The last thought that passes through her mind as Chloe helps her into what was always Beca’s side of the bed is that even through her blurry vision she can see a picture on the refrigerator. A copy of the same photo she’d taken with her the day Chloe had thrown her out, placed in the exact place the original had been for so long.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She wakes to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Her head throbs but not too painfully; she rarely gets hungover these days. She knows where she is. She knows the feel of the bed, the softness of the sheets, the scent of breakfast and the sound of the quiet tings and thuds of cabinets opening and closing, of plates, mugs, spoons, and knives.

She doesn’t want to open her eyes. Maybe if she pretends to be asleep she could stay there all day without having to be embarrassed by her actions. She can just hold onto this unexpected return to a past life for a few more minutes before it’s ripped away from her again.

She starts when the sound of a mug being placed on the nightstand near her head comes unexpectedly.

“Morning,” Chloe’s quiet, husky morning voice whispers as she sits on the edge of the bed next to Beca.

Beca grimaces and pulls the covers up over her head. “No.”

“I have to go to work.” Beca didn’t even think about the fact that it was a weekday. Her own schedule doesn’t conform to the typical Monday-through-Friday model. “But I’m going to call out sick for the afternoon and come back at lunch.”

Beca slips the covers down until they’re under her chin. She knows she looks like shit but Chloe looks more beautiful than she remembers her.

“You can stay here until then. Help yourself to breakfast. We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”

Beca just nods, afraid that anything more than that will wake her from whatever dream she’s having. She feels Chloe’s hand on her leg, a brief touch before she’s leaving too soon.

Beca watches her gather her things and leave the apartment, locking it with her keys.

She knows she should go back to sleep. Sleep off the last bits of the drunkenness she can still feel swimming in her. But she’s been thrown back into her old life, her old home, and like so many mornings, Chloe’s just gone to work after making coffee for Beca.

Slowly, she sits up to take in her surroundings. The small studio looks much like she’s remembered it. There’s a lot more of Chloe in it now, though. More photos of her and friends Beca’s never met. The band posters Beca had insisted on putting up have been replaced with generic canvas prints from Target that feature the Eiffel Tower and a recreation of a poster for la tournée du Chat Noir avec Rodolphe Salis. It makes her smile; Chloe’s always had an obsession with Paris and it had only gotten worse after they went to Denmark—but not France—in college.

Driven by her roiling stomach she forces herself out of bed. When she stands, she has to do a double-take looking down at herself. She’s not wearing the clothes she’d left her apartment in yesterday. She’s not even wearing pants. Her legs are bare and she plucks at the shirt she’s wearing to see it’s one of her old concert tees.

A memory flashes of last night, of Chloe in the doorway wearing Beca’s shirt.

It makes her feel lightheaded and she reaches for the coffee Chloe’s left bedside before crossing the room to the kitchen. Everything’s still in the same place and it’s mindless yet spine-tingling to go through the motions of finding something to eat in that room just as she’s done countless times in the past.

She plops down at the small table that she once imagined proposing to Chloe over on a Sunday morning over a cozy winter brunch they prepared together and is about to dig into her bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that Chloe miraculously has on-hand despite claiming to hate it when she freezes, spoon halfway to her mouth.

On the clothing rack in the middle of the room, the one they had to fight over for valuable space, hang all of Beca’s clothes she’d left behind when she was forced to flee.

Her chair screeches as she pushes it back to rush over and quickly flip through the blouses, pants, and dresses she hasn’t seen in more than a year. She tugs open the third and then fourth drawers of the dresser they shared to find them both still stuffed full of underwear, bras, socks, tank tops, shorts, and Beca’s beanies and gloves she’d really missed that winter. She drops to her knees and reaches under the bed to find the sharp plastic edge of a storage bin and pulls it out. All her shoes, still in their place.

If not for the changes in decor, she would believe she never left. Nothing has changed since her last morning with Chloe.

It’s overwhelming. Chloe had threatened to throw everything away if Beca never picked it up. Beca never did, but Chloe didn’t follow through.

Her head swims and her eyes prick with tears. She thinks she might be sick from the rush of emotions and adrenaline; Chloe hadn’t tossed their life in the trash even though she’d tossed Beca to the curb.

She isn’t sick, though. Instead, she strips off her shirt and crawls into the bathtub and turns on the shower to sit under the spray and cry.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beca’s heart races when she hears Chloe’s keys in the hallway seconds before they rattle in the lock. She watches the door open slowly, Chloe peeking in carefully until they find Beca sitting at the table.

“You’re awake,” she says as she enters with less care now that Beca’s not asleep. “Did you find something to eat? I brought lunch just in case.”

Beca’s eyes drop to the bag in Chloe’s hand; there are familiar round plastic take-out containers stacked in it and Beca doesn’t have to ask to know it’s from the ramen place they frequented. “I did, yeah.”

Chloe sets the bag on the table and Beca watches her take off and hang up her coat. When she turns back around, she pauses. “Oh.”

Beca wonders what she’s looking at until she realizes it’s Beca’s clothes. “You didn’t throw my stuff away.”

Chloe takes a break as though she’s about to speak but instead she sighs and says nothing in reply as she sits down in her chair to Beca’s left and starts unpacking the lunch she’s brought.

Beca catches her hand when it’s busy setting up soup and sides and Chloe’s entire body seems to flinch, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. “You didn’t throw me away, did you.”

Tears are welling in Chloe’s eyes when they meet Beca’s but she still doesn’t speak.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Beca rushes when she realizes she’s the one who has to do the talking. “But I do. Will you hear me out? Give me ten minutes. Five.”

“Okay,” Chloe says quietly as she pulls her hand back to resume passing out utensils.

Beca waits until she’s finished, until Chloe’s no longer distracting herself with busywork and her eyes land on Beca nervously so she can finally say, “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

The End

[whirlybirdwhat]

Prompt: modern au (?) Gin wants to ask Sanji out, but he has to go through Zeff first

let me preface this with a HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIN I LOVE YOU!!!!  and a thank you for the request! 

Now, onto the story! Also read it here on ao3!

what you do for love

Gin has broken into a great many places. Some were worth it! Some were not. Some had the security of Fort Knox, and others were like an open door. He’s done it across the coast from east to west, but never, never, has he found a place so hard to get into like the Baratie.

And this time he isn’t even doing it for fucking Krieg!

It’s for Sanji.

Whom he likes, very much, and would like to invite on a date, thank you very much.

It’s not happening – different schools, Sanji has work, Gin has a job, Sanji’s taking down governments with his own gang, there’s never a time to get to him.

So Gin decided to ask him out at Sanji’s work.

Only… Gin had forgotten that the Baratie wasn’t only Sanji’s workplace… but his home. Where his dad and pseudo big brothers lived.

The first time he walked in to ask, he was met with Zeff, smaller than Gin but twice as muscular with a mean kick despite only having one leg. Zeff had given him a once over, taking in Gin’s leather jacket, tattoos, bandana and flyer to next month’s fight arena and promptly… did nothing, except give Gin a warm meal.

(It wasn’t the first time, nor the last.)

Until that is, Gin went up to go talk to Sanji.

Then Zeff swept his feet out from under him and sent him flying out the door, laughing.

From his place on the sidewalk, hidden by the high storefront windows, Gin heard Sanji asking “What was that,” and Zeff brushing him off.

Surely a fluke, Gin foolishly thought.

Only to find that the second time he went in, Carne was there, waiting with a strong hand to lift Gin by his collar and drag him out to the back-door entryway and throw him into the ground outside.

“Bye,” Gin could see Carne mouthing, mischief in his eye, followed by a swear.

Fuck off! Gin wanted to scream back but decided to rest in the ground instead, contemplating his failure.

Why, he thought, why.

He tried again, and again, and again. Zeff kicked him out the window with a first aid, kick, did a round of combat with flying kicks, gave him a warm meal then had Patty and Carne throw him onto the shallow beach outside.

Gin didn’t get it, because each time Zeff had this look that he approved of Gin, which, what.

Why was he kicking him out then?

Dads were weird as fucking hell.

After the seventh time this happened, Gin decided to get a little smarter, which leads to the current situation: breaking into the Baratie.

Which, as previously mentioned, is hard as hell.

He doesn’t want to get to the money, so he’s thankfully avoided the more dubious traps, but he’s tapping on what he assumes to be Sanji’s window and it’s not opening.

He questions why he thought this was a good idea, then remembers that Sanji did the same thing last year because he wanted to ask what food Gin wanted for his birthday, so this is just him returning the favor.

The windows finally opening, thank fuck, he was scaling the gutter for this.

“Hey, San-” That’s not Sanji.

That’s Zeff.

“Shit.” Gin says out loud and isn’t fast enough to dodge the kick that smacks him into sliding down the gutter.

Fuck.

Zeff gives him a wave, throws down and ice pack, and leaves.

Should have known Red Leg Zeff wouldn’t let anyone near his home without his permission. Hell, even the gang members follow his lead.

Gin sighs, staring up at the window which apparently isn’t Sanji’s, and decides he’s not being smart enough.

Or maybe, he thinks, staring at the straw-hatted jolly roger emblazoned in graffiti on the side of the building, I’m not being crazy enough.

-

Gin’s phone was destroyed in a fight two weeks back, half of his troubles with talking to Sanji, but that also means he has to track down the Straw Hats in person.

It’s not the most difficult task though – just look for the biggest commotion and you’re sure to find at least one Straw Hat in the fray.

Gin turns the corner, swearing to find a Straw Hat tonight, and runs smack into the Straw Hat, who is sprinting and holding a bag of what looks to be… meat themed jewelry? Gold? Gold nuggets but chicken nuggets? Gin can’t tell and doesn’t want to ask, but takes the opportunity anyway.

(The world always had a way to fall exactly into Luffy’s whims, and Gin supposes that if this must be happening it’s a sign of hope.)

“Straw hat!” Gin shouts, snatching out a hand and dragging Luffy into the alley corner.

“Bandana Guy!” Luffy says happily as Smoker rushes by the alley entrance. “What’s up? Sanji misses you!”

Gin lets a dopey smile bleed onto his face before speaking. “Yeah, I miss him to which is why I need your help right? I need you to bring your crew into the Baratie tomorrow, around sixish, and cause a ruckus so I can ask Sanji out, alright? Zeff and the others keep kicking me out.”

“They do that to you too? Shishishi! Sanji’s dad says I’m not allowed there without superpowers.”

“I think you mean supervision, anyway, will you be there?”

“Party at the Baratie tomorrow night, got it!”

That’s as close as Gin is going to get with Straw Hat, so he lets them go.

Time to get ready for action.

-

Gin should have expected this. He really should have expected this.

This being the Strawhat’s starting the ‘party’ whenever they feel like it, which is not six which was planned but five.

Gin sighs.

Whatever.

He can make this work.

Gin walks into the Baratie and, for once, is not immediately accosted by members of the Baratie’s staff.

Straw-hat can’t follow a plan but at least he can cause a ruckus. Gin looks to the left where the swordsman is balancing bottles of beer on his swords to raucous cheering, and steps to the right.

And then Gin spots him. Sanji, coming out of the kitchen, laughing and smiling the way he’s only prone to do around his crew (and Gin, on occasion.)

He’s not talking to anybody, just enjoying the chaos, which means this is Gin’s chance.

His only chance.

There’s a flash of yellow in his vision, accompanied by two flashes of white, and Gin knows he has to move fast if he wants to beat Zeff and Carne and Patty.

Gin runs, jumping over smashed glass and dodging around rushing waiters, all the while shouting “SANJI!”

Zeff trips him but he manages to turn into a roll, and comes up standing right in front of Sanji.

“Sanji!” He says again, out of breath but with a smile on his face, offering the carefully folded but now crumpled flyer in his hand. “Would you – would you like to go with me to Red Line’s Battle Arena on the twenty-third… as a date? If your family doesn’t kill me first?”

Sanji’s staring at him, and he hopes he hasn’t said the wrong thing. He had thought the date out perfectly, it was something they both enjoyed, food provided, near the sea, he had tickets to the booth seating so it wasn’t as chaotic as usual and –

Sanji cuts off his internal monologue with a smile. “Yes. I’d love to.”

Gin practically faints only managing to keep himself upright through sheer determination. He doesn’t know what to say after this, hadn’t really thought that far but—

“FINALLY!”

“Brat smartened up at last.”

“Now we can tease ‘em both at once! Boss, can we kick them both out?”

“Not until the party’s over. But yes. Eventually.”

“HELL YEAH!”

Gin is lost at the commotion coming from the chef’s around him, who have now stopped attacking him and started cheering for him.

Like… what?

Sanji takes pity on him. “They’ve been teasing me for months about you, trying to get me to ask you out. You stopped showing up so…”

“Oh. That was because your family kicked me out when I was trying to ask you out. Its been going on for a month. Tried banging on your window and everything but they literally kicked me out.”

“Oh.” Sanji starts snickering.

“Yeah.” Gin says to his boyfriends(?) apparent mirth at the situation.

Sanji snorts one last time before turning to his family and screeching. Gin swears there’s fire coming off of him as he yells “WHAT THE HELL YOU SHITTTY BASTARDS!? WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU KICKING HIM OUT? WHY ARE YOU THIS STUPID THIS COULD HAVE BEEN DONE AGES AGO AND-“

“It’s cause we like ya!”

“Yeah! We have to tease you!”

“Making up for that time you kicked me in the face.”

“And me! And the time you met the Straw Hat Brat!”

“Yeah!”

Zeff cuts in through the shouting. “Eggplant, you’re a bit short on the braincells. Had to make sure this brat was good enough to replace the ones you’ve lost. He passes. Welcome to the family brat, we got cake in the back. Straw Hat told us to throw a party, and I’m sure Sanji mentioned that it was your birthday today. Eat up.”

Gin gets a caked shoved in his hand and a hug from Sanji in a matter of seconds, followed by approving nods from the rest of the Baratie Staff as the Straw Hat pirates cause chaos in the background.

He’s bewildered. Confused. Bamboozled. Any other word to describe this feeling. Sanji just laughs at his face.

“They’re always like this,” he explains. “When Luffy first invited me to join his crew they thought pretending that they hated my food was a good way to make me leave and chase some dreams. You can see how well that turned out, but that’s just how they are. Hazing the new guy and me, at every. Single. Opportunity. Ugh.” Sanji’s complaining, but Gin can tell he loves this place.

“I can see that,” He says, and watches how Sanji smiles so brilliantly. “You want to escape this mess?”

Sanji laughs. “Definitely. Happy birthday, Gin.” He places a kiss on Gin’s cheek and strolls out the back door, waiting for him.

Gin smiles in return. “Thanks, Sanji.”

Zeff nods one last time behind his back before turning away.

Gin has finally passed the Baratie Bar of approval.

Thank God. That was exhausting.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes from Stephen King’s “On Writing” 03: How to Write

Now that King has laid out the tools before us, he sits down and tells us exactly how he goes about his craft. He acknowledges that everyone writes differently, and that how he writes may not jive with you, and that is okay. He is just walking us through what he does, and you can take what you want and leave what you don’t.

How to Summon Your Muse

“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.”

Read a Lot and Write a Lot

“We read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.”

Man, I probably can’t even count how many times I’ve seen this piece of advice. But the fact that I’ve seen it this much means that it must be right, I guess. In particular, King advises us to read bad books, as the bad stuff is usually more glaring than the good, and we can learn from that. 

He also says that reading bad things can provide us positive inspiration.

“Most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?”

Certainly, I have to agree with him.I remember the first time I was deflowered with bad fiction.

King also advises us to read good books, because we can learn about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling. 

On Finding Time to Read

It’s not that we don’t want to read, it’s that we just don’t have the time to read when we’re working and have other obligations and also want to write. So how do we find the time to read? King says:

“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.”

Especially with the advent of e-books, it is easier now than ever to have a book on hand at all times. Read in waiting rooms, in transit, in the checkout line, on the treadmill, and the bathroom. Read when you have an hour to yourself on Sunday. Just read when you can. 

On the Importance of Reading

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease  and intimacy with the process of writing. ... Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mindset, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen.”

This makes a lot of sense. From personal experience, even though English is my native language and I love reading and writing, I stopped reading English for leisure when I moved to Japan. I poured all of my free time into learning Japanese, and I consumed only written Japanese media for about three years. When I went to pick up a pen again, it felt like a foreign object in my hand. My prose was clunky, the words were stop and start, and I was forgetting words. Especially since I spend a good 90% of my day in Japanese now, I make it a point to come home and read in English every night, and I have seen an improvement. 

How Much to Write?

Okay, so we know that we have to “read a lot” and “write a lot,” but let’s quantify that. (This is the specificity that I really love in this book.) 

King prefaces this section by making it clear that all authors work at different paces. James Joyce sometimes wrote just seven words a day. There was this dude Anthony Trollope who wrote for 2.5 hours every morning before work and stopped even if he was mid-sentence when time was up. If he finished writing a book before the 2.5 hours was finished, he would close that manuscript and start writing the next one. What a machine.

Also, just how many works must a person write to become a Real Writer? Harper Lee only wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. (I know a sequel has been released since King’s book was published, but don’t we all want to forget that sequel exists anyways?) This guy John Creasey wrote five hundred novels under ten different names. 

So how long your works are and how many works you have is your choice. You do you. But if you’re good at it and you love it, don’t put down that pen! 

Writing Schedule

King writes in the morning, takes naps in the afternoon, and spends time with his family in the evenings. That sounds like a dream come true to most of us that are still working a 9-5 and writing on the side. But that’s what he does now. 

To put things more concretely, he says that he has a strict 2,000 minimum that he must write every single day. Even if it’s like pulling teeth, even if it takes longer than he hoped, he does not stop until he has 2,000 new words on the page. 

King also believes that the first draft of a book, even a long one, should take no more than three months to write. (Personally I feel that could be difficult for everyone to do unless they have the ability to commit a certain amount of time everyday to writing no matter what.)

How to Keep Good Writing Habits

King gives us this advice.

Have a “writing room.” For King, this was the cramped laundry room while he wrote Carrie and Salem’s Lot. He isn’t telling you to add a room onto your house. Just have a space that is yours and free of distractions. Have a space that is designated for writing and nothing else, and make sure you can close the door to it. 

Set a daily writing goal for yourself. Even if it’s as low as 100 at first, that’s fine. Just write every day no matter what. He says you can take one day off a week at first. But only at first. 

Eliminate all possible distractions while writing. No phone, no TV, don’t even have the windows open (unless your view is boring). You can have music on if it helps filter out the outside world. 

Have a schedule. Dedicate a certain time before or after work that will be “writing time.” Let’s say mine is 8 pm to 10 pm every day.

Don’t wait for the muse. In King’s words, “Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.” Sidenote: King’s muse doesn’t match muse stereotypes lol.

“I think we’re actually talking about creative sleep. Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. You schedule -in at about the same time everyday, out when your word goal is on paper - exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. You can train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.”

The above quote put a lot of things into perspective for me. I had never thought of writing like dreaming, but really, that is what it is. I have a desk that was meant for writing, but is actually for everything now. Eating, chatting with friends, surfing the web, and writing. It is very far from distraction-free. I also just write “when I feel like it,” which means that sometimes I have months-long or years-long dry spells. And that’s nothing but a shame. 

So now I’m looking at getting another smaller, simpler desk to put in my bedroom, upon which I’ll put a tablet with no internet connection and a wireless keyboard. Maybe a notepad. Maybe. I’m not much of a note-taker. But I’ll put that in my bedroom, which really has just a bed and clothes, not even a clock, and I’ll push myself to write more every day, right there, from 8 pm to 10 pm. 

Source: King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Hodder, 2012.

[strxga]

Thoughts & Review on V7C12

This is my personal review for the latest chapter of RWBY. I tried to keep my points objective and organized, and to not take too much time discussing each, and I would sincerely appreciated if it could be given a read. Thank you if you do read it.

Well. It’s finally happened.

After a hazy but relatively positive start, I can say that Chapter 12 is yet another tipping point in a direction. The last chapters of Volume 6 were certainly… A lot, but compared to this one, Volume 6 pales in comparison. This one is… A doozy for several reasons. Let me preface by saying this: I love this show.

I sincerely adore it and the characters, and the reason I’m writing this think piece is precisely because of that. Because it could be so much better, it could be truly a love letter towards Fantasy, anime, and its fandom… But the writers specifically seem to not know how to balance that… But enough ranting. Off to the meatier sections, which I will progressively go from what I liked the most to what I liked the least.

Penny & Winter Scenes

This was, by far, the best written scenes in the episode, and coming from an unlikely pair of friends. Penny has always been emotional despite being a robot while Winter, despite being human, has always acted mechanical. This episode provides a nice contrast between the two, with Penny emphasizing with Winter and trying to get through to her only for Winter to refute her claims, but doing so with a sadness to her face because deep inside she knows James Ironwood’s plan is flawed. In a way, one acts as the other should, but doesn’t. Their awkward but working friendship makes that its mold and comfortably rests atop it.

It’s flawed, but realistically, it’s the best option to take over having to fight Salem with depleted and exhausted forces. The two play off one another marvelously, and this keeps up until Cinder’s entrance (which is another point I’ll discuss later) and the entire time they keep up this great dynamic. Penny asking if it’s going to hurt Fria to transfer her Aura directly to Winter, only for her to once more act as Penny’s foil and say that it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is following orders and keeping the Relic and Maiden Powers safe.

Team ORNJ Scenes

Thankfully this time, it doesn’t take an entire episode to figure out where Oscar is. Frankly, there isn’t much to talk about here, but what little there is of it is good! A problem is established, and then it’s swiftly solved by Neopolitan’s confidence only for everything to fall apart when the real Oscar appears, confirming he wasn’t taken away but had been actually fighting solo against Neopolitan for the lamp.

It establishes he’s no longer the wimp he once was and is making full use of Ozpin’s cane, but I honestly do feel like it was mostly a cat-and-mouse game with Neopolitan stealing the lamp and him chasing after her, because I don’t think he could’ve beaten her on his own. Team ORNJ then sets up to fight Neopolitan, spicing up the fight between them that’s going to take place in the upcoming chapter.

(Upcoming) Neopolitan vs. Team ORNJ

There honestly isn’t much to talk about this regarding on what happened in the episode, but what it did amazingly is set up the fight. We know Neopolitan is an experienced fighter, and strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Cinder without her using her Fall Maiden powers. We also know that Jaune and Ren aren’t the strongest fighters, but they can still hold their own, and them accompanied by Oscar who is slightly below-average but still powerful enough to hold his own and Nora who is, now that Pyrrha’s gone, the strongest member of what remains of Team JNPR, I think the battle between them and our favorite ice cream girl is going to be a highlight of this season, especially with how it was set-up.

Cinder’s Entrance

This is when we start to get into the ‘meh’ section of this episode. Cinder is usually compelling in small doses, but extremely dull, boring and irritable in extended scenes due to how confident, smug and self-assured she is despite her multiple failures ever since the Fall of Beacon. But from a writing perspective, she was amazing. She showed how fearsome she is yet again and that her cleverness is part of her character and not just a plot device. She sent Ironwood into a paranoia and then tracked Winter knowing he’d send her after Fria.

Now, the only thing I don’t get, but this might be just me having forgotten, is if there was one point in which Cinder actually learned Winter was the next candidate to be the Winter Maiden… After all, prior to this point, Cinder had never met or encountered Winter or even less have known of her affiliation with Ironwood in the sense that she is her second-in-command. I have difficulty following that thread of logic… Unless Neopolitan told her at some point? I don’t know. Not knowing is what makes me ‘meh’ about this scene.

Clover, Qrow & Tyrian’s Fight

Taking away the connotations and context from the fight and looking at it purely from a choreography perspective, the fight was amazing and showed all of the fighter’s individual styles and strengths. As per usual, Tyrian was shown as crazed and psychopathic. There is no rhyme, reason or logic to his moves, and therefore there is no pattern or proper way to attack other than improvise. Qrow was versatile in using both his hand-to-hand skills and Harbinger to get the job done, but who stands up the most to me is Clover.

Clover really shows why he’s the leader of the AceOps. He was strategic in using Kingfisher to constantly tie-up Tyrian a few times (I cannot remember if he caught Qrow though) and managed to actually keep up with both of them for a long time! Had it not been for Tyrian’s interference while Clover and Qrow spoke, well… I’ll mention that later. But the point is, Clover was an absolute king in the battlefield and despite his weapon being a fishing rod, he was able to use it tremendously.

Furthermore, what surprised me the most is the fact Qrow and Tyrian worked so well together. They made-up for each other’s flaws whenever Clover had one of them against the ropes, and this surprises me even more considering the fact Tyrian was responsible for Qrow’s closest brush with death. It was… Surprisingly bittersweet.

(Upcoming) Cinder vs. Penny & Winter

Nothing much to talk about here given that this hasn’t yet happened, but as per usual Cinder is flaunting and showing off her power while severely underestimating her opponents. It has been approximately three years since she last saw Penny and since she was rebuilt stronger than before, not to mention the combat experience she’s accrued defending Mantle from the Creatures of Grimm and the occasional bandit and the like.

Winter has also presumably gotten stronger since then, but the scope of her abilities are still unknown since she only engaged in combat once and it was against Qrow all the way back in Volume 3. There’s so many ideas up in the air regarding this upcoming fight that nothing’s stopping me from theorizing Fria will wake up and use her Winter Maiden abilities to kick the snot out of Cinder.

But I am looking forward to what the fight has to offer. I don’t think any of them will die though. Cinder is still too important to the plot as are Penny and Winter for as long as the setting is Atlas.

Clover, Qrow, Robyn & Tyrian Scenes

Yeah. This whole encounter was… It wasn’t exactly ‘bad’ but I felt like the characters here acted completely out of character. Well, sans for Tyrian of course, given that at his core, he is simply a psychopath.

Clover has always been one who acted as one of the most morally-upstanding member of the AceOps as well as the one who was, arguably, given the most screen time. But for some reason, this episode had him betray everything he stood for and wanted to arrest Qrow even though Qrow… Well, what did Qrow even do for Ironwood to want him arrested? That’s another minor nitpick I have about the situation. But with how closely Clover and Qrow had bonded, you’d think he’d try and make sense of the situation instead of acting as a drone even though before he had never done so.

Robyn went from a pragmatic and understanding leader-like figure to, well… Whatever that was. I sincerely can’t understand her character because she isn’t cohesive at all. The only trait about her that remains is her loyalty to Mantle… But that’s it. One moment she’s against Ironwood, the next moment she’s siding with him… Then she sides against him and then once more sides with him. It’s honestly very boring and for someone who is supposed to be based on Robin Hood, she’s never done anything Robin Hood-esque. Even her aesthetic doesn’t match him. She feels like an incomplete character and the only side of her we see is a temperamental, indecisive leader. She couldn’t even tell it wasn’t Penny who attacked her at the election party even though almost every single part of her, weapons included, are bioluminescent. It’s frustrating, really. She should’ve known something was wrong from the get-go when Ironwood gave the order instead of immediately resorting to blind anger.

Qrow… There has never been an instance in the show when Qrow reacted with direct violence ever since Volume 3 while he was drunk. He saw Robyn attack Clover first and decided that he was going to attack Clover when he was the one being assaulted. Robyn and Qrow, as far as I know, never even had a single interaction together one-on-one, and even if he did, he’s always been one to stand against wrongdoings despite his shady demeanor. It honestly sucked seeing him being so out of character this entire chapter because he is a fan-favorite and for good reason. He has had a good amount of development. But he acted on violence instead of simply sitting down and having a talk with both Clover and Robyn. It simply didn’t make sense to me.

AceOps vs. Team RWBY

Just like before, I will focus entirely on an unbiased analysis of how this fight went and criticizing the things that particularly stood out for me whether bad or good. I’ll also be dividing this into subsections because it’s going to be a more direct and easier way for me to do so, and in case anyone’s reading this, that way they can skip ahead to their favorite fight. I watched this battle several times in an attempt to breakdown as best I could. So, let’s start with the main show and the one we saw the most of:

Ruby Rose vs. Harriet Bree

Arguably the most balanced fight out of the four short ones we saw. While I am apprehensive of aspects such as Ruby’s Semblance being able of breaking through iron barricades so easily despite never having alluded or shown her Semblance doing something like that before… I can give it a pass if anything because it made the environment more malleable. Despite that, however, I did like the fast paced match between the fastest members of their respective teams. It’s a very fast battle, but we can see it fully and what we see… Is a fight in which Ruby is on the defensive the entire time, and a battle she should’ve completely lost.

Ruby landed exactly zero hits on Harriet. Zero. Well… Not entirely. She does push Harriet down once but Ruby… Isn’t good at hand-to-hand combat and it’s been shown time over time that she’s not very physically strong so I’d hardly say that counts as a hit… But it does happen. Yet we’re supposed to believe that she was taken out by running into an ice wall created by Weiss at the last moment and that her Aura broke from that? Harriet landed exactly 5 very powerful attacks on Ruby and yet her Aura never even budged. I find that hard to believe. First Ruby got kicked on the face with enough strength to send her flying towards an elevator and break the doors off the wall.

Then he got double-kicked by Harriet on the gut and sent flying back. Then she got punched right on her back by Harriet’s weapon, Fast Knuckles, which are basically Yang’s gauntlets. An attack like that should’ve, at least, done significant damage to her Aura given it was strong enough to buckle her legs and crash her against the floor, which in and of itself should count as another impact given how hard she hit it. Then after that, Ruby got headbutted on the face by Harriet and then choked on the neck by Harriet with her legs and once again slammed with tremendous force on the floor. But her Aura is unscathed for some reason?

Then in comes Weiss, puts an ice wall in front of Harriet for her to crash into, and somehow that takes her down and breaks her Aura. Objectively, this battle was amazing, but Ruby never even once had the advantage. Ruby should’ve been knocked out by Harriet when her Aura broke, but for some reason… That didn’t happen. Good choreography, however.

Weiss Schnee vs. Marrow Armin

I frankly can say this one was expertly choreographed as well. We finally get to see a fight in which Weiss gets to use her Semblance at its full capacity, and this time she doesn’t abuse ice dust only. While it’s still in the vast majority of her attacks, she also relies on fire dust, which does add a degree of excitement and a fresh take to her battle style. Not to mention she now isn’t as reliant on the Arma Gigas only. It was a good balanced diet of everything Weiss can do! There still was very little of her in actual close-quarters combat, but that’s never been her specialty. She’s more of a mid-ranged fighter than anything else with lots of tricks and gimmicks. As for Marrow– well, Marrow… Could’ve made things so much easier if he had used his Semblance effectively.

When it comes to the battle itself though it was… Very lackluster on Marrow’s end, but then again it is heavily-implied by Harriet that he’s not fighting seriously at all and was purposefully holding back, so perhaps the fact he was defeated so easily really isn’t that hard to believe considering his heart wasn’t on the fight and even then he still put up a good fight. But like with Harriet… I find his Aura breaking so easily to be… Weird? He only got hit one time by Weiss’ homing fire dust… Flames? Bullets? Rays? I don’t know what to call it, but he got hit just once with Weiss’ dust and I don’t really count it as a hit but he got pushed to the wall once, but nowhere with near the same intensity as Ruby getting slammed and thrashed all over the environment by Harriet.

But ultimately while it is a nice fight… Again, I find Marrow going down to a single attack borderline offensive and humiliating for one of the members of the AceOps, but then again this was the only battle that felt like a member of Team RWBY deserved to win, and that’s saying something given Weiss’ battle track record isn’t exactly the cleanest and she’s lost the most fights out of any Team RWBY member when it comes to one-on-one encounters.

Blake Belladonna & Yang Xiao Long vs. Elm Ederne & Vine Zeki

Honestly, this is probably the best fight out of the ones regarding Team RWBY vs. the AceOps. It is nice to see this fight’s choreography because it was quite enjoyable. It was very dynamic and there was a lot of movement which made it flow just like a river of water, but there were also… Lots of inconsistencies regarding the character’s power levels and how they performed in this fight, especially regarding Elm and Vine who, from an objective standpoint if one sits down and analyzes the fight as I did, it’s also easy to tell that… Elm and Vine should’ve won.

While it’s disappointing that we didn’t get to see Vine’s weapon in this final bout, we did see Blake and Yang working together as well as Elm and Vine despite their personality conflicts. There really wasn’t a lot of team coordinating, but both sides performed admirably. Yang & Elm with their brawn and ferocity as well as Blake & Vine with their strategic minds and nimbleness. Now… While I can only praise the dynamics, the battle was, again, stacked against Blake and Yang. Like I did with the battle between Ruby and Harriet, I went through this one thoroughly and counted the amount of hits each character received.

Yang landed a total of three direct blows against Elm. A punch to the face that sent Elm staggering back a few steps, and then she didn’t land a single hit on Elm until she punched the ground with her Semblance, destroying it and sending her flying, but this doesn’t count as a hit because Elm wasn’t harmed when Yang did this. She was only sent flying in mid-air and then Yang and Blake both delivered a single attack on Elm before she fell to the floor, shattering her Aura. Now, we know Elm is basically the Yang of the group, except bigger, stockier and presumably stronger, so with how tough she’s been portrayed up until now, that she was defeated so swiftly surprises me… Especially when she herself beat Yang down to the point her Aura should’ve broken as well.

First she headbutted Yang, knocking her off-balance and later swinging her hammer with enough strength to send Yang, the strongest and bulkiest member of Team RWBY, flying a considerable distance with her massive hammer. This didn’t happen just once, twice or thrice though. Elm hit Yang on the chest with Timber, her hammer, four times, and every single time she was sent flying. We’ve seen the ridiculous feats of strength Nora Valkyrie’s performed with Magnhild. Well, Elm is at least twice stronger than Nora. The fact Yang’s Aura never even budged despite getting hammered on the chest with the heaviest and most powerful hammer we’ve seen in the show is beyond me. It doesn’t help that she got also hit directly by Vine with a rock the size of her entire body and pushed back. If anything, Elm and Yang’s fight is the most balanced one so Elm being defeated is not the issue. The issue is how despite receiving double the punishment, Yang’s Aura never broke while Elm’s broke with just three hits that didn’t pack the same punch and power all of Elm’s attacks which connected did.

Now regarding Blake’s encounter with Vine… Like Ruby with Harriet, Blake landed a total of zero hits against both Elm and Vine. Coincidentally, however, Blake also was also hit the most in this battle to the point her Aura actually did break. Why only her’s though is not something I can answer. I could describe how Blake got hit, but two of those times she got crushed by Vine’s Semblance and slammed against the wall twice, the second time enough to break the wall as well, and the one time she got hammered on the chest by Elm with enough strength to send her several feet on the air, which likely hurt a whole lot since every single one of Elm’s hits pack two massive punches. Now if any of you are curious about how many hits Vine took before his Aura broke…

It was one. He got sent flying to the ground by Yang and his Aura broke. I don’t count the explosives that detonated near him because he was using his Semblance to hold onto them, reducing the explosion’s power and size, but it still destabilized him and sent him careening to the air for Yang to grab. But Yang’s explosives aren’t exactly the strongest anyways so even if they did do some damage, it was still extremely minuscule damage for his Aura to break from a single hit like Marrow’s did. It was honestly disappointing, especially after we got to witness how strong they truly are by perfectly fighting against a Geist in the earliest episodes of the Volume.

My overall rating of the fight is that, objectively, it was amazingly choreographed… But the power level in RWBY is still awful and largely-irrelevant, since there is no instance in which Team RWBY will actually lose a fight even if throughout the encounter they are taking more hits than their opposition. This is an issue they still need to fix…

Team RWBY’s ‘Plan’

This one is… Upsetting. Even more so than the above because, at this point, Team RWBY is devoid of any and all potential consequences of their actions, and frankly I’m tired of it. Ever since Volume 6 their ‘plans’ if they can even be called that, have been compromising even more things for the sake of their so-called righteousness. In Volume 6 they endangered all of Argus and attacked an entire military base, and to this day they’ve suffered exactly zero consequences for their actions. If anything, they got rewarded for their criminal activity by getting a free pass to Atlas. Ironwood didn’t even look in their direction after they did that too. All for their selfish righteousness too, which in most occasions isn’t even right. They just do whatever they can even if it comes at the cost of other’s safety as long as it serves them

Now they even refuse to even see where Ironwood is coming from. They don’t offer him help, all they do is judge him and criticize him both to his back and in front of him and only side with him when it benefits them. They are, physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of sympathizing with others yet they want others to sympathize with them and their hypocrisy only continues to go rewarded. The narrative is very obviously in their favor and attempts to sway the viewers into thinking Ironwood is the villain for… Doing the only few remaining things he can do to try and keep not just Atlas and the Mantle survivors safe, but all of the world. They don’t even bother to see his point. At no moment during that confrontation do they go ‘we see your point and where you’re coming from, but that’s just playing into Salem’s hands and we can’t do that.’ No, all they do is yell at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he’s an awful person.

They don’t see the greater scheme. All they see are their own lofty ideals. They physically cannot save all the people of Mantle. They physically cannot keep the Lamp and the Staff, and they certainly, at this point in time, physically stop Salem if she is coming. They need ships to save the people of Mantle, they need to be on guard duty to protect the Staff and the Lamp. They need to keep Fria safe to keep the Winter Maiden powers from being robbed, but how are they physically going to do that? By ‘standing their ground?’ That is such a nonsensical, idyllic solution. They can’t do all of those things, but somehow, someway, they are ‘right’ because they want to do ‘the right thing.’ Except. There is no right thing thing to do. Not everything is as black and white as they want it to be. And every single time they do this and experience zero consequences while reaping many rewards for their hypocritical and catastrophic reckless decisions, the more faith I lose in the writers and the show.

Team RWBY defeating the AceOps

Like I said above, this was something I really didn’t enjoy… As I’ve mentioned above, it seems Team RWBY’s recklessness and inconsiderate behavior that endangers far more lives than they save will always go rewarded, and here is no different. I’ve gone through the battle several times and the only fight which deserved to be won by a member of Team RWBY was Weiss’ battle against Marrow, and this was largely because Marrow was holding back and implied he could push Weiss more against the ropes if he wanted to. Not to mention that it was due to Marrow’s hesitation Team RWBY even had a fighting chance. Had he used his Semblance at the very beginning he could’ve frozen all of Team RWBY where they were and have them apprehended immediately because they’d be unable to move.

Besides that one, the only other one who could’ve gone in Team RWBY’s favor is Yang’s fight against Elm, but even so it was… 75/25 in Elm’s favor. But the proof is in the animation, and it shows Elm landing far more attacks on Yang than Yang ever did on her, but since Team RWBY’s victory is required for the plot to progress, they were able to defeat the AceOps. Blake’s fight against Vine and Ruby’s fight against Harriet is not something I can even justify if I tried to do so because it was entirely one-sided on the AceOps’ favor. I try to give a lot of leverage to the show and its writing, but I cannot suspense my disbelief for such a one-sided fight, especially when the AceOps dished out punishment after punishment for Team RWBY and none of their Auras broke nor did they look even remotely tired while the AceOps all went down with two-to-three hits that I find hard to believe would take down the most elite Hunters in all of the Atlas continent.

We don’t know the AceOps’ members’ age, but what we do know is that they’ve been serving directly under James Ironwood for years now, and as the most elite, that makes them the strongest military platoon in all of Atlas with several years long specialized training years under their age while Team RWBY received not even a year of formal training at Beacon Academy and fought some Creatures of Grimm on the way to Mistral, had very limited and minor training under Ozma/Ozpin and then had small bouts against Salem and Raven’s forces in the Battle for Haven. Then after that they faced off against more Creatures of Grimm on the way to Atlas except for the one time they teamed-up to fight against Caroline Cordovin’s Colossus. Compared to the AceOps’ rigorous daily training and constantly having to carry out extremely difficult tasks under Ironwood’s leadership, Team RWBY’s training really pales in comparison.

There are many other ways that Team RWBY’s physical, mental or emotional strength without having them win fights they don’t deserve, because at this point it simply feels like no matter what happens, no matter how gray the situation the writing team behind RWBY attempts to portray, the narrative always tries to portray Team RWBY as being in the right even though for the past two Volumes they have been wrong in their methods without suffering any consequences. It’s exhausting and frankly, not good writing. I understand this is said a lot, but in this case, it can really be attributed to bad writing. Team RWBY doesn’t have to win every fight, they don’t have to always come out on top. They don’t always have to be right. And they most certainly don’t have to always be at the center of everything. That’s what side characters are for, side characters that they rarely use at all but keep around and keep increasing the amount of side characters for the plot. It’s overwhelming in all the wrong ways.

By the way, it was Team RWBY who attacked the AceOps, not the other way around. They could’ve stood down, they could’ve calmed down and realized they were in the wrong in this scenario, and Harriet herself said it first. They decide what happens next. Ruby draws out her weapon and escapes the room, forcing Harriet to chase her. They were the ones who forced the AceOps into acting, not the other way around. But the next moment Ruby is begging Harriet to team up with her to fight Salem even though a moment ago she was challenging Harriet to a fight because of her arrogance and unjustified massive ego. At this point, Ironwood might be paranoid and making bad decisions, but Team RWBY certainly poured gasoline all over his paranoia.

Qrow

I think most of the FNDM can agree that what they did with Qrow makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are a lot of things wrong with his character this chapter. For starters, at no point since he was introduced did Qrow try to solve the problems he faced with outright violence. He always preferred the diplomatic and peaceful approach because that’s what Ozpin taught him to do and what he genuinely believed was the right step today, because violence leads to panic, and the panic leads to Creatures of Grimm… Except in this case where he… Decided to rely on violence.

But the greatest offender was the fact he teamed up with Tyrian of all people– that’s right. Qrow willingly teams up with Tyrian, the same person who has tried to slaughter both Ruby and himself and has successfully murdered dozens of innocent civilians for his own amusement to attack Clover… What? Then he has the audacity to blame Clover for what happened and feels awful when, to no one’s surprise, Tyrian betrays him and stabs Clover with Harbinger when it was him who knocked out Clover’s Aura in the first place.

It’s awful, and I can understand why so many Qrow fans are enraged by this, because even I was and I don’t relate to Qrow that much. Just as the meme goes, ‘everything happens so much…’

Clover’s Death

Didn’t need to happen. Literally that’s my entire point on this section. It didn’t need to happen, it shouldn’t have happened, and this was RWBY’s writing team attempt at shock for the Volume. Because Qrow is just not allowed to have happy endings or friends. Qrow has no rights mourning Clover’s death when he himself was the direct catalyst for it to occur in the first place. But there is something else that is horrifyingly atrocious in the writing department going on with Clover in the last moments of his death. Seconds before getting stabbed with Harbinger, Clover states that he would trust Ironwood with his life… Then, all that changes right after he is nearing the end of his life.

The moment he realizes his life is fading away, once again, Clover goes against anything and everything he stands for by wishing Qrow good luck when the other claims he’s going to make sure Ironwood takes the fall for what happened, when Ironwood is doing nothing wrong. Ironwood keeps getting painted as the villain even by his most loyal soldier, the one who claimed he would trust the general with his life, but that ultimately doesn’t matter based on the show’s writing. Clover previously also talked about how Ironwood was doing the right thing by making the toughest decisions, the decisions that realistically could and would save thousands of lives unlike Team RWBY’s lofty goals.

Goals which by the end of the episode continue being unanswered. How are they going to accomplish all the naïve promises they want to fulfill? From a non-biased opinion and how they tend to solve the writing’s plot holes in past volumes, what most likely’s going to happen is yet another Deus Ex Machina. In Volume 4 it was the ‘random’ troops that just happened to arrive to Kuroyuri on time to escort the group all the way to Mistral and seek medical first aid for Qrow. In Volume 5 it was Blake showing up with an entire militia of the reformed White Fang as well as Vernal, somehow, still living to get that cheap shot in for Raven to have an opening to knock Cinder off the vault’s cliff. In Volume 6 it was Ruby’s empty speeches somehow convincing Cordovin to give them a free ship so they could travel to Atlas even though Team RWBY and company were responsible for everything bad that happened to Argus because of their selfishness.

[hellyeahheroes]

“If you are poor how do you have an iPhone”

This is something that was gnawing at me for several weeks by now. Very recently comicbook twitter has gone on an anti-piracy outrage when one of the indie creators found out their comic book, that same one that had to change from selling in floppies to only selling in trades due to low sales, had hundreds of thousands of views on a pirate website. Due to the respect I have for that creator, I want to preface that what I am about to discuss is not a defense of piracy per se. it is not an argument that even applies in a large scale to indie scene that by far avoids some of the issues I will be talking about.

While I would never openly condone piracy, I have found myself playing devil’s advocate on that day out of sheer anger at one very specific argument that I have seen being thrown around by people condemning piracy. The exchange usually went like this - someone would go and try to say that comics are too expensive and that person would then be mocked for posting from their iPhone or another company equivalent. Every time I saw such behavior I have called it out. In some cases, people would apologize upon me explaining why this line of argument is out of the line. But in one a person had gotten furious I dared to question them, quickly devolving to childish insults and outright toxic behavior (the fact this person is an editor at Geeks World Wide made me completely give up on that website). But that is beside the point.

I want to just make it very clear that this “argument” is rooted in classism and, quite frankly, doesn’t even work. Let us explain the latter first

1. Why You Cannot Just Buy A Single Book

First I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the people using this argument. So we will do something dreadful and talk about math. For the purpose of this argument, I’m even going to go as far as not address the fact that even if you buy an iPhone through installment payments, at one point you are supposed to just have finished paying for the hardware. Meanwhile comic books expect you to keep buying if not one title, then hopefully another effectively forever. This fact in itself breaks the whole line of argument; A person could have wrapped up paying for the iPhone long before they ended in a financial situation where they cannot afford even comics. I will be ignoring this to address what I believe to be a steel man version of the argument - the strongest possible interpretation I can imagine. But even if we assume we live in a capitalist nightmare of endless payments, the rhetorics do not hold water.

Currently, on Apple official store, the newest iPhone11 costs you 30 dollars a month, while iPhone11 Pro is for 25$. In theory, the comparison that is presented should therefore work. After all, if you can afford 25$ dollars you can easily spare $5 for a comic book, right? For that price, you could buy as much as 4 comic books each month. Except that this assumption comes from a perspective that in order to read a single comic book all you need to do is buy that one comic book. Which is not the case. Or rather, it might be a case if we’re talking about independent publishers or markets like European or manga. But is certainly not one for Marvel and DC. While the problem is better than it once was we still regularly end in a situation where, in order to understand what is going on in a single Big 2 book, you need to read several others. This is a common case with big events. Let’s take a look at recently finished Absolute Carnage

This event had the gall to ask you to buy seven books and then upped it to nine. Nine comic books roughly 5 dollars per issue is 45$. To buy all of it would be to spend the equivalent of your iPhone11 Pro fee for five months.

Someone might now say that you obviously do not need to read the entire event. But the truth is, you do not really know that when it comes to making preorders. The event comics are deliberately constructed in such a way to trick people into thinking they have to buy all of it to understand what is going on. It was true when they were humongous, reaching even a hundred issues like the first Civil War, and it is true now. And while veteran fans have learned that usually you only need to follow main series and tie-ins written by its writer, even that can be a strain on someone’s budget. It might be that this person could only afford this one, single comic book. So when they suddenly find what might be their only source of entertainment incomprehensible without paying more money, they may face a dilemma. Deny yourself your one source of joy for any duration of time from a month to half of a year. Or quickly pirate that one book you never wanted to and was never interested in buying in the first place until you had the title you were paying for effectively held hostage.

I want to underline this is not just events. The most outrageous case of this issue right now is the X-Men line since Jonathan Hickman’s takeover. Which has become so self-referential you need to read all the titles in order to understand any single one. Without doing it the books become incomprehensible. This is me speaking from experience here. I was only interested in a single title from the initial launch. But the moment I saw characters talking about events from another book in a way that assumes I’m up to speed, I dropped it. 

In order to get into this so-called great new jumping-in point as it launched fans needed to first spend around $20 a month to buy two miniseries for 3 months. And as Dawn of X rolled in, the number of books rose and keeps rising. X-Men, X-Force, bi-weekly New Mutants, Excalibur and Fallen Angels already request you to invest an equivalent of the monthly price of an iPhone11. And they soon shall be joined by Wolverine, Hellions, Cable, X-Men/Fantastic Four and possibly monthly Giant-Size X-Men. Those keeping attention to the math part might have noticed we are a single series (and we are lead to believe there is more than one coming) from X-Men becoming an investment equal to paying for two separate iPhone11s each month. It is proof that the Big 2 has adopted a “more eggs, fewer baskets” mentality. This customer-unfriendly approach to storytelling seems by design prone to weeding out and turning away all but big spenders who can afford to regularly buy multiple books. it is not different from the exploitative systems we find in video games, designed to prioritize so-called “whales”, as the industry came to call people who can blow ungodly amounts of money on a game, over regular customers.

2. The Rhetoric Itself Is Flawed

However, even if the hypothetical scenario presented by people using the “why do you have an iPhone” argument was true, we need to recognize how toxic this argument is. First of all, this whole line of reasoning is out of touch and assumes that a working iPhone is a luxury, while more and more times in modern society it becomes a necessity. I live in Poland and have not encountered this issue yet, I keep hearing of people who simply cannot get a job without having an iPhone. It’s because more and more fields require you to have working company apps or use them to find new workers in the first place. The miniature computer in your hand has become such a utility tool it now is actively getting harder to operate in modern society without affording it. This line of argument only betrays that you are out of touch almost as much as a similar argument being used to claim people who have flatscreen TVs are not “really poor”. Currently, flatscreens are only TVs being produced and sold anymore, cheap for purchase and cheaper to maintain than a full-sized TV long time out of use and with spare parts likely no longer produced.

Moreover, you don’t really know how exactly that specific person’s financial situation is. It may be that yes, they can afford an iPhone out of necessity but it does require them to be on a tight budget. Maybe the phone itself is actually passed on from a family member - speaking here as someone whose every phone ever was such a gift. It may even be that the person had to work extremely hard and save up a lot to afford this phone and simply is not able to expand on their profits anymore. Or, as mentioned above, that they once could and finished paying for the last installment but have fallen on hard times ever since. The list goes on. The crux of it is that you do not know other people’s stories and have no right to hold them to some arbitrary standards without that knowledge.

Which brings me to my final point - the whole argument relies on perpetuating a myth of “properly poor” people. The made-up image of nobly suffering poor who deny themselves any and all form of luxury in life (and remember, we established that the whole argument relies on seeing modern phones as a luxury, not a necessity they have become) to save money to get themselves out of poverty. Not to mention a similar myth of “kindhearted poor” who gladly give up what little they have to help others - the kind media love to perpetuate to distract from how bad the state of society is to lead to this situation in the first place. This not only does mispresent how the whole capitalist system is rigged to make it easier to save money the higher up the financial ladder you climb, but it also does not understand human nature. Human beings aren’t machines and it is impossible to really go through every single day without some sort of relief. Sometimes it may be a video game or a dinner at a fancy restaurant. Sometimes it may be a smartphone. Or a luxury item you never plan to use but just want to have to remind you what your goal is.

Yet our society made a game out of shaming and being judgmental to every poor person who spends even the tiniest amount of money on escapism, on any sort of relief from how stressful poverty is. And, speaking as someone who had panic attacks caused by sudden financial expenses wrecking my monthly budget, it is stressful. We expect people to act as all forms of entertainment and escapism aren’t also contributing to one of our human needs, the need to simply be able to wind down for even a moment, and thus not worth spending money on. Then we judge them if they resort to illegal means to fulfill that need. 

I would go as far as making the argument this is a self-perpetuating problem. This very line of thinking, that poor must be at all times miserable and them spending even the slightest amount of money on anything nice is worth scorn? it is what actively encourages them to resort to piracy even if they could afford to buy comics. They are being constantly told by society they shouldn’t buy themselves anything not essential. And then the society acts surprised when they then fulfill their needs through illegal means to save money. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I am not making this post to defend piracy. But I think we need to seriously consider what kind of rhetorics is being used to condemn it and what it actually says about people who use it and those who silently nod in agreement.

- Admin

[zm-sc]

On the racism MJ/Zendaya (still) faces

So, it shouldn’t be too long before the new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer gets released. Therefore I’d like to humbly try to provide help to fight the racism these ladies are victims of, by pointing out what I think are the most reccuring patterns in the commentaries MJ/Zendaya receives. This idea came to me as I remembered I had fun screen shoting messy comments at some point and keeping them in a file just in case I’d need to prove a point, and I guess this time has come

Disclaimer: Sadly, these are in no way edits. Real people, type this stuff online. I'm aware a bunch are just really dying for a redhead, fiery and all that, Mary Jane on big screen, and that a bunch are just jealous fangirls thinking they stand a chance with someone who doesn’t even know they exist, but also none of these are reasons to be borderline, or full on racist. Some usernames are masked because I thought it wasn't that deep but still dumb, some are lucky they didn't appear, and some appear because I think that if one has the nerves to make these kind of statements, probably some exposing can not hurt them

Here we go.

1. Racism:

2.  Rationalization of hatred:

NB: A spot on response to this post

I have no screen shots for this, but the reactions to MJ saying “Therefore I have value?” in the first Far From Home trailer. In which the NEXT second she says she is joking, but you know, gotta make this an issue.I read with my own two eyes that it would "put Peter in a bad mood", or "I hate how feminist she is, makes me hate her and the actress". For this latter point, notice, Brie Larson has been getting the stupidest hate for saying she wanted her press tour to not only be white as men interviewers and being a feminist

But still, let us not be delusional, this remains about race.

3. Language: Let’s see: "Gross, "ew", "too black", “woc aren’t attractive”, “sick to my stomach”, “no chemistry”, “ (bonus: letting a single character ruin your whole love for Peter…..) Oh and bad attitude” “rude as fuck”, “basic-ass negative”, “forced”, “NO Chemistry”, “she made fun of him”. I could go on but it’s not in these posts, but you get me. Like what is gross? What is the standard for chemistry? Is calling him a "loser" truly the end of the world or is it all a reach because MJ doesn't cater to hegemonic feminity, so it makes her rudw? (S/O to Brie Larson again, who is having her whole body language analyzed to prove her co stars hate her/is being compared to every actress who has played a super hero to prove that it's ok to dislike her because she is not "nice" compared to the hegemonic standard these x other actresses correspond to.) Btw, “I love Zendaya but” is a classic too, usually prefaces nonsense

4. "I love x character who is a poc/x black character so this take is invalid”. Wrong. Not being racist towards one race is not a stop from being anti black, furthermore in this case, it is not a stop from not falling into mysoginoir. Very simply, “mysoginy directed towards black womenwhere race and gender both play roles in bias.” It’s all systemic. Loving Ned doesn't prevent you from being anti black. Men are privileged over women and then it’s race coming into play, always. Zendaya/MJ is a black woman, so she is less worthy of everything, and so it makes little sense in these people’s minds that Peter would like her, let alone that he’d want to date her. Ned is a man, so he is not a threat to fangirls’ fantasies, in which you’ll also notice they treat Ned/Jacob Batalon better than MJ (well, whatever "better" is when you aren’t a skinny white boy….).

5. "Liz was better". (Very often is the pov of, wait for it, white girls (often male fans would rather not even have Spidey in a relationship all short, so yeah). Because she was a fleshed out character absolutely not solely designed as a plot device to the Toomes reveal, or because she embodied the behavior that is deemed as THE one women should have if they want a man's attention and so it is easier to project yourself into her than it is to do so with MJ? That was rhetorical. Gender socialization. Hegemonic feminity. Be white, nice, docile, so very sweet and ready to please, or you won't find a man/job! But men can be shitty and yet will be called badass or witty. Think here for a sec, how many people who dislike Michelle for being rude, are into TONY STARK/Irondad? And God knows I love Tony, but as if he is a saintl? From his pre cave antics to the way he was with Peter in Homecoming and some other stuff in between. Also, he would fucking love MJ lol? What differentiates them so much at the end of the day, from the constant sarcasm to the obvious need to hide their feelings behind it? And that she clearly loves Peter, as did Tony but it took him until Endgame to show it. What makes it ok for him to not have shown it from the jump but makes MJ undeserving of character developpement and of Peter falling in love with her in Far From Home after an obviously planned character developpement? The fact that Tony is white and male. That's it

Candice Patton/Iris in The Flash, hell, Serena Williams in tennis, are all examples of this

6. Another thing that does not appear here but that exists, related to MJ or not, is attempting to erase Zendaya’s blackness to deny these reactions could possibly be racially motivated. “She is half white”. Or whatever headass take of the likes. But we know those 50% are not the reason why she is “Not the real MJ”. So which is it? Is she too black or not white enough? The answer is: Both. And both are racist statements, period. The people saying “they should have just named her Mary Jane” are also the same who were all up Zendaya and Marvel’s ass when her casting news dropped, bet

In conclusion, racism has many more faces else than explicitly using the n word, exactly like these microgressions above

They are not ok, because they stem from systematic racism and oppression, including negative stereotyping. This idea that black women are aggressive, not desirable, and not beautiful enough etc is nothing new but it still does not make it tolerable. Nobody who is racist or using a microagression, consciously or not, will actually ever admit it when called out on it. So dare to open that can of worms if you can. And for those who have been called out, please actually listen to why this statement is being made, especially if it's by a POC. That way you should technically never face this accusation again because you'd have listened and learned, instead of not listening and learning and finding yourself getting called names every turn, because you refused the lesson you could have gotten at the last turn

Spider-Man: Far From Home comes out on July 2nd and its press tour is starting today. I'd like to encourage everyone to above all, provide Zendaya/MJ the support she is going to need online, as she will this time get more to chew in this movie than in Homecoming, and yet people will still find reasons to complain, but also to not forget to pay attention in the future, to the frequency of use of these patterns when talking about MJ/Zendaya and to not let them stop you from defending these ladies. Let Z (and Marvel too while at it) know you have their back. She is a very attuned to social media lady, she would not miss the memo, nor would Marvel

A cute edit: We love racism and disrespecting drug addicts for no reason. Carry on though, idiots