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queersrus · 2 years ago

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Hi, Fukase anon here! Sorry, It never occurred to me that people may have a hard time coming up with things for characters they don't know a lot about. Sorry :( /gen

Anyways, I really love the clown and red theme ideas! Also, since Vocaloid is technically a music software, I was thinking some music-themed names as well! Also, as long as this isn't too specific, could you maybe do some X-themed things since there's a lot of Xs in his design?

I also like the idea of the darker, edgier themes, but I'd rather not have anything explicitly horror/slasher/demon related... as someone who kins Fukase, being associated with that stuff brings back some rough memories :( /nm

I'm sorry if I'm being too specific or picky or anything like that, and I hope everything I've said makes sense! Once again, thank you in advance :)

no worries!!

heres some names and pronouns based of red, clown, dark/edgy themes and the letter x!

Music names:

muse, musa, musica, musette harmony melody, mic, major, minor clef, capelle, capella, cord, chorus note key tone, tempo, timbre bar, beat, bridge, bass, blue, blues sheet, strum, song, singer, sang, string, sonata, soul acoust, adagio, allegro, andante, arpeggio, amp, alto, aria instro, instra, instrumenta rythm/rhythm, ryme/rhyme, rock, rocker orchest, orchestra pitch, pop funk

list here, here

red names:

Altemur, altan, autumn, apple, amaranth, alhambra, alroy danla, desire, desiree parichat, phoenix, pepper, poppy/poppie cher, cherry/cherrie/cherri, crimson, clifford, copper, candy/candie, currant, carmine, carmin, chili, coral, corsen, clancy maroon, merlot, mahogany, mohagan blood, brick, berry/berrie, blush, burgundy, barn, burn, blaze ruby, rust, rusty, rose, raspberry, redd, rede, redde, reder, redi/redie/redy, reddet/redet/reddett/reddette/redett/redette, redeta/reddeta/reddetta/reddeta, redin/redine, redina, redino, roso/rosso, rufus/rufous, rowan, rosa, rosie, roisin, rory, radley, rudyard, radcliff, redmond, redman, rumo, russel/russell, rohan, redford, rufina, reeding/reading, reed, rogan, roone, roth garnet, ginger, gough scarlet, sangria, strawberry, sienna, sorrel/sorrell jam wine, watermelon fire, flame, ferrari, flan/flann, flannel, flanner, flannery, flyn/flynn, flanna vermilion, venetia imperia tart, torch hazel, harkin

clown names:

Joseph, john, joey grock oleg emmett/emet/emmet/emett bozo, barry ronald krusty penny, pogo, pinto charles sunshine weary, willie albert, antonio, arthur daniel, david, demitri/dimitri, Demetrius/demitrius tinsel

actually found a whole wiki here

Dark/Edgy names:

dusk, dagger, draven, drake, draco, damon/daemon, damion/damien/damian grey/gray, gunner/gunnar, greer keir, khaos, knox, kestrel umbra, umbro poison, pain/payne asteroth/astaroth, asher, ammo, astrid chaos, crow, coen, chase, casper, caspian, cassian, carter, cage, colton hades, hemlock, hex, hunter, hawk, harper somber, sombre, sombra, serpent, snake, saber, stone, storm, slade/slayde, sparrow, salem, snow, smoke, slayer necro, natrix, nox, nix, nyx, nero, nash branwen, briar, blackwell, blade/blaid, blair, blase/blaze/blaise raven, reven, requiem, rhapsody/rapsody, rogue, ryder, ryker, raze, razer eris, elysium, ebony jinx, jett/jet, jack, jason lucien, lucius, lock/locke viper, venom, vlad, vane/vain/vein, veil, vee/v wolf/wolfe trix/tryx, trixie, thorn, tyren/tyrin, tirent, torrent, tyranny, toxin, tank, tempest, tanner zeke, zena fox, flask, falkner, falkon/falcon onyx/onix, obsidian xena

X names:

xen/xene, xavier, xena, xeno, xenon, xeon, xero, xerox, xyx, xyr/xyre, xyra, xray, xeny/xenny/xenie, xenia, xander/xzander, xyla, xyler/xylar, xia, xavi, xylia, xylitol, xioa, xu, xan, xanth/xanthe, xanthus, xavia, Xinjiang, xinia, xenophon/xenophone, xayvion/xavion, xochitl, xio, xion, xiona, xiomara, ximena, xanthia

many here

red 3rd p pronouns:

list here and here

clown 3rd p pronouns:

list here and here

edgy/dark 3rd p pronouns:

list here, here

x 3rd p pronouns:

xe/xem, xy/xem, xy/xyr, xe/xyr, xy/lo, xylo/phone xyi/lotl, x/x's, ex/ex's, ex/exes, xay/xem, xay/xyr, xie/xem, xie/xyr xe/no, xeno/xenos, xeno/morph, cross/crossed, cross/crosses, x'ed/out, exed/out, ex/amble

hope these help!

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luuurien · 2 years ago

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moondaughter - phosphenes and iridescent lights

(Ambient Pop, Slowcore, Dreampunk)

Diving fully into the ambient pop & dreampunk her projects as sonhos tomam conta used to guide the flow of heavy screamo and blackgaze, Lua Viana's debut under the moondaughter moniker is a potent dose of her unique soundscape stylings. With a weightiness and dark undertow to each luminous track, phosphenes and iridescent lights shows off Viana's ability to pierce the heart's center through mood alone.

☆☆☆☆

If you've heard a sonhos tomam conta song in the past, you'll already know a decent bit about what phosphenes and iridescent lights sounds like. While Lua Viana's work under the name took much inspiration from black metal, shoegaze and emo, she spaced these songs out with tender ambient pieces where her love of Grouper and Angelo Badalamenti were readily apparent, full of rich guitar and synth layers along with light dashes of percussion that provided breathing room within the anguish and distress her albums focus on. As moondaughter, those delicate ambient sections become the focal point, phosphenes and iridescent lights letting more vivid colors and greater contrast into them as the album gets closer to her heart than ever before. It's a slow album, but by no metric an unengaging one. Part of what makes Viana's ambient pieces so interesting is how her noisier influences always find themselves in the rearview: even as she moves further away from them, that discordance and intensity is always around in one for or another, be it in the ice-cold synth pads that swallow up endless sea of nothingness' electric guitars or the touches of distortion and noise in first blossom of the evening's midsection, thickening up Viana's mixture with a buoyant low-end that gives the album more space to work with (midnight prayers largely forgoes all that in favor of ethereal textures and softer instrumentation, though its implementation is a bit too heavy and causes it to feel much airier and less enriching than its surrounding tracks). There are even some nods to post-rock in lonely people / neon cities, its brushing percussion and gnashing vocal performance from meu quarto é vazio the closest thing to standard sonhos tomam conta fare the album delivers. Viana can be both breathtaking and heartbreaking at once, and that dichotomy is what phosphenes and iridescent lights thrives on. Choosing to go with a more exposed sound also brings phosphenes and iridescent lights incredibly close to Viana's soul, her writing lighter than usual but all the emotion condensed into just a few short verses: "My shadow greets yours in the nightfall / The memory of me feels blurred with yours," she sings alongside fellow shoegazer Della Zyr on early highlight when i fall asleep, and her songs written in Portuguese take on feelings of listlessness and overwhelming sorrow made all the more crushing when unprotected from the elements her intense blackgaze songs normally provide. Though it's an ambient album at heart, there's a folk songwriter's sense of intimacy and tactility to Viana's work here she hasn't shown before, phosphenes and iridescent lights her first chance to take on these emotions without the commotion of noise rock keeping her steady. With the shift in tone phosphenes and iridescent lights brings, Viana positions herself as not just one of the most exciting talents in modern noise rock, but a well-honed crafter of different emotional worlds her music gives shape to. It's in how she softly travels around the bottom three strings of her guitar on mais vívida que o mundo real, or lets her voice shoot out the mix clearer than ever on caminho das rosas, or brings a little bit of glitchiness into first blossom of the evening like sand being brushed around by the tip of her finger, phosphenes and iridescent lights her most heartfelt project to date simply by stripping back everything but the core of her songwriting and artistic expression. She knows precisely the kinds of stories and feelings she needs her music to tell, and phosphenes and iridescent lights does nothing less.

#moondaughter #sonhos tomam conta #phosphenes and iridescent lights #delirio prod #ambient #ambient pop #dreampunk #electronic #folk #post-rock #psychedelic folk #slowcore #2022 #8/10 #album review #album reviews #2022 albums

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heavenlymemoir · 2 years ago

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Rosa Memories

I dated both Vyn and Artem, at the same time. Yes, they knew and yes they were fine with it. I remember Vyn asking first and then Artem second, but Artem didn’t know about my relationship with Vyn. So I told him and explained everything.

I called Vyn too. I told him what Artem asked and asked for his opinion on the matter; he knew beforehand that I had liked Artem, but had seen Artem was too busy with cases for a devout relationship. Vyn listened intently, and said that as long as Mr. Wing knew of our already pre-existing relationship and consent was with both sides, things could work.

It was a bit hard at first; trying to find balance between Vyn’s and Artem’s schedule to spend time with them both. One had different needs than the other, and one had a different way of love language. I called them both and asked them to come over one night and just told them flat out that I am having issues balancing things between them.

Artem and Vyn both had a look on their face and I knew they thought I was breaking up with them, so I quickly clarified that no, I am not breaking up with either of them. I just wanted to call them over to see if they had any ideas on how to work this out, because I loved them equally and didn’t want to hurt one to please the other. And Artem spoke, and with his suggestion, it caught me and Vyn off-guard. Artem just implied that we do a poly-three way. I didn’t understand at first and he explained further. Say I’m point A. A goes to B and C, just as B goes to A and C, and C goes to A and B. A triangle!

I looked at Vyn and he asked Artem if he could step out so we could discuss matters privately, and he agreed. So Vyn turned to look at me better and asked what I thought. I said I was okay with it; I was just concerned because I don’t know either of their sexualities and didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for them. Vyn told me right then and there, that he had been questioning for a while; in fact, it was ever since he joined the NXX and seen Artem. He told me how Artem had awoken something within him that had scared him, so he hid it for years until he was okay enough to confront the issue again. He asked if I was okay with that, and if changed my views on him. I shook my head and said no, why would it? Even if he did tell me from the beginning or in fact, kept it hidden until we parted, I still would’ve loved him the same way. I cannot solely love someone or deny them that love based of something as trivial as sexuality, or lack thereof. Vyn seemed pleased with my answer, and he took of his glasses.

He was crying. He was crying?? I thought. I asked if I said anything wrong and he just shook his head no, wiped his glasses and cleared his throat. He said he had been so scared that it would change my view on him or our love, and that I would leave. I held him for a bit, and texted Artem he could come back in. He told Artem the same thing, and Artem was shocked at first. Now, as far as I know, Artem did not harbor any homophobia. I seen a look in his eyes that confirmed what I thought, and Artem came out right there too.

Artem had sighed as if a weight were taken from him. He said that although he himself were not questioning, he was indeed bisexual. That he had seen a show during his childhood that had awoken the same urge and feeling as Vyn described. That out of fear of repercussion from his family and parents, out of fear for being judged by the media and clients, out of fear for being blacklisted from jobs and such, he kept it hidden. And so, we three had an intense talk that night. It was not a bad talk, just talk filled with love and nothing less.

I remember how Vyn asked me to be his. The following is that memory;

“Time itself seems to stop, as if it too, were stunned by your words. I blink a few times, and look up at you. You stand before me with your hand extended, a patient smile on your face. Your soft eyes glimmer in the lights, the flickering candle on the table dances back, entranced by your beauty too. Your eyes encapsulate me, enveloping me in a world unknown to anyone else. My heart quickens again, as you ask me to dance with you.

My brain and body are no longer one; my brain wants me to refuse, to stay out and watch you go, and my heart wants to agree with you. And so I do. I dare not look away from your eyes, for I’m too afraid the spell you’ve cast will end and you’ll simply vanish from existence. As we slowly make our way to the dance floor, the occupants move, as if enthralled by you too. They whisper amongst themselves, but their quiet and ushered words fall upon deafened ears. The music starts, and you whisk me away.

The strings and the piano dictate our moves and I lose sense of direction and stumble. You catch me and hold me oh so close. You smell of roses, a warm fireplace, and of spice. It reminds me of a home I’ve never stepped foot in, yet I feel homesick. You gently lift my head, and move a strand of loose hair, tucking it behind my ear. It leaves a lingering warmth on my face. You hold my face as the music slows, and lean down to my ear.

3 words were whispered. Yet, those 3 words lit my heart and body aflame. Those 3 words sent warmth all over my body, and soon, my face matched the redness of my dress. Yet, you stayed and danced. We danced the entire night, and nobody dared to stop us. As the music began to fade, and the sun started to rise, I whispered 4 words back to you.

I love you too.

I always have, Vyn.”

What made the memory come back: Summer’s Romance and Pacifica by Caleb Bryant.

#rosa ; kin memories

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vavuska · 3 years ago

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This girl is right: Freud's mom was a hottie!

Sigmund Freud (aged 16) and his mother, Amalia, in 1872

More about Oedipus complex:

Who were Freud's parents?

Freud was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic), the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia, a historic province straddling modern-day West Ukraine and southeast Poland. His father, Jakob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel (1833–1914) and Philipp (1836–1911), by his first marriage. Jakob's family were Hasidic Jews and, although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition, he came to be known for his Torah study. He and Freud's mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as a positive omen for the boy's future.

In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg.

Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866).

How was Freud's relationship with his parents?

The answer to this question could be found in the letters from Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin nose and throat doctor with whom Freud carried on a passionate 15-year friendship. The letters suggested a greater anguish by Freud over the abandonment of the seduction theory and several details about his auto-analysis.

Mothers and Nannies

Amalia was considered by her grandchildren to be an intelligent, strong-willed, quick-tempered but egotistical personality. She has been described as lively and humorous, with a strong attachment to her eldest son whom she called "mein goldener Sigi".

Just as Amalia idolised her eldest son, so there is evidence that the latter in turn idealised his mother, whose domineering hold over his life he never fully analysed.

However, nannies or nurses were always present in the Viennese's bourgeois households. The Freud-Fliess letters attracted attention to Freud's nanny and also to the role played by nannies in the ideal family of psychoanalytic theory. Included in the models that explained the bourgeois family since the nineteenth century, but excluded by analytic theory, the nanny, ever present in Austrian upper-class families, still poses a question to the father-mother-infant triangle. The relevance of the nanny's presence in children's development is fundamental and could introduce themes such as adultery, sexual harassment by the master, illegitimate children.

Freud's interest in nannies began, it seems, with the analysis of the cases that would be known in the analytical literature as those that were in the origin of the 'seduction theory' – and also with his auto-analysis. His interest, though, extended well beyond the time of this emergence, as we will see.

Almost all of his patients had a nanny or nurse – some of them had two, what would lead to a curious unfolding of this character, either in the duo good mother/ bad nanny, or, in a kind of duplication, as good nanny/bad nanny.

Freud's nanny, from whom even the name is disputed, could have been a Czech woman, a catholic, who took him to masses and reproved him for being good for nothing. He wrote:

"Today's dream has, under the strongest disguise, produced the following: she was my teacher in sexual matters and complained because I was clumsy and unable to do anything."

In the next letter (October, 15), Freud registers what his mother had told him about the nanny. Asking her if she remembered the nanny, he got the answer:

"Of course", she said, "an elderly person, very clever, she was always carrying you off to some church; when you returned home you preached and told us all about God Almighty. During my confinement with Anna (two and a half years younger) it was discovered that she was a thief, and all the shiny new kreuzers and zehners [coins] and all the toys that had been given to you were found in her possession. Your brother Philipp himself fetched the policeman; she then was given ten months in prison."

Telling that his nanny made him steal money to give her, Freud interpreted his dream as a reproach for asking money from his patients for his bad treatment of them, in the same way as "the old woman got money from me for her bad treatment." The fact that Freud used his mother's remembrance to strengthen the interpretation he made of the dream –in which he was the thief - doesn't matter here, neither his identification with the nanny, observed by some analysts of this famous dream ("I = She"), but it is relevant to consider that it seems that it was with his auto-analysis that the nanny figure began to be seen as a malignant one or, in the best hypothesis, as an ambiguous one.

What needs explanation is how the theory of the Oedipus complex accounts for the boy's guilty impulses toward his mother but ignores the boy's arousal at the hands of his nurse, especially in view of how much more attention his nurse gets from Freud than his mother does.

Discussing the possible interpretations of Freud's dreams along his auto-analysis, many authors saw the relevance of the nanny's presence in his development until his conclusion that "the remarkable circumstance" is that Freud, in effect, had two mothers, his actual mother – whose nakedness he can only mention in Latin – and his nanny whom he remembers in association with numerous disturbing sexual experiences. Having two such mothers, and the luck of having the 'bad' ugly mother banished from his life when he was only two and a half, allows Freud to maintain a secure split between the internalized good and bad mothers.

Unconsciously, Freud's nurse was his seductress and shamer, his mother the pure object of guilty desire.

Thus Freud's discovery of the Oedipus complex emerges not only from memories of a small boy's guilty, aggressive lust for his mother, but from memories of dependence on her, too – a dependence remembered, however as the seduction of a small bourgeois, Austrian boy by a Czech working-class woman in a province of the Austrian Empire still recovering from the Revolution of 1848.

Freud's father

To begin with the so-called 'seduction theory': in 1896 Freud published a polemic article in which he attributed the origin of hysteria to a sexual trauma suffered by his female – and some male - patients that ranged from sexual harassment to sexual abuse in the hands of a member of the family: uncles (some of whom were revealed as fathers in subsequent publications), brothers, guardians, school colleagues, or nannies. He said that this trauma was "unhappily" caused "too frequently, by a near kin."

In this article he said that in 18 cases of hysteria until then analyzed by him (six men and twelve women), all of them showed this etiology, or cause, of the condition.

By 1897, Freud was spending six days a week analyzing his patients, many of them suffering from hysteria. Increasingly, their problems resonated with his own. Freud began to suspect that he too was neurotic, suffering from what he described as "a little case hysteria." He became consumed by his own self-analysis.

In the spring of 1897, Freud wrote his friend Fliess about a new patient, a young woman with hysterical symptoms: "It turned out that her supposedly otherwise noble and respectable father regularly took her to bed when she was eight to twelve years old and misused her…"

It was Freud wrote, "fresh confirmation" that the prime cause of hysteria was the sexual abuse of an innocent child by an adult, most often, a father. But his theory had alarming implications. If he himself suffered from a form of hysteria, and if an abusive father caused hysteria, then Freud was forced to draw a distressing conclusion. He began to imagine that his own father might have abused him. Three months after Jacob's death, he wrote Fliess: "Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts, and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother… and those of several younger sisters."

Freud realized that he can not get further in understanding others unless he analyzes himself. That was another one of those great ideas. [But] The dreams that he analyzed are not really particularly well analyzed.

Freud interpreted the message "close the eyes" in his dream after his father's death to mean that there was something he was not meant to see, nor to know about, his father. To make his theory work, his father's secret had to be that he had sexually abused his children. But, when he could find no evidence of such behavior and no clear memory of abuse among his brothers and sisters, his seduction theory collapsed.

By the next year, he began doubting his proposition, and wrote to Fliess: "I don't believe in my neurotica [neurosis theory] any more." Even if he mentioned the seduction theory in other letters of this year (and also years after), he began, then, to treat these denounces of his patients as a fantasy.

#vavuskapakage #sigmund freud #freud #historical figures #historical #History of psychology #oedipus complex #oedipus #psychoanalysis #Psychological projection #psychology #Seduction theory

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echo-bleu · 4 years ago

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Brothers

A little Manes brothers canon divergence for @eveningspirit ‘s birthday! I hope you like it :) It also happens to fit with today’s @alexmanesappreciation theme: legacy.

[concussions, mentions of vomiting, mentions of abuse, mentions of the shed scene]

The exact sequence of events that leads to him, Flint and Gregory sitting together on a mattress in the bared living room of a house he doesn't know will remain blurry in Alex's memory. He puts it on the massive concussion he sustained at the hands of his own father, because he was careless enough to let his guard drop for ten seconds and the bastard managed to sneak up on him.

He remembers waking up in his childhood home and almost throwing up on the floor of the basement at the goddamn awful feeling of being back there−or maybe that was just the concussion. Probably the concussion.

He'd suspected that his father was faking most of the consequences of his stroke for a while, and he'd known about the bug on his phone for days. He just didn't expect his father to act so fast, in the middle of the junkyard, when Alex was supposed to report back in the morning.

Maybe Jesse heard something in his voice down in the bunker. Alex let his emotions carry him away and said more than he meant to, so maybe his father figured out that he was made somehow. Either way, he got the drop on him, and Alex woke up with a killer headache, pissed off, confused, and, yes, scared. Even after all these years, after three tours overseas, his father still scares the shit out of him.

The one who greeted him upon waking up, however, was not his father. It was Flint, a gun in his hand and a hard look on his face. Alex's sudden hope that Flint was here to free him was squashed quickly at his sneer. He listened to Flint and their father argue up in the living room about where to keep him for hours−something about Jesse grabbing him too early, before things were ready−before Flint came to get him. He'd learned his lesson from last time, because he stayed out of range of Alex's zip-tied hands the whole way out of the house. Alex nearly fell down the stairs at least three times because of the dizziness, and threw up, with some satisfaction, on his father's shoes.

It's been days, but he's still dizzy and nauseous all the time, and the killer headache is a constant companion.

Greg's hands are on him, checking him over. He finds one of the bumps on his head and Alex flinches away, almost overbalancing off the mattress when the cuff on his wrist pulls him back. “Are you alright?” Greg murmurs. Alex nods, and immediately regrets it as it sends a spike of pain down his spine.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Greg?” Flint growls. For once, he doesn't have his gun in his hand. Alex realizes that it's because the gun is tucked in Greg's waistband and he frowns, trying to keep it in his line of sight just in case. He thinks Greg actually cares, that he's not in on this with Flint and their Dad, but if he's not, why is he here?

“Now that's a real funny story,” Greg smirks mirthlessly. “Why don't you sit down, Flint?” He formulates it as a question, but it's obviously an order. And in a situation where there's only one gun, ranks don't matter much. Greg is out of the Navy and Alex outranks both of them anyway. Flint slowly drops to the floor, just outside the mattress, and crosses both his legs and his arms petulantly.

“See, yesterday morning, I got a call,” Greg stars. “It's the funny thing about being the only one in our family Alex trusts enough to list as next of kin. You get these calls. I got one before,” he nods to Alex's leg. “No, two, actually. There was that one time−” Alex glares at him and he rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay, back to the point. I was told that Alex had been AWOL for 72 hours, and they were looking for him.”

Alex winces. Of course he already knows that crawling this way out of this one, even if everything ends well and no one dies, is going to be impossible. Being AWOL will earn him jail time, which is already bad, but if they start looking into his recent activities out of suspicion...well, he hopes to God that Liz has really emptied the lab, or things will get a hell of a lot more complicated.

Speaking of Liz...

Helena Ortecho was a surprise. There's a kind of irony in there, that Alex would be more surprised at being held captive by a woman he hasn't seen in over a decade than by his own family. He wonders what Liz would think of Helena being a kidnapper−or of her being more motherly to him that he's ever seen her be to Liz and Rosa. She watched Flint tie him up to a radiator without a word and then brought him food and clothes that weren't covered in vomit and dust, even getting Flint to briefly untie him at gunpoint to get his arm through the sleeve. Alex might have tried to seize the opportunity to fight back if he'd been able to see straight.

“Now I'm a good brother, and I know there's no way Alex would go AWOL without a good reason,” Greg continues. “Especially the day after he drove to the rez with a bunch of suspicious people who are supposedly his friends, and tells me he thinks that Dad has changed.”

Flint huffs.

“Yes,” Greg nods. “Either our baby brother really is more naive than we thought, or something fishy is going on.” Alex rolls his eyes, and Greg just glares at him.

The last few days, after getting to the house, are even more fuzzy. Alex remembers trying to push the mattress against the wall to get a better range of movement, and Flint coldly making him pull it back. He remembers pulling off his prosthetic, his stump swollen and sore from too much time with it on, and then trying to hit Flint with it the next time he came by, which earned him what is probably a second concussion from the butt of his brother's gun. He doesn't really remember anything since then. From the stubble on his face, it's been at least three days, but time is wonky and his mind unreliable.

Which brings him to now, and now has Greg sitting beside him on the mattress. Alex tries to blink away the confusion and sit up properly, wincing when his stump moves on the mattress. Days without a shrinker will make it a bitch to get back into the prosthetic.

Greg shifts. “I took a family emergency day, since that seemed to be the case, and I drove to Roswell. I had to look up my own brother's address in the phone book,” he glares again.

Alex throws his free hand up. “Hey, you're the one who didn't want to come.” His voice is weak and hoarse from disuse, and Greg looks more concerned than chastened.

“Right. I broke in−sorry, Alex, I'll replace the lock if you want me to. Alex's house was empty but his suitcase was still waiting on his bed. So I looked up Isobel Evans.”

“Really? Isobel?”

Greg shrugs. “I don't know what's going on between you, Guerin and Maria, but I'm not getting in the middle of it. Besides, Isobel seemed the most sensible of all of you.”

“You're just attracted to her,” Alex mutters.

“Alex, the choice I had was her or her brother. I know you're gay, but would you really go to Max Evans first?”

“I see your point,” Alex concedes, though he's still really not sure “sensible” is the adjective he'd use to describe Isobel. His muddled brain can't seem to come up with a better one, though, so he lets it go.

“All Isobel could tell me was that no one had seen you since you came back from the rez, but she got everyone moving to find you. Guerin went at it with Dad, got him to admit that he got to you first and Flint took you from him. Don't ask me how, I don't know.”

Isobel, Alex thinks after he's parsed all this−with at least a thirty-second delay. Isobel must have gone into their Dad's head, he would never have told them that willingly. But Greg doesn't know about aliens and there's no way he'll risk telling Flint something he could use against them, so he keeps quiet.

“After that, it wasn't hard to follow Flint here from his place,” Greg finishes. “I disarmed him once I confirmed you were here.”

Flint grunts. Alex looks over at him, amused. He's never been the best at self-defense, even when they were kids, too easily overtaken by his temper.

“Now will someone explain to me what's going on here?” Greg straightens up more, in a stance that looks relaxed but Alex can feel is fully vigilant. He may be missing part of the story, but he's a force to be reckoned with.

Alex and Flint exchange a glance. Somehow even as they stand on opposite sides of this fight, this decision−tell Greg about the aliens or try to lie their way through some kind of resolution−comes down to them. “Where's Helena?” Alex asks.

“In town,” Flint answers, some of the confrontation gone from his tone. “She won't be back for a few hours.”

“Who's Helena?” Greg asks.

“Flint's accomplice,” Alex answers. “Ironically also my friends' mom.”

“Which friends?” Greg frowns.

“Liz and Rosa. You remember them?”

Greg nods. “Rosa was the girl in Flint's year who died, right? Her mom is helping you?” he asks Flint.

Flint shrugs and looks at Alex again, trying to communicate something silently. Alex doesn't bother figuring out what it is. His head isn't quite clear enough to see all of the implications, but he already knows that there's no way Greg will settle for anything short of the truth. And Greg has always been very good at reading his brothers.

Plus, Greg is in control here, and he's been more than sympathetic to Alex since his injury. This could come out well for Alex, so he won't let Flint turn this to his advantage.

“Dad tried to take me down because I've become an inconvenience to his little genocide plan,” he says before Flint can stop him. “Flint thinks he can use me to get Michael to build him a bomb.”

That's the little he's gathered from Flint's talk with Dad the other day, and from Flint and Helena's interaction. He has no idea where Helena comes into it or how she learned about aliens, but he knows Flint's motivations well enough. They've been clear since Caulfield.

“Wait, genocide? Bomb?” Greg spits out in shock. Then he shakes his head, as if realizing that he shouldn't be surprised. “What the fuck are you doing, Flint?”

“They're invaders,” Flint says. “They're dangerous.” He's looking at Alex rather than Greg, as if he's trying to convince him. Alex wonders if he's not still trying to convince himself. Dad's twisted ideas coming from Flint's mouth sound so perverted and out of place.

“They're people,” Alex shoots back.

“They're aliens!”

“They're refugees!”

“Whoa,” Greg throws up his arms. “Am I missing something obvious or did you suddenly become a racist asshole? Are you even hearing yourself?” he asks Flint. Flint has the good grace to look a little abashed.

“Literal aliens,” Alex mutters. “We're talking about actual aliens.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Not even a little,” Alex sighs.

Greg closes his eyes. “Okay. Aliens. And Dad−”

“Wants to kill them all. Kept some of them prisoners for decades and experimented on them.”

Alex watches both Greg and Flint's face closely as he says that. Greg's is suitably horrified, but he doesn't know how to interpret Flint's expression. It's not disgust. It's not glee, either. He may be parroting Dad's rhetoric, but he's not lost to it.

“Dad was just trying to protect us,” he says. Not perfectly assured. The facade is cracking.

“Was?” Greg notices.

“He's been weaker, since the stroke.”

“You know he's faking the limp, right?” Alex asks.

A shadow goes through Flint's gaze. “Of course,” he says, but it's obviously a lie.

“Another lovely moment, finding out my father has been faking a disability for months when he hit me over the head with his cane,” Alex casually turns to Greg. Flint winces, glancing down at Alex's empty pant leg. “I love how well we communicate in this family.”

“Alex−” Flint starts.

“You don't get to say anything. You've been holding me chained up for days against my will. You've lost the right to tell me how great a family we are.”

“I'm still hung up over the alien thing, but I have to agree with Alex here,” Greg says. “What the fuck were you thinking, Flint?”

“He wants Michael to do something for him,” Alex says when Flint doesn't answer. “I don't even know why you'd think Michael will do anything. We're not together. And you're asking him to build a bomb designed to wipe out his entire species, Flint.”

“Wait, wait, Guerin's an alien?” Greg interrupts him.

“Yep,” Alex pops out the 'p'. “That's Dad's great threat to earth. Three orphan refugees who just want to live their life.”

“They're not alone,” Flint mutters, at the same time as Greg asks, “Three? Who else?”

“Max and Isobel Evans,” Alex smirks. The cat is out of the bag anyway, since Flint knows, and this little revenge feels good. Having one of his brothers on his side will feel good.

Greg blinks. “Okay,” he drawls out. “Let me get this straight. Guerin and the Evanses are aliens, even though they look just like us. And Dad knows about this, and wants to...wipe them out? And you're helping him?” he points to Flint.

“It's not just them,” Flint says. “We had specimens in Caulfield who could cause cancer with a simple touch, blow up whole buildings. They have dangerous powers.”

“And you have a gun,” Alex says. “How is it less dangerous than any of those powers? Powers, I should add, that Dad had no trouble using for his own agenda when it came to eliminating Jim Valenti.”

“Jim Valenti was killed by Subject N-38,” Flint frowns.

“And what, you think he went into his cell for fun? I have all the video surveillance, Flint. All the records. Decades of Dad and our grandfather randomly torturing people before going home for Sunday dinner.” From those surveillance tapes, he knows that Flint never had real contact with any of the prisoners. He never even went beyond the upper level, where he did the designs for his bomb. Alex spent hours and hours watching those tapes. “They're the same as us. Just people.”

“They want to wipe us out,” Flint says.

“They're my family,” Alex counters softly.

The shock on Flint's face would be comical, if it wasn't so painful. Greg's gaze on Alex is lost and sad. “They're more my family than you've ever been,” Alex adds for Flint.

He tries to mitigate that blow by putting a hand on Greg's arm, to show him that he doesn't mean him, but Greg shakes his head and gently moves away, guilt obvious on his face. Alex pushes through and leans his shoulder on Greg's, welcoming the support. His head is clearer now, but he's aching all over.

“Did you ever stop to think, when you were overseas?” he starts, his voice barely more than a whisper as he's trying to conserve some energy. “When you pointed your gun at insurgents or civilians or whoever it was that day you were ordered to contain or kill, did you stop and wonder who they were? If they had a life, too, a family? A brother?”

Flint looks away.

“Michael was the first person who really understood,” Alex continues. “He grew up in the system and he got the worse luck. He made me feel safe, for the first time since Mom left. He made me feel like I could get out of Roswell, escape Dad.”

“What happened?” Greg asks in a murmur.

“Dad found us,” Alex answers. “He didn't know what Michael was, but it didn't matter. He knew what I am. He started to choke me, and Michael tried to step in, so Dad took a hammer to Michael's hand.”

Neither of his brothers look shocked. Greg is clearly pained, and he drapes his arm around Alex's back in comfort, and Flint won't look at him, but they're not shocked. That's probably the saddest thing, that they all know exactly what Jesse Manes is capable of.

He waits until he's caught Flint's eyes again. “Michael's mother was in Caulfield,” he says. “He got to see her blow up with the building. He wanted to stay with her. He dreamed of going to college, but he stayed in Roswell because his sister needed him. He used to play the guitar while I sang, before Dad ruined his hand. That's the threat you're trying to eliminate, Flint.”

Flint swallows. “Did Dad really kill Jim?”

“I have the video on a secure network,” Alex nods. “We'd have to go to my place to show you, but yes. He did. I'm sorry,” he adds after a moment.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I'm sorry that Dad isn't the man you wish he was. I wished for something else for a long time, too.”

Flint stands up suddenly, and starts pacing. “I've read the reports,” he says. “The aliens attacked people when they arrived. And there's been thirteen murders in the last ten years done by aliens.”

Greg looks at Alex. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Alex sighs. “They're people. No worse than us, but also no better. We found the murderer. He's dead now.”

“We're talking about a serial killer, Alex!” Flint loses his cool. “What if they're all like that?”

“What if they aren't?” Alex yells back. He regrets it as the sound rings painfully inside his head. “Tell me how many times you've heard that same question asked about Native men, Flint.”

Flint opens his mouth, and closes it again. He paces the length of the room faster, giving the edge of the mattress a kick when he passes by.

Greg clears his throat. “Can we go back to the bomb? What the fuck is it?”

“It's not really a bomb,” Flint says. “It's a chemical agent, designed to eliminate people who have specific DNA strands.”

Alex can almost see the cogs turn in Greg's head. “How do you plan on dispersing it?”

“My team designed an atomizer,” Flint explains. He looks hesitant, like he knows he shouldn't be talking about that but he can't quite remember why. They've got through to him at least a little, Alex realizes. “I just need someone to build it.”

“Michael,” Alex explains for Greg's benefit. “He's a mechanic. And a genius.”

“So it's not a sanctioned mission,” Greg raises his eyebrows. “You and Dad have been working on this for...how long? Years? A Manes family mission to commit genocide?”

“We're doing what needs to be done,” Flint stops pacing and stands at attention.

“By fucking kidnapping Alex? Flint, did you stop even once to think about what you're doing?”

“They got into Alex's head. I'm doing this for his own good.”

Alex lets himself fall back until he's lying down on the mattress, prompting his brothers to look at him. His headache is getting worse, not better. “His words, in your mouth,” he tells Flint. “I expected that from Clay. Not from you. Have you forgotten everything, Flint? All of Granddad and Granny's history lessons?”

Flint looks away. Greg seems to seize the opportunity, and he stands up and grabs Flint's arm. “Let Alex go, Flint.”

“I can't.”

“Do you remember the last time we were all at the house together?” Greg lowers his voice, almost as if he doesn't want Alex to hear, but the room is small. “We promised we'd look out for him,” he nods toward Alex. “That we wouldn't let Dad get to him again.”

“He shouldn't have come back to Roswell,” Flint sets his chin stubbornly.

“Maybe not. But he's still our brother. We need to stop failing him.”

For the first time, Flint truly looks torn. “I'm trying to protect him from the aliens,” he says slowly.

“I think you and I both knows that's not who we need to protect him from,” Greg says.

Alex resists the urge to retort that he can protect himself−his current situation would tend to disagree, although he swears he'll free himself the minute his head stops swimming−and finds himself feeling oddly touched.

Flint looks down at his shoes.

“Let him go, Flint.”

“Fine,” Flint finally relents. He grabs a key from his pocket and tosses it to Alex, who scrambles to open the cuff around his wrist.

He eyes the gun in Greg waistband again, trying to figure out if it's worth making a go at it, but he decides to trust Greg. It's not like he can stand up, anyway.

“What now?” he asks.

“We should really get you to a hospital,” Greg says.

“No. I need to see that Michael's okay. And I need to stop their plan,” he waves at Flint, including Helena and his father as well. He gives Flint a defiant look. “I can't let you harm them.”

“I know,” Flint sighs. “Helena's gone to bring Guerin here.”

“Will you stand down?” Alex asks him. “Let me do what I have to do?”

“I won't try to harm you,” Flint holds his empty hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Or your family,” he adds reluctantly.

“Good.” Alex turns to Greg and holds a hand up to be helped into a standing position. “You have a phone? I'm going to need it.”

“Who put you in charge?” Greg asks, amused. “You have a concussion, Alex, you need medical care.”

“I know. I'm doing to call my doctor,” Alex answers. “After I call Michael, anyway. Anyone know where my leg is? We have a lot of work to do.”

#roswell new mexico #alex manes #alexweek2020 #gregory manes #flint manes #roswell nm #mine #echo's fanfiction #manes brothers #eveningspirit

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angels-edits-archived · 4 years ago

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hello! i hope all of you are well :] could i get a kin assignment from danganronpa? i have a very limited social battery and tend to be tired & uninterested in things most of the time. i'm in my local metal scene!! i somehow ended up as the dad of my friend group? babies cry around me for some reason :[ i'm a cat person, my hair is dye-fried, i do competitive MMA, my favourite monster flavour is rosa & i have memory issues. i'm transmasc nb & aroace :] tysm in advance!

I kin assign you with...

Himiko Yumeno

Firstly I thought of Himiko Yumeno, Himiko definitely doesn't have much energy for social interactions and is constantly tired, which can cause her to seem like she's uninterested in a lot of things, she'd probably be a cat person as well. She also doesn't have the best memory out of everyone.

Shuichi Saihara

Secondly I thought of Shuichi Saihara, Shuichi drinks monster energy drinks and coffee daily or seems like the person that would. He doesn't have the most energy for social interactions, but he tries his best. He also seems like a cat person to me. He is also kinda a dad friend if you look at it, usually putting his friends before himself.

Chiaki Nanami

Lastly I thought of Chiaki Nanami, Chiaki doesn't have a lot of energy for social interactions and constantly falls asleep durring them which can come off as her being uninterested. As a gamer I'd say she probably likes monster energy drinks and or cats.

I hope you're satisfied with your results and I apologize this took a little bit to complete.

#☁️Mod Peko☁️#☁️Request Complete☁️#Kin Matchup #Himiko Yumeno #Himiko #Shuichi Saihara #Shuichi #Chiaki Nanami #Chiaki #Danganronpa #Danganronpa Goodbye Despair #Danganronpa Killing Harmony #Dr2 #Drv3

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wunderlass · 5 years ago

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Long meta ahoy, based on the opening scene from episode 2x03.

At the Atlanta panel and elsewhere, Carina said they were using Nathan for whatever parts they could to keep him entertained. She specifically gave two examples: a “shadowy figure”, and as a pair of hands for a character not yet cast.

(source: my memory, it’ll be on Tumblr somewhere but I’m too lazy to go looking for receipts right now).

The shadowy figure was when Rosa was getting chased in her nightmare in episode one, and I think we’ve now seen those mysterious hands.

Coming to rest on Nora’s shoulder the night of the crash.

There’s a lot going on in that opening scene. Nora comes out, apparently peaceful. At first she holds her hands up in apparent surrender, then kneels down on the ground. Meanwhile, another alien comes out of the wreckage and approaches her from behind.

Here’s Nathan! He’s hooded so you can’t easily identify him but apparently I am able to recognise him by nose and chin alone #goals.

He touches Nora’s shoulder as if in reassurance though the way she almost looks like she’s in pain - this might be him establishing a psychic connection with her.

And without provocation, he flambes Hector Valenti, the man who’d been advocating *for* Nora rather than letting her get shot.

The figure then immediately vanishes. When Nora stands up, he’s gone.

So. Lots of questions here.

Is Nathan genuinely just a stand in here for a character who is going to be properly cast in the future?

Who is this character? The stowaway? Why does Nora look like she’s in pain when he touches her? Why does he barbecue poor Hector for no good reason?

Where did he go? (insert your own Cotton-Eyed Joe joke here)

I’m sure we’re going to get answers to these questions. I’m not sure they’re going to be this season.

I have briefly considered if we’re going to get time travel thrown into the mix somewhere. That’s based on Mimi apparently disappearing for a month and thinking it was only overnight - while seeming to recognise Jenna from somewhere.

So have a slightly crackpot theory. That figure isn’t just Nathan earning his wages. That’s actually going to turn out to be Max, astral projecting (or something) himself back to the night of the crash. Carina told us that Nathan was going to be standing in for an uncast character so if the eagle-eyed among us saw him, we’d have an explanation to handwave it away.

Why the hell Max would go back to the night of the crash and provoke the men into slaughtering his kin? Who knows. I didn’t say it was a good theory, did I?

#roswell new mexico #rnm spoilers #rnm speculation

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softlydaydreaming · 6 years ago

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memory regaining Chiaki Nanami here to say doubles are perfectly valid and fine by me :) if you wanna tell us about some of your kins, feel free to do so in reply to this ask, i'd be happy to hear

It’s been posted! And I hope you like it! And if you’d like anything changed please let me know!

Also, thank you for letting me talk about my kins! And also, I love doubles! Here’s what I have on the mod page:

My kins are Chiaki Nanami (sdr2), Kaede Akamatsu (ndrv3), Yuzuki Tatsumi (danganronpa non canon, SHSL Baker), Shun Kurosawa (danganronpa/bnha non canon, SHSL Thief), Ochako Uraraka (bnha), Amu Hinamori (Shugo Chara), Freya (non canon Fire Emblem Fates character), Rosa (pokemon bw2), Lisia (pokemon oras), Yona (Yona of the Dawn) and Ayano Aishi (extremely canon divergent Yandere Simulator). I’m also synpath with Mikan Tsumiki (sdr2) and Mew Berry (Tokyo Mew Mew a La Mode)!

And here’s what’s not on it:

Chiaki, Kaede, and Shun are my stronger kins. And I’m also questioning a few characters from a series I like, but I don’t think anyone kins any characters from there (if anyone knows any Fate Series kins please do tell me).

My Ayano canon is really really canon divergent, and like I wasn’t even a yandere or in love with Taro (he was my cousin and we were basically like siblings). And I have two canons for Shun, one of them being a crossover canon with bnha (but Hopes Peak still existedand all of the dr characters went to Hopes Peak. It doubled as a hero school (but not majorly) and as a school for really talented kids. Also, Izuru and Hajime were nearly identical twins.)

Sorry for the info dump! And thank you for letting me talk about them for a bit! I hope you have a good day!

-Mod Chi

#anon #requests #answered #mod chi #chi’s mumbles

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cinaed · 7 years ago

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AO3 Stats Meme

I went to do that meme where you look at your ten most popular fics and see if you’re surprised or not, and said to myself, “Hey, I feel like I did this one before. It would be fun to do a compare and contrast-- ...okay, the last time I did this was apparently 2011.”

So this should be fun.

2011

1. Here Thy Hands Let Fall the Gather'd Flower (Greek mythology, Hades/Persephone, 2209 hits) 2. The Aftermath Job (Leverage gen, 587 hits) 3. Once a Goddess (Chrestomanci gen, 451 hits) 4. Hat Trick (Glee/High School Musical, Kurt/Ryan, 358 hits) 5. A Memory That Wasn't Ours to Claim (Hot Fuzz/Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, Danny/Nicholas, 338 hits) 6. Such Delight As Prisoned Birds Must Find in Freedom (Pat Barker's Regeneration gen, 331 hits) 7. Bright Lights, Big City (Glee/High School Musical, Kurt/Ryan, 289 hits) 8. Where Sister and Brother and God-kin Know Us (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood gen, 276 hits) 9. Outnumbered Like the Alamo (Stargate Atlantis, John/Rodney, Elizabeth/Radek, 254 hits) 10. The World Was All Playthings (Stargate Atlantis, John/Ronon, 242 hits)

2018

this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name (Captain America/The Avengers, Bucky/Natasha, 30,656 hits)

my heart lies buried like something dead (Les Miserables, Valjean/Javert, 24,257 hits)

Here Thy Hands Let Fall the Gather'd Flower (Greek Mythology, Hades/Persephone, 17,316 hits)

All the Effects of Intoxication (Les Miserables, Valjean/Javert, 9,881 hits)

A Love Song Stuck in My Throat (Book of Life, Manolo/Maria/Joaquin, 9,463 hits)

Undercover Work (Brooklyn Nine Nine, Amy/Rosa, 6,423 hits)

Lift It to Your Lips Like a Broth of Stars (Pacific Rim, Raleigh/Mako, 5,950 hits)

Between the Shadow and the Soul (Justice League Unlimited/Greek Mythology, Bruce/Diana, 5,141 hits)

The Best Time of Your Life (Despicable Me/The Incredibles, Margo/Violet, 4,638 hits)

The Michael Problem (South Park, Craig/Tweek, 4,654 hits)

Conclusions is that Greek mythology will always be popular and that it’s very nice to be in megafandoms from time to time (or in Book of Life’s case, write a 24,000 word fic for your ot3 right after the movie comes out).

Also I love the variety-- we’ve got gen, slash, femslash, het, and ot3.

#tumblr meme

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chaos-weekly · 4 years ago

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Didi didn’t have time to ask Nollie about the London date. She didn’t have time to notice that Nollie was glowing, truly radiant. She didn’t have time to do anything but think about her mom in a hospital in Minnesota. Alone. Didi’s dad got a divorce when she was 17, and he and her mom didn’t have any contact anymore. Didi was an only child. She didn’t have cousins or friends from home she was close to. Her mom didn’t have many close friends, either. So Rosa was alone, in a hospital room, fighting potentially life changing injuries, and Didi could do nothing to fix it.

“Didi? What’s going on?” Nollie asked in a gentle voice. Didi gripped the steering wheel tighter. Saying the news out loud made it real. But she had to tell Nollie. She couldn’t keep this to herself, or else she’d explode.

“Mom’s in the hospital,” Didi whispered. The temperature in the car dropped ten degrees, and even though she hadn’t noticed her friend’s radiance, Nollie was no longer glowing.

“What happened?” Nollie knew how important Rosa was to Didi. Sure, she and her mom weren’t close like they used to be, but that was because of work and distance. Didi still visited home every holiday. Even during Christmas, which in northern Minnesota meant delayed flights and being snowed in regularly, Didi visited home. She’d never missed a holiday or major event since she moved to LA and got lucky in the acting business.

“Car accident. Semi turned too fast. I don’t have more details.” Didi was surprised she had that much. She was her mother’s next of kin on the insurance forms, but hospitals didn’t like giving out any info.

“She might have broken her back. Could be paralyzed. Could never dance again.” Her voice broke and more tears slipped from her eyes. Didi got out of the car—she’d never started after picking Nollie up.

“I can’t drive. I need you to,” she whispered. Nollie didn’t say anything, just calmly switched into the driver’s seat and started the car.

“We’re gonna get you home, and we’re gonna call the hospital. We’re gonna get you all the information they can legally give out and then some. You said Xander met with a lawyer recently? Maybe they could help you out?”

Didi sank lower into her seat. Nollie was an angel, stepping in and remaining calm. She had control over herself. Didi didn’t have anything. She might never have her mom again.

Sobs broke out at the thought of that. Realizing her mom—a dance instructor of 25 years—may never dance again was bad. But it might be worse. Didi had no way of knowing. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t handle life without her mom. Didi hadn’t even told her mom everything about JJ and how she wasn’t entirely sure she hated him after all!

Nollie sighed, concerned for Didi, surely. “Text JJ and tell him it’s a girls emergency and you need ice cream.”

“Maybe he’ll bring my spoon back,” Didi joked weakly. The words were barely intelligible. The humor didn’t lift her mood.

Nollie reached over and squeezed Didi’s knee. Thankfully, they were able to sit in silence until they got home.

////

“You know, if you’re gonna keep demanding ice cream, baby girl, I’m gonna have to get something in return,” JJ joked, walking into Didi and Nollie’s apartment. Didi had told him to just come in, but his voice went dead when he heard her crying. He turned to Nollie, who had a comforting arm around Didi’s shoulders.

“What happened? Did Jared do something?” There was a surprising amount of concern in his voice. Didi hadn’t expected that. She figured he’d drop off the ice cream, be annoying, and then leave. But he seemed to actually care? It was weird. Didn’t they hate each other?

“Jared?” Nollie asked in confusion. Didi had never told her best friend about the creepy text. It would have started something she didn’t want to deal with: getting a new manager. Didi shook her head.

“My mom’s in the hospital,” she explained, her voice cracking again. Didi didn’t hear JJ reply, just the opening and closing of a drawer. She saw him when he held out her cherry Garcia ice cream to her with a spoon. Didi attempted a smile, but she didn’t think her lips moved at all.

“Thank you,” Nollie said for her. “Did you get half baked?”

She expected JJ to make a snarky or playful comment. He didn’t say anything, just nodded and sat down on the arm chair.

“Will she be okay?” he asked, voice as gentle as Nollie’s was but with his slight southern twang.

“I dunno,” Didi whimpered. “The hospital won’t tell me anything more since I’m not there. But I have work commitments and stupid publicity stuff thanks to Jared and just—she’s all alone! Mom’s all alone in a hospital in Minnesota, and I can’t even call her.” More sobs overtook her. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t visit her mom—it wasn’t feasible—but Didi had to see her. She had to be there with her mom. They needed to listen to “La Isla Bonita” again. She needed a bone-crushing hug from her tiny mother. She needed advice on how to handle Jared the Creepy Manager and JJ the Surprisingly Nice Yet Annoying Fake Boyfriend.

She needed her mom. And that was the one thing she couldn’t have.

“Madonna,” JJ said, earning a confused look from Nollie. Didi looked up, no sure where he was going with this.

“What other songs do you listen to with your mom?”

“Rich Girl by Gwen Stefani,” Didi sniffled. “So many musicals. A lot of Phantom of the Opera. Oklahoma! But only the version with Hugh Jackman. Classical music, mostly Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky. Uh,” Didi paused to think. Mom was obsessed with Christine and Raoul in Phantom. She loved Hugh Jackman, so Les Mis and The Greatest Showman had been other favorites.

“What else?” JJ prompted. She didn’t realize he was on his phone, adding songs to a playlist.

Didi shrugged. “Um, Taylor Swift’s country stuff. Mostly her early albums. Beyoncé’s Halo. Pon de Replay and Umbrella by Rihanna. Lots of early pop music.” Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was another good memory. Cyndi Lauper had a weird voice, so Didi didn’t like her other songs, but that one was special.

“What? None of my music?” he asked, and Didi was glad to hear him joking. Between Nollie’s quiet and comforting presence and JJ’s distraction, she was starting to feel like she could breathe again.

“She really loves Venomous. When I told her about you, she told me that that’s one of her favorite songs.” Didi smiled wryly. “She said I should break your heart so you write an epic album about me like Jane did for Maroon 5.” Didi was pretty sure that wasn’t actually the origin of Songs About Jane, and she definitely wouldn’t ever get attached enough to JJ to break his heart, but it was a funny thought. That was her mom. She loved weird humor, stuff that was a little off putting or taboo. Not in a bad way, but in a strange way. Didi loved that about her mom.

“I wrote that one by myself,” JJ admitted. He didn’t describe the emotions or situation behind the vulnerable song. Didi was curious, but she didn’t ask.

“What are your thoughts on it?”

It was Didi’s favorite song of his, too. She loved Venomous. She loved Any Other Way. She loved all of Arsenic’s songs. They were her number two band on Spotify for a reason! But JJ wasn’t allowed to know that. She bit back a smile and finally dug into her ice cream. One spoonful and she already felt better.

“It’s mediocre,” she said, glad the ice cream muffled her reply so he couldn’t tell that she was lying through her teeth. JJ had genuine song writing talent. She could deny it all day long, but she’d be lying.

JJ feigned offense. “Fine, that’s what I get for getting you ice cream. Don’t expect me to be so nice next time, sweet thang.” He was fully joking now. Annoying Didi wasn’t the goal, but making her laugh was, and it worked. His southern accent—as faint as it sometimes was—combined with his tone of voice made his words even better.

“Be quiet,” she scolded, holding up her spoon as if she might throw it at him. JJ smirked back at her.

“Never.”

#chaos weekly #rising from the ashes

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