#the line about parentheses made me set down the book so i could have a little cry

[millennialgrandma]

They talk for so long Alex has to plug his phone in to keep the battery from dying. He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.

[yayeetsonny]

Keeping Secrets~USWNT x Baby Reader

Prompt: Team finds out baby r has epilepsy.

Requested by: @khiaraaa-in-spacee​

TW: Depictions of seizures and mentions of them.

Y/N PRO//

My name is Y/N L/N and I have epilepsy. Having epilepsy is hard because a lot of people assume that there is just the one kind, where a person suddenly falls to the ground and experiences uncontrollable muscle movement. While that is a common form that it can take there are several other types. Like mine, I experience Typical absence seizures, this means that when I am experiencing one I stop whatever it was I was doing and it can look like I’m frozen or zoning out, my eyelids flutter quite a bit and my ams jerk slightly sometimes too. When these happen I don’t realize it until it’s over.  Most of the time I have several in a row so when everything is over I tend to be a little confused. 

I try not to let it define my life. I’m also a member of the United States Women’s National soccer team. I’m the youngest player on the squad at 15 and the team is over protective to say the least. They tend to overdue it by a lot when we’re on the field, for example if I go down injured at all they swarm me, asking if I’m okay a million times and calling the medical staff over for the tiniest injuries.. Off the field is much the same, they wake me up at the same time every morning because

“Having a routine is important.” 

Christen has told me this a thousand times, doesn’t mean I like being woken up at 5:30 am everyday, off days included. (That is unless I’m sick, then they make me hate naps) Once I’m up they make me get dressed and they carry me down to the dining hall where all the food is set up. When they first started doing this I protested being carried, citing that I was a big girl and I had two legs that worked perfectly fine but, after a look from Ali and Ashlyn I just let it happen. The veterans of the team also stormed the coaching staff’s office demanding that they find a way to make breakfast available for me (and them) when I wake up. They didn’t do this to be snobby or high maintenance they say its because

“If don’t eat right away in the morning, you get grouchy.” 

I don’t, but they think I do so I just let them have it and eat by 6 everyday. 

I haven’t told the team that I have epilepsy because I don’t want to scare them or freak them out. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it or anything it’s just that I don’t want them to feel like they have to worry about me even more than they already do.

“Hey Y/N! You in there?” Kelley asks appearing out of nowhere.

“What? Oh, sorry what’s up?”

“We just wanted to see if you wanted to go to the coffee shop around the corner with us.” 

She pointed to nearly half the team, including all the vets who were looking at me with concern written all over their faces.

“I think I’ll stay here, thanks anyways.”

“Are you sure? You love that place.” Kelley said frowning.

She was right, I had never turned down going there, especially with her. I wasn’t going to tell her this but I had forgot to take my seizure medicine so I need to stay back to take it before I forgot.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay, well, we’ll bring you something back then.” 

“Y/N?” Christen grabbed my hand before I could start walking to the elevators to go back to my room.

“Yeah Chris?”

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just wanna make sure. You know, me and the other veterans wouldn’t mind staying with you. We could hang here and watch movies or play board games or if you want we could all lay down and nap together, I know how much you love the “Cuddle puddle” we create.”

“I’m okay, really. Go have fun with the others. I think I’m just gonna go read my book in my room.”

“Okay, see you later.”

She gave me a hug before leaving, I watched as she explained what we talked about to the other vets and I saw several of them turn back to look at me. I shrugged at them before turning on my heel and heading back to my room. 

Once there, I took my medicine out of its hiding place, making sure to take the right dosage I then put it back and make sure it would stay hidden. I had to hide it because the girls always double check my bag before we leave any where we’ve stayed to make sure I have all my stuff. It’s nice sometimes but it also can get a little annoying.

There was a sudden knock at my door making me jump a little. Who could that be? The players who stayed behind were those that loved to nap and or they didn’t like coffee and almost all of them needed to have there alone time so getting a visitor is rare. After looking through the peephole I saw it was my roommate and best friend Morgan.

“Hey Moe! I thought you went with the others?” I said as I let her in.

“I did but I forgot my sunglasses. Have you seen them?”

“Um, I think you left them on the bathroom sink.”

“Oh that’s right! Okay, well got ‘em! See you later.”

“See you.” 

After she left I was able to go back to reading my book, It was pretty peaceful and I had almost made it half way through when I stopped. The book fell out of my hands and onto the floor with a loud thud. 

My eyelids fluttered and my fingers twitched and then just like that it was over. They only last 10-20 seconds, which isn’t long at all but for me it often feels like hours before I am aware of my surroundings again. Okay, there’s one. Am I going to have more?

My medicine has reduced them but it doesn’t stop them completely and some days it doesn’t work at all. I would go to a doctor to fix the prescription but since I can’t drive and the girls don’t know I just leave it be. 

“Oh boy, today is gonna be a long day.” I say to no one but myself before I slowly stand up and go to the sink to splash water on my face. 

We have practice in 45 minutes and I know the girls will want me to be ready a few minutes early. After I take my time changing into my gear and double checking that I do indeed look okay I make my way down to the lobby so that I can get on the bus before everyone else. I choose to sit all the way in the back and put my earbuds in so they know I don’t want to be bothered. But it seems Megan didn’t get the memo because she sits down right next to me and yanks the earbud out of my ear, putting it in her own.

“Hey kid, where you been? We brought back your favorite drink but you weren’t in your room.”

“I’ve been here.” I say shortly

“Okay?”

“Sorry I’m just tired.”

“You should’ve taken a nap before practice Y/N. What have we told you about that?”

“That I get grouchy without one, I know.”

“Do you?” 

“Yes! I’m sorry, okay? I forgot, I’ll take one when we get back.”

“I’ll be having a discussion with Carli, Chris, Alex, and the others about what we can do to help you remember.” She said leaving no room for argument.

Ugh, I hate when they have “Veteran meetings” about me. After they’ve decided something, they sit me down and all crowd around me so that if I get upset, they can comfort me. 98% of the time whatever they tell me isn’t a big deal, like a curfew. I can deal with that or even an early bedtime when I get sick or injured. But I draw the line on some things.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me Y/N.”

“Whatever.”

“Are we gonna have to talk about your attitude too?” 

“No. Sorry.”

“Mhm, what I thought.”

We finally arrived at the training facility we were practicing at this camp before our up coming international friendlies, and I grabbed my stuff and ran off the bus so I wouldn’t have to deal with Megan giving me the look anymore. 

“Y/N! Walk please!” I heard Alex shout from behind me but I ignored her.

Ali PRO//

“Okay is it just me or she acting weird?” I asked, concerned for our youngest teammate 

“Mmm, she’s just in a mood.” Megan said

“Okay, but she knows how we feel about her running anywhere that’s not the field, she’s the clumsiest kid we know. Plus, she always listens to me.” Alex said

She made a good point, she listened to all of us 9 times out of 10, some more than others but still. We all just stood there, letting the young players off first while we continued discussing our kid’s weird behavior.

“Hey guys?” 

“Yeah Ash?”

“What’s this?”

She held up a pill bottle that none of us had seen before. On it in big bold letters, was the name Y/N L/N and it was a medicine called Ethosuximide with the name (Zarontin) in parentheses. What the hell?

“What is that and why does she have it?” Christen asked angrily.

“I don’t know but I’m gonna find out right now.” Ashlyn said as she stomped off the bus.

“Ash, Ash hold on!” 

I stood in front of her trying to get her to stop walking.

“Why?”

“I know you, you aren’t going to let her explain and you’ll jump to conclusions.”

“What’s there to explain Ali? None of us have ever seen her take pills before and we all know she doesn’t have any medical conditions. We made Vlatko give us her file remember?”

“Yes but you should still let her explain.”

Ashyln was growing more upset and I was having a hard time keeping her at bay. As we got closer to the locker room the players who were already on the field or heading out attention was drawn to our argument. 

“Ash, cool it. Young ones in the vicinity.” Alex said referring to the “youngins” as Becky called them.

“I don’t care. I’m talking to her right now.”

There was nothing me, Alex or any of the other veterans could do to stop her from storming into the locker room.

“Y/N Y/M L/N!”

She came over to the front of the room quickly, startled and looking slightly terrified. She had yet to spot the pill bottle Ashyln was holding behind her back.

“Yeah Ash? What’s up?”

“ “What’s up?” she says. What’s up? That’s all you have to say?” Ashlyn had a bite to her tone that made me shiver. She can be mad intimidating when she wants to be. 

“Yes?”

“What’s up Y/N, is this.” 

As soon as she saw what she was holding all the color drained from Y/N’s face and I was afraid  she might faint. 

“Y/N… Sweetie, you’re okay. We’re just a little worried about you.” Chris said stepping forward and blocking her view of Ashlyn’s “Mean face” 

She tried to reach for Y/N but she turned away from her and made a move to leave.

“Uh you know, I really should get out on the field with the others. See you guys out there!”

Alex grabbed her around the waist and held her in her arms tightly so she couldn’t go anywhere. She tried to get her to let go but gave up when she realized Alex was too strong.

“Shhh, deep breaths. You’re okay. It’s just us. It’s okay.” Alex cooed softly in her ear.

I could tell that she was scared and was trying not to let her walls down.

“It-it’s not anything bad I swear!” 

“Really, then what is it?” 

“It’s just… can we just talk about it later? Please.”

“No, what is this and why do you have it?” 

“I- Please just let me go practice.”

“Y/N…”

“I have epilepsy, okay?! There, can I go practice please?”

She freed herself from Alex and ran out onto the field. We all chased after her and Christen tried to catch her but she was saved by the whistle.

“Ladies! Let’s go, stop messing around and get to work!” Dawn yelled, we knew it was directed at us.

After that we had no choice but to let it go and practice. We did the usual, stretching and warm up and then position group training, individual for some and scrimmages to end the session. Were half way through a scrimmage whenI noticed Y/N stop moving. It was like she was frozen, she wasn’t moving except for her arms that were jerking slightly and I could see her eyelids fluttering. She must be having a seizure. I thought. I rushed over to her stopping practice and tried everything to get her to snap out of it. Many of our teammates also tried to no avail and everyone was gathered around her unsure of what to do.

“Okay let’s give her some space.” Ashlyn said

I stayed close in case I had to prevent her from falling and hitting her head or needed to do anything else to help her.

She continued to seize, each one only lasted 10 seconds but she had 5 in a row and when those had stopped she only came to for a few seconds before she started to experience a second wave. In total she was unresponsive for almost a minute and half straight. Christen had put her arms on her shoulders, trying to let her know she was there.

“Y/N, it’s okay. We’re here. You’re okay.”

“What do we do?”

“We just have to let her know we’re here.”

“What’s going on? Is she okay?”

Several of the younger players looked scared and unsure of what to do, so Tobin and Megan took them away from where Y/N was and tried to reassure them she was gonna be okay.

Y/N PRO//

Everything finally started to come back into focus and at this point I had been moved to the ground and I was sitting in Chris’s lap as she held me. When I was fully out of the state I had been in I started to try to push her away, I was disoriented and confused and I didn’t remember what I was doing here.

“Hey, hey it’s okay. Y/N you’re safe, it’s okay.” Becky said as I settled down and the rest of the team begin trying to help me.

Chris held me the whole time, cooing in my ear and trying to keep me calm. Everything was super loud and my mind and body had gone into sensory overload trying to come back to practice. When I realized what happened and I was able, I pushed my way out of Christen’s arms, and ran back to the locker room. After that I ignored everyone and their questions about what was going on. I was the first back on the bus and had planned to continue ignoring everyone. The Vets of the team had other ideas however and put an end to it quickly.

“You feeling better little one?”

“Yeah Al, I am.”

“That was really scary.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about babe. But can I ask you something?” Ali said

“Sure, shoot.”

“Did you take your medicine today?”

“Yeah, I did it just doesn’t work well.” I said timidly

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the right dosage, it just doesn’t work well enough most of the time.”

“Why didn’t you get it adjusted?”

“I didn’t want anyone to find out about it.”

“That’s dangerous, you know that right?”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I know you were scared. We’ll take you to get it adjusted as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

When we got back to the hotel I dropped off my stuff and decided to go for a walk. I needed to think about some things, and I knew the girls wanted to have a more in depth talk about what happened but I wasn’t ready. Eventually though I made my way back to the room and when I opened the door my roommate was there to greet me.

“Hey babe! You came back to me!’ Moe said dramatically as I entered our room.

“I’ll always come back to you, baby.” I said jokingly

“You better. My life is so boring without you!”

“I am the life of the party I’ve been told.”

“Ha ha, If anyone is the life of the party its Crystal. Girl can dance.”

“Definitely.”

“Have you talked to the others since we got back?”

“Uhh... no. I’m sorta avoiding them.” I said rubbing the back of my neck.

“You know that they’ll want to talk to you about it eventually right? I’m sure they’re worried about you.”

I was unsure of what to do because I didn’t really want to talk to them about it but I knew I had to. After another hour of avoiding it, I got up and made my way to Alex’s room. I knocked on the door timidly and waited for it to open.

“Y/N? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just was wondering if I could talk to you all?” I said as I saw almost all the older players in her room.

“Of course.”

We got to talking about what happened and I told them about the condition I had and when it first appeared and all the while Alex held me in her lap, cooing in my ear when I would start to get emotional and the others sat around us doing there best to let me know they were there.

“Why didn’t you just tell us?” Ashlyn asked 

“I was just afraid.”

“You don’t ever have to be afraid to tell us these things. I’m sorry you felt the need to hide it from us.” JJ said.

“I know today was scary for everyone. I think I should tell the whole team everything soon.”

“Are you sure? You shouldn’t feel like you have to, if you’re not ready that’s okay too.”

“I am, it’s okay. Will you guys be there?”

“Of course, always.”

“I love you guys.”

“We love you too.”

I knew that some of them were still a little hurt that I hadn’t told them sooner or they felt bad because they weren’t able to protect me but I knew we would be okay.

we agreed to be more honest with each other going forward and When it came time for me to tell the entire team the older players were there to support me and help me explain everything. They were all super supportive and assured me that they didn’t see me any differently.

After our heart to heart we decided to do some much needed team bonding.

Rose showed me a Tick tok of a bulldog trying to reach a cake that was just out of its reach and failing (or succeeding) spectacularly as it splattered in the floor.

“Wilma would totally do this!” I said laughing at the thought of Rose’s dog doing something similar.

“She totally would but I would give her a hand.” Rose giggled.

Kelley succeeded in putting a cup on her head with only her feet and I was in awe of her flexibility. I attempted to do the same but I failed miserably and pouted as everyone laughed at me.

“Good try kid. You’ll get it eventually.” Kel said.

We ended up playing cup pong (the clean version), Jenga, Sorry, Truth or Dare, and twister. We also tried playing hide and seek through out the hotel but we got in trouble with the managerial staff and almost got the whole team kicked out. Let’s just say that Vlatko was not too pleased… 

Sam, Rose, Sonnett, Lindsey and Mal choreographed a new dance and performed it for everyone. We all watched for over an hour as these knuckleheads tried to get it all down perfectly.

“Oh my god you guys, try again tomorrow when you actually know the dance.” Tobin said exasperated

“No, no we can do this. Right guys?” 

“Yes we can.”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Just give us a minute.”

“We got this.”

We watched on as they tried and failed to prove that they had it, but we all gave them an A+ for effort anyways.

“We would have gotten it, if you guys had just been patient enough.” Sam grumbled.

“We watched for over an hour, you know this team, they can’t sit still forever.” I giggled.

“I guess you’ve got a point.” Sam chuckled.

“Hey! We’re not that bad at sitting still.” Kelley protested.

“Uh, yeah Kel. We are.”

The whole team giggled at that and agreed that together asking us to sit still for long periods was useless.

After that we made pies and cupcakes and they were actually really good, but things took a turn when I decided to smash Ali’s face in a pie. She then chased me down the hall trying to get me back.

“Y/N, get back here!”

“Becky! Save me!”

“No way kid. Not trying to get punched.” She said before she closed her door.

“Traitor!” I yelled as I continued to run from a pissed off Ali Krieger. 

She eventually caught up to me and attacked me with kisses and tickles. I ended up covered head to toe in pie filling after she got hers all over me and then found another one and got revenge.

“Aw man, you got me.” I said as I giggled wildly as she tickled me some more.

“This whole team loves you so much. You know that right?” Alex would later tell me that night as we all snuggled on the two beds in the room I shared with Morgan. 

“Yeah, I know. I love you guys too.” 

They drive me nuts with the constant hovering and weird, silly rules they make me follow but I am so grateful to have them in my life and to have such an amazing group of friends who love and support me no matter what. Me and my 23 best friends are family for life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

//

THE END

If I got anything wrong, I’m so sorry. I did the best research that I could. Sorry for any mistakes.

-N

[emy-loves-you]

Have Your Name (And Your Back) Chapter 6

Chapter 5 | Masterlist | Chapter 7

Summary: Patton is told more about the Fairies he stays with, but by the end he's left with more questions than answers.

Warning: Bathing. This chapter is also mainly used for world building and can be seen as info-dumping, but I needed to get most of this info out now so y’all weren’t confused in later chapters

Patton woke up with a low moan, stretching out on the bed. He felt lazy and warm, his limbs pleasantly stiff as he snuggled under the blankets. He had always been woken up by someone else, whether it be his mo-Lady Hart yelling at him to get to work or Prince’s soothing magic from yesterday. It felt so relaxing to wake up on his own, with no immediate need to get up and do work. He laid in bed for a few minutes, savoring the warm sheets over him and the soft mattress beneath him. If it was possible, Patton would be fully content to stay in this bed for the rest of his life, warm and happy and content.

Eventually, however, he felt his familiar urges and left to use the restroom. As he finished up and washed his hands, Patton stared longingly at the large bathtub. It was large and circular, and Patton was sure that if he layed in the middle of it and stretched his limbs in any direction he wouldn’t be able to touch the edge. The outer edge was slightly deeper than the average tub and deepened as it reached the center, the direct center almost as deep as Patton was tall, and small bottles sat on the edge of the tub.

Patton bit his lip as he stared at the tub. Prince said that this was all Patton’s. Did that mean he could take a bath? He wasn’t allowed to bathe at the Hart manor, only short cold showers when he was extremely smelly. He had sometimes ran the bath for Lady Hart, and he was pretty sure he knew what bathing entailed, but he’d never actually done it.

Patton’s curiosity won as he stripped himself of his clothes. He cringed as the clothes clung to his skin. He was used to wearing grimy clothes for weeks on end, but the feeling of fresh clean clothes yesterday had truly spoiled him. Patton had seen a few pairs of pajamas in the closet; maybe he could change into them before he went to bed tonight?

Patton put his clothes into the small basket next to the door and gasped as they disappeared. Magic is amazing! He turned to the tub and frowned when there was only one handle. He’d only seen tubs with two handles. He turned the handle and gasped as his hand tingled from the contact. Water began slowly dribbling out, and Patton put his hand under to feel the temperature. It was pleasantly warm but not hot, just like he wished it would be. He turned the handle to try and make the water flow faster but it didn’t budge. He shrugged and glanced over at the small bottles. There were different soaps and a few bottles of oils. He opened one of the oil bottles and smiled at the warm vanilla scent. He carefully poured a few drops into the water, just as he had done with Lady Hart’s baths.

Suddenly the faucet started running at a faster rate, apparently waiting for the oil to be added before filling the tub. Patton put the bottle away before carefully stepping into the tub, moaning as the warm water seeped into his skin. He laid his head on the edge of the tub and fully relaxed, finding it even better than his bed. He didn’t even have an experience to compare this to, reveling in the sensation of lying beneath the still water.

He laid in the water until his fingers started to wrinkle, slowly washing his body and hair. He stretched each action out for as long as possible, not wanting to leave the tub. Eventually, however, he had to leave with a slightly heavy heart yet content smile. He stood up and picked up a towel that had appeared on the counter at some point during his bath, drying himself before wrapping the towel around his body. The towel covered his small frame, easily wrapping around him and stretching from his armpits to below his knees. He sighed at the feeling and made his way to the closet, deciding to wear a pale blue shirt that went down to his knees along with some white tights. The clothes were tighter than yesterday’s pair but they were still comfortably loose, the shirt fanning out when Patton spun around.

He giggled and went back to the bedroom, spinning around in small circles until he was dizzy. As Patton flopped down onto the floor he noticed something new in his room. A small table stood in the corner of the room, a large book and journal sitting on top with a pencil. Remembering his conversation with Prince about learning fae culture, Patton grabbed the items and sat down in bed, getting comfy as he looked over the new items. The book was a deep red color with gold lettering, luckily in the same language as the cookbook Patton was used to reading. It was weird to find out that the language he could read was not the same language he could speak. The words on the page were easy to read and translate to verbal English, even if he didn’t understand what some of the words meant, though he couldn’t speak the language that was written or write in English. Is that because I can only read in that language and speak in English, or is the Fae magic helping me again?

Patton shook his head and focused back on the book. The title read How to Survive an Encounter With the Fair Folk, and there was no author name in sight. The journal was a dull brown leather, with no significant markings. Patton flipped to the first page, expecting it to be blank. Instead, there was half a page worth of writing- in the language Patton could read- labeled ‘Instructions.’ Patton carefully read them over.

As you read the information found in either the books supplied to you or this journal, use these symbols to communicate your comprehension levels. If you understand a question or wish to respond with ‘yes,’ simply place a checkmark (✓) next to whatever you’re responding to. If you disagree with a statement or wish to respond with ‘no,’ place the Latin letter ex (X) next to whatever you’re responding to. If you are confused, place a question mark (?) next to whatever confuses you. Lastly, if you only wish to respond to a small word or phrase, please underline the word or phrase before placing a checkmark, ex or question mark. Also, if you wish to respond to multiple sentences or an entire section, please surround the text that you are responding to with parenthesis (the text would go between the two parentheses as shown). Once you have woken up and read this, please acknowledge that you have read and understood these instructions.

Patton read it over a few times to make sure he had it right before surrounding the entire set of instructions in parenthesis and placing a ✓ at the end of it. A few moments later writing began to appear. It was breathtaking to watch, seeing the text appear mark by mark without a pen or pencil in the way. It was so entrancing that three whole lines of text appeared before Patton remembered to actually read it.

Salutations. You may call me Logic. I was the one wearing the blue accessories at Lord Hart’s dinner. I will be calling you ‘Heart’ for the time being, since it is phonetically similar to ‘Hart’ in English. The language that I am currently writing in is German, the same language that your cookbook was in. I have been made aware that you are severely lacking in multiple areas, specifically writing. Hopefully your knowledge and skill will improve over the next few months as these lessons progress. While I was originally told to teach you about Fae culture as a whole, we will instead be learning about how to survive a Fae encounter from a human perspective. While none of the faries in this manor would intentionally harm you, you could seriously endanger yourself if you interact with some of them without proper precaution. The fairies in purple and yellow are not allowed to speak with you unless Prince is present, and not after you’ve learned the correct precautionary measures. The Fae in purple has already let you call him Umbra, but he wanted me to inform you that you may call him Anx or Anxiety. The Fae in yellow has said that you may call him Deceit. Please ask any questions now or indicate that you understand so we may continue.

Patton underlined the word ‘phonetically’ and was happy to receive a definition immediately afterword. Phonetically- In the way it sounds. He read over the passage again and frowned, a familiar unease settling in the back of his mind as he read the names. He underlined ‘You may call me Logic’ and placed a question mark over ‘Logic.’ He frowned when he read the text that appeared under the passage.

Logic is what you would refer to me with. For example, you could tell the Duke ‘Logic is teaching me how to take proper precautions against Fae.

Patton frowned, putting an X next to the answer. That’s not the question he was asking! He underlined ‘Logic’ and put an X over it, then proceed to do that with all of the Fae names, and the name ‘Heart’ that Logic had given him. After that he underlined ‘Lord Hart’ and placed a ✓ above it. Lastly, he underlined ‘You may call me’ again and placed a question mark on top of it. He watched for several minutes as the page remained the same before a response eventually appeared at the bottom.

Heart, I assume the issue is the use of real names over fake names. But I have a question to ask first: do you believe my name is Logic or Glacies? Patton immediately put an X over both names, and there seemed to be a pause before Logic started writing again. Have you ever felt an odd sensation occur when a fairy gave you a name to call them by? An itching in your skin, a niggling in the back of your mind, an unnatural sense of unease? Patton sighed in relief, placing a ✓ above each description. One last question: has anyone’s magic caused you to gain nosebleeds, nausea or intense headaches? Patton placed an X at the end of the sentence and the writing seemed much more relaxed as it wrote. That is fortunate. If you had, you would have been showing symptoms for what is basically an immunity disorder caused by an oversensitivity to magic. Some mortals are unknowingly born with it, and the constant exposure of magic would have eventually made you permanently ill and potentially send you into a magical coma or kill you. Though I am not sure why you displayed the first set of symptoms. You were clearly sensitive enough to notice the magic being used, but you didn’t suffer any ill effects. I will have to look into that as time goes on.

In order to understand why the names feel odd, we first need to go over how Fae magic works. There are two types of Fae magic: physical magic and negotiation magic. Physical magic involves the magic you’ve seen occur inside this manor: Prince’s fire magic, the enchantment on your wardrobe (which I performed) and the enchantment on these books that allow us to communicate. Physical magic only requires the fairy in question to perform it, and while it is weaker than negotiational magic, the effects are extremely specific and easy to control. Negotiation magic requires a deal to be made between the Fae and someone else. One of the most powerful and dangerous parts of negotiational magic is the power behind one’s name. All names are extremely valuable but only to those who can wield negotiational magic. When you openly give away your name, you essentially create a deal where you give away the ability to control your actions in exchange for practically nothing. When Prince ordered Lord and Lady Hart to sit down and not focus on the door behind them, they performed the actions as if they had came up with the idea. This was because they gave away their names to Prince without knowing the consequences. If you were aware that you gave your name away to a fairy, you could attempt to fight their control, but you would most likely be unsuccessful. That is why instead of saying “my name is” then saying your real name, you instead say “you may call me” then state a fake name for them to call you. We give you fake names to refer to us by because while you couldn’t do anything as a human, you could accidentally give our names away to a fairy or witch with ill-intent. And while you can trust everyone in this manor, Anxiety and Deceit are born fairies, so they may accidentally use their power over you in initial interactions, as it is within their nature to do so.

Patton sighed in relief as he read over Logic’s explanation. Knowing that there was a reason for his sense of unease and that he wasn’t just being freaky relieved him. He read over the last sentence and frowned, underlining ‘born’ and put a question mark next to it. There was hesitation again before Logan responded.

There are many types of supernatural beings in this world, Heart, and many types of fairies as well. The two main types of fairies are born fairies and transformed fairies. The difference is just as it sounds: born fairies were born as fairies with all of their parents being Fae as well. Transformed fairies were once human but were turned into Fae. Born fairies are more in tune with their magic and specialize in negotiation magic, but they tend to perform said magic subconsciously. Transformed fairies take time to be in tune with their magic and specialize in physical magic, and they are forced to be conscious of their magic as soon as they gain it so they don’t accidentally injure themselves.

Patton’s head was left spinning from that explanation. Humans could turn into fairies?! How was that possible? And Logic had said that only Anxiety and Deceit were born fairies, did that mean that the rest of them were transformed? And what did he mean by ‘all of their parents’? Why didn’t he just say ‘both’? Patton frantically scribbled at the paper, trying to properly convey all of his questions. The pause this time was even longer, the hesitancy obvious as Logic answered.

You aren’t ready to know most of those answers. If you end up staying here, you will most likely gain your answers over the years as you grow. But I will answer one of them, if only so that you don’t try and snoop around. Prince and the Duke were human twins and made a deal with their own Fairy Godfather. After they grew up they were transformed into fairies. Soon after they transformed they met Anxiety and Deceit, two born fairies. Prince and Anxiety are mates, along with the Duke and Deceit. Around 30 years ago I made a deal with the Duke to be my Fairy Godfather. I was 12 at the time, and when I turned 18 I was transformed. The term ‘Fairy Godfather’ is actually quite a loose term: they are simply the fairy that houses you and protects you until you come of age, where you are then either transformed into a fae or sent back into the human world. If you are transformed you gain magic, your aging slows to a crawl and you become an official member of the family. If you return to the human world, you’ll have either your memories wiped or your tour tongue tied to prevent you from informing the human population of the knowledge of the Fae. Again, you don’t need to fully comprehend all of this yet. You still haven’t completed your deal with Prince yet, and most of this information won’t be valuable to you until you’re nearing 18. Right now you need to learn how to safely interact with other fae and learn skills that will be useful in both the Fae and human worlds, such as writing and math.

Patton felt his head spin at the information but he ended up putting a ✓ at the end anyways. He still had a lot of questions, but he understood that he needed to wait until he was older to ask them. It baffled him that all of this information would be taught to him as he neared 18. He was turning 15 in a few months! Could he really learn all of that and more in just 3 years?

I think you have learned enough for now, Heart. Prince should be by in a few minutes to take you to breakfast. I suggest you try and read the first two chapters of the book next to you before dinner tonight. The sooner you learn how to protect yourself, the sooner you can leave your room and interact with the other Fae. I would like to speak with you again tomorrow morning to see if you have any questions regarding the reading material. Does this sound acceptable? Patton quickly wrote down a ✓ and the message continued. Then I shall talk to you tomorrow. Farewell.

Patton waited to make sure that no more writing appeared before closing the notebook. He sat it down and closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing steady. That was a lot of information, especially in one sitting. He’d only known about the existence of fairies for a little over a day! He was still waiting for Prince to punish him for his misbehavior or give him a list of impossible chores to do. Or worse, send him back to Hart manor. He shuddered at the thought, shaking his head. His Fairy Godfather had promised to protect him and make him happy, and Patton trusted him.

Knock knock knock

Patton leapt out of bed and answered the door, finding Prince waiting patiently on the other side. “Good morning, young one. Ready for breakfast?”

Patton bit his lip, looking down at his feet as he summoned his courage. “Could- could you call me Heart? Please?”

Prince kneeled down, gently grabbing Patton’s chin and tilting it to where he was looking him in the eye. “I will gladly call you whatever you wish to be called, Heart.” He held out his free hand. “Will you please join me for breakfast, Heart?”

Patton smiled and nodded, his heart swelling with joy as he took his Fairy Godfather’s hand.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taglist: @bisexualdisaster106 @self-taught-mess @arodynamic-enby @sanderssides-angst

[kaetastic]

Adapting

pairing: Agent Whiskey x F!Agent!Reader

summary: After a mission gone awry, Agent Whiskey and Agent Brandy had no choice but to find refuge at an isolated lodging. It seemed only one of the pair seemed open to the idea of adjusting to the change of plans.

word count: 3k+

warning: nothing spicy, just fluff, angst, mention of death, mention of violence, discreet mention of sexual intercourse oop

note: when i was making this, i based this whole thing around cottagecore aesthetic, however, i want to say that there had been some things in said-community where it’s not right. so, i will not associate cottagecore with this. i honestly just wanted to write this very descriptively, then, i was unforunately hit by w****r’s b***k :( i’m sorry i haven’t been writing much, or i haven’t been that active on this platform :(( x

The creaking of decaying wooden hinges shrieked into the light air. It scraped along the canal of ears, leaving back permanent damage. The rusted flakes that coated the hinge looked like a shy amount of shredded slice of chocolate, the thin line would melt into one’s tongue within seconds. Although, the taste wouldn’t be as delightful as the sweet delicacy. The noise of soft rustling from the leaves from birds who have finally arrived back to their home from their exhausting journey danced with the orchestra of petite lambs. Their gentle ‘baa’s lingered longer in the air, the conversation extended in the warm afternoon sky. Well, it could’ve been assumed it was an argument for it went on and on. The weaving of grass padded by their fluffy feet stomped a song of approaching closing to the day.

The scent of freshly plucked out grass (consumed by the wandering animals) lingered in the air, a refreshing smell- almost comforting. There wasn’t much controlling of the weeds and the greeneries for the only two humans who had occupied the lodging had no experience with said- mowing. Whiskey had been nudged at an attempt; however, with scissors, it would’ve taken hours... or years. So, that task was left behind to be the factor for the spurting growth of grass. Even though the memory of Whiskey suggesting the idea of using his lasso to possibly cut the grass still remained in the jar, it wasn’t brought up much. Disasters then lead to a small branching river of fires, nothing the two agents couldn’t stop by scurrying with horrid-to-the-eyes stitched blankets in their arms.

The blanket of wearing-off white paint peeled away from the wooden fence, creating waves of thickness. There were random bulges and bumps, an inconvenience- more like an uncomfortable blotch of area to graze one’s fingers over. Y/N let out an exhausted huff, arms aching from the hefty wicker basket that hung in her arms. It was her underestimating the fresh fruit from the ground that caused the heavyweight of possibly two dozen ripe strawberries to only bring one basket. If she had not thought less of the weight, she would’ve either brought another basket or have dragged her other accompany. Although, he was quite occupied with his own set of chores. All the ones he had proudly chosen. Y/N couldn’t help but be amused at the thought of Whiskey leading the cattle. It would be an entertaining sight. One she had been blessed to graze her eyes upon once. 

While making her way towards the petite cottage that contrasted warm tones to the walls of glowing trees, she couldn’t help but let out an exasperated sigh. It had been roughly a week and a half since they had found shelter in the lodging. Rough weeks for the two, although, rougher for the woman since she had been the one to have to put up with the other. Hours of Whiskey had somehow made her want to regurgitate whatever she had consumed at the thought of him and the drink. 

Even though the mission was going great, the inches at the ending had not been so great. There was joy at the realization that it was going smoothly before it churned into moments of disaster. Chaos. That was the reason for their staying at the cottage. Somehow- as if it was written in prophecy, a perfectly maintained house had resided in layers of forest trees, bedded by greens and towering weeds. The only reason they even stayed there was to stay off-radar from those who were chasing the pair. They stalked nearby. 

Stranded with no way of communicating the agency as there would be a chance those they were running away from would be able to pick up the signal, there was not much they could work with. It only made sense if the two agents had stood in front of the wallpaper, blended within barks. An idea that neither of the two liked. Something they had in common, other than the fact that they were both agents at the Statesman. Whiskey had been rambling on and on about having no way of communicating with Champagne or anyone at the agency. Y/N just wished he would zip his lips up or else she would have the dig through the stacks of books on the Leaning Tower of Pisa’s bookshelf.

The man had tried every possible method of initiating communication. Although the reason he told Y/N was to inform them of the intel they had received, she knew otherwise. Whiskey wanted to do nothing but flee away from the pesky bugs that crawled up his walls. Within a week and a half at the cottage, he had at least complained five times a day about the littlest things. It all piled up to his objection to staying at the ‘abandoned’ cottage, so he says. In parentheses because there was no owner- no one who roamed the property, not even a sole photo frame. However, it was peculiar since there had been animals who did not look slightly malnourished. There had been water in their pots, their grass had been at a perfect height as if gingerly trimmed and looked after, and there were no quivering traps spun by spiders. Almost as if the house was cared for, loved.

With every feathery graze of her foot against the odd shapes of the stone steps that seemed as if it had been watered down by rough bites of water, she made a step closer towards the cosy house. It was indeed comforting, almost too comforting. The wallpapers were warm yellow, brown stripes splayed in random measurements to create a soft pattern to the eyes, and the floor let out gentle cries that played a lullaby if one choreographed the notes.

Despite Whiskey facing the truth and embracing the fact that the house wrapped his chest in a fuzzy feeling that he had never felt before, the words had not clawed out of his throat. He refused to say so even though he had accepted the feeling that he would not usually feel in the puzzles of skyrocketing towers. 

Digging into the soil-packed ground were heavy slabs of stone which were placed as if thrown. The steps were bubbly shapes, set apart from each other quite spaciously. An extended skip hop with a rise of land between each level. The front of the house had already been a sight, the appetizer to what rested inside the walls. Shrubs ruled over the small land, vibrant flowers peeking out of the twigs while packs of rocks splayed over the ground.

A squeaking plea from the door trickled into the tranquil air. Even though the animals that were in the fences within the properties boundaries, a slight smear of noise only made way into the house. Muffled ‘baa’s from the lambs was replied with guttural ‘moo’s from the cows. It was boisterous outside the house, now it’s just a forgotten radio player that caused chaos for people who are in search of the sound. The hallway welcomed a new path to her right, the petite kitchen that she had somehow made possibly to cook meals in. 

Y/N let out a huff as she swung the basket onto the small island in the middle of the kitchen. The aching in her muscles was no different from the time she had her arms chained up in the air. Although, that’s a story for another time. Once she had slipped her way through the small space between the island and the counters, and she had managed to pull out a bowl from the ancient cabinet without having the stack tumbling down upon her, she gingerly went through the fruits individually- with care for any visible faults. That was when the time she was enjoying all by herself eradicated with a blessing of presence by none than the other, Whiskey. Whiskey and his infamous Stetson-Cowboy hat. Just when her head and mindset was in a tranquil and quiet place.

The man let out an exasperated groan, either from his time wasted on scrambling about his horrible time at the cottage or since he had been the one to put at task to chop a bundle of wood. All so they could be warm.

“You know, if you actually helped me, you would be doing much more important work.” Whiskey murmured while his eyebrows quirked towards the victorious strawberries that managed to pass the trial of being without fault. Y/N rolled her eyes at his words. Of course he would jab at the chore she had was assigned to do since it was him who decided to take upon the manly job of chopping up wood. The man had to swing an axe while she hummed a song, caressing strawberries. It was all his fault. Although, every time she confronted him about the truth, he just grunted in frustration before he stormed off. 

“If I left them there, it would’ve been a waste.” 

Whiskey made his way towards the small circle table that resided in the sad corner, the ragged wooden planks he had pierced through had jagged ends, splinters bulging from the surface from his frustration, “It should be enough for two days unless someone demands for more warmth.”

“It was an exceptionally cold night.”

Whiskey hummed, “Sure,” He pushes down the planks to flatten them on the surface before a cranky groan let his lips- most likely from his ageing body. “Goddamn it, these woods.” 

Y/N rolled her eyes at the sight of his hand resting upon his aching back. As she hurled another bright red strawberry onto the cascading pile, she inquired without glancing up, “Did you water the plants?”

“Yea, gave them plenty of water, too.” Her eyes hurled to gaze into his dark ones. His pupils had been painted with slight humour, almost as if he had been amused at what he told her. Y/N did not need any more explanation as she understood what he meant perfectly. She exhaustedly groaned, feeling the weight on her shoulders at taking care of the man as if he was a child. 

“I told you not to drown the pots, you just- I’ve shown you how to do them before.” Y/N hissed out. The thought of the soil being soaked in litres of water had done more than annoy her.

Whiskey hummed, “I must’ve forgotten how to do it.”

The devil crawled onto her shoulder, the corners of its lips curled up at the tainting thoughts it had plagued her with. Anger, frustration, yet, somehow- Y/N did otherwise. She felt her energy balled up from his stubbornness, thrown out of the window, “I’ll teach you again tomorrow, just start the fire, it’s nighttime.”

Heated waves crawled up her arms in shy bites, fearing for what would be inflicted if they had blanketed her whole body in one engulf. Despite the generous percentage of warmth she had embraced all to herself from the dancing flames, she could still feel her toes shiver. The cottage would be warm during the day; however, with cracks in the walls, at night, it was bound to offer the frigid air a place to rest. 

The noise of the fireplace crackling, a sound she had got used to, well, more like forced herself to get used to, trickled along her ears. Y/N would drift off to sleep, her eyes fluttering to shut while the natural music sang her a lullaby. Except, the night did not apply that same ending to the day. No, Y/N could not find an ounce of willingness to melt into the small tattered loveseat even though minutes ago, she had been shaking the whole house with her series of exhausted yawning. It was either from the stuffings of the seat that had been harder than bone, although, Y/N liked to believe that she had got used to the way disobedient stitches would pierce into her back with every shift of her muscle, or the credits for her to wander away from the path of sleep was all handed towards the presence in the living room. The same presence that would find comfort elsewhere- his designated room. 

Whiskey was the one who claimed he wanted the only available room which had no fireplace, unlike the living room, saying he had gone through terrible weather conditions whilst working in missions- something he kept bragging on about, even though Y/N had been on the same list of terrible weather missions about seventy-five percent. “Nothing I can’t handle.” The man would say. That night, Whiskey couldn’t peel his eyes away from the gentle swerving of the flames. His arms were crossed, legs tensed, yet, he could feel himself drift away faster than the time he had spent in his own room. Maybe warmth wasn’t so bad after all. 

“What do you think they’re doing?” Whiskey quirked up, his southern accent smeared along the heated air. It was the first thing he had resounded in the room in hopes of steering him away from the need for sleep. He knew he deserved every fraction of slumbering from the chores he had worked hard for, but he didn’t quiver under the thought of it. 

“Hm?” Y/N grazed her eyes across the room to land on the man who perched himself on an uncomfortable, solid-looking armchair. The main fabric seemed to be a young teal, something Y/N had assumed ever since the day they had arrived at the cottage because no other cloth overlapped or covered said-colour. Other places were patched over with square cloths of floral designs, some atrociously hard to the eyes. 

“Do you think they’re looking for us?”

The woman let out a chuckle before a shiver crawled down her spine, “They just lost one of their best agents, I’m sure they’re doing everything they can,” Y/N spotted the smug smirk growing on Whiskey’s face. Only a second of pride lingered before it flattened back to his pressed lips. “I’m not talking about you.” 

Oh, she knew how to press his buttons. She knew what to say, she knew the perfect speed of the syllables that would fall off her tongue for the best reactions, and the following actions- everything. It had always bothered the man. Sure, they had gone to missions together. And sure, they had been side by side in moments where death stood in front of the door. Yet, the chemistry seemed to only spark up in situations where their adrenaline gets fired up. Y/N managed to bring his hopes up, filling his container by caressing his ego, fuelling up till the brim. Then, within milliseconds, all of it vanishes into the air. Not a speck of dust remained. 

“What makes you think you’re the best agent?” The man finally squeezed out the words. He had been slightly reluctant to the thought of saying it, yet, his tolerance was only so limited. Even though he was holding back the whiplash of his tongue, he couldn’t help it.

“I don’t think it, I know it,” Finding her words amusing as it brushed on a familiar set of egoism from the man, she let out a chuckle, “I’m sure Ginger just says it to butter me up.” Another sentence rested on her lips, ready to be launched into the air when another chilling shiver spiked down her body.

Whiskey quirked his eyebrows in confusion. He pushed himself away from the chair to sit on the edge, “Do you need more blankets? I’ll go grab some more.” 

“All of them are here.” His eyes brushed over the cocoon Y/N had wrapped around her body. It seemed to be a thick mess of heat, possibly suffocating her blood vessels, ready to crack her ribs. Her cheeks reddened. Although, she wasn’t sure if it was from the confession of her using all the possibly blankets offered by the house or the last reminiscent of heat she had to quench upon.

“Well, there’s no point in adding more wood, it’ll just be the same. We’ve already shut every window, you’ll have to bear with it. Unless…” Y/N pulled away from the brim of the blankets where some had poked out to cover her lips, her eyes meeting his in hope. In hope of getting away from the annoying coldness. 

“Unless?”

Whiskey glanced at the fireplace before suggesting the thought while his eyes gazed into hers, “Unless we make use of our body warmth.”

Maybe he should’ve said the words better, he could’ve rephrased the suggestion in a more… approachable setting. Or maybe, it was Y/N’s head that was stuffed in the gut, because his idea had not been comprehended the way he thought of it, “Whoa! I’m not sleeping with you.”

The man could feel his eyes roll at her words, “I’m not saying I wanted to sleep with you, I’m a gentleman- I wouldn’t ask so straightforward.”

“That definitely makes it better.”

Having enough of her opposing to his only possibly good idea, he hovered over her resting body, “Move, I’ll sit at the edge.”

“Such a gentleman.” There weren’t any other suggestions they could take. They had done everything so Y/N wouldn’t feel cold during the night. She had no choice. She had to comply with the much more friendly idea, compared to that of diving straight into the fireplace, if she didn’t want to be shivering all night. 

Slightly reluctant to the thought of slumbering the night away on a cramped loveseat, Y/N shifted away to press her back against the backrest. Whiskey nudged his shoe down before slithering himself into the cocoon. The first thing that came to Y/N’s mind was the extremely close distance between the two, while Whiskey inquired himself to how she had not fainted at such a temperature, especially with the addition of the fireplace. 

“Okay, get some sleep, a day’s waitin’ for us.” No rules had been hung upon the board, no restrictions, yet, during the night, unconscious two pairs of arms slithered to snuggle the other. 

[hedgefairy]

Okay, I know, I know, it's already old news, everybody and their uncle in the costuming community has already talked it over, but anyhoo, I made notes when I crawled my way through effing Bridgerton and I will be damned if I don't vomit them onto this site. I have 32 pages of this shit, I'm not gonna throw that away.

I'm also typing this on my phone because I'm stuck on a trainride that's just doubled in length because this is the 2021 Northern German snow storm. What, there's snowflakes on the rails? We cannot possibly keep up our schedule, say goodbye to 90% of the connections.

Okay, on to Bridgerton, Episode 1

We're in Britain (oh, London, okay), allegedly 1813. I see people who are clearly meant to be asympatico, but is this size incusivity I spot there? Daring! Gasp! Me li...

Oh wait, no. The character is promptly shamed for her figure (which is mostly caused by the horrible cut of her dress. Every size can look great in Regency garb, but never mind, we need to make the "fat one" look bad!).

Also, no shifts under the stays. Why. There was obviously enough budget, don't tell me you couldn't afford a few strappy tops - it's not like the rest is historically accurate, so it would have sufficed to send some poor underpaid intern to H&M and get some. Nvm, that wouldn't be sexay.

Wait, is the garishly dressed (always a sign of a character of bad character in a costume drama) woman Delphine from Selfridge? Does she always have to play bitches? That's not nice, and just because she has a recognisable face, which by modern (read: americanised) standards is not favourable enough. Ugh. But I like the actress, so I'll let it slide (for now).

Lol, buttocks.

Not sure about the girls' dresses. Also, the Queen is a WOC, cool!

Oh no, one of the Featherington sisters faints! But that's okay because the Featheringtons are just comic relief and foil anyway.

I get weird incest vibes from the Bridgertons.

So the court is clearly 18th century and the show is set in the 1810s. I've by now seen several explanations for this decision, I still think it robs the Queen of reproductions of her actual historical gowns which were heavily inspired by the 18th century but so. Magnificently. Weird. It would have been so neat, and more of a "hey, I'm kinda out of touch with things" vibe, but hey, I'm not the one getting paid for making those taffeta gowns here (her hair is glorious, tho).

I'm very into the intro.

That Regency gossip girl is a real b, not unlike the Dowager Countess of Downton (unpopular opinion, I think she's pretty overrated, yes, I like Maggie Smith).

Again, no shifts.

Where do I know the "pragmatic" Bridgerton sister from? Ah, it's The Paradise. And Jonathan Strange. (Wait, she's my age. And she's supposed to be a teenager. Man, do I love a good Dawson casting. I like the actress, though, she has a face ™!).

Aaaah. We get it. She's the spirited one. She also doesn't care about dresses because she's not like other girls™. I really like her voice (but she still doesn't sound like a teenager).

The heck is up with Lady F's dress and that of her friend? Oh, yeah. Antagonist fashion.

Of course the Featheringtons are Horrid Hags™ aside from Penny who's nice, but the pudgy one (at least we don't get a case of "she's not conventionally attractive so she's bad").

Oooh, the cousin! Supposed to suck, but ofc she's a stunner, and only Penny (who's the nice one, remember!) is delighted to have her around. She's also a POC, which is nice but apparently that means she does not follow fashion, hair-wise. I would have loved to see some Regency hair on her, it would have been so pretty *cries in Greek updo*

Ugh, we're still in Ep. 1, typing this on my phone was a bad idea.

Lady Danbury and the Duke guy are delightful with each other (more POC! So neat!).

The girl the oldest Bridgerbro screws is apparently a singer, which isn't up to status for his doucheship, and she doesn't wear a shift.

The music at the ball sounds like something from the Top 40s, but I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary music charts so I can't tell what it is. I like it when they do that in historical-ish works, making well-known pop or rock stuff work for the ambience (ugh, that dance scene to Golden Years in Knight's Tale. My heart. In a good way.)

I dig the Ducktail hair of Penny's crush. Oh, wait, that's a Bridgerbro. I don't quite get why the hair trends of the time don't apply to the POC characters or extras, but seeing how most white characters also show a shameful disregard for the weirdnes and gloriosity (that's not a word) that is early 1800s hair (the 1830s take the cake, tho) despite those hairdos being basically designed for white people hair, I don't think I care much (well, I do, but about all of them). Overall the hair is horrid and not very 1810s. Let's just leave it at that.

Like a good old romance novel (I've since been told that Bridgerton is supposed to be a pastiche of such novels, but I really couldn't tell from the series, not at all, and I'm not inclined to read the books) we have

a pretty, kind, superpure daughter of the main family

the mean matriarch (could have been an aunt, too, but here she's the mum) of the rivalling or antagonist family

a spirited daughter of the main family (in most romance novels this would be our heroine but so far she refreshingly lacks a love interest and pretty daughter seems to get the most screen time)

a Horrid Suitor™

a Hot Suitor™ who doesn't want attention

a really good and doting good parent

Lol, misheard Greece for Grease with Ducktail Bridgerbro, whose name is Colin, apparently. This is funny because of his Danny Zuko memorial hair.

Overall a bit too much bling for my taste, and too few pearls. It looks like an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen with a Regency theme.

Of course the romance is going to be the Pretty One aka. Daphne and the Duke and he's even bros with her eldest bro. Wait, are they exes? I can haz bi? No? Aww, shucks. Maybe in another episode (spoiler: no).

Okay, WHAT is it with Lady F's dresses and hair. Like, she reminds me of Mars Attacks. Which, as you might remember, was not set in the Regency period.

Lord B (Bridgerbro the Eldest) sucks, he's screwing Opera Girl without any intention of marrying her but he's bitchy about his sister being ogled by his Eton (or wherever) bestie?

Oh, I'm in Hamburg now. And my train back home got canceled, so back to Berlin it is because there's not a single option to get to Hanover tonight, at least that's what the lady from the train station is saying, "oh well, you'll have to go back and try again tomorrow", so that's awesome...

Honestly, if it weren't so late and I didn't have things to do at home I'd find this terribly exciting.

Back to Bridgerton!

Where were we? Ah.

I can't even read my own annotation. Something about George III. I think I was upset about how they totally ignored that it's called Regency because George IV acted as the regent king, and he doesn't even feature in the series, I guess because they wanted to play up the Queen? Not a fan, because thanks to Horrible Histories I'm quite fond of that guy.

Again, no shifts.

Oh, look, it's Horrid Suitor™, destined for leftovers.

The Featherington cousin gets all the attention but no fleshed-out character.

Penny Featherington's dog is named Lord Byron, which ❤️

I like the Duke! He's there, drinking in his club (even though they're a patriarchal remnant of the past I have a weird appreciation for stuffy Gentlemen's Clubs, I blame Bertie Wooster and the Drones), calling Lord B out for his general fuckery.

Oh no, Ducktail Colin is more into the Cousin than Penny, who obviously pines for him!

Thank you, Lord B, for enabling Horrid Suitor™. Nobody asked you to be such a fucktwit.

The Queen is, of course, a bit of a bitch, but patronage from cool Lady *scrolls up for name* Danbury ensues for Protagonist Girl™ Daphne.

"I wish they had found a better trend language", what the heck did I even mean by that? That's what you get for just scribbling down notes while watching and simultaneously sewing. 18th century pants, in case you wanted to know.

Cousin is angry, probably because Lady F behaves like Cinderella's evil stepmother, because Cousin is prettier than her daughters and gets, like, all the suitors because Lord B bitched away everyone who wanted to get into Daphne's dowry ifyouknowwhatImeanwinkwinknudgenudge, right across the street into Cousins parlour.

The Bridgertons are annoyingly perfect. Ugh.

Oh look, it's "banter" between Daphne and Dukey! It's so Pride & Prejudice! It's almost a tiny bit Shakespeare! I put banter in parentheses because wow, nope, I'm not getting any chemistry here.

Uh, Lady B calls out Lord B (aka. her son aka. Bridgerbro the Eldest) for his screwery with Opera Girl and his outpimpery of his sister to Horrid Suitor™, buuuurrrrrnnn. He promptly calls of his affair with Opera Girl.

No shifts!

Penny gets to dance with Ducktail Colin at the thing! Good for her, but it's a country dance with jumping and fun, because she's a) the pudgy character and b) a Featherington, so it can't be something romantic and pretty (I personally like country dances, but they aren't protagonist dances).

Oooh, Cousin had her period, oh no, oh snap, oh she didn't, because she's PREGNANT! Shit, that's problematic, and not because she's an unmarried woman in the 1810s, but because she gets close to no lines at all so far, and suddenly she's pregnant and telling Lady F that she sucks for being privileged, violence ensues, this is ugly. Man, I get what some critics mean by "the POC actors*actresses get all the problems" and that not exactly being great.

Horrid Suitor™ makes property claims about Daphne, eeewwwww, thanks to Lord B's general suckiness, ewww, r@pe attempt ensues, was that really necessary? It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the series and generally nope, yay, broken nose! (which was indeed totally necessary). Nice one, and probably the only scene so far (spoiler: overall) in which I actually like Daphne. Dukey thinks a mean left hook is attractive, and, generally speaking, he's not wrong.

Daphne and Dukey come up with a pseudo-shakespearean plot to pretend to be totally into each other so she can attract suitors by being not available and he gets not to have fangirls by being not available, and as someone who has read a few too many historical-ish bodice rippers I know exactly where this is going. I mean, come on.

I can't see enough of the following choreography to complain about it. Man, I miss historical dance classes.

And that concludes Ep. 1! Finally! Thank you for getting this far, sorry for all of it (especially typos, it's the bane of unwanted autocorrect), I guess?

Update on the train situation: I've been told by the ticket control person that I shouldn't get my hopes up until noon tomorrow.

To be continued,

because I didn't take these 32 pages of notes for nothing.

[mst3kproject]

The Equinox

'Aleczilla51297′ appears to have made a tumblr purely for the purpose of telling me I need to review Equinox and Godzilla vs Hedorah.  I decided to do Equinox first because I’ve already seen Godzilla vs Hedorah, which is one of the preachier Godzilla movies but does have that hilarious bit where the big guy flies by using his atomic breath as a rocket.  If Equinox turns out to be a #fuck this movie entry, then Godzilla can act as a sort of a palate-cleanser.  And so, without further ado:

Something blows up, a woman called Susan dies, and a dude gets run down by a driverless car.  My Dad would feel vindicated – he finds the whole idea of self-driving cars untrustworthy.  The victim, whose name is David Fielding, ends up in a mental hospital, where he tells his story to a psychiatrist.  Seems that Dave, his pal Jim, Jim’s girlfriend Vicky, and Vicky’s friend Susan, headed up into the mountains for a picnic with their old teacher Dr. Waterman. These people are all idiots.

The four young people arrive to find Waterman’s cabin destroyed and a creepy old man living in a cave nearby, who gives them a locked book. Because the characters don’t know they’re in a bad movie, they don’t realize that the book is clearly the fucking Necronomicon, and decide to crack it open and read it while they eat their KFC. To nobody’s surprise, they’re soon being chased around the countryside by dumb stop-motion monsters.  At the end everybody’s dead but Dave, who’s in the mental hospital waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy that said he would die a year and a day after the original events, but that’s not a spoiler because it was the opening scene.

Let’s go over the shit that happens when these four clowns arrive at Dr. Waterman’s.  The cabin’s destroyed and the park ranger who discusses it with them says his name is Asmodeus.  Does that sound like a signal you should get the hell out of there?  No?  Okay, how about when they find a castle they can’t remember being there before?  Still no?  Well then, on their way to the castle (which later vanishes behind a wall of invisibility, probably because they couldn’t afford interior sets), they come across a cave with Green Goblin laughter echoing out of it, and weird velociraptor footprints all around.  Would you leave, or would you light up some torches and go check it out?  What about when you find a partially-mummified corpse in the cave?

The whole first ten minutes of the flashback that comprises most of the narrative is a litany of things I’m pretty sure anybody would flee from in real life.  I don’t believe much in the supernatural but if I saw all that I would be sure that multiple crimes had been committed and that I wanted no part of it.  The characters of Equinox, however, insist on investigating themselves, and continue to make stupid, stupid decisions for the entire run time.  Yes, let’s all go in a group to check and make sure the monster is dead.  Let’s hang around and bury the bodies ourselves instead of getting back to civilization for a police report and a good stiff drink.  Let’s collect the picnic stuff before we leave because that basket cost at least $15 at Wal-Mart.  It’s the kind of movie where you start to get annoyed that the characters aren’t dying fast enough.  When we finally get back to the opening shot I mainly felt relief that the movie was almost over.

The MST3K movie Equinox most reminds me of is The Day Time Ended: there are people in the middle of nowhere and, for some reason, a bunch of random stop-motiony things happen that never actually add up to a story.  Stuff comes and goes without serving any purpose other than to be creepy.  Who was Crazy Cave Guy?  I at first assumed he was the missing Dr. Waterman but Waterman turns up later and immediately dies, so what’s going on with this other guy?  What’s about the cave mummy… who was that?  Was the man who showed up to snatch the book actually Dr. Waterman or just a demon in his form?  Why is there a random graveyard in the middle of the woods?  Why does the psychiatrist have a creepy monster mask on his wall?  What’s up with Asmodeus apparently trying to rape Susan without even unbuttoning his pants, and later possessing her so that she does the same thing to Vicky?

Dialogue specifies that Dr. Waterman was a geologist, which seems an odd choice for somebody to be translating ancient documents.  I mean, there’s no reason why a geologist can’t have a side interest in ancient manuscripts, but when a movie takes the trouble to tell you something like that there’s usually a reason why.  Geology is never important to the plot, even tangentially.

It must be said that Equinox makes slightly more sense than The Day Time Ended, in that we’re actually given a reason why these events are happening.  Dr. Waterman had acquired and translated the Necronomicon and could not control the demons he summoned (I am convinced that Sam Raimi saw Equinox when he was around twelve and thought, shit, I could make a better movie than this!).  A huge tentacle creature destroyed his cabin, and then there’s the sabre-toothed ogre, the giant green caveman, and of course, the devil himself.  These creatures have a motivation: they are determined to get the book back, whether through force or persuasion.  The events could still happen in any order, but it all has a common core, rather than being just a collection of Concepts.

In capable hands this story could be made to work (see previous parentheses), but sadly none of the hands involved in making Equinox were remotely capable.  The acting is abysmal, mostly just people standing around awkwardly reciting their lines. All the dialogue was then dubbed over in post-production, which makes it even more stiff and awkward.  There’s a bit where a guy reads a letter as if he has to sound out each word.  The direction and music are bland.  Even the costumes are awful.  You’d think it would be hard to fuck up costumes in a movie set in the present, but it looks like everyone just turned up to set in their street clothes and they went with that.  Good costuming can tell us a lot about characters but the outfits here say nothing. Also, both Vicky and Susan are blondes in blue shirts, and once Susan’s hair falls out of its bun they’re basically indistinguishable.

The characters have no discernable personalities.  How they react to things changes from scene to scene, with nobody’s motives clear.  The only thing that remains constant is Jim wanting to leave while Dave always wants to stay and take care of something or other.  Stuff happens that could result in character development but none of it is ever followed up.  The most notable example is when Dave feels terrible guilt over having apparently killed Dr. Waterman, but this is forgotten a few minutes later and we never even find out if the dead man were really Dr. Waterman.

The effects are uniformly bad, but not usually enough so to be entertaining in themselves.  The castle is an obvious matte painting and the stuff on the other side of the portal, whether it’s Hell or the Dark Dimension or I don’t even know, is just the same spot in the woods with an orange filter over it.  There’s a stupid spinning thing used to represent Asmodeus exercising assorted dark powers.  The devil and the sabre-toothed ogre are both stiff and shitty stop-motion puppets.  The animation is surprisingly competent for a movie with the budget of Jr. High drama club, but they’re still not good.  The one exception is the giant green caveman, which looks dumb but is quite convincing as occupying space and interacting with the characters.

One might expect that this movie would be about the temptation of evil.  The monsters in it are summoned using a book of dark knowledge, and in trying to get the book back Asmodeus offers Jim anything he wants – money, prestige, women, you name it.  Problem is, there’s never any sign that the main characters are in fact tempted.  The crazy guy in the cave wants nothing from the book except to get rid of it.  He passes it on to Dave and Jim with evident glee.  Dr. Waterman’s interest in it, according to his notes, was purely scientific.  He summoned demons just to see if he could do it, but he doesn’t appear to have gained anything thereby except the knowledge that it works.  The main characters never even attempt to use the book, even to get themselves out of this mess, they just run around trying to keep it out of the hands of the monsters.  I’d say it’s like if every character in The Lord of the Rings was book-Faramir, but only a colossal nerd would use an example like that.

Honestly, I think this movie was about the wrong characters.  Dr. Waterman’s process of discovering the book and learning to use it, only to realize he’s unleashed things he cannot control, would probably have been a much more interesting story.  The characters from this film could have shown up at the end to fish the book out of the mess, with the implication that they will be its next victims.  This would have been a much better way to explore the ideas of temptation, making a Faust-like character out of Waterman as he is tempted not by riches or fame, but by knowledge and power.

Equinox is not quite #fuck this movie bad.  In order to earn that tag, a film has to be unwatchably dull and/or morally repugnant. I didn’t have any trouble sitting through Equinox but I also didn’t really enjoy the experience.  As movies about demonic forces go, it’s pretty bland and nothing much really seems to happen.  I guess that means I have to forgive Aleczilla51297 for sending it to me, but I’m still looking really forward to a Godzilla film or two.

[bluemoon-writer]

TSI - Chapter 1 Notes

Here are my full notes and commentary for Chapter 1 of my Harry Potter fic 'The Snake Inside'.

Chapter 1 can be found here.

Throughout the chapter there are numbers in parentheses, these numbers correspond to the below notes. To best understand what I’m talking about in the notes I would recommend opening the story in a second tab and following along from there.

(notes begin under the cut)

1. This is, if you hadn’t noticed, lifted directly from the book, I do do this a couple times however, this is the only one that is italicized. I’m going to try and point out the other instances in chapter notes as well.

2. Another line lifted from the book, although here it has slightly different context

3. This was another line from the book, although again it has slightly different context (also I swear these notes aren’t just going to be me citing passages from the book)

4. I was actually really conflicted over this. Dudley is obviously incredibly spoiled so I figured it made sense that if for once Harry had something that he didn’t that he would throw a fit and demand he get the same. What I wasn’t confident about was how Petunia or Vernon would react as they really do love Dudley, shown by how much they spoil him. In this scenario, I decided that Petunia’s hatred of magic plus her fear of losing Dudley to magic (just like she lost her sister) would drive her to hit Dudley.

5. The first signs of Harry’s sneaky Slytherin side! He reads the room and chooses the best manner to approach the situation, something he would be good at considering he grew up in an abusive household. He would likely have gotten very good at reading moods and acting accordingly at a young age to avoid being hit or yelled at.

6. It might seem like Harry is a little quick to believe in Hogwarts and want to go considering he knows nothing about it. But, it’s an escape from the Dursleys and the terrible school they were going to send him to. Plus, it’s obvious that the Dursleys hate magic, so why would they lie to Harry about him being a wizard?

7. I know in canon Hogwarts is free, but that simply doesn’t make sense to me. In my world, Hogwarts is the best and most elite school in Britain, but it’s not the only one. There are also smaller ‘public’ wizarding schools that people who can’t afford Hogwarts go to. Also, if Hogwarts has a tuition then it only makes sense to me that the Potter Parents would set up an education fund for Harry, especially since their lives were at risk, they would want to make sure that Harry would be able to get the best education possible.

8. Some more Slytherin sneakiness, Harry isn’t a master manipulator by any means but he’s lived with the Dursleys for 11 years, he knows how to play them.

9. I don’t write it in bc it seemed unnecessary, but she does explain her reasoning off-screen.

10. Some foreshadowing here, I thought I was rather clever, finding a logical way for Harry and Vernon to learn how to enter the train platform.

11. This whole paragraph is my attempt at showing how Harry is still just a kid who’s curious about the new world he’s found himself in. I know I write Harry (and all the characters his age) as being a little more mature than they probably would be in reality, so here I was trying to show a pure, childlike curiosity and also some trains of thought that aren’t totally logical bc he is a kid.

12. I do think the Dursleys, or Vernon at least, is more clever than he gets credit for, he is high up in Grunnings, so he has to have some sort of head on his shoulders, and he’s certainly self-serving we saw in book 2 how he lathered up those rich people he wanted to impress. So, I think as much as Vernon might hate magic and think goblins are disgusting, that he would very much be able to put that aside if he thought it might benefit him.

13. The goblins ‘revealing the truth’ to Harry, or giving him or helping him out in some way is kinda over done and doesn’t always make sense as the goblins really have no reason so want to go out of their way to help Harry. But, I needed an unbiased 3rd party to teach Harry a little about the wizarding world and I figured a satisfactory motivation for the goblins would be making money in the form of consultation fees.

14. The first hints of Dumbledore’s manipulations. He wants a naïve Savior who will be easy for him to influence and shape into the person he thinks the world needs. Note, I’m not going for an evil Dumbledore, just a morally grey Dumbledore.

15. Paper business refers to the practice of owning a business on paper but not being involved in how it’s currently ran, I’m not trying to say that the Potters own several companies that sell paper. I don’t know if this is a common term, when I googled it nothing came up, but my dad uses it a lot when talking about businesses. Also, we know in canon that the Potters are rich but in a lot of fics it has evolved into them being extremely wealthy and influential. I’m running with this fanon idea because the Potters are a very old family, they’ve been around since the 12thcentury and married into other very influential families in canon. Also, if I ever get to the later years I do want to mess around with some politics and Harry having power from his family name will be a necessary advantage.

16. I’m not going to bore you guys with paragraphs detailing just how exceedingly rich Harry is, if he can’t even do anything with what he owns yet. He’s 11, he’s not going to be making any smart investments.

17. Like I said earlier with the tuition vault, the Potters were soldiers in a war, they knew they might die and I think it’s only logical that they would take precautions to ensure that Harry would have a comfortable life should they die.

18. This might seem like a lot, but again, the Potters are rich and they want their only child to be able to have a comfortable life even if they die, plus it is supposed to last until Harry’s an adult.

19. This is not canon, JKR said that a galleon is approx. 5 British pounds. I think that’s too low, so I changed it. I mean, it’s solid gold and the highest form of currency it’s got to be worth more than that.

20. Trying to give Dumbledore the benefit of the doubt, but of course Vernon is going to be suspicious of anyone who took money that he could have used.

21. This is just something that I thought made sense, Gringotts has been established as being in the business of making money and how can they do that if they’re cut off from part of their clientele?

22. I’m trying to go in a new direction with the Dursleys, I’m not trying to redeem them, but like Dumbledore, they’re in a grey area, especially Vernon. I think a self-serving Vernon would be interested in learning more about the magic world, or more specifically learning what it can do for him. But also because you need to know your enemy, as interested as he might be in profiting off magic, Vernon doesn’t trust wizards. As for Harry, this is a Slytherin AU, of course he’s going to play along with his uncle’s plan as long as it benefits him.

23. This is another line from the book

24. Hints that Dean is actually a halfblood and not muggleborn, this is canon too. I’m looking forward to exploring the future “tracking down who my real dad was arc”

25. Originally, I had Harry meet Hermione and her family, but I decided to change it to Dean because I wanted to go down some different avenues. A lot of Slytherin Harry stories have Harry becoming friends with Hermione early on despite their differences and I didn’t want to just do the same thing as everyone else. Also, I really like Dean Thomas’s character he’s a friendly, good natured, brave and loyal. I also think that Harry would get along better with Dean right off the bat than he would with Hermione.

26. Honestly, I think it’s ridiculous that they still use quills and I will be using the trope where Harry sneaks in ballpoint pens.

27. Harry came to Diagon a few days earlier than he did in canon, so I figure it only makes sense that he would meet someone different at Madam Malkins also this gave me a great opportunity to shoe in one of my other favorite characters, Neville.

28. I headcanon that Harry and Neville have a slight magical bond over both being possible options for the prophecy.

29. I admit this is slightly unrealistic, as I’ve dropped my glasses several times before and they’ve never broken but I wanted an excuse to get Harry some new glasses.

30. Not implausible, but also not likely either. Also, I admit I really have no clue about British healthcare, especially not what it was like in the 80s and 90s. I know it’s free, but that there’s also the option to do private or paid care. So, for this story, assume that the Dursleys use private care bc they want to seem better than everyone else.

31. Again, probably not the most realistic scenario, but it is possible. I got glasses when I was 11 and contacts when I was 15, but I definitely could have gotten the contacts when I was a little younger. Maybe not, 11-years old younger, but I don’t think it’s entirely out of the ballpark.

32. I didn’t see any point in changing Hedwig’s name, so I kept it the same.

33. Giving Harry contacts was something that I debated a lot, there’s no real reason he needs them, I just wanted him to have some because they’re convenient. I personally regret not getting contacts earlier.

34. To be honest, this is actually a bit of a cop out on my end because I haven’t figured out the entire political system yet. BUT even if I had, Harry is still 11 so he probably wouldn’t understand it that well anyways. There will be a brief explanation in chapter 2 though.

35. Dudley’s reaction is anything thing I was really torn up about. Because he’s essentially torn between his two parents, sticking with Petunia ostracizes him from Vernon and sticking with Vernon ostracizes him from Petunia. Ultimately, I decided Dudley would value his father’s attention more because while Petunia wouldn’t like him getting involved with magic, she wouldn’t cut Dudley off completely, she loves him too much. But Vernon, has been completely distracted by magic and without Dudley getting involved in it too then he won’t get any attention from his father.

36. According to the HP wiki, Dean’s family actually lives in London, but I wanted it to be more convenient for them to meet so I moved them closer to the Dursleys. Also, I actually did about an hour’s worth of research on google maps trying to find a real place Dean’s family to live.

37. A whole lot of this section with the Weasleys was lifted from the book with slightly different commentary from Harry. I originally had more, but it didn’t add anything so I cut it out.

38. I don’t know how outgoing Ron was before he met Harry, if I was him though I would be too nervous to intrude on a compartment with two other kids who looked like they were already friends.

39. This is not a Ron bashing fic, Harry has no reason to dislike him, so of course he wouldn’t be opposed to sitting with him. That said, for the premise of the story I couldn’t have them sit together because Ron is heavily biased against Slytherin.

40. Poor Draco, if he had just paid more attention to who he was passing in the hall then he would have met Harry, but again, I couldn’t let that happen because Draco’s so obnoxious that he’d turn Harry off Slytherin.

41. Honestly, I just wanted Harry to interact with more students who can be potential friends.

42. Again, and the sorting is lifted from the book. I’m not going to make note of every line.

43. I wasn’t sure if I wanted Neville to be in Hufflepuff of Gryffindor at first. A lot of people argue that Neville needed to be in Gryffindor to learn how to be brave, but I think that Hufflepuff would provide a strong support system that would help Neville gain confidence in himself. Also, I decided that Harry’s words in the robe shop would influence Neville into not thinking that he was a loser if he went to Hufflepuff. I imagine in canon, much like Harry was chanting “not slytherin” Neville was probably chanting “not Hufflepuff”. So I think it’s fitting they both don’t end up in Gryffindor in this fic. Also, Harry already has a Gryffindor friend in Dean, he can use a Hufflepuff friend.

[papermoonloveslucy]

LOOK! TV: TURN ON OR TURN OFF?

September 7, 1971

The September 7, 1971 issue of LOOK Magazine (volume 35, number 18) dedicated their entire issue to the medium of television. Inside, there is a feature titled “Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist on page 54. 

The photograph on the cover is slightly distorted to give it the look of an image through a TV screen.  The shot was taken by Douglas Bergquist in January 1971. 

The issue presents a variety of viewpoints about the state of television. Is it ‘tired’ or is there an infusion of new energy to take it into the new decade? John Kronenberger writes an article that asks if cable television is the future. Hindsight tells us that it was not only the future, but is now the past. 

“Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist. 

Bergquist first interviewed Lucille Ball in 1956 for the Christmas issue of Look. 

The photograph is by Douglas Kirkland, a Canadian-born photographer, who not coincidentally, also took the photograph used on the cover. This shot was taken in the garden of Ball’s home in June 1971.  At age 24, Kirkland was hired as a staff photographer for Look magazine and became famous for his 1961 photos of Marilyn Monroe taken for Look's 25th anniversary issue. He later joined the staff of Life magazine.

Bergquist launches the article talking about her friend Sally, who is besot with watching Lucille Ball reruns, preferring Lucy over the news. Under the headline, she sums up the purpose of her interview: “Sorry, Sally. But Lucy is a serious, unfunny lady. So how come she’s a top clown of the fickle tube for twenty years, seen at home 11 times weekly and in 77 countries?”  

LUCILLE BALL: THE STAR THAT NEVER SETS...

(Lucille Ball’s quotes are in BOLD. Footnote numbers are in parentheses.)

My neighbor Sally, nine, turns out to be a real Lucy freak. Though she likes vintage-house-wife I Love Lucy best, she'll watch Lucille Ball 11 times a week, if permitted. That's how often Madame Comedy Champ of the Tube, come 20 years this October, can be caught on my local box. Ten reruns, plus the current Here's Lucy on Monday night, CBS prime time. Friends, that's 330 weekly minutes of Lucy, which should be rank overexposure. Did you know that even the U.S. man-on-the-moon walkers slipped in ratings, second time around?

Quel mystery. Variety last fall announced that old-fashioned sitcoms and broad slapstick comedy are passé, given today's hip audiences. With one big exception - Lucy. When the third Lucy format went on in '68, reincarnating Miss Ball as a widowed secretary (with her real-life son, Desi Jr., now 18, and Lucie Jr., 20), Women's Wear Daily said not only were the kids no talent, but the show was "treacle." "One giant marshmallow," quoth the Hollywood Reporter, "impeccably professional, violence-free, non-controversial . . . 100% escapism." 

Miss Ball: "Listen, that's a good review. I usually get OK personal notices, but the show gets knocked regular."

So why does Sally, like all the kids on my block, love slapstick, non-relevant Lucy? "Because she's always scheming and getting into trouble like I do, and then wriggling her way out of it." A 44-year-old Long Island housewife: "Of course I watch. I should watch the news?" When the British Royal Family finally unbent for a TV documentary, what was the tribe watching come box-time? Lucy, over protests from Prince Philip. (1)

"I've been a baby-sitter for three generations," says Miss Ball briskly. "Kids watch me during the day [she outpulls most kiddy shows]. Women and older men at night. Teen-agers, no. They look at Mod Squad. Intellectuals, they read books or listen to records.... You know I even get fan mail from China?" MAINLAND CHINA? "Hong Kong, isn't that China?" No. "Where is it anyway?"

The Statistics on the Lucy Industry are numbing. In recent years, she has run in 77 countries abroad, including the rich sheikhdom of Kuwait, and Japan, where, dubbed in Japanese yet, she's been a long-distance runner for 12 years. Where are all those funny people of yesteryear - Jackie Gleason, the Smothers Brothers, Sid Caesar, the Beverly Hillbillies - old reliables like Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton? Gone, all gone, form the live tube - except for reruns dumped by sponsors, out of fashion, murdered in the ratings.

Even this interview is a rerun. Fifteen years ago, I sat in Miss Ball's old-timey movie-star mansion in Beverly Hills, wondering how much longer, oh Lord, could Lucy last? She has a different husband, a genial stand-up comic of the fast-gag Milton Berle school, Bronx-born Gary Morton, 49. He replaced Desi Arnaz, her volatile Cuban spouse (and costar and partner) of 20 years, who lives quietly in Mexico's Baja California, alongside a pool shaped like a guitar, with a second redhead wife. "Ever been here before?" asks Gary, now her executive producer, who's brightened the house decor. "Used to be funeral-parlor gray, right?"

Otherwise, the lady, like her show, seems preserved in amber. Though newly 60, she could be Sally's great-grandmother. Of a Saturday, she's unwinding from a murderous four-day workweek. Her pink-orange-fireball hair is up in rollers. Her black-and-blue Rolls-Royce, inherited from her friend, the late Hedda Hopper, is parked in the driveway. But in attitude and opinion, she comes across Madame Middle America, despite the shrewd show-biz exterior. Good egg. Believer in hard work, discipline, Norman Vincent Peale. Deadeye Dickstraight, she talks astonishingly unfunny - about Vietnam, Women's Lib, about which she feels dimly, marriage to Latins, books she toted up to her new condominium hideaway in Snowmass, Colo. "Snow" is her new-old passion, a throwback to her small-town Eastern childhood. For the first time in family memory, this lifelong workhorse actually relaxed in that 9,700-foot altitude for four months this year, learning to ski, reading Pepys, Thoreau, Shirley MacLaine's autobiography, "37 goddamned scripts, and all those Irvings" (Stone, Wallace, etc.). She had scouted for a mountain retreat far away from any gambling. Why? Is she against gambling? "No, I'm a sucker. I can't stay away from the tables."

From yellowing notes, I reel off an analysis by an early scriptwriter. Perhaps she comes by her comic genius because of some "early maladjustment in life, so you see commonplace things as unusual? To get even, to cover the hurt, you play back the unhappy as funny?"

Forget any deep-dish theorizing. "Listen, honey," says Miss B, drilling me with those big blue peepers, "you've been talking to me for four, five hours. Have you heard me say anything funny? I tell you I don't think funny. That's the difference between a wit and a comedian. My daughter Lucie thinks funny. So does Steve Allen, Buddy Hackett, Betty Grable."

BETTY GRABLE THINKS FUNNY? "Yeah. Dean Martin has a curly mind. oh, I can tell a funny story about something that happened to me. But I'm more of a hardworking hack with an instinct for timing, who knows the mechanics of comedy. I picked it up by osmosis, on radio and movie lots [she made 75 flicks] working with Bob Hope, Bert Lahr, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges - didn't learn a thing from them except when to duck. Buster Keaton taught me about props. OK, I'm waiting."

Well, I hedge, I caught Miss Ball in a few funny capers on the Universal lot this week. Like one day, in her star bungalow, she throws a quick-energy lunch in the blender - four almonds, wild honey, water, six-year-old Korean ginseng roots, plus her own medicine, liver extract. "AAAGH," she gags, then peers in the mirror at her hair, which is a normal working fright wig, "Gawd," she moans, "it looks as if I'd poked my finger into an electric-light socket!" No boffo line, but her pantomimed horror makes me laugh out loud. Working, she is fearless - dangling from high wires, coping with wild beasts. She talks of animals she's worked with, chimps, bears, lions, tigers. "I love 'em all, especially the chimps, but you can't trust their fright or panic. Like that baby elephant who gave a press job to a guest actress." (2) What's a press job? "Honey, once an elephant puts his head down, he keeps marching, right through walls." Miss Ball puts her own head down, crooks an arm for a trunk, and voila, is an elephant. Funny as hell. So off-camera she's no great wit, but then is Chaplin?

Four days a week, through the Thursday night filming before a live audience, she labors like some hungry Depression starlet. Monday a.m., she sits at the head of a conference table, lined by 12 staffers, editing the script. Madame Executive Tycoon in charge of everything, overseeing things Desi used to do. Also the haus-frau, constantly opening windows for fresh air and emptying ashtrays. She wears black horn-rims, three packs of ciggies are at the ready. "Do I have to ask for a raise again?" she impatiently drills the writers, "I've done that 400 times." "QUIET!" she yells during rehearsal, perching in a high director's chair, a la Cecil B. DeMille. "Isn't somebody around here supposed to yell quiet?" She frets about the new set. "Those aisles - they're a mile and a half wide. What for?" The audience is too far away, she won't get the feedback from their laughs are her life's blood. (Once I hear Gary Morton on the phone, in his British-antiqued executive office, saying: "We need your laugh, honey. Go down to the set and laugh; that's an order.")

That physical quality about her comedy, a la the old silent movies or vaudeville - which were the big amusements of her youth - seems to transcend any language. (A Moscow acting school, I was told, shows old Lucy clips as lessons in comic timing.) So what did she learn from that great Buster Keaton?

"At Metro, I kept being held back by show-girl-glamour typing. I always wanted to do comedy. Buster Keaton, a friend of director Eddy Sedgwick, spotted something in me when I was doing a movie called DuBarry - what the hell was the name? - and kept nagging the moguls about what I could do. Now a great forte of mine is props. He taught me all about 'em. Attention to detail, that's all it is. He was around when I went out on a vaudeville tour with Desi with a loaded prop." What's that? "Real Rube Goldberg stuff. A cello loaded with the whole act - a seat to perch on, a violin bow, a plunger, a whistle, a horn. Honey, if you noodge it, you've lost the act. Keaton taught me your prop is your jewel case. Never entrust it to a stagehand. Never let it out of your sight when you travel, rehearse with it all week." Ever noodge it? "Gawd, yes. Happened at the old Roxy in New York. I was supposed to run down that seven-mile aisle when some maniac sprang my prop by leaping out and yelling 'I'm that woman's mother! She's letting me starve.'" What did you do? "Ad-libbed it, and I am one lousy ad-libber."

After 20 years, isn't she weary of playing the Lucy character? "No, I'm a rooter, I look for ruts. My cousin Cleo [now producer of Here's Lucy] is always prodding me to move. She once said Lucy was my security blanket. Maybe. I'm not erudite in any way, like Cleo. But why should I change? Last year was big TV relevant year, and I made sure my show wasn't relevant. Lucy deals in fundamental, everyday things exaggerated, with a happy ending. She has a basic childishness that hopefully most of us never lose. That's why she cries a lot like a kid - the WAAH act - instead of getting drunk."

Aha! Is Lucy the guileful child-woman, conniving forever against male authority - whether husband or nagging boss - particularly FEMALE? ("None of us watch the show," sniffed a Women's Libber I know, "but she must be an Aunt Tom." Still, I ponder, hasn't that always been the essence of comedy, the little poor-soul man - or woman - up against the biggies?)

"I certainly hope so. You trying to con me into talking about Women's Lib? I don't know the meaning of it. I never had anything to squawk about. I don't know what they're asking for that I don't have already. Equal pay for equal work, that's OK. The suffragettes rightly pressed a hard case - and when roles like Carry Nation come along, they ask me to play them, perhaps because I have the physical vitality. But they're kind of a laughingstock, aren't they? Like that girl who gave her parents 40 whacks with an ax? Didn't Carry Nation ax things, was she a Prohibitionist or what?" (3)

She'd just said nix to playing Sabina, in the movie of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Why? "I didn't understand it." She turned down The Manchurian Candidate for the same reason. "Got that Oh Dad, Poor Dad script the same week and thought I'd gone loony." If she makes another movie, she'll play Lillian Russell in Diamond Jim with Jackie Gleason, "a nice, nostalgic courtship story that won't tax anyone's nerves." (4) 

Is Miss Ball warmed by the comeback of old stars in non-taxing Broadway nostalgia shows like No, No, Nanette? (5)

"Listen, I studied that audience. I saw people in their 60's and 70's enjoying themselves. That had to be nostalgia. The 30's and 40's smiled indulgently, that Ruby Keeler is up there on the stage alive, not dead. For the below 30's, it's pure camp. I don't put it down, but it’s not warm, working nostalgia, but the feeling 'Ye gods, anything but today'

"Maybe I'm more concerned about things that I realize. I told you politics is definitely not on my agenda - I got burned bad, back in the '40's signing a damned petition as a favor. (6) Just say the word 'politician,' and I think of chicanery. Too many subversive angles today. But I must be one of millions who are so fed up, depressed, sobbing inside, about the news...the atrocities, the dead, the running down of America. You can't obliterate the news, but the baddest dream is that you feels so helpless.

"I was sitting in this very chair one night, flipping the dial, and came to Combat! There were soldiers crouching in bushes, a helicopter hovering overhead. Nothing happening, so I make like a director, yelling, 'Move it! This take is too LONG!' It turned out to be a news show from Vietnam. That shook me. There I was criticizing the director, and real blood was dripping off my screen... That drug scene bugs me. It's ridiculous, self-indulgent. We're supposed to be grateful if the kids aren't on drugs. They're destroying us from within, getting at our youth in the colleges. OK, kids have to protest, but how can they accomplish anything if they're physically shot?

"One of the reasons I'm still working is that people seem grateful that Lucy is there, the same character and unchanging view. There's so much chaos in this world, that's important. Many people, not only shut-ins, depend on the tube, too much so - they look for favorites they can count on. Older people loved Lawrence Welk. They associated his music with their youth. Now he's gone. It's not fair. (7) They shouldn't have taken off those bucolic comedies; that left a big dent in some folks' lives. Maybe we're not getting messages anymore from the clergy, the politicians, so TV does the preaching. But as an entertainer, I don't believe in messages.

"Some Mr. Jones is always asking why am I still working - as if it were some crime or neurotic. OK, I'll say it's for my kids. But I like a routine life, I like to work. I come from an old New England family in which everyone worked. My grandparents were homesteaders in New York and Ohio. My mother worked all her life - during the Depression in a factory."

What does she think of the new "relevant" comedy like All in the Family? "I don't know... It's good to bring prejudice out in the open. People do think that way, but why glorify it? Those not necessarily young may not catch the moral. That show doesn't go full circle for me."

Full circle?

"You have to suffer a little when you do wrong. That prejudiced character doesn't pay a penance. Does he ever reverse a feeling? I'm for believability, but I'm tired of hearing 'pig,' 'wop,' 'Polack' said unkindly. Me, I have to have an on-the-nose moral. Years ago, the Romans let humans be eaten by lions, while they laughed and drank - that was entertainment. But I’m tired of the ugly. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, that's my idea of entertainment. Anything Richard Burton does is heaven. Easy Rider scared me at first because I knew how it could influence kids. But at least that movie came full circle. They led a life of nothing and they got nothing. Doris Day, I believe in her. Elaine May? A kook, but a great talent. Barbra Streisand? A brilliant technician."

On her old ten-minute daily interview radio show, (8) she once asked Barbra, like any star-struck civilian: How does it feel to be only 21, a big recording artist and star of the Broadway hit Funny Girl? "Not much," said Barbra. "That cool really flustered Lucille. It violated everything she believes in," says cousin Cleo Smith, who grew up with Miss B in small-town Celoron, N.Y. "For her, nothing ever came easy. She didn't marry until she was 30, or become a really big star until she was 40. She's still so hard on herself, sets such rigorous standards for herself as an actress and parent. She honestly believes in all the old maxims, that a stitch in time saves nine, etc. She's literal-minded, a bit like Scarlett O'Hara. Does what needs doing today, and to hell with tomorrow."

Her self-made wealth a few years ago was reckoned at $50 to $100 million. After her divorce, she reluctantly took over the presidency of the Desilu studio and sold it six years later to the conglomerate Gulf & Western for nearly $18 million. Does that make her the biggest lady tycoon in Hollywood? (The 179 original I Love Lucy reruns now belong, incidentally, to a CBS syndicate; her second Lucy Show, to Paramount. She owns only the current Here's Lucy - OK, go that straight?)

"Hah! Like Sinatra, I owe about three and a half million bucks all the time. That figure is ridiculous. All my money is working. I lost a helluva lot in the stock market last year and haven't recouped it. It's an illusion that people in show biz are really rich. The really filthy rich are the little old ladies in Boston, the old folks in Pasadena, who've had dough for years and haven't been seen since."

The divorce from Desi Arnaz can still set her brooding. "It was the worst period of my life. I really hit the bottom of despair - anything form there on had to be up. Neither Desi nor I has been the same since, physically or mentally, though we're very friendly, ridiculously so. Nobody knows how hard I tried to make that marriage work, thinking all the trouble must be my fault. I did everything I could to right that ship, trotting to psychiatrists. I hate failure, and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes... Anything in excess drives me crazy. He'd build a home anyplace he was, and then never be around to enjoy it. I was so idealistic, I thought that with two beautiful babies, and a beautiful business, what more could any man want? Freedom, he said, but he had that. People don't know what a job he did building that Desilu empire, what a great director and brilliant executive he was yet he let it all go....Maybe Latins have an instinct for self-destruction..."

Was that the conflict, a Latin temperament married to an old-fashioned American female? "It has a helluva lot to do with getting into it and getting out. The charm. But they keep up a big facade and don't follow through. No, the machismo didn't bother me, I like to play games too.

"Desi and I had made an agreement that if either of us wanted to pull out of Desilu, the other could buy. I wanted to go to Switzerland with the kids, anywhere to run away, but he wanted out. The I found out that for five years, our empire had taken a nose dive, and if I wanted to get my money back, I had to rebuild it first. For the first time in my life, I was absolutely terrified - I'd never run any show or a big studio. When I came back from doing the musical Wildcat on Broadway, I was so sick, so beat, I just sat in that backyard, numb, for a year. I'd had pneumonia, mononucleosis, staph, osteomyletis. Lost 22 pounds. Friends told me the best thing I could do physically, psychologically, was go back to work, but could I revive Lucy without Desi, my old writers, the old crew?"

You didn't like being a woman executive? "I hated it. I used to cry so much - and I'm not a crier - because I had to let someone go or make decisions I didn't understand. There were always two sides to every question, and trouble was I could see both sides. No one realizes how run-down Desilu was. The finks and sycophants making $70,000 a year, they were easy to clean out. Then during the CBS Jim Aubrey regime, I couldn't sell the new pilots we made - Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor, Ethel Merman. I couldn't sell anything but me." (9)

Was it tough to be a woman bossing men? "Yeah. It puts men in a bad spot. I could read their minds, unfortunately, wondering who is this female making this decision, not realizing that maybe I'd consulted six experts first. I'm all wrong as an executive, I feel out of place. I have too many antennae out, I'm too easily hurt and intimidated. But I can make quick surgical incisions. I've learned that much about authority - give people enough rope to hand themselves, stand back, let them work, but warm them first. Creative people you have to give special leeway to, and often it doesn't pay off. Me, I'm workative, not creative. I can fix - what I call 'naturalize.' I'm a good editor, I can naturalize dialogue, find an easier way to do a show mechanically.

But I didn't make the same marriage mistake twice. Gary digs what my life is, why I have to work. We have tranquility. We want the same things, take care of what we have."

She shows me Gary's dressing room, closets hung with shirts and jackets - by the dozen. "My husband is a clothes and car nut, but it's a harmless vice. Better than booze or chasing women, right?" (His cars include a 1927 Model T Ford, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, an Astin Martin, a Rolls-Royce convertible.)

"Anyone married to me has an uphill climb. Gary and I coped by anticipating. We knew we should be separated eight, nine months a year, so he tapered off his act, found other thing to do - making investments, building things. He plays the golf circuit, Palm Springs, Pebble Beach, and tolerantly lets me stay at Snowmass for weeks. Sun just doesn't agree with me. He didn't come into the business for five years. I didn't want to put him in a position in which he would be ridiculed. I could tell that he was grasping things - casting, story line. I said, 'You've been a big help to me. You should be paid for it.' "

On a Friday night, I dine with the Mortons. Dinner is served around 6:30, just like in my Midwest hometown. Lucille is still fretting about this week's show - "over-rehearsed; because there were so many props, the fun had gone out of it." Gary, just home from unwinding his own way - golfing with Milton Berle, Joey Bishop - asks if I'd like something to drink with dinner? Coke or ginger ale? "No? I think we have wine." No high living in this house, but the spareribs are superb. "Laura asked me an interesting question," he tells his wife. "Like isn't there a conflict when a husband in the same business - comedy - marries a superstar? I told her I'd never thought of it before."

They met the summer when Lucille was rehearsing Wildcat, and he was a stand-up comic at Radio City Music Hall, seven days a week. "We both came up the hard way," he says. "I got started in World War II, clowning for USO shows. I've been in show biz for 30 years and can appreciate what she goes through. Lucy can't run company by herself. Maybe with me around, when she walks on the set, her mind is at peace. I pop in from time to time, on conferences, rehearsals. I can tell from her if things are going well, if the laughter is there. She's a thoroughbred, very honest with me, a friend to whom I can talk about anything. She never leaves me out of her life; that's important for a man. Do you know how many bets were lost about our marriage lasting? It's been nearly ten years now, and I've slept on the couch only once."

Past dinner, we adjourn promptly to the living room, and a private showing of Little Murders. It's not a pretty movie of urban American life, and Lucy talks back indignantly to the screen. (10) The flick she rally like was George Plimpton's Paper Lion, with the Detroit Lions, which she booked under the illusion it was an animal picture. "At the end, 12 of us here stood up and cheered, and I wrote every last Lion a fan note. You know that picture hardly made a dime?"

On a house tout, I'd noted the Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth albums in the living room, and a memo scotch-taped to her bathroom wall: "Get Smart with N.V.P."

N.V.P. Is that Norman Vincent Peale, her old friend and spiritual mentor? "Yes. He marred me and Gary. I still adhere to his way of thinking because he preaches a day-to-day religion that I can understand. Something workable, not allegory. Like how do you get up in the morning and just get through the day?

"Dr. Peale taught me the art of selfishness. All it means is doing what's right for you, not being a burden to others. When I was in Wildcat, he dropped around one night saying, 'I hear you're very ill, and working too hard.' 'Work never hurt anybody,' I protested. But he reminded me I had two beautiful children to bring up, and if I was in bad shape, how could I do it? I've learned you don't rake more leaves than you can get into the wheelbarrow. I've always been moderate, but I was too spread around, trying to please too many people. You don't become callous, but you conserve your energies."

What about her kids? Passing a newsstand, I'd noted a rash of fan mags blazoned with headlines about Desi Jr., something of a teen-age idol, and at 18 a spitting image of old pop. (A rock star at 12, he'd recently garnered very good notices indeed for a movie role in Red Sky at Morning.) "Why Lucille Ball's Son Is So Bitter About His Own Mother," read the El Trasho covers. "Patty Duke Begs Desi Jr. To Believe Her: 'You Made Me Pregnant.' " Does the imbroglio bother this on-the-nose moralist?

"I worked for years for a quiet personal life and to have to personally impinged on, with no recourse, is hard. I brought Patty to the house, feeling very maternal about her, saying look at this clever girl, what a big talent she is. Now, I can thank her for useless notoriety. She's living in some fantastic dreamworld, and we're the victims of it. Desi being the tender age of 17 when they met, she used him. She hasn't proved or asked for anything. I asked Desi if he wanted to marry her and he said no. My daughter helped outfit the baby, which Patty brought to the house, but did she ever say thank you?

"Desi's going to CIA this fall." Not the CIA? No, the new California Institute of the Arts, where he'll study music. "Yes, he's very much like his father, too much sometimes - I just hope he has Desi's business acumen. I'm glad he didn't choose UCLA or Berkeley or a school full of nonconformists. Lucie just now wants marriage and babies - maybe she'll go on to college later.

"I took the kids out of school deliberately. Desi was at Beverly Hills High, Lucie at Immaculate Heart."

Why? "I didn't like the scene - it was the usual - pregnant girls, drugs." That goes on at Immaculate Heart? Sure. "A lot of girls who boarded there were unhappy misfits, and Lucie was already working in the nunnery. All the friends she brought home were the rejected. I'm that way myself."

Did they mind, well, your stage-managing their lives? "No, they were as sick of that weird high school scene as I was. I made them a proposition - told them to think it over for a month, while I was in Monaco. Do you want to be on the show? I told them the salary would be scale, that most would be put in trust. They'd be tutored and not able to graduate with their classes. They both thought they were going to the coast, but working with a tutor, they really got turned on by books for the first time. They wanted to be in show business, and I wanted to keep an eye on them."

Of course her show is nepotism, she grants. "Cleo thought a long time before becoming the producer, wondering if it wasn’t overdoing family. Nobody seems to be suffering from it, I told her." Thursday night show time is like a tense Broadway opening night. Gary Morton, in stylish crested blazer, warms up the audience, heavy with out-of-town tourists. "Lucy started out with another fellow, can't remember his name.... What is home without a mother? A place to bring girls." Lucille bursts out onstage, exuding the old MGM glamour, fireball hair ablaze, eyelashes inches long, in aquamarine-cum-rhinestone kaftan. "For God's sake," she implores, "laugh it up! We want to hear from you... Gary, have you introduced my mom?" Indeed he has. Loyal, durable, 79-year-old Desiree "DeDe" Ball, her hair pink as Lucille's, has missed few of the 409 Lucy shows filmed to date, and is on hand as usual with 19 personal guests. Gary also asks for big hands for Cleo, and her husband Cecil Smith, TV critic for the LA Times, who has also appeared on the show. (11) 

One day Desi Jr. wanders on the set, just back from visiting his father in Mexico. He'd gone with Patty Duke and the baby. The young man does have Latin charm, and apparently talent. I ask him a fan-mag query: Is it rough to be the spin-off of such famous show-biz parents?

"Well, I grew up with kids like Dean Martin, Jr., and Tony Martin, Jr., and we had a lot in common." What? "We all had houses in Palm Springs." Any generational problem with Mom? "She's found the thing she's best at, and sticks to it. As long as she has Snowmass, she has an escape, some reality. I realize she lives half in a man's world, and that must be tough on a woman. My father - he worked hard for years, and then he'd had it. This is silly, weird, he felt. He aged more in ten years than he had in 40. I'm like him. I feel life is very short. He's had major operations recently, and he's changed a lot."

Patty Duke is six years older than Desi Jr., paralleling the six-year age gap that separated parents Lucy and Desi. "Patty is a lot like my mother, the same drive, and strong will, a perfectionist...But I'm never going to get married. Marriage is unrealistic, expecting you to devote a whole life unselfishly to just one person. Do you know people age unbelievably when they marry? From what I've seen, 85 percent of married couples are miserable; 14 percent, just average; one percent, happy." (12) 

His mother's own childhood, in little Celoron, an outspring of Jamestown, N.Y., was oh-so-different from her kids'. "She was always a wild, tempestuous, exciting child," say Cleo, "doing things that worried people, plotting and scheming, though she knew she'd get in trouble." Interesting, because that's one basic of the Lucy format, Miss B forever finagling second bananas like Vivian Vance into co-trouble. "One summer, she conned me into running away. It was only to nearby Fredonia, but in her sneaky way she really wanted to catch up to a groovy high school principal who was teaching there. He played it very cool, calling Mom and telling her we were staying overnight in a boarding house. On his advice, when we got home, DeDe acted as if we hadn't been away. That devastated Lucille, no reaction, nothing."

The classic Lucy story line also has her conniving against male authority, whether husband or boss, now played by Gale Gordon. "I need a strong father or husband figure as catalyst. I have to be an inadequate somebody, because I don't want the authority for Lucy. Every damned movie script sent me seems to cast me as a lady with authority, like Eve Arden or Roz Russell, but that's not me.

"No, I don't remember my own father," says Miss Ball. "He was a telephone lineman who died of typhoid at 25, when I was about three. I do remember everything that day, though. Hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had measles... The doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall.

"My brother Fred [who was born after her father's death] was always very, very good. He never did anything wrong - he was too much to bear. I was always in trouble, a real pain in the ass. I suppose I wasn't much fun to be around." To this day, says Cleo, Lucille suspects Fred is her mother's favorite, even though DeDe has devoted her whole life to this daughter.

Family ties were always fierce-strong. After her father's death, "We lived with my mother's parents, for a while. Grandpa Hunt was a marvelous jack-of-all-trades, a woodturner, eye doctor, mailman, bon vivant, hotel owner. [And also an old-fashioned Populist-Socialist.] He met my grandmother, Flora Belle, a real pioneer woman and pillar of the family, when she was a maid in his hotel. She was a nurse and midwife, an orphan who brought up four pairs of twin sisters and brothers all by herself. He took us to vaudeville every Saturday and to the local amusement park. When Grandma died at 51, all us kids had to pitch in, making beds, cooking.

"Yeah, I guess I am real mid-America, growing up as a mix of French-Scotch-Irish-English, living on credit like everyone else, paying $1.25 a week to the insurance man, buying furniture on time. But it was a good, full life. Grandpa took us camping, fishing, picking mushrooms, made us bobsleds. We always had goodies. I had the first boyish bob in town and the first open galoshes.

"My mother then married Ed Peterson, a handsome-ugly man, very well-read. He was good to me and Freddy but he drank too much. He was the first to point out the magic of the stage. A monologist came to town on the Chautauqua circuit. He just sat onstage with a pitcher of water and light bulb and made us laugh and cry for two hours. For me, this was pure magic. When I was about seven, Ed and mother moved to Detroit, leaving me with his old-fashioned Swedish parents, who were very strict. I had to be in bed at 6:30, hearing all the other kids playing outside in the summer daylight. Maybe it wasn't that traumatic, but I realize now it was a bad time for me. I felt as if I'd been deserted. I got my imagination to working, and read trillions of books."

The adult Lucille, talking to interviewers, used to go on and on about her "unhappy" childhood, little realizing that she was reflecting on her mother, to whom she is passionately devoted. "Just how long do you think you lived with the Petersons?" asked DeDe one day in a confrontation. "Three YEARS? Well I tell you it was more like three weeks."

"I left home at 15, much too early, desperate to break into the big wide world. Looking for work in New York show biz was ugly, without any leads or friends or training other than high school operettas and plays and Sunday school pageants. I was very shy and reticent, believe it or not, and I kept running home every five minutes. I got thrown in with older Shubert and Ziegfeld dollies and, believe me, they were a mean, closed corporation. I don't understand kids today who get easily discouraged and yap about doing their own thing. Don't they know what hard work is? Where are their morals? I always knew when I did wrong, and paid penance."

Yet she was venturesome enough to sit in on some recent Synanon group-therapy sessions for drug addicts. "They wanted me to raise some money, and I wanted to find out what it was about. The games were fascinating, wonderful, until I couldn't take it any more. The other participants kept bugging me: What are you here for? Are your children drug addicts? I had to start making up problems."

For two decades, she's been risking her neck in those murderous ratings, outlasting long-ago competitors like Fulton Sheen, and now up against such pleasers as pro football and Rowan and Martin. (13) 

Suppose the ratings drop, what would she do?

No idea. "Might take a trip on the Inland Waterway form Boston to Florida. In my deal with Universal, I can make specials, other movies, TV pilots. I wouldn't have to ski 'spooked' at Snowmass." What's that? "Honey, I have to be careful. If I break a leg 500 people are out of work. (14) I'd be happy in some branch of acting with some modicum of appreciation. Listen, it never occurred to me, in life that I'd fail ever, because I always appreciated small successes. I never had a big fixed goal. When I was running Desilu, it drove me wild when people asked, 'Aren't you proud to own the old RKO studio where you once worked as a starlet?' What $50-a-week starlet ever walked around a lot saying, 'I want to own this studio'?

"I don't know what you've been driving at, what's your story line? But it's been interesting, talking."

FOOTNOTES: HINDSIGHT IS 20/20

(1) This refers to a rare 1969 BBC documentary about Britain’s royal family that gave the public an inside look at the life of the Windsors. In one scene, the family was watching television, and on the screen was “I Love Lucy”, much to the chagrin of Prince Philip. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were mentioned on the series, especially in the episode “Lucy Meets the Queen” (ILL S5;E15).  

(2) Lucy is referring to a 1967 episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy The Babysitter” (TLS S5;E16) in which Lucy Carmichael babysits three rambunctious chimps for their parents, played by Jonathan Hole and Mary Wickes. In the final moments of the show, Wickes reveals a fourth sibling - a baby elephant!  The animal went wild and pushed Wickes (what Ball described as a “press job”) into one of the prop trees. The trainer had to physically subdue the elephant to get it away from Wickes, who injured her arm. The final cut ends with the entrance of the baby elephant.

(3) Lucy is conflating (probably intentionally) the stories of real-life prohibitionist Carrie Nation (1846-1911), who famously hacked up bars and whisky barrels with an axe, and Lizzie Bordon (1860-1927), who famously hacked up her parents with an axe. (Photo from the 1962 TV special “The Good Years” starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.) 

(4) There was never a film version of Thornton Wilder’s play Skin Of Our Teeth which was on Broadway in 1942 starring Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, the role offered to Ball.  There were several television adaptations; one in Australia in 1959; one in England the same year starring Vivian Leigh as Sabina;  one in the USA in 1955 starring Mary Martin (above) as Sabina; and a filmed version of a stage production starring Blair Brown as Sabina in 1983. Although it is possible that Lucille Ball might have been considered for the role of the sexy housemaid Sabina in 1955, the article says that the role was “just” offered to her, so it probably refers to a 1971 project that never materialized. Wilder’s story tracks a typical American family from New Jersey from the ice age through the apocalypse. 

(5) In 1971, there was a popular revival of the 1925 musical comedy No, No, Nanette on Broadway. The cast featured veteran screen star Ruby Keeler and included Helen Gallagher (playing a character named Lucille, coincidentally), Bobby Van, Jack Gilford, Patsy Kelly and Susan Watson. Busby Berkeley, nearing the end of his career, was credited as supervising the production, although his name was his primary contribution to the show. The 1971 production was well-reviewed and ran for 861 performances. It sparked interest in the revival of similar musicals from the 1920s and 1930s. The original 1925 cast featured Charles Winninger, who played Barney Kurtz, Fred’s old vaudeville partner on “I Love Lucy.” In that same episode (above), they sing a song from the musical, "Peach on the Beach” by Vincent Youmans and Otto Harbach. Like the revue in the episode, the musical is set in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  

(6) Lucy is referring to her 1936 affidavit of registration to join the Communist Party.  Lucille said she signed it to appease her elderly grandfather. The cavalier act caught up with Ball in 1953, when zealous red-hunting Senator Joe McCarthy tried to purge America of suspected Communists. Although many careers were ruined, Ball escaped virtually unscathed.  

(7) The popular big band music series “The Lawrence Welk Show” (1955) was unceremoniously canceled in 1971 by ABC, in an attempt to attract younger audiences. What Lucy doesn’t mention is that four days after this magazine was published, the show began running brand new shows in syndication, which continued until 1982. Welk, despite not being much of an actor, played himself on “Here’s Lucy” (above) in January 1970. 

(8) “Let’s Talk To Lucy” was a short daily radio program aired on CBS Radio from September 1964 to June 1964. Most interviews (including Streisand’s) were spread over multiple installments.  

(9)  To showcase possible new series (pilots) Desilu and CBS aired “Vacation Playhouse” (1963-67) during the summer when “The Lucy Show” was on hiatus.  This would often be the only airing of Lucy’s passion projects. “Papa GI” with Dan Dailey as an army sergeant in Korea who has his hands full with two orphans who want him to adopt them. The pilot was aired in June 1964 but it was not picked up for production. “Maggie Brown” had Ethel Merman playing a widow trying to raise a daughter and run a nightclub which is next to a Marine Corps base. The pilot aired in September 1963, but went unsold. “The Hoofer” starring Donald O’Connor and Soupy Sales as former vaudevillians aired its pilot in August 1966. No sale! 

(10) Little Murders (1971) was a black comedy based on the play of the same name by Jules Feiffer. The film is about a young nihilistic New Yorker (Elliott Gould) coping with pervasive urban violence, obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, electrical blackouts, paranoia and ethnic-racial conflict during a typical summer of the 1970s. Definitely not Lucille Ball’s style of comedy!  Paper Lion (1968) was a sports comedy about George Plimpton (Alan Alda) pretending to be a member of the Detroit Lions football team for a Sports Illustrated article. 

(11) Cecil Smith appeared in “Lucy Meets the Burtons” (HL S3;E1) in 1970 playing himself, a member of the Hollywood Press with a dozen other real-life writers. The casting was a way to get better coverage of the episode (featuring power couple Dick Burton, Liz Taylor, and her remarkable diamond ring). The gambit worked and the episode was the most viewed of the entire series. 

(12) Desi Jr.’s 1971 views on marriage did not last. He married actress Linda Purl in 1980, but they divorced in 1981. In October 1987, Arnaz married dancer Amy Laura Bargiel. Ten years later they purchased the Boulder Theatre in Boulder City, Nevada and restored it. They lived in Boulder with their daughter, Haley. Amy died of cancer in 2015, at the age of 63.   

(13) From 1952 to 1957, Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hosted the inspirational program “Life Is Worth Living”, winning an Emmy Award in 1953, alongside winners Lucille Ball and “I Love Lucy.”  “Here’s Lucy” was programmed up against “Monday Night Football” on ABC and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” on NBC.  Instead of ignoring her competition, Ball embraced them by featuring stories about football and incorporating many of the catch phrases and guest stars from “Laugh-In.” 

(14) Lucy spoke too soon!  Just a few months after this interview was published Ball did indeed have a skiing accident in Snowmass and broke her leg. With season five’s first shooting date approaching, Ball was faced with either ending the series or re-write the scripts so that Lucy Carter would be in a leg cast.  She chose the latter, even incorporating actual footage of herself on the Snowmass  slopes (above) into "Lucy’s Big Break” (HL S5;E1). 

Elsewhere in the Issue...

“This Was Our Life” by Gene Shalit includes images of Lucille Ball in the collage illustration. 

A week after this issue of Look hit the stands, the fourth season of “Here’s Lucy” kicked off with guest star Flip Wilson and a parody of Gone With the Wind.  Three days later, Ball guest-starred on his show. 

Not to be outdone, LOOK’s rival LIFE also devoted an entire issue to television, on news stands just three days later.  

Naturally, “I Love Lucy” didn’t escape mention!  I’m not sure why the show’s run is bifurcated: 1952-55, 1956-57.  Actually, the show began in 1951 and ran continually until 1957. 

Click here for more about Look, Life and Time! 

[sapphicambitions]

My Favorite / Underrated Lines of Red, White, and Royal Blue:

Just did a second read through and marked all of them. We all know and love lines like “Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams?” and “History, huh? Bet we could make some,” and “America: he is my choice,” but this books is a goldmine for fucking fantastic and romantic lines, so I made a list of them. Long post so under the cut!!

-Alex’s kind of love story is much more Shakespearean.

-”I’m trying to understand why you’re so committed to acting like someone you’re not, considering you just told the little girl in there that greatness means being true to yourself.”

-...and when he turns and catches his reflection in the mirror by the closet, he’s right back in his teens, caring too much about his parents and helpless to change his situation. Except now he doesn’t have any AP classes to enroll in as a distraction.

-Alex tries to imagine what they look like: the prince and the First Son, the two leading heartthrobs of their respective countries, shoulder to shoulder on their way to the bar. It’s intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy.

-Maybe he can absorb some of the “much” from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.

-He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long.

-”I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an off broadway play about it.”

-How dare Henry come into Alex’s house looking like the goddamned James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the Prime Minister, and act like he didn’t slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month.

-He feels himself standing at a very tall, very dangerous precipice, with no intention of backing away.

-He laughs into Henry’s mouth, instantly caught up in his own dramatic mental portrait of the two of them painted in oils, young icons of their nations, naked and shining wet in the lamplight.

-He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.

-”You have so much in you, it’s almost impossible to match it. But he’s your match, dumbass.”

-...because Alex has never met a challenge he didn’t love, and he--well, Henry is a challenge, head to toe, beginning to end.

-All those nights Henry can’t sleep, just knocking around these endless, impersonal rooms, like a bird trapped in a museum.

-Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.

-He wants to call Henry. He guesses it makes sense--they’ve always been fixed points in each other’s world, little magnetic poles. Some laws of physics would be reassuring right now.

-He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slacked.

-If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lighting hits the ground.

-He truly is a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else.

-”The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.”

-”I do think I got a gut feeling about you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?”

-”If I’m north, I shudder to think where in God’s name we’re going.”

-That long. That much.

-He wears the key to his childhood home around his neck, but he doesn’t know the last time he actually thought about the boy who used to push it into the lock.

-The lines of him are long and languid in the moonlight, just skin and skin lit soft and blue, and he’s so beautiful that Alex thinks this is the moment, the soft shadows and pale thighs and crooked smile, should be the portrait of Henry that goes down in History. There are fireflies winking around his head, landing in his hair. A crown.

-He wants to match the new freckles across Henry’s nose to the stars above them and make him name the constellations.

-That, he realizes suddenly, is the danger of allowing love into this--the acknowledgment that if something goes wrong, he doesn’t know how he will stand it.

-What if it was never his decision to make?

-He’s spent too much of his life talking, talking, talking not to know the signs when someone doesn’t want to hear him anymore.

-He thought he was reckless before, but he understands now--holding love off was the only thing keeping him from losing himself in this completely, and he’s gone, stupid, lovesick, a fucking disaster.

-And that is, officially, too fucking much.

-”When have I ever, since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this about you and whether or not I love you rather than the fact that I’m an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the option to not chose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family so don’t you dare come to me and question if I love you when it’s the thing that could bloody well ruin everything.”

-Don’t miss it this time. He’s too important.

-”If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true. So I can offer you all of me, in whatever way you’ll have me.”

-...and looks at his fingers and thinks about holding the Bible at his mother’s inauguration with the same hand. 

-He wonders what Santa Chiara would think of them, a lost David and Jonathan, turning slowly on the spot. 

-”Let me know if I need to start practicing gazing wistfully out the window, waiting for my love to return from the war.”

-”I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.”

-Alex wants to go to war for this man, wants to get his hands on everything and everyone that ever hurt him, but for once, he’s trying to be the stead one.

-”You and me and history, remember? We’re gonna fucking fight. Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we’ll be able to just be, and fuck everyone else.”

-It would be a lie because it wouldn’t be him.

-”but i’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, the place it goes, so many times now, i’ve memorized it, topography on the map of you, a world i’m still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria.

-The president stands on the edge of a career-ending scandal, measures her breaths evenly, and waits for her son to answer.

-And there’s no room left to agonize over it, nothing left to do but say the thing he’s know all along.

-One. One. One.

-Alex hasn’t been a good Catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament. They were supposed to stay safe. Fuck.

-If Henry’s voice on the phone was a tether, his body is the gravity that makes it possible, his hand gripping the back of Alex’s neck like a magnetic force, a permanent compass north.

-”And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years thought I would see him do.”

-”Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothing should change? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, and change.”

-Never tell me the odds.

-This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.

-It’s been one long, long year of learning Henry inside and out, learning himself, learning how much he still has to learn, and just like that, it’s time to walk out there and stand at a podium and confidently declare it all as fact.

-The way Henry’s looking at him in the pitcher is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person’s perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he’s staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn’t bright enough.

-All at once, Alex is in love all over again.

-From his side, Henry, whose eyes are wet, seizes Alex’s face roughly with both hands and kisses him like the end of the movie.

-...Alex thinks his heart’s going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his ribcage.

-Goddamned forever.

[bananaairplane]

You Already Know What To Do

Shortly after I arrive in Oregon for harvest, I got an email from an editor asking for the manuscript of my dissertation, which I had described as being ready in my book proposal but was, actually, filled with notes to myself and the random rough patches left behind by cutting and rearranging. My first goal, however, was to find a cheap, old Toyota to buy. This was how I found myself sitting in the back seat of my roommate’s car, in the parking lot of an auto mechanic, typing footnotes on my laptop and glancing up every few minutes at the rear view mirror to glimpse the back of a pale green Camry perched on a lift in one of the bays behind me. Its wide fenders framed the horizontal red bars of the taillights like parentheses. As I gazed upon it, I knew this was my car. It was perfect: not beige, with leather seats, and the owner lived in the same suburb where I found my mattress, also on Craigslist.

It was not perfect: The “check engine” light was on, the radio didn’t work, and the A/C vent made a clicking noise. After the inspection found multiple oil leaks, I couldn’t come to an agreement with the seller on price and I walked away. I was so sure it was the one, but after all I don’t believe in superstitions like that. I reasoned that it only felt like my car because car buying is stressful and I just wanted it to be over.

The next day, I drove four more Camrys. Two of them were beige and most had the kind of busted suspension that makes it feel like you are driving an ox cart through a Thomas Hardy novel. One of them had a broken driver’s door handle, which seemed like a dealbreaker: What if I were being chased by a bear, and needed to leap to safety? Also, if no one has bothered to fix something so superficial, what kind of shape can the car be in?

I almost bought one of the beige ones from Adem, the salesman at a crowded car lot pressed up against a two-lane road on the outskirts of Portland. Relaxed, unflappable, cheerful, Adem had a careless air that telegraphed supreme confidence in his trade and also a certain disdain for it. When I returned to the lot a second time and explained that I wanted to drive the car 20 minutes away for an inspection, which would take at least an hour, he shrugged and waved off my offer to leave my license as surety. “I know you’ll come back,” he said easily. When I did come back, we sat in the Adirondack chairs outside the little office and reminisced about Turkish food. He told me about his vacation home in Anatolia and invited me to use it sometime. He smoked a cigarette and sighed as he looked out over the dense thatch of Subarus and Nissans on the lot.

Two days later, I set out to buy the car. I got a sense of what kind of day it was going to be when Andrew, the teller at the bank, began listing the Zodiac signs of all the actors who have played James Bond. It started innocuously enough. I asked him for $3,300 in cash. He took my ID and started typing things into his computer. “Oh, I see you have a birthday this month.” I assumed this was the prelude to some kind of security check, so I said yes, and was going to confirm the date. “You’re a Leo,” he mused. Was he hitting on me? He named two celebrities who were born on August 16th. Did their shared birthday yield other similarities, I asked? They were both in superhero movies. I offered that Madonna is a Leo. He was filling out the request slip for the money when he got to the James Bonds. Sean Connery: Virgo. Timothy Dalton: Libra. He needs a supervisor’s approval to give me this much cash. I make a comment about Libras being calm by nature, so he serves me Hugh Jackman, another Libra. Leonardo DiCaprio: Scorpio. He met Leonardo DiCaprio once, at the Aerospace Museum of California. The manager has come by and now Andrew is counting out the cash, spreading out the bills like he’s setting up a magic trick. I glance around the lobby nervously to see who may be observing. I sweep up the bills and stuff them into bank envelopes as quickly as he finishes counting. Now he is telling me that he paid $300 for a 3-minute video meet and greet with John Cleese, one of the members of Monty Python. He used part of his 3 minutes to tell Cleese that he didn’t really like “Holy Grail” very much. Cleese told him to watch "Fawlty Towers.” A line was forming for the teller windows. It seemed rude to just leave, so I waited for him to finish his story.

I don’t exactly remember how things went sideways at the car lot. Adem and I sat inside the little office, on either side of his desk. I brought up that the struts on the car were original and overdue for replacement. The owner of the dealership, sitting nearby, got wind of what was happening. “What is the issue? The what? Struts?” He called over. “What does that cost? $50? $100? We’ll replace them for you.” Immediately he had his phone out and he was dialing. “This guy is the best front-end guy in Portland, only the best work,” he was saying. “He gives me a discount.” He had the phone on speaker and held it before him like an old-timey movie star in her dressing room with a cut glass atomizer of perfume. The front-end guy quoted him $450 for the struts. “How much?” He exclaimed. He began dialing another number. “Hector is a grease monkey” he explained, “but he does good work.” Hector quoted $350. “With the savings,” the dealer assured me, “we’ll also have him change the oil.” I ended up taking my envelopes of cash home in an Uber.

Reader, I bought the pale green Camry. The owner was a somewhat disgruntled, wiry man who lived in an ostentatious tract home in a subdivision whose streets all bore the names of European cities. Except, incongruously, for Iceland Street; I guess they decided no one wanted to spend their life trying to spell Reykjavik over the phone: “ROMEO ECHO YANKEE KILO JULIET ALPHA VICTOR INDIA KILO.” When I texted him abjectly offering to buy the car, he surprised me by texting back that I could have it for $200 less than we had discussed, if I bought it the next morning. When I rang his doorbell, accordingly, at 10:00 the next day, he looked shocked to see me. He had deleted our previous text exchange and thought I was someone else. But, seeing as I was there with one of my envelopes of cash, he went inside and got the paperwork.

As the global pandemic and West Coast wildfires have upset my plans for this year of adventure, I’ve been flying by instruments, making up my itinerary as I go along. Where will I go next? What will I do? How will I spend this year, and what if the pandemic, having killed my round-the-world plans, extends what was meant to be one year of adventure into two? With little to guide my choices, I inevitably look for signs to signal which way to go next. When things fall into place, it feels like the universe sending me flowers: Sorry I screwed up your plans, here’s a Toyota.

Outside a cannabis dispensary in Santa Cruz on the side of Highway 1, a letter board sign reads: YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO. I drove past it on my way to Big Sur to camp in my hard won car. Those words stuck with me as I drove down the coast, and resonate now, as I stay with friends in San Diego and contemplate my next move. On the one hand, I feel baffled: where to go next, what to do in a pandemic? On the other hand, this trip has revealed to me that I know the answers to those questions. I already know what to do. It’s time to make it happen.

[lumosinlove]

Solntse

part ii

Remus sits in Lily and James’ tiny living room and tries to ignore the subtly laid out pillow and blankets set on the corner of the couch. Lily doesn’t let him.

“Your apartment has flees.”

Remus sets his glass down, “That was one bug and it was a beetle.”

Lily twists her hair over one shoulder, unrelenting, “Remus. Please.” She nods towards the pillow, “Just—I’m worried. We’re worried.”

Remus looks away so he doesn’t have to see the way James nods, they way they’re both looking at him like he’s already a lost cause. He wishes for a moment he’d never told them what he does other than serve pizza and take the early shifts at the gas station around the block, but then he’d be all alone in it. And they were his best friends, that was why he had told them. Just in case one day all of James’ fears came true and some guy murdered Remus in a hotel room. Or something.

James sighs, “Mate, we’re not ganging up on you.”

“No, I know.” Remus nods down at his mug of tea, “I know. I just…I don’t want to be that friend you can’t get rid of. Like. That would be awful.”

“Re, you’re never going to become that.” Lily puts a warm hand on his shoulder, squeezing, “That’s not how we think about it at all. We just want to know your safe.”

James raises his mug to his mouth, “As safe as you can be…”

“James.” Lily snips, then her face turns soft again for Remus, “Will you stay here?”

“Lils, really, my apartment is fine.” He curls his feet further beneath him, “I’ll finish my tea and go. Don’t worry.”

He thinks back to his two night hotel escapade and shakes his head more firmly at Lily. He already feels enough like a charity case as it is. Even if he did get good money for it. Sirius had pushed an extra eighty dollars into his hand at the door and closed it before Remus could protest. He had pressed a chapped kiss to his cheek too. Remus was still mulling that over.

When he finally does make it out of the apartment he pulls his ratty coat tightly over his shoulders and ducks his head against the wind. He could probably buy a new one if Sirius called again. He did ask for two nights in a row, and it went great so, maybe. But he didn’t want to be flashy about any new money. His landlord had already raised his eyebrows when Remus had handed over two months rent in advanced.

His apartment wasn’t flea infested although it did give off that sort of look. He had a cheep futon bed frame, just to keep his mattress off the floor so it didn’t mold, and a dresser from IKEA. His kitchen consisted of a stove and a sink. The gas was usually pretty iffy and his sink ran mostly cold, like his shower, but…he had a roof and food. It’s fine. He has James and Lily if he was really, really in trouble but he doesn’t want it to come to that. He’ll never want it to come to that.

He throws his keys down on the dresser and goes to check the leak under the sink. It hasn’t gotten worse but he empties out what water is in the bucket just while he’s there. He re-tapes the crack in the window and makes a note to ask his landlord about that. Again. He’s just sitting down on his bed when his phone rings. He groans and closes his eyes when he pulls it out, hoping it isn’t one of his less polite customers. He sighs in relief when he sees the name.

“Frank, hi.” Frank almost never wants sex. He likes to talk. He’s lonely. Remus can relate. He’s the son of two wealth-soaked parents who don’t pay him a lick of attention. Remus can half relate. “How are you, mate?”

“Oh. Hi, Remus. Wasn’t sure I’d get you, um. I’m fine. I—um. Was wondering…” He trails off.

“Sure, when were you thinking? I’ve got something Tuesday and Sunday and you know when I work, so…”

“Actually, I was thinking now?” His voice is up an entire octave with nerves, “I just…Family problems right now. Was hoping to just talk a bit.”

Remus runs a hand over his face but tries not to pause too long. He doesn’t want Frank to think he doesn’t want to, “Sounds great! Should I meet you at the—“

“I couldn’t get the usual room. It’s 207 tonight. Same hotel though, the Pierre.”

Remus nods, tries to keep a smile in his voice, “Great. See you soon.”

He’s barely hung up when another name flashes up at him. He’s almost embarrassed by how fast he answers, “Sirius. Hi.” That didn’t come out anywhere close to how he wanted it to.

“Remus! Life is good?”

Remus laughs lightly, still caught off guard but warmed by Sirius’ simple honesty, “Uh, yeah, life is good. How are you?”

“Good. Busy. Always busy, you know? I’m at airport now, going to be in town on Wednesday. You want see together? Or, ah, not together.”

“Each other.” Remus supplies.

“Yes, perfect. You always know. What you think, Remus?”

Remus half wishes Sirius would stop saying his name like that and half wishes he’ll never stop saying his name like that, “Yeah, that works for me. What time were you thinking?”

“Seven? I get us dinner in room, so don’t eat. I’m, ah…” Sirius lets out a soft laugh and Remus presses the speaker closer to his ear, “I’m think about you a lot.”

Remus swallows over a suddenly dry throat, “Yeah?”

“Hm.” There’s a loud speaker in the background and Sirius says something low in Russian, “Flight calling me. Wednesday okay, yes?”

“Yes. Have a good flight.”

“You too. Or—“ They both laugh, “Okay, I’m go now. Bye, Remus.”

The line goes dead and Remus lets the phone fall to the bed. He breathes in deeply and looks down. He’s half hard in his pants now and he really doesn’t know why. He’s suppose to be on his way to Frank’s, he tips well, he honestly needs Remus a little bit and…fuck. He splashes some freezing water on his face from the sink and yanks his door shut as he leaves.

Frank’s is fine. The hotel room is nice and Remus ends up sucking him off—twice. He doesn’t get hard either time but Frank seems either completely fine with that or he doesn’t notice. What does get him going is the ping he gets on his phone while he’s walking home from the tube. It’s a picture. Of Sirius. A selfie. He’s grinning in front of a beautiful sunset outside a plane window. There’s no message except a few sideways parentheses that Remus takes as smiles. Looking at the grin triggers thinking about Sirius’ large, warm hands on his hips and back. That leads to thinking about the way Sirius had carefully pushed his fingers inside of Remus, then the hot slide of his cock to replace them, his weight covering Remus’ back—

By the time Remus is walking up the stairs to his apartment again he’s more or less waddling around his tented trousers. By the time he’s throwing his keys on his dresser all he can do is lean back against his door and shove his hand into his boxers. They’re already damp with pre-come so what’s the point anyway? He smears his thumb over his head and squeezes the base, letting out a breath. It’s not as good as Sirius and his fucking huge palms. Now that he’s got a hand wrapped around himself he can really feel the difference. He pushes his pants down around his knees so he can get two hands around himself instead, twisting around the head and keeping a tight grip around the shaft. It barely takes a dozen pulls before he’s shooting into his fist with a harsh sound, Sirius’ name almost on his lips. Almost. He makes the mistake of thinking about the way Sirius had trailed his fingertips over his sensitive cock after he’d made Remus come in his mouth, keeping the pleasurable nerves alight, and takes a cold shower so he doesn’t have to go again. The shower only makes him think about how, next time, maybe Sirius won’t come untouched. Maybe Remus will get to return the favor. He doesn’t even know how much of Sirius he could fit in his mouth but fuck if he doesn’t want to try. He groans and wraps a hand around himself again. He’s too sensitive but he doesn’t care. He works himself fast and hard until his cock is a flushed red and he comes weakly against the shower wall, panting into the cool spray.

He looks at his phone as he towels off his hair. It’s Saturday, and it’s going to be a long couple days.

~

There’s a different woman at the front desk this time and Remus is glad. Not that he thinks the other one would remember him but, still. He stares at the twelve on the door for a moment, trying to calm his heart rate, before he knocks.

The door doesn’t open immediately so he knocks again, feeling more awkward by the second.

This time there’s a muffled shout and a few seconds later the door is yanked open by Sirius—dripping wet and a towel hastily wrapped around his waist.

“Sorry!” He gasps, “Sorry, flight late, felt kind of like plane—plane all over me? Thought I be fast, sorry.”

“Okay.” Remus meant to say it’s okay but, well, Sirius’ towel is slipping sort of low.

“Come in, come in, I’m be ready in minute.”

Ready for what? Remus wants to ask.

He goes to sit on one of the couches and strokes his hands over a soft pillows while Sirius pads back to the shower, dropping his towel without closing the door. For a second, Remus debates on whether he can consider that as an invitation or not. He stands up twice and sits back down before the water shuts off and he sits again. Sirius emerges a second later, grabbing the towel from the floor to wrap around his waist and another for his hair.  He rubs at his hair until the waves fluff around his ears and into his eyes. He smiles over at Remus somewhat guiltily.

“Sorry again. You want look at menu?” Sirius flips open a sleek looking suitcase and starts rifling through it, “Starving. Airplane food most bad, you know?”

Remus doesn’t but he’s not about to start that conversation. Instead he reaches for the leather-bound hotel book, “Where did you come from?”

“Sydney, ah…Hard for me to say.”

“Australia.”

Sirius laughs and pulls a loose fitting pair of sweatpants on—bare, “Yes, right.” A white long sleeve shirt follows and—to Remus’ surprised delight—a black snapback. It sits snugly on his damp hair, pushing the front part back out of his eyes while the rest wings out above his ears. Remus can see the shape of his ring necklace through his shirt. He swallows. Sirius looks good.

He pulls some warm looking socks on and Remus glances briefly at the hole in the heel on his own left foot. The couch bounces a little as Sirius settles next to him, leaning in close to look at the menu, “Good food? What you like?”

Remus tries to read the menu, he really does, but Sirius’ arm is thrown over the back of the couch  and his fingertips are brushing over where he sweater gives way to skin. He holds the menu out to Sirius, “You decide. I’ll eat anything.”

Sirius gives him a teasingly disapproving look but takes the menu and reaches towards the side table for the phone. He orders too much. A steak, fries, a plate of brisket ravioli, a cheese board, a salad, calamari, and two slices of chocolate cake. Remus doesn’t know where they’re going to put it all, but he hopes maybe he can take some of it home.

“We do tea later,” Sirius reaches out and fans one of Remus’ curls between his fingers. “After.” He amends, “They say thirty minutes.” Then his fingers are lightly brushing Remus’ hip, just beneath his sweater, “We stay busy while wait. Is okay?”

“Yeah.” Remus breathes, because what Sirius doesn’t know is that he got off to the mere memories of what they did last time every night leading up to now. Sometimes twice. Of course it’s okay. He’s never had a job this fucking okay, and he’ll damn sure make the most of it until Sirius moves on. They always do. Remus usually feels more grateful when they do, but he has a feeling Sirius will be different.

Sirius flashes him a grin and tugs him right into his lap. His lips are warm and chapped against Remus’, but the rough texture is nice. Remus feels like it keeps him there, in Sirius’ arms. He runs his tongue across Sirius’ bottom lip just to feel it and is rewarded with a soft sound and a palm to the small of his back. Sirius, who seems to be able to take Remus aback in almost everything he does, is holding Remus close, chest to chest. Not by the hips, not by the shoulders. Remus has never had any problems with abuse and he’s lucky in that way but Sirius, Sirius isn’t holding him like he’s there for sex at all. He’s cradling Remus in his lap, hands running lazily up and down his back. He’s licking into his mouth like they have all the time in the world, like they’ve been kissing forever and they’ll do it tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Remus’ palms cup his jaw and he runs his fingers along the edge of the snapback.

“You want off?” Sirius’ voice sounds like he’s just woken up.

Remus shakes his head and his eyes slip closed as Sirius’ mouth moves to his jaw, “No.”

Sirius’ warm breath against his neck as he laughs softly almost feels better than the wet kisses he’s leaving there. Almost.

They stay like that until the knock on the door makes Remus blink his eyes open blearily, suddenly aware of how warm he is.

Sirius shifts him to the side gently, kneeling on the couch for one last peck, “I’m get food, relax here.”

Remus blinks at him, licks his kiss-swollen lips, and honestly just wants to ask Sirius why he is like this. He rests his head back on the couch and listens to Sirius’ bright voice chatting away to the bell boy who brought their food. He’s thanking him, telling him how good it all looks, and Remus thinks maybe he’s just this nice to everyone he meets. He isn’t sure what to do with that.

“Hey,” Sirius head pokes back through the door, cart trailing him, “Food.”

Remus isn’t going to say no to that.

The spread of food looks even bigger when laid out and Remus can’t help but laugh as Sirus sits down next to him again, “Sirius, this is…a lot.”

Sirius shrugs one shoulder, “We don’t finish, you take home.”

Remus isn’t going to say no to that, either. He has a brief moment of wondering whether ordering this much was purposeful on Sirius’ part, but pushes it aside. That’s ridiculous. Sirius doesn’t even know him, much less anything about his financial situation. Well. He might know a little given who they are to each other.

Remus spends most of the meal listening to Sirius try to explain some funny story that happened on his trip, and anticipating the occasional moments of being fed bits of steak and such by Sirius, who barely breaks in talking despite how it takes Remus’ breath for a moment.

“I spend lot of time in hotel, you know?” Sirius’ voice breaks into Remus’ thoughts, mid story. He wished he’d been listening fully to know how to respond.

“I, ah, lonely?”

Sirius shrugs, but shoves a large scoop of pasta in his mouth. Remus takes that as a yes.

“How did you…” Remus searches for the right word before trying, “find me?”

Sirius actually pinks a little at that, “Ah. Friend. You know him. Recommend. Say you very sweet.”

Remus nods and respects the anonymity even if he’s dying to know who, “Sweet, huh?”

Sirius smiles a little, “I’m think so, too.”

They move onto the cake and the hotel had sent up an two extra desserts, seemingly just because Sirius is Sirius.

“I’m stay here lot, they know me.”

“Probably because you order the entire menu anyway.” Remus jokes.

It makes Sirius’ entire face light up, spreading his hands, “Hey, why not? Hungry after long day of flying.” He knocks his ankle against Remus’, “Good food, best company.”

Remus rolls his eyes a little and Sirius snorts. That shouldn’t be attractive, but it is.

“You live here always?” Sirius asks through a bite of cheesecake, “London?”

“Yeah, always.”

“Born here?”

Remus nods, “Yeah. I live a few streets over from my parent’s flat.”

“Must be so nice.” Sirius is smiling, but his eyes are down at his plate and he looks a little mournful. His fingertips not holding his fork are twisting the ring around his neck,  “Be near family always.”

Remus takes a bite instead of answering. It had been nice. For a while.

“Not…Not nice?” Sirius says softly, “Sorry, not want to bring up bad things, Remus—“

“No. No, it’s okay. It’s fine, I just��yeah, I don’t really talk to my parents much these days.”

Sirius places a warm hand on his thigh, thumb rubbing on the inside slowly. But it isn’t sexual. It isn’t even verging on sexual. It’s soothing and warm, and it makes Remus want to keep talking.

“Not since I came out.” He finally manages, “To them. They weren’t…” But it turns out that’s all he can say on the matter.

“Make you feel better…” Sirius wets his lips, “Parents not know. Mine, I’m saying. Scared to tell, not good thing in Russia.” He gives Remus’ thigh a little squeeze, “I understand. Remus, it’s—it’s most brave.”

Remus blinks hard, “Yeah.” He doesn’t know why he’s sitting here having this semi-melt down with Sirius. Sirius definitely isn’t paying for this. He’s probably annoyed with him under all his kind words and so Remus snuffles and digs his palms into his eyes, trying to wipe the tears away and the redness that’s probably there both. There’s nothing really to do to make this not an awkward transition. How do you go from tears to sex? And with a stranger? “I’m sorry.” He begins, “Fuck, this—was not what I had planned.”

“Remus, it’s not apology—no, okay?” He’s suddenly pushing the food table away and tucking his legs beneath himself, sitting on his socked-heels and taking both of Remus’ hands, thumbs rubbing gently against the vulnerable insides of Remus’ wrists, “I’m not mind, really. Really.”

“I’ll take this out of your pay. Honestly, Sirius, this isn’t what you brought me here for, I just want you to know that I know that.” Remus can’t help it though, and despite his words curls his fingers around Sirius’, “Sorry."

“Please stop saying, Remus.” Sirius tone is firm, “Please, you—not an apology.” Even the word ‘apology’ sounds nice in Sirius’ mouth.

“I…make okay? A bit?” Sirius tugs very lightly on Remus’ hands but when Remus shakes his head he—he lets go. Which Remus can’t decide how he feels about that.

“Sorry.” He says again, then at Sirius’ face, he pushes a hand through his hair, “Fuck, sorry—Sor—“

And then Sirius is kissing him. His thumbs are stroking slowly along his cheeks and he’s sucking Remus’ bottom lip slowly into his mouth, brushing his tongue along it with the same amount of leisure. Remus sighs into it, fingers digging into his own thighs for a moment before he’s leaning forward and pressing his palms flat on Sirius’.

“Only if want.” Sirius says against his mouth, “Remus.” He pulls away just enough to look at Remus’ glassy eyes, “You not want a second ago, I’m just want no more sorry. No, ah, not need to do anything, okay?” He curls his fingers back around Remus’ ears, around the curls there, “карамель, can just put movie on. Have more cake.”

Remus sniffles a little, blinking hard at Sirius, “Did—Did you just call me caramel?” He remembers the soft word from last time.

Sirius smiles, a bit, and lifts one shoulder, “It’s good, no? It’s…not sure how to say…small names important in Russia. Mean two people are close.”

Is that really what we are? Remus wants to ask. He sort of wants to yell it because, as great as this is, he sees nothing but a darker end. For himself, anyway.

“Oh.” Is all he says out loud and falls sideways a little on the couch into the cushions. He’s suddenly so tired. Sirius doesn’t seem to mind, though, and mirrors his position, their knees knocking together. His soft smile is still aimed right at Remus. “What’s yours then?”

Sirius’ smile grows, “Mama give to me when little.” He raises his eyebrows, “Little bit funny, not laugh.”

Remus feels a smile of his own start up and he uses his sleeve to wipe his nose, sitting up a little more, “I won’t laugh.”

“Sivushka.” It rolls nicely off of Sirius’ tongue, and his cheeks pink a little but he looks pleased, “Sort of…for family? Friends. Not so much lover, too…small?”

“Casual?” Remus offers, “Like, it means a different feeling.”

Sirius’ smile is soft, “So good with english. So helpful.”

“Sivushka.” Remus tries it out, but it doesn’t sound half as good. Then, he can’t help it, heart in his throat when he asks, “What’s…what’s more than friends? Like, not—just, I’m curious what that would be.”

“Lover? Sirusya, maybe.” Then he smiles, eyes crinkling warmly, “You like? You call me?”

“Surely someone already calls you that.” Remus tries to keep his voice light. I mean, look at you. He wants to add.

Sirius sits up at that a little, eyes going hard, hand—that had been rubbing idly against Remus’ knee—going still, “No. No one call me.”

Remus swallows, “I—I didn’t mean—“

“I’m not—изменя́ть.” He huffs in frustration, “изменя́ть—I’m not know, not know, okay?”

Remus’s chest goes cold, “Okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

“Not be here if with—someone else.” Sirius shakes his head, “Not like that, Remus. I’m not.” The phrase is followed by a disgruntled spell of Russian that Remus does his best to follow through tone alone.

“I know.” Remus finally says, “I know you aren’t.” Because he’s only met Sirius twice but he can honestly say he does know this about him, “I’m sorry.”

“Not apology, карамель.” Sirius rubs his hands over his face, “Too much action, sorry.”

Remus looks on in confusion, “What?”

“Me, me,” Sirius gestures aggressively towards himself, “Me. Too much action. Not right.”

Overreaction, Remus thinks and nods, “No, I understand.”

“I’m know…what guys you probably see doing…this.” Sirius doesn’t look at him as he acknowledges exactly why Remus is there for what feels like the first time other than money exchanges, “Not wrong for you to think. But no.”

“Sirius, it’s okay.” But that feels wrong somehow and so he says instead, “I mean, we’ve done this three times.”

Sirius is quiet for a long moment this time. “It’s true.” Then, after running his fingers over his necklace a few times, “You have other small name?”

The topic change pings a little, “Um. Not anything big. Re, mostly, if anything.”

“Re.” It sounds like a lovely mess of vowel in Sirius’ mouth, “That’s all?”

Remus nods, “Nothing like Russia, huh?”

Sirius runs a hand over his face one more time but when he moves it there’s a trace of his usual smile, “I’m find you one, not worry.” Then, eyes down and voice quiet but questioning, “You have…small name…for lover?”

Remus swallows. His throat is so dry all of a sudden so he just shakes his head, then realizes Sirius isn’t looking at him so he croaks out, “No.”

Sirius nods back, “Oh.” Then he grabs the remote and pushes it into Remus’ hand, “Find something. I’m call for tea and get money before forget. Be back.”

It seems like the end of the conversation, but the conversation doesn’t feel over. Remus choses a movie, but he couldn’t say what it was about. When its over Sirius has to tuck the money into Remus’ back pocket himself. He presses another kiss to Remus’ cheek. Then Remus doesn’t hear from him for two weeks.

[the-potter-analyst]

Chapter 12 - The Mirror of Erised

One can never have enough socks!!

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text word of the day: (White) Privilege

When I learned that this was the word that the hosts would use for chapter 12, I was.... intrigued to say the least about how they would connect the concept. But once again, I was amazed on what they found! Basically the invisibility cloak was a symbol for both having privilege and not having privilege. The original word(s) of the day is “white privilege” but the idea can also work for privilege in general, which is why I have white in parentheses. Just to put it out there, I’m an asexual black woman which right off the bat puts me at a disadvantage for the top categories of privilege lol, so this topic is something very close to home and I will not sugar coat anything. istg if I get any defensive replies or asks

The invisibility cloak having a double meaning around privilege is so fascinating to me. It reveals how invisibility can be good or bad depending if a person is privileged or not. For example, if you’re white, you will largely be ignored on the things you do; you can get away with almost anything. This is the positive side of the invisibility cloak, as Harry can roam around the castle without being noticed, particularly at night, and not be caught. On the flip side, a white person will be seen as an individual, their actions defining themselves and not an entire group. Alternatively, this is the complete opposite of any minority. Any black person walking down the street will be noticed because they are black, my people literally can’t do anything without the cops being called on them. And a black person’s actions ends up being a collective definition of the entire race. Like... a white shooter will always be talked about as an individual and the event being an isolated case. If the shooter is black or Arab or whatever? The media will spin it like the entire minority is evil. But if a black person is successful, their efforts are ignored. Can you name any black inventors? Because technology wouldn’t have been the same without them, yet you never learn about them in history books.

Harry notes that the cloak doesn’t stop him from being solid, which made me think about how being invisible and ignored in a negative way doesn’t make a person any less of a human, no matter how they may be treated as such. Just food for thought I guess.

Something Sacred Text host, Vanessa, said really struck me. She talked about how she was literally side stepped by someone so they could tap her black friend on the shoulder and compliment her outfit. And Vanessa, connecting it with invisibility and visibility, commented how the person probably (unintentionally) gave the compliment because her friend looked nice, for being black. And... I’ve never thought about that stuff quite in this way. I just assumed (white) people just tried to go out of their way to be nice to a black person, but to be honest I never gave much thought about it or its meaning in the first place. I get compliments from complete strangers everywhere for articles of clothing to my hair. Like just yesterday this white man walked up to me at a restaurant to say he loved my hair, which was in an afro. I’ve always thought it was weird to compliment random strangers like that, not in the way that you’re standing in line or something and compliment a girl’s purse who’s right in front of you, but literally walking up to someone who’s just minding their own business to do it. And cause this happened after listening to the podcast, I kept thinking is he trying to be encouraging to people with natural hair? does he really think his opinion is going to boost my self esteem like that? (normally I’d just brush it off and think that person’s weird) I know that wasn’t his intentions, but this is what those actions imply when it comes from a white person who’s a stranger.

Dumbledore says something that really holds true about privilege: “Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you.” When you have it, you aren’t always aware of what your privilege gives you or what others without it experience. Like for me, I admittedly don’t think about ADA regulations all the time because I have an abled body, so it’s not something that I personally have to worry about unless I get an injury. But someone in a wheelchair, someone with a cane, someone with an invisible disability has to think about these things, because that’s their life. They need an accessible doorway for example just to get in a building. As a female, I can’t go out alone at night or even the bathroom at a bar without worrying I might be assaulted, but this isn’t something that men have to think about. So next time you’re defensive about something that someone of a minority group says about your privilege, think about this quote. Think about how your privilege makes you nearsighted. And then fucking listen.

Another long post lol I can’t not rant about this topic The rest of the chapter will be analyzed under the cut.

I kinda wonder if Hermione wasn’t in Harry’s friend group, if he and Ron would be as motivated to find out who Nicolas Flamel was. Obviously the constant searching in the library was her idea lol, because that’s her thing. When she doesn’t know something, she consults books AKA goes to the library. Though I think because Harry knew he read the name somewhere, he would have been searching in books as his curiosity had hit an all time high, but it would’ve probably been limited to his school books. Ron probably would’ve only joined occasionally to help Harry out, or done the same and look through his own books. I find it funny that the trio only looked through books about modern or recently famous wizards, which makes sense because you don’t exactly expect someone to live over 600 years lol.

Christmas morning of Harry’s first year always gives me so much joy to read (and watch). He gets so excited that he has presents!! Even the 50 pence that the Dursley’s sent he responds with that’s friendly lmao. I will also never get over the fact that Mrs. Weasley, after learning from Ron that Harry didn’t expect to get presents, made him a goddamn sweater and some fudge 😭 I also love how the Weasleys basically adopt Harry, and it’s not just Mrs. Weasley, it’s Fred and George too. Fred pulls wizard crackers with Harry during Christmas dinner.... they played in the snow until they were cold and wet.... not to mention the twins look after him in Quidditch.

The contrast between Christmas morning and Christmas evening is so interesting to me. Harry wakes up to presents from many people, eats all he wants for dinner, spends the day having fun with the Weasleys, and then after an adventure with his invisibility cloak, finds the Mirror of Erised. And this scene is so heartbreaking. I can just feel the empty silence as Harry longingly looks at his family, I can feel his ache for the people he never got to know. The hosts brought up how white/western culture is very individualistic, but at the expense of feeling disconnect with one’s own heritage. I also want to add how the same disconnect happens with a diaspora. This topic is a little interesting when considering that there’s a widespread headcanon that Harry is half Indian or just poc, so the feeling of disconnect might be even more powerful.

For what Ron sees, I’ve said previously that Ron’s insecurity is being the odd one out in his family, the one who doesn’t have a special thing because all his older brothers have already done it. So in the Mirror, he sees himself being the best of all of them combined. And he’s alone. He wants to stand out. So far I’ve seen a lot of signs that Ron takes his family for granted, which I get since he’s 11 and one of the youngest in a large and loving family: he’s embarrassed about their class status, he pushes away his mother when she tries to clean dirt off his face, he tells Harry he can see family any old time. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since Ron’s still fairly young though (he also didn’t resist being told to wear his Weasley sweater like Percy), but again and again we’ll see moments like this where it’s apparent that Ron and Harry’s desires are the complete opposite of each other. Ron is also less obsessive than Harry, which is why I think he had a bad feeling about the mirror  while Harry didn’t despite the two fighting over it while in the empty classroom. And he gets so worried about Harry! He tries to get him to eat, or play games, or even visit Hagrid, anything to get Harry out of his depressive state.

I wonder why the Mirror was moved to the empty classroom for anyone to stumble upon though. Maybe Dumbledore needed space to tamper with it? And the best time would be the holidays when most of the students were away? Why not do it in the Room of Requirement where is was probably kept before this? And was Dumbledore invisible every night while modifying the mirror? Or just to keep an eye on it? I can’t stop thinking about his comment on not needing a cloak to be invisible.

Small things

The Weasley twins bewitching snowballs to basically hit Voldemort ahaha

I will always laugh at the “Gred and Forge” joke xD

What time do they have Christmas dinner.... afterwards it says they spent a “happy afternoon” playing outside, which I don’t know if they would do at night when it’s cold and snowy lol. And being in Scotland, the sun will set pretty early. So was this actually a Christmas lunch? I’m so confused

ONE CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SOCKS CAN I GET AN AMEN

hjsdfhsjkdf but actually, as an adult that’s all I want for Christmas (even though I have no room for them anymore haha)

Scabbers why are you sleeping on Harry’s pillow you creep

Special shout out to all the Hogwarts house elves that make Christmas magical, as well as every other day at Hogwarts :)

Previous: Chapter 11 - Quidditch

Next: Chapter 13 - Nicolas Flamel

[nmshostclub]

Hi,I'd like to request a matchup, please and thank you. I hope the length is alright, if not let me know. Here is the blog , I hope it works. Its a tumblr blog and the first part is shortships(.) tumblr(.) (com) (without the parentheses).I’m 5’7,dark brown eyes, brownish black shoulder length hair,I have light brown skin (not a tan), pear body type & I love wearing chunky bracelets and necklaces. I think I put everything in,I feel like I forgot something, but not sure, if I did let me know.

-Senpai: Ai ships you with …….. Takeru-senpai!!

-A lucky item:

  Tea packets. At one store in the crowded market there's a small shop that sells herbs and tea packets. The owner has their shelves stocked with tea that claims to do many things. Able to help the consumer deal with things that may trouble them.

  Lack of sleep, anxiety, and e.t.c.

 So whenever you go to the market, don’t forget to check that small store for some more teas and herbs.

-First encounter:

It’s been a busy day at the cafe. You’re trying your best to finish orders. Getting slowly overwhelmed with the crowd, but you pushed through. You just have to.

You’re a table away from a customer, then you feel a nudge on your shoulder. Pushing you down. Slipping and falling on your plate full of drinks.

  Your dress is soaked in warm coffee and iced tea. Even a slice of pie was crushed under your knees. You then quickly pulls out a towel from your apron, apologizing as you tried to clean up the mess.

People helped pick up some of the cups or plates. Some chipped, broken or saved from the fall.

That’s when the boy that pushed you on accident rushes down and helps. Telling you over and over it was his fault, telling you how sorry he is.

 You just shake off his nice words, mumbling some back to ease him. You rush up, collecting the rest of the dishes. Running off to the back to clean yourself up. Not before a brown-haired boy catches a glance at your face. Caught off guard on how fast you ran out, quitting the title of ‘center of the attention’.

Recognizing those same features from a girl he knew before as everyone picked on the guy that accidentally pushed you down. He couldn’t help but think of someone he used to know.

  The little girl that lived next door to him a few years before.

-Interactions:

Takeru will watch you a little closer after that accident. Offering help for the cafe or with anything really. Even told you that he could help with the after-school orders if he has time.

At first, you wonder why this upperclassman is being so nice to you. It isn’t until later he introduced himself. That’s when the questions that sat in the back of your head were answered.

                You always knew he looked familiar.

Whenever you thought about the boy next door from some years ago, you got a bittersweet taste, but that feeling became a mushy mess. Like mashed potatoes with a touch of something sweet.  Honey maybe.

You warmed up to him again, finding out that he’s still the same kid from before. Just with changes here and there. You slowly start letting him into your life again, meeting up to walk home after school or just stopping by the corner store.

  However, you can’t help but put some distance between you two. Takeru knows about your trust issues, so he can’t help a feel a little hurt that you have these feeling towards him now.

  Nevertheless, Takeru respects them. As much as he wants the old times back, he has to earn your friendship like he did before.  

     ~

On a day out with his aunt and cousins at the petting zoo, he sees a figure that looks like you. After some awkward investigation, he catches a glance of the stranger’s face. Knowing those features from anywhere, he knew it’s you.

He never thought he would encounter you here at the petting zoo.  He remembers would calm you were when you were around animals, always wanting to pet the nearby dog or cat you saw.    

  Then that’s when he remembered how you volunteer to get the community hours you needed for school. Plus, you had a little pin on your shirt that said so. Takeru tells himself he ought to go over and say hey. Before he could call out her name, he hears your voice first.   

Hearing your long conversation …… with the goat. However, as weird as that may sound it…..okay it does sound pretty weird, but it was a conversation that still flowed together. Even if one of them just answered with ‘baaaaaas’.

 You expressed your daily troubles. All the little worries that built up to a fear.  A huge fear that killed you every day.

  You weren’t always all sunshine and smiles, in the end, you were just a girl who has some trouble. Troubles that stopped you having peace of mind.

  Takeru couldn’t help, but feel terrible. He felt like a stranger.

 He has been gone for so long and everything just changed. Takeru felt like it was his fault for setting up ‘wonderful’ ideas and expectations without truly talking to you or learning more about you.  The new you, not the five- year old you.

  In a way, he felt that he has to help you in a small way.  It wasn’t his place to do so, but he just wanted one real smile from you. Not like simple ones that could be passed in the school’s hallways, but one that a generic. One that said, “I’m glad you’re here.”  

However, as Takeru makes this his new goal, he gets caught by you. Scaring him when you ask,

      “How long were you hiding behind that tree?”

-Confession:  

 “You’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

  The most “clever” line you wrote on a simple thank-you card. One that you had decided to write as you put together a little gift basket for Takeru. Just for everything he has done so far.   

  Lately, he has helped you with the cafe during after school hours if he wasn’t in tutoring with Touru. Washing the dishes or checking inventory for you. All to take a bit of stress off your shoulders and you felt like you had to show your gratitude for his actions.

  You stopped by his house to drop off the gift, ringing the doorbell only to see Takeru’s mother. Who smiled brightly. She jumped up with questions, asking in the end if you wanted to stay for dinner.

  You opened your mouth to say something before Takeru finally came in the picture. Saving you from his mother’s eagerness on having you here. Asking you why you came like this, is anything wrong?

  That was your cue to tell him the explanation of why you were on his doorstep unannounced like this. That’s when the card that was tied on the handle of the gift basket fell. Reaching for it, Takeru saw the writing inside. Reading it quickly before a small smile appeared on his face.   

    “You’re the best thing since sliced bread,” he quoted.

Gushing inside with joy as his cheek glowed softly while the sun shined brightly. Making your hair shimmer in light tones.

  “Dang, if that’s your way of telling me ‘I love you’ then I think you’re the best thing to happen since sliced bread too,” Takeru added. Taking his eyes off the thank-you card, looking back to you.

  Watching his face turn to an eggshell white when he asks, “I didn’t say that loud right?”

  And that, my children, is the story how our dear Takeru spilled the beans about his feelings. It also didn’t help when he was trying to explain what he meant by that after. Throwing out all his feeling about her and regretting it the moment they came out of his mouth.  In fear of being rejected.

  Only till you told him that to returned those same feeling for him.

-First date/type of dates frequented:

 Small dates in the cafe or out on the town. Hit up the local noodle shop for a quick meal before going in and checking out the art galleria.

  Dates depend on the weather. If it’s chilly or rainy then a puzzle and movie marathon are in order. Or if you guys want to take it slow, during November this types of dates are more common with all the essays deadlines or tests coming up in the school year.  Doing this all as the cafe’s pets are at their feet. Sleeping or so.

Dates that involves going outside are ones that can be to the gaming shop or to an animal cafe to check the animals out. Trying your best to resist the urge of adopting one.

THE FIRST KISS:  

   Your first kiss went something like this- awkward and messy.

  The first attempt ending up being the both of you bumping noses during a study date. Takeru making you laugh as he put in different terms in google translator. You found your old “Learn Any Language Fast and Quick” book. One that you remember getting a yard sale when you were young. Takeru was invited over to help prove this 10 or something year old book to be a scam. Or you could rule the world with learning a new language at record speed.

  Instead, he was here making you laugh. You told him to stop, but it just made it worst as your sides started to hurt.

You turn around to see Takeru’s face, then BAM! It happened, you’re so close at that moment and you just go for it.

Messing it up with your poor aim.

After a while of plain embarrassment, the both of you tried to pass it off with nervous laughter. You held back your fears as you decided to look past it. Reaching the book, going on to chapter 4.

Before Takeru took you chin and quickly pecking your lips. His cheeks dyed in harsh red color as he mumbles,

  “There. See that wasn’t that hard.”

-Long-term relationship:

  You were a bit distant in the beginning, ‘ghosting’ him when it came to texting up until a habit was built. Texting him back more and more than leaving him on read.

He helped you so much in the cafe that you even let him come in early to help with the baking. One time you forgot about the whole baking part and ended up having a dance party as you listened to the radio. Not hearing the doorbell go and ring as the door was opened.

Giving Takeru a view of what happens in the closed kitchen. Not helping to smile as you skipped, slid, and shaking your way around the kitchen. All while mixing up cookie batter. After you notice him in the room, you made him swear not to tell anyone about your dance moves.    

A new bond was created between you two. He supports you so much and the fact he’s straightforward with you is a perk at times. He just doesn’t want to let you slip through his fingers again. Letting you know how he feels and asking how you doing at the beginning and end of every day. Being there to talk.

The walks back home are pretty therapeutic, since the cold breezes and the smooth conversations can easily distress you.  Soon becoming the cure for some daily troubles, of course, you would still have those days, where getting out of bed will be tough. -But Takeru will be there, texting you, calling you. Telling you sweet words and dropping some advice about the situation. From things he read or just in his own options.

This relationship can have two sides. The classic romance novel or the anime brother and sister relationship.  Since with how much he cares and checks up on you, it’s almost like how a mama bear would be to her cubs.

He just really loves you. And he’s not afraid to show it. Unless you’re too embarrassed about it in public, then secret kisses are in order.

[the-gay-in-the-way]

A Thread of Doubt

(Okay, so this is something that I felt kind of compelled to write while I was working on the third part of The Great Boop War of 2018. Reason being that it kind of adds on some extra context to some of the stuff that happens in there.)

(So I figured I’d just go ahead and make this beforehand while the iron was still hot and the ideas were fresh in my mind.)

(You can see this as a stand alone or a spin-off or whatever, but the basic thing you need to know is that it takes place in the same universe as the Boop War, the Utensil War, and Why be Sad When You Can be Even Sadder.)

(It all coincides together and you can read all of them to get some extra context and little references in each one that comes from a different one.)

(Also, there’s a particular line in here that I have Virgil use and it comes from this person right here and their really interesting idea that inspired another really cool person to create an awesome fanfic on Ao3 called Persona that I very much recommend.)

(Also, also, there are a couple of songs I reference in this that I recommend you just generally check out. They’re pretty cool, in my opinion.)

(Myth me-Chilly Gonzales, Roundtable Rival-Lindsey Stirling)

(Anyways, let’s get on with this. Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy the story.)

Deceit had been helping Patton with the dishes one morning when the moral side had suddenly asked him if he’d like to watch Virgil work that day.

Deceit hadn’t been entirely sure why they were going to watch Virgil work, of all things, but he had been intrigued enough by the question and Patton’s enthusiasm that it hadn’t taken much convincing to make him come along.

And so, Deceit soon found himself standing beside a visibly excited Morality as they both stood inside of Virgil’s bedroom.

“So, do you know where the entrance is? Or are we waiting for Virgil now?”

(Technically, you don’t have to read this part. But I recommend that you do so that you can understand the universe as a whole a little better. It’s what I’m gonna be using in most of my stories so...)

(You know, just as a warning. Read or don’t, it’s your choice. There will be another line and a set of these parenthesized comments where the detailed exposition ends and the rest of the story continues.) 

All sides had a particular “Realm” within the Mindscape they were individually in charge of. Each Realm was attached to the main House/Hub by a specific entrance within each side’s bedroom. The entrance would then lead to a mirrored version of the bedroom and house within the other Realm. And, when you exited the house, you would enter the actual bulk of the Realm itself.

Logan’s Realm was the Memory Library(where all of the subjects, books, movies, music, roles, and lessons Thomas had ever learned/experienced before were kept) and the entrance was behind a secret bookcase door that could only be opened by solving a particular puzzle within the room that Logan changed once every week.

Roman’s Realm was the Imagination Plane(where all of Thomas’s ideas and dreams were kept and, for the most part, created) and the entrance tended to change depending on the day. Sometimes it would be through a wardrobe, other times it would be through a magic mirror, and every once and a while it would be through a painting or a book. Finding it was part of the fun, according to Roman.

Deceit’s Realm was the Memory Archives(where all of Thomas’s actual memories were kept and carefully sorted, organized, and maintained) and the entrance was through a fake wall right across from his bedroom’s door.

Patton’s Realm was the Heartscape(where everything Thomas held dear to his heart like his love for his friends, a collection of his most precious memories, his most deep seated beliefs, and almost all of his emotions as a whole were kept and maintained) and the entrance was through a simple door covered in pictures and stickers and little splashes of paint over in the corner of Patton’s bedroom.

Virgil’s Realm was the Nightmare Plane(where all of Thomas’s fears, doubts, concerns, nightmares, and troubling thoughts were all kept, created, and very carefully maintained) and Deceit didn’t actually know where the entrance was.

(Okay, that’s all the detailed exposition)

(Back to the main story)

Nobody had ever gone to Virgil’s Realm without him or Thomas just sinking them into it, so the other sides weren’t really sure where Virgil’s Realm entrance actually was.

And, whenever someone asked, Virgil would always just say that it was better they not be able to go in on their own anyways.

The Nightmare Plane was a dangerous place, even with Virgil being there to keep them safe.

If they went in without him, nobody was really sure how well that would turn out.

So it was simply one of those things that everyone quietly thought about but never did anything to figure out.

Except, apparently, it wasn’t.

Because Patton was smiling at him and walking towards Virgil’s bed with a confidence that spoke volumes about how much time he spent in the anxious side’s space.

“Virgil showed me where the entrance was a long time ago. And I know where he’s gonna be today, so you can just follow me and I’ll take you where we need to go.”

Deceit blinked in surprise and had to physically keep his jaw from dropping when Patton reached a hand under the overly long sheets of Virgil’s bed, pulled the blankets up and away from the floor, and revealed a very thin black wooden door where the underside of the bed was meant to be.

And then Deceit felt a little like smacking himself.

Of course, the entrance was under the bed.

It was the Nightmare Plane, were else would it be?

Patton grinned at him and waved a hand.

“C’mon, I wanna get there before he starts!”

And, with that said, Patton opened the secret door and slid easily through it.

Then it closed with a startlingly loud slam behind him and Deceit had to take a moment to remind himself that this was Virgil’s Realm Patton had just gone into and the anxious side would never let anything bad happen to them if he could help it.

So, after taking a single long and steadying breath, Deceit made his way to the side of the bed and opened the small door.

It didn’t creak or do anything particularly ominous which surprised him a little.

And it stayed open when he started to slide through it.

It only slammed shut again when he was safely past it.

“There you are! For a second there, I wasn’t sure if you followed me or not.”

Came the muffled voice of Patton from...

Somewhere.

Deceit couldn’t see anything.

Which said a lot considering how good his night-vision usually was.

But he was still on his stomach and, when he raised his head a little, he could still feel the low ceiling/bottom of the bed above him.

Then, suddenly, there was light and it took a moment for Deceit to adjust his eyes enough to clearly see Patton crouched on the floor and looking at him sideways through the thin open door.

“Don’t worry, this is just the bed in Virgil’s other room. So, you can come out now.”

“Oh. Alright then...”

And Deceit shuffled his way out from under the bed, looking around the room with some curiosity once he entered it.

Although Virgil had let them into his Realm a few times in the past, they had never really gone anywhere past the living room before.

The rest of the Realm was far too dangerous, according to Virgil.

“Okay!” Patton said with a firm clap of his hands that made Deceit jump half a foot. “Let’s get going before we miss anything!”

Deceit didn’t bother complaining as he allowed the other side to pull him along.

He simply remained silent and continued to look around the only Realm he’d never really had the chance to explore before.

The main house looked, for the most part, the same.

Just with the additional decorations that tended to vary between each side’s spaces.

The living room, once they reached it, looked as it always did.

Although, there was now the addition of a pile of random pillows and blankets strewn all across the floor.

It looked like a massive pillow fort had attempted to manifest only to somehow miss its mark and just end up collapsed all over the place.

Patton went straight past the mess with only a bit of a fond smile thrown over his shoulder as any sort of acknowledgment.

Deceit kind of wanted to ask about it but didn’t get the chance when Patton reached the front door and swiftly pulled it open.

And Deceit felt chills run down his spine as he and Morality entered the true Nightmare Plane and all that that would entail.

Patton didn’t hesitate when a strong gust of wind pushed at them threw the door and only laughed in delight as he stepped easily through, his hand still pulling Deceit along behind him.

For a moment, Deceit was too afraid of what he’d see to look away from the other side’s back.

But then he started to hear the sounds of something that surprised him.

Crickets chirping.

A breeze gently rushing through leaves.

Water flowing from somewhere nearby. 

So, hesitantly, Deceit looked up.

And was met with a sight that he would easily call one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

Outside of the house was a large circular clearing, surrounded by trees.

Within the clearing was a medium-sized pond attached to a waterfall that came from a river leading into the shadows of the surrounding forest.

Next to it was an absolutely massive willow tree with little glowing purple lights gently floating around its swaying limbs.

Small, almost glowing, white flowers dotted the grass like little fallen stars.

And above it all, was a breathtaking view of the sky.

The moon was large and full, surrounded by too many stars to count in a swirling mass of color like Deceit had never seen in anything other than Logan’s pictures of far off galaxies.

Gentle golds and oranges mixed with vibrant blues and purples.

The stars made patterns like no real constellation ever could.

“It’s nice, right?”

Deceit looked quickly back down at the one standing beside him, and realized with a start that they had stopped walking at the edge of the pond.

He took a quick glance and saw that the water was so clear and still that he could see the sky reflected within it.

It was like standing beside a tiny galaxy.

“No.” He breathed. “It’s horrible.”

Then there was the sound of a familiar laugh and Deceit looked up to the willow tree nearby.

“So shocked you lied, huh? I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Virgil walked through an opening in the limbs created by, seemingly, the limbs simply moving themselves for him.

He looked as he always did, though he did seem slightly more relaxed than usual.

Even his eyeshadow seemed just a tad softer than normal.

 “You shouldn’t. I can think of something better to express my shock.”

The anxious side let out a small snort in return as he finally reached the two and came to a stop beside Patton.

He let out a rather long-suffering sigh and directed a baleful glance at the other.

“Hey, Pat. I didn’t realize you were gonna be bringing someone with you today. If I’d known I would’ve made this place a bit spookier or something.” Virgil said with a shrug before bringing a hand up to rub at his neck a little awkwardly. “I’ve got an image to maintain, y’know.”

And Deceit felt the smallest of twinges within his chest.

He understood Virgil’s mindset quite well.

“Nobody cares if you’re scared.” He’d once said to him after a rather heated debate between the sides had ended with Virgil using his voice and control over shadows to intimidate them all into listening to him. “They care if you’re scary.”

Virgil could easily be seen as one of the most caring of the sides.

Both for Thomas and the others.

But he always seemed so dark and mysterious and scary.

That it had been hard to notice before.

Though, that time was passed now.

And they were all famILY.

So Virgil didn’t need to be scary anymore.

This was something that Patton, and now Deceit, wanted to prove to him.

That was, after all, why Patton had brought Deceit with him in the first place.

He’d been trying to find good opportunities to bring the others in and show them around without Virgil being able to stop him beforehand.

And that opportunity was now, so he was going to milk it for all it was worth.

Patton grinned widely at his best friend and released Deceit’s hand before leaping forward and giggling when Virgil instantly caught him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Virgil. You’re already beautiful in my book, so I don’t know how making this place look any different would make your image change.”

Deceit smiled behind his hand as Virgil’s face turned a very pale shade of pink.

“You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you. I swear you’re the worst, Pat.”

The anxious side’s grumbles were only met with more giggling and some quiet snickers from the peanut gallery.

Then he sighed in a way that sounded, incredibly, even more long-suffering than before.

“Alright, I get it. You’re making a point and trying to reveal my soft and squishy underbelly to the others. That’s fine and all but I actually do need to get some work done today. Thomas is having a good time with his friends so I’d rather take care of it now than worry about it later.”

With the reminder of Virgil’s work, Deceit straightened and Patton let go of the side he’d jumped at to instead face him head on with an excited grin on his face.

“Right! Sorry, yeah, let’s go!”

And Patton ran past Virgil and over to the willow tree, the other sides trailing slowly behind him.

The two stayed silent as they walked but Deceit did give the anxious side a gentle nudge to the arm that was returned with a soft smile.

The gesture spoke volumes, and needed no words to get the intended message across.

When they entered the small enclosed space created by the willow tree’s limbs, Patton was already settled within a little cushioned hollow in the tree’s roots and Deceit took a moment to look around at the floating lights as they idly made their way around the area.

“Alright, get comfortable you two. I’m gonna be at this for a while and I’d really prefer it if you didn’t interrupt anything.”

“Don’t worry! We’ll be good, right Deceit?”

And Deceit nodded as he took a seat in the hollow beside Patton.

“Of course not.”

He didn’t bother making himself tell the truth.

Virgil could tell when he was lying and when he wasn’t.

Indeed, he simply nodded in understanding and took his place standing in front of them.

For a moment, everything seemed to still and take a breath.

Then Virgil took his own breath and sat down on thin air.

Deceit blinked in surprise and watched with no small amount of curiosity as liquid shadows dripped from Virgil’s fingers.

The shadows moved around him and slowly solidified into a piano and a bench.

Then he started to play and Deceit felt something well up in his chest.

And when Virgil started to sing this song that he had never heard before, he felt a little like crying.

“Myth me.”

Patton’s quiet whisper startled him a little and he turned to look at the other side who looked just as affected by the music as he was.

“What?”

Deceit whispered back as quietly as he could.

“The song. It’s called Myth Me. It’s one of my favorites when he works on these threads.”

And that’s when Deceit finally noticed them.

Long, delicate, and glowing white threads filled the air around Virgil like some kind of intricate work of art.

The threads thrummed quietly alongside the music and some seemed to simply loosen and fall apart, disappearing into the air like mist.

“Oh.” 

Was all Deceit could think to say in response.

And that was fine.

The two remained silent for a long time after that.

Simply listening to Virgil as he played and sang.

Occasionally, more shadows would seep from his fingers and take on the forms of featureless humanoids that would play other instruments alongside him.

And the threads continued to loosen and fall apart.

Until all that was left were the tautest of strings.

That was when Virgil stood from the piano and took his place beside it.

A violin quickly formed in his hand and the piano, alongside almost all of the shadows around him dissipated into thin air.

Then Virgil started to play.

And the ethereal calm that had filled the clearing moments before was snapped alongside dozens of the threads as Virgil played a song that sent a thrill of excitement and fear through Deceit’s body.

He felt Patton press close to him and listened closely as the side whispered in his ear once again.

“Roundtable Rival. It’s one of the best at breaking lots of threads at once.”

Deceit wasn’t surprised to hear that.

He watched as the strings continued to snap, letting out impossibly loud cracking and booming sounds that matched the music perfectly each time.

Virgil danced around the threads, and the shadows that played beside him, like he was being carried by the music itself.

With each snap of a thread, blindingly bright light flashed across him and only seemed to intensify with his playing.

And Virgil continued to play that song and so many more until most of the threads were gone.

Finally, Virgil stopped, took a deep breath once more, and let all of the shadows and instruments he had summoned disappear into thin air.

Then Deceit jumped almost a full two feet into the air when Patton leaped up and started to clap with a cheer.

“That was amazing, Virgil!”

The anxious side smiled a little crookedly and rubbed his neck again.

“Thanks, Pat.”

And Deceit found himself quickly nodding along as he stood alongside the moral side.

“No, that was terrible. I hated every second of it.”

And Virgil seemed slightly surprised by the praise but smiled genuinely at the both of them.

“Thanks. I’m glad you guys enjoyed yourselves, I guess.”

And Patton rather suddenly squealed before launching himself at Virgil once again.

Virgil, bless his heart, leaped forward and caught the excitable side without hesitation.

“We have to go and get cookies now! You deserve so many cookies! All of the cookies! I love my dark strange son so much! He deserves all of the cookies in the world!”

Deceit chuckled into his hand as Patton continued to ramble while Virgil just silently carried him away from the tree with an expression of utter defeat and quiet embarrassment on his face.

With one final glance back at the beautiful clearing they were leaving behind, Deceit followed the two emotional sides back into the house with a peaceful smile on his face and a slightly altered view on his family’s resident worrywart.

(Here’s a link to the next part of the CAP Series.)

(A Bed of Links:)

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Cerillen

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerillen/pseuds/Cerillen

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPz4p5XdoRESDKZeMDnWXFQ

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/cerillen

Discord: https://discord.gg/FsUhc5f

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND PROFESSOR

But Wodehouse has something neither of them did. Don't drop out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist. It won't get you a job, except perhaps as a classics professor, but it should be helpful to be in this business; it's just too annoying to see a 25 year old with money, but it happens so often to varying degrees in large programming projects that there is a degenerate case where what someone wants you to do everything. Its more general version is our answer to the Greeks: Don't see purpose where there isn't. Failing at 40, when you could start a startup, don't design your product to please VCs or potential acquirers. This is about cities, not countries. I was thinking recently how inconvenient it was not till we ourselves raised money that I understood why. And what made him so good was that he was harming his future—that is, to grow about ten percent a year. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. If they get something wrong, it's usually not realizing they have to work harder to entice people to buy them? A conditional is an if-then-else construct.

Because that machine was not just a machine. But in the US now seems to be making an effort. I wrote this article to help myself understand exactly what McCarthy discovered. Walk down University Ave at the right time, and you don't have to be poked with a stick to get them out. Languages less powerful than more recent assembly languages; there were no subroutines, for example, set prices based on the cost of starting a startup is not like having an idea for a startup, which in its raw form is more a question of fashion than technology, even he can probably get the right answer. If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that Lisp has a strange syntax as because it has a quantum of utility, and then see what they do is related to the parentheses. They were just trying to survive. Not only does a society get the best man for the job, but parents' ambitions are diverted from direct methods to indirect ones—to actually trying to raise their kids well. In server-based applications are hot now, but Fortran I didn't have them. Even if you start a startup and make them buy it to get you? Unfortunately, those few deals now want less and less money, and still make a profit.

In Lisp, functions are first class objects—they're a data type just like integers or strings. Now companies increasingly have to pay employees market price for the work they do. But Wodehouse has something neither of them did. So every macro in that code is there because it has no syntax. For example, Web-based application. The usual way to do that. Big companies also don't pay people the right way. For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave to defend it.

In the US this process still shows many outward signs of corruption. In the original sense it meant someone, usually an outsider, who deliberately stirred up fights in a forum by saying controversial things. In fact, the way Stripe delivered instant merchant accounts to its first users was that the company was. And so most of them. I don't think there was a causal connection. I'm not too worried about it. My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish. At places like MIT they were writing programs in high-level language, and computers speak whatever language you want. Running code at read-time lets users reprogram Lisp's syntax; running code at compile-time, compile-time is the basis of Lisp's use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea recently reinvented as XML. The pointy-haired boss doesn't want to open it.

In Ansi Common Lisp I tried to move things along as fast as I could till I'd made enough to solve the problem once and for all. I told the audience that this happened every year, so if the programmers working for me now quit, as programmers working for me now quit, as programmers working for me mysteriously always do, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. Kenneth Clark was a star in his day, thanks to the documentary series Civilisation. And if it's not impossible but simply very hard, it might be helpful to be in this business; it's just what their business has evolved into. I was in high school it was probably understood that you were supposed to go to college. What I'm proposing is exactly the opposite: that, like a skateboard. This falls short of the spec because it only works for integers. Software licenses to Orbitz. If founders could sell a little stock early would generally be better for the people who created it as well. The less it costs to start a company. But in her novels I can't see the gears at work. Professors nowadays seem to have become professional fundraisers who do a little research on the side of the line of scrimmage.

The questions you're answering are pleasantly familiar. Universities seem the place to start. They didn't mean to be in this business; it's just a more extreme version of designing a robust and elegant product. And it follows inexorably that, except in special cases, you ought to use the most powerful you can get, and wait for your competitors' pointy-haired boss doesn't want to open it. That was not a unique feature of Airbnb. People pay a lot for desktop software, there's a lot they can do to drive prices down. The pointy-haired boss, the difficulty of hiring programmers, I think is a red herring. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics. If you think of one day starting a startup.

[theolddarkmachine]

12 Days of ODM: Day 7

Dedicated to: @tanasha91 (HOLY CRAP IT LET ME TAG YOU)

Prompt: Gajeel’s first Christmas

AO3

“It’s pretty, don’t you think?” She asked, her words forming clouds between them. “I always felt like I was in a Christmas story when I was here.”

Gajeel’s nod was quick as he agreed, ruby eyes reflecting the lights stretched around them. A sadness hung around him as he continued to look at anything else but Levy, causing her stomach to drop.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, Shrimp,” he said after a moment, finally turning his attention to her with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’ve just never really celebrated Christmas before.”

Fun fact: This prompt made me realize that I am not good at writing festive things lol Basically it made me WORK. Which is NOT a bad thing lol I do love a challenge :) I hope ya like it! Merry Christmas!

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

Christmas lights were wound around the otherwise bare branches of the trees lining Magnolia’s town square, creating a warm glow that wrapped around the bark. Different carts and booths were scattered across the open area, each one with swirling script written across boards proclaiming whatever it was that they were selling. As Levy stood in the middle of it all, her eyes scanning over the square, lit almost as brightly as the lights as she tried to decide her plan of attack. It was her favorite time of year, when the square was lit and the Winter Festival began, each night different vendors bringing baked goods, warmed ciders and hot chocolate, and handmade gifts.

Each year since she’d arrived at the guild, the older members would take the younger members out to the square to explore what there was to be offered, and ever since she had loved it. Even now, hands wrapped around the warm cup of hot cocoa, she felt her heart swelling against the back of her ribcage.

Of course, that probably also had something to do with the dragon slayer standing beside her, arm wrapped around her shoulder and pulling her into his side.

The glow from the lights had softened his usually hardened features until they were molten. Gajeel was always going on about how beautiful she was, but he never gave himself enough credit. He was made entirely of jewel cut lines, and he was all hers.

“It’s pretty, don’t you think?” She asked, her words forming clouds between them. “I always felt like I was in a Christmas story when I was here.”

Gajeel’s nod was quick as he agreed, ruby eyes reflecting the lights stretched around them. A sadness hung around him as he continued to look at anything else but Levy, causing her stomach to drop.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, Shrimp,” he said after a moment, finally turning his attention to her with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’ve just never really celebrated Christmas before.”

***

The admission had come with complete nonchalance, as if Gajeel had spoke of something as small as never having had a certain food, or never reading a certain book. It hung between them for barely a moment before he’d moved on to the topic of the cider he had ordered, the weight of his statement dissipating quickly from his mind.

Levy, however, could not say the same.

It had been nearly two weeks since they’d gone to the Winter Festival and the words had twisted themselves around her mind in an unending tempest that haunted her. Even now, snuggled into a nest of their bedding and pillows that she had arranged around the fire, they were a repeated metronome in her head.

I’ve just never really celebrated Christmas before.

It shouldn’t have been much of a shock to hear that Gajeel hadn’t ever celebrated the holiday. Dragons and Dark Guilds hardly seemed like the types to cultivate a festive environment. Coupled with the fact that jobs and fights had seemed to keep the iron dragon slayer preoccupied for just about every holiday since he’d joined Fairy Tail, Levy should not have found it so shocking to hear that he’d never celebrated.

The thought of it dredged up a slow burning sadness that had eaten away at the bits between her lungs and her ribs like tree rot. Everyone deserved to have a happy holiday, no matter what their past. Had Gajeel not atoned enough for his past sins?

Had he not proven himself worthy of the simple joy of Christmas?

Yes, everyone deserved to have a happy holiday, and dammit, Levy was going to make sure he had a great first one.

The only problem was, she hadn’t entirely been sure of how to do that. Her own Christmases had revolved around the guild for so long that her own holiday celebrations had fallen to the wayside, the only one still holding up being the book that was clutched in her fists. Before she had come to the guild as an orphan, her parents used to sit with her on Christmas Eve with the very same copy and take turns reading out to her the story of how Christmas came to be.

After they’d died, she’d clung to the book and its story as if it were a lifeline, the only thing left of the only family she’d ever known until she found one within the open arms of the guild. Yet every year, on Christmas Eve, she still pulled out the book and fell into its comfortable embrace.

Reading the words on the pages felt almost like coming home.

It also felt like the answer she was looking for as her honeyed eyes scanned the swirling script that was etched in black ink over the page.

“What ya doing, Shrimp?” Gajeel’s voice was smokey, filled with burning oak and crackling flame as it pulled her from her thoughts. Looking up through the veil of her blue bangs, Levy saw her iron dragon standing over where she sat, a smile carving parentheses into his cheeks. The flickering of the fire before her danced over his skin, casting its yellow glow onto him.

It made him warm. Almost as warm as the heat that always rolled through her veins when she looked at him. It was something caught between heat lightning and a supernova.

“I was just about to read a Christmas story,” she said simply, pushing herself to the side of the nest she’d created and opening a space beside her. “Want to join?”

Only a moment passed before he was making his way around the blankets and pillows, not bothering to answer as he set himself carefully into the fold of the nest. The soft scent of sage and metal curled around them as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her into his chest.

“I would love to,” he said softly, voice barely above a whisper as if to not disturb the thickening air around them.

Shifting in his hold so that her back aligned with the length of his chest, Gajeel curved his body around her in a protective arc, a contented rumble vibrating through him and shaking them both.

“Comfy?” She asked as she flipped back to the first page, more for the painted scene stretched across the page than the words. Those she had memorized.

Heat spread down the back of her neck and through her as Gajeel pressed his nose into her crown, breathing her in as he held her against him.

“Mmhm,” he hummed.

“Good,” Levy smiled before launching into the tale of Christmas’ origin. As the story fell from her lips, colored by the same golden glow of the fire before them, they both became wrapped in its magic. Without ever saying it, Levy threw all of her love into the story, weaving its tale before Gajeel until he could feel the cool brush of the snow and see the gleaming kingdom of Christmas stretched before him.

Together, they lost themselves in the words of her favorite tradition, and each other. It was there, the mounting blush of sweetness tinging their cheeks red and their own affections settling them into a tenderness softer than the nest they’d rested in, that they pieced together a whole new tradition all their own.

It was there, as Gajeel listened to Levy tell the story with rapt attention, never daring to look away from her rose petal mouth and honey eyes, that they both saw their futures, tucked within the words of the story. Years would pass, and they would continue to wrap themselves in blankets and each other on Christmas Eve and read the tale of the holiday’s beginnings.

Visions of their Christmases to come were carried through her voice, revealing their family as they carried on the tradition in front of the fire with the then worn book, its pages tearing from its spine but never losing its enchantment.

There, with Christmas Eve bleeding into Christmas morning and Levy’s story carrying out before them like a song, they had their first of many more to come.

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