#therefore she was doing some sort of make believe about not having a nanny or something?

[gothra]

If you’re making a video about tradwives, why is Nara Smith in the thumbnail? Is she an out and proud conservative who believes in the traditional definition of a Godly American marriage, thereby she is not a trad wife? No? Then, she is not a tradwife. Nara Smith is a thin, conventionally attractive woman who wears sophisticated outfits and has kids and cooks in her big fancy kitchen. She is not a tradwife, she is a professional, likely affluent model who runs the equivalent of an amateur TikTok cooking show. She is not attempting to manipulate you into becoming a submissive, dutiful housewife, she’s making money off of your engagement by maintaining a brand. She is polished and prim, not because she’s trying to portray some sort of natural ease in being a traditional mother, but because she doesn’t want to be clowned for a distracting dirty kitchen. She wears fancy clothes because she’s a model, who gets paid to wear fancy clothes, probably IN the videos. She has three kids because she wants three kids, or however many she has. She’s not perpetuating an unreality, or playing into some deeply insidious narrative about what it means to truly be a woman and a wife and mother, YOU are just poor, and SHE has money, so your lives look different, therefore making her reality inherently different to yours, which isn’t her problem. She doesn’t have to preface every video with an apology or an assurance that you don’t have to go through all of the trouble she does, and she shouldn’t have to. She is a BRAND because she is a BUSINESS. Her work, her videos, make her money! Of course the things she does seem staged and sterile, she is staging and sterilizing her work space to maintain an image online. It’s not her fault you don’t understand branding, and it’s not her fault you failed to learn the message the past decade and the most immediate technological “advancements” have been teaching us: sometimes things online aren’t real. Next are you going to tell me that you think that everyone in every advertisement is genuinely that happy to be wearing/eating/drinking/driving/using the product being advertised?

The elements of Nara Smith’s public persona do not add up to traditionalism, they add up to hyperfemininity at most, and at the very least, a minuscule injection of traditionalism from a Mormon upbringing. Tradwifery isn’t when women wear fancy clothes and cook, it’s when women DON’T work outside the house as successful models who wear crop tops to show off their pregnant bellies. It’s when women follow a traditional, Godly plan for marriage, birth control and childrearing. It when a man works outside of the home as something that isn’t “model”, and his wife (who also isn’t a model) stays home to raise and homeschool 2+ children, and cook and clean and maybe tend to a garden and read her Bible by candlelight and shut her mouth. It’s a woman who is jobless, uneducated, diminished according to “God’s” will. The tradwife isn’t just some lady you don’t like, she’s molded physically and mentally by her upbringing and shaped by the hands of the men around her. She is quiet, she is private, she follows her husband like a lost puppy. The pillars her identity rests upon are repression, conservatism and religious femininity, the kind that makes you wear skirts that go below the knees, and tops with collars to the neck. The most modern tradwife MAYBE has social media, and every video, every post is meant to perpetuate the myth that she is happy and that other women will be at their happiest if they follow her lead. The most important part of “trad” wifery, is the TRAD part, which stands for TRADITION. Miu miu is not traditional. Exposed belly bumps are not traditional. These “commentary” videos like the one I’m referring to do half of the work of investigating the perils of femininity and hyperfemininity, and traditionalism and only succeed in confusing themselves even more because it’s more important to them to pretend to be a journalist than sit with and analyze what they’re saying. This is coming from someone who has a finely tuned radar for subtly anti-feminist propaganda. I can and will scrutinize every aspect of a performance of femininity. I will squint and roll my eyes at every makeup tutorial and GRWM. I will question shaving and waxing and high heels and skirts and bras and porn. One thing I WON’T do, is use a term I KNOW doesn’t fit to make money on a YouTube video.

If Nara Smith bothers you, she just bothers you. If her inaccessible cooking style bothers you, it just bothers you. If the way she dresses bothers you, it just bothers you. That’s it. It JUST bothers you. You’are allowed to feel bothered, and annoyed, so what’s the point of lying? Are your personal feelings so under attack that you have to resort to making up a reason? That you have to resort to making yourself look stupid to justify a half-assed thinkpiece about her? If you want to discuss her potential plagiarism from smaller creators, discuss that. If you want to discuss her kitchen safety, discuss that. Don’t insult me by making shit up, because I’m on the same internet you are! I can watch her videos too! I can take notes too! And I can easily see that your problem with her is the fact that you are simply tired of being advertised to. You’re tired of seeing rich people, and you’re tired of seeing pretty people. Who cares? Be tired of it proudly, but be tired of it and do your research? Quit using areas of feminist study as a personal kiddy pool and get real!!!!!!!!!!

[pennysperfectpolls]

Adoption poll preliminary match 4

Sirin (Honkai Impact 3rd) vs

Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb) vs

Elphaba Thropp (Wicked) vs

Suletta Mercury (Gundam)

Only two will move on!

Propaganda under the cut (some of them have a lot)

Sirin (Honkai Impact 3rd) Propaganda

She is an orphan, was experimented on, and watched all her friends die due to said experiments.

Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb) Propaganda

Her own mother mocks her and thinks she's going insane. Literally the only thing she wants is to be believed, trusted and listened to. Everything goes wrong for her and nobody ever believes her about anything or cares. She asked a random-ass woman to adopt her on New Year's Day when the woman said she'd bust Candace's brothers, and boy did I want to leap into the screen and accept it on her behalf. No, she's not perfect, but she's a good kid who's maybe acting a bit erratically as a result of the insane, stressful situation she's under. As dearly as she loves them, her parents aren't helping her at all and for the most part actively make her obsession with her brothers' antics worse.

Elphaba Thropp (Wicked) Propaganda

Big spoilers

If we’re going for characters with bonkers home lives, Elphie has got to be up there. Depending on who you count as a ‘parent’ Elphaba has like five of them.

Her bio dad is super duper evil and keeps having her friends and family killed (to the point of like, having her dead boyfriend’s widow’s sisters executed, ten years after she’s made any active moves against him). He’s a literal evil dictator, so, bad look all around.

Her parents as far as she knows them are a nutty preacher who sees her being born green as a manifestation of his own sin, calls her a punishment from his god in front of her when she’s like seven, and openly favours her sister to an absurd degree. Her mother sort of just tolerates her, and is usually too high to even do that— also she was so desperate for a boy that Elphaba openly calls her younger brother, who her mother died without meeting, mother’s favourite child.

Nanny comes in to look after Elphaba and is the best parent she has in that she seems to care about her even a little bit, but she also ends up having to favour her sister. Also she is an employee, which narrows things down a little.

Her parents also have a boyfriend who she seems to like a fair bit, but he was human sacrificed when she was very young, so there’s that. Oh, and the goat professor she gets very close to, and then he’s murdered, and she has to break into the crime scene to save his research from being destroyed by her dictator dad. It’s a mess really.

Other important things include; her mother being so determined not to have another child who looked like her she took medicine that caused her younger sister to be born with a disability (and her being constantly blamed for it, in the musical), her parents deciding to raise her in a swamp despite her having a severe water allergy, and therefore presumably causing her constant pain. Her parents dragging her on missions where she apparently saw enough deaths to be able to competently recognise the signs at seventeen.

Oh, also her bio dad had her first boyfriend murdered, which led to her being pregnant in some kind of trauma coma in a convent. So that’s awful too.

Please ignore the propensity for domestic terrorism and the fact her hobby is amateur monkey surgery. We can work on that.

Suletta Mercury (Gundam) Propaganda

She’s my sweet baby tomato girl. She’s adorable and awkward and her mom is so fucked up.

[brahmsheelshireshusband]

🏳️‍🌈 - for the hyperfixation ask game

🏳️‍🌈 Do you have any HCs (lgbt, race, neuro etc. that are important to you?)

YES oh my goodness I do!!!

Im going with slashers (spoiler alert I will never write any slasher as being exclusively CisHet even if the content *seems* to be Heterosexual it is actually Heterosexual*

*Terms and Conditions may apply)

I HC all slashers to be bi or Pan at the very least! I haven’t delved into specifics for them yet bc most of the writing I do is self-indulgent and for Me and Me Specifically, but!!!

I do HC that Bubba Sawyer is pansexual and genderfluid! And they use she/they/he pronouns!! But he doesn’t really like. Think much about their pansexuality? Mostly because she doesn’t think that she’ll ever meet someone who will love her (all of her) so why does it matter? yes that is sad and YES I am definitely writing x readers where that is addressed bc. I love him. He deserves much love. I also HC that Bubba is autistic (yes this is blatant projection) and that she has a lot of physical/vocal stims! Like they will flap their hands and do the fluttery hand thing when excited or nervous and are almost always tapping!! Whether it’s her fingers or her feet, she taps bc she likes the repetitive noise.

personally I also HC that Brahms Heelshire is somewhere on the autism spectrum, again mostly due to me looking at him and going “ahaha, I do that!” But his need for a strict schedule to be followed and for there to be no changes to routine (or any guests, which would be Factors Outside of his Control and therefore Not Good) resonate with me a lot. I think that he thinks he’s straight, considering he’s implied to have only had lady nannies, but he’s… Not! One of these days I’ll actually publish some of my male reader stuff and y’all will see more of what I mean. I imagine he’s cis, but eventually very gender indifferent if that makes sense? I know there’s a better term for it I’m just drawing a blank at the moment. He probably has a few hang ups on how men should act (his parents are very old fashioned) but once they’re gone (and with the Reader’s encouragement), he would realize that the strict masculine/feminine dichotomy is stupid and he’s just going to act and dress how *he* likes.

The Sinclair brothers are the other slashers I really think about a lot!!!

Bo Sinclair is a repressed bisexual. He simply has That Energy. I know Louisiana men, and he is a repressed bisexual who firmly believes that he just “can appreciate the male form” or something like that. probably relates to Dean Winchester from Supernatural since the movie came out around the time the show began. I also think that deep down, he’s got some really bad issues with anxiety. And like. Bad claustrophobia. I have Many Thoughts on the Sinclair’s childhood after their parents passed, which will get revealed eventually, but it. Wasn’t good! Not for Bo, at least. I HC that he has OCD, and really gets stuck in the whole… I don’t know if it has a technical term, but I call it “cyclical thinking”. Basically, he’ll just get stuck on one thought and it’ll go around and around in his head, recycling over and over until he goes and checks on something (usually someone bc he has a lot of deep seated insecurities and regrets when it comes to his brothers) so he can put that thought to bed.

Lester Sinclair might not know what it means to be pansexual (because hey, that movie is set in Louisiana in 2005 and you just didn’t really know about that kinda stuff Back Then) but he is a giant pan man. Gender does not factor into his attraction to someone! He really just sort of assumed for most of this life that that’s how everyone felt! But when he got reunited with his brothers and started talking to Bo about this guy down at the gas station he was nursing a crush on, Bo let him know Real Quick that he needed to keep that shit on the Down Low if he didn’t want to get his ass whipped. not that Bo would hurt him! he’s just. He’s worried for his baby brother is all. Cause again. It’s Louisiana. folks around here are pretty homophobic, sadly. Especially toward men??? different rant for a different time lmao

Vincent… Vincent Sinclair gives me unlabeled vibes. He is an Artist, first and foremost, then a brother second, and that’s all he is. I think he falls in line with Bubba, in that he definitely isn’t straight but doesn’t really think about it since he knows he’ll never get a partner anyway. and while Bo is down for one night stands and quickies with strangers, Vincent Is Not. He just gives me the vibe that he’d need a lot of time to get emotionally connected to someone before he could become attracted to them romantically/sexually. And it probably doesn’t help that like, anyone who is remotely nice to him would confuse him. Is this a trick??? Is this another prank?? What’s happening. Why are you being nice. Vincent is confused. one day I’ll write some x reader stuff that’ll expand on this, or maybe just a Vincent solo thing where I pick apart his brain.

Ik these are hardly all the slashers but they’re the ones I’m currently the most hyperfixated on!!! I might come back to this later as I warm up to the other slashers more and get a better feel for their characters and my interpretations of them.

[thoroughlyskeptic]

Dear nannies/antis,

Logic, let's try logic, since nothing else gets through those thick skulls of yours. What is improbable about the scenarios that the skeptics, as a whole, present? 

For the record, the established parameters here are that:

1) Ben is unhappy.

2) This unhappiness began right around the beginning of the PR push for The Imitation Game.

3) His unhappiness has not abated despite achieving his stated goals of marriage and family.

4) No other event or person in his life correlates to that time period in exclusivity except Sophie. 

Now the skeptics disagree on the instigating factors of those same parameters. The general consensus among the skeptics is that:

1) Ben's marriage is a sham.

2) He is not happy about being a father, therefore based on his stated goals and desires there is something that he doesn't like about the children.

3) Sophie did many things that are generally discouraged during pregnancy therefore she was not pregnant. 

Now the nannies and antis(that's you all) suggest that these things can't possibly happen. That the parameters are false. While it is true that we cannot clearly prove to your satisfaction that Ben is unhappy, you conversely cannot prove to our satisfaction that he is happy. Now, people exist in all spectrums of emotion and can have several at a time so in fact, perhaps we are all right. But assuming that our parameters are true, the instigating factors are the big sticking point. 

Logically, many marriages are marriages of convenience. Whether for legal protection, not wanting a child born out-of-wedlock, dynastic reasons in general, and of course there are Lavendar Marriages. Several people have suggested in the past that Ben married and had children to hide the fact he is gay. Although the younger generation has been very vocal in claiming their personal preferences for pronouns, older generations who tend to watch the big budget Oscar bait movies Ben likes to make(TIG, The Courier, That cat movie) tend to prefer their actors straight. It's happening less but there can still be a backlash from someone coming out. I'm not saying that I believe this theory, but it is not something that is unheard of statistically. As far as dynastic reasons, although Ben is not in direct line for any titles dynastic reasons can include the purpose of furthering the family name. There is also the legal protection. Some people get married for the reason of testifying, or rather not testify.

Ben has stated previously that he wanted to become a father. Now, it could happen that someone who had the desire to have children came face to face with the full weight of taking care of a human life and balked. (He saw a loaded diaper and ran screaming, for example.) This is not unheard of in people who were raised as only children or people who have never been around babies. However, seeing that Ben has a niece around the right age to have baby-sat and has small Godchildren he was very close to, I very much doubt this is the case. Now, you can have an unhappy reaction from a parent who has a special needs child but unless all three were also in need of extra help, having another child eliminates some, although not all, of the regret and sorrow that having a child that you may be unable to help can cause. The other explanation that could account for him not being thrilled about being a father, would be doubtful paternity. This is also a fairly common occurrence, more discoverable now with modern DNA tests but it has happened since the beginning of societies.

One theory is that Sophie has faked her pregnancies. This is not out of the realm of possibility. Two separate explanations can apply and both have precedent. One is common in Hollywood circles or models. They hire a surrogate and "fake a pregnancy" so they don't lose their figure, this is known as social surrogacy. If done by IVF it's still their child, so no lying would be involved. A well-known doctor from Hollywood has stated that he has helped many actress and models "fake" a pregnancy in this way. The other possibility is sadder. Women, saddened by the loss of a child or pregnancy, substitute a "New Born"/" Reborn" Doll for their child and treat it exactly the same. Some do have more than one of these "children". Her apparent weight gain could be hysterical pregnancy common in the type of delusional personality that causes one to imagine a doll is a real child. Once she was pictured pregnant the public(i.e. tabloids) would be eager to get a photo of the baby. To maintain this from a public relations standpoint, some sort of explaination would have to be given. Of course reborns and dolls do not age. If the situation is as believed, he would need to explain why there were no children. In his position, it would be easy to hire child actors to play the parts of the children for a photo shoot and tell his wife they were doing a movie shoot or ad. If there was a surrogacy, there would, of course, be children. He may resent having gone through IVF and surrogacy. Many men believe this process emasculates them, that they aren't "real men" because they can't father a child the "natural" way. 

As to the health of Sophie when pregnant, the pictures indicate that she was drinking, riding dangerous boats, and traveling to far off locales. All of this is discouraged during the stage of pregnancy she was at. It was not prohibited but as a geriatric pregnancy, she would have been urged to be overly cautious as older mothers are 14 percent more likely to have a spontaneous preterm delivery and 31 percent more likely to have early deliveries because of labor induction, cesarean births or other interventions.  The National Women's Health Network now prefers the term Advanced Maternal Age. (And yes your mother was Methuselah, and gave birth to you at a 104, nannies. Outliers do not determine the statistical norms.) 

Now are all the things that skeptics have said illogical? Not all of them. Do we have sound logical reasons for the basis of our skepticism? Yes. We didn't just randomly decide one day that Sophie looked like the kind of person who would fake pregnancy. It's not like she hasn't faked a pregnancy for attention before. People that fake things for attention tend to feel they have not gotten enough attention and try bigger and bigger stunts to get attention. They escalate. That's not from any book. That's from personal experience. The only way to deal with them in general is to ignore them. If that is not strictly followed, they will escalate until someone gets hurt. 

This of course is where nannies/antis see threats, when skeptics aren't making them. Saying that destructive behavior leads to destruction is not a threat, its logical.

Now logically I know that I'm either preaching to the choir or to those who aren't really going to change their mind. That's not the reason for this exercise. The point, my dears, is to lay out a logical reason for what the skeptics believe, even if it doesn't change anyone else's mind in anyway.

[blushing-starker]

Cold mates and black coffees

For @starkerfestivals prompt of mates

There is, he supposes, something beautiful about a world such as this, primitive yet advanced and sophisticated. Children no taller than his knee carry around super computers that fit in the palm of one's hands, talk to friends thousands of miles away whenever they want. It used to take him months to receive his preferred concoction for the early night wake up call, now stores inhabit every corner of every city. They patiently wait to receive their dependents, all sorts of people relying on some version of the simple black coffee to jolt their system. Convenient, sure, no doubt about that. A quick stop at a Starbucks and violá, five hours of productivity guaranteed. But nothing builds character like swimming laps through a freezing lake infested with piranhas to keep away the urge to rest for just another five minutes. Unfortunately, sleepless days were the norm for him and Rhodey whenever they endeavored to race each other underwater.

There are clothes, too. Clothes for each season available year round. Fox fur adorns a lanky mannequin next to a twin showcasing how breezy summer fabrics can be. Riding boots that he would have spent a small fortune on decades ago shine below man made light for the cost of a nice meal over at Pepper's. Jewels fine enough for the family vault enchant any who take so much as two steps in either direction. Everything is for sale; it just means swiping a plastic card, presenting a number off a super computer or giving the cashier the remains of ancient trees. He could buy an ice cream cone (with sprinkles, of course, he's not an idiot) and immediately wander over to a restaurant selling sizzling curry. It's what his father dreamed about, a thousand years ago. How odd then, that his only heir couldn't be more nonchalant to all this.

It's his what, first month back from sleeping for half a century? He got accustomed to this whirlwind of a consumerist world by the first week. The soft purr of self-driving engines, flashing neon street signs, a melting pot of twenty, thirty languages, glittering clothes clashing with garish makeup, an overwhelming scent of smoke, perfume and money is as familiar as the palm of Rhodey's left hand or Pepper's right. Is it fantastic, being alive for the wild ride that is the twenty-first century? Yes, of course it is. But it's his father's dream; not his. His dream is the same as what drove Maria Stark into the world: finding his mate. Which, logically speaking, won’t happen until time has colored his hair with quite a bit more starlight and streaked thin lines around not too shabby cheekbones. (Rhodey’s teasing words.)

Going along with logic, there is a chance his mate will never show up. It was mere luck his father met the only woman besides Peggy that could stand his whole. Well, that could just stand him, period. A mate is found by scent, identified by touch and only bound with words. If his father had gone for one more drink, he’d probably be as real as the tooth fairy. In the back of his head, there lives a voice. And this voice he named Miss Lucky. She told him how lucky he would need to be in order to find a mate not too close to cradle or grave, a person that saw eye to eye in the majority of the basics and was open to his predilection. Someone that wouldn’t fear or expose him, wouldn’t want to strike the killing blow themselves. And Christ, with or without Miss Lucky, it’s a fool’s idea, thinking that in the middle of New York amidst one of the coldest winters to ever grace the city, his mate, his soul’s match, his other heart will chance upon him and actually accept the fact that he barely exudes a scent. Let alone something useful enough to help others recognize his class.

That’s the one downfall to living in this time; so much tension regarding one’s class. It is infinitely better than before when there were only three possibilities and the social restrictions could very rarely be shattered. But now it’s about pulling rank, percentages listed on a piece of paper could be used against you or signify one’s survival. A double-edged sword. To be a nurse, any applicants must be less than thirty percent alpha. Soldiers were forbidden from entering foreign countries if they had more beta characteristics than not. Lovers, in some parts of the world, could marry exclusively when their percentages were compatible. In the old times, if you smelled like an omega, you were treated as such. That could entail being thrown into a whorehouse or perceived as royalty destined to bring life into the world. Once puberty came, a simple prick and a vial of blood determined one’s next decision regarding the future.

He took the test. Just out of curiosity and it’d be rude not to provide a mate with information so readily accessible merely because of an unjustified fear over his identity. He is an alpha. And if the test had said otherwise, it would have been no problem. Of course not, he would have been proud to identify as a beta or omega. His mother was a beta and his nanny, basically his second mother, was an omega. No shame would’ve clouded his mind at receiving such news. The matter was this, though, he had believed to be an alpha the entirety of his life. If the paperwork said that was his lowest percentage, different rules and procedures, updated to today’s society, would need to be learned.

And he’s so tired of it all when only a handful can smell the fact he’s an alpha. What was he supposed to do, carry the results in his pocket in case a bigot searched for a fight? No, that would be, as Pepper had made very clear before, extremely silly.

He carries the test in case his mate considers such matters important. Or their family. Yes, it’s not because he worries that society will somehow doubt his identity. In the end, being an alpha is an integral part of who he is. It shouldn’t be that way and he barely knows what that means, but it’s true. Miss Lucky comes back around swiftly now, what if his mate isn’t interested in him because of his percentage? What then? Learn what the other classes represent to that person and behave in ways they believe suit said classes? Could his match be with a pureblood, intent on “staying true” to their highest percentage? Would he be able to, cinnamon. Wait, cinnamon and honey? Is that rain and sunlight? Since when does Starbucks incorporate those smells? And how the hell does he know what sunlight smells like? He’s insane. There’s no other explanation, oh that must have hurt.

A young man has just barreled into him. Slammed into his arm like a linebacker. A linebacker that weighs a feather and a half. How is he this light, a breeze had more force. What should he, what’s the proper ritual here, oh my god

“Your nose is bleeding- “

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking. I’m just late for class and- “

“Calm down and let me buy you some coffee; you’re half dead- “

“Shit, your coat. I will pay you back, I swear.”

He hums, looks down and apparently he was too involved in his quest to find a mate that he completely bypassed the thought that this man had accidently crashed into him while holding a coffee…

A mate. He doesn’t know what sunlight smells like. How could he? Unless that’s what his mate smelled like. The young man inhales sharply, lets out a little “oh, I think, I know it’s you.” and, on further reflection, he notices this kid has the voice of an angel. Soft and kind while not being so lilting he’d think it weak and demure. Ah, he looks like an ethereal entity too. Of course he does.

It’s the eyes that do it for him, enchant him enough he wants to kneel and propose right there in the hopes of waking up each night to those amber pools as familiar and mysterious as the universe itself. The rosy lips, pink cheeks and sweeping lashes are also quite nice. He has the body of a being from the old tales, a nymph or a muse destined to bring light and joy to the world. And black coffee to coats older than his father and grandfather combined.

“Could I touch you properly? I think spilling sugar over that coat didn’t really give me the chance to feel my mate, Mister?” Rhodey’s gonna annihilate him. This is a child, twenty-one at most. They could exchange numbers; communicate when his best friend wouldn’t be tempted to take one look and accuse him of going for jailbait. He could make a plan, organize a way to gently explain how he’s an undead creature of the night whose low circulation means that somehow his hormone production slowed and therefore he barely smells like wood let alone an actual human being. They could make it work. If he’s lucky, Angel here won’t fall for another. If he’s lucky, lots of things won’t happen. Or they will anyway.

“Stark. Tony Stark. It’s a pleasure to meet you, all things considered. When I learned one’s mate smells like something unknown, I didn’t quite expect literal sunshine to be what I noticed. And don’t worry about the coat; it’s nothing.”

Marie Antoinette gave him this coat as a gift on his sixteenth birthday a few years before her death. It’s fine.

“Oh. I, I wouldn’t have thought I smelled like that. It’s really nice, actually. You smell, and please don’t take this the wrong way, like alpha. And home. I know it’s weird, but I can’t explain it any other way. I’m sorry if it’s too- “

At least he already knows he dislikes that worried furrow on such a happy face. He surges forward, clasps a soft hand and lets slip a shocked gasp, sees the mirrored reaction because Jesus, it’s as if he licked his finger and then stuck it inside a power outlet. Every hair on his body stands on end and when was the last time his heart beat that fast? Surely it was the night his old flame left or when they, no. No memories of a past lover when his mate is right here, clutching his hand like a lifeline.

“I don’t believe I know your name. Seems a little unfair, don’t you think? Wanna even the odds?” It’s meant to make the young man smile and he does.

It’s only when he grins that Tony notices the sharpened incisors and the slight cold coming from the small figure. The same fog that follows him around even on the hottest of days. The exact shape of teeth Tony cleans in front of his bathroom mirror each night.

“Peter. My name’s Peter. Nice to meet you, Tony.”

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - 1 Corinthians 3:3

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: Well, this is where Warlock accidentally brings up something none of the two idiots who raised him ever thought about. Plus, Beelzebub gets a mug.

Art by @lunaescribe​

***

“Well. I have to admit, this will speed things up quite considerably.”

Leaning on the door he’d just opened, Crowley grinned. Said door would normally lead into a backroom in Aziraphale’s bookstore, but with some imagination from his part it now opened right on the spacious loft of the very nice cottage they had only just purchased in the South Downs, with a generous and perfectly valid check.

“I can’t believe you considered putting everything in boxes and calling a moving company. How do you keep forgetting what we can do?”

Much of it, Aziraphale suspected, came from the fact Heaven seemed much better than Hell at keeping track of miracles performed and part of him still expected to receive a strongly worded letter against frivolous miracles from Gabriel if he pushed it too far. Well, maybe not from Gabriel, but from… whoever replaced him.

And besides… “Well, I’m hardly the only one who occasionally forgets,” he said.

Crowley frowned. “What do you mean by that? I never just forget I can miracle my way--”

“Why did you not use this trick to get to Tadfield last summer?”

A few rather amusing things happened on Crowley’s face, and Aziraphale watched it all unfold with keen interest. His eyebrows shot up, his mouth opened, then closed, opened again. His forehead scrunched, and finally he opened his mouth again. He stammered a little before catching himself.

“Well-- I-- ngh-- I had to make a proper entrance, no?”

“Oh?”

“Come on, the flaming Bentley - it was cool, is what I’m saying.”

Aziraphale was, in general, rather charitable. It came with being an angel, he had thought for a long time, but now he suspected it was more of a personal trait of his (a concept that was novel and somewhat exciting to him). Now, however, a slightly less charitable side of him almost quipped something on how Crowley hadn’t precisely looked like he’d planned for the flaming part when he’d fallen on his knees before the remains of the Bentley.  

Almost, but no.

“It… was a rather memorable entrance,” he finally conceded, and Crowley grinned. 

“Oh, I know. It may have been my very last dramatic entrance, I figured  had to make it coun--”

“Hello? Is anyone in?”

The voice that suddenly reached them from the entrance of the shop, followed by the sound of the heavy door closing, caused Crowley to shut his mouth and stare at him. Aziraphale stared back, two thoughts suddenly writhing around his mind like ferrets locked in a struggle. The first was that ah, he must have forgotten to shut the door. The second was that he knew that voice.

It wasn’t one he’d expected to hear again anytime soon.

“Hey! Is someone in?” Warlock Dowling called out again, now just on the other side of a large bookcase. Crowley recoiled, seemed to realize he was still holding open a door leading to something that was very conspicuously a loft in an entirely different building, and slammed it shut before shoving his sunglasses back on his face.

And just on time, too. When Aziraphale turned, Warlock was only a few feet away. 

“Hey, Brother Francis! Is that yo-- huh. The hell happened to your teeth?”

Ah, yes. Yes, the teeth. He had changed his teeth back then. “Ah, er… those… I--” Aziraphale stammered, fervently praying he would not recognize him as the magician at his birthday party, or Crowley as one of the waiters. Thank God, there seemed to be no such realization.

“Braces,” Crowley spoke quickly. “He got braces. Work miracles, don’t they, angel?”

Relieved as he was for being provided an excuse, Aziraphale knew right away Crowley had made a mistake. Warlock had heard his nanny calling the gardener angel a few times growing up - they hadn’t been terribly careful - they had managed to convince him Nanny Ashtoreth had meant to mock kindly Brother Francis when he’d asked questions, but if he remembered--

Warlock Dowling’s eyes grew wide as saucers. Oh no, Aziraphale thought. He did.

“Nanny Ashtoreth?” Warlock exclaimed, clearly stunned, and Crowley stammered a little for the second time in only a few minutes. “What is she-- what are you…?”

“Uh, that-- isn’t really--” the thought of trying to lie his way out of that crossed Crowley’s mind, sure enough, plain as day, but in the end he seemed to realize it would only make the boy all the more suspicious. “I mean, these days I don’t go by that name, but I guess-- er--”

“What-- oh!” the boy shook his head. “Ah, shit, I didn’t-- fuck.”

“Young man! Your language!” Aziraphale protested, unable to keep himself from cringing a little. Crowley didn’t mind the language at all, of course; he’d taught him most of those words. He seemed busy panicking over... everything else.

“We can explain everything--”

“I didn’t mean to, uh. Use that name,” Warlock said quickly. “So, what is it now? Sir?” he went on, uncharacteristically flustered, and it dawned on Aziraphale what one would logically assume upon seeing their old, very much human nanny presenting as a very much human male. His reaction was enough for the distress over his language to fade away into a fond sort of pride. 

Maybe some of Brother Francis’ lessons had stuck, after all. With all that had been going on in the days before the Armageddon’t, after realizing they had the wrong boy from the start, thoughts of Warlock had rather slipped in the back of his mind. He now found he was very, very glad that neither him nor Crowley had been able to find it in themselves to kill the child in order to prevent the Apocalypse.

Crowley, who was putting two and two together, seemed somewhat proud himself. Whether for the quick recovery or for the foul language he’d certainly had a hand in teaching him, Aziraphale was not sure. “Anthony J Crowley,” he said. “Crowley will do.”

Warlock seemed to consider it for a moment. “It’s kind of a crap name,” he finally said.

Well, maybe not all of Brother Francis’ lessons had stuck, but then again he had been raised with a literal demon talking in his left ear.

Crowley frowned, crossing his arms. “Your name is Warlock, kid.”

“Well, I didn’t choose it,” the boy pointed out, and Crowley seemed rather cross to realize he didn’t have a good retort to that. 

“What are you doing here, Warlock?” Aziraphale asked. “Not that we don’t appreciate seeing you again, dear boy, but did you not move to the Middle East?”

“It sucked. Too hot. Too much sand. Didn’t know anyone and dad is a prick.” Warlock shrugged. “I got to come back here in a boarding school. Just had to be enough of a pain in the ass to get them to want to send me away,” he added, and grinned up at Crowley, entirely ignoring the way Aziraphale cleared his throat to show his displeasure at his language. 

Crowley grinned back, like… well. Like a proud nanny. 

“So I figured I’d drop by,” Warlock went on, glancing around. “Thought you were taking the piss when I saw the address was that of a bookstore, though. But you’re really here. The hell?”

“Well, I-- we are in the process of moving,” Aziraphale muttered, only to be taken aback when Warlock’s face suddenly split in a wide grin. 

“Ha-ah! I knew it?”

Aziraphale blinked, and turned to Crowley. He couldn’t see him blink through the glasses, but the message behind his raised brows - “No, I got nothing either” - was easy to infer.

“If I may ask you to elaborate…?”

“You fucked!” Warlock exclaimed, getting a choking noise out of Crowley and making Aziraphale wish he had not, after all, asked for him to elaborate. 

“What!”

“Warlock!”

“Language!”

“What the fuck--”

“Crowley!”

“You totally fucked! I mean, sh-- he called you angel all the time, you were really obvious, and now you’re moving together--”

“My dear boy, we-- we most certainly did-- not,” Aziraphale stammered. If the heat he felt in his face was anything to go by, he was now about the color of a ripe tomato. As a matter of fact, that had never… really come up. He saw no reason why it ought to come up, neither of them was human and therefore-- therefore-- well. That was not the moment for needless speculation. “Where did you even learn…?” he began, glancing towards Crowley, who lifted his hands.

“Wasn’t me,” he said quickly. Aziraphale sighed, and decided to let the matter drop. 

“You are a child, I’d really rather you don’t bring up such matters,” he finally managed. 

Warlock huffed. “I’m twelve,” he said, as though informing them he had a failed marriage under his belt and a mortgage on his shoulders. Crowley huffed right back. 

“Not yet, you’re not. We remember when you were born.”

“Hmph.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat, trying to collect himself. “Well-- er. Why don’t you come upstairs? I have cake, and I suppose you have been up to a lot these past months.”

“Up no no good, I should hope,” Crowley muttered, gaining himself a shrug. 

“Did my best. Uh, worst.”

“So, cake!” Aziraphale spoke quickly before Crowley could be any more of a bad influence, and hurriedly ushered Warlock upstairs, turning just a moment to raise an eyebrow at Crowley. 

Crowley just grinned, and followed.

***

“I ought to have incinerated that mortal on the spot.”

“I’d say it’s for the best that you didn’t.”

“He dared raise his voice at me.”

“You were about to walk out with a mug from the gift shop.”

“And…?”

“Without paying.”

“First of all it’s their own fault for calling it a gift shop. You aren’t meant to pay for gifts, are you?”

“Well-- no, I suppose not.”

“It’s dishonest advertising, that’s what it is. I would know, we invented it. And furthermore, the arrogance to demand payment from the Lord of the Flies--”

“He really didn’t know any better. I think his ignorance can be forgiven.”

A snort. “A Prince of Hell is not meant to be forgiving,” Beelzebub muttered, but decided to let the matter drop for the time being. After all, they did have the mug after a paper bill had passed from Gabriel’s hand to that of a mortal who had absolutely no idea how close he had come to a violent death that day. 

“Right. Either way, now you have the mug.”

Yes, they did have the mug. Not that they needed one, to be entirely honest, but they’d decided to take it after seeing the Titanic painted on the side. A good mug, celebrating what had been a very good day in Hell. It might just replace the skull they were currently using, which honestly was there mostly for intimidation and was a very impractical thing to drink from. 

And they supposed that it had been rather nice of Gabriel to pay for it, though they were not entirely sure whether it had been for them or just to avoid a mysterious case of spontaneous combustion of a gift shop employee. It was a gift, all right. Odd. 

They were not used to the concept of receiving gifts. Sacrifices, a long time ago, sure. Boons. Pledges, but all of it for something in return, or as a token of respect borne of fear. Not this time, it seemed, because that fool neither asked for anything nor he feared them. 

... Perhaps they were overthinking it. It was a mug, Titanic print or not. Not much of a gift either, only… definitely a first. Since the Fall, at least, and they were not sure how to react - until they remembered they had a plan, sort of, and were supposed to stick to it. “Thank you.” Beelzebub, Prince of Hell and Lord of the Flies, spoke without looking up. Giving thanks was unfamiliar and not precisely pleasant, but it came easier than the apology he’d had to utter the previous night. 

“Huh?” Gabriel blinked, glancing down at them, then at the mug - and, thank Satan, he seemed to catch one without need for Beelzebub to specify. “Ah, that. You’re welcome,” he said, and looked away, clearing his throat - which turned quickly into a yawn. 

Beelzebub frowned. “Am I boring you now, or…?”

“Apologies, I have been up since four in the morning. I had a very early shift.”

“Ah, I see. You do need sleep at night,” Beelzebub conceded, the hint of annoyance fading. Gabriel smiled a little, and the Lord of the Flies suddenly wasn't sure what to make of the pang somewhere in their chest. That was unfamiliar, too, and somewhat unsettling.

“You’re curiously prone to forget that, considering how often you appear at my place at night,” he said, but he didn’t sound precisely annoyed. “Well, I would appreciate being able to sleep tonight, but I will be free tomorrow. If you wish to meet--”

“Works for me,” Beelzebub replied quickly, and disappeared suddenly in a cloud of sulphur, back to Hell, the cheap gift shop mug held firmly in their hands.

***

If Dagon noticed the mug sitting where the skull cup had been for millennia, she made no mention of it. Nor did anybody else, for the matter, while Beelzebub sat on their throne, scowling at the file in their hands. 

But then again, hardly anyone was foolish enough to talk unnecessarily around an obviously scowling Prince of Hell. They steered clear, which was precisely what Beelzebub wanted. Truth be told, being alone with their thoughts was the main reason behind their scowl. 

Not that they didn’t have reasons to be scowling: reading through Gabriel’s file showed them they had failed to really get any sins out of him. Maybe they should think of ways to speed it up - this was getting nowhere - but on the other hand… they were supposed to play the long game. Make him grow to trust them more, and surely it was working. 

Maybe they could give the current plan a little more time to start bearing fruit, after all, before they considered more direct action. It would mean having to bear more encounters with that moron but, all things considered, it was a sacrifice they were willing to make.

***

“It was nice to catch up, wasn’t it?” Aziraphale finally said once out of the train station again. 

“Yeah, guess it was.”

“Maybe we should have driven him back to his school, he did like the Bentley…”

“He’ll be fine. Someone gave him a blessing to ensure an absolutely safe trip back with no one noticing his absence, no?”

“Of course I did, after giving him a good stern talk about how foolish it was to come all the way to London without telling anyone!”

“Please, you think that was stern? Kid wasn’t even listening to you. Brother Francis cannot do stern to save his life,” Crowley muttered, elbowing him a little. It gained him a huff. 

“Well then, why didn’t you say something?”

“Because as far as I’m concerned, he did a great job and I'm not one to stifle talent,” he replied, entirely honest. He was pretty impressed by the deception Warlock was able to pull at only eleven. He was going places. Would probably be a better politician than Thaddeus Dowling, who had several facial tics revealing his each and every lie the moment it was uttered. Amazing he’d even made it as far up the ladder as he had, really. 

Unaware of his thoughts, Aziraphale gave a sigh that faded in a sort of resigned smile as they climbed in the Bentley. “You fiend.”

“Thanks,” Crowley said, and… didn’t start the car. 

“... Everything all right, dear?”

“I, uh-- yes. All good,” he replied, and did start the engine. Right, right, so they were not going to talk about the nonsense Warlock had spoken, which was all well and good, of course. It had never even crossed their minds, the mere thought of doing anything carnal. It was simply not in their nature. There were some demons who kind of made it their thing when it came to corrupting mortals, but Crowley was not one of them, and Aziraphale-- well. He was an angel, so certainly not… or so he assumed. 

Not that he knew many angels well, on a personal level. But still-- not the angel sitting in the passenger seat, surely. What Warlock had said was nonsense. No reason to speak of it. No reason for it to keep lingering in his head.

“Is… anything on your mind, or…?

“No, no. Nothing at all,” Crowley said quickly, pulling out of the parking spot, and Aziraphale did not insist. Part of him was relieved and part of him disappointed, which was weird, but Crowley did a pretty good job at ignoring both.

***

“What are you doing?”

“Running.”

“I can see that, don’t get smart. Where to?”

“Around the park and then back.”

“... For what purpose?”

“It’s called jogging. A human thing.”

Moving alongside him on an electric scooter - where had they found that? - Beelzebub made a face. “Human habits are getting to you,” they said, and patted the handlebar of the electric scooter. “You should try one of these. They piss off absolutely everyone, whether you’re on the sidewalk or on the road. It’s amazing. Also, they are causing an increase in accidents.”

“None of it sounds good.”

“Exactly my point.”

The statement made Gabriel chuckle. “I believe I’ll leave it to you. I’d rather jog.”

“Why are you doing it in the first place? It looks stupid.”

“To keep fit, I suppose.” Truth be told, Gabriel was jogging mostly because he rather enjoyed it, even now that he had an actual physical form and thus his breath would get short if he pushed himself too far. And well, as he now had a human form, he supposed he may as well try and keep it in decent working order. Which would also mean drastically changing his diet into something with more greens in it, if what he’d read was to be trusted, but he was in no particular rush to experiment when he could simply stick to food he knew his new form appreciated. 

“Fit for what?”

“Well, for… for…” Gabriel couldn’t think of a single thing in his current existence that required physical prowess, and therefore he was unable to really come up with an answer. “You know, in case-- the War does happen.” It was the first thing to come to his mind, even though now he had no idea if the War was actually ever meant to happen in the first place and, if it was… then Gabriel certainly wouldn’t be part of either army.

Beelzebub was aware of all that, as the brief silence that followed told him plainly. However no mockery followed, no stinging comment about his current state as a mere mortal. Just a hum, barely audible beneath the steady buzzing of the electric scooter and Gabriel’s own steps.

“Still trying to figure that one out,” Beelzebub muttered. “If the war to end all wars is meant to happen later, or-- not at all. Was it ever part of the Great Plan? What the Heaven was that about if not? Are we supposed to do something else to make it happen?”

“You were supposed to see the Antichrist delivered to Earth.”

“Which we did, as you know. But I cannot imagine how that went so wrong. He was the son of Satan, he was meant to do as his nature commanded. And then he just--”

“Rebelled?” Gabriel asked, unable to keep himself from smiling faintly at the irony, and glanced sideways. Leaning on the handlebar of the scooter, Beelzebub was frowning. 

“Yes. He rebelled. I know. Hilarious.”

“I believe humans have a saying on apples not falling far from trees.”

A scoff. “You’re talking nonsense.”

“I take it his father did not appreciate the irony of it.”

“He’s no longer his Father, the brat rewrote reality,” the Lord of the Flies muttered. “He certainly did not appreciate it, but he hasn’t made his displeasure known to the rest of Hell so far.”

“Oh?”

“He keeps to himself, of course. We have our instructions - mostly - and he has ways to make his will known. We don’t need to talk to him unless he decides to personally see someone which is usually not good news.”

Gabriel thought back on the conversations over the millennia with the Voice of God, trying to remember last time God had talked to any of them personally. It had been so long, he couldn’t even quite recall. The chuckle that left him was somewhat bitter. “That sounds rather familiar.”

“What!” Beelzebub let out an outraged buzzing noise, head whipping toward him as though he had insulted them personally. “Don’t you dare compare Satan to God! The insult will not stand.”

Not too long ago, Gabriel might have considered it blasphemy and would have been aghast of hearing it himself, if for precisely the opposite reason. Now, he shrugged as he kept running. “I am not precisely-- well, the ruler keeping away, not really talking to anyone, giving instructions that are not always exactly clear or giving none. I don’t understand, why rebel to the absolute authority of God to pass absolute the absolute authority of Sat--”

“You know nothing, Archangel!” The Prince of Hell snapped, clearly forgetting in the heat of the moment that he’d long since been kicked out of the celestial host. “His plan is no mystery, and we are given precise instructions to follow it, unlike--”

“But it was God’s Great Plan you were fulfilling. The Antichrist was meant to be part of God’s design, so you were still following--”

“This insult will not stand! You take it back right no--”

Two things happened in quick succession: first, Beelzebub forgot they were standing on an electric scooter and turned to grab his sweater. Second, related to the first thing, the scooter lost thrust and caused Beelzebub to nearly fly, ironically, off it. “Agh!”

“Hey! Careful!” Gabriel acted out on instinct, reaching out, and was somehow able to snatch up Beelzebub before they had a rather unpleasant meeting with the pavement. “Are you all right?”

It was a stupid question to ask the Prince of Hell, all things considered. The same Prince of Hell he was currently holding up bridal style in his arms while standing in the middle of the park. If anything was bruised, it would be their pride - in which case Gabriel expected there would be, quite literally, hell to pay. However, as he glanced down, Gabriel saw no fury and a frankly astounding amount of incredulity on Beelzebub’s face. 

You didn’t, that gaze said. Their hand had grasped the front of his sweater out of instinct, they were… not letting go. 

“I, uh… apologies, I--”

“Hey, get a room!”

“Gah!” Gabriel jumped back, Lord of the Flies in his arms and all, as a youth rode past on a bike, laughing. Of course, laughter was rather quick to turn into screams when the bike’s wheels erupted in flames and the vehicle veered off course, hurtling towards the pond. Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Will he survive this, or…?”

“I assume he can swim, so probably. If not, it’s his issue. If a swan gets him, that is also his issue.” Beelzebub said flatly. Gabriel glanced down at them, and found himself chuckling. It was odd, how easily he’d picked them up - how well they fit in his arms. 

“Looks like I did manage to keep fit,” he tried to joke. Beelzebub looked up at him again, their expression going from satisfaction to an odd sort of surprise before quickly turning cold.

“You. Unhand me. Now.”

“Ah-- yes. Of course.” Gabriel immediately put down the Lord of the Flies, smile dying on his lips, and stepped back. He cleared his throat, ignoring the realization that he hadn’t really wanted to put them down. “You know, trying to help. I didn’t mean to grab you, but you fell and--”

“I have no need for help,” Beelzebub snapped, and in a sudden burst of flames they were gone - but not before Gabriel was able to put a name to the expression on their face. It was not anger, or annoyance, or incredulity: for a moment before they left Beelzebub, Prince of Hell and Lord of the Flies, had looked flustered.

***

"For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?" -- 1 Corinthians 3:3

***

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[Fanfic] Museum Mishap | the BatFam

Heya! As we approach the End of 2020 (FINALLY), I’m realizing that this story is ridiculously close to reaching the milestone of 25k hits on Ao3. To celebrate, I’ll be posting the whole thing here on Tumblr!

(I would however, deeply appreciate it if y’all would pop over to view it on Ao3, briefly, so I can get the view counted as a hit and actually make it over the line for 25k in views before the close of 2020!)

Museum Mishap  |  Chapter 1/6

Fandom: the DC Universe, Batman & co. Pairings: Jay x Tim Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None

Total Word Count: 38,590

Summary:

Middle-School Tim Drake is on a field trip to the Science Museum, but with a WE exhibition of top-secret new technologies being staged in the basement, Tim separates from his classmates and breaks into the staff-only areas by using the skills he's developed over years of stalking Batman and Robin.

Current-Robin Jason Todd catches him in the act, but he's not there to confront Tim for trespassing or truancy - he's there because there's a rumor on the street that Tim Drake knows Batman's real name. And the rumor's gaining ground, quick, drawing in the wrong kind of attention.

When a Drug-Lord decides to take the rumor seriously enough to kidnap the little genius, Jason jumps into the crossfire. It all goes downhill from there. Fast.

(Jason is 14, Tim is 12)

Chapter 1 : Special Access

           A trip to Gotham’s History of Science and Technology Museum would’ve been exciting for even your average twelve year old – it was a day of school that didn’t feel like school, and it meant a chance to hang out, relatively unsupervised, with your friends all day instead of just the one or two classes you managed to luck into having together.

           Timothy Jackson Drake was not your average twelve year old, and a trip to the SciTech Muse was the kind of thing that made his enrollment in middle school entirely worth it. For starters, it was an entire day spent in the heart of the city surrounded by some of the coolest artifacts of science humans could craft.

           And to make things even better, the trip was an all-day, delayed opening affair, starting at 10am and ending at 6pm – which meant he’d actually been able to get enough sleep last night to be well-rested, a rarity in its own right with his particular extra-curriculars. Better yet, he’d been able to tell the Drake housekeeper / nanny that he’d be having dinner with his class so she could go home right at 6 without having to wait for him to get back so she could cook for him.

           That part wasn’t true, of course, but he had concrete evidence that had been legitimately published by the school to help back up his story. Mrs. Simz had her own kid, and was therefore harder to convince than some of the others Tim’s parents had hired, but that also meant she had more reason to hurry home when presented with a believable reason excusing it.

           Being a sixth-grader meant Tim couldn’t just stay in the heart of the city when the field trip was over, he was on a rollcall and the bus back to Gotham Academy wouldn’t leave without his name getting checked off. The high schoolers were allowed to take public transit home if they had a signed permission slip from their parents, but Tim had to wait a few more years before he could con his way into having such freedoms.

           Still, getting over to the West Side from where his school was in Coventry would be far easier than getting there from the Drake Estate way out in Bristol. The extra hour and a half he’d save himself in commuting time mean he would be able to grab some coffee and something to eat without having to rush to get in place for the nighttime adventure he’d planned.

           Beyond all that, the fact that the field trip was this week, meant there was a special exhibition from the cutting-edge tech division of Wayne Enterprises in the midst of being set up. All the main components were being staged in the museum's basement and the ones too big to steal were as close to unprotected as they would ever be – and Tim intended to take full advantage of that.

           He’d been summarily and repeatedly denied acceptance to the WayneTech summer camps as his parents owned one of the company's main competitors: Drake Industries. Apparently corporate espionage was a big enough problem that even ten year olds were suspect. Tim found it ridiculous that the one time he would’ve been entirely okay with having his abilities underestimated was the one time he wasn’t assumed to be just another dumb kid. Honestly, Tim was pretty sure that no one had actually read his application – the computer had probably scanned his ID and kicked his profile out of the running before it had even made it to a human that might care about his actual qualifications.

           Tim hadn’t figured out how to make a bulletproof fake identity profile – not yet, at least – And he certainly wasn’t going to get caught trying to gain illegal access to WE on a sub-par fake ID. Because there were all kinds of ways that would go poorly for him – between his parents possibly being disappointed in him enough to hire a live-in Nanny to the legal ramifications he’d face, even as a minor, it just wasn’t worth it.

           But the thought of getting an up-close look at the new tech WE was rolling out still made Tim's heart pound like he’d just downed a full pot of coffee. WE took a very different approach to developing their tech than DI – more of a ‘you know what would be cool? can we make that reasonable?’ philosophy than a ‘how do we solve this problem?’ sort of thing. Tim found the both the WE approach and their results utterly fascinating.

           Not that Tim had been allowed to play with much of DI's tech, being that his parents would hear about him attempting to gain unsupervised lab access, and promptly ground him, and anyone who might supervise treated him like a kid far too young to understand or unobtrusively observe the work going on inside the places he wanted to see.

           So, the fact that a spectacular spread of WE tech was set up in the basement of a rather glaringly unsecured staff only area in the very building Tim’s class was touring stood as an open invitation for Tim to investigate.

           An invitation that Tim took very seriously. He’d spent at least 18 hours over the past week examining the museum’s blueprints – courtesy of the Gotham City Hall Public Archives – And the rundown of the security, both in terms of the human guards and staff on-hand and the electronic countermeasures – via close examination of the extensive repertoire of ‘insider access’ videos on the museum’s own webpage. Tim would probably end up sending the museum an anonymous suggestion about adjusting that at some point, but he’d worry about that later.

           After he used it to his tech fantasy fulfillment advantage.

           For now, he simply slipped away from the unwatchful eyes of his teachers, stuck headphones in his ears, and carefully made his way – casually, calmly, and like he had no destination in mind – over to the hallway by the cafeteria near the east wing gift shop. The hallway that had restrooms and a staff-only door halfway down it. A door secured with a heavy-duty machine-lock, with a ten-digit keypad, but a door that was not alarmed.

           The human guards were always more focused on preventing shoplifters from stealing over-priced – for a good cause, but still over-priced – museum memorabilia than on the high-traffic restroom hall by the cafeteria. Using his headphones as an excuse to tap his fingers to keep count – while his eyes and most of his brainpower focused on evaluating targets – Tim tracked the museum employees on their lunch breaks and calculated the best option to use as his ticket backstage. He had some in mind, but he had contingencies for last-minute adjustment.

           Tim settled on a big guy whose name he’d read on staff profiles but had forgotten with the other useless information provided about his role in the marketing department. What Tim hadn’t forgotten about him was that his department’s office was right by the staff door he was eyeing – 4.5 meters down and to the left, to be exact – which meant that, even with his slow stride, he would be behind another door in the hallway approximately 17 seconds after the door Tim needed closed behind him.

           When Mr. Marketing got up and lumbered over to the trash, Tim sidled over towards an informational sign with a museum map. As Mr. Marketing passed him, Tim counted off 4 seconds before he turned around to follow. He slid his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the u-shaped metallic magnet he'd had to smuggle in by jamming it into his mouth and using sleight of hand to pretend it was his retainer – Less than sanitary, but effective, and he’d taken an extra vitamin this morning as a precaution.

           Mr. Marketing punched in his code and pulled the door open to well over 90° before he lumbered through the gap. Tim kept his pace consistent; patient, he could be patient – even though it made his heart rate kick up uncomfortably as he put his faith in his calculations instead of in his feet. He reached the door with almost 6 inches of clearance left for him to slide his hand in and clip his magnet into place over the latch.

           The door closed as he withdrew his hand and kept walking, but it did not click.

           The machine lock whirred with an attempt to close, but its components struck the flat surface of his magnet and failed to properly secure the door. Had the door been alarmed, that would have drawn a lot of unwanted attention, but as it was Tim made it to the restroom with almost nothing noticeably amiss.

           The restroom was crowded enough that his entrance didn’t draw attention and he shut himself in one of the stalls to count off exactly 10 seconds. Then he washed his hands, acquired a paper towel that he did not immediately dispose of, and went to retrieve his magnet. The paper towel allowed him to grasp the handle without leaving fingerprints and he retrieved his magnet without incident – opening the door onto an empty hallway and promptly swerving right to access the unsecured stairwell he knew would be there.

           Tim had no way to hide himself from the singular security camera watching the hallway, but the area was so highly trafficked that he doubted any security guard had been monitoring closely enough to spot his detour. He would get in a ton of trouble if he was caught here – phone calls to his parents would be unavoidable and they’d likely be so angry at him they’d fly back from Spain a week early. But he’d almost certainly avoid any kind of legal consequences.

           Besides, he wasn’t going to get caught. He’d planned this too well for that.

           Tim made his way through the less convenient passageways in the museum’s basement until he reached the corner of the sub-basement where the WayneTech exhibit was being staged. It was, as he’d known it would be, isolated and completely vacant of staff.

           A smile split his face as the relief he felt in making it there successfully was quickly replaced by the buzz of unadulterated excitement. He set his backpack down carefully – mindful, as always, of his precious camera. Then he rolled up his sleeves as he stepped closer to the first machine he saw with the WE logo stamped proudly on its side.

           According to the signage prepped in the binder sitting next to the behemoth, it was a component of the quantum computer WayneTech was developing to facilitate physically interactive virtual realities. Tim bounced on his toes as he warred with himself – half wanting to read more about the technical specs and half wanting to dive right in and see it for himself.

           Tim made it through another two pages of engineering details before he gave up and literally tackled the machine to hoist himself up high enough to look inside via the glass panel built in for that specific purpose. There were at least a dozen windows in the casing and Tim wondered – for a brief moment of distraction from the tech itself as he clambered higher up its exterior – how the museum was going to work in ramps and such for visitors to get the best views. If he didn’t get arrested tonight or banned from the museum forever, he might have to come back to see it in its full glory.

           He’d finagled his way to the last protrusion from top and was marveling at the neat rows of complicated wiring laid out below him when something crucial changed: he discovered that he was not, in fact, alone.

           “Ya know, I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here.”

           Tim really wanted to pretend he didn’t yelp like a kicked puppy when the sudden voice scared him half out of his skin, but the basement echoed enough for him to know it would be ridiculous to think the newcomer hadn’t heard him. Tim ducked his head in shame as his ears burned red and he turned to face whoever had caught him with hunched shoulders and guilty hands raised in surrender.

           And then he spotted his accuser on the floor and froze.

           It was Jason Peter Todd.

           Jason Peter Todd – Bruce Wayne’s new ward and the new Robin. And also kinda Tim’s neighbor. Well, as far as the word ‘neighbor' applied when your respective estates were so big it took an hour to hike door to door. Tim’s brain got caught in a loop of wondering what the frack Jason Peter Todd, of all people, was doing at the museum on a Thursday afternoon. Was doing down here, in this particular sub-basement, on a Thursday afternoon.

           Tim had fully been expecting to see the new Robin today, but that was when he was in full costume and wasn’t supposed to be for at least ten more hours. And Tim had not – in any of his contingencies – planned for Robin to see him.

           “Uh, hi,” Tim floundered.

           “Hi,” returned the crime fighting teenager Tim idolized and had been planning to stalk through Coventry later today. There was a glint in his eyes as he stared up at Tim with a smirk.

           They stared at each other in silence for way longer than could possibly be considered reasonable and Tim's ears resumed to burn at that, and at the distinct realization he had no idea what to say next.

           Because what exactly are you supposed to say when Jason Peter Todd catches you red handed in an off-limits part of a museum? Sitting on top of a piece of cutting edge computer engineering that you had absolutely no right to touch?

           “You're Tim Drake, aren’t you,” Jason asked – in a way that was definitely not really a question and also made it clear that Jason was laughing at him. “We met last month at the charity gala. I’m Jason.”

           “I remember, Mr. Todd,” Tim spouted, falling back on the robotic safety net of manners his mother had drilled into him. “Um, what brings you here?”

           “It’s just ‘Jason’, kid.” He jerked his chin at the machine Tim clung to, continuing, “That shit’s WayneTech. B sent me over to make sure it’s got all the right bits with it.”

           Tim nodded like a puppet, trying not to drown in his horror as he realized what it meant that Jason had caught him. He was messing with tech that Batman owned. There were probably a hundred undetectable BatSecurity features on this thing. Robin had probably been sent to see if someone was trying to steal it when one of Batman’s invisible alarms had gone off.

           “How about you, kid,” Jason asked, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his cargo pants. He regarded Tim with openly amused parody as he asked, “What brings you here?”

           “Field trip,” Tim responded automatically.

           “Field trip?” Jason echoed with an incredulous chuckle.

           He stared at Tim for another long moment and Tim stared back, terrified and unblinking and too tongue tied to substantiate his claim.

           “Alright then,” Jason said eventually, with a one shoulder shrug inside his leather jacket. “So, you got yourself stuck up there or are you gonna come have lunch with me?”

           “Lunch?”

           “Yeah, ya know, food. You eat it,” Jason explained. “I know I could use some pizza.”

           Tim frowned – at the confirmation of the non-sequitur of lunch plans, not the various insults attached to it.

           Jason seemed to falter briefly. “You actually stuck up there, Tim?”

           “No,” Tim huffed, willing to admit he sounded slightly petulant about it.

           “Well then get your skinny ass down here,” Jason prompted – a beat too late in a way Tim didn’t quite understand. He blinked, trying to puzzle out what didn’t sit right, but Jason arched an eyebrow – in the way Tim had seen him do as Robin, magically managing the expression despite the mask – and Tim realized he was supposed to be doing something.

           He was already in enough trouble as it was, so Tim scrambled down the computer and found himself face to face with the second Robin. Or face to chest, as it were.

           Tim hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, so he knew he was a scrawny twelve, but he hadn’t thought Jason would be that much taller. Jason was only two years older and he was stocky to start with. It was different when he’d been in the suit he’d worn for the charity gala. In civvies he looked broad and strong, and he stood up straighter.

           Jason pulled one hand from his pocket and threw his arm around Tim’s shoulders – began dragging him towards the exit. Tim lunged for his backpack as they passed it and clutched it close to his chest as Jason continued to drag him back upstairs.

           They ended up in the west cafeteria, in a corner that Jason had clearly selected for it’s state of semi-privacy. It was crowded and public enough to make raised voices problematic, but private enough to discuss sensitive details without much worry of being over heard. And it was neutral ground, like Jason was trying to make Tim comfortable before hashing out exactly how much trouble he was in for touching Batman’s stuff without express permission.

           Jason had acquired a large pizza, dripping with extra cheese and a blanket of peperoni, and two double-thick paper plates – one of which he piled high with three slices and placed in front of Tim. He gave himself five slices and settled down to chat having somehow already inhaled half of a sixth.

           “So,” Jason started around a mouthful of food as Tim poked tentatively as his own serving, “Some people are saying you’ve got some sort of connection to the Batman.”

           Tim frowned, his gaze snapping up to evaluate Jason.

           He’d spoken quietly, conspiratorially – like he wanted in on a secret Tim had. Like he wasn’t about to threaten to hang Tim by his thumbs in the depths of Batman’s secret lair for the rest of the foreseeable future.

           Awareness that Jason didn’t know that Tim knew his vigilante identity sparked inside Tim’s brain. He might be able to get out of this. If Robin didn’t know then Tim was only in trouble for touching the quantum computer because Batman didn’t want anyone touching it, and Jason was limited in how he could exact vengeance because the wrong move would reveal his role as Robin. All Tim had to do was talk his way out of this.

           Tim could do that. Right?

           All he had to do was figure out how.

           “I’m sorry I touched the quantum computer,” he blurted.

           Probably not like that.

           Tim hunched down into his shoulders and poked again at his pizza to avoid eye contact with Jason. His ears began to burn again as he felt Jason staring at him.

           “Shit, kid,” Jason said, after swallowing his bite this time, “You’re not in trouble.”

           Tim’s finger paused mid-poke. “I’m not?”

           “Nah,” Jason promised. “Fuck the Man.”

           Tim blinked. “Then why are you talking to me?”

           Jason blinked. A sort of confused expression that was vaguely pitying flickered across his face. Then he reiterated, “’Cause I hear you know who the Batman is, ya know, under the cowl.”

           Okay. So, Jason didn’t know he knew, but he suspected.

           Tim could work with that. Probably.

           He took a bite of pizza purely to keep himself from blurting anymore unhelpful apologies and attempted to calculate the best response.

           “Nobody knows who Batman is,” Tim said eventually.

           “But you’re a fan, right?” Jason nodded at Tim sweater – at the big black and yellow R embroidered on the left-hand side of the red-wool knitwork. Mrs. Davis had made this sweater for him, before her kids had insisted that she retire from babysitting rich Gotham kids and go be a grandmother in the safety and comfort of their town in Florida. Mrs. Davis had been one of the very few people who had supported Tim’s moderately obsessive interest in Batman and Robin.

           She hadn’t really understood, but Tim missed her – missed being able to talk about it.

           “You’ve gotta have some theories,” Jason was saying, his voice persistent enough to pull Tim back out from inside his own head.

           “I don’t have any theories,” Tim said. And it was true enough. He’d had theories. But that was before. Now, he had evidence. Another bite of pizza kept him from saying that out loud.

           “Seriously? None?”

           Tim shrugged and counted the circles of peperoni left on his first slice. Nine more circles, fifteen more bites. His stomach was already wary of the food he was putting in it. If this interrogation lasted more than ten bites, Tim’s stomach would probably begin to protest.

           Adamantly.

           He peeked up at Jason. Who was somehow already finishing slice number three.

           “Then why’s the word on the street that you’ve got insider know-how on ole Batsy?”

           “I dunno,” Tim said with another shrug. Truthfully, the question was bothering him too.

           Tim had never been seen when he’d staked out a spot to catch the dynamic duo on patrol or in the midst of a big bust. Never. They would’ve confronted him then and there if they’d ever found him with a camera full of very clear photos of them in action.

           So, how did Robin know enough to suspect him?

           “Who’d you hear it from?”

           This time, Jason shrugged. “I dunno. People. But like seriously, you don’t have any fucking idea why someone would think you know Batman’s real name?”

           Tim shook his head silently. He wanted to save his pizza for the questions that really needed him to have something to do with his mouth other than blabbing out his secrets.

           “Huh.”

           Jason’s eyes were narrowed, not quite threateningly, but pressingly – like he wasn’t quite sure a threat would be appropriate, but he was certain that Tim wasn’t telling the truth. It was another look Tim had captured him using as Robin. A kind of gentled-down BatglareTM for Robin to use on uncooperative victims instead of how Batman used his on uncooperative criminals – because victims could be uncooperative for all kinds of non-criminal reasons.

           Tim suddenly understood why it was so effective.

           He squirmed in his seat and caved to the need to take another bite of pizza.

           But he wasn’t a victim. Was he?

           Suddenly, Robin’s presence at the museum seemed a lot more suspect. It made sense for Robin to be there because Tim had triggered some sort of invisible Batalarm on the quantum computer, but he’d gotten there way too quickly for that to have been what brought him to the museum initially. He’d’ve had to have already been inside the building.

           But why?

           Tim’s class had been scheduled for this museum trip over a month ago. He’d even talked about it briefly with Bruce Wayne himself at the charity gala he’d attended with his parents – that’s how he’d known about the WayneTech exhibition far enough in advance to plan effectively to sneak down to the basements.

           “When’d you start hearing that rumor?”

           Tim’s question was so sudden and loud in his own ears that he startled himself.

           He seemed to have startled Jason too – who was starting on pizza slice number five and appeared to have been in the middle of a sentence when Tim had jolted into questioning him.

           “Uh, about a week ago, I guess,” Jason explained. “Your name had come up a few times before that in regards to you being a fan, but it wasn’t too long ago that it changed to you having special access or some shit.”

           Tim nodded absently.

           Two weeks ago, there’d been a major drug bust in a neighborhood just over half a mile away from his school. Batman had been tipped off about the drug ring in the same way Tim had: kids who came to school high rode the bus home and the chalk marks on the benches at the stops used by the kids who were using weren’t terribly sophisticated code.

           Tim had snagged some really spectacular shots the night that bust went down.

           Several of Tim’s classmates had exhibited symptoms of withdrawal shortly after that. A few of those students – namely some who’d never seemed to be able to have a civil conversation or simply let Tim pass in silence – had stopped exhibiting those symptoms a few days later. Tim had assumed they’d found a new dealer.

           Maybe they’d needed to find something more valuable to trade too, to make up for getting their old dealer busted.

           Info on the Bat who’d busted them would be pretty valuable.

           Even just a lead on info would’ve been valuable. Tim had been outright stalking Batman and Robin for over a third of his entire lifespan, at this point, and only just recently figured out who Batman really was. And he was a verified genius who’d happenstantially acquired the right life experiences to recognize things like quadruple somersaults. Who’d circumstantially idolized and stalked two different costumed acrobats for several years before he realized they were actually the same person and begun to extrapolate from there.

           Nobody knew anything about Batman.

           A tip on someone who might, would be very valuable indeed.

           Tim was being interrogated by Robin because he was a victim. He just hadn’t been victimized quite yet.

           Tim dropped his pizza like it’d burned him and began to rifle through his backpack for the new cellphone his mother had bought him when school started. It was ‘so he could fit in with his peers’. It was too big to fit in his pocket and he’d never liked wearing a watch, so he’d had to dig to find it and figure out the time.

           It was 4:32pm.

           Shift change for the guards was in less than an hour and they were already definitely antsy for it. Most of the science staff were already heading home to beat the traffic, and most of the new guards wouldn’t be coming in for at least another twenty minutes.

           If Tim were going to lead a team to invade this place and capture an unwilling potential asset, he would do it in the next ten to fifteen minutes.

           “We have to get out of here.”

           Jason frowned, his confusion pronounced with wary unease. But he demonstrated a willingness to trust Tim at his word for no other reason than Tim wanted him to and clambered to his feet. He took his last slice of pizza with him though – and nabbed the two untouched pieces from Tim’s plate as he followed.

           “What’s wrong, Tim,” Jason asked, carefully nonchalant. His hands were full of pizza in the way Tim’s mouth had been to stop him from doing what he wanted to do when asked a stupid question he should’ve known better than to answer – Tim suspected that if Jason wasn’t holding onto the pizza he’d’ve grabbed Tim’s shoulder at this point.

           Tim didn’t know how to answer at all, let alone efficiently communicate what he’d deduced about their current situation. Especially not without revealing that he knew Jason was Robin and could guess why Robin was here talking to him to begin with.

           Jason was rapidly eating though the pizza that was keeping him from grabbing onto Tim’s arm to stop their not-so-subtle scramble towards the museum’s main exit. They made it to within sight of the doors before Jason had inhaled the last piece of crust, and Tim had probably ignored several unheard comments and questions about their rapid egress, when Jason finally lost the battle to avoid physical contact and wrapped his hand around Tim’s elbow.

           Tim swung around to face him as his inertia asserted dominance.

           “Timmy, what’s got you so spooked?” Jason asked. “C’mon. You can tell me. Anything. I won’t rat on you, even if it’s something bad. Lemme help.”

           “I can’t – it’s not – You don’t,” Tim could practically feel the whine building in his voice at all the false starts that his brain attempted to send through his mouth to make the act of communication happen. His brain apparently thought it worked something like magic.

           Tim was frustrated and embarrassed and still very acutely aware of the fact that they needed to get out of the building. Right now.

           And Jason was doing the Robin look, the other one – the one for the scared little bunnies of the victims they came across that needed to be soothed and calmed and promised that they had a friend somewhere in the cold cruel world. Tim knew why it worked – felt it working on him – and yet he was mortified that Robin thought it necessary.

           He wasn’t a bunny. He was an asset. Currently being targeted.

           Recentered, he focused and forced words to come out of his mouth intelligibly.

           “We have to get out of the building.”

           Jason had moved to holding onto both of Tim’s shoulders at some point – holding him steady, holding him still. He looked Tim right in the eye and asked gently, “Why?”

           The words got jammed up in Tim’s throat again and he squeaked.

           And then the museum’s windows exploded inward with a dramatic shower of glass and gunfire as more goons than Tim could count began to repel their way inside.

           Tim closed his eyes and winced at the bite of regret on how fracking close they’d been to getting out of this without any major complications.

           “That’s why,” he groaned.

-----

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[venxmedina]

hellllo family :~) guess who’s baaaack !! it’s chelly, with my sassy little babie venice, whom i love very much and hopefully you do, too !! she’s a fun one to go out with, will flirt with you, takes up dance studio time whenever she can, and isn’t afraid to voice her opinions. i’m so excited to get her back into the swing of things, since i am bringing her back from a smol hiatus !! like this or shoot me a message if you’d like to plot :pleading fc: :~)

— && guests may mistake me as ( camila mendes ), but really i am ( venice medina + cis female + she/her ) and my DOB is ( 3/31/1995 ). i am applying for the ( housekeeper ) position as part of the EHP and would like to live in suite ( 213 ). i should be hired because i am ( charming & witty ), but i can also be ( cunning & dramatic ) at times. personally, i like to ( go shopping, attend dance classes & practice self care ) when off the clock, but that won’t interfere with work.

okay before this gets waaaay too long lmfao here’s a TL:DR of venice, her pinterest board, and her connection page 

venice is a spoiled rich girl who mommy & daddy never really paid much attention to except when it came to succeeding in life and she responded to that by partying and being a wild child tbqh, resulting in her parents cutting her off and forcing her to take on a real job at the malnati. she’s returning after her grandfather passed, which essentially turned into just another instance of her parents controlling her life and not trusting her to take care of herself or the medina family name. she’s resentful of them bc they never rlly believed in her and instead treated her more-so as a pawn to advance their family's position which is a lil dehumanizing as a daughter and she's now determined to prove them wrong and actually make something of herself. her parents put her into ballet classes from such a young age and although most of anything they made her do has mostly been tainted now, dance is the one thing that's stuck and brings her so much joy and purpose so she still takes classes & is in search of a permanent partner to compete with.  she’s more than just a pretty lil rich girl, like she does have a heart ( kind of a big one but lowkey tho asdlfj ), but she's also got a bit of an identity crisis now that she's fully on her own and not under the influence of her parents or with the comfort of her brother, and that's ... different. kind of a cold bitch, but she’s charming and sociable and has a good heart but she’s guarded and afraid of getting hurt.

here is her pinterest board & her connection page <3 i’d especially love some hookup buds, a dance partner, childhood enemy, one night stands, fake relationships, fiesty friends, frenemies, and just about anything tbh :~)

tw: drugs & alcohol mention, neglect, death

*:･ﾟ･✧･ who am i?: the medina family fortune was founded during the gold rush era in which the family immigrated from brazil and were talented metal-workers who could turn such raw materials into works of sheer beauty. jewelry, picture frames, gold plated toilet seats and architectural elements alike - everyone in hollywood wanted something made by the medinas. their prominence never weaned, either. throughout the decades, the family fortune has amassed well beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and therefore money is barely to be considered to the medinas despite them still understanding the value of a dollar earned. given the diversity in which the wealth is spread, and the investments that it has been used to make, it is obvious that they are a family of considerable wealth making up the upper class. their high-rise in the upper east side really says it all. this was the world that venice was introduced to, and quite frankly, it was all she had ever known. her guarded building was as much as she was allowed to venture out into for many a year, where the doorman was a babysitter and mrs. winters’ dog a few floors down was a friend. of course, there were a few other kids in her building whose parents were either fond or jealous of the medinas, so until she went to school venice did get to socialize with kids her own age too. her older brother, lucca, was one of her biggest saving graces. he was one of the only people in her life that truly gave her the time of day, and as much as it pained venice to be constantly overlooked by her parents in favor of lucca, he was her best friend. for all intents and purposes, he was the only medina who made her feel like she even had a family, and if there's anyone she's more loyal to than anyone else, it'd him. but per her education, venice attended private schools in the city throughout her life, even being tutored by some of the most highly reputable and paid retired teachers in the entire state for extra attention. getting a proper education was more important to her parents than it was to venice, so she put in the minimal effort needed. it wasn’t as if she was ever going to be given a failing grade, and it wasn't as though an A on a paper was going to garner her parents' attention for long ( if at all - it was what was expected of her ). the girl knew of her influence and the power her family held from an early age. whatever she wanted, she got, and that was the precedent that had been set from infancy. whatever would get her to stop whining, that’s what she got.

*:･ﾟ･✧･ attention to detail: half of the battle for venice, though, throughout her life, was garnering her parent’s attention. her father was a proven, accomplished businessman who was often out of the state or city to tend to whatever firm needed his attention. her mother was a socialite who was more concerned with keeping up the image of a perfect household than actually tending to one. it wasn’t that there was a lack of love for her, from her parents, it was just rather that care was seldom expressed when venice so desperately needed it. she had spent more time with nannies and tutors and tennis instructors than she did her own parents, and that left a vacancy in her heart. naturally, her relationship with her brother was one that she worked on every day; they were thick as thieves and everyone knew the medina siblings. but, she couldn't follow her brother all day for the rest of her life, and as much as his love helped fill some of those voids in her heart, it wasn't always enough, either. she sought out their attention in so many different avenues. whether that be through ballet dance recitals, throwing temper tantrums if she wasn’t getting her way, leaving notes on her mother and father’s pillows … venice really tried all of it. and sure, she would occasionally get some kind of attention in return, but it was usually fleeting and uninspiring. they favored lucca in just about every aspect, and expected him to carry on the family name, line, and company so in a lot of ways - he took precedence. and this wasn’t dissimilar to the experiences of some of the people she called her friends at the time. her parents were busy people who didn’t have much time to deal with the handful of a daughter that they had.

*:･ﾟ･✧･ to be needed: this is where much of venice’s neediness has stemmed from. she truly does seek out those who are more likely to give her attention, to feed into her, even though she has been taken advantage of time and time again over the years. it’s not something she is even consciously aware of, it’s mostly just something that happens. or at least that’s how it started out. even to this day it can be difficult for venice to understand what a mutually beneficial relationship looks like, but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of learning. for a long time, the people who wanted to be in her life also wanted access to the lavish lifestyle that follows her. this often meant that so many of venice’s ‘friendships’ were hollow, and merely existed to the benefit of the other person. it took awhile before venice started to realize that all of the trips she took people on, the random shopping sprees, the VIP bottle service, the ‘borrowed’ gucci and hermes - it was all for nothing. it wasn’t until she graduated that all of this dawned on the girl, but it did. and while she still feels that aching need to be surrounded by others, to be validated in some way, she is far more guarded now and protective of herself; she isn’t just going to be used by anyone ever again, and that lesson is one she holds very close to her heart. which she’d personally describe as a cold one if only to protect it.

*:･ﾟ･✧･ reckless abandon: but … speaking of, like so many of our favorite little rich girls, venice has always been a rebellious one. it started when she was a sixteen year old who had access to her own limo and could go wherever the hell she wanted. she had met plenty of other affluent sons and daughters of her parent’s pals by that point, and they had their own sort of ‘code’ amongst them. she started experimenting with drugs and alcohol at an early age and since it was what everyone else was doing, it allowed her to be a part of the club, and that’s what she was searching for. it warranted attention from the paparazzi, from these other so-called ‘friends’ of hers. her beach house in the hamptons was her playground every weekend during the summer and it was good she had a maid service on speed dial because after her friends were through on a sunday night, it was necessary. she'd grown to essentially need a bottle of titos if she were going out or a few bumps to get her through a night, and it was incredibly unhealthy, but it was one of those staples that made her feel better. even for a little. even in fleeting moments.

when she was graduating from her private academy and just turning 18, the need and desire to escape her family's imposing pressures and lack of care grew deeply. she knew that she wanted to escape to the west coast, and after spending far too many weekends jet-setting all over the country, the dry heat that filed the arizona air was appealing to her. she was miles away from her parent's, but still close enough to the beach and access to all the funds she could ever ask for. she was a party girl who barely attended classes and it was her family name that mostly got her through the couple of years that she even attended. she spent most of her time shopping, getting high, and drinking all night long. perhaps what was the most shocking was the relationship venice found herself in. he was a football player, older, undoubtedly gorgeous, and one of the kindness people venice had ever met ... up until meeting mason, she had basically only been surrounded by people who wanted to use her and didn't genuinely give a shit about her at the end of the day; they were in it for themselves, and mason was the exact opposite. he considered her, was far more mature than most of the people she'd ever spent time with, and she latched onto that breath of positivity and openness that was mason davis. even till this day, her relationship with mason was the longest one she'd ever found herself in, and to put it simply: she fell in love and she fell hard. some of her fondest memories were cheering him on at every game, celebrating the wins, and introducing him to anyone she could who was in the professional scene because she believed in him more than anyone else. he was unlike anyone she'd ever met before and cared for him more than she could understand; he was her first true relationship, someone who deserved to be her one and only, and while it terrified her how much she felt for him, she thought it was all reciprocal - so what was there to worry about? well, the night to worry came. and it was when mason broke up with her - supposedly, with his graduation date coming, he wanted to spare her the hurt ... but, in reality, all it did was shatter the girl's heart at twenty years old and it's never fully recovered since.

it didn't take long for venice to go off the deep end after the breakup ... being at the university of arizona was way too much, and every memory that used to bring her nothing but happiness was tainted. every ounce of personal growth that she had worked on seem to vanish overnight, and she was just angry, and hurt, and it was like all of those moments her parents made her feel like she wasn't enough - they were right. and still ... she needed home, to go home, to be surrounded by people who she was familiar with and who she knew would let her lean on them ... even if there were only a couple of people back home who'd comfort her, even if it was just lucca, she needed to go back to the city she knew like the back of her hand. even to be surrounded by people who'd pretend to care about her just for a night in her lifestyle. so she put in a transfer application to NYU, and yet again, it was her family name and pedigree that got her into the school. and attending NYU ... well it wasn't much better and when she first started at UoA. she’d hook up with anyone who she deemed interesting and the next night she was onto someone new. she was almost desperate in getting over mason in the only way she knew how ... getting under someone else. and she did a whole lot of that. everyone knew who she was on the party scene and you either hated venice or loved venice - but no matter what, you knew who she was. and that's how she survived her last two years ... making the rounds, living it up, partying and relying on her favorite substances .. it wasn't good, and it wasn't pretty, but it was what she knew best and that's what she reverted to at the time.

*:･ﾟ･✧･ riptide: anytime she could garner his parent’s attention with her reckless escapades, it was a win. that’s what she wanted. she wanted their attention, no matter what way she could get it, and there was something extremely fun in the process of getting it. but as she got older, her parents stopped caring as much. they knew venice wasn’t making healthy choices, spent too much time partying and out all night rather than studying, that she probably was crying over for something or someone, but that wasn’t what they were most concerned with. no, they were more concerned with the tabloids and the family’s reputation - that’s why they weren't paying venice any attention while she was away at NYU. they’d threaten to cut her off and that she would no longer be apart of their family if she continued to act this way in public. whether it was in a headline or on social media, she was being filmed and photographed acting out and being a truly spoiled brat which wasn’t the image that her family so desperately sought to protect.

*:･ﾟ･✧･this is growing up: it has been a true emotional rollercoaster between venice and her parents - constantly struggling to support their daughter and ‘set her on the right path’ versus venice’s ‘devil may care’ attitude. so many of her parents threats have been empty, and she had never truly thought that in all of their attempts to get her to be the picture perfect daughter that they wanted that they’d cut her off and force her to fend for herself. but, that’s exactly what happened. after graduating NYU with a degree in marketing, venice figured that her parents were get her in to one of the top agencies in the city and she would be able to live out her life with the top dogs like her father had. and for a long time, that is exactly what her parents had promised her. but then her graduation came and it was just after that she had pulled her biggest stunt and had stripped down on top of the bar at one of her parent’s fundraising events during a drunken stupor. that was truly a turning point in her relationship with her parents, considering just how badly she embarrassed them at their own fundraising event. and truly it all stemmed from that desire to be seen by them, by anyone, to be considered at all. the most they were concerned with when it came to venice was where she was going to be working and later living. they didn’t care that she was depressed, covering it up with partying and alcohol, that she wanted their love to be expressed and to feel as though she belonged to a real family. and she’s always known her life is wonderful compared to so many others, and there is guilt that comes from that, too, but still she couldn’t stop herself from acting out when she needed attention the most. and that is when her parents ultimately decided to cut her off - freeze her accounts, reposses her car, and force her to get a job that would actually put her back into the real world.

*:･ﾟ･✧･out here on my own: and really, that is how venice has ended up in chicago in the first place. the medinas are friends with the malnatis, and they agreed to take her on as an employee through the employee housing program and to ( most importantly ) get her away from mommy & daddy and out of The City. it’s the first time in her life where she’s without friends, money, or any sort of support. honestly, she feels quite abandoned by her family, as she looks at it like they got sick of dealing with her so they shipped her off elsewhere to be someone else’s problem. the resentment is there, and now more than ever venice is determined to show her parents that she doesn’t need them or their money, that she’s going to be capable of being on her own and working a medial job like being a maid without crawling back to them. sure, she’s going to hate cleaning up after people when she used to have a nanny who would tidy up her own place, as she truly has been spoiled, but she’s determined to grin and bare it before going back home. besides, so much of her life has been focused on gaining their attention, approval, to be validated by anyone, to be seen as something more than just a pretty face with a fat bank account … and while she hasn’t always helped herself to be seen in any other light, she’s consumed by the idea of doing so now. this is the first time in venice’s life where she isn’t under her parent’s thumb. where she isn’t constantly under the influence of some substance. where she isn’t doing something insanely foolish or unhealthy to try and gain the favor of someone whos approval requires chasing. she’s really just getting to live within her own skin, be herself and figure out what that looks like.

after working at the malnati for a handful of months, it was a family emergency that landed her back in new york ... her grandfather had passed, the true patriarch of the family, and that came with a lot of 'passing of the guard' within the medina family enterprise. it meant funerals, and meetings with lawyers, and memorial services, and rekindlings with her brother, and public appearances, and making statements and being interviewed for magazines, and it was then that venice had truly learned of her position in her family. while her grandfather had left her stock options in her name when he passed, and plenty for her to be able to live comfortably off of for the rest of her life, it was so written that it was contingent upon her father's disbursement of the stocks when he deemed she was so fit to handle them. so it was even in death, her family did not trust her enough to be able to handle herself. she was still considered reckless, unreliable, and unworthy of holding a stake in medina international ... while it wasn't anything new or surprising to venice, it still hurt just the same. because she'd spent the past year working on herself, away from the pressures of being a medina, separated from her family and essentially disowned by her own parents and even still, she found herself at their mercy once more. it would come at no surprise that she decided to leave it all behind her once more ... which is why she's returned to chicago, not as a guest at the malnati, but as an employee. as someone with aspirations and desires to move up in the world, once more on her own, once more with a heart she's nursing from lovers she's had to say goodbye to, once again without the support of her family, and furthermore with the wrath and persistence only a medina can procure.

*:･ﾟ･✧･it’s a new dawn: she still gives into her pleasures, whether that be sex or art or dancing, all of which she’s never been able to kick but she manages them well and enjoys them all the same. she is still a good time, someone fun to be around, and is always willing to get the party started no matter where she is. she’s kind of done it all, and while some of that has been left behind now that she’s got some different focuses in life, venice knows what makes her feel best and doesn’t want to deprive herself of that, either. she’s currently obsessed with her taking dance classes and is constantly updating her instagram followers on all that she can show them when she’s in the studio. after taking ballet classes for most of her life, she is quite good and likes to indulge in those, but her latest passion has been in salsa and hip hop. it’s not only a great workout to keep herself in shape but she likes the way she feels when she’s doing it, too. and piano lessons were big in her household, as her parents wanted her to be educated in the arts too, so she’s kept a keyboard lying around her things in case she ever feels a spark of desire to mess around on the keys.

*:･ﾟ･✧･it’s a new day: mostly, venice is a guarded gal who loves to have a good time and will absolutely give anyone a hard time when they deserve it. she’s dramatic, to a fault, and she knows it and could not care less. to quote, “i am who i am, and if you don’t like it then there’s the door.”. she’s loyal to the people that she decides she wants to have in her life, but will be very cautious about those she doesn’t trust right away, which can stem from some kind of experience of her own judgement since she does tend to operate off of preconceived notions of people until proven otherwise. and despite being crass, she can also be rather charming, and is a sociable person at her core so she will be willing to strike up conversations with whoever - but whether the conversation goes well or not is another thing. her ultimate weakness though is pretty people, as she is attracted to both men and women, and likes to engage in all kinds of relationships with anyone she thinks is attractive and interesting. so if she starts flirting with you, she has every intention on getting to know you one way or another. in truth, venice has a good heart, and it’s simply masked by a lot of vibrato and insecurity. her biggest fear is not being enough, and that’s so much of the reason why she’s never really tried to be anything. but since being cut off, and repeatedly cast aside by her family, she’s found this rejuvenated sense of desire to prove everyone wrong - that she is worth a damn, that she can work her way up the ladder and break out into the ‘real world’ on her own, that she’s enough.

also if you got this far honestly thank you asdkfalf i do not deserve you lmfao this has been a journey and if you had to suffer through all the typos i’ve likely made, i owe you <3

[buildarocketboys]

It's @williamvapespeare 's birthday and they wanted crowziraphale hand-kissing so here we go:

1.

The first time is a surprise to both of them. They aren't expecting each other.

Aziraphale has been granted an audience with the king. He had wanted to know who was responsible for all the good deeds in the kingdom, although it did not sound like he wanted to thank Aziraphale. He could hardly say no to a King, even one of such warlike stature and reputation, but even so. He would have to play it safe so as not to be discorporated. The paperwork alone would be a nightmare.

So, reverence is key. He reminds himself of this as he enters the King's chambers, the King before him, seated on his throne with his crown atop his head and a veil over his face. It is said that no one has ever seen the King's face. Aziraphale isn't sure about that, but it is certain that the King is a creature of mystery as well as murder. He falls to his knees in front of the throne, swipes his helmet off and takes the King's outstretched hand to kiss, all in one sweep of motion.

Crowley, for his part, doesn't recognise Aziraphale until he has swept his helmet off and by then it is too late to react; Aziraphale's lips are already at his knuckles. He brushes his veil aside (oblivious to the gasps of his attendants) that Aziraphale may see his face when he finally looks up, and just sits there, stunned. The angel's lips burn a little as they touch his demonic skin, but it is not that which leaves him motionless, speechless. It is the warmth in the pit of his stomach, the increasing pitter patter of his physical form's heart as he gazes down at the angel, eyes closed and expression adorned with such reverence as he kisses him.

When Aziraphale finally looks up (it feels like an age to Crowley, although it has only been a few seconds) and he reels back a few bent-legged steps in shock. "C-Crowley," he stammers, cheeks going a fetching shade of pink. He licks his lips in annoyance, perhaps even embarrassment. "I should have known it was you!"

Crowley is just about able to regain his faculties enough to give the angel a sly smirk. "You didn't, though. Showing reverence to a demon, tut tut, Heaven won't be happy."

Aziraphale actually blushes properly this time. "I was merely showing common courtesy to the King. Keeping up appearances." He sniffed. "I see now that wasn't necessary."

Crowley frowns. "Oh, now, don't be like that Aziraphale! I am still the King, after all! And you've been thwarting my wiles every which way, so I'm sure one little kiss won't count against you." He grins a little manically, trying to ignore the heat he felt in his cheeks.

Aziraphale pouts. "It was barely a press of my lips to your knuckles," he huffs. I didn't even scald my lips."

Crowley raises his eyebrows, then shrugs. "Well, never mind that," he says, determined to change the subject before he can dwell on it too much. "Stay for some supper, at least, before you go back to thwarting my wiles."

"Oh I couldn't..." says Aziraphale, biting his lip. He looks shiftily from side to side, then glances up. He sighs. "Just a bite to eat can't hurt, I suppose. I've heard you have terrific banquets up in this castle."

Crowley smiles and leans back, then snaps his fingers for his servants to bring them food. And wine, plenty of wine.

2.

Perhaps, Crowley thinks, this is...the opposite of blasphemy. Whatever blasphemy is for demons.

Aziraphale has disguised himself as a high priest and, for the plan to work, Crowley must be one of his loyal and adoring flock. It's not a role he enjoys playing, nor is he particularly good at it. Part of him blanches at the idea of kissing the hand of an angel.

But the other part of him...Aziraphale is no ordinary angel. Oh, he doesn't mean that in rank (although Aziraphale is a high-ranking principality) nor in goodness (although he's that, as well). Aziraphale is...well, he's just Aziraphale. Warm, and a little too in love with Earthly pleasures, and sometimes almost stupidly kind (Crowley hasn't forgotten the flaming sword incident)*. But as he follows the line of people waiting to kiss his angel's hand, he thinks, the amassed ranks of Heaven and Hell ought to go down on their knees and worship at Aziraphale's feet. And that's an opinion that neither hellfire nor holy water can melt out of him.

His turn comes and he drops to his knees and kisses Aziraphale's hand with almost passionate reverence. He looks up to see Aziraphale smile at him (although there is confusion clouding the light of his smile) and nod down at him. That's it. That's the signal.

3.

Nanny and the gardener, Warlock has observed, appear to be in a constant, but very civil war, although he's rarely seen them speak to each other. He thinks they avoid each other on purpose, although to be fair their paths rarely cross.

One day, Nanny and he are in the kitchen, making-well, making a mess, more than anything else.

"Very good, Warlock," Nanny coos as he tips tabasco and cinnamon powder into the gooey chocolatey mess. He's gonna give this to his dad when he comes home tonight. See how he likes that. He says as much to Nanny, who just smiles indulgently. Warlock sort of loves Nanny.

All of a sudden there's a clatter, and the two of them are looking helplessly down at the broken pile of glass that was the tabasco sauce.

"Oh dear," says Nanny, in her Scottish brogue. "You didn't get any in the mixture, did you?" Warlock peers in carefully before shaking his head. "Well, never mind then. I'll just clear this up."

She bends to pick the glass up in her bare hands** and stifles a gasp as the jagged pieces slice into her skin. Warlock winces in sympathy. She hotfoots it outside to dispose of the (now bloody as well as spicy) glass but as she turns to come back in, the gardener, hurrying in from the sudden rainfall, bumps right into her.

Warlock, with a front row view, winces again and then settles down to watch the show. He only wishes he had popcorn.

"Oh, my dear lady, I'm sorry," says the gardener. Nanny scowls at him (although it's not as severe as Warlock expected, certainly not the severest scowl he's seen her wear), but says nothing.

"After you," says the gardener, gesturing to the door, but in doing so he looks down, and gasps in shock at the state of Nanny's hands.

"What have you done?" he says, almost a tad crossly, in Warlock's opinion.

Nanny rolls her eyes and gives her best put-upon sigh. "Just some broken glass," she says, nonchalantly, although her face is drawn tight with pain. "It's nothing."

The gardener shakes his head. "It's not nothing," he says, and before Nanny can react, the gardener has taken Nanny's hand in his own, and pressed his plump lips to it.

Warlock gasps loudly then turns it into a cough, quickly turning round and raising his eyebrows at the disgusting mixture. Not mortal enemies, then.

When Nanny returns to him the gardener is gone.

There's not a single scratch on Nanny's hands.

4.

They are back at Crowley's flat, discussing in hushed tones what their next step should be, when a blinding light shines in the darkness of the flat and Gabriel appears before them.

Do not be afraid, Aziraphale thinks, acidly, but he is, very afraid. They're not ready yet! They need to set the plan in motion or they'll be destroyed!

His reaction is nothing to Crowley's though. The demon is trembling like a leaf but he steps in front of Aziraphale protectively.

Aziraphale feels the last piece of his treacherous heart steal away from Heaven and latch onto this most extraordinary of demons.

Gabriel rolls his eyes and bats Crowley to the floor. Oh, Aziraphale just wants to smite him.

The Archangel smiles at Aziraphale. It's all mouth - his eyes are cold. "Aziraphale," he says winningly, all false charm. "It doesn't have to be this way. Give him up," he indicates the demon on the floor, "let us have him, and join your brothers in Heaven. It's where you belong."

Aziraphale feels the fear, real fear, radiating off Crowley now, and realises that it's because Crowley actually believes he might be tempted, might go back to them. He's angry at himself for letting Crowley believe that for so long.

"No," he says, with a small, polite smile. "No, I don't think I will."

The smile drops from Gabriel's face and his eyes are anything but expressionless now. He is apoplectically, burningly furious. "You know what will happen to you if you don't," he growls.

Aziraphale hums in agreement. "Yes," he says, offering Crowley a hand and pulling the demon up from the floor. Gabriel's rage grows impossibly, almost imperceptibly larger. Aziraphale full-on grins now, and drops to his knees. He looks up at Crowley, who is gazing down at him questioningly. "But I rather think it's worth the risk," he says, and allows his lips to caress his demon's skin, gazing shyly but surely up at him with his lips still on Crowley's hand. Crowley gazes back, shocked but steady. Content in a way Aziraphale has never felt from him before.

Gabriel literally explodes in rage. Aziraphale looks slowly back towards the empty air has left, reluctant to draw his attention away from the demon, even for a second. He shrugs.

He'll be back. And they'll be ready.

Getting to his feet, he looks at his demon and smiles. Crowley smiles back.

*Neither has God, but for different reasons.

**Crowley had forgotten that his hands, along with the rest of his body, were human and therefore liable to get cut and bleed when handling broke glass.

[kazhewbrekker]

vilify me - chapter 1

Vilify Me

Shatter Me AU where Ella and Emmaline were raised as children of the Supreme Commander of Oceania, and everything that happened after.

Fandom: Shatter Me Series - Tahereh Mafi

Relationships: Juliette Ferrars/Aaron Warner

Additional Tags: Ella Sommers!AU, Implied Torture, Child Abuse, basically ella and emmaline were raised by their biological parents,Childhood Friends to Lovers, Flashbacks, Restore Me spoilers, Defy Me spoilers, i might add more tags later

( AO3 Link) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4)

vilify v.

1. to lower in estimation or importance

All the children of the Supremes spent time away from home, visiting each other on the regular, it was a much needed break for their parents and good for networking. And when you were young and sick of being treated like test monkeys, a little bit of freedom never hurt.

Emmaline was one of the older kids, alongside Haider and Warner. So she grew out of the visiting trips earlier then I did. Instead she became obsessed with getting ahead and learning everything she could about everything. She didn’t have time for her little sister or taking a small flight to another continent every weekend. I understood, maybe not then, but eventually.

Sometimes I still think about how different she would have been had she opened up more, if not to me then to the rest of us. But I suppose we really were outliers, when it all came down to it. Emmaline was untouchable, in a metaphorical way, she was not only going to inherit our mother’s title as Supreme Commander of Oceania, but she was also the strongest Unnatural on the planet. The scientists always got it wrong, they downplayed her power so frequently in order to raise mine up, but I wasn’t as strong as her. It seemed like I was the only one who realized that.

I didn’t want to see what would happen if someone stood against Emmaline. Not even me.

The warmth of morning became overbearing the later after dawn I waited to get up. My conditioned body still continued to rouse me at five o’clock sharp, before even the sun had decided to get up. But I was on vacation, or the closest thing to vacation I could get, so there was no way I was going to leave this bed until at the very least eight in the morning.

“Ella, love.”

His voice was quiet, so quiet I could have ignored it, but he placed a hand on my shoulder to shake me awake. His palm was frigid. I jumped a foot into the air and rolled across the bed, hugging the sheets to my chest.

Aaron Warner stood before me on the other side of the bed wearing his usual ensemble of immaculate clothing. His surprise at my reaction quickly turned to amusement, he looked as if it physically pained him to restrain his laughter at my antics. I gave him a sidelong glare before laying myself down once again, but on his pillow.

“Are you going to get up before noon?”

“Excuse you,” I said. “Some people like to sleep in.”

I listened intently as he moved around the room. The fabric under my chin was cold and smelled faintly of soap and little much else. He probably hadn’t slept for very long at all, and I could vaguely remembered he’d come to bed late too.

“Did you even go to sleep last night?” I turned my head up, but found he wasn’t where he’d been before. I sat up on the bed and found him bringing in a tray covered in metal containers that I knew to be military issued meals. “Breakfast in bed? Don’t spoil me or I’ll never leave.”

Warner place the tray on my lap, the quirk to his lip hadn’t disappeared just yet. I hesitantly opened the first dish to find fruits chopped into squares, the others had what looked to be eggs and ham and some kind of baked bread. I picked up the cup of coffee placed off to the side and held it up to my lips, watching Warner as he watched me from his seat on the edge of the bed.

He looked away and rubbed the back of his neck, “I will admit I didn’t sleep as long as I could have, but I am still expected to work while you’re here.”

“Responsibilities, I’m familiar.”

“Yes, precisely,” Warner laughed. “As for breakfast; no crumbs in my bed.”

He watched and waited as I partook in the food laid before me. I wasn’t a huge fan of eating, food equaled energy and energy gave me the ability to use my body properly and that was all there was to it. Maybe that was something the Reestablishment had trained into us, to only see things in terms of power. If you didn’t get a benefit from something then it had no use, and therefore it could be thrown away as simple as that. Food, people, it was all the same in the Reestablishment’s eyes.

“What’s the agenda for today?” I asked between mouthfuls of bread.

“I have another meeting in an hour, and I have to visit the compounds around 1400 hours.” He eyed the bread with disdain, “The in between time I am all yours.”

“How generous.”

“Do you plan to be sarcastic for the rest of the morning?”

I sigh reproachfully. In truth I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that he was busy. Warner’s father like to pile up work in Sector 45 more than any of the others, just to get a rise out of his son, and especially when he knew I was visiting. I could beat the old man black and blue for just that alone.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. There honestly wasn’t much to do on base without Warner around. I did come to North America purely to see him, more often than not.

I could easily do my own work from the comfort of my own home.

“Are you alright?” He said, with a hint of worry, “What’s wrong, love?”

“Nothing,”

He raised an eyebrow.

“The only reason I don’t want to tell you is because it’s obsolete. You’ll feel guilty and that will make me feel even worse.” I said, “I miss you and I want to spend as much time with you as I can. But I hardly know what to do with myself here when you’re gone.”

Warner winced, confirmed my fear that he’d take the burden of my discomfort onto himself. “You could join me during work―?”

“And distract you the entire time.”

“There isn’t an easy solution.”

I picked the tray up out of my lap and wiggle my legs out of the blanket. The carpet was cool under my bare feet as I walked over to the table and set the empty tray atop it. It’s only when I’d crossed halfway over the room that I realized how chilly it was in this room without trousers. I pulled on the bottom threads of my shirt as I headed back to the bed, Warner’s eyes never left me as he sat quietly, waiting. And I only had to meet his gaze once before he was fixating on the far wall.

Ever in full control of temptation.

“I know there isn’t, that’s precisely why I didn’t want to mention it.” I stood in front of him so our knees touched, his expensive black polyester against my skin. “Beside, I come here to escape from all the military talk, your board meetings would give me hives.”

He laughs, but it’s restrained. His hands hesitantly test the waters and reach out to me. Which I oblige by lacing our fingers together and sitting myself on his lap with my legs pinned on either side of him. It only takes a moment of surprise before his dimples are on full display and he uses his grip on my arm to drag me in closer, while the other unlatches itself to cradle around my waist and keep me secure in place.

“So you’ll quietly wait for me to return and absolutely not cause trouble in which I will have to fix,” Warner said, “right?”

I winked, kissed his cheek, and replied. “Of course.”

“When was the last time you heard from Warner?”

Emmaline never did beat around the bush, she’d waltzed in my bedroom and slammed the door closed behind her. I placed the book I had been annotating down and tried my hardest to project my annoyance into the air between us.

“Awhile ago,” I hissed. “Why?”

She shrugged. I watched as she wandered around my bedroom, the walls painted a pale pink, the mature version of what had originally been the color scheme for our shared bedroom when we were children. In Emmaline’s own bedroom, I’d find almost an identical spread of pastel purple. Mum had always loved coordination.

“Emma, seriously, if you’re just here to bother me get out.”

Her fingers glided along my bookshelves. Objects that Dad had told me to throw out months ago, the Reestablishment saw no need for literature of any kind. I wondered if Emmaline shared his sentiments, she’d always been so complacent.

Finally, my sister turned to look at me point-blank. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“Then get to the point.”

“Nazeera told me today that Warner and Lena are together.”

I stood up.

“Like, he’s staying in Europe?”

I could briefly register my heart picking up speed inside my chest. My brain racing to keep up, sorting through every conversation we’d ever had on the topic of Lena. Warner didn’t share many sentiments about being around the other Supreme kids. Had he ever even brought Lena up before?

Emmaline sighed. “Els, you know what I mean.”

“He would have told me.”

“You said it yourself,” she turned back towards the door. “You haven’t heard from him in awhile, maybe things change.”

I went back to bed before I caused havoc. Warner could do with a rest from any of my particular antics, despite what he might believe, I didn’t enjoy making his life harder. I just got bored. In any case, he was lucky his bed was so comfortable.

When I finally rolled out of the red sheets and dressed properly it was already midday. The shower was hot and the water was sharper then back home, but the smell of the soap and the fabric of the towels was comforting. Sometimes it scared me how at home I felt in North America, how much time I’d spent on the other side of the world. Something my sister never understood.

In the corner of Warner’s closet there was a place for my clothes, personally picked out by him, and all perfected to my own tastes. I didn’t like Anderson’s dresses, or the shorts and sleeveless shirts my parents insisted I wore. The Reestablishment liked to remind people I was a weapon. Remind them what one single brush against my shoulder would do.

When I was younger the power felt nice, but it always turned my stomach to see how maids and nannies would watch me with disdain, even fear. Emmaline got similar looks, but not to the same caliber. I’d grown to hate the sight of my own skin. Warner had sat through enough of my tears to know that giving me pretty dresses that exposed my legs or frilly shirts that showed my arms and stomach was the worst possible gift he could give me.

He gave me jeans, leggings, sweaters that came down to my thighs. I had turtlenecks and boots without heels, shirts with sleeves that went past my wrist. They were comfortable and functional, and of course fashionable. He’d given me so many lectures on color theory that at this point I could retell it to myself from memory.

That was the other feeling that came with vacations at Sector 45. For once, in only one place in time, I could completely be myself. And I could go wherever I pleased.

As in any military base, the decor was minimal and the walls were stark white. The building was as boring as it was tall. I wouldn’t get lost though, most of these bases were carbon copies of each other and I’d grown up in these skyscrapers. And I was going to observe the training rooms, not Warner’s private ones that I refused to visit on unpaid time off, but the soldier’s training rooms. They were the same in context, maybe a little less high-grade and much larger. Any soldier who was off duty went there to work on what they lacked.

I passed the hallway guards who shot me strange looks. I couldn’t be sure if it was because they recognize me or because they couldn’t believe a five foot three, little girl was walking around base. Anderson didn’t seem to like employing women, did he?

Delalieu noticed me turning the corner and fluttered towards me, “Miss Sommer, is there anything I could do to be of assistance?” He looked wary and anxious, but then again when didn’t he.

“I’m just fine,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be at the meeting with Warner?”

He shook his head, “It’s not that type of meeting.”

Strange.

I moved towards the training room doors, they weren’t the doors that the soldiers came in through as those were connected to the barracks and the dining hall. They were the doors that Warner would enter through when he wanted to observe his soldiers, maybe punish them when they were unassuming.

Delalieu didn’t so much as stop me, but move towards the door as I attempted to open it. My hands were still bare and I could almost feel the shudder that went through the old man as he saw them revealed against the metal of the handles. The lieutenant's movement caught the eye of the guards and they moved in closer.

“There is no reason to trouble yourself with the soldiers, Miss Sommers.”

I quirked an eyebrow, “Are you hiding something from me?”

“No!” He urgently replied, “Of course not.”

One of the soldiers was leaning in towards the conversation, attempting to be inconspicuous and failing miserably. Who was training these imbeciles? The other actually put a hand on my shoulder and I felt a rush of nausea.

“What seems to be the problem here?” His voice was deep and booming. The soldier was trying to be intimidating, but I could only be concerned with how much I wish I’d worn short sleeves despite the discomfort. “Well―?”

I grabbed his hand.

The soldier’s knees buckled to the ground as I felt the familiar surge of warmth, of strength. I whipped around and kicked him dead-center in the chest sending him rocketing towards the far wall. A loud sound cut off. He’d been screaming, my ears had tuned it out.

I rubbed my hand against my jeans. And looked back at Delalieu.

The guard who had been observing was now straight backed and looking forward like he should have been when I arrived. I scoffed. Delalieu stood out of my way as I opened the metal doors into the training room. They would have all heard the scream. Good, at least then I wouldn’t have to explain myself to anyone again.

This side of the compound wasn’t known for being very hospitable. I almost shivered at the feeling that emitted from the grey walls. Dad was leading, five feet in front of me with a higher-up military persona on one side and what looked like a doctor on the other. They expected me to follow as we went down the winding hallways towards the basement level. I was very familiar with the basement level.

“Alright sweetie,” Dad said.

He opened a chamber door, it creaked under the pressure. I resisted making any sign of displeasure and merely nodded. Walking in and listening as the door closed behind me the second my feet passed the threshold. I was not afraid. I would not tremble.

Supreme Commander Anderson was in charge of any and all missions and assignments I was given. In simple terms, he was my boss. And I hated it. He’d given me the same mission since I’d started training under his care at the ripe age of eight years old; obtain information in relation to the rebel groups opposing the Reestablishment’s control.

The Executioner was in. Ella Sommers was nowhere to be found.

Before me, tied to a chair in the middle of the room, was a man not much older than me. He had the makings of a beard on his face, though he looked ragged. As if he had been struggling to no avail for hours. Maybe days. I stepped out of the shadows of the corners of the room, so he could see me in full view. I caught his attention immediately.

What a vision I must have been. A fourteen year old girl in a dress as green as fresh grass, little white sandals, and her hair done into braids on either side of her head. My appearance made me seem as least three years younger than I was. But if I were to stare myself down in a mirror, I would see the storms behind my eyes. I was not a child.

“Who are you?” The man asked, his voice distinctly accented.

I cocked my head to the side. “You don’t know me?”

He narrowed his eyes. Reassessed myself as I stood before him, I made no threatening movements, but I could see the pulse in his neck jump. He was on edge and didn’t even understand why.

“Why would I know a little girl?” He gritted his teeth, “What are you doing here, huh?”

I’d forced Warner to sit down and watch a nature documentary with me once. He disliked movies, but he preferred anything that had any educational value to the frequent romantic comedies I laid before him. It had been about predators and prey. How the prey could sometimes sense that they were being hunted simply on a whim, but that often it was still not quick enough of a warning to spare them from the predator. It was a biological reaction that ever creature possessed when confronted with a bringer of death.

“I was under the impression that your organization was looking for me.”

The man bit down on his lip. His fear was rising, palpable, as I inched closer.

“But that’s fine if you don’t know who I am.” I raised a hand, “Allow me to introduce myself.”

I found my way to the dining room easily. Warner sat on the far end of the table with a stack of papers in front of him, and two sets of cutlery placed for two people on the table. I found my seat next to him and smiled. He looked up only after a minute of ignoring me.

He looked unimpressed.

“How was your day, my dear?”

“Excellent,” I unfolded my napkin, “and yours?”

Warner blinked and set his papers aside, “Eventful.”

“Do tell,”

“I got a report from my Lieutenant that a guest of mine had debilitated and almost killed one of my men in the middle of a very important meeting with the surrounding sectors.”

I tried my best to look convincingly troubled.

“Ella,”

I wasn’t a very good actress.

“In my defense,” I said, “he touched me first which could very well be seen as an attack.”

There was a bottle of red wine on the table that I picked up and inspected heavily, the label was all but scratched free of any information besides where it came from: Sonoma, CA. When I looked up, Warner was staring straight ahead with a confounding expression.

“What are you doing?” I asked, “Stop thinking, Aaron. Don’t you dare--”

“I’ve come up with a solution.”

My forehead slammed into the porcelain plate. I groaned, and it wasn’t from the newly formed bruise. If only I could find comfort in the dishware. Warner laughed.

“You’re being over dramatic.”

I pushed myself up, squared my shoulders, and took a sip from the wine bottle itself. Warner was leaned back in his chair, watching me with faint amusement, like we we’re playing a game. The bell dinged, signaling that dinner would now be brought in for us. I met his eyes.

“I learned from the best.”

Anderson's eyes turned up at me like a glare, "Report on the status of rebel interrogation."

"Yes, sir." I met him with a practiced ease. Standing from my chair with a ramrod-straight back and an expressionless face, "The Reestablishment has acquired thirteen rebels as of this month. I have interrogated," tortured, "five of the hostiles."

"How many of those were killed by your hand?" The Commander of Europe asks, focused on the papers in front of her and with a voice of disinterest.

"All five," I responded immediately, "sir."

There is a quiet that no one interrupts, not because of the deaths but because of the abject disappointment. They've not heard any of the information I gathered, though they might have read it in the packets of text they seem to be much more interested in flipping through before them.

"Report." Warner's father repeats with a sternness that makes me want to rip his spine out through his throat. There's a beat, a pause, before I begin.

"Number of soldiers is inconclusive, it is estimated no more than a thousand within the North American capital. I was able to extract two safe houses which have since then been removed. The central base of operations, known as Alpha Point, I have only been able to obtain generalizations when it comes to location and management."

"And why is that?" Its Nazeera's father, the Supreme of Asia, this time. "What reason do you have for not finding this rebel stronghold."

My jaw doesn't twitch like I feel it does. There will be no comfort in this room, the Commanders will tear into my failures with promises of punishment if I do not succeed in the future.

"Rumors, sir."

"Rumors?" Anderson's blue eyes have never left my face. I have never flinched in his presence. "What rumors?"

I still, turn my chin a little higher, "The Unnaturals know of me by name."

There's a commotion. It starts with my parents, I'm unsure if they are outraged by the breach in security or the safety of their own child. I don't turn to see the anger that would be clear upon my sister's face. But unfortunately, I don't have to search far for him.

Over his father's shoulder, Warner's eyes burn with a brand of guilt I'm far too use to. For a moment I feel as though he could swallow me whole with that look. The concern, so tangible, for the first time this meeting my heart is in my throat.

He makes me worried about my own safety. Only because I couldn't bear to leave him alone here. Even if we aren't speaking currently.

"Enough," The Commander of Africa slams his stack of papers on the desk. I don't turn to look at him. "Finish the report, Miss Sommers."

They don't usually call me Miss Sommers. That is a name reserved for my sister. My big sister, queen of this world and the next. Most powerful Unnatural, next Supreme Commander of Oceania.

"Yes, sir." I bathe in the silence, "Once the soldiers had realized, individually, of my identity their demeanors had changed."

Anderson was back to staring me down, "How?"

"Some tried to win my sympathy, those were the ones that relinquished the most information. The others attempted to either provoke me or stay silent. It seemed, although there was no chance of escape, they had wanted to observe my ability."

"That's to be expected." I recognized my own mother's voice, "They see her as one of their own, or a betrayer of their own. That will be a good angle to use."

It didn't matter if I agreed. "In the end they were disposed of."

Anderson laced his fingers together and settled his chin atop them, there seemed to be a flicker of amusement in that gaze. It made my stomach revolt. The way he looked at me like a spectacle, a circus animal for them to cage and abuse when they willed it.

"Were they impressed?"

"Excuse me?" My mask faltered for only a second.

"Were the rebels, the Unnaturals, were they impressed by your ability when you killed them?" Anderson’s grin was small and quiet. His words rang and bounced across my skull.

"I believe it was more painful than they had anticipated."

Anderson finally settled back into his seat, "Good. The rebels hear of a girl who can kill a man with a touch, they're going to believe it's instantaneous. Prove them otherwise. I want those eight prisoners interrogated and properly disposed of, and as your commanding officer on this task, I want reports written to me before the tenth of next month."

And just like that, I was dismissed. I settled back into my seat beside Emmeline and felt as her gloved hand crept across the space between us. It was an offer, a broker for peace, I wouldn't take it. I didn't need comfort. This was my task, the job I was raised for.

I would not be the weaker sister between the two of us.

[imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch]

Lies Sleeping - A Review

Lies sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch 

Chances were I was going to like this book - I liked the rest of the series after all. So how did Lies Sleeping compare?

The spoiler free bit -

This book was one long call back to the first book, the most obvious being the return of Mr Punch (not counting this as a spoiler since its announced in the blurb). As with the previous books I found there was no way I could really follow what was happening - I'm no good at remembering names of people or places and these are often key to "getting" the plot. Not only are you bombarded with people and places and companies and names, so much happens and you aren't sure what's important and what's a random side trip somewhere. I think there are a couple of reasons why that has never bothered me historically with this series and why it didn't bother me this time round.

The first is that the books are still an enjoyable read (even Foxglove Summer) even when I don't have a clue what's going on. Another is that things do make sense in retrospect with a second read, and I really do enjoy reading these books a second, third and even in the case of approximately 60% of the series (skipped Whispers Underground and Foxglove Summer) a fourth time. Four times is by no means a personal record for me rereading, but these books still have a lot of life left in them and I don't see myself getting bored of them anytime soon.

There is another reason why  I tend to give these books a pass at the fact the plot absolutely escapes me, given that this would normally be within my top three complaints (others being boring/unnecessary and/or boringly unnecessary love interest with bonus points for tired clichés applied lazily, and character (lack of)). It only really occurred to me in Lies Sleeping, but the flood of information is (probably) what an investigation is like. A series of events and you have to figure out what's connected and how. Aaronovitch tends to be clever enough with his foreshadowing that I connect enough dots to keep me happy, but the hints are hints enough that I'm never 100% sure of myself so that if I'm right I get to feel smug and if I'm wrong I get to feel delight at being tricked.

An example of this from Lies Sleeping, kept to a spoiler free minimum but expanded below the cut, is the sense that this book was a gamechanger. I thought it would be as such before I'd even read the first sentence: the reintroduction of Mr Punch in the blurb and the fact The Faceless Man was unmasked suggested this book would further change the status quo somehow.

That's probably all I can get away with saying spoiler free so I'll carry on below the cut.

So continued from the point above I knew we'd end on some kind of shift in dynamics. By the time I was approximately two thirds of the way through I had narrowed this guess down to a) Nightingale dying or b) Martin Chorley actually accomplishing what he wanted to do which somehow altered magic's status possibly even bringing it into the public consciousness. What we got, of course was Peter being suspended. I didn't expect it but I didn't feel cheated in any way. And then there was the second game changer - Beverly being pregnant. In retrospect comments about Peter acting as Abby's parent have more weight - at the time I took them to be hinting towards a baby but maybe in a couple of books time. I'm actually really excited about Peter and Beverly having a child because I think it will bring an interesting new dimension to Peter - will he act the same when he has a child to think about? Is he still going to be as reckless? Will magic start to worry him?

And of course there's Lesley.

If I liked the Peter being suspended thing and the baby thing, I loved Lesley shooting Chorley. It's going to add another layer of changed dynamic and world shift. Peter isn't fighting a "Faceless man" (pardon the pun) anymore, someone he doesn't have any particular personal history with other than the two repeatedly trying to outwit and maim each other. Now it's Lesley and that's a whole different kettle of fish. I really like how Lesley's arc mirrors that of Mr Punch. Lesley has always seemed preoccupied with law and seemed more frustrated than Peter whenever she saw someone from the magic-world apparently getting away with crimes, just as Mr Punch was originally fond of the law and order the Romans brought. You could argue that Lesley is now slipping into chaos, however much she believes that she is trying to make things better: shooting Chorley for instance is not something I could see her doing in previous books but it felt right at this point in her journey.

I'm very interested to see what happens next with Lesley and where she's going to go. Did Chorley have something in the pipeline in case the whole Arthurian thing didn't work out, that she'll now take over? Or perhaps she'll go her own way.

One thing is certain: this book felt like the end and a new beginning and I think the series will continue to shift from here. It's not just the big details that have changed: this was the first book where it wasn't just Nightingale and Peter helped somewhat distantly by whichever police were involved in the crime of the day.  With magic seeping into the police as a whole and what with the exchange about other societies not revealing magic between Peter and Nightingale I wonder if we are going to start dealing with magic becoming common knowledge as was my original prediction for the ending of this book.

I'll leave the speculation there - I'd like to re-read Lies Sleeping, and possibly the whole series - before I get into any serious guess work. I'll finish off this review for now with some little things I enjoyed that weren't to do with the ending as well as my one little niggle.

The first thing I really liked was the introduction of Foxglove (which I'm only know realising ties into Foxglove Summer - yeah I'm slow). I didn't really have much to say for the reveal that Molly might be high fae. It didn't annoy or upset me but equally it didn't really interest me. But with the introduction of Foxglove and the links to the Pale Lady, the Pale Nanny and the awful strip club I have changed my mind on this revelation. I really like how threads I thought were finished with come back later on - as confusing and haphazard as the worldbuilding can feel at times, I enjoy when it comes back together and pulls tight. On a more basic level I just really like that Molly has a friend.

I enjoyed the way the book followed a trajectory of Rivers of London, while remaining it's own story. It'd be more precise on this but I'm lending out Rivers of London at the moment so can't check on all the things that felt familiar but the more obvious ones are the back through history to meet Mr Punch ending, the actor's church, Mr Punch being in it at all. As a beginning and an end this provided a nice symmetry.

Nightingale is  my favourite character by a fair amount and so I really enjoyed that we got to see more of him being kickass. I especially enjoyed his command of magic in the interview with Patrick Gale. I mean I enjoy any and all magic Nightingale does, but after seeing his explosive, fighting magic seeing him perform something more subtle was a treat and gives us a better indication of what he really could do if he set his mind to it. Let's all be glad he's on the side of the "good guys". Continuing with the Nightingale is incredibly powerful line, the list of reasons why Nightingale is absent to allow Peter to get into all the dangerous situations is fantastic. One of the problems with having one significantly more powerful character is the well why haven't they just stopped the bad guy already? Nightingale's absences from key moments allowing Peter to get into trouble are noticeable, but they do feel organic enough that though I find it funny I don't find it distracting or unrealistic.  

On the magic front I also enjoyed hearing more about everyone's signares. The first description of Nightingale's as being "as heavy as a mallet and as sharp and as controlled as the point of a needle" was a great description that completely sums up his character, while the later descriptions of it as the precise tick-tock are lovely. Lesley's being a combination of Nightingale's, Chorley's and a cry like a seagull screaming was both hilarious and somehow completely fitting.

On the favourite character front my favourite rivers (plus possible war spirit) are Lady Ty, Effra, Oberon and Ash. I was disappointed to not hear much from Effra, Oberon and Ash therefore (he wasn't even at the Summer Court) but I wasn't surprised either. Can't have everything. I did, however, greatly enjoy the Lady Ty scene where Peter offers her a sacrifice as well as the return of the original Tyburn who I love as much as his modern counterpart.

Continuing with character for a moment is my one niggle with the book. I'm not sure if it was because this book had more continually high stakes, as the team tried to predict and forestall Chorley, but there didn't seem to be as many character moments. As many isn't no, and some were really unexpected but lovely such as Seawoll reminding Peter and Guleed to look out for each other and talk to someone if the pressure gets too much.

I think the main place it was noticeable was the reunion between Nightingale and Peter, or lack thereof. And I know Nightingale isn't the sort of hugging, crying, making a scene sort of guy, and they had other operational priorities at that moment as well as an audience. I wasn't expecting a huge scene at that moment. But information later on in the narrative about what Nightingale had done to try and find Peter would have been fitting in with the character and the time limits the characters have - could have come as an offhand comment from Guleed or someone else during a conversation about work for example. A kind of well we know Nightingale can do a-awesome-thing because he did it while searching for you thing. Or even Nightingale looking tired, Peter commenting on it and someone, probably Guleed or maybe Abdul, answering it was because he'd barely slept while looking for Peter. Nightingale has shown he feels responsible for Peter, so the lack of acknowledgment of the fact Peter was missing for a considerable chunk of time just felt like a missed opportunity to me.

Still it wasn't enough to ruin this book for me by any stretch of the imagination and I'm excited to re-read it and connect all the dots I missed the first time around. A great, read and a solid addition to the series that has me desperate for the next book.

Lies Sleeping: 5/5

[anotherdayinchuckletown]

Happy Halloween, Mr. Wonka!

(A/N: Hello, and Happy Halloween!! Now, Halloween is my favorite holiday, so y’all know I had to whip up a little something for my favorite muse who definitely hates this day with a passion! Full disclosure, this was drafted, written, and edited all in the span of about two hours, so I’m a tad self-conscious… But hey, I was on time! I wanted to give y’all something festive, even if it’s my saddest Wonka piece so far.

Thank you so much for reading, and have an amazing (and safe) Halloween!

-Katherine <3)

_________________

Heavy machinery whirs quietly all around. Some gadgets emit soft clouds of vapor, which float listlessly toward the high ceilings of the Inventing Room like restless spirits. Phosphorescent light filters through the haze, making long shadows dance in the corners of the room. Since the sun has already gone down and factory operation hours are over, the Oompa-Loompas are absent, meaning that there is no music, no dancing—only the droning hum of technology.

An eerie combination, indeed, thinks Wonka sourly. Such a nuisance.

Charlie is preparing to leave for his annual trick-or-treating expedition, and when he asked earlier if Wonka would join him, Wonka had excused himself. I just need to tie up a few loose ends in the Inventing Room, he had claimed, pointedly ignoring his teenage ward’s crestfallen expression. You go and enjoy yourself, Charlie. A boy your age shouldn’t be stuck working on Halloween, of all nights!

The Halloween season is always a busy one for the factory. That much should be obvious, given the long-standing tradition of trick-or-treating. A tradition which allows even kids who normally have nothing to indulge in an overabundance of candy for one glorious night. A tradition which Wonka himself took part in as a child, in his family’s own unique way…

His gloved hands twitch, and he remembers what he is supposed to be doing. Well, pretending to be doing, really. He reaches for the spoon to his right, and stirs the mixture before him with more force than necessary.

The tradition of trick-or-treating expressly demands candy production be at an all-time high for the year. He has already met his surplus production goal, and the sales numbers reflect that this is a wise investment. Things are truly going swimmingly. All things considered, he thinks he should be in a great mood. He should be kicking back and relaxing, instead of throwing together this…whatever this is, just so that he has something to keep his hands and mind occupied with anything but Halloween.

“Milk powder…where is the milk powder?” he mutters to himself as he scans his table of various ingredients.

“Here it is, Mr. Wonka.”

Not expecting any sort of response, Wonka lets out an embarrassingly shrill scream. Brandishing his cane and spinning on his heel toward the source of the voice, he comes face to face with…Eliza Weber, his assistant.

Free hand clutching at his heart, which is now racing faster than a hummingbird’s, Wonka desperately attempts to get his breathing under control. He lowers the cane warily, leveling the young woman and the container of milk powder she offers him with a scowl. Finally, he stretches out his arm and snatches it from her.

The whole time, she has the audacity, the absolute gall, to look completely unaffected by his outburst. “I apologize if I startled you. I did knock.”

Eliza is not only Wonka’s assistant, but she is also Charlie’s teacher. She has only been a part of factory life for a few months, but has already proven herself to be his finest employee. Some of it can be attributed to her height advantage over the Oompa-Loompas, although she is exceedingly petite herself. She is wildly intelligent, adept in mechanical design, and regimented as all get out. In addition, her loyalty and perseverance are unmatched, to the point where it’s a bit unsettling.

“Were you planning to use your cane as a weapon just then?”

Her ability to get on his nerves at times is also unmatched.

He takes in her costume, consisting of a hooped skirt with an apron, tightly-buttoned corset, and short lace gloves. Her hair is pinned into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. “And what are you supposed to be, Nanny McPhee?” he retorts.

“Mary Poppins,” she corrects him, the insult either sailing right over her head or not bothering her in the slightest. “Charlie invited me to go trick-or-treating with him. I’ve never been, so I agreed.”

Wonka sets the powdered milk down hard enough that some of it puffs up and over the sides of the bowl, coating his gloves in the white substance. “Well, isn’t that just peachy!” The smile that accompanies his statement is too pinched, even by his standards.

“Incidentally, that’s why I’m here,” she continues. “He requested I tell you that we’re leaving shortly, and it’s your last chance to join us.”

He lets out a long sigh,  summoning up all the patience he can. “Goodness, I certainly would love to, I’m just so gosh darn busy!” He gestures to the mess on the table behind him. “You know how it is this time of year. You two go on without me, have fun!”

Eliza scrutinizes him. “You seem tense. Do you not want to go because you don’t have a costume?”

Wonka simply squints at her, confused.

“I have a contingency plan, meaning I can throw something together for you in a matter of minutes. Your facial structure bears a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands.”

“It does not!” He pouts, not appreciating her sneaking up on him and making wildly inaccurate comments about his facial structure. If he bears a resemblance to any Johnny Depp character, it’s Sweeney Todd, for goodness sake!

She looks at him like he’s taken the wind out of her sails, a small victory. “Very well. I will let Charlie know that you’re busy.”

She starts to leave, and Wonka visibly relaxes, turning away. Except she lingers at the door, and he can feel those eyes on him. Those big, glassy eyes that seem to pierce through him, all-knowing, like a particularly astute goldfish.

“Permission to speak freely?” she asks suddenly.

“Denied!” he responds right on the heels of her question. He is treated to a few moments of feeling the irritation radiate off of her before curiosity gets the better of him. “…What is it?” he asks weakly.

“According to my data,” she explains, “sales are much higher than normal, but it’s nothing to warrant the rate at which you’ve been working the last few days.”

Of course, the woman who handles his accounting would call him out on his lie.

“Therefore, I can only assume this has to do with some sort of personal aversion.”

Wonka feels his skin prickle. Facing her once more, he asks, “What is your point?” The question comes out even colder than he meant it to.

Eliza at least has the decency to shuffle nervously, breaking eye contact in favor of watching the vapor circling up toward the ceiling. “My point is…at the risk of breaching the parameters of my job description…I am a very good listener as well.”

Leave it to Eliza to choose the worst possible time to display some emotional intelligence for a change. The chocolatier stares at her long and hard, choosing his words carefully. “Eliza…why have you never been trick-or-treating before?”

She looks justifiably taken aback. Tilting her head, she says, “My foster parents never allowed it. They believed Halloween was…Satanic.” Wonka nearly blinks and misses the subtle roll of her eyes at the notion.

Wonka thinks that there’s something to be said for her never knowing what she’s missing out on as a kid. Never having that false hope that this year, things will be different. Still, he latches on to his opportunity.

“Well, they’re not here to stop you now, are they?” He grins at her in a way that he hopes is reassuring and not as melancholic as it feels, even though his face is starting to hurt from smiling so much. “Yet, here you are, worrying about me instead, silly! You just take Charlie and get out there, okay?”

Looking anything but convinced, Eliza blinks slowly. “…Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Wonka.”

Satisfied that she will actually leave this time, he turns his back to her again. He does not answer her, nor does he let his expression drop until he finally hears the sound of heels clicking farther and farther down the hall.

Wonka has had his day in the sun. Or, would it be his night in the moon? At any rate, he no longer has need to go trick-or-treating. No need to celebrate the ridiculous holiday at all, for that matter.

He’s all right with that. Sincerely, he is.

Now, to get rid of that mixture he had been working on. He won’t bother tasting it—he can already smell how it is disgustingly, revoltingly, irreparably bitter.

[lethesomething]

Question

Furious speculation and spoilers incoming from season 3 and 4 of Voltron Legendary Defender. Also just... so many pictures of Lotor.

So guys. Serious question.

How friggin old is Lotor?

I have many questions about Lotor (and at least one of those is 'Can we get him out of that armor?") but the most prominent that comes to mind right now is how old is he supposed to be? Because a lot of things don't add up.

Let’s do the speculative math. Lotor is half Galra, half Altean. Altean lifespan seems to be roughly a thousand years, if we go by Coran standards. (he's 600 years old but seems to look and act middle-aged by human standards). Galra natural lifespan is unknown but personally I don't think it's as long as Altean. If the Alteans are space elfs, then the Galra are space orcs. They're more militaristic, they throw themselves at their death with surprising ease, giving me the feeling that life is considered less precious, and therefore the toll of years lost should be lower. If a human dies at forty, that’s a toll of thirty years they could have had. If you have a thousand years to live, it feels Very Wasteful to kamikaze yourself at nineteen. But that might just be me. The main takeaway, however, is that neither Galra nor Alteans live 10.000 years. That is, for pretty much anyone in the galaxy, an unnaturally long lifespan. The reason Zarkon and Haggar manage, is because they use quintessence to prolong their 'life' way past what is normal or even preferable.

Puting this under a cut because I overdid it again.

So. On to Lotor.

His natural lifespan should be about 1.000 years. Tops. He looks and acts fairly young. Like early twenties, by human standards. So 200? Thereabouts? But when the frig was this guy born? And how? There’s a few things that are just really off about the Zarkon family.

1. From what we see in their interactions, his parents don't seem to remember that they were married at some point. Whatever love or connection they had, seems to have been lost when they 'turned'. They certainly don't act like a married couple and in a very real way, I'm just having trouble picturing them in bed together, ok? Their power dynamic is just too weird at this point.

2.Lotor doesn't treat Haggar as his mother. He doesn't call her that, even though he addresses Zarkon as 'father'. He doesn't even acknowledge who she is. In the same way, Haggar talks to Zarkon about 'your son', not 'our son'. To Lotor, his mother is Honerva, Altean scientist. And he respects Honerva deeply. It's her work he's trying to continue by building the rift. He seems to care a lot more about that than the empire his father (and Haggar) are so desperately trying to preserve. But Honerva, at least that part of her identity, died 10.000 years ago.

So what the hell is going on.

Option one: he's like, so old

Consider Lotor being born 10.000 years ago, to Honerva, before the whole mess that destroyed the Galra home planet. That would give him 10.000 years to start hating his dad.

But. For him to still be alive in the series, he'd have to be given quintessence. His lifespan must have been expanded way past what was natural, in a manner similar to Zarkon and Haggar.

I don't buy that. Why? For one, it’s in his eyes.

Lotor, while being a Complete Asshat and just, the best kind of villain, has pupils. This is surprisingly significant.

Voltron tends to use eyes as a way into the soul. It’s a sort of way to show a person’s... for want of a better word, humanity. That’s why Haggar has yellow slits, Zarkon has purple slits.

#NoPupils. But that’s not how it used to be.

Lotor has his father's eyes, from back when his father wasn't fully evil. So what has changed? For Zarkon and Honerva, it was a trip to an alternate reality. But most modern day Galra have no pupils. Even the good guys, like Kolivan. That’s weird, innit? Now this may be some gene evolution thing, but I personally believe it has to do with quintessence. The purple evil stuff, and the use thereof. The Galra empire uses that stuff for Everything, it's like their electricity, but we've been shown quite vividly that it corrupts.

Meanwhile Lotor is 'the outcast brat'. He may have Altean blood to keep some of that corruption off, but he’s also staying as far away from headquarters with its druids and its massive stores of quintessence as possible. He's the rebel son traipsing around the outskirts of the galaxy with his pack of badass lady generals, all of whom have pupils, btw.

But of course, the eyes could just be part of his heritage or somesuch. Now let me add this tidbit of an argument.

He's too fabulous. No, listen. Being that old takes its toll, even if you're using eldritch magics and pure evil to prolong your lifespan. And the series shows this. Haggar and Zarkon aren't just old, they LOOK old. You can even see it in the god damned cat.

Kova went from cute fluffy pet to the galaxy's oldest feline, and while the kitty retained its pupils, it does SHOW that it's super old.

That creature is a skeleton covered in leather and ennui. Meanwhile Lotor is over here looking, well, young. Like he's in the prime of his life.

Option two: he truly is a young adult

If you consider that Lotor is like 200 years old, because he really is in the prime of his life, this opens up Many possibilities.

1. He was born the natural way.

This involves his parents getting it on, which, go you I guess. But it doesn’t account for the Very Strange family dynamic they seem to have.

2. In vitro fertilization (or whatever version of it the Voltron universe has)

Consider Lotor being Created in some way. Either as a pure test tube baby, or through some druid ritual or even using a surrogate mother (I have no clue about Galra biology and I do not wish to know). Somehow that makes So Much More sense.

It accounts for the lack of any motherly bond between Haggar and Lotor

It is certainly easier to imagine a lab working on this, than the strong but not exactly life-sustaining body of Haggar growing a baby.

You can just imagine Lotor being born and handed to a set of nannies and trainers. "Hello, you're the prince. Your father is emperor Zarkon, your mother is Honerva. Time to start playing space chess and learning to fight with a laser sword." And no one even mentions who Honerva is, because that seems to be like some kind of weird secret.

Shall we go deeper?

What if this Lotor isn't the first?

What if the original son was born and raised in the normal way, but died 10.000 years ago. What if every few centuries they try clone him, or recreate him, only for Lotor to disappoint his parents by rebelling and basically not being Zarkon.

What if the memory of her motherly instincts is what compels Haggar to keep trying? To put Lotor on the throne and to hope that he'll do it right this time?

I found Zarkon's reaction to his own son's actions very strange. This is your only son, and you're firing him like that? You're treating him with pure disdain? You're chasing him across the galaxy to kill him? The main difference between Zarkon and Lotor is that Lotor is cold and calculated, whereas Zarkon is emotional and passionate. Lotor is capable of changing sides, of scheming, of doing the rational thing for his continued survival. Zarkon, meanwhile, will drop everything to get the Black Lion, will go to alternate friggin realities to save his wife. It makes sense for Zarkon to try and reap bloody vengeance on his son for disappointing him, but not until he’s found out as a traitor.

But what if he's attempt number six? At this point he'd be nothing more than a product to Zarkon. Another failed subordinate who was given more chances than others, and who squandered them all.

Why is this important

The possibilities for Angst on all sides are just delicious in this scenario, so there’s that. But mostly, it opens up character development for our villain. It would mean Lotor is a total shit, yes, but an uncorrupted one. It would mean he does not have 10.000 years of evil juice running through his veins and like the eyes, it would mean he still has some humanity left to regain. I would personally not trust this fucker as far as I can throw him but... He could have the little redemption arc I’m sure a lot of us want. And I’m kinda hype for that.

[mst3kproject]

507: I Accuse my Parents

This is apparently tied with Hercules Unchained for Joel's favourite episode.  It begins with a surprisingly depressing short in which the narrator is downright proud of the exploitative and ecologically destructive nature of the vegetable industry.  Then we cheer up with the heartwarming tale of Jimmy, a young man who blunders obliviously into crime because his parents never hugged him – just one of the many excuses that only work for rich white kids!

Jimmy Wilson is a bright, popular student who likes to tell lies about his home life, and when you consider that his parents are drunks who hate each other, it's hard to blame him.  Things seem to be looking up when he gets a job at a shoe store and begins a whirlwind romance with a singer named Kitty Reed, but this only leads him further into trouble.  He gets mixed up in the criminal dealings of mobster Charles Blake, eventually having to flee from the law and ending up on trial for manslaughter.  At the trial he blames his parents' neglect for his behaviour, and the judge accepts it and suspends his sentence because he's a Good Kid With a Lot of Promise. In the world we live in, that will apparently get you forgiven for all kinds of things.

The final shot in the film is a card telling us that this movie will be sent overseas to entertain the troops in Europe.  What?  Why? This is a movie about how important it is to be involved in your child's life.  Why would you show that to soldiers who've been away from their wives and children for months and don't know when they'll be going home?  Way to guilt trip the guys who are trying to fight a war for you.

One thing you'll notice about this movie, even if only by reading a plot summary, is that it goes to great lengths to make sure Jimmy never actually does anything wrong on purpose.  He considers stealing from his boss at the shoe store when he's sent to the bank, but doesn't.  He plans to rob Al's diner, but Al talks him out of it. All the crimes he committed for Blake he did in blissful ignorance, believing he was merely a delivery boy.  He doesn't even realize he's not supposed to be dating Kitty, since he has no idea that she and Blake are in a committed relationship.  The writers seem to fear that if Jimmy were to knowingly commit a crime we would immediately lose all sympathy for him.  Rather than take that risk, they keep him in the dark about what's going on, and as Joel and the Bots repeatedly observe, he therefore comes across as rather dim.  This has the opposite of the intended effect, making it harder to sympathize with Jimmy as we feel he really ought to know better.

Something kind of similar is done with Kitty.  She works for Blake at the Paradise Nightclub, which he appears to own, but all we ever see her do for him is sing.  If she's involved in any of his criminal activities, we are not privy to it.  She is presented as somebody who is fully aware of the world she's fallen into and wanting out of it, and Jimmy, the innocent, good-hearted shoe salesman, may just be her ticket to a more wholesome life... yet she, too, avoids knowingly doing anything wrong outside of her illicit affair.  The writers probably did this so that we would feel she 'deserves' upper-class Jimmy, but again that's not quite the effect they achieve.  Instead, Kitty Reed ends up seeming a whole lot more interesting than her blandly nice beau, and I found myself thinking she could do way better!  I actually kind of want to see a movie about how she got where she is.

So that's I Accuse my Parents, a movie in which the main characters are criminals who never commit crimes.  It reminds me of The Sinister Urge with its PG pornography, even though the moral of the story is much more like The Violent Years.  As in The Violent Years, the movie is also rather contrived.  The situations we're seeing never feel natural – they're always things the film has set up on purpose to teach us a lesson.  Naive and responsible Jimmy just doesn't feel like the product of a broken home.  Sunny Kitty doesn't come across as a mobster's moll, except in the scene where she breaks Jimmy's heart, and then we know she's putting it on.  Al offering a job to the kid with a gun is absurd.  Jimmy's fall into crime happens as a series of coincidences.  These aren't real people living out real events, they're actors in a morality play, and we are never quite able to forget that.

Yet despite all that, for some weird reason I Accuse my Parents is actually a pretty engaging movie.  Even the Brains seem to have gotten into it, judging by the host sketches.  When the movie was boring we tended to get things like Monster A-Go-Go's random games of keepaway or Viking Women and the Sea Serpent's celebration of waffles, but almost all the sketches of I Accuse my Parents are based on the movie itself. How does such a silly, artificial film draw us in like that?

I think a lot of it has to do with the pacing.  Every scene in I Accuse my Parents actually does something, establishing character or moving the plot along.  Bits that could have been tedious, like Jimmy's deliveries or his time on the lam, are glossed over with montages.  The closest the film comes to wasting time is with Kitty's three songs, but even these serve a purpose.  They're not very memorable but they're not bad, either, and each is chosen to speak to both Kitty's and Jimmy's emotions in the moment they're performed.  By keeping both of them in sync with the lyrics, the movie helps build the bond between the two characters and makes us want to root for their relationship.

The entire purpose of I Accuse my Parents is, of course, the moral.  Unlike many of the movies featuring old-looking 'teenagers' that appeared on MST3K, I Accuse my Parents is not targeted at a teenage audience.  Instead, it's looking to say something to that audience's parents, reminding them that their children need them. The Violent Years tried to do the same thing, but failed.  I Accuse my Parents is a bit more successful, because of another thing it does right: it explores exactly how Jimmy's relationship with his parents works, and gives us specific examples of things they could have done differently.

In The Violent Years, Paula Parkins' parents are chronically absent, but what we do see of them suggests that they love her and are trying their best.  In I Accuse my Parents, the mother and father seem to have no interest in Jimmy whatsoever.  Paula is able to have reasonably warm conversations with both parents.  They don't know she's in trouble, but that's because she deliberately lies to them.  Jimmy, on the other hand, would be happy to tell his parents what's going on in his life, both the good and the bad, but he can't get a word in edgewise.  Paula's parents probably tried to help her when they found out about her life of crime.  Jimmy's parents don't even let him tell them he needs help.

Although the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are exaggerated in order to make the movie's point, there are moments in their relationship with Jimmy that feel uncomfortably familiar.  I think we can all remember a time when we tried to share something with a busy parent and were brushed aside.  We can also all remember lying awake in bed reliving an embarrassing moment over and over, thinking of all the million ways we could have prevented it if we'd seen it coming – which we feel we really should have.  These moments ring true, and that gives the entire movie a big boost.

The end of the movie suggests that Jimmy's parents have realized the error of their ways and will be more attentive to him in the future... but we are only told this, and so it doesn't make the impression that the earlier events did.  I would have kind of liked to see them find the note he left them, and realize that something's been going on, or maybe have them apologize to him at the end of the courtroom scene.  As it stands, his forgiveness of them for their neglect – and theirs of him for calling them out in front of the court – seems to come far too easy.

The other thing that seems to be missing from the movie is any sign of the resentment Jimmy displays in the courtroom scene, when he declares his parents should never have had a child.  I think this is supposed to be manifested in his compulsive lying about his home life, but that never actually seems bitter.  It's more of a fantasy world he has created for himself, and comes across as wistful rather than angry.  If Jimmy were in the habit of telling people that his mother never showed up at the PTA because she was chronically ill, or that his father wasn't around because he ran off with the nanny, that would seem resentful.  Writing an essay about how everthing at home is wonderful just makes it seem like Jimmy is unable to cope with reality.

I give a lot of left-handed compliments on this blog, and it feels really wishy-washy to say that I Accuse my Parents is pretty good for a bad movie.  I can't think of a better way to put it, though – like The Magic Sword or The Black Scorpion, it's not by any means a good movie and yet I quite enjoyed it. I probably won't watch it again, at least not without Joel and the bots at the bottom, but that's more because it's just not the sort of movie I watch than because it's particularly awful.  The music was fun and things moved along fast enough to keep me interested.  I even lost my place in my knitting a couple of times.  MST3K movies come a lot worse than this.

[breckens-blog]

hey vine ! i’m sunny & i’m always late but never fashionably. this is my son brecken, he is the absolute worst so um apologies in advance. i’m super excited to be here and to plot with each & every one of you. below you can find more info on brecken as well as some plot ideas !!

for starters brecken has been wealthy his entire life, his mother a rather successful actress and his father a businessman with nearly a billion dollar net worth. therefore his climb to fame was hardly a struggle, in fact there’s rumors his father bought his career.

now to address the rumors, his father didn’t exactly buy it, but his connections did help. he didn’t have to struggle to get discovered, instead his father merely called up a friend.

he has a rather successful music career and a rather large fan base. he puts a lot of work into his music. he prides himself in writing his own songs because he feels it gives him a better connection to his audience. he’s very open in his music, expressing what’s really on his mind, therefore if you played an important role in his life you’ve probably landed a song.

similar to harry, he’ll never confirm nor deny who the song is about, he actually finds it amusing hearing people’s theories.

he’s very fickle minded, he’ll make up his mind only to change it a thousand times more. he’s rather spontaneous and kind of lives life on the edge.

he’s sort of used to the tabloids and flashing lights due to his mother, but there are certain things he prefers to keep private. he’s more likely to hide a serious relationship where as he’s more flashy and public with flings or PR stunts. 

speaking of relationships, he’s horrible at them. he’s had one serious relationship throughout his career — one fans speculate almost every new song is about, but outside of that he’s mostly known for brief flings that burn fast.

he’s typically rather tolerable, though he can get easily irritated. he just has low patience at times but he’s really trying his best.

his childhood nanny ( nan as he calls her ) is probably his favorite person. you’ll probably hear him mention her often. she practically raised him and he’s very appreciative of her. 

he sort of feels lost at this stage in his life. he’s living what most consider the dream and what he’s always believed to be his, yet he’s unsatisfied. he feels selfish for that so he’ll likely never admit it ( maybe in a song. )

also this is random but peppermint mochas are a comfort drink for him.

he’s got an abundance of pets, two dogs ( a husky named rocky and a pug named buster ), an iguana ( iggy lizalea ) , a rabbit ( trixie ), a cat ( mittens ), and a duck ( sunday ). he really just loves animals, like boy wants more.

and yeah, i don’t know he’s a mess but like, love him, maybe?

possible connections:

hookups: pretty self explanatory. these could be past or present, the point being brecken sucks at relationships so these were probably brief flings.

best friend: everyone needs one, this is someone he trusts with his life and would literally do anything for.

frenemies: hollywood is fake, give me super rich kids with nothing but fake friends.

protective friendship: could go either way tbh, maybe they’re protective of each other.

PR stunt: fake relationships for the cameras, maybe in reality they hate each other, maybe there’s a real budding romance.

rumor sparker: someone who everyone believes to be romantically linked to him, there’s endless romance theories but in reality they’re just friends and it doesn’t go deeper than that ( unless the chemistry is wild, then plot twist: everyone was right and they were oblivious )

muse: someone he’s in love with the idea of. this person has inspired songs without even realizing it’s about them. it’s a silent admiration ( i might be pickier on this plot but i just think it’s really cute )

enemies: because not everyone’s gonna like you

ex friends: because shit happens and even the best of friends fall out

cousins: more like siblings? competitive as hell ? the two different dynamics could be interesting either way.

this got so long, if you made it to the end bless you. feel free to like this or slide into my dms if any of this interests you or you’re down to plot.

[kwain-itinerant-meddler]

Okay, so I saw this video on Facebook shared by one of my... powerfully Republican acquaintances. I’m gonna rant for a bit.

So, the video was part of a segment called the Tipping Point. This woman started talking about transgender people, which is, "a man who identifies as a woman or a woman who identifies as a man," and stated, falsely, that as a society we have come to terms and accepted this. Wish that were true, but it isn't. Next, she went on to talk about a white woman who identified as a black woman and even was in the NAACP. From there, she went on to talk about how a woman pour some chemical in her eyes because she identified as a blind person, and a man who hacked off a limb because he identified as an amputee. Then, lastly, she went on to talk about a man posting an ad on craigslist for a nanny because he identified as a child. This woman equated all these things. Listing them subsequently as Transgender, Transracial, Transabled, and Transaged. She then discussed how ridiculous it was for a child to order alcohol for themself and be denied if they 'identified,' as a 21 year old person, and that if we start basing things on emotions and not facts, where do we end up as a society. Well, that's the thing. One of these things is factual and the rest aren't. Well, one's debateable, but I'll get to that. The fact remains that gender is a societal construct that, while typically assigned as one's birth sex, is independent of one's birth sex. Race, while also a societal construct, is based on a the amount of melanin in a person's skin, lineage, heritage, and similar factors that I won't get into. Race is therefore something that cannot change and depends inherently on biological factors. "Transabled," is technically debateable, because the mutilation is sort of making them disabled, but I believe, mostly, they just need some kind of help. Age is another thing based on biology. In fact, the age for alcohol, her common argument, is set based on a biological component. It was based on the development of the decision making portion of the brain, which was believed to not be fully developed until the age of 21 (in reality it's closer to 25, but that's beside the point). In conclusion, the problem with these arguments is that two of these things are based on biology, one is based on biology/circumstances, and the fourth, gender, is based on (excuse my poor phrasing, I can't peg down the word I want) societal expectations and culture/psychology. Any suggestions on better ways to phrase any of this are appreciated. Any hate will be ignored. Just wanted to get my thoughts out there.