#this edit gave you at least two clues for where I went to university

[madrigaljail]

Since these tags are basically "say EPCOT one more time" I will say I did go to Magic Kingdom....maybe three times?? not counting that time when I was four and my mother took me on Space Mountain and I spent the entire time weeping and screaming and wanting to go home to my cat. Also MGM Studios maybe twice and Animal Kingdom once because why go there when I had an annual pass to Busch Gardens for like $50 and could pop in to ride the log flume between classes at college.

[buckaroundandfindout]

always see posts criticizing the therapy scenes in FATWS and like

I ain't sayin' y'all are wrong, absolutely tf not, but hear me out—

have you ever had therapy WITH someone who absolutely did not want to be there, was uncooperative, and did not give one whit about the homework the therapist asked them to do?

I'm not claiming Raynor is a good example of a therapist whatsoever, but Bucky's attitude towards it lives in the realm of believable for me, as someone who was a firsthand witness to when therapy was like pulling teeth, with someone who didn't even want to be there in the first place, let alone gave a flying fuck about what the therapist was saying.

I think that's the key, folks say it's a bad depiction for anyone who ever intends to go— i read the whole thing as bucky once again forced to do something he doesn't wanna do: therapy edition

and so it makes me wonder, what does a therapist do for someone who is literally forced/mandated to be there, and is Uncooperative™ and kind of antagonistic about it??? again, not really cutting raynor or the writing team slack necessarily, but I don't know what it looks like to have, essentially, two unwilling parties doing something they do not want to be doing at the behest of the state… and have that look like some semblance of mental health help? that this character can still grow from (or in spite of) by the end of the story

does it look like what we got? is there someone who has experienced that, that can weigh in? are there therapists on Tumblr who work with people who do not want therapy but MUST go anyway? idk, man.

it sounds like that situation would be problematic, at best. which… I mean. what we got seems problematic. was that a bad creative decision in the first place? maybe. but because something we witness is problematic doesn't exactly mean its bad writing, nor does it mean that there's some nefarious or ignorant nonsense going on behind the scenes

all I can say is there isn't a single universal experience for trauma & recovery, so maybe we fucking hate it but consider that it's possible that it's not exactly incorrect.

fwiw the bit I felt in my soul is the sam/buck part where bucky is like "if he's wrong about you, then he's wrong about me". that cut deep, real af. I can explain how that specific issue is Fucking Accurate six ways to Sunday, but the rest of it? no clue. can't help ya. I'm grossly unqualified to have an opinion, bc I went to therapy because I wanted to. so I can't relate to either of 'em and I ain't gonna throw stones

also kindly remember that Marvel is not a person, it feels no responsibility, it's a corporation egregiously protected in this country in ways that real humans with feelings are not. it's like, a meeting of a zillion people on fucking zoom who have to agree on a creative direction, and argue their points to another entire team who exclusively want to talk in terms of dollar signs because that is how they get paid, who also need to agree. no one ever agrees. please be nice to creative professionals bc there's at least one person who raised their hand to bring up your point & they likely got shot down or talked over and is likely being grossly underpaid (see: strike) and they don't deserve your ire

block me to hell if you must, but I think its naive to assume that the hundreds of people who touched the show were all collectively either willfully ignorant or maliciously negligent about how sensitive those scenes were gonna be.

bucky does deserve the best, tho, and I hope he gets it

[imamotherfuckingstar-lord]

Damaged Souls

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: dark humor, cussing, loss of parent. 

A/N: A comfort fic for myself/ me dealing with my dad’s passing. NOT EDITED, sorry for mistakes. 

Summary: While waiting to meet with Steve, Bucky meets a woman trying to skateboard. 

The park was twelve steps away from where Bucky parked, waiting patiently for his usually on time friend. He leaned against his hood, a cup of stale gas station coffee in hand. The plan was to meet Steve for some down time - he hadn’t gotten much time off from work lately. Sam and he were doing some intense intel ventures that brought him away from home in weekly intervals. Now that his oldest friend was, well, his oldest friend - he tried to see the aging gentleman as often as possible. 

His cell phone rang and he picked it up to Steve apologizing for running late. “I guess old age has its disadvantages.”

“Come, on, punk,” Bucky teased, eyes following a woman who was walking passed him. She held a skateboard in hand, a duffle bag thrown over her shoulders. “By the time you get down here, I’ll have gray hair too.”

Steve laughed and promised to be there as soon as he could. “Go grab us a bench, before they’re all taken.”

“Jesus, you really are old.”

“Respect your elders,” Steve coaxed, laughing as his dog barked for his attention. “Be there soon, Buck.”

The friends hung up and Bucky sighed, pushing himself off the car hood. He walked further into the park, sipping on his coffee and enjoying the fresh air. Admittedly, he was tired and a little run down. He was truly looking forward to meeting up with Steve, so he wasn’t upset that he had to wait a little longer. It was nice being out, so he took his time looking for a bench and ended up finding one near a basketball court. No one was playing, so he sat down and relaxed. 

That’s when he noticed you walking up to the court; he wondered if you were going to play alone but saw the skateboard in your hand. You were the woman who had passed him in the parking lot - he watched as you threw the duffel bag down at the edge of the court. Drinking his coffee, he focused on you - observing as you put on knee and elbow pads on. That was more protection than Sam wore on missions, the thought made him laugh a little too loud because you turned his way. Bucky quickly took a sip of his coffee, pretending to not notice you.

You looked away and continued to secure yourself before moving to the middle of the court. Embarrassed, Bucky tried to not stare, cursing his friend to hurry up so he wouldn’t look like such a creeper. He attempted to think of the things he wanted to tell Steve, mainly asking him for advice on how to rein Sam in but those thoughts were momentary. His eyes quickly went back to watching you attempt to skateboard. 

He noticed how unsure you were at first, getting on the board and kicking off but stopping yourself right after. Personally, he never rode a skateboard in his life - he already spent too much time off the ground and he could only imagine how silly he would look. So, it was interesting to watch someone attempting to learn - he was living vicariously through you, whoever you were. Feeling a bit more relaxed as you noticed him less and less as the time went by, Bucky watched freely and even felt excited for you when things started to go smoothly. You were balancing yourself perfectly and even picking up speed, and as if his promising thoughts were jinx - he watched as the skateboard halted and you flew backwards. 

Bucky couldn’t stop himself, leaving his coffee on the bench as he raced forward. You had fallen on your back and when he got to you, he was shocked to see you were laughing on the ground.

“Miss, are you okay?”

You blinked a few times before waving a hand in the air. “I’m fine, just...my ass hurts.”

Bucky laughed and offered up a hand. “Let me help you up, it looked like…”

“I ate shit,” you murmured, letting him pull you off the ground. Rubbing the back of your head, he asked if you hit it. “Not hard at all, I guess that’s what I get for being 30 and thinking I was Tony freaking Hawk.”

Bucky had no clue who you were talking about, but he just smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay, if it helps, before the fall it looked like you were doing great.”

Reaching down for the skateboard, you shrugged. “I guess, it’s really not that hard but my body felt that fall.”

“It looked brutal,” he admitted, pointing to the bench he was occupying. “Maybe you should sit down for a bit?”

You looked to the bench then back to the man in front of you - he was attractive, that much was obvious but his smile was kind and that’s what reeled you in. You wondered if he did this often - lingered around the park for silly women who did silly things to occupy their depression. 

“I probably should, let me go get my bag.” 

Bucky watched as you started to walk away but stopped, turning to tell him your name. He took the hand you held out and shook it lightly. “I’m Bucky.”

“Thanks for watching me fall on my ass, Bucky,” you amused, nodding to where your bag sat. “I’ll meet you at the bench.”

He watched as you left to retrieve your bag, scratching his head and praying that in his old age, Steve would take even longer to get to the park. Jogging back to the bench, Bucky sat down and picked up his coffee just as you approached. You were limping a little and he had to hide his smile as you sat down, tossing the bag down to the ground along with the skateboard.

“I have to ask,” he said, trying to get the conversation going. “Why skateboarding?” 

You let out a low laugh but your smile faded quickly; he recognized the pain in your eyes and he felt guilty for asking such an innocent question. 

“Well, my dad passed a few months ago,” you explained, feeling the constant lump in your throat forming. “And...it was one of those things, where life just feels empty. So, here I am, trying to cure my depression one new hobby at a time.”

Bucky felt a sting in his throat as you shrugged and laughed - god, he knew that feeling all too well. He lost all his family and the hell he had been put through since then, had crushed his soul. “Sorry about your father.”

“Don’t be sorry, you didn’t kill him.”

It was apparently raw, the false sense of humor in your voice - trying to deal with your pain with dark jokes. He could tell you used it often by the shrug you gave, paired with a nervous laugh. Bucky just grinned back and asked what number hobby was skateboarding.

“Shit, number six. I’ve done knitting, rug making, yoga, day drinking, throwing myself off buildings,” you laughed as you rattled off random things. Bucky grinned and shook his head, asking if you had found something worth sticking to. 

“I kinda like skateboarding, just gliding around feels free. At least...I don’t know,” you said, embarrassment written on your face. Here you were, showcasing your dead dad personality to a complete stranger….again. The difference was that this time, the person wasn’t walking away confused and unsettled by you - a person so terribly broken all she could do was just laugh at her life. Laugh loud and abruptly because it was either laughing or crying, and fuck, were you sick of crying. 

“I understand,” Bucky said quietly, half smiling as he stared down at the to go cup in his hands. “It feels like you’re just standing still while everything around you keeps on living, like you’re frozen in time…”

“Exactly,” you practically yelled, holding back as you laughed a little. “I mean, shit, can I bitch get a break?”

Bucky’s eyes widened at your vulgar humor and you apologized. “Sorry, I just - I blurt things out without thinking, more than ever now. “

He held up a hand and grinned. “No need to apologize, it’s actually refreshing.”

“Thanks,” you smiled, glancing down at your cell. “I have to go, I just decided to randomly come to practice but I need to go meet my sister. We have our weekly crying sessions over ramen and slushies.”

You reached down for the duffel bag and skateboard, and he watched as you took off the knee and elbow pads, stuffing them in the bag. Zipping the bag, you stood up and groaned. “Yeah, my ass is going to be sore tomorrow.”

“Ice it,” Bucky teased, standing up with you. “I’m glad you’re okay...it was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, again, thanks for witnessing my downfall,” you remarked, unable to move. This was different, it felt strange and a part of you didn’t want to leave the bench or this stranger. Not wanting to miss your chance and this possible attractive sign from the universe, you decided to make a move. “So, I’m going to be coming back here tomorrow around noon to practice some more…”

Bucky felt relief in his chest as he smiled over at you. “I’ll bring a bucket of ice.”

Laughing, you pointed a finger at him. “That was a good one, I better go - my sister might commit suicide if I’m not there on time and I can’t let her go see our dad first. I’m very competitive like that.”

Your eyes watched for Bucky’s reaction and when he shook his head with a chuckle, you just knew he understood. Whatever he had gone through, although not the same as yours or maybe it was, it definitely was a pain the two of you could connect with and that was enough reason to show up the next day. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he nodded, his smile small and kind. 

Holding back a smile, you started to walk away but turned to wave at him. He waved back, although you had to admit, he looked pretty dorky. Laughing, you turned around and nearly bumped into an elderly gentleman with his dog.

“Oh, sorry!”

He smiled and shook his head. “No problem, sweetheart, have a nice day.”

Usually a sweetheart from anyone irritated you but his sweetheart was kind and surprisingly genuine. Smiling at him, you left the park somewhat happy for the first time in a long time.

…

Bucky watched as Steve made his way to the bench, patting the seat next to him. “About time, old man.”

Ignoring the comment, Steve sat down, whistled for his dog to sit, and nudged Bucky in the ribs - he was still pretty strong for a man of his age. “She seems nice.”

Not surprised at all, he laughed. “So you saw that whole thing?”

Steve shrugged. “I saw enough, are you going to see her again.”

Thinking of the sadness in your eyes and the familiar reflection he saw in the mirror every morning, he glanced over to the basketball court. He had felt lonely for so long and while he wasn’t going to depend on anyone else or put his own baggage on others, but something about you felt interconnected. 

Two damaged souls, it sounded very dramatic but hell, his whole life had been dramatic. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said through a smile. “I’m definitely going to see her again.”

[khaleesiofalicante]

OK I GOT 5 HOURS OF SLEEP LAST NIGHT WHICH IS PRETTY OK IG (I did stay up to read the fic-) BOTH MY TESTS WENT LIKE SHIT, I HAD AN ANXIETY ATTACK IN PROGRAMMING CLASS BECAUSE BY TEACHER IS A LITTLE SHIT WHO KEPT ON YELLING AT ME WHEN I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND SOMETHING AND I SPENT LUNCH ALONE BUT AT LEAST NOW IM ALONE WITH MY LAPTOP SO YAYAYAYYA

first of all, this chapter right here is my comfort chapter from now on. i said what i said. I will be rereading it again and again just because i can. it was PERFECTION

here's me going crazy at 2 am yesterday.

MAGNUS' CHAPTER

LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO

AHHHHHHH IT'S THEIR ANNIVERSARY

SCREAM

oh

alec shaved his beard because it made him look older

RAFAEL WAS SO UPSET AFTER THE MEXICO ATTACK BECAUSE OF ANJALI RIGHT??

magnus and alec are the oblivious parents istg

“Are you decent?” Max yelled. “I don’t want to be traumatized again.”

“Hey! We agreed not to talk about that!” Alec yelled back.

Im not even surprised at this point

“Happy anniversary, bapa!” Rafael kissed him on the cheek and handed him the flowers.

“Where are my flowers?” Alec asked.

Rafael plucked a rose from the bouquet and threw it at Alec. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, son,” Alec mumbled.

IM WHEEZING

DAVID BAKES

“David made it,” Max said shyly. "

Oh,” Alec replied and then shrugged. “Well, the icing could be a little sweeter I think.”

Ever since Max started dating, Alec had become incredibly protective. Alec liked David of course – it was impossible to find someone who didn’t. But that didn’t mean Alec approved.

And it didn’t help that the blond boy was absolutely terrified of Alec.

ALEC STOP TEASING HIM

THE BOY IS ALREADY SCARED

“I don’t know,” Alec analysed the card. “David used too much glitter.”

“Since when do you have a problem with excessive glitter?” Max demanded.

ALEC

“I didn’t use him!” Max huffed. “He was thoroughly compensated for his efforts!”

“Compensated how?” Alec asked.

“Uh,” Max said. “With donuts.”

when i saw donuts i immediately thought of rose and luisa from jtv

iykyk

but should i continue the show? i got tired of jane continuously embarrasing herself

“You expect us to follow rules?” Alec asked in surprise. “In our own home? On our anniversary?”

The warlock boy grinned wickedly before leaning close to Alec.

“You better do it, or I will tell everyone about your secret,” Max whispered.

Alec blinked at that.

the secret...

I DONT LIKE HOW MANY THINGS POPPED INTO MY HEAD

is highschool musical that bad? i havent watched it. should i?

what if i cried

i just wanna hug alec??? but i cant say it'll be ok because it wont

“Is that why you are not attending?” Magnus grinned at his friend. “Or is it because you are terrified of Georgia?”

“That child is the reincarnation of Christopher Lightwood!” Ragnor complained. “I heard she made explosives out of demon ichor! Who makes explosions out of demon ichor?”

RAGNOR IS PROBABLY GETTING FLASHBACKS

THESE STUPID FUCKING BITCHES

how tf do you think we have survived huh??

medicine that's how

vaccines, anti biotics and what not

stop being close-minded and fucking do it

ok i know the risk is great

BUT OTHERWISE THEY ALL DIE

it was different for warlocks. The Shadow World was their universe. The nephilim kept it safe. At one point in their lives, they had learned to coexist with them, out of necessity and out of obligation.

And now here they were – working together in the name of friendship and love.

how things change...

what

say what

the causes are what

ok let's not jump to conclusions

im fucking crying wtf

alec doesnt deserve this shit

all he's done is make the world a better place

hes worked so hard on this

RAZIEL CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF

what am i supposed to say to my parents if one of them comes to check on me and im sitting here crying at 2 am

He didn’t want to believe in a reality that would punish Alec. Alec who only wanted to do what is good and right.

Alec was who was losing his hope and strength every passing day. Alec who was struggling. Alec who was turning to desperate measures to cope with all the stress.

please alec

no please

THE ANGELS ARE BITCHES

Because if Magnus found out Raziel was the one causing all this pain for Alec, he would march up to heaven and set the bastard on fire himself.

AND I'LL GO WITH HIM

KNEW THE SPY WAS LIVVY

AWW RAGNOR LIKES SELENA THATS SO SWEET

blue and gold

STOP IT IM CRYING AGAIN

The shadowhunter was a good influence on him. Magnus hoped Alec would see it sooner rather than later.

HUH

HUHU

HUH

omg

GIGI GETTING A SIBLING

“Max isn’t allowed to do a lot of things,” Magnus chuckled. “But he does them anyway.”

thats my boi

GASP

]THE NECKLACE

rafael is growing into the consul voice

they grow up so fast

nope nope he's still the little 5 year old

voice cracking what do you mean he's 20

im glad hes happy with mila. or is he...?

Magnus had deduced as much. Alec lived in his beautifully oblivious world. But Magnus noticed.

He noticed the hickeys. He noticed the late-night visits. He noticed the tense phone calls.

well thank god there's at least one non-oblivious person (alec i love you so much but you are very very oblivious)

“What’s stopping you then?” Magnus asked.

"2554 miles,” Rafael chuckled sadly.

me with all my online friends

probably more miles

Magnus tried to do the math but promptly gave up.

me

But Alec did lie though. Magnus pushed the thought away.

NOT NOW

LET ME LIVE IN PEACEFUL OBLIVION

HUSH

“Except melt it?” Rafael chuckled.

“Yes,” Magnus chuckled back. “As you can see, the bar is extremely low in the Lightwood family.”

AHHIUCCDSKUHDCV

i have no clue what the words describing the outfit are

time to google

OK PRETTY

Fifteen years. Fifteen years of loving and Alec still made his heart stutter.

dont do this to me right now I WILL CRY

“What the hell?” Max exclaimed. “Why are you all dressed up?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s my anniversary,” Alec chuckled.

Max-

Fifteen years. Fifteen years and Magnus still took Alec’s breath away.

HJCSDHJBJDHSGCDYGJVVC JHVDFYMJ

it's not funny MY EYES ARE WATERING

“Bapak is a good looking one in the family,” Rafael pointed out. “You are the chaotic one and I am the smart one.”

“What am I then?” Alec asked dryly. “A sack of potatoes?”

“You’re the sexy one,” Magnus grinned. “A sexy sack of potatoes.”

yes.

Alec grinned back and leaned forward. Magnus put his hands around Alec’s neck and kissed him. He kissed Alec with all the love he had inside his heart.

Just like the first time. Just like the hundredth time. Just like the thousandth time.

Because with Alec, every kiss mattered. Every single one.

muffled sob

“Stop making out, oh my god!” Max groaned.

Magnus sensed a pillow coming their way but Rafael caught it before it hit them.

“Max, stop!” Rafael scolded. “You will wrinkle dad’s suit and ruin bapak’s hair! I spent hours ironing both!”

why is max me when i see people display affection in front of me

ALSO RAFAEL HKUIUIDCSKIHUDFVHJDFVHU

“They are here,” Rafael said. “You two better look exactly the way you did when I left with Max or I will raise hell.”

IM SCREAMING

Selena was wearing a blue crop top with the words “MIND YOUR OWN UTEREUS” written in gold.

i need that top

DAVID'S SHIRT IS THE COLOR OF MAX'S MAGIC

AHH ISABELLE DOESNT KNOW SHE'S PREGNANT YET

The argument of “who gave the best gift” had started when Jace and Izzy had gotten drunk on vodka. It didn’t help that Alec had gotten drunk as well. All three Lightwood siblings had then proceeded to have an argument about who had the best spouse. The whole night had been drunken chaos. Magnus, Clary and Simon had let them have it since the Lightwood siblings had a tendency to carry the world on their shoulders even when nobody asked them. They rarely ever let loose ever since their worlds had plunged into sickness and demon attacks. Especially Alec. So, Magnus had let his husband be that 18-year-old boy again. The boy who got drunk and fought with his siblings and sang songs about Magnus’ pretty eyes.

OH MY GOD THE CHAOS

Georgia considered that. “I’m not allowed to melt it, right?”

“No,” they all replied in chorus.

LET GIGI MELT IT

SELENA IM SO PROUD OF YOU

“Dad,” Max said. “Can you keep a picture of me wearing this necklace in your office?”

“Why?” Rafael asked.

“I think it will piss off the boomers,” Max giggled.

“Nice!” Lexi grinned. “A downworlder wearing a shadowhunter heirloom? They will lose their heads. Uncle Alec, you must do it.”

“I will do you one better. I will hang a tapestry,” Alec chuckled.

YASSS I CANT WAIT FOR THE SHADOWHUNTERS TO BE PISSED

AWW THEY DIDNT KNOW THE NECKLACE USED TO BELONG TO MAGNUS

he actually gave to camille first-

Why couldn’t this boy just cause chaos during his travel year like the rest of them? Why did he actually study and do his research as recommended?

why would you NOT study and research during your travel year????

oh shit

well well well

david bby stfu

i love you but pls stop speaking for all our sakes

“Holy shit,” Max said. “It is expensive then!”

“Don’t pawn the ruby!” Rafael warned.

MAX NO-

OH THE STONE COMES FROM EDOM

oh no

pls dont fight

oh so i was wrong about magus confronting him from that snippet

all you need to know is im sobbing right now and grammarly is the only thing making this coherent

dont mind me just

NO I FORGOT ABOUT MAX AND DAVID

GET BACK IN THE ROOM YOU IDIOTS

don't do this to me at 3 am

OK THE DILF PART

thank you for adding light into my life again

(me while editing this: today really isn't my day huh? i just slipped in rainwater outside my balcony because I heard rain and ran there. now my knee and back hurt and I think I sprained (?) my toe-

ANYWAY

wait im gonna go check out the rain and then continue editing this

ok i got bored of the rain)

that made me laugh through my tears

“Objectively good looking?” Jace snorted. “Excuse you, but my parabatai is smoking hot! He is a freaking prize, okay? If we had a magazine for hot shadowhunters, you would be on the cover page. Every single issue.”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Alec interrupted. “Magnus, are you happy? Now all my friends have told me I am pretty.”

“I said smoking hot,” Jace corrected.

“We are not being biased,” Clary pointed out. “It is the general consensus, Alec.”

“It’s true,” Lexi said. “So many people have asked me for your number, Uncle Alec. And I would have given it to them if I wasn’t worried about being turned into a marshmallow.”

LEXI DUHDUGHUDFCUHKVDFUIKFDU

“Dad, I don’t know why you are so worried,” Max said in a bored tone. “You’re a told DILF.”

David choked on his champagne and Jace patted him on the back.

“What the hell is a DILF?” Alec demanded.

“Oh, I know this one!” Jace said excitedly. “It means Dashing and Irresistible Looking Father. Max is right, you are a total DILF.”

“Mr. Herondale-” David raised a hand.

“I heard one of the shadowhunters in their travel year calling me a DILF too,” Jace said proudly.

THAT IS NOT WHAT DILF MEANS OH MY GOD

“It’s not a rumour,” Selena spoke up and passed her phone. “There is a group chat at Scholomance just to thirst after you.”

add me to it

ALL THE COMMENTS I CANT BREATHE

“Alec Lightwood can run me over with a Maserati and I would thank him.”

“Give me that,” Izzy grabbed the phone and started giggling. “Petition for Consul Alec Lightwood-Bane to stab me with his mortal sword.”

“Isabelle!” Alec hissed, cheeks flaming. “Stop it!”

“I want one!” Jace grabbed the phone now. “By the Angel!”

“Read it!” the kids yelled in chorus.

“I would gladly let Consul Lightwood-Bane inspect my mortal instruments,” Jace chuckled and threw the phone at David.

David shook his head vehemently and threw it at Max.

“My body is just a hole for Alec Lightwood,” Max read out loud and started laughing so hard that he fell off his chair.

Lexi grabbed the phone and giggled. “I want the Consul to strip off my runes among other things.”

She passed the phone to Gigi, who looked at the phone and look at Alec.

“Uncle Alec,” the girl said. “This person wants you to crush them with your massive archer arms.”

“Give me that,” Rafael grabbed it now. “Aw, this one is a classic, dad. Alec Lightwood turned me gay.”

He threw the phone at Simon, who stared the screen and looked up. “Uh, I don’t think I can read this one out loud in front of the kids.

“Is this the one about the basement?” Selena chuckled and Simon nodded.

WHAT'S THE BASEMENT ONe

TELL ME

AWW GIGI AND LEXI PUTTING MAKEUP ON DAVID AND MAX RECORDING IT

google translator time

oooo Rafael's gonna talk with Mila

Magnus you're such a good father

seriously

“Sometimes things are just sad. So, you need to let yourself be sad.”

YES

SAY IT LOUDER

THEY ARE UNDER THE BED

AHHH MAX AND DAVID

DAVID CALLED HIM MY ANGEL IN FRENCH

Alec and Magnus hiding under the bed and spying on them is just-

Jace had tried to give Max the shovel talk and had gotten a little too emotional.

of course, he did smh I love him so much

“David doesn’t need a shovel talk,” Alec smiled. “He knows what would happen to him if he hurts my son.”

David gulped. “You will throw me into the silent city?”

“I will ask me husband to portal you to hell,” Alec said – Consul Voice. “We have relatives there.”

the beloved relatives yes

“Goodnight,” Jace gave them a salute. “Have fun inspecting Magnus’ mortal instruments.”

JACE

OH SO THE QUESTION WAS ABOUT SMOKING

damn it

oh my god guys he said he'll stop smoking

just lemme have this moment

my boy's lungs will be intact

HIS LUNGS WILL BE OK

“I can’t wait to see all the messages on the chat after that,” Magnus giggled.

Alec looked up. “I’m more than a tall glass of water, Magnus!”

SCREAMING

In his dream, he saw them again. But they weren’t smiling this time.

what

wait

THE PROPHETIC DREAMS

nope nope nope

Nah I don't know what you're talking about

haha

damn, I think I really hurt my back...

OK BUT THE IMMORTALITY ANGST???? WAS SO SO GOOD???? I know it makes me cry but is it bad that I'm always so excited for angst written by you because of HOW GOOD it is????

"When I die I will love you from my grave" I NEED THIS ON MY FOREHEAD OH MY GOD I LOVE THESE TWO SO SO MUCH

alright I need to get something for my back and my knee (I'm home alone so this will be fun)

OK, I THINK THE NEXT CHP WILL BE ANJALI'S POV I JUST FEEL IT!!! I miss my girl so much I hope she's doing ok. Jaime too...

I'm rereading all of these chapters after chapter 10 because why not. Bye!!

OKAY I AM GLAD YOU LIKED IT BUT I AM ALSO DEEPLY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR HEALTH.

I hope your knee and back feels better soon!

also fuck that teacher yelling something doesn't make people understand it any better ugh dumb piece of shit anyway screw that person.

I hope you get some good rest and recovery from this rollercoaster of a day.

Take care!

[hitodama89]

I've had a quite an action-filled week, but in like... The most boring adult-way possible. I still wanna write about it because hey, I am a boring adult after all.

Most of my time has been spent working with my balcony. I've been cleaning it thoroughtly because despite having closeable windows it gathers a ton of this certain sort of nasty "city dust" in it (more on that later). The first incidence that stressed me to hell and back was when I was washing its floor and suddenly the neighbor who lives below me starts yelling that water is leaking to their balcony. I tried to ask several times where exactly was it coming from so I could actually do something about it, but instead of giving any sort of helpful answer they just kept mumbling about their annoyance as loud as I think is possible to mumble. After I had finished the cleaning I went to their door with a package of cookies in order to apologise, but they didn't even open the door. Finally I ended up just writing them an apology letter because there wasn't really anything else I could've done. Fortunately that whole ordeal hasn't escalated any further since that.

After that it was time to try to fix the issue of the city dust. The thing is my balcony hasn't always had windows, they were installed a few years ago when the whole house got some remodeling done. Buuut the windows weren't exactly a perfect fit: between their frame and the balcony's handrail is this weird ~5-10 cm gap that has let anything from bugs, snow, rain and that dang dust in. So after suffering from it for several years I, uh, took the matter into my own hands and filled the gap with this... Sprayable, hardening foam thing, god knows what it's actually called even in Finnish let alone in English. After hardening it resembles styrox quite a lot? It should keep the forces of nature out quite well but it can also be dug out in case the landlord for some reason hates it and wants it gone. (The apartment complex is owned by the city I live in, not by some individual person, and usually they don't really care what you do as long as it is reverseable. I highly doubt they will ever even notice it, especially as I'm not planning to move out from here in the foreseeable future. And if they do notice it and hate it, they'd either ask me to take it off and/or give me a fine of some sort, which, okay, I can live with that risk.)

So I spray the foam which is again scary and weird and stressful, but I get it done. And then I take the next day to tidy it up, scraping it off from surfaces it doesn't belong to. At this point I'm tired and exhausted more than in a good long while, but I'm far from being finished! So what the heck even is the point of all this: why am I doing it now exactly? Well, the first reason is that for the last week or so it has been abnormally warm in Finland, temperature rising to heights that normally belong to June. The second reason stems directly from that: it reminded me of how much I've wanted to spend more time in my balcony during summers, but I've just had really no comfortable furniture in it. And that reminded me of a purchase I already tried to make during last autumn, but I ran into SEVERAL online stores that claimed to have the product I was looking for in storage but when I had already paid for it, they sent me an email stating that they didn't actually have it for real and that they'd return my money.

Now that the season was more optimal, I decided to try again: I bought myself a sun sofa. I don't know if that's what it actually called in English because even in Finland stores sell it under various names, but basically it's this nest-like round sofa thing with a raisable canopy. It's meant to be kept outside so it should be perfectly fine to keep it in my balcony, especially now that the stupid gaps have been filled (which is the reason I did it). It costed A LOT of money, likely as much as the rest of my furniture combined, as the vast majority of them have been bought used or as the absolutely cheapest option available. But like... I've basically had a whole small room I have barely been using, so I figured turning it into actually comfortable space for me would be worth it.

Okay, so at this point I had cleaned up the balcony, fought with the neighbor, filled the gaps under the windows, tidied the filler foam and ordered the nest sofa. The sofa had already been sent but according to tracking it hadn't moved out of the capitol area yet, so I thought I'd have time to paint the foam to make it less noticeable before the sofa arrives. I was wrong - this morning a confused post delivery man called me that he can't find my house (I don't really know how because I heard the voice of a GPS on the background) so I went out to wave at him. He dumped the sofa out of his car, couldn't even bother to lift it into the staircase even thought it was raining outside, and left. And I was like okay let's do this, let's get this bad boy into the third floor where I live!

I couldn't fit it into the elevator. I tried, back and forth, for god knows how long. Finally my hands were so shaky and weak that I couldn't even lift the sofa anymore and I have literally no clue what I would've done if it wasn't for the fact that my parents live in the same city and I could scream for them to come and save me. (I don't exactly love doing that, but what else was I supposed to do?) So until they arrived I just sat there in my staircase, sweaty as a pig and faint from exhaustion, with a god damn sofa in the middle of it all. Finally they came and we managed to smash that problem child into the elevator and inside my apartment.

And then that fucking thing didn't fit through my balcony door. Oh believe me, I had measured everything meticulously and it should've fit through; I don't know if the packaging was different from the promised or what, but there was no way to get it in. But good thing I had plans B, C and even fucking D ready! They were, in that order:

Take apart this... Metallic rod thing that prevents the door from opening fully so it doesn't hit the wall behind it.

If that fails, take apart the hinges of the door and lift the whole door away.

If literally everything else fails, open the window that goes from my living room to balcony and lift the motherfucking sofa through the window.

At that point we couldn't even start from B because the door had some really fucking weird screwheads and I had no right sort of screwdriver for it. Thank the forces of the universe my father is the DIY man of all the DIY mans and has about every tool you can ever imagine, so we had to go get more tools from their place and try again. In the end plan B was enough and we didn't have to take apart half of the balcony, but we were both sweating bullets for the whole day even from imagining having to do it.

Now the sofa is in the balcony. The next time I have to move it from there is hopefully when the city remodels the whole house the next time, which will be in, idk, 30 years or something. At least I promised my (now 60 years old) father that at that point he doesn't have to come to move it anymore. ='D The ordeal is finally more or less over, unless the sofa was somehow damaged during all of this: I haven't yet taken it out of the wrappers because I want to keep it covered during the painting of the foam. (I did do some painting already after all this, so I should hopefully be able to strip it tomorrow and stash it to the already painted corner.)

Two bonus points that gave some extra spice to all of this: I also got my first Covid vaccine shot this week (I belong to one of the risk groups because of my health issues) so one of my arms was pretty hurt even before I had to start lifting the sofa around the apartment complex. Fortunately I the very least haven't had any other side effects*! And bonus point number two: that heat wave that hit Finland? It's gone by now. There is literal god damn snow on the ground again. =DDDDD

*(EDIT: NO WAIT, I just realized that I did likely get one other side effect! Please skip this if you feel icky about health subjects, but I do want to mention it in case it could be helpful for someone else. I thought it was just because of intense stress and quite a bit of exercise, but my body has produced some period blood even though it isn't a proper time for it. My body doesn't generally do that because of my hormonal medication, but these days getting weird new health-related symptoms mostly just makes me shrug and continue my life. BUT now I remembered reading that the vaccine has been affecting people's periods by making them more voluminous, so that's actually likely what's causing it??? That's interesting.)

[ghostlyhamburger]

50 Things Men Should Know (Or, How Adrien Agreste Becomes a Man): Stop a Running Toilet/Give a Speech

Rating: T

Pairing: Adrienette

Read from beginning

Read current chapter on Ao3

Stop a Running Toilet

Adrien actually felt the universe shift when he saw Marinette standing before him. Of course she was Ladybug. He’d always slightly suspected, but every time his suspicions became clearer, she’d done something to throw him off. Knowing it was really her—nothing could have prepared him for the feeling that wrenched at his heart in that moment.

He loved her.

He knew he loved Ladybug, but now that he knew—he loved Marinette just as much. He always had, he realized, and he just wanted to hold her in his arms and kiss her until everything was okay.

But the look on her face stopped him. She wasn’t smiling, instead she was staring at him with something akin to horror.

His heart dropped, feeling like it fell out of his body and plummeted down to the dirty streets below them. He was suddenly reminded it was his fault, his father that had caused everything, and he was just as much to blame. He should have known!

Lady—Marinette wasn’t going to forgive him. And she shouldn’t.

“Adrien,” she murmured softly. Her voice was soft, and he steeled himself for her next words. Did she hate him? Was he going to lose his friend along with his partner?

Was she going to demand Plagg back?

He wasn’t expecting her to rush towards him and wrap her arms around him. “Oh, Adrien, I’m so sorry,” she murmured, her body warm as she embraced him.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he muttered. “I should have known. I should have found out sooner, I should’ve—I just ran away, like an idiot, I’m so sorry my Lady…”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she said fiercely. “Nothing. I understand why you left now, and—I don’t blame you.”

“So you forgive me?” he asked, dusting off his heart as he dared to pick it up again.

She chuckled. “Of course I do, you silly cat. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

He hugged her tighter, just relishing in the feeling of being held, being wanted, before he pulled away. “You know, I kind of thought this reveal would go differently.”

“How so?” she asked.

“You’d see how devastatingly handsome I am, and fall for me on the spot,” he replied with a rakish grin that felt odd to do without the mask. “Of course, that was the idea before—before my father, and before I knew that you…” He waved his hand in a vague motion as his words trailed off. “But I’m really glad we’re friends, Marinette.”

She had an odd look on her face, just for a moment, before it was replaced by the soft smile that he loved to see on her. “Yeah. We’re friends.”

He wasn’t going to stop loving her, but he could dial it back to friendship if that’s what made her more comfortable. At least he was going to keep his Lady in his life.

“Anyways, now I’m definitely helping you finish that list of yours,” she said, smiling. “I can tell it’s really helping you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “There’s actually—one of the things is giving a speech, and I figured—I thought, if this went well, I could do something to let people know I’m back. I-if that’s okay with you!”

“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ll swing by Alya’s after this and see about doing some sort of Ladyblog announcement.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to say, though,” he admitted with a small smile.

“Then—let’s talk about it.” She sat down on the rooftop, patting the space beside her. “Just you and me, Kitty.”

**

Much later, Adrien finally returned home. He went through his typical bedtime routine and crawled under the covers, ready for a night of sleep after the emotional toll of the day suddenly hit him.

But then he heard a sound from the bathroom. His toilet was flushing—and flushing, and flushing and flushing and—

With a groan, he got up and headed into the bathroom. This had happened before, but he just called one of the night staff to fix it. Now, he didn’t have that luxury.

A part of his mind was excited—this is what he wanted! Handling things on his own! Being an adult! But a larger part of his mind just wanted to sleep.

He lifted the lid off the back of the toilet and stared down into the thankfully clean looking water. It was shimmering as it ran, but one thing was very clear: Adrien had no freaking clue what he was doing. So, he grabbed his phone and did a quick search.

Comparing his toilet to the one in the video, he quickly realized the chain under the water was caught on something—it was an easy fix to reach in and uncatch it, letting the toilet finally quiet down. Then, it was just a matter of vigorously washing the toilet water off his hands.

By the time Adrien got back to bed, it was 2 AM. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d talked to Ladybug—to Marinette. And before he could think about her too much, he was asleep.

Give a Speech

Alya was still awake when Ladybug came by, and she was more than happy to arrange for Chat to give a speech to the Ladyblog followers.

“So, why did he stay gone so long?”

Ladybug shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s a personal reason, and it’ll be up to him if he wants to tell you. What’s important is he’s back now.”

“You must be relieved.”

Ladybug smiled. “You have no idea.”

**

Marinette: alya agreed. Normal patrol time tonight okay?

Adrien: purrfect 😼

Marinette set down her phone and relaxed in bed, not quite willing to get up yet. “Hey, Tikki?”

“Yes?” the small kwami asked, floating over to her.

“You knew Chat was Adrien, didn’t you?”

Tikki nodded. “Even if I wanted to tell you, the magic prevented me from doing so. I think it’s good you chose to do the reveal on your own.”

“Chat…he always said he loved Ladybug. Loved me,” she murmured. “Do you think now that he knows who I am, he might be able to love me again?”

Tikki was silent for a long moment, and then said, “I can’t tell you the future, Marinette. You should just do what feels right for you.”

“I can’t lose him as a friend,” she said resolutely. “He’s been through too much, and I’m going to be there for him in any way I can. He said he’s glad to have me as a friend, and I’m going to be the best friend I can for him.”

“But what about you?”

She sighed. “I’ve been in love with him for six years without making any progress. What’s the rest of my life, really?”

“Marinette.”

“Don’t be so down, Tikki, I’m going to try and move on. I just—the way I love him keeps changing, and hopefully, someday, it’ll be at the point where I won’t be hurt by it anymore. Till then, I can be happy being his friend.” She stretched and got out of bed. “All right, time to get up, and see if Papa needs any help in the bakery today.”

**

The day went by agonizingly slow, but it was at least broken up by texts from Adrien. He wanted to go over every detail of what he was going to say to Alya, and Marinette was absolutely happy to help him. She couldn’t help the way her heart leapt each time her phone chimed, or the way she smiled at her phone as it set in that Adrien wanted her help.

Reminding herself that Adrien was Chat, was her best friend, did nothing to stop the flutters in her stomach.

Finally, she transformed and met Chat at a building across the street from Alya’s place, and the two superheroes headed there together, meeting the reporter on her roof.

She was almost vibrating with excitement, and cried, “Chat Noir! It’s good to see you back!”

“It’s good to be back,” he replied.

“So, let’s get right to it,” she said, pulling out her phone to record him. “Why did you leave?”

He flashed a smile at the camera. “Cat’s secret,” he said with a charming wink. “But I do want to let the people of Paris know that I’m back, and Ladybug and I will keep the streets safe for everyone again!”

“Are you going to leave again?” she asked.

“Not planning on it,” he replied with a shrug. “Next time I’m out of Paris will be when my Lady accepts my proposal and we go on our amazing honeymoon.”

He leaned close to Ladybug with a suggestive eyebrow waggle, and she just rolled her eyes before lightly pushing him away with a finger to the tip of her nose. It was just an act, she reminded herself. They couldn’t let everyone know their dynamic had changed. They’d discussed this.

He didn’t actually want to marry her.

“So, what do you want to say to the people of Paris?” Alya asked. “There’s gotta be a reason you came to find me instead of just randomly hanging out. Ladybug wouldn’t tell me anything when you were gone.”

Ladybug shot her a look, and she gave a sheepish shrug.

Chat took a breath, rolling his shoulders back to ready himself. “I want to address the people of Paris. It’s not fair to leave everyone in the dark for so long.”

Alya nodded silently, making sure the camera was focused on him. Ladybug stood by his side, her fingers brushing his, but also stayed quiet to let him speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said, all humor gone from his voice. “I did have personal reasons for disappearing, which I cannot share, but I’m sorry about how I left. You, people of Paris, deserved to have some closure after being terrorized for so many years.”

He took a deep breath before continuing. “Hawkmoth is defeated, and at this time, we are not aware of any other threats facing our city. But we won’t be going away—Ladybug and I will stay protectors of Paris and keep you safe. If anything, or anyone, tries to threaten this city again, we will stop them.”

He squeezed Ladybug’s hand, glancing at her, his eyes wide. She squeezed back and smiled at him before addressing Alya.

“Are we good?”

Alya nodded, shutting off the phone. “Yeah. I’ll edit and post it tonight.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “Thanks for…everything. It’s good to know we can count on you.”

“Off the record,” Alya said abruptly, making a show of putting the phone in her pocket, “Chat, are you okay? I just—I know we’re not the closest, but I’ve been on your team and we’re kinda friends…”

“We’re definitely friends,” he replied. “And—I will be okay. There’s a lot going on, which I can’t talk about, but thank you for caring. It means a lot.”

“Anytime,” she said. “If you ever want to come over and just hang out? No cameras. I’ll be here.”

Chat abruptly stepped forward and hugged her. “Thank you,” he murmured as she returned the friendly embrace. “Thank you so much.”

**

Chat and Ladybug sat on top of the Eiffel Tower together, watching the city lights below them

“Do you think it went well?” he asked.

She nodded. “People will just be glad you’re back. I know I am.”

“Technically, I never left.”

She turned to smile at him, ignoring how her heart pounded at the soft, uncertain look on his face. “Yeah, that’s true. But still—I missed you.”

He looked at her, his smile sweet. “I missed you too.”

Buy me a coffee?

[botslayer]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) review (Long)

Star Wars has a place in all of our hearts, I think. This series has had literally galactic-scale highs and lows. Be it the video games, the movies, the comics, the novels, what have you, Star Wars is one of, if not THE biggest sci-fi universe in the world and one of the most important in all of nerd culture. After the controversial madness that was EVERYTHING about The Last Jedi, I felt the need to see this one. How does this new Trilogy end? Is it any good? Well, let's dig in. 1. Technical aspects The movie looks good for the most part. It's a lot of good CGI and descent puppetry, a lot of explosions, and a lot of color. All the places that the movie goes do feel genuinely unique to one another, so points there, I guess. But it has some serious issues with the editing. The editing is god awful for most of the movie, the camera flips around too much, I think. I don't want constant tracking shots but they keep jump-cutting all over rooms and very suddenly for scene transitions. There are a fair amount of wipes but only one scene transition actually stood out to me at the very start of the movie, everything else was kinda dull. This has to be addressed, Carrie Fisher is still in this movie. What they did was cut snippets of her head out of unused footage from Force Awakens and Last Jedi, then put it relatively well over the face of a body double. This allows her to exist in the movie but it isn't good. From an ethical standpoint and from how it affects the flow of her scenes. Her tone of voice doesn't feel right for any of the scenes she's in and her answers to what people say are usually just kinda weird, as well as what people say whilst responding to her. 2. Acting and characters (very lite Spoilers) The acting in the movie is okay generally. It's nothing to write home about though. It's solid and generally does the job but the characters themselves are a different story. One problem is that the movie introduces a shit ton of them, including but not limited too, (Spoiler warnings for this paragraph), Zorii Bliss, An old Spice running friend of Poe's who is trying to ape a Mandalorian (Like the society) vibe in the look of her outfit but doesn't do it well. Babu Frik, her tiny alien boss and a surprisingly tech-savvy little so-and-so. D-O, a small droid consisting of a cone head and a single wheel, voiced by JJ Abrahms. And Jannah, who like Finn, is a rogue Stormtrooper from the first order. Everyone and everything else introduced are just more generals for the "Final order" (A rebranding of the First Order) and a bunch of background aliens and stuff for the resistance. The main problem with these characters is none of them have time to develop because of how many are introduced. They try with Zorii, bless them, but her scenes are too short so her character doesn't "Develop" it just starts at one point and changes at the drop of a hat. And the returning Characters honestly aren't handled great either. Rey is okay for the most part, but Finn contributed just about nothing, Poe wasn't worth much more than a ride between planets, Kylo Ren goes back to wearing his old helmet for some reason and again, seems to change without much provocation. Leia's death is weird and kinda pointless, although I'm happy they won't do what they did again. The only consistently good, solid characters in the movie were the droids (Especially C3PO) and Chewbacca. Characters with very few lines or who literally cannot speak. That's such a weird thing to say, honestly. 3. Plot and thoughts as we go (Heavy Spoilers) A transmission has gone all across the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine lives. Kylo Ren is hunting for a "Sith Wayfinder" and Rey is training under Leia to become a better Jedi. Kylo finds the Wayfinder and goes to a sort of hidden Sith planet whereon he meets Palpatine, here it is revealed that Snoke was a clone made by Palpatine's servants, "The Nights of Ren" and that Palpatine was "Every voice Kylo heard in his head." (Not too subtle change into Darth Vader's voice as he speaks.) Kylo and Palpatine have a short exchange where the younger pledges both his and the First Order's services to him, in exchange, Palpatine will add a whole new fleet of Star Destroyers to them. Star Destroyers he literally just summons up from the ground. Hangar bay doors don't open, these things just slam up from the ground like titans of myth rising from ancient slumbers. And while that might sound cool, it comes with a lot of issues. For starters: Who made these things? The Knights of Ren? How old is that organization, then? How old are these ships? Why don't they have hangar doors overhead? Hell, we learn later that these things will bolster first Order forces by "Ten thousandfold." How many of these things are there? How many ships does the First Order (Now "The Final Order") have at this point? Anyway, back with the resistance. After a cameo by the best fictional game in the series, Holochess, we find that they're getting information from an ally I never caught the name of, flanked by some sort of weird alien on the ship who's apparently on a first name basis with Finn and Poe. We also learn the Final Order has a spy and a decent chase scene ensues. All well and good, but all this and the conspicuous lack of porgs makes me wonder how much time has actually passed between this movie and Last Jedi. Especially when we cut back to Rey who is trying to hear the voices of past Jedi but just realizes she can't and immediately drops the meditation in favor of running a training course. She ends up getting distracted while running it and accidentally drops a tree on BB8. She says to Leia that she will one day earn the right to use Luke's lightsaber... But it broke in the last movie. Again, can we please get a time stamp? Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, and their crew return, whereupon there's a kind of funny back and forth about what Rey did to BB8 and what Poe did to the Falcon during the chase. The highlight of which is "At least BB8 isn't on fire!" "What's left of him isn't!" During this breif stop, we learn that The Final Order is broadcasting their plans, in sixteen hours they will lay waste to entire worlds because as it turns out, the new ships that Palpatine gave them all have planet-destroying laser weapons on the bottom. A Fleet of Star Destroyers, each with Death Star-grade power. That's definitely upping the anti, I suppose. During this, we also learn that the "Wayfinder" Kylo went after is important because its the only way to find the planet Palpatine is holed up on, a world called "Exegol," you won't find it on any other maps. So the crew goes on a quest to find a man in service to the Sith, a bloke named "Ochi" who was last spotted on a planet called "Pasaana" because for some reason, Luke and Lando Calrissian were tracking him. The movie doesn't explain why they were after him, nor why they seemed to abandon the search. (Or when any of that happened, for that matter.) Our heroes journey to Pasaana where, as it turns out, there's a festival happening. One that celebrates family and ancestry. Cue the best comic relief in the movie, C3PO, as when Poe expresses that he isn't psyched about working with a crowd of people all around him, C3PO expresses elation, "We are very lucky, it only comes once every Forty-Two years--" Etc. Honestly, C3PO is the best part of the movie. As the resistance crew goes about the Festival, Rye gets a necklace from a local who asks for her family name, not just her given, but Rey just says she doens't have a family name. Kylo contacts Rey with their weird psychic bond they had in Last Jedi, and they have an interesting exchange about the last movie and her wanting to take his hand at the end but deciding against it, and how when he offers it this time, she will take it. He steals the necklace Rey got from off her throat because as established in TLJ, he can do stuff like that. He has Final Order members analyze the necklace and learns of the planet Rey and her cohorts are on while they gad about the festival looking for any sort of clues or leads. They end up getting found by Final Order Troopers, but saved by Lando, apparently, Leia told him where they were. They mention the resistance could use his help, but he just says that his flying days are behind him before he sends them off. The gang is followed by Final Order troopers, resulting in a chase scene, one I quite like. The Final Order has jet troopers now, and the crew basically just have their sidearms as weapons, having stolen vehicles from the locals. It's a very intense action scene, even when the crew crashes into "Not-quite-quicksand." Everyone starts sinking in and Finn says he's always wanted to tell Rey something. What it is goes unanswered as he sinks down. The lot of them have fallen into a cavern of some sort. They explore the cave until they find two things, Ochi's land cruiser, and Ochi, who as it turns out is long dead, nothing more than bones and whatever he had on him at the time. Rey digs through his body and finds a scary-looking dagger that has most definitely been used for some less than savory deeds, Rey sensing the negative force energy off it. 3PO tells them that the inscriptions all over the dagger are in Sith Runic. He CAN translate it, but he can't say it aloud. It has to do with Old Republic regulations on translation modules. They keep the dagger, at least. There's also a giant serpent, one the cast calm into letting Rey get close, whereupon we learn she has the ability to force-heal injuries. The snake lets them out and she explains that it's basically channeling some of her own life force into whatever she's healing, and when she sees Ochi's ship, she's unnerved. She knows it from the day her parents left her. Some true madness begins to unfold as Kylo shows up in his ship and Rey cuts one of the wings off, forcing it to crash. Chewbacca is captured and ostensibly killed accidentally by Rey because she summons force lightning and blows his transport's engines. There's another brief exchange with Kylo about him seeing the lightning for real, thus her capacity for darkness, before Finn and Poe tell her they NEED to leave. They do and Kylo radios for pick up as the Final Order literally toes the Millenium Falcon into a Star Destroyer. It is here we learn that Kylo knows about the spy in their ranks and that Chewbacca survived. While they waddle about in Ochi's ship, thinking of a plan, C-3PO reveals that there IS a way to get a translation out of him. Essentially they need to do a factory reset. This means 3PO will lose all memories of his friends and life. But what is that compared to a galaxy dominated by fear? Poe knows the man for the job, trouble is they need to go to a world called "Kijimi" where Poe made a booboo before joining the resistance. But again, literal planets worth of lives are at stake, so he swallows his lack of pride and they go. A not bad tracking shot of Poe creeping around the streets and finding it crawling with Final Order troopers later, his mistake comes up to him. Both her pistols drawn, and one to his head. We learn that "Zorii" and Poe's old outfit were spice runners, and their old friend "Babu Frik" is the guy they'll need to crack 3PO's head open. Babu only sees people who are part of the crew, which Poe no longer is. They eventually convince her and the other spice runners to let them in. There's a genuinely heart-wrenching moment where 3PO goes completely silent before the process gets going and he says he's just taking one last look at his friends. Meanwhile, we see Poe and Zorii on top of a building, Poe mentions how no one came after the last movie, their distress call was for nothing. Way to invalidate the most controversial movie in the series, you dolts. Also, Zorii seems to have changed for no reason. She went from not wanting to look in Poe's general direction to inviting him out to her new life as a farmer on some rock at the fringes of the galaxy. Poe turns her down because he has a war to fight, whether or not he wins. She gives him a First Order Captain's badge, which would allow docking in any Final Order ship or planet because the rebranding is only so recent, I guess. C-3PO gets rebooted and the crew learns what the inscription on the dagger means, but again, the cost is 3PO's memory. He reboots and introduces himself as "C-3PO, human-cyborg relations, who are you?" Babu introduces himself and Rey fixes the wheel on a robot found on Ochi's ship, a little cone head thing we don't learn the name of until about an hour later, "D-O." At about this point, Rey realizes what's in orbit just overhead, Kylo's flagship... And Chewbacca inside. The crew boards the ship to free Chewy and get the Falcon back, along the way, Rey mind tricks a couple of troopers, the crew shoots a few dead, and then she goes off on her own, trying to find something. Her scenes on the flagship are pretty awesome, as she enters Kylo Ren's quarters and starts not only talking to him again but also fights him. This leads to some very interesting cinematography, a fight where when they accidentally break things in their respective locations, they appear in front of the other, so for example, Kylo is in the streets of the city the crew was in, specifically a market in it. He cuts open a pot full of berries/nuts and they all appear on the ground in his chamber while Rey is fighting him. It's pretty impressive. During the fight, we also learn A. the real reason Rey's parents sold her: Protecting her from her grandfather. B. Who this grandfather is. The Emperor. Rey is seriously Palpatine's granddaughter. C. Rey's parents died protecting her. Kylo learns she's in his quarters when she accidentally destroys a podium, on which was resting Darth Vader's semi-melted helmet. From there, it all spirals out, Ren has them lock down the ship, Rey snags the dagger and Chewy's gear, Chewy, Finn, and Poe are caught, only to find out that general Hux is the spy who saves them When his motives are questioned, Hux says he doesn't care if the resistance wins. He wants Kylo to lose. Rey and Kylo have one more confrontation before the falcon shows up and Rey literally leaps into space to get on the entrance to the falcon. Where Finn is. Audibly screaming at her. Y'all can say what you want about a downward bombing in space probably not working very well in Last Jedi, but this is a whole new level of bullshit. Rey leams OUT OF A RAY SHIELD into the vacuum of space. I don't care that Leia survived being out way longer in TLJ, at least she wasn't audibly saying things as she went, at least it felt like she was in space instead of just a big random fall. Also worth noting, to ver their escape, they blast the bad guys with the Falcon's engine trails, this burns or knocks back all the Troopers but Kylo, who is standing roughly the same distance as at least two of them, and Rey, who is closer than ANY of them are unaffected. This one moment is more agitating to me than most of The Last Jedi, honestly. There's Wardian grade plot armor, and then there's this. The crew gets away and Hux is killed by another general because he figured out that Hux was the spy, they end up at another planet because of the inscription and the Falcon crashes, drawing the attention of "Jannah" and her random tribe of people. They resolve to fix the Falcon while waiting for the water to calm, something they at once have zero choice or time for. Turns out the Sith Wayfinder is on a hunk of the second Deathstar. Rant to come. While waiting for the water to calm and repairing the Falcon, we learn Janna is a rogue Storm Trooper, just like Finn. Her entire company was meant to open fire on civilians, but ALL OF THEM refused. Finn mentions he didn't think there were others but I have to question where Jannah's entire unit gets off doing that. How did all of them fight their programming? Moving on, BB8 raises a concern, he hasn't seen Rey in a while. Turns out she stole the rogue trooper's sea skimmer and rides the waves JUST right, so she can make it to the chunk of Deathstar. I was never big into the idea that Rey was a Mary Sue until this happened. I was willing to write everything else off up to this point but NO. She has NEVER used something like this. She spent most of her damn life on a planet with NO water and no point actually drove anything like this save for the land boat she stole from the natives during the festival but even then, it didn't have the quirks this thing had (It's a repurposed ship of some sort, she needs to constantly raise and lower an arm of the ship to reduce drag, I suppose.) I know this seems like the most random thing to officially stand in that camp, but what's that old saying about straws and camel's backs? Rey goes to the shard of the Deathstar and starts exploring, it's full of old classic Storm Trooper outfits, mostly helmets. She goes to the Emperor's old throne room and through an old door, she ends up in a kind of trippy, maze-like space until she finds the Wayfinder and faces a seemingly Sithified version of herself with a dark robe and a collapsable double-sided lightsaber. This version of her fights her for all of four seconds and is never seen again because normal Rey flees out of the room and into Kylo Ren's waiting gaze. Now, my question is WHY would Palpatine keep one of these things on the Deathstar 2? In case he wanted to go to Exegol? Why not keep it in a more remote location than about thirty feet to your left? It's an ancient Sith artifact, you'd figure he'd be more protective of it. But nooo. So Kylo breaks the Wayfinder Rey found, wasting all of our time, before engaging in a lightsaber fight on the outside of the ruins. Finn and Jannah catch up to see this but can't do anything, partly because if they don't hug the ground, the turbulent water below will likely send a wave up just high enough to knock them into the ocean, Rey and Kylo, however, are clear I guess because they have higher ground away from the tides, they still get sprayed a lot. The fight ends with Leia dying from using what's left of her energy to reach her son, Rey stabbing and then healing Kylo before she leaves in his ship. The crew, save for Rey, and Jannah's rogues join up with the rest of the resistance where they find out what happened, and Chewbacca loses it. The Wookie collapses to his knees and starts screaming and wailing, beating into the ground, etc. He's lost all his human friends, 3PO's mind is wiped, the only things left from the good old days are R2 and the Falcon. This is a genuinely harrowing moment for longtime fans, I think. Meanwhile, Rose Tico shows up for the second time this entire movie, the first time being her explaining why she can't go with, she has lines that could have been given to almost any rando in the resistance which is honestly a shame. Then we cut to Ahch-To, The planet Luke exiled himself to in Force Awakens and TLJ, to find Rey burning Kylo's ship and very nearly, Luke's lightsaber. Luke's ghost shows up, catching the saber, and giving her a pep talk, telling her he knows now that exiling himself was stupid and that she needs to face the darkness in herself and the galaxy head-on. That delusion she saw getting her Wayfinder wasn't the first, she's seen herself ruling at Kylo's side as the empress, but given Luke's Pep talk, him showing her a spare lightsaber that used to belong to Leia, and the fact that Kylo had HIS Wayfinder in his spare ship, Rey agrees to continue fighting the good fight. But how will she leave the planet? Luke's force ghost raises Red five from the ocean. I'm not kidding, he literally just force lifts it with some show-offy joy. That thing has been waterlogged for how long? Even assuming Rey could fix it, where the hell is she getting fuel for it? Back with Kylo, we see him gawking out over the sea, a familiar old voice starts talking to him. Han Solo's ghost shows up and they start having a heart to heart oddly reminiscent of the one they had in Force Awakens. Han says he knew his son was in there somewhere, and when Ren says "Your son is dead" Han says "No, Kylo Ren is." In that spirit, I will now refer to Kylo as "Ben" for the rest of the review. Ben throws his lightsaber into the ocean and is left to his own devices by his dad's ghost. The resistance somehow knows that there are radio towers on Exegol that help the ships navigate through the constant storms and rain, Poe and Finn organize a plan, to distract the ships while a ground force attacks the tower and Chewbacca will go off and send another distress signal, allowing others to join the battle if they can. They come up with this because D-O has the plans for the ships and the like stored in his head if memory serves, and also 3PO gets his memory back, R2 had a back up, wouldn't you know it? The Resistance charges into battle against the Final Order over Exegol, And thus begins a fun clusterfuck of lasers and explosions. As one expects from this trilogy. Now, the first order has this actually brilliant moment when they realize they can shut down the tower, and start broadcasting the same helpful signals from one of the ships themselves. Which they do, this allows them to down some Resistance ships before Finn sees what's happening and has them do a ground invasion style attack ON that ship. As in they deploy troops over the top of it ON HORSEBACK. Honestly one of those things that's so loveably stupid. They end up in conflict with a bunch of troopers on top of the ship as they look for weak spots to plant bombs or the like. Rey, meanwhile, has snuck into the Emperor's hiding place, just as Ben lands on the planet. There's a lot of running around on all sides, dogfights under and around the larger ships, Ben fighting knights of Ren with just his bare hands and the Force, Rey being lured into Palpatine's grasp, Finn and Jannah's group shooting at troopers and passing ships as they look for weak spots. It would have all been fairly tense if the editing wasn't done by a coked-up squirrel. Almost nothing feels impactful in the fights, there are too many cuts in scenes largely about singular or just two characters. There are good elements to all this but I didn't care enough about most of these people. for it to mean much. Also worth noting: not much can be done. They've already lost so many pilots, soldiers, and fighters, Finn and Jannah's group haven't fulfilled their goal yet, Palpatine is giving Rey a very "Let the hate flow through you" speech about how it's all pointless and her friends are doomed, but if she kills him, and becomes the empress, the Final Order will be hers to control, she agrees for a moment, letting a bunch of the Knights of Ren and Palpatine begin ritual chanting as a horde of them look on, Poe is out of hope. Rey is about to give in and Ben is surrounded with no weapon. All hope is lost... Until Rey enters another sort of shat with Ben and gives him the lightsaber she was moments ago going to kill the Emperor with. Ben strikes down his aggressors and makes his way to Rey and the Emperor, they slaughter the knights in the immediate vicinity. While that's happening, an entire fleet of random people shows up to help the resistance. Zorri and Babu are right next to the Falcon, which contains not only Chewbacca but Lando. The fight begins anew as Finn and Jannah blow the antennae in the ship they're on and cripple the Final Order Fleet. Now all the Resistance has to do is blast the planet-killing lasers and the entire ship they're rigged up to will also be destroyed... Which makes some sense but is still a pretty massive design flaw. Down with Rey, Ben, and Palpatine, the youngsters try to strike the Emperor down, only to basically have their life forces partly fed upon. Ben goes flying down a naturally formed cave shaft, presumably to his doom. Palpatine has regenerated from the life steal thing and sits on this massive stone Sith throne just under the battle in the sky, and in a moment so absurd I was dumbstruck when it happened, sends lightning up into the sky. A massive MASSIVE pillar of it, so massive that not only does it reach the sky, but when it does, it fans out and strikes dozens, if not hundreds, of resistance ships, taking them right out of the sky. This guy is over a hundred years old, several of which he was DEAD for and for some reason now, he has power I would only be able to describe as "Godlike" for no damn reason. I forgot to mention earlier that he didn't live through being exploded in ep 6. He brought himself back to life somehow, just wrote it off as his access to the dark side. He still looked terrible though, like he was actually a corpse with rotten hands and pure white eyes and all that. But somehow, two random idiot children's life forces, nowhere near in their totality, are enough to rejuvenate him and give him power unseen by most of the deadliest Sith in all of Star Wars. Vader's apprentice from The Force Unleashed wasn't this fucking OP. The worst he did could be chalked up to gameplay, this one-man lightning storm bullshit is actually canon, though. So this creates a problem: How does Rey defeat someone with the power of a god on her own? She ignites Leia's old lightsaber from when Luke was training her and then redirects the Emperor's lightning back into his face, destroying his head. From there, the Final Order's fleet is destroyed and Finn and Jannah are rescued from a fiery death as the ship they're on starts crashing to the ground, I guess being the only surviving members of their attack squad.   Ben climbs out of the shaft and gives his life force to bring Rey back from the dead, they share a kiss and Ben dies, allowing Rey to flee in the Red Five, much to everyone's relief. There are celebrations and hints of things to come, including Lando taking Jannah with him on adventures through the stars, Rose hugging some dude who ISN'T Finn, much to Finn's annoyance, and Zorii and Poe exchanging wordless gestures. The final scene is Rey going to the old Skywalker Moisture farm to burry Luke and Leia's lightsabers just outside the house. How she knew where the farm was or why she buries them is anyone's guess. She pulls out a new lightsaber, a Yellow one. Which... Okay, I guess but where did she get it? Did she make it? How? Where? Did she just find it somewhere? How? Where? But anyway, an old woman comes walking by and mentions that the hasn't been anyone at the farm in so long and asks Rey who she is. Rey says "My name is Rey." "Rey Who?" Luke and Leia's force ghosts appear and smile at Rey. She proudly announces that she is "Rey Skywalker." And her and BB8 watch the suns over Tatooine set. The end. 4. A Nitpick? Some of these are just little things I couldn't find a good place to put elsewhere: In flashbacks, we see Luke training Leia a bit, in those scenes, her lightsaber is green. In the modern-day, for whatever reason, it's blue. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not. Also worth asking: Where is Luke's personal saber? I did some research and he apparently reclaimed it at some point in the EU (Which is no longer canon) but even in Last Jedi, the last we see of it is him almost using it on a young Ben Solo. Where the hell did it go? 5. Conclusion I see this movie has it’s good bits but it isn't enough to make up for how shoddy the overall product is. There are too many new characters to let even the pre-established ones breathe, let alone each other, the editing was total garbage to the point where I genuinely got a headache, the plot invalidates both episodes eight AND six, while itself being kind of terrible... Nothing can kill Star Wars for me. This movie certainly tried. TL;DR: Do not watch this trash, I don't care if it's your first Star Wars film of if you're a long-time viewer, it isn't worth your time or money. Merry Christmas, everyone, and have a happy new year.  (FTR: This is something I stole from my own deviantART, I’m not plagiarizing shit, I’m just copypasting myself and adding edits if I see hiccups in the future.) 

[cultml]

covid 19 problem

1 i decided not to read do deeply about it, ignorance warning

2 i decided over the past few days to just post links with the covid19 tag instead of trying to link to them here, and  not going to take the time to explain.

SO..

Around the time of the ban on flights China i read that the genetics of the virus meant that the spread rate was 2.???... a couple of days latter it was becoming clear they had no idea. then it looked like they had a clue... then no...

What is the incubation period.. 5-6 days.. 2-14.. you might be able to spread it up to three Weeks latter?....

how long does it live on surfaces 3hrs... 9days? They may have the answers to those questions now, though i haven’t seen them.... but i gave up some time ago. Play with the models and the reasons all you like.

They didn’t know and still don’t as far as i can tell. Looks like there may be good reason why... still they don’t know

So I am going to jump around a bit and hopefully get to my point. Trump and Cuomo need to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Cuomo seems to be doing a chicken little rain dance every day... why...it’s not helping. Trump.... he does not speak in clear and concise term. That’s good for a whole range of things. It is the worst way in the world to talk about a freak’n pandemic. I do not ever want to hear him speak about the half ass attempt to keep it from coming here by shutting down flight from China. And he is a target for the press and that makes him a distraction. The local news and their social media should have been where the official messing should be coming from. One press conference from the White house a week, the rest, paper statements. It turned into a circus... what’s new

China’s fault. Trump was to optimistic and moves to slow. Bureaucracy and bureaucrat did what they do. Our leaders didn’t do the basic they supposed to before a crisis hits. The technocrats are in charge and the wise men are all dead.

Masks..?...

Masks..?... A wise leadership would have caught this. there are at least two types of masks.....that do TWO different things...... that means we need to use TWO DIFFERENT terms.  Surgical masks and respirator masks? You want to stop the spread? 2 ways people don’t catch it or people don’t spread it. Med. personal need to not catch it the rest of us need to not spread it.... so cloth surgical style mask for everyone. there solved it. They are not a complicated piece of equipment... that make them very DYI able.... and that make the very customizable.... and that make them very meme able.... I will never understand why the in the fucking hell we didn’t do that.... Childish technocrats me thinks. Some other came to a similar conclusion as i about mask uses they just did it by looking at what Asia does differently than us. Depleted stock piles of N95s etc.

Ventilators... I feels like some one raised Robert McNamara from his grave. Or someone been read Moneyball to many time. It sound like we will have all the ventilators we will ever need some time next...year? We need the guys that where stacking sand bags and what ever else on Shermans or the guys strapping on gun pods to the early Phantoms or any of the engineers that where there when the space missions went pear-shaped. The actual McGyvers types that are acting out of necessity. If this is PR BS wheel McNamara out there.... If this is the freak’n war you say it then screw the rules and save the live. Inflatable swimming pools filed with sanitizer to respirators made from shop vacs and duct tape. don’t give me this shit about FDA clearance, sterile production environments, retraining workers and retraining Drs for the new machines... really...

there was some hope, a couple of university have cheap prototype with of the quasi of the shelf parts and there was talk of using F-150 blowers and batteries form tool manufactures.... Then today, FDA clearance... and “we are not sure how fast we can retrain the medical staff”......

If they can’t suppress blueprints for the 3d printed gun ......

The stimulus pt 3 (i couldn’t tell you with a gun to my head what 1and2 where about)  looks like heaping piles of mistakes repeated (ignorance warning) Bitching about income inequality and that Trump hasn’t taken over production sooner... It a country lead be wise men these people wouldn’t even be in the room and no one would listen to them. Like wise saying it doesn’t matter what’s in it, it just needs to get done....? Fair enough, but really this is the best we can do ... you go to war with what you have and you enter crisis with the facile toddlers for leaders that you have. That fact that all side are pleading for the workers and not for the ideals that would help the works should tell you how bad all this is going to be.

Civil liberties... to late now. We will just have to hope we can wrestle most of them back after the fact.

Economy or lives is a false dichotomy, a prison of two ideas. It is some of both and there is no right answer in this moment, maybe in ten years it will be clear. If you can’t under stand that then you can;t understand leadership at least at this level.

closer to the point.. Virtue ..... Puffery?  It’s not virtue signalling, there is a semi virtuous act involved. Having a kids plat a concert out side the door of your elderly neighbor, or showing Grandpa your engagement ring through the window or going to the store for them is What Your Supposed to do..... I stopped smoking some ..years ago now. I don’t talk about it, in fact hate it, it is not a source of pride. It is embarrassing,not that anyone said good job, because few in a position to say know better.It would feel like more of knife in the back than support. I stop doing something that was bad for me. I stop a negative that is not a positive.... Our virtue is all relative, for a number of reasons. any thing sort of getting caught for rape or murder is a positive. Say thank you and we should be good. you want to be an asshole I’ll happy to leave you alone. That’s it and tell the news crews to fuck off. I know people are posting this shit themselves which is worse......

The point.... well i never really got to it, which is part of the the point i think. The battle for what comes next was barley getting oxygen before. and most of it was between the progressive et al. and the New Theocrats / national conservatives. Neither should be any where near power... and what are we doing... trying to understand statistical modelling most of us will not totally understand.. a giant waste of time. The virtue puffery of the moment and the failure of Sanders followed by the insane Dem over reach in this moment and then by the  catastrophic Biden campaign. May well propel the new theocrats in to power.

The something new, the thing to come, the what’s next..... will be old. It will have no defense against what pushed it out of power because it never adapted because it never saw it’s failure as legitimate. If it was legit or not is an open question but it’s failure and weaknesses are real.  They may gain power again not because they defeated their enemies but because their enemies failed.

This quasi fascist verses socialist cycle is a fixture in Europe and not here. My fear is that that is over.  The cycle could very easily shorten and escalate. The increasingly useless, populist , theocrat Tucker Carlson made the point the crisis don’t change much they just exhilarate the trend. The what’s next just wasn’t there going in to this crisis. The path for change may be dead.

The world may end up rather dark and very boring.

(not editing/ pissing in the wind for 2+ hrs is long enough, and didn’t get to the uselessness of libertarians substituting econ or morality)

[icecoldflames]

The Pinnae Flower Chapter 1

Masterlist

The Fifth Pinnae Book???

People seem to want to know my opinion on Raz Keeran’s soon-to-be-published fifth and final book in the Pinnae series. So, I’m gonna give it to them.

I know Pinnies—fairies and spirits alike—are freaking out. Who wouldn’t? I’m freaking out right now, sitting up in my bed, nursing a cup of tea and writing this blog post. But I’m not freaking out for the same reasons everyone else is freaking out about.

I’m freaking out because I want to know what’s going to happen in the fifth and final book. We never knew there would be five books in the series, only four. However, Raz Keeran stated on his Twitter that five books in his series was always the plan. It wasn’t unprecedented. So, it’s not a money-grab like some people think.

Also, I’d like to point out (or, more specifically, my friend Logan pointed out to me) that there is no actual proof that Raz Keeran is going to kill off Parisa and Arel. I don’t know where that rumour started but, on Raz’s official sites and social media, it doesn’t say anything about killing the two main characters from the previous four books!

I know that the summary for Pinnae: Spelunca that Raz gave us is pretty nerve-wracking. I mean, come on Raz! We need to kill now what this last book is going to be about! His exact tweet says this:

“A short summary of PS:

It will not have Arel and Parisa in it but will focus entirely on a new MC. Fairies and sprites will not have a major role either.”

Thanks for that hint, Raz.

But anyway, with some sleuthing with Logan, we managed to headcanon what this last book will be about:

Number 1. It will probably be about dragons. I mean, this is pretty obvious I think. Dragons were mentioned in the previous books. Also, in PM and PE, their titles are the names of the fairy and sprite villages: Magus and Exsul. This is obvious latin and anyone could put those words into Google Translate and find the words “magical” and “outcast”/”banished person”. The latin of Spelunca is “cave”. Where do dragons live? Exactly. A cave.

Number 2. We’ll figure out who took the pinnae flower. Raz never did answer the question as to why the dragons stole the pinnae flower (I know Raz never did say the dragons actually did take the flower but it’s pretty much canon by now. Unless some fairy or sprite rubbed glitter on a dragon scale).

Number 3. Raz also NEVER TOLD US WHO FREAKING KILLED SIDNEY. I know some people think that maybe it wasn’t a person but I’m not buying it. Raz wouldn’t kill off that character and then say “oh, he died of a heart attack” or “he died by glitter suffocation”. No. Sidney died at the hands of another person. Who, you may ask? We’ll find out in PS, we’re sure.

Number 4. We’ll find out why Arel’s little sister, Kaida, was in that last scene. We’re sure it wasn’t a vision or some weird magical hallucination. Kaida was there at the battle. Sure, she vanished in, how Raz put it, “a blink of an eye” but do you know how that could have happened? Oh, I don’t know. Magic?

Which brings us to Number 5. Kaida, Logan and I think, is going to be the new MC. We both think it won’t be a full-fledged magical character like a sprite, fairy, or dragon, so human (or at least half-human) will probably be the main character. I mean, why else would Raz add that tidbit about Kaida there if they didn’t plan on using this character in the first place?

So, yeah. These are five things Logan and I think will happen in PS. I’m not mad at Raz for making a fifth book. Sure, the ending of PTNE was pretty good and cry worthy but there is just so much Raz hasn’t answered. Something tells me we’re in for a big surprise.

No one was expecting that bloodbath at the end of PTNE and I think Raz might be preparing us for something darker. The first four books might be about cute fairies and sprites but this last book, we know, is not going to be focused on them.

Thanks for reading my loyal plebeians.

Prince Roman Falco

~~~

Roman read through his post once again before hitting the “publish” button. Then, he heard the familiar whoosh as the post went onto his blog, “The Prince’s Crown”. His blog was his most prized work. A blog—his blog—with a massive and loyal following.

While he started writing posts about musical theatre first, it slowly morphed into a Raz Keeran blog dedicated to Raz’s most famous series: the Pinnae series about fairies and sprites. He still did other posts like everyday life posts and still about theatre. But he was known famously for his Raz Keeran posts. Though, he couldn’t give all the credit to himself. As much as he wanted to, most of his fame admittedly came from his best friend since high school, Logan Holmes.

Logan was incredible with thinking up theories and backing them up with the most forgettable quote from the series. And, amazingly, they usually made sense. Logan also edited all of his posts to make sure he used correct grammar and spelling and sourced everything well.

Logan was not an avid Pinnae series reader or a, as the fandom called themselves, the Pinnies. And Roman could understand that. Logan wasn’t into fantasy worlds with fairies and sprites. He liked mysteries and non-fiction and something that puzzled his mind.

Roman constantly teased about Logan’s last name. Holmes. As in the famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.

With some persuading on Roman’s part, he had managed to get Logan to pick up the Pinnae series. There had been only three books out at the time and Logan had read them in three days. One 700 paged book a day. And Logan was working at the university on those three days. It was like he ate them up and gained the knowledge inside them.

While Logan still wasn’t a full-on Pinnie, he enjoyed the book and had respect for Raz Keeran. “That author can sure write a fantasy novel.” Logan had said after he had finished the fourth book.

Roman watched as his blog post began to be read. His first and most loyal plebeian, an unknown face under the name “theazureflower” commented first, like usual.

Amazing read Roman! Tell Logan that he did a fantastic job! I feel as though this fifth book will not be like any others. And not just because it’s the last book in the series! Your headcanons always seem to make perfect sense! (◕ ˬ ◕✿)

Roman grinned and pressed “reply”.

Glad you liked it! I’ll definitely tell Logan your praise when I see him next!

Roman finally closed his laptop and stood up. He stretched his back and wrists as he made his way to the kitchen for a snack.

He loved Raz Keeran’s series. Maybe some would call it childish for a 25 year old to read such a fantasy novel, but he didn’t care. He had been called many things in life and childish was definitely the one he preferred.

The only thing that really bothered him was that he didn't know who Raz Keeran was. No one did. Raz wrote under a penname and had, so far, not been found out by the public. There was little known about Raz. All Roman and the public knew was that Raz lived in a small town in the USA. No one even knew what gender Raz was. They were completely anonymous and Roman wished he knew who Raz was.

It would be an incredible feat. It would be in magazines, on blogs, in the news! POPULAR BLOGGER UNCOVERED THE MYSTERY BEHIND AUTHOR RAZ KEERAN. He would be famous! It was a secret dream of his to find out Raz’s identity. He knew a lot of people frowned down upon those who wanted to figure it out. They said that if Raz wanted to be found out, they would have shown themselves long ago. They said it was Raz’s own, private, business.

But that still didn’t stop Roman’s dream. He wanted to find Raz. The first one to find Raz. Before anyone else did. He knew there were other people trying to find them. Most of them were large news corporations who could allow that much time spent looking for clues.

But Roman had something that the news corporations didn’t have. He had Logan Holmes.

Roman had hinted at the idea of Logan helping him search for Raz plenty of times. In conversations, in texts, anytime he could speak to Logan. But Logan refused. He had the same opinion as most Pinnies—that trying to find Raz was an invasion of privacy and was wrong.

But Roman’s counter argument was always “but Raz puts themself in the spotlight, they should be in the public. It was their choice to write the Pinnae series.”

However, Logan, always the intellectual, would say “but it was Raz’s choice to stay out of the public eye. You can’t dictate another person’s choice to either stay out of the brutal views of the public eye or put themselves in the limelight where they would no longer have the privacy they want.”

Roman sighed as he opened his cabinet, taking out some crackers and getting some cheese from the fridge. He was sure that if Logan helped him find Raz, they would be able to find them. Easy peasy.

These few months were the perfect time to try to find Raz, too. It was coming up on summer vacation and Logan was taking his summer vacation too. They would both be free from work to travel to wherever Raz lived and find him before their time would be up and they’d have to go back to work.

Roman cut up his cheese in little pieces, humming to himself. Maybe he should phone over to Logan’s house and see what’s up later. Maybe today would be the day he would convince Logan to help him find Raz.

~~~

Logan looked down at his computer screen, reading the picture of theazureflower’s favourite passage from the whole Pinnae series written by Raz Keeran. theazureflower did this every time they messaged each other. He must have at least 10 different favourite scenes in the Pinnae series. Not that Logan was complaining. The passage he sent Logan was from the first book, Pinnae: Forests and Flowers.

Sidney looked absolutely terrifying. The other sprites seemed to think the same too for they made sure to keep a good distance between them and Sidney. His hair was a curly dark red and his eyes were haunting—a smoky grey and golden flecks, sunk deep into his face. He seemed almost impossibly skinny—skinnier than the sprite queen herself.

He was the only one who had a dark grey cape wrapped snugly around his neck with a hood. Most of the sprites had short sleeved shirts on of varying colours. It was like Sidney was a dark stormcloud amidst a large rainbow.

But Sidney didn’t seem to mind the obvious difference between him and the other sprites.

“Hi!” Arel said, looking at Sidney with a toothy smile. “It’s nice to meet you. I like your cape.”

A couple nearby sprites seemed astonished that Arel was even speaking to Sidney and I had to nudge Arel in the side. “They’re staring at us!” I hissed.

Arel looked at me. It was almost a confused look. “Why does it matter? Besides, we’re humans Parisa. Or,” his eyebrows drew down, “at least half human”. He shrugged and turned back to Sidney. I huffed and crossed my arms.

Sidney gave a curt, tight-lipped, smile to Arel. “Thanks. I made it myself.”

“Wow! I wish I could make my own clothes! Normally my mom just buys it at the store.” Arel rambled kindly, making me even irritated.

“That sprite is constantly wearing that stupid cape,” a sprite next to me sighed, climbing onto a branch near my ear. I turned to see a female sprite with bright purple hair. I think Titania introduced her as Mauve. She was frowning deeply. “Once,” she said more quietly, “me and a couple other sprites tried to pull that thing off.”

I looked at her and glanced back to where Arel and Sidney were now having a conversation about leather. “And? What happened?” I asked quietly, urging her to go on.

Mauve shivered just slightly and I was afraid she would fall off the branch. “Let’s just say no one saw him for a whole month. Rumour has it he was exiled.”

“Was there anything you found?” I asked, cocking my head to the side, keeping Sidney and Arel in my peripheral view. “Underneath his cape?”

Mauve shook her head vigorously, her purple hair shaking with it. “Didn’t even get that close to him…” she trailed off and crossed her arms tightly.

Mauve glanced over at Sidney and Arel and I followed her gaze.

They were both laughing silently, as if they’d known each other for eons.

Logan liked Sidney’s introduction too. While the sulky, dark, character was often a cliché there was just...something about Sidney’s character that made him think there was a reason for the cape—a reason for his death in the fourth book. He wasn’t just any morally grey character who would no doubt get an arc in the last book.

But, then again, maybe it wouldn’t happen. Logan had been wrong before. Raz had pleasantly surprised him in the fourth book. He had thought that Raz wouldn’t include such a bloody war. It seemed more like a children’s book than a young adult novel and the blood and descriptions really threw him for a loop.

That was what made Logan like Raz. It was unlike any YA novel Roman had made him read. While some things were alike—fantasy universes, action and conflict and romance—The Pinnae series was something else entirely.

It had hints of dark but children could still read it. It was hidden so well that Logan almost didn’t catch it himself.

theazureflower: I just love sidney’s character!!!

theazureflower: And arel and parisa’s and mauve and lewis’!!!

Logan grinned down at his screen and rolled his eyes.

Lewis’_Journal: You love all the characters. I don’t think you’d be able to choose a favourite character if your life depended on it.

theazureflower: Guilty is charged ;)

theazureflower: But they are all so amazing and raz does such a good job at making their characters feel so...real!!!!

theazureflower: I mean, none of the characters are perfect and their flaws don’t seem like an afterthought. They just...ASDFGHJKL! I relate to all of them all at once!

Logan loved this about theazureflower. He was always so excitable and happy and reminded him of—no. He wouldn't think about him now. Not when he was talking to theazureflower and having a good time.

He did agree with theazureflower, though. Raz’s characters all seemed to be real characters—save that most of them were magical creatures who could fly and speak to animals.

theazureflower: What character do you relate to most???

Lewis’_Journal: Definitely Lewis. I feel like he’s almost exactly like me.

Logan didn’t want to delve too deep into Lewis’ character with theazureflower. It felt almost...too personal to talk about with an online friend he didn’t even know the first name to.

Lewis, Logan felt, was the perfect embodiment of himself.

Lewis was a fairy who was mentioned briefly in the first book before being introduced more thoroughly in the second book, Pinnae: Magus. He was intelligent and smart and did not speak much with the other fairies. Logan liked to think he was the opposite of Sidney to a degree—the outcast character but on the fairy side.

But Lewis accompanied Parisa in her quest to find the missing Pinnae flower. He was, at first, silent and incredibly stoic. It was only when Parisa brought her laments that she was missing Arel that they really bonded.

During that chapter the reader finds that Lewis has a brother. While Logan doesn’t have a brother himself, he can still empathize with Lewis’ emotions connected to his gone missing brother.

theazureflower didn’t reply for a long moment. Logan didn’t think about it too much.

That was when the phone rang. He reached for the phone and groaned at the caller ID. Roman. Roman Falco. His co writer of the popular blog, “The Prince’s Crown”. Logan’s name was never mentioned in the About page but Roman mentioned him enough that almost all the readers knew Logan helped write Roman’s posts.

What really annoyed Logan, though, was that Roman was a, rather scatterbrained and b, was obsessed with the author of the Pinnae series, Raz Keeran.

While scatterbrained was fine (it was only the fact that Roman never had a schedule for his posts and they always came out on random days at random times), it was Roman’s obsession that was borderline stalkerish and just plain wrong.

“Let the author live their life!” Logan had said late last week when Roman had asked him to figure out where Keeran lived for the thousandth time. “If Keeran wants to stay anonymous, that’s their business, not yours.”

Logan was hoping Roman would eventually drop it. But, Logan knew his friend well. Roman was very strong minded and when he wanted something, he would try his darned hardest to get his idea to become a reality.

Logan put the phone to his ear after heaving a deep sigh. “Hello?”

“Logan—“

“—No, Roman. I’ve already told you I’m not going to stalk Keeran and find out where they live so you can unveil them in your blog.” Logan said crossly.

It was silent on the other end for a split second. “...It’s your blog too, ya know.” Roman’s voice finally said. “You help me with all my posts.”

“But you started the blog.” Logan pointed out. If Logan were to have a blog, it wouldn’t be about a book series (no matter how good of a series they were) and he would definitely not call it “The Prince’s Crown”.

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean anything.” Roman said emphatically.

Logan didn’t know why he was arguing with Roman. Besides, Logan and Roman didn’t get paid for the blog. Sure, sometimes they got ads on their blog but, more often than not, “The Prince’s Crown” to Logan was more of a hobby.

Roman seemed to be thinking about the same thing as Logan as he immediately dropped the argument. “Anyway. Logan, you’ll never believe what I just read!”

Logan crossed his arms, squatting the phone between his ear and shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “What did you find now, Roman? Something about Keeran on another sourceless blog that only relies on speculation?”

“No—well...yes.”

Logan pushed up his glasses and took a breath. “Okay, Roman, what did you find?”

One of Roman’s “brilliant” ideas to find information about Keeran was to search up their name or something about the Pinnae series and then go to the very last Google page.

Most so-called “interviews” with Keeran and “Raz Keeran Revealed!!!” posts were fake and were in the last pages of Google for a reason.

“There’s this new interview! Speaking to Raz Keeran over email!”

“—Literally every interview with Keeran is over email,” Logan said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No one has heard Keeran’s voice. No one knows what gender Keeran is either, that’s the whole point of email.”

“Anyway,” Roman continued. “It said that they managed to learn a couple things about Raz. It said that they managed to weasel out of them that they go to this cafe every morning. And!! Listen to this! It says that Raz lives somewhere around the coast and their town does annual art exhibits around their streets!”

Logan’s back stiffened and he instantly began scrolling backwards in his conversation with theazureflower. “Art exhibits in the streets?” He repeated. “What is this blog anyway?”

“‘The Pinnae Flower’.” Roman replied. “Some tiny blog run by this girl.”

“Isn’t that the one who also said Keeran was some big corporation?” Logan asked, still scrolling. He was into last year’s conversation with theazureflower.

“...Well...yeah. But still!”

Then, Logan found it. A conversation he had had with theazureflower two years ago. June. Almost exactly two years earlier.

theazureflower: I can’t wait for this weekend!!!

Lewis’_Journal: How come? What’s happening over there?

theazureflower: There’s this thing my town does

theazureflower: It’s kinda of like this art thing

theazureflower: Artists in our town do some art and over the weekend they hang them everywhere in the town

theazureflower: Like a scavenger hunt but you find wonderful art everywhere!

Logan wasn’t sure if any other USA town did an art exhibit like theazureflower. It felt odd for Keeran, though. If their town and theazureflower’s were the ones to do an art exhibit, then wouldn’t Keeran be more secretive with it?

But when Logan searched it up. There were a couple of small towns that did something like what theazureflower explained.

There were multiple towns but none of them were theazureflower’s home town. Logan knew theazureflower’s hometown, Mayflower Town, and it wasn’t there.

“Logan?” Roman asked, making him jump. He had forgotten Roman was still on the line. “You still there? What are you doing?”

“I think…” Logan said, trailing off. He straightened his spine. “I think you should leave Keeran alone.” He hung up before Roman could say anything else.

Logan went back to the computer and theazureflower.

...What if theazureflower and Keeran lived in the same town?

Logan and theazureflower sometimes talked about meeting each other summer. Maybe…

He quickly shut the computer. No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t try to unveil Keeran. It would go against all of his morals. It was wrong. Just plain wrong.

But Roman would want to travel with him—they always did in the summer. And if Logan told Roman about Keeran and theazureflower, Roman wouldn’t leave that town until he found out Keeran’s identity.

Unless...what if theazureflower was Keeran?

No. That was impossible. Keeran explicitly said in previous email interviews they did not read theories about the Pinnae series because they didn’t want to be accused of plagiarism. “The Prince’s Crown” was just about all theories and ideas.

No. Logan couldn’t go against his morals. He wasn’t a hypocrite. Logan did not want to be the one to put a spotlight on Raz Keeran.

Logan got out of bed and poured himself a cup of coffee in a cup that Roman had given him last year for his birthday—a Sherlock Holmes mug that said “It’s elementary, my dear Watson”.

It was going to be a long day. He could feel it.

~~~

Roman loves to teach. Children were always bursting with excitement and ideas. Roman was glad he was a drama teacher—he couldn’t imagine teaching children math or science.

It was nearing the end of school and since elementary schools had no exams, he didn’t have to do major correcting like Logan did.

Thank goodness.

By the end of the day, Roman was feeling electricity running through him. He didn’t think he could go home and do something productive and static right now.

So, he called up the only person he wanted to see. Logan. Maybe they could go to the mall or go out for an extra early supper.

“Hello?” Logan asked from the other end. His voice had a sharp edge to it.

Roman put his phone on speaker and began pulling out of the school’s parking lot. “Want to chillax this afternoon? I just got out of the school. I can come pick you up. I don’t think I can stay at home on this beautiful June afternoon.”

Logan didn’t reply for a long time and Roman had to check his phone to make sure he hadn’t hung up on him.

“As long as you don’t bring up trying to find Raz.” Logan said bitterly. “I’m sick of you always talking about it.”

Roman didn’t even think. “Of course. No talk about finding Raz. Got it.”

“Good.” Logan said. “I’ll just pack some stuff to correct and I’ll be out at the front of the university in five minutes.”

Before Roman could protest (who brought stuff to correct on an outing?), Logan had hung up.

Roman got to the university in less than three minutes and, soon after, Logan walked out. Roman glanced at the dash and grinned. Exactly five minutes since their phone call.

“As always, very punctual.” Roman commented as Logan pulled himself into the passenger seat.

“Why are you surprised?” Logan asked, buckling himself in and putting his massive canvas bag at his feet. “I am always punctual.”

Roman grinned as he put the keys in the ignition. “So, where do you want to eat? We could go to—“

Logan rolled his eyes. “Why do you always ask? We always go to the same place.”

Roman shrugged. “Just making sure. What if you suddenly become sporadic and choose some place different?”

“I’m not messing with tradition.” Logan protested. “We’ve been going to the same place since we were in high school.” His eyebrows knitted together. “And when have I ever been sporadic?”

“Well, there was that one time,” Roman chuckled. “When you signed up for the soccer team on a whim.”

“I need exercise.” Logan protested. “The place where I normally walked went under construction—“

“Sure, sure, sure.” Roman grinned as he pulled up to Fairy Cakes and Fantasy Books.

The whole building was decked out in pink and glitter with fairy statues near the door, greeting customers.

The building was squat between a law firm and a grass lot that seemed to permanently hold a “For Sale” sign beneath it’s uncut grass.

It was far away from most of the city and pretty secluded.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy Books was a cafe and library all wrapped into one. It was mostly booked out for birthday parties and for special events.

Normally, it was empty. Like now.

“I can’t believe this place is still open.” Logan muttered. “And still looks pretty okay.”

Roman stepped out of the car and Logan did the same. The air felt thicker even though they were nowhere near the center of the city.

As Roman opened the door, a bell above tinkled and Logan patted the head of a statue of a fairy clad in pink and doused with a fine glitter.

“Ah! Roman and Logan! My favourite two customers!” The lady behind the counter exclaimed. She had her dyed blonde hair up in a bun and was wearing a green dress like Tinkerbell.

“Good afternoon Breena!” Roman called out, striding over to the desk where all the baked goods were.

Logan was immediately drawn to the books and he began to gravitate towards them.

The books were in the corner and the wooden bookshelves were covered in pink glitter and sparkly fairy stickers. Logan’s eyes read the spines.

Most of them were fantasy novels. Hence the name Fairy Cakes and Fantasy Books.

Logan recognized the Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Six of Crows duology. And, in the very middle, was the Pinnae series.

They were the American version. The cover was a glossy pinnae flower with an old time-y map as it’s background. They were all hardcovers.

The first book in the series, Pinnae: Forests and Flowers, was the only book here at the cafe that he had read. All the others he had bought himself.

Scrawled throughout the pages, however, young children had marked it with crayons and the pages were dog-eared again and again, some pages were missing corners altogether. It infuriated Logan to no end.

So, after he had finished the first book, he had bought the entire box set which included a complementary map of the world Raz had created.

“So, what’ll it be?” Breena asked, gesturing to all the pastries and cakes behind the glass.

Roman leaned against the counter, clicking his tongue while making his decision. “I think I’ll have the usual, Breena. Thank you very much.”

Breena grinned and slid open the glass, taking out three churros which had been rolled in pink, edible, glitter. The card next to them read “Fairy Wands”.

“And you Logan?” Breena asked.

Logan came up to the glass and peered inside. He’d been seeing the same baked goods since high school yet he could never really choose “a usual” like Roman.

“I think I’ll have two of those Fairy Cakes,” Logan finally decided, pointing to the powdered sugar topped Berliners.

Breena nodded and put two of the Berliners on a plate.

Once they had paid, Logan and Roman found themselves in their usual spot—in the back corner next to the fairy book display which included a couple of the Rainbow Magic series, the Artemis Fowl series, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

“I literally love this place,” Roman sighed as he bit into his churro. “It always seems so magical to me.”

Honestly? Logan didn’t see it. All he saw was a cafe-library covered in pink and glitter and fairy pictures and drawings hung on the walls.

But he loved it all the same. Just not for the reasons Roman had.

He loved how the books were all Tetris-ed in the bookshelves perfectly. It was like an oddly satisfying video.

He loved Breena’s desserts even though he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.

And lastly, the fact that it was almost always empty. While Breena probably hated that there wasn’t a lot of business, Logan was perfectly content eating Berliners with Roman in an empty cafe with books.

They sat in comfortable silence as they munched on their treats.

As always, Roman was the first to talk. “Guess what I saw today.”

“What?”

“I saw one of my students, Matilda, reading the first Pinnae book! I think she’s going to do her novel presentation on it too!” Roman grinned from ear to ear.

“I, as well, saw a student in my astrology seminar with a t-shirt with the pinnae flower on it.” Logan said, remembering the student and his green shirt.

Roman finished his churros in record time, Logan just starting his second Berliner.

He could feel the pressure building up in Roman’s voicebox, about to ask the inevitable question. Logan knew Roman couldn’t refrain from it. He never knew why he always made Roman promise not to bring it up when Logan knew for a fact Roman could never bite his tongue.

Roman shifted in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “Logan…” he hesitated. “I know that I promised not to say anything about it but...could you please reconsider trying to find Raz?”

And there it was. Logan sighed and shoved the rest of the Berliner in his mouth to keep from screaming. He didn’t think he could handle Roman right now.

Roman twiddled his fingers like a child as he waited for Logan to chew and swallow the Berliner. “I just,” he sighed, “you’re so good at mysteries and stuff and—“

Logan swallowed and angrily shook his head. “No,” he hissed, trying not to raise his voice and alert Breena. “Roman, I’ve told you every single time you’ve asked: no. I will not find Raz for you. There is a reason Raz is anonymous.”

He didn’t know why right now, in a glittery cafe-library, he was finally breaking. After years and years of Roman asking, he had never really gotten mad or angry with him. Logan would just shake his head or logically explain why finding Raz was wrong, hoping it would get into Roman’s brain and he’d finally realize that his dream was unethical. Maybe it was pent up anger from all the years.

A small part in Logan’s brain reminded him of his theory that theazureflower and Raz might live in the same town.

He shook it away. Not now, he told himself.

Roman shrunk for a split second in his chair before seeming to come to his senses and lean forward and straighten his spine, meeting Logan’s height. “I understand why it’s wrong but don't you see it? Our blog could get so many new readers and we could become famous!”

“I’m not interested in becoming famous, Roman. Maybe that’s why I empathize with Raz so much.” Logan snapped back. “I’m not finding Raz for you.”

Roman wasn’t giving up that easily. And neither was Logan. He didn’t know how the two of them—both rather hotheaded—became friends, to be honest. Or, actually, stayed friends after all this time.

“What if—”

“—No, Roman. I won’t take any of your compromises. You’re atrocious at keeping promises. Like this one.” Logan inturpted, not in the mood for one of Roman’s compromises. “Oh! But what if we found Raz but didn’t tell anyone?” or “What if we found Raz and hinted at it on our blog to grab followers?”. Logan was sick of them. Roman would never keep Raz’s identity a secret after he knew, Logan was sure of it.

“This summer is perfect, though, Logan!” Roman exclaimed wildly. “It’s summer and you’ve got a couple of weeks from last summer we didn’t use!”

Logan gritted his teeth and brought his hands into fists. “Roman, for the last time, I am not—absolutely will not—find Raz Keeran for you.” His voice was loud and Logan prayed Breena wasn’t in earshot.

Roman slouched in his chair and sulked, rolling his eyes. “I bet I could find someone on Craigslist that could find Raz quicker than you anyway. They can be my new best friend.”

Logan felt his anger rise and rise until it consumed him. “Craigslist?” He repeated. “Craigslist?” He pounded a fist on the table, the plates slightly jumping off the table. He was better than any random person on Craigslist.

Logan heard the words come out of his mouth before he could logically go over the consequences. “Oh yeah? You think, Roman? Well pack your bags and book us two plane tickets to Mayflower Town. We’ve got some sleuthing to do.”

[shookethbrooketh]

seven days

day two: part two

summary: dan is stuck in the wrong timeline. one day, he kisses phil goodnight. the next morning, he’s completely alone. he doesn’t even recognize where he wakes up, and little details in the world around him have changed. he has no clue what’s happening or where to go next in an effort to fix it; all he knows is that he has to find phil.

genre: sci-fi, a lil bit of angst, happy ending

warnings: none (for now)

fic word count: 5.5k chapter word count: 1.2k

written for the @phandomreversebang ! inspired by the awesome moodboard/edits by @maybeformepersonally ! beta’d (beginning to end) by @i-might-just-leave-soon !

read it on ao3

“have a great day!” dan shouted as he watched the love of his life walk out of it clueless. he sighed, and muttered under his breath, “i love you.”

Dan put his head in his hands. He’d been refreshing Phil’s Twitter for nearly half an hour, and he’d yet to post anything about meeting Dan. Was he not as big of a fan as he let on at the meetup? Would he even respond if Dan messaged him? How would Dan even start that conversation? 

The only way he figured was to use the art as a conversation-starter. He did find that post, and he liked and retweeted it, but he couldn’t seem to message Phil. Something he couldn’t quite identify was holding him back; it was like there was an invisible forcefield blocking his thumbs from typing Phil’s handle into his DMs. 

“Dan!” James called from the other room. “Are you ready to go? It’s time to leave for your panel!” 

No one had even bloody told him he had a panel that day. He decided to count himself lucky that he’d been too down to change out of his meetup clothes and stood up to head to the door. Before he moved, though, he stopped, looking back down at the phone. By then, it was already about 2:00; he didn’t have all that much time left. 

hi there! i really like the art you gave me at the meetup; would you mind if i used it in a video? thanks so much x 

He typed it and sent it without even thinking, and he was gone.

Checking the phone nonstop up until the panel did no good for Dan; Phil had yet to respond. He was probably sitting in the audience chattering with someone, Dan thought. Finally, when he was ushered out onto the stage, he was met with deafening shrieks. At least something was normal. 

Dan spent the next few minutes scanning the crowd for any sign of Phil but to no avail. Furthermore, not only did his plan fail, but it also managed to distract him from a panel he already knew absolutely nothing about. He didn’t even figure out the topic of the panel until five minutes in, and that only made it worse: he was sitting in a row of makeup YouTubers. 

Dan didn’t know a single thing about makeup, so every answer he gave, he lied straight through his teeth. It didn’t take long for him to notice creators up and down the panel giving him odd looks, and he started sweating through his jumper. He could tell he was crashing and burning, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He was like an astrophysicist giving a lecture on Shakespeare.  

Every time the moderator asked him a question, Dan answered as confidently as he could, but he knew that everything coming out of his mouth was dead wrong. Only fifteen minutes into the panel, shouts were radiating from the audience. 

“Dan’s a fraud!” one critic shouted. 

“That’s not Daniel! He’s an imposter!” someone yelled over the murmurs of the croud. 

Suddenly a chant broke out: “IMPOSTER! IMPOSTER! IMPOSTER!” 

Dan sunk down into his seat as if that would hide him from the audience. Up and down the panel, the looks from his fellow creators had changed from confused to angry. He bowed his head, stood, admitting defeat, and took a walk of shame off the stage. 

“Dan!” someone shouted, and his heart jumped out of his chest. There was currently a crowd of people angry at him; his name coming from the other end of a hallway immediately spiked fear in his core. He gave a deep exhale as he turned to find James running towards him, but his eyes quickly widened as he realized the situation he was in: he had just bombed, and “his” manager was making a beeline straight for him. “What the hell just happened?” he said, anger and concern about even in his tone. 

“I’m sorry, I just….” he trailed off, panic setting in. “I’m not well right now. I think I need to go back to my room for the rest of the day and just lie down.” James raised an eyebrow. 

“Damnit, Howell, if I didn’t know your face well enough I’d say you were an imposter.” He sighed and turned on his heel, finally leaving Dan completely alone. 

It was a miracle, really, that Dan made it back to the hotel. Between his general lack of direction and the fact that angry makeup experts were probably out to get him, he was quite paranoid through the entire walk, but he somehow managed to make it. 

After he was safely locked up in his hotel room, he pulled out the phone, and it was already flooded with texts, half of them asking if he was okay and the other half making very rude yet technically true allegations. 

All the notifications stressed him too much for him to be bothered to look through them, so he simply opened his phone and went straight to Twitter. Or at least he attempted to. Before he could even reach the top row folder the Twitter app was hiding in, he found himself tapping the notification to another concerned text. 

At this point, a mix of stress and anger began to pool in his stomach, and he finally snapped, frantically searching for the settings app (and hitting a couple more notifications along the way). He began shutting off notifications for each app, one by one, and when he reached the bottom, he discovered that Twitter notifications had already been off. At least the YouTuber he personified had a little bit of sense. 

However, he suddenly realized that this meant Phil could have messaged him back hours ago, and he wouldn’t have known. He rushed back to the Twitter app, this time uninterrupted, and found a DM sent only a few minutes early. 

Depends. Are you who you say you are? 

He’d been at the panel. Dan sighed and began to think. Could he continue to lie to Phil? What would happen if he told the truth? Would Phil stop talking to him? He anxiously typed out a message, refusing to even look at the screen as he went. 

sorta. i know this is weird, but i am daniel howell. just not the one you know. i look identical, and by all legalities we’re the same person, but i’m not… from here. again, i know it’s really weird, but i need you to trust me. i need to talk to you. 

He threw his phone down on the bed as if it were suddenly burning. He knew the only way he’d be able to tell if he got a response was if he checked, but he was terrified to do so. It was like 2009 all over again. 

Finally, a few minutes later, he opened Twitter to find what he considered the worst case scenario; Phil had read his messages, but there was no answer. He went to Phil’s account, and, even worse, the most recent tweet was a screenshot of their conversation captioned “Creepy texts from @/danielhowell ???” 

He was screwed. Dan rolled over in his hotel bed and pulled up Netflix on his television, feeling his depression setting in with every passing second. “Maybe in the next universe.”

[prosaicswirl]

This got deleted when I tried to edit the tags from mobile, so this is a re-post.

But this was my last day of short story slam 2019 :)) This was fun, if not a little challenging to come up with a new story every day.

Warnings: Hostage/kidnapping, memory loss.

I can’t be the only one who thinks like this… No way.

Because everyone has those songs that bring them back to… a place. A place or time only they remember. That being said, I’ve never talked with someone who had it like me. Maybe that was just my own fault though for not talking enough.

“I hold hands with cosmic entities…”

And suddenly I was walking down Hongqiao with my purse bumping against my hip, and sunlight on my skin. I could still see every face, every emotion I felt in that time. First paycheck of a summer job, and I was off to go find friends to go shopping, and that was the day I played that song on repeat as I laughed, and enjoyed life for once. It was also the first day I ever bought calligraphy pens and started getting into that hobby.

It was wonderful, and I loved the feeling of being happy, something that I don’t remember in recent memories.

In fact, I don’t remember recent memories at all.

“Jet lag, been in a state of desire…”

2014. Sitting in an empty pool office with Niels, my playlist playing on the Bluetooth speakers for getting a higher score on our beginning-of-session training, and staring so deeply into each other’s eyes, that it felt like I could see his memories too. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when he asked me out three months later over the phone while it was on speaker and we were both packing to go off to the same university a day later. We were so in love.

Were… are? I can’t remember. I’m living in the past, but I have to stop soon. He must be concerned, wherever he was… or maybe he was watching all this?

“Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again.”

I froze. This one… It’s been so long… I remember lying down, I remember tears on my face… Who brings a six-year-old to see a horror movie? But they sold out of tickets for whatever Disney movie was on, and instead, me being a dumb child, asked to see that pretty lady on the poster. That, and my father really didn’t know much English, so he definitely didn’t understand the rating system here.

That’s all to say that he sang that song every day for a week to get me to sleep.

Except he never sang the words. It was always humming.

My eyes shot open and I didn’t see his face, nor Niels eyes, and not even my friends. I saw wires upon wires, and the music finally stopped. I don’t remember.

I remember so much, just not what was going on here. Or what led me to this place. Unconsciously, my fist gripped the arm of the chair a little tighter, and I felt the hundreds of needles under my skin.

Right. I thrashed around so much that they were forced to sedate me before sticking them all in.

Why? I thought and thought and thought, but the only think I could think of was Niels. So, he must’ve still been in my life, right? God, I didn’t even know that.

“Congratulations, Patient 20701, you are the first to survive the music test.”

The voice was coming over speakers, meaning that I couldn’t actually see anything. The machines I was hooked up to were retracting the needles, and I could do nothing but stay deadly still. Even the smallest twitch where there was still a needle, make me tear up. But at least I was remembering. I remembered so much now…

Niels was waiting. As long as he wasn’t dead yet. The surgery would cost too much… And even though we were rich, we didn’t have that kind of money. So, I came here.

“Where’s the money?”

There was a silence during which I held my breath. Something just… felt off.

“He’ll be ok now. His surgery has been scheduled now, and the entire procedure has been paid for.”

Oh, thank god. I could finally breathe again. “Then I’m done here.”

“…No, 20701, you are the first to show such… results. As such, we insist you stay here. Of course, you’ll be reimbursed, but—” nonono…

I yanked on the restraints holding my wrists down until the warm blood trickling down my wrist made me stop. Even my feet were bound, when had that happened?

“Our contract’s over, let me out!”

“Phase two will begin in a moment. Sit back and relax.”

I screamed. I screamed so much that I couldn’t tell whether or not I eventually stopped.

When my eyes opened up again, I was back in that chair, and a hand was shaking me awake. It was no longer the robot aliens faceless employees, but a human face. “Ma’am? Are you hurt?”

Before I even opened my mouth, I looked between the gun on his front and the badge on his shoulder.

“They locked me up here.”

“We know.” He nodded his head, holding his arms out to keep me steady. “We found everything. Now, we’re just here to get you out.”

It turns out, it wasn’t just one thing that I forgot. That’d be too easy. Every time they asked me something special, when did I move? Where did I graduate? I just didn’t have an answer. They were gone. Not everything, but a lot. And so sporadically placed, that no one could help me figure out what was wrong. During that time spent in a hospital, I saw my parents come in to try and help me figure out what exactly I had forgotten, but it was no use.

Eventually, they all gave up.

“Today?” I asked, swinging my feet over the side, and automatically reaching for my bag.

“We’re bringing you home.”

“Good, I can’t stand this sad song anymore.”

“Sound of Silence? But it’s been quite popular again because of that movie.”

“A movie I either haven’t seen before, or have forgotten about.” The soldier nodded along, and showed me out.

Home was not home. It was a house that I saw from one of my vague memories, and a nice floral scent. I don’t know why. I knew I was old enough to have a job and mortgage, so that shouldn’t have surprised me, but the tearful face at the door was.

Once the stranger helped me take my bags in and the soldiers had left, I turned to ask a question, but he wrapped his arms around me instead. “Holy shit, I didn’t think I’d see you again. They said you paid for the surgery, but I didn’t think we had the money and…”

He looked down at my limp arms and swallowed. “Right. They said you wouldn’t remember me.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Niels. I’m your husband… you don’t remember? You went into that place to get the money so I would live… I… I had no clue you’d be stuck there after…”

His hands were so warm, and they kept tickling the edges of memories I couldn’t remember. And those eyes… something wanted to come back, but nothing was there.

“Sweetie… it’s my turn to take care of you now. Sit, and I’ll get everything sorted.”

The first thing he brought to me was a stereo. “This will be slightly painful, but they said it had to be done.”

And it was a song, one that gave me a headache right away, but Niels kept holding my hand, and looking into my eyes. And… and something was coming back…

2014. Sitting in an empty pool office with Niels, my playlist playing on the Bluetooth speakers for getting a higher score on our beginning-of-session training, and staring so deeply into each other’s eyes, that it felt like I could see his memories too. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when he asked me out three months later over the phone while it was on speaker and we were both packing to go off to the same university a day later. We were so in love.

And the tears in his eyes made that seem like the truth.

“It’s coming back.”

His fingers wiped the tears that were trickling down my face. “I know. We’re so close.”

[mrswhozeewhatsis]

21 Supernatural Questions

Thanks to @sammit-janet for helping me procrastinate tonight!

1. When did you start watching Supernatural?

Early December, 2014. I’d been sick for a month, already, and had run out of other shows I wanted to watch. I decided to watch that show that Misha Collins was on that my goddaughters used to watch. I got through 9.5 seasons by Christmas. That first hellatus was awful, and it’s how I got into the fandom. I needed more, found con videos, then fan fiction, and the rest is history!

2. Who is your favorite in TFW?

It depends on the day. I usually say I’m Winchester-sexual, angel-curious!

3. Who is your least favorite in TFW?

Ugh. I don’t dislike any of them (though I miss BAMF early-seasons Cas who didn’t bleed much and could do things regular hunters couldn’t like see demons’ faces). If I had to rank them, I probably obsess over Cas the least.

4. Tag your top 5 Supernatural blogs.

You’d ask me who my favorite children were, too, wouldn’t you? Not falling for that!

5. Who is your favorite character (not including TFW)?

You’re killing me. You’re really killing me. I CAN’T PICK. Chuck? Donna? Jody? Rowena? I love John and Mary, but I don’t get squishy when I watch them on the show. Charlie? I literally squealed and frightened my husband when we saw AU!Charlie the first time. Ellen? There are too many and you can’t make me pick!!

6. Who is your favorite woman in Supernatural?

Donna. She kicks ass and calls it butt.

7. John or Mary?

Gonna quote @sammit-janet directly, cuz she said it well: “Both.  I know people hate one or the other, but you cannot look at these parents with real-world glasses.  John had the mother of his children burned on the ceiling and he had no fucking clue about the Supernatural until then.  Once he did, he was on a mission to find whatever killed his wife.

“Mary made a deal to save the man she loved.  She would have stopped Azazel that night in the nursery too, but Michael erased her memory.  Now that she’s come back, well, don’t you think it’s a little disorienting to spend 32 years in heavenly bliss and then get thrust back down to earth and find out her children are living the exact life she didn’t want them to?

“Also, don’t forget, EVERYTHING was stacked against them.  Heaven made 100% sure that they got together just so Sam and Dean could be born and play out the apocalypse.”

8. What were your first opinions of Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack?

Sam: Tall, but the hair, and he’s a baby, I feel like a pedophile.

Dean: Older, still tall, wiseass, heart of gold, if he loves pie, I’m a goner!

Cas: HOLY FUCK.

Jack: If he’s good, I will hold him and love him and squeeze him and call him George. If he’s evil, I will cut him down with the flames of a thousand burning suns.

9. What’s your favorite season?

I really don’t have one. I have seasons I love more, and seasons I love less, but none are my favorites. The writing in the beginning was tighter, and felt like there was an end coming, which made it more electric. But I really love watching the boys grow and change and make better, smarter decisions, or make stupid decisions for bigger, better reasons. I dislike the degradation of angel powers, though. I mean, remember when Cas could smite an entire diner of monsters or demons with just a bright light, but this season he was beaten to pulp by a demon gang? And now that Heaven’s gates are all open, can Cas fly, again? I mean, they couldn’t fly because the closed gates cut them off from Heaven, but now the gates are open, so LET CAS FLY, DAMMIT.

10. What’s your least favorite season?

Season 7, although that season does have an inordinate amount of things I like about it, so it makes no sense. Story-wise, I get it. They had to systematically take away everything the boys valued in order to leave Sam the destroyed mess he was when Dean and Cas disappeared. I don’t like it when my boys hurt, but I understand why they did it. On the other hand, season 7 gave us Charlie, and Frank, and Garth, and Kevin, and numerous dick jokes, and Sam tied to a bed, and Cas naked on Dean’s car covered in bees. So torn, but when I rewatch the series, I take a deep breath when I start season 7. (During my most recent rewatch, I also took a breath when Toni Bevell came onto my screen, so I guess I now put 12 in with 7.)

11. Opinions on Destiel?

Canon - Dean is straight. He’s said multiple times he doesn’t swing that way. I wouldn’t object if the writers decided to change that, but I respect Jensen and the writers in their decision not to go that way. There are more and more diverse characters on our screen every year, and I’m okay with letting Dean be a cis het white male who loves women of all kinds. I would love if they did a Human!Impala episode and the Impala turned out to be John Barrowman, though. On the other hand, Cas is completely unconcerned with gender and sexuality, so I wouldn’t mind seeing him have a romantic thing with a guy. Pretty sure that would break the fandom, though, so not holding my breath.

Fanon - Holy cheeseballs, that boy swings harder than an old-time saloon door, and I love reading about him being so open to everyone. Give me all the guys banging Dean like a screen door in a hurricane. Dean is all the door metaphors and memes, including the memes about Cas loving to destroy doors. Show me these two idiots falling in love any way you got it. They were roommates, you say? YES. There was only one bed, you say? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. Dean’s a fireman and Cas is a nurse? ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME??? BRING IT.

12. Do you believe Supernatural queerbaits?

Not intentionally, or maliciously, but I can see why some folks might think that, sometimes. It’s a fine line the show writers have to balance on when it comes to scenes with Dean and Cas because of the fandom’s obsession with Destiel. They want to show the love between the two characters as brothers, but it can’t be too much love. (However, I sometimes wonder about certain things. I would love to sit down with Jensen, Jerry Wanek, and Robbie Thompson, show them certain moments, and ask why certain decisions were made regarding framing, editing, props, and such. If they weren’t thinking Destiel, what were they thinking??)

13. Seasons 1-7 or 8-14?

You’re asking me to pick my kids, again. 1-7 is Kripke writing, 8-11 is Robbie Thompson writing, NO NO NO YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DECIDE.

14. Favorite villain (plot wise)?

Crowley

15. Do you think they should end the Lucifer plot line?

YES. I’m cool with watching Nick progress into a big bad, but keep Lucifer in The Empty. (I just had a wild thought about The Empty, Lucifer, and The Shadow coming for Jack. Lord, I hope I’m wrong.)

16. Who do you think has gone through more trauma (Sam, Dean, or Cas)?

Quoting Sammit again: “Sam.  He found out he had demon blood in him, was one of Azazel’s “chosen”, died by being stabbed in the back, went to hell for 100 years, lost his soul, was driven mad by Lucifer, almost died doing the trials, was possessed by Gadreel…did i leave anything out?”

Dean and Cas have also had their share, but if you want to quantify it, I think Sam has had more. 

17. What’s your favorite Supernatural episode?

Baby, Dog Dean Afternoon, Don’t Call Me Shurley, most of the other episodes writing by Robbie Thompson, too.

18. Do you like case episodes?

They are a nice breather in between the episodes where I can’t sit back for  moment.

19. Who do you relate most to in TFW?

I switch back and forth between Dean and Sam. I relate to Sam wanting to go to college to get away from his family, I relate to Dean’s eating habits, I understand why Sam’s done all the stupid shit he’s done, and I understand Dean not wanting to delve into things because it’s hard. Oh, and I say awesome almost as much as Dean. Cas, though, is a mystery to me. The only time I relate to him is when he’s confused by pop culture references.

20. Why do you like Supernatural?

The characters. They’re just so fucking interesting, you know? And (with some notable exceptions) the writers have managed to keep them from getting too far away from who they were in the pilot, while showing them growing and changing and improving. I love the world, I love the fantasy, and I love how universal they all are. I mean, if you took characters from another show and put them in a Beach AU, I wouldn’t be able to see it like I can with these characters. They’re awesome.

21. If you could bring back one character and kill off another who would they be?

Keep Lucifer dead, bring back Frank. I also want to see more of Linda Tran. Or Ellen, though I don’t know what they’d do with her with Mary around. I’d say Crowley, but I know that will never happen, and I understand why, so I’m letting him go.

Tag yourselves!

[drexodthegunslinger]

Why is it only Cayde you focus on? What about other destiny characters?

Okay, that’s a fair point. Let’s go shall we?

1: The Speaker.

Said literally three things in the entire franchise. He told you to fight but that we can’t win, he gave a speech nobody listened to because we were all thinking “is this it? Really?”, and then he told Ghaul to kill himself. Yeah the Speaker dies but who really gives a shit? We’re not given any reason to care are we?

2: Zavalla.

Apparently this boy does not understand promotions. “We killed all the Cabal leaders, why are they not gone?” Idk mate, maybe because that’s not how that works. “We stepped into a war with the cabal” yeah and you’re doing pretty shit mate. Sure he’s supposedly busy managing and planning shit, but really it doesn’t translate well in game. He might as well have two lines in the entire game where he alternates between “mah walls” and “we stepped into a war with the cabal” and he’d be the same.

3: Ikora.

Good in the crucible apparently? All she does these days is stand around looking stern and running an intelligence group that can be brought to a grinding halt by a fucking storm. Ikora, listen, if your satellites can’t withstand a storm they’re not much use are they?

4: Cayde.

TLDR, Bungie killed your fave.

5: Eris.

Creepy Hive lady. Very convenient for her to turn up in time for the Hive DLC’s and then disappear when they weren’t at the forefront. Will admit, I was mildly surprised she wasn’t brought back for the Warmind DLC because it has Hive. What did she really do though? She gave us some advice on Hive, had her shit stolen, and was looked down on by pretty much everyone. Only redeemable feature I can thing of is the rule 34 fan art of her which is great if you like generic rule 34 art where the woman’s chest and ass are exaggerated to shit.

Speaking of which, Bungie, I know the Destiny Franchise takes place in a period where food shortages are probably frequent, but mix it up with your fucking character designs. Not everyone is the same height and build you cowards.

6: At this point my mind went blank and I had to google “destiny characters”

7: Ghost.

Look at what the Speaker did. It took a multitool and gave it sentience.

The Ghost is really inconsistent, let’s be real. You want me to hack a lazer grid on earth, sure but that’s going to take precisely three waves of enemies and you’d better not miss one. You want me to access Cabal consoles on our very first time accessing the computer shit of an alien that likely has a numerical system that works off of base 3? Easy shit, no waiting involved.

Yeah, the “talk to your ghost” thing was great and honestly, I liked that. It was a moment for you to sit down ant talk to your Ghost, the one constant companion you have. It was a good moment.

And then they go right back to alternating between being a torch and a lockpick.

Bungie really fucked up with the Ghost-Guardian interaction in vanilla D2. The two of them nearly died, Light was lost, and the two don’t sit down and have a “talk to ghost” moment at any point? That’s theft of a possibly great emotional moment.

8: Crota

He is bad because he kills people

9: Oryx

He is also bad because he kills people and he’s mad you killed his son who he can bring back because We didn’t destroy Crota’s soul or something?

10: The EXO Stranger

In going to find the tweet I wanted I found something worse. Luke Smith had said he felt they had wrapped up her arc and quite frankly I haven’t heard a more objectively wrong thing come out of a human beings mouth with regards to games in a long time.

But it gets worse. Because 4 fucking years later, bungie dropped clues to who she might be if you paid enough attention to the shitshow of the Warmind DLC. According to lore from the dlc and the rasputin arg, there are hints that the EXO Stranger is Ana Bray’s sister who went back in time from the future as an exo to?

No, you know what. That’s bullshit. Bungie thought they finished the exo stranger arc, which was a shambling corpse of writing itself, then learnt actually they were wrong and tried to wrap it up.

Except none of it’s confirmed and explains nothing. Fuck the stranger, and fuck everyone involved in the creation of her character and her arc, learn how to write a story.

11: While we’re here, Ana bray.

Bungie’s first confirmed non-straight woman. I don’t know if it was confirmed if she’s a lesbian, bi, pan, or what so I’m using non-straight until I get confirmation otherwise. Had her girlfriend introduced on the fourth day of pride in a comic where she died. Great start.

But what about Ana herself?

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I tried to play Warminds but the Hive ruined it because Bungie is quite frankly not great at writing their own game are they?

12: Ghaul

Quite frankly, my favourite character. I dropped enough money on D2 to get the collectors edition cabal book which gave quite a lot of backstory to the campaign, however I’ll keep this to what Bungie actually make accessible in their game.

He’s an arsehole. He’s just the antagonist of the day, let’s be real. To understand that his behaviours and attitudes might somewhat stem from how he was shunned in mainstream cabal society and how this loneliness and bitterness from being an orphan as well as a runt was used to manipulate him into being how he is today, is completely lost on anyone who didn’t read his lore.

The game doesn’t put any significant thought into him on the actual disc that you play because, like Crota, like Oryx, like Skolas, he’s just an episodic villain.

13: Osiris.

Local Man Who Says He Doesn’t Need Help, Actually Needs Help.

How bad was this dlc? I mean, sure, we ran through the same area repeatedly, killed a Vex reskin of Oryx, and watched a Cabal jump on a vex. Twice. Once in a mission and again in a strike.

I can’t think of what Osiris did in this DLC except think he was able to do this himself, and then be the only reason we could damage Oryx- I mean, uh Panoptes.

Wait. Did they give a Vex guy that tries to simulate all the universes a name after an ancient Greek figure who was the source of the “eyes of Argus” stuff? I think they did.

14: Panoptes.

Bungie aren’t even trying at this point. He’s just Vex Oryx.

15: Amanda Holiday.

She has a robotic leg, an american(?) accent, and didn’t stop Cayde from doing his stupid bullshit plan that she knew was illegal. She also had a quest for an exotic shotgun that makes her different from other vendors. I get that as a vendor she doesn’t need an in depth backstory but Bungie, come on. If you’re going to make her important to parts of the story, give us reason to care about her.

16: Tess Eververse

Is there an actual ingame reason for her to be there? Is Silver explained? Is Bright Dust? As far as I can tell, no. Literally bolted on because Activision couldn’t let EA one-up them in microtransaction bullshittery.

17: Mara Sov

Cold, aloof, had fallen as pets. Was it confirmed how dead she is?

18: Uldren Sov

The only episodic villain I like aside from Ghaul. Uldren is great once you realise that he is how he is because of a bitterness towards Guardians. I mean, we turned up in his house demanding stuff, and the City on at least one occasion, let the Reef take a big loss for us with no acknowledgement. I can understand why he’d be pissed off in the first place and if he was somewhat possessed then sure that’s not going to help.

Most people are just pissed with him because he killed Cayde, but now he’s back as a Guardian that anger seems to have calmed. I’ve stopped playing the game since Warminds and I can’t say for anything that happened since, and while I hope Uldren as a Guardian grows as a character I won’t hold my breath.

19: Variks.

He stayed loyal to the reef and was helpful for a brief stint before we all shamed him for his mine dismantling kink.

20: Is that it?

I can’t think of anyone else. Sure, there are vendors and other side characters, but honestly, those are cardboard cutouts of a character with no depth of anything to them.

Sure, you could say “but drexmun, what about The Drifter, or the Spider, or Obb the Soulcarver?”

And I would say “yes, but two of those are from after I stopped playing the game and I can’t make an analysis on characters I know nothing about, and also you leave Obb out of this.”

[plumbobpost]

Fan(fic) Friday: Spotlight on Peni Griffin

Sul sul!

Today, I have a special treat for you guys. I had the chance to ask the very delightful @penig a few questions about Widespot and The Sims in general. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her work, she has created two widely popular hoods for The Sims 2: Land Grant University and the aforementioned Widespot. It’s longer than usual, and Peni expressed the concern that it would needed to be edited down, but in all honesty, her responses were such a wealth of information, deleting any of it seemed wrong.

I’ll stop teasing you, and let Peni speak for herself:

What inspired you to create Widespot?

“I’m always in story creation mode. This has been a large part of the appeal of The Sims 2 for me, as it allows me to tell a particular kind of story that I will never, ever be able to write for publication,  and have always wanted to: the story of a community in which we see every character as the hero of her own story, and how all the stories intertwine (often without the protagonists recognizing it) and affect each other as they all go about their business.” 

“At the time I started Widespot, I was in a situation in which my normal professional outlets were not available to me. You will excuse me from going into detail on the subject, which can be summed up as Health Crap. For our purposes, the important thing was that I needed a project, I couldn’t work on a book, I had been thinking for some time about the potential of my favorite game as a storytelling medium, and enough discussion of the matter had been generated over at MTS that I found/was directed to the late lamented Mootilda’s thread on creating a clean, safe, populated neighborhood for sharing.  ( http://modthesims.info/t/455403)”

“I actually went into some detail about the process on my writing blog at the time.”

( https://penigriffin.blogspot.com/2013/02/so-you-want-to-share.html )

Did you take inspiration from the Maxis neighborhoods?

“To a certain extent, yes. I decided that what I wanted to create was a neighborhood that would feel and play as if it had shipped with the game, but with less mess. No dead people without full character data, no memories that outright contradict each other, no hints in the bios that can’t be fully explored in the game.”

In your neighborhood, you included different story elements for each family that interconnect. What is your process in developing this story?

“Somewhere around here, I have the notebook in which I first started working it out, but I’d have to dig to find it. I remember starting with the admonition to myself to keep it simple, as your first attempt at publishing in a medium should be simple - you have enough to do mastering the new medium without trying to make something complicated with it. I knew my genre was soap opera, and though I’ve never been much of a soap watcher, my mother and husband are, so that set my parameters. I listed the tools at my disposal - the five base game aspirations, the jealousy mechanics, and the generational play. The question I asked myself at the start of the process was: “How do I create the most Drama for the least amount of effort?”

“Probably the notion of having five aspiration-themed households came almost at once, possibly as I started making name lists. I wanted to give elders a big role, because I had noticed that a lot of people thought elders were “boring,” and I knew they were wrong! I’ve always felt that Maxis missed a big trick by not having a Scheming Matriarch in Pleasantview. I wanted to shake up some stereotypes and have sims who didn’t obviously “belong” in their aspirations - shy Romance sims, outgoing Knowledge sims, lazy Fortune sims. I wanted all the households intimately connected to each other, which meant that for simplicity’s sake the story (story being defined as “person with a problem”) should center around one particular event that triggered events in all the households, a cascade of consequence. At which point I wrote down “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife,” and decided that the wealthy Mann family coming to town with a highly marriageable son and a Dark Secret was a good place to start.”

“That turned out not to be the trigger, but you have to start somewhere.”

Aside from your official captions, how did you set out to convey plot to those who play Widespot?

“I tried to take pictures of enough key moments that the players could inspect the albums for clues. By playing out the development I had ensured that some important information already existed in the memories and relationship panels, but I also went in and inserted memories that seemed to me significant. I had specific meanings in mind when I gave Mary memories of potty-training her younger siblings that extend all the way back to teenhood and manipulated some of her relationship scores with the testing cheats, but I wanted the players to be free to interpret those memories and relationships according to their own ideas, so I tried to background my own opinions as much as possible.”

“The plot, after all, is the players’ job, not mine!”

As far as literal world building goes, how did you factor in your characters’ surroundings to both their plotlines and their characterization?

“The smallness of the town, necessitated by the decision to keep things as simple as possible, gave me the starting point and the town’s name - it’s just a wide spot in the road, hardly a town at all. Rural areas have a certain vibe; certain types of people grow up there, and certain kinds of people wind up there, so this was on my mind as I designed the characters, built their homes, and decided what order they should be created in CAS and moved in.  Each house has a history, not all of which is necessarily made explicit to the player, and some of which really, really made me long for something more than BG Maxis content! But I think most people get that the Land cabin was built piecemeal over time, that a lot of Skye’s house was DIY, that the Beech house is Daytona’s house and the rest of her family just lives there, etc. Skye only got educational toys for his kids, but the Lands have a teddy and a dollhouse as well. The Mann’s house is the only one with a fence, and Rich ensures his privacy with stained glass windows in certain rooms. He also has that ominous closet full of aspiration rewards. (I hate that I couldn’t get him a counterfeiting machine - he clearly needs one.)”

“Some details were dictated by the game mechanics. Penny needed a double bed to get pregnant in, but there’s no particular reason for one to exist on her lot; so the heck with it, everybody in that house gets a double bed and I don’t even try to explain it. The lowest-numbered playable in the hood is always the telescope slapper, so I had to create the Mann family first in order for the guy with the Dark Secret to be the one who was incensed at the possibility of being spied on. But who would beard Rich in his own den when he, Lana, or Junior used the telescope in the daytime? That would be the local cop, wouldn’t it? This is why the Land house (with the nubile Land daughters) is right behind the Mann house and the Mann telescope is pointed straight at it. I also used the house to train the Manns - especially Junior - into wanting to buy things by furnishing it minimally to start with, and then adding items as wants were rolled for expensive artwork, games, etc.”

“When I gave characters their starting skill points, I assigned them partly at random, partly according to the implied backstory and role, and partly according to what would be possible in the game. If logic or a random roll indicated that someone in a household had a skill, I made sure that suitable skilling items existed in that household. Woody has an easel because it’s a solitary tool for gaining creativity points; the other families have the more sociable piano.  Neither family is much concerned about the impression they make on the outside world, so they are not oversupplied with mirrors, unlike the other families, where Charisma matters.”

“This all works back and forth; the character or situation requires something in the setting, and then I realize that having this thing here means that I also need this and that means I should improve the relationship between these two characters, or whatever. My first and best playtester insisted to me that Goldie needed a teddy bear, and made a good case for it based on Goldie’s characterization, both in the bios and as played; and she was right, so I added it almost at the last minute. (Which is why, so often, the first thing Rhett does it pick it up and try to talk to someone through it.)”

“One thing that I was aware of during development, but am a little reluctant to discuss, is the possible implications for the setting of the racial makeup of the neighborhood. At the time I was born, in the state where I was born, the Land and Beech marriages would have been illegal; and I had that in mind when I mentioned familial disapproval in the Land bios. Some people pick that up and run with it, most people ignore it. Most people look at the Hart’s Spanish-style house and decide (despite the name) that the family has a Mediterranean or Mexican background, but others have decided that Valentine is black/white biracial and all the Spanish influence comes from Angel. I have no desire to dictate anybody’s interpretation or play style, but I do want to enable as many interpretations and play styles as possible, and this variety is an indication of success to me.”

In a lot of ways, fans have come to regard Widespot as highly as they regard the original three Maxis neighborhoods. Did you envision the neighborhood being this popular?

“I beat my “expectations” about the reception of any particular work to death years ago. While I was building Widespot, I told myself that if the only person who liked it was Aegagropilon (my first playtester), that would be good enough and anybody else’s approval would be gravy. Well, Aegagropilon loved it; and I’ve lapped up quite a bit of gravy since then. I don’t have much of a grasp of how popular it actually is, and that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that I know some people are playing it, and enjoying it, and using it in different ways. How many there are, and how it stacks up next to the many other (and in some cases far more sophisticated) fan made hoods out there, is out of my hands. I’m better off not dwelling on that.”

How did Widespot evolve after you started? Were there any massive deviations from your original plan?

“Development was an alternating process of playing (including building, character design, and actual play) and working things out on paper in illegible notes, which is always how I work. I haven’t properly thought anything till I’ve written it down, but I’m a “pantser” rather than a “plotter” - i.e. I tend to fly by the seat of my pants when creating. Too much planning kills the story for me. So once all the preliminary work had been set up, and the broad strokes of the storyline determined, the rest was done directly in the game, with a little help from the testing cheats, Tombstone of Life and Death, and so on.”

“I knew I needed to wind up with a baby for every adult woman, but I didn’t always know who specifically would be the father of each baby until I saw how characters interacted. I knew one of the households would have a ghost, but for awhile I thought it might be Lana. I assumed Candy would have two lovers but I thought one of them would be Hamilton until she informed me otherwise. As mentioned earlier, I thought the Manns would be the central, triggering household rather than the Harts. I had no plans for the teens or children at all, and they took care of their own storylines”.

On a different note, what was your inspiration for the dynamic between the Harts and the rest of Widespot’s inhabitants? How did you develop the idea for these entanglements?

“As a family of Romance sims, their job was to wreak havoc. And boy, howdy, did they! But only after I realized Angel had to be the town ghost. The family ran much too smoothly when she was in charge - she and Valentine constantly smooching it up, Rhett being Mama’s boy, Candy being Goldie’s social support. Kill Angel, and everybody falls apart and starts making bad decisions. I designed Valentine as a Dirty Old Man; but he refused to be only that. I designed Rhett as a heartless jerk, and he can be that - but he’s also the only one of the immature Mama’s boys in the hood who has lost his Mama. I designed Candy as a golddigger, and yeah, she is - but she also made friends with Daytona and Goldie without any prompting from me, and she put herself in the middle of what turned out to be the hardest knot to untie in the whole hood, the Mann Triangle.”

“And Goldie - well, Goldie was a darling who autonomously put the rest of her family ahead of herself repeatedly, could never finish her homework, and never once brought anyone home from school or came home with anyone else.”

“TL;DR: I didn’t develop the Harts. They did.”

You’ve been very active on both Mod the Sims and Tumblr for a while now. How has The Sims community evolved since you first got involved? Why do you think there is still such a strong following of the series?

“It’s hard for me to speak to how it’s evolved, since I was never part of the Age of LJ and only started playing Sims 2 since after Sims 3 was already out. Also, having been on the fringes of a lot of subcultures in my life, I have become adept at keeping away from the stuff that stresses me out. So I’ve never hung out at SimSecret. I block tags on tumblr. I avoid anything smacking of edition wars, don’t allow anonymous communication, and back out of controversies as fast as I can - with an apology if necessary, because face it, everybody’s a jerk on the internet sometimes, and the most you can hope for is to not be one any more often than you can help.”

“So I have no idea how the Sims community as a whole is going on, and I only have a limited knowledge of the portion of the Sims 2 fandom that hangs around specifically at MTS and attracts my attention on Tumblr (often by tagging Widespot). Within this limited sphere, I have noticed a few changes. I used to see it assumed as common consensus that all Maxis premades were “ugly” and that “ugly” is a bad thing; moreover, that certain sims - Goopy Gilscarbo and Sandy Bruty in particular - are more “ugly” than most and are to be avoided at all costs. Now people are shipping Goopy and Sandy (that’s largely @holleyberry’s doing, I believe) and embracing the cartooniness of sims with enthusiasm.”

“On older websites I often see “realistic” (i.e., modeled on airbrushed photos in fashion magazines) sims that, as far as I can tell, are identical to each other and to the ones on the other old websites they link to. With current websites, however, I can not only tell the sims from each other, I can tell Person A’s versions of the premades from Person B’s at a glance. This is especially marked on tumblr, where I often know who originally posted the pics I’m looking at regardless of the attached avatar.”

“And there has been such a flowering of creativity in so many directions in the last eight years it’s overwhelming, though I don’t know how that compares to the days before I started participating. I like to think of Widespot as the vanguard of a Golden Age of hood-sharing. Nobody moans about the lack of clean fan made neighborhoods anymore; they’re agonizing over whether to play Europa or Widespot or Emerald Heights or Polgannon. And suddenly people are making new face sliders. Neighborhood deco lights up at night now. There’s mods for parking on the street, taking toddlers and pets on vacation, hunting, foraging, beekeeping, on and on and on.”

“I think the main difference between now and eight years ago is, that people were defensive about still playing Sims 2, and a general air of playing a “dying game” hung over us all. Now we are joyous and defiant and declaring that Our Game is the Best and Will Never Die.”

“Or maybe that’s just the people I self-select to see. How would I know?”

As a writer by trade, did you find many similarities between creating Widespot and writing a novel?

“My experience has always been that there’s an underlying unity among all kinds of creation, and in particular that storytelling is storytelling, whether it’s the language of text, sound, line and color, or whatever. My writing habits and skills translated seamlessly into the medium of the game. The chief difference, once you factor out technical matters, is that in most forms of storytelling, you need to provide a discrete unit of Story and give the reader the pleasures of closure and narrative structure, pruning out everything that disrupts that weakens the sense of completeness.”

“When making a sims neighborhood, though, you need to be as open-ended as possible, and you need to discern the optimum moment to turn the hood over to the player, while it’s still bristling with plot hooks and unresolved situations. You don’t need, as I did, to deliberately choose the moment at which a bunch of hard choices must be made immediately; but you need to put the player into a situation in which the choices he makes will matter and shape how the neighborhood develops from that point.”

You often play neighborhoods like Pleasantview and Strangetown. Do you prefer playing your own sims or those created by Maxis?

“That’s like asking if I prefer to read Diana Wynne Jones or Megan Whelan Turner. (And if you aren’t familiar with those authors, boy do you have some great reading ahead of you!) The answer is “both.” I enjoy playing characters I’m engaged with, regardless of who made them. Sometimes I wonder what’s going on with Vidcund and want to play Strangetown; sometimes I want to reconnect with the sims in Drama Acres, my personal custom neighborhood; sometimes I want to play with some of my own plot hooks from Widespot. It’s all good.”

If you had to pick between Widespot and Land Grant University, which would you choose?

“I’d attach LGU to Widespot and play them both. I don’t do either/or choices.”

(She just defeated the Kobayashi Maru.)

Do you intend on creating more neighborhoods?

“I actually have three on hand right now: a downtown called Bigg City (an empty version of which is available on SFS  http://simfileshare.net/download/207580/ ); a Seasons/Pets neighborhood I call Knotthole County; and an AL neighborhood called Port Cochere. The populated Bigg City got real complicated, real fast and when Health Crap is in a certain state I can’t work on it. Knotthole County is almost completely built but got interrupted while I was designing the characters; and Port Cochere is an SC4 map and a bunch of illegible notes. And at the moment I can’t work on any of them because I need two disk drives in order to use AGS, and one of them has gone wonky. However, I should be able to replace that soon, and then - well, maybe I’ll finally get that last week of work done on Bigg City. Or maybe I’ll decide (again) that if I’m organized enough to work on that, I should seize the moment and get queries out instead.”

Your content is themed around The Sims 2; have you played other titles in the series?, If so, which installment in The Sims is your favorite to play? For storytelling? For building? For creating sims?

“I’m a late adopter by nature. I started with the original The Sims and played it till I felt I didn’t have anything more to discover in it, at which time I started looking into the Sims 2, assuming that I’d eventually plumb its depths, too, and move on to Sims 3 about the time Sims 4 came along. Then I discovered that Sims 2’s depths are unplumbable, and that it was the perfect vehicle for that all-community storytelling I’d always longed to do.”

“The more I learn about the later iterations, the more certain I am that I will never play them. I’m sure they’re fun in their own ways, and I certainly don’t look down on anyone who chooses to play them; but I don’t like the way they look, I don’t like the lack of a storytelling tool, and most of all, the mechanics and structure of the game don’t enable my style of neighborhood play. The Sims series consists of four distinct games with four distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses; and the first two are the only ones I feel any call to play.”

Lastly, why do you still continue to play The Sims? Do you feel that the games provide a positive creative outlet?

“It still gives me pleasure. And I still have Health Crap and need projects, and have a computer that will play it. The Sims 2 is as much a part of my life as reading and playing tabletop RPGs and board games with my friends. So why would I stop?”

“The game is a positive creative outlet - it has nothing to do with my feelings on the subject. One of the most rewarding things about having made Widespot and LGU is seeing people use them as springboards for developing and experimenting with their own creative capacities. Also, a lot of simmers are deliberately using the game to control or relieve some condition or other. Depression, OCD, chronic pain from which they need distraction - I’m not the only one with Health Crap, and I am honored whenever anyone uses something I made to  deal with theirs.”

“They could have done these things without me, of course - but they didn’t. They used something I made for their own benefit, and I can feel good about that.”

Any parting comments, teasers, spoilers, public service announcements, etc.?

“One of the core concepts by which I live my life is that creativity is the quality that defines humanity best, and that it is the birthright of every single one of us. But we’ve been educated to think that it’s something special and separate, accessible only to certain special “talented” people; and brainwashed to think that personal creativity that can’t be monetized is a trivial use of time. On the contrary, creativity is to a large extent what time is for. Whether it’s a book, or a game, or a prom dress, the process of making is fulfilling and enriching, and sharing what we make is nourishing to us and to those we share with. So whatever your medium is, whatever resources are available to you, whatever ideas are quickening in your brain and hands - go for it.”

“It is not a silly waste of time.”

To those of you who haven’t played Widespot, go check it out; you won’t regret it. Thanks again to Peni Griffin for allowing me to pick her brain, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. I certainly found a new favorite word in “pantser.”

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to visit my ask box. If you are interested, give Plumbob Post a follow, and reblog for anyone else who you think would enjoy this blog. Stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Dag dag!

[theyoongoboongo]

One Letter

Scenario: I have the first letter of your name on my wrist, but do you know how many names begin with “S”?

Pairing: Jin + Reader

Genre: Fluff + Soulmate AU (in which you only have the first letter of your soulmate’s name tattooed on your wrist)

Words: 3,027

A/N: Continuing with the soulmates. I hope you enjoy it ♡

◇ Masterlist ◇

cr.

First it was Sungmin. You met him in elementary school and thought he was the cutest boy in the second grade. All of the girls in your class were jealous when they saw you two holding hands on the playground during recess. You didn’t care.

Sungmin switched schools halfway through the year after his father was promoted and had to move to a different city. You cried for two days.

Then came along Soohyun. You didn’t meet him until the summer before high school. You were on vacation at a resort when he approached you while you were exploring the area. It was a fun little fling that barely lasted the whole summer. Your parents caught you sneaking out of your hotel room to meet up with him, so they grounded you.

At one point, it was the foreign exchange student, Sebastian. During your third year of high school, he was your chemistry lab partner. You thought he was cute, especially when he smiled and showed off his one and only dimple.

He was your first serious relationship, which is why it hurt you the most when he had to go back home. He promised to keep in contact with you, but the promise was immediately broken as soon as he landed back in his country. You saw his latest Instagram post with a new girl and regretted ever having feelings for him.

You didn’t know what it felt like to find your soulmate, so you dated any guy who showed interest in you — so long as their name began with the letter “S”. Each relationship ended in disappointment and another name crossed off your list.

You had come to the conclusion that the universe liked to see humans scramble around without a clue on how to find their soulmates. That’s why you are born with only one letter tattooed on your wrist.

Every morning, you would wake up and stare at the letter. You so desperately wanted to find your soulmate, but you knew it wouldn’t happen that easily. You just had to keep in mind that you would find him someday, just not as soon as you hoped.

You went about your life while pushing away any thought of soulmates. If you were to get through all those years of school, your undivided attention had to remain solely on your studies. If you couldn’t find your soulmate, you wanted to at least get your degree.

By the time you went off to college, your head was set on one thing and one thing only — being able to work for your dream magazine. This was something you had been wanting to do since you held your first camera when you were 6 years old.

However, during your years at college, that was when you met another boy named Seokmin. He had the kindest eyes and the warmest heart. You thought he was the one. You thought he was your soulmate.

You two dated for three years before you found out he was cheating on you with his actual soulmate. He said he was too afraid to breakup with you because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Typical Seokmin. You knew his extreme kindness would end up hurting someone, except you didn’t think that person would be you.

After that ordeal, you wore bracelets to cover up the “S”. You wanted nothing to do with it.

A few months after graduation, you moved to Seoul to pursue your career as a magazine photographer. Luckily for you, your internships during college landed you a position at one of the local business to help you build your portfolio.

Each day was full of photo sessions and endless hours editing each picture. Sometimes, you would wake up on the couch in your office as one of your coworkers handed you coffee and a bagel. Needless to say, you rarely slept at your apartment.

When you were finally able to submit your dream job application, you felt like crying. You just wanted to know if you were accepted or not. Your portfolio was jam-packed with every single picture you took for your clients. You wanted this more than anything.

Two weeks after the submission, you were sitting at your desk when you got an email. It was about your application. As soon as you read that they were offering you an interview, you screamed. Your coworkers rushed over to find out what happened, and when they read the email, they were screaming with you.

All of those days you spent working on your portfolio had led to that moment, and you were not planning on giving it up for anything.

After a year and a half of working at that small business, you had to say goodbye.

~

Your interview went as smooth as possible, and the editor absolutely loved your work. The interviewer told you about what you would be doing and where. You soaked in each bit of information and it made you even more excited than you already were. She said your first day on the job would be the following week. The period of time you had before then was for you to set up your new studio that the company provided.

You called your parents that night to tell them about your new job. Your mother started crying as she repeated how proud she was while your father just laughed at her. Before the call ended, you made them promise to visit you so they could have their own photoshoot. They, of course, agreed.

The next day, you met the stylist and makeup artist who would be working with you during shoots. Luna had been the stylist for the magazine for 10 years, and Jisoo had only been there for a few years. They were very friendly and helped you put up your equipment while you got to know them. You knew you would love it there.

~

“Y/N!” Luna ran into your studio, completely out of breath.

You were editing pictures from the latest shoot so you could submit them later that day. You watched her as she made her way to your corner desk, her smile never faltering.

“What’s with that look?” You asked.

“Chen was on his way to give you a new assignment, but I was already coming here so he gave it to me.” She placed a folder full of papers on your desk. “I may have peeked at who it is.”

You opened the folder and scanned the papers for a name.

“Jin,” you said and looked up at Luna. “The actor?”

She nodded while jumping with excitement. “He’s coming here! I’m going to be styling the Jin!”

You looked back at the documents to see what the shoot was for. He was the magazine’s hottest man of the year.

You shot up from your chair, nearly losing balance. “Hottest man of the year?”

“Yes!” Luna shouted. “This shoot is one of the biggest we have, and you’re the one in charge of it this year!”

You had only been working at the magazine for almost a year, and there were so many other more experienced photographers. So what made them choose you?

“This is amazing,” you finally said, still stunned from the news. You noticed the date at the top of the page. “He’s coming next week.”

“Oh, shit I didn’t read that part.” She moved next to you to go over the other pages in your hand. “Give me the page with his measurements. I need to start planning his outfits and get them approved by Chen.”

You located the page and handed it to her, and she bolted out of the room. You shook your head and laughed at your coworker. Hopefully she’ll be more composed when Jin arrives.

The week leading up to the shoot went by way too quickly for your liking. You were nervous beyond words and you couldn’t help but think about how badly everything could go. Jin was one of the best, if not the best, actor of all time. One fatal mistake could cause you to lose your job.

The minutes ticked by and you paced your studio while Luna and Jisoo waited patiently at their stations. Jisoo was twirling a brush between her fingers, a nervous habit of hers that you picked up on. Luna was rearranging the rack of clothes, trying to figure out any last-minute changes.

Your phone began to ring, making the three of you jump.

“Hello?” You answered.

“Y/N, Jin and his team are on their way,” Chen announced. Your boss’s tone wasn’t too firm, meaning he trusted you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself. “Have fun.”

“Thank you.” You hung up.

Not even three minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Luna and Jisoo stood together near the entrance as you rushed to open the door.

A man, who you assumed to be Jin’s manager, entered followed shortly by a petite woman with a notepad and then finally Jin.

You politely greeted them, and when you turned to Jin, your heart stopped. He was the handsomest man you had ever seen. His eyes were sweet and his smile made you feel warm inside.

“Y/N, right?” He asked.

It took you a second to remember your name. “Y-yes. It’s very nice to meet you.”

He smiled once more before greeting Luna and Jisoo, who were utterly starstruck.

“Ms. Y/N,” Jin’s manager said. “I will be leaving to meet the person in charge of Jin’s interview. I will be back by the end of the shoot. I trust you to not do anything against his wishes.”

“I am nothing but professional, sir,” you assured. “That’s why I was given this job.”

He showed a quick smile before leaving with the woman. As soon as the door was shut, Jin let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m glad he left,” he said. “He makes me nervous sometimes.”

“You have nothing to worry about with us,” Luna beamed. “Y/N loves to have fun during her shoots to make the clients feel more comfortable.”

“Oh, I don’t do anything too special,” you waved off the compliment. “Tense people are hard to take pictures of.”

“She’s so good at her job that she refuses to take a compliment,” Jisoo commented.

You shot her a playful look. “Okay now. You two get him ready before we end up having an overnight shoot.”

Luna helped Jin change into his first outfit, and then Jisoo worked her makeup magic. When he stepped onto your backdrop, you had to keep your jaw from dropping. He looked like a prince.

He laughed when he noticed your reaction. “I look good, don’t I?”

“Well, I mean you are the hottest man of the year for a reason,” you noted. “Are you ready to start?”

He adjusted his suit collar before getting into a relaxed stance and nodding. For a half hour, you adjusted his positions and had him do different facial expressions for the pictures. Flash after flash, Jin would switch from serious poses to funny ones to make you laugh.

“I think it’s about time for an outfit change,” you decided.

“Maybe we could also take a lunch break,” Jin suggested. Luna and Jisoo immediately agreed with him.

You told the two to go to the local market to get something quick so you could finish up the rest of the shoot. After they left, you took a seat at the small table while Jin opted to explore your studio.

“Have you ever had your own photoshoot?” He questioned as he looked toward your sitting figure.

“No, I’d rather stay behind the camera,” you explained. “It’s much more fun being the creator.” “But you’re too beautiful to not be in front of it.”

You were rendered speechless by his bold comment. You couldn’t tell if he was flirting with you, or if it was just part of his personality. Either way, it still made you blush like crazy.

While you tried to find the words to reply back to him, he took off the suit jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves up. He then took a seat in front of you and folded his hands on the table.

“What made you want to become a photographer?” He changed the subject.

“Well, I had always been fascinated by the art, thanks to my grandpa,” you began. “Ever since then, I worked hard to realize my dream of working here.”

“I bet your parents are proud.”

“Of course they are, but they’re proud of me no matter what as long as I’m happy,” you smiled. “What about you?”

He leaned back in the chair before speaking, “I didn’t think about acting until my teen years. I auditioned for a role, was chosen, changed my name and here I am.”

You met his eyes in surprise. “Changed your name?”

“Well, not exactly,” he chuckled. “I just shortened it.”

“What’s your real name?” You pondered.

“Seokjin. Kim Seokjin is my full name, but I decided to go by just Jin,” he responded. “Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to find my soulmate. They might be looking for a completely different person.”

He looked down at his wrist. When he turned it to view the letter, you saw what it was. It was the first letter of your name. You softly grabbed your bracelet-covered wrist, remembering that an “S” is tattooed there.

Maybe he’s my soulmate, you thought.

Just then, Luna and Jisoo entered the studio with a few bags full of food for the group. The conversation that occurred between you and Jin was forgotten.

After you all ate, Jin changed into a different outfit and Jisoo touched up his makeup. You were going through the photos from earlier until he was finished.

When he stood in front of you, you asked him if he was ready and he nodded.

“Let’s finish this up now.”

Two more outfit changes and hundreds of pictures later, the shoot was finally done. You could tell that Jin was tired, but you knew he still had an interview to do.

“Thanks for everything today,” he said to you and your team. “I had a lot more fun than I was expecting.”

“It was an honor working with you,” Jisoo beamed. “If you ever need another photoshoot, we won’t hesitate to do it.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” he laughed. “I should be heading over to the interview now. I’m already a few minutes late as it is.”

You said your goodbyes and he was soon out of the room. You wished he didn’t have to go.

“He’s so dreamy,” Luna sighed. “I wish he was my soulmate.”

“Don’t we all?” Jisoo lightly smacked her friend’s arm as they turned to clean up their stations.

You began to tear down the backdrop and put away the stool that was used for one portion of the shoot. Then you made sure all of the photos had been uploaded to your computer before pulling the chord out from your camera. You tucked it into the side compartment of your camera bag and slid your camera into its place. You pushed the tripod out of the way, too lazy to fold it up.

“You guys can go home when you’re done,” you called out as you flopped into your cushiony desk chair.

“Are you sure?” Jisoo asked.

“Yeah, go ahead. I think I’m just going to start editing the photos already.”

“Okay. Don’t stay here too late like the last time. I don’t want to find you sleeping in a pool of your own drool on your desk again.”

You threw a pen in her direction. “Stop bringing that up! I promise I’ll go home in a few hours.”

“Good girl,” she patted your head as she and Jisoo walked by.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” you said. They waved and then left.

You clicked through the photos, getting lost in Jin’s eyes as each one passed. Then you began to think about the possibility of him actually being your soulmate. That would be absolutely unreal, but it would only make sense based on how you felt around him.

None of the guys you previously dated made you feel that way. Could it be love?

You took off your bracelets to admire the letter on your wrist. You traced it with your finger and imagined the rest of Jin’s name following it.

“I knew it.”

“Fucking hell,” you gasped, clutching your chest. You were so lost in your thoughts that you didn’t hear Jin come into your studio.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, not trying to hide the smile on his face. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

After you gained back your composure, you stood up. “It’s fine. I just got caught up in my work.”

He pointed at your wrist. “There’s an ’S’ on there,” he noted. “Right?”

You nodded, unsure of what else to say. Does he also think you’re his soulmate?

He moved to the other side of your desk to stand next to you. He slowly reached out to take your wrist in his hand, looking at the tattoo.

Your breath was a little unsteady because of the close proximity. You were afraid he could tell that your heart was racing.

“I’ve been looking for you.” He pulled you closer to him so he could wrap his arms around you.

It took a few seconds for you to reciprocate the hug. You were stunned that out of all of the people in the world, your soulmate was right here waiting for you.

“The universe works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?” You giggled.

When he leaned back, he gazed down at you, eyes full of happiness and a giant smile. You could only guess that you were looking at him with the same expression.

He tapped your camera bag that was perched on your desk. “I guess you can say that I’ve been picturing us together since we met.”

You rolled your eyes, but still laughed at the joke. “Shut up and kiss me already.”

[goswagcollectorfire]

CARL’S BLOG: ARKANSAS HILLBILLY Dear Friends and Carl’s Blog supporters:   For the next several blogs I will personally share with you true events in my challenge of finding my adopted children’s biological parents.  The events are true.  Some of the names may have been changed to protect the privacy of those who may have helped me in my task of finding the biological parents.  I would leave you with this observation.  I never gave up!  I wanted to fulfill a promise that I had made to both Carla and Jeffrey that someday I would try to find their adopted parents. A few years ago, Arkansas Legislature passed a new law that adopted children who were over 21 years of age could now get their original birth certificate and find their biological parents if they wanted to.  I wished that law had been in effect when I was doing my search.  It would have made my job a lot easier.  I hope you will enjoy reading my journey in the next several blogs.  Another observation, Lena and I never once had the fear we would lose our children’s love and respect after we found their biological parents.  I can tell you today that it made a stronger relationship between us.  God is good, all the time! 2-10-21, Search for Carla’s Biological Parents, Part 2 I did not have a clue about a starting place. We arrived at the History Commission about nine o’clock in the morning. We first visited with Russell Baker, who was the head librarian of the historical archives. I had gotten to know Russell well when I started doing my genealogy research at the archives. If anyone could help us, he could. After arriving at the archives, we sat down with Russell and I shared with him why we were there. He asked me if it was an Arkansas or an out-of-state adoption. “It’s an Arkansas adoption,” I said. “Carl, I don’t think we have anything that will help you,” he said. “Not anything at all?” I asked. “Are you aware of the adoption laws of Arkansas?” he asked. “I know there is a confidentiality thing involved, but that’s about all I know.” “If you adopt a child in Arkansas, all records are sealed. It is almost impossible for adopted children to find their biological parents, or for the biological parents to find the child they gave up for adoption. The state of Arkansas is noticeably clear on the law. “It’s my understanding that there is a registry at the Department of Social Services which allows the biological mother and the adopted child an opportunity to sign a registry and fill out an application. The application consists of certain information that might be useful in linking two people together. This procedure isn’t very effective unless both parties participate in signing the registry. To be truthful with you, I don’t know how successful that program has been.” We thanked Mr. Baker for his time, and Carla and I left the archives disappointed. Our next stop was St. Vincent’s Hospital where Carla had been born. We started at the office of records and inquired about records for Susan Ann Gates. This was the name our lawyer called out in court on the day the birth certificate was changed from Susan Ann Gates to Carla Lynn Barger. The lady at the receptionist’s desk picked up the phone and called another lady about the record on Susan Ann Gates. In a few minutes, the lady came to the front office and introduced herself to Carla and me. After we introduced ourselves to her, she asked, “Are you the adoptive father, Mr. Barger?” “Yes, I am,” I answered, “and this is Carla, my daughter.” “Mr. Barger, I can’t discuss any of the contents of this file with you without a court order from a judge,” she told me. “Carla’s original name was Susan Ann Gates. Can you not discuss any of the file with her? She is now twenty-six years old.” “Arkansas law is very precise in telling us what we can do and cannot do. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” “Do you know anyone who might be able to help us?” I asked. She wrote down a name on a piece of paper and handed it to me. The name was Allen Pettinger, Registry Coordinator with the Department of Social Services, Little Rock, Arkansas. I asked the woman where I could find Mr. Pettinger, and she said, “He’s in the Dougherty Building in Little Rock.” “I know where that is,” I said. I thanked her and left. Carla was very disappointed, but I told her at least the name Susan Ann Gates appears to be the biological name. On the way to Mr. Pettinger’s office, I decided to call him first. It was getting close to noon, and I was afraid he might have left for lunch. I called, and his secretary informed me that, yes, that was the case. I told her I wanted to make an appointment. I gave her my name and she said, “Mr. Barger, I have put you down for a one-thirty appointment.” Carla and I had a few minutes to spare before I had to go to my twelve o’clock committee meeting. I decided to run by the Little Rock City Library to look at their card catalog of newspapers. We knew the state newspapers printed births from Little Rock hospitals. We thought if we searched the birth announcements, we might find a Gates baby born on February 4, 1971, and maybe the parent’s name. In 1971, Arkansas had two state papers: the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat. Arriving at the library, we told the young man at the desk what we wanted. We also told him we were in a hurry, and asked him if he could help us find the February 1971 editions of the Gazette and Democrat. He told us they were all on microfilm. He took us to the microfilm section and pulled the film for February 1971. Carla took the Arkansas Democrat, and I took the Arkansas Gazette. We searched the birth records from February 2–7 in case the newspaper was slow about getting the births in the newspaper. There was no baby girl Gates listed in either paper. The Arkansas Social Services Department had done an excellent job of keeping adoption files closed to the public. At this point, it appeared they had thought of everything! We found out later that adopted babies’ births were not reported to newspapers. Our next stop was my committee meeting briefing, which was held at the new Arkansas Teacher Retirement Complex on East Markham Street. Carla and I stayed at the meeting until about one fifteen in the afternoon before leaving for my appointment with Mr. Pettinger at Arkansas Social Services Department. As we entered his office, his secretary greeted us and asked if she could help us. “Yes, I am Carl Barger from Warren, Arkansas. I called this morning about an appointment with Mr. Pettinger.” “Let me see if Mr. Pettinger is ready to see you,” she said. She called Mr. Pettinger, who came out of his office to greet us. He was a young man in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in blue jeans and a casual shirt. After we introduced ourselves, he said, “Come on back to my office.” After arriving at his office, I said, “I am the adoptive father of Carla. We have always told Carla when she was twenty-one we would try to help her find her biological parents. We are here today to try to find how we might locate them.” “Carla, have you filled out the Arkansas Registry Application?” he asked. “Yes, I did about two years ago,” she replied. He explained in detail what the Arkansas Registry does. In summary, if the adopted child and the biological mother, father, or grandparents were to fill out applications, then the Arkansas Social Service Department would conduct a study of both parties, and if there were similar items that were considered a match, they would be able to link the two together. The adopted person had to be at least twenty-one years old before he or she could sign the registry. Mr. Pettinger went on to say, “Other than the registry service there is little that I can help you with.” He explained how strong the Arkansas adoption laws were. He said, “There is one other method one might use, but I don’t know anyone personally, who has ever used it. In some cases if the judge within the county where the adoption took place issued a court order to open the adoption files, the files can be opened.” Mr. Pettinger was nice but his hands were tied because of the strict Arkansas adoption law. “Carla, if you would like to update your file, I can give you the forms, and you can return them to me when you finish,” he said. “Yes, please.” Carla said. After Mr. Pettinger gave Carla the forms, we left. Carla was so dejected! “Dad,” she said sadly, “why wasn’t he more understanding and sympathetic?” I reminded her that his hands were tied because of the Arkansas adoption laws. I told her he could lose his job if he gave out information that was protected. She was still very disappointed as we got into the car. We had not eaten anything for lunch, so we went to Benogin’s on University Avenue for lunch. At Benogin’s, Carla and I visited several minutes regarding to the stumbling blocks we had already faced and other pitfalls that still stood in our way. Carla returned to Boise, Idaho, on Saturday, March 29, 1997. It was hard to see her go. I knew how disappointed she was about not finding out anything about her biological parents. As Lena and I returned to Warren from taking Carla to the airport, I told Lena I planned to pursue the search for Carla’s biological parents. I also decided I’d not let her know I was continuing the search. I didn’t want her to be hurt if I kept coming up short. We decided that if I were successful in finding either parent, we first wanted to know if either would be receptive to meeting Carla. If not, everything would be dropped at that point. If either was, I would set up a meeting for them and Carla to meet. I had heard stories about adopted children finding their biological family members and how it had wrecked their lives. I certainly did not want this to happen to Carla.