#the one who ought to give up but she's just too hard headed [kirsten]

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                                        Kirsten                   Daughter of Zeus & Hera [Hercules]

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[nxttheendxfthestxryarch2]

Flashback Solo Para: A Little Too Young and a Little Too Dumb (Sylvia)

So I grew up fast in a whole new world, Waved good-bye to that little girl-- I can see her now, innocent and seven... I wish I had never turned eleven.

“Daaaaaaaad!” Sylvia whines in the backseat. “Bubs is touching me!!”

“I am not!” Her brother retorts beside her.

Dad laughs and shakes his head, glancing in the rear-view mirror for a split second. “Guys, come on. Can we try and get along for one drive?”

Sylvia huffs and rolls her eyes, crossing her arms and looking at him. “Now, daddy, I’m being perfectly behaved and keeping to myself. It’s not my fault.”

Velma chokes and laughs from her seat, looking back at the twins and shaking her head at her daughter. “You are something else, little lady.”

“She gets it from you,” dad jokes, and mom gasps, turning back and smacking his arm. Sylvia, however, giggles and wrinkles her nose a bit, sticking her tongue out at her mom a bit.

Once they’re finally out of the car after what feels like forever in the child’s opinion, she grabs tightly onto her dad’s hand while her brother grabs mom’s. She wrinkles her nose but takes her brother’s other hand anyways... and the twins practically drag their parents behind them rushing into the pizza place for dinner that night.

And they’re laughing and daddy is playing with his food and mom is scolding both him and Sylvia for making so much noise that people are staring and it’s all perfect and she can’t imagine it getting any better than this.

                                                           -----//-----

Eleven-year-old Sylvia Ed-- no, Sylvia Dinkley now, doesn’t go to bed that night.

Mom tries to reassure her that it’ll all be okay but she just can’t believe it, can’t believe that dad would just up and leave them, leave her family, because it means that they weren’t good enough, that he didn’t care about her when she was supposed to be his baby and she just wants to take the stupid picture of them both with a mozzarella stick in their mouths with the other end stretched as high as their arms could reach with the cheese holding on by a thread and shred it to bits.

She flops on her bed and cries softly into her pillow. Blaming herself, even though mom was constantly promising it wasn’t her or her brother’s fault. Because it wasn’t just about mom, it couldn’t be, it had to be that they all three weren’t enough for him, which meant she wasn’t good enough and he was gonna have some new daughter and forget all about her.

She cries until she can’t. And then she’s just mad.

In the coming days, she throws things around her room, tears up pictures and breaks the fragile presents he’d buy her on vacations and tears up every single shirt that had proclaimed her daddy’s girl. She gets introduced to the WSN and she trains, she fights and beats up everyone they pair her with until Laurian.

Laurian is different. She still beats him up a lot to begin with, throws unnecessary punches and fights back at every step of working with him, but he sticks with her, because the WSN is tired of moving them both, and, begrudgingly, she comes around to him. Slowly but surely. And he asks her, one night, when they’re done training for the day.

“That first day, when we met. They introduced you as Edwards, but you immediately snapped back with Dinkley. What gives?”

She looks down at the next floor below them, their legs dangling off the side and their arms crossed on the lower railing. And, sighing, she answers.

“A couple years ago now, my dad... left. It was right around the time we met. I guess he found some woman he thought was prettier than my mom and decided to leave with her instead. And I didn’t want to be his kid anymore. Because it just hurt. At the time I guess I thought... I thought it’d feel easier if I didn’t feel like I was his kid still. So I’ve been using my mom’s maiden name. Legally, on paper, it’s still Sylvia Edwards, but... I don’t think I’m really that man’s daughter anymore. Wherever he is.”

“So you’ve never looked him up?” Laurian looks at her.

Sylvia shrugs. “Didn’t want to see what his life became with his new perfect woman.”

“Okay, yeah, eh, I see where that’d come from,” he agrees.

Sylvia sighs, slowly leaning over and resting her head on his shoulder. Her partner, her best friend, and now her true confidant. She’d trust him with anything and somehow, she knew he was doing the same.

Their dynamic changed that day, though neither of them knew it. That trust had strengthened their bond to the point it only took a word, only took a simple phrase-- “Do you trust me?”-- to know what the other was thinking, to follow the other’s lead and know they’d make it out alive.

Sometimes, she wonders where she’d be without her partner, but, she tries not to reflect too much on it.

                                                        -----//-----

In retrospect? It’s kind of funny that she’s picked up witchcraft. But the fourteen-year-old shuffles her tarot deck and pauses, almost hearing something. Cocking her head, she looks to her candle. “Is that you?”

But the flame remains unchanged, flickering in the direction of no. Hmm. Then who...?

No, not in her head. “Who is it, then?” She continues shuffling her cards-- jumping at a thump at her window, looking up in surprise, nearly dropping the deck entirely.

What the hell...?

Getting up and going over, she looks at the frog resting there on her windowsill outside. She swears it’s looking back up at her just as intently. Frog deities? She goes back to her computer and looks it up, frowning a bit to herself as she reads.

“You won’t find me there,” she suddenly hears, clear as day.

“Okay,” she answers. “Why not?”

“You’re looking at the normal world’s old mythology. I’m in Auradon and associated with their not-so-mythical side.”

“...oh,” Sylvia nods slowly. “Makes sense.” She clears her throat. “Then may I ask who you are?”

“My name is Kirsten,” is the answer to that. “You’ll learn more in time.”

And she does, as promised. Kirsten is the goddess of runaways, survivors, and found family. She sees Sylvia as someone in need of a little protection and care, between her father’s absence and Sylvia’s growing gravitation towards Laurian over her twin as almost a surrogate brother. Sylvia, for one, is grateful for the additional presence... even if Kirsten doesn’t seem fond of Athena. If anything, she has a seemingly bitter and jealous response to the other.

But Sylvia doesn’t question it, assuming it isn’t her place, even if she is curious.

                                                     -----//-----

Auradon Prep. Sylvia doesn’t believe in 90% of the student body’s population, and she steadfastly doesn’t want to. She’s not really sure if she even wants to be here but here she is nevertheless and she’ll make the best of it, even far away from either of her brothers.

She slots herself in with old friends and new, forming the very misfit band of detectives affectionately known as The Clue Crew, but in a way, she finds a greater solace in her friendship with her just as ordinary companions Melinda and Sam.

...oh, son of a bitch!

When Sam and Melinda sit down at lunch and just outright admit neither of them is normal, Sylvia’s left blinking and staring blankly at them before they finally circle back and address her face, settling her nerves. Sylvia sighs and shakes her head, smiling and hugging onto them both tightly. Regardless of anything, they’re still basically her family. And family requires sacrifice, so Sylvia begrudgingly goes along when a couple of “ordinary” cases turn into hunts with Sam. Just in small doses, though. She doesn’t want to really get involved.

                                                    -----//-----

Denton changes everything on so many levels.

Sylvia’s head is spinning. Her bastard of an old man... was a wizard? A hunter, no less? He hadn’t left because he didn’t love them-- no, the opposite. He’d left because he loved them and wanted them to be safe. It hadn’t been her fault.

And gods, she was a wizard?! A wizard! Her magic was bound and according to that kid Scott, that wasn’t gonna be coming undone, thank the gods for that part at least. But she’d been so set on normal humanity, on being completely average, and...

And a wendigo had taken her father from her right in front of her own eyes.

She doesn’t say it.

But Sylvia knows what’s changed in her, deep down. She knows what she’s becoming and... she knows Sam can see it, that he hates it.

She wishes she could take it back. She wishes she could stop the feelings inside her about all of this. For fuck’s sake, the man abandoned her when she was eleven! She shouldn’t care, not really!

But she does. And there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

She just hopes that Sam will forgive her.

Because she can’t lose him, too.

                                                        -----//-----

Sylvia sits at the table, scrolling the WSN database on her phone slowly, reading while she works on a spell jar.

Something to keep Sam and Melinda safe. Since they’d agreed she’d be better suited here, with Bobby, right now.

Bobby. Grumpy old man was kind of growing on her. Not that she was even paying attention at this point. She had so much to learn, so much to focus on, that she couldn’t even pay attention.

Sighing softly, she turns away from the database for a moment, frowning and looking in front of her at her supplies. “Wait, where’d the candle go?” She starts moving things in front of her, eyebrows furrowing.

He looks up from his own reading for a moment, then reaches over, tapping her shoulder in a second. Looking up, she blinks as he hands her the candle in question and smiles softly as she takes it from him. “Thanks, dad.”

And that seals the deal for something she didn’t even realize was in the works. One little word that had showed where things had gone in five years, since the day a man she’d taught herself to despise walked out the door.

Thanks, dad, she’d said, and she’d known even then just how true it was for her to call him that, even if she hadn’t been thinking about it.

[devoverest]

Getting to know me: a novel

@ignisgalaxia @imaginationdrift @bizships @lodessa and @streepmulgrew  have all tagged me for this, and I just can't take the peer pressure any longer. However, I'm so long-winded everyone will surely be very sorry that you five ever asked me. I will try very hard to put most of this below a "read more" link, but my mobile app doesn't play nicely with that feature any longer, so I truly deeply and sincerely apologize if yours doesn't either and you get a callus scrolling past all of what follows on your way to the gifsets you're on Tumblr to enjoy.

1. Relationship status: married -- legally and everything. It was the mid-'90s. I was considering having a religious ceremony but forgoing the state-recognized marriage license part, in solidarity with same-sex couples who at the time and for many years afterward were denied that privilege. However, my father absolutely put his foot down (something he almost never did with me, especially in my young adulthood) and insisted on the marriage license. He supported marriage equality, but he was thinking of my economic security in case our marriage didn't last. He was right to do, as I ended up taking many years out of the paid workforce to raise children, which I hadn't planned on doing when I decided to marry.

In case Tumblr is stupid, right here is where I’ve inserted a “read more” link as I’m writing this post. I tried. 

2. Lipstick or chapstick: Usually neither. Actually, never literal Chapstick because that stuff is made out of petroleum and isn't good for your skin. I learned that when I was playing a lot of flute in high school and college and had to take extra special care of my lips to play well. If the weather gets really cold and dry, which it rarely does where I live, and if I can hang on to any of the half-dozen tubes I buy every year but which invariably get swiped and then lost by family members, I use a Burt's Bees lip balm. I seem to have a knack for finding them barely-used in the bottom of my purse during the warm months and then never having one at hand when I actually need it. I think I own one lip pencil currently and I'll sometimes use that to outline my lips when I'm doing some sort of special-event public speaking kinda gig but I don't wear any make-up normally. My husband claims that I knew full well it was a date the first time we got together socially because I wore make-up. I have never admitted to him that he is correct, but he is.

3. Three favorite foods: Too many to narrow down to just three. I enjoy and appreciate a wide range of foods. Things I enjoy and appreciate perhaps a tad more frequently than I ought to in the strictest interests of nutrition are chocolate in almost any form, ice cream (especially that of the chocolate persuasion and most especially any form of peanut-butter/chocolate), and Starburst brand jellybeans, which my son and I share somewhat ritualistically most evenings after dinner (which is somehow not the same thing as for dessert.) Why yes, I do have a sweet tooth -- why do you ask?

4. Song stuck in your head: Currently "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive (I had to google that.) I don't know why but suspect it was on TV this evening, which makes me fear that it may be the campaign song for some politician I would never vote for. Which reminds me -- US citizens, please double-check that you are registered to vote and make a plan for voting in the upcoming midterms! This will probably the most important election of your entire lifetime, past or future, no matter what your age, and in many races in many states, voter turnout will be the single deciding factor in who controls the future of our country for a very long time to come. Please vote!

5. Last movie you watched: "Crazy Rich Asians," with my husband, unwisely just two days after I had minor (but surprisingly butt-kicking) surgery. We went to the first matinee showing on a Saturday and actually arrived at the theater before it even opened, a sure sign of mature middle age if I've ever heard of one. We both loved the film -- it was glitzy, funny, extremely well-written and -acted, got all the Chinese cultural details right, offered caricatures but no stereotypes, was very female-centric and multi-generational, and of course starred the exquisite and inimitable Michelle Yeoh who also plays Philippa Georgiou on Star Trek: Discovery. Laughed until my belly hurt (literally, sadly) and then went home and slept the rest of the day.

6. Top three shows: This will sound really strange for someone who is on Tumblr because of TV show fandom, but I don't watch TV. I grew up with Star Trek TOS reruns and movies, then TNG in college & grad school, then Voyager until extended stays abroad made it impossible to keep up with (back in the days before streaming and VPNs.) I reconnected with Star Trek in summer 2017 when I was home alone for six weeks and binged all of Voyager and then started digging up fanfic for all the reasons all the Voyager fans turn to fic -- to fix what the show's writers mutilated -- and now here I am, but I don't watch TV, and when I do it's the nightly news or whatever sports my husband is watching and then it's just because I feel like sitting in the same room with my husband at that particular time. The one exception to this fact about me is that I did watch Star Trek: Discovery as it was being released last year, and even got my teenager into it. (He is a Netflix addict but never watched any Star Trek anything before that. I don't know where I went wrong with this child.)

7. Books I'm currently reading: Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer because @voyager-book-club; Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (audiobook but I'm counting it); Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. LeGuin, Soul at Work: Spiritual Leadership in Organizations by Margaret Benefiel; Pachinko by Min Jin Lee; and Selecting and Using Breastfeeding Tools: Improving Care and Outcomes by Catherine Watson Genna. Except that the last three books on the list are ones I have at hand and keep wanting to read but haven't so much as opened yet. But including them gives you a more complete sense of my interests.

8. Last thing I googled: "you ain't seen nothing yet lyrics" because #4 above. Before that, "instant pot beef stew recipe." No need to look further back in my search history (she said during a break from writing smut.) *whistles innocently*

9. Time: 10:30pm as I write this. No idea when I'll post it or when you'll read it. This seems like a silly question to include for a post of this nature.

10. Dream trip: India. But I've also never crossed the equator and really feel I should someday, so who knows, maybe I'll find a way to drop in on all the Australian friends I've made in Voyager fandom. Now wouldn't that be lovely?

11. Anything you want: Anyone who knows me in real life (and anyone hanging around the Voyager Book Club discord server) knows I never shut up about breastfeeding support and advocacy. But I always try to make it clear that I'm not preaching at parents about how they should feed their babies; rather, I'm working to help parents who want to breastfeed overcome any challenges they encounter. I save my preaching for the folks involved with policy and institutional barriers to breastfeeding, and when it comes to the unethical and demonstrably harmful advertising practices of the infant formula industry, my preaching leans hard toward the hellfire and damnation variety because that is some truly evil shit, folks -- the advertising practices, not the formula milk itself; let's be very, very clear about that.

Rules: Tag 15 people you want to get to know better.

Here I shall echo @imaginationdrift: "(Really?! That sounds like a number chosen by an extroverted maven.) / Ok, here goes. / FEEL FREE TO: never complete this. I won’t be disappointed, promise." Also, apologies to those who have already responded -- feel even freer to ignore. 

@garrulus  @rikerssexblouse  @klugtiger  @ussjellyfish  @kate-coleman-writes  @lameraextranjera  @armitagetrekkie  @warp6  @admiralkatcornwellfan @zjofierose  @writtenndust @trekkiefeminist @quirkette100 @nerdfishgirl @hoidn

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