#this set is inspired by the prompt 'influence' so it's a little less obvious than the last one... 'hands' was pretty clear lol

[marquisguyun]

A Xianle person hiding their identity for five years. Five whole years. Father honored him as the Imperial Preceptor. I respected him as my master, even after the Golden Feast, despite the courtiers' advice. But I stubbornly insisted on saving the lives of all the Xianle people!

Guoshi! Are you intentionally fooling us, fooling me? That day... It was my birthday! Just because your seventeenth year was a hurdle, you wanted to turn my seventeenth year into a hurdle as well?

If that's what you intended... I won't comply with your wishes! If you want me to become full of resentment like you... I won't! If you want to force me into self-destruction like you, I absolutely won't! No matter how you treat me, I will never become like you!

(Good. Well said. Remember the words you just said today. You will never become like me.)

[captainkurosolaire]

I challenge you to pick five Tumblrs in your social circle and tell them something you admire about their blog!

Only 5? I could probably do 500. However, that's determined by what's considered my social circle. I'm often in my head being incredibly social continuously is really a challenge of mine. I'm always actively marching to something, my flame of passion when I have it, I can do some crazy stuff but it diminishes relatively quickly, so I try to cling. But I'll up your thing and list 25 of my fave people. Ask me this same thing in a Month, I'll keep doing 25, until I do all the people. How about that? (If anyone wants to be taken off mention let me know.)

@eligos-venator

- Has one of the most intelligent and sophisticated minds, I've had the pleasure to know. Literally admire all his aesthetics, work, head-cannons, ideas. It's only a benefit that the dude shares some OC characteristics to my own (Winning features). I really enjoyed the short-thread we did. It was incomplete, mainly because of my faults. I want to actually be better to give him a proper delivery and RP worth his time, but he's incredibly worth the investment of eyes.

@mischiefandmystics

- If there was a Mount Rushmoore of writers who kept me in this endeavor, encouraged me. Sun'ra is one of them. His characterization skills, writing, the delivery and how believable his character is, they're masterful acts.

@mishivymendi

- I wouldn't be nearly tamed or as creatively freed if it wasn't for this gem. She broke my shell, I really didn't at a time ever see myself being anything really beyond a smut writer, but Mishi not only saw potential in me, but brought it out. Her stories and world's she brings to life are so majestically colorful.

@asymphonyofash

- My go-to. He's another pillar individual who saw things in me past just the obvious perception, (Probably second longest XIV RPer I know.) Taught me a lot of the lore, I shot him up and he's sort of become my stapled rock. He's right aside Sun'ra met them about the same, both took me under their wing's as I quietly observed and absorbed.

@lavender-hemlock

- We're always up and front with each other, never feeling like I couldn't say anything around, extremely rare to share that these days. Her gif's are legendary, something on my own terms I want to soar in quality. The writing she does is astounding. Character has so many mysterious pages that are quite addictive to want to explore and learn them. (Encore 20 below-cut)

@under-the-blood-moonlight - Her sweetness and artwork and overall is just a friendly presence to be around. I cherish them so much. One I can jive with more darker undertones with. She's one the most hardworking and ambitiously creative people. I'd mail them infinite hugs if could. Thanks for being you! @roxinova - I owe a lot of credit to her. She's constantly OOC and everything was nudging me too be more inclusive to things and involved heavenly. It's rare for me. I'm really horrible about that my autism sets me back socially, I constantly will be drowned by the next day and be reverted back to better off alone, that's my major crux and weakness. But her thoughtfulness, these things, aren't ever foreign to me, I do pay attention probably better than any would ever give me credit. She's a beacon model to have as a friend. @corpse-dancer - Haven't ran into many words with them, but her character, screenshot game, expressiveness, they're all a marvel to constantly see, alongside her attitude and bringing life character. I do think if I were better, we would click quite splendidly. They've recently reminded and motivated me to pick-up my daily-practice, or try too. Keep being a rockstar. @fair-fae - Few who wouldn't know who she is in this community. She's been in my opinion a huge core. I'm certain she's inspired many who weren't even RPers too try it by seeing her at the Quicksands or elsewhere, a tyme ago. Making no exception, I was even one of those. I used to be in QS every-single day and was often doing my shameless stuff. Though her presence first did show me there's a lot more. I admire her in all fields. Also appreciate her adopting me to the FC and her always thinking of others and giving events, or her aesthetics and portrayal, its the epitome of swan elegance. @thorcat - One of my most treasured friends. Been RPing with them for a longtime. There's never anything complicated between us or a rift of drama, it's just let's go and have fun. We really mesh well, I've welcomed nearly ever character and got the privilege to RP with nearly all them. They always open up envelope and help me, settle on back and just laugh. Whether used to be waking up to their characters humping my afk one or use randomly having a hardcore banter between Ufah and Captain and capturing them as a voidal pet. Memories with them isn't something I'd ever want to lose. I love ya! Never stop enjoying life for anything. @lukawarrioroflight - I get in the gutter find myself lacking motivation or writing, discouraged even... But I never have felt, I could ever do any wrong with this person, they bring the light out of me. So no matter what, how many hospital-beds I yearly visit, it's because of this rare nature, that I come back, even if they're the only one's ever to read my stuff. I would do it for them alone. @scholarlybreadbun - I've only been back recently and they've so much warmth. Their presence is the sun of inviting. The couple and posing all the shipping that stuff makes me even melt. I'm not particularly talented in regards to posing couples, but I took notice of them along time ago and set on quietly improving. Really like them for them, wouldn't ever want them to change that. Ideally look forward to be in their orbit longer so I can bask in them. @seascrapes - Been mutual with them for a while. Their aesthetics and character is all S+ level. I appreciate throwing back tagged prompts with them, one of many people I really think would be enjoyable to collab with any other seafarers. The artwork and pieces of Tal Brook, are breathtaking as ever exceptionally too, not to mention. Love your stuff matey, you're a king. @mai-takeda - Is a myth. Her absolutely sheer friendliness and her attitude, are so positive influencing, I was so thrilled to be welcomed with her and boosted by them early on. I couldn't see myself, wanting to exist where they didn't have happiness like the same she always delivers by just doing so many soft-things. Not to mention her writing... She's a whole world to throw yourself gazes

under. @zhauric - It doesn't go far either without the same breath of Mai, I could say about Zhauric. He's someone worthy to look-up and also recognize they're passionate and inviting, hoisting up literally everything. Could easily find any of their characters comrades with my own, or jiving alongside. Not to mention last XIVWrite, they slaughtered it. So enjoyable to read them all. I like how organized their blog is too, motivated me recently to redux my entire thing. @cadrenebula - They have so many diverse characters and their entire roster is vibrant and is imbued with a massive flux of life. They are able to encapsulate so many character's voices and portray them so effectively too, I really admire that greatly. They've made me think bigger and try myself recently at actually undertaking a huge roster of characters too. I've taken many breaks, but I always am so graciously returned often with them close-by and that's so incredibly sacred. I've seen a lot of people get discouraged or quit, leave, departure, etc. But they always seem to have a bigger house then they had last I took a break and I enjoy peaking in. @silvernsteel - Her artist and gif-work are awe-aspiring, there's little unrecognizable by her photo-sets and edits. They helped me even tip-toe into uncharted with giving me the recipes to try incorporating gifs into my arsenal. Plus so delightfully pleasant to actually talk with and just chill. I want nothing less in life, than the beauty they give, to be returned to them for eternity in all their glorious air. If ever needed anything of me, they've got me. @spotofmummery - We talk about passion or friendliness or overall a person to even remotely try to be, I got to include them. Their web-series and writing, screen-work, everything they do is fantastic. And that's furthered back nearly any I've met showcase or immortalize how just genuine of stellar person they are. I wish them always the energy to create and sparks. @snow-covered-moon - They've never been anything less but absolutely a diamond to know. I enjoy their character, their almost always abundant of energy that's very rub inducing. Their WoL character stories, writing, screen-shots, everyday they open up a new pandora box of joy, there's no mistaken love behind their character and that's infectiously easy to also enjoy something when the author does too. Always healthy to be around, I never feel short of vitality when they're close-by. @letheofthelost - Always cheerful or least encapsulates with me, they're a carnival ride. Just pure epic story-telling and engaging equally as passionate, constantly writing characters, not looking for anything outside of RP or anything really just being their selves, they fade all others. I love their presence, them as a person. Enjoy any character they'll ever come and throw under me, or a change of pace. Always feels easily understandable between one another. @crow-iv - Together we're an unfiltered, unstoppable wake of pure passionate writers and art. But I would say they're far ahead of me, in every regard. Already able to portray multiple characters in a scene and do such in-depth thinking, alongside even sketch or draw right afterwards or a scene. They're so talented, huge reason I set-out on giving them a Crew of cast and actual stories to-tell when I'm actually caught up and if they interested and we both have the room, I really think if further myself, I can be better and supply more for them to draw and I want to see them soar. I want to give them all my improvements and effectiveness. @trishelle - They've such a reinforcing personality and aura around them that easily bolsters anything that dares thinking they're about to be depleted so energizing. Aesthetics, characters, all them are so lively that further compliment their own mun's great welcoming presence. Worth hundreds of smiles and stars, keep high. Wish I had more time to dedicate to learning you! But I do notice and appreciate you. @fracturedfantasia - One of my people, I like to retreat and just talk my full

head-cannons with or learn, share insightful and inquisitive thoughts about philosophies and multi-culture things. Or plotting and in-general, they're a well of information and brimming ideas, they are every making of what makes a quality friend. When you can generally be open-about-all that's a real one right there. Their characters and tarot readings, I always would implore if they're offering. Thanks for giving me any-time. You're truly a treasure. @violet-warder - Never have even came to words with them yet unfortunately but didn't mean as a mutual, I haven't admired all their screenies, writing, or the aesthetics they bring of their character. Glamours is real end-game, I like all what you've done and put together. I care strictly about what represent and give, I don't want to see them ever think anyone want's them gone, they are abundantly so talented and possess things only they can deliver. I think recently came back too, and I'm glad to share, hopefully, overtime I can build you better up. Or eventually even talk, but I'm certain you are a busy-body person too, so we're relatable. @layla-grey - I have a lot of underline issues that set me back as a flawed person, but I've never not been anything but someone who's open, it's why I always do include my f-list in anything or etc. I'm not here to present this facade, and really don't care to be an image crafted by another. No one as of recently or now, am I close with as an RP partner or friend with then this stunning masterpiece. I never let-up on story-telling or anything so I can eventually use my Crew or other Characters, to give them anytime a master entertaining day, they push me to not be short-changed. IC and OOC I would devote my full attention too cause they've never shed from me. Didn't ever matter how much silence or anything, they're always around. And don't expect anything out of me or pressure. Just accept me and I equally share that sentiment, I want you to have everything in this world has to offer. ----- This is just a fraction of people, I've paid attention, noticed or know. I've been around in this Community for many years. There's a lot of things I could say about it, more probably then anyone else. But what matters to me, is recognizing the people who are here, that work hard, build others up, support, constantly are a beam. I don't need to interact with everyone, to know when someone is generally out for good. Or they're out for bad I've learned inquisitiveness longtime ago, I had to survive and remain afloat. I just go out and be me, and along the way, I get to find people like these, who help bring out the best me. I am nothing without these people, creators, writers, artist. I'm a terrible friend, horrible person, I don't have the energy to interact NEARLY with as much as I'd like with you all, If I could clone myself, or if things were different, I would drop it all to be in your orbits more if could. But, do know I appreciate you. And even if you ever do depart from this whole community or anything, know that anything you share, or give, that stuff does matter, somewhere, someone was aspired, if nothing else, by me. ONLY you can give the worlds you see and I am thankful. Do love yourself.

[killing-all-joy]

Dancing at 2 a.m. in our Pajamas...

I was inspired by this prompt by @sanderssides-prompts that I saw two weeks ago. I write really slow, so here it is now. I strayed a bit from the prompt, but I hope y'all like it! It’s really just fluffy Roceit. [Edit: here’s part two!]

(cw: janus is a swear-snake so swearing tw)

Janus rubbed lazily at his eyes. He was beyond irritated—for some reason, his mess of a brain decided it would be a good idea to wake up after only three hours of sleep. It was two in the morning, it was raining outside, and he had a lot to do the following day. His brain was running on very little sleep, but despite the small number of things he was able to consider clearly in his mind, he knew that he would be unable to return to his slumber without a substantial period of leaving his room. He was very well aware that he had to reach a higher state of awakeness than he was at now to be able to go back to sleep. It would never make any sense to him, but he complied because he hated sleep deprivation.

He trudged over to his closet and threw on a yellow sweatshirt over his sleep shirt. Then, clothed in that sweatshirt, a pair of black sweatpants, and fluffy black socks, he sunk out of his room, deciding not to bother with his hat. No one would be in the kitchen anyway, and he had decided with a look in a mirror that his hair, while fluffy as ever, wasn't too horribly messed up from sleep.

He planned on getting a glass of ice water, watching an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender at a very low volume, pacing the living room a couple of times, and then returning to his room to fall back asleep.

His mind seemed to only get fuzzier; Janus hardly registered his present actions in any shape or form. He walked into the blurred haze that was the mindscape living room, grabbing a cylindrical glass from a cabinet and clumsily sliding on the tiled floor over to the freezer. He opened the door, flinching at how cold the damn thing was for his serpentine physiology. He grabbed three pieces of ice and dropped them into his glass. One fell on the floor at his carelessness so he kicked it under the refrigerator and grabbed another to replace it. He walked over to the sink, and after three incidents of fingers slipping on the metal handle, turned on the water and filled his glass. He hissed and immediately turned off the water when it started to overflow.

He sipped the cold water so it wouldn't spill onto the floor and walked away from the sink, deciding to drink in the living room. He stopped short at the door-less doorway, finally realizing that against his predictions, there was someone awake at this hour and occupying the living room.

Of all people it could be, it was Roman.

Just his luck.

His brain could hardly register just how unlucky that was. Nor could it realize that sinking out would probably be the best thing to do in that situation. Roman, his old enemy, his friend (ish), his crush: hateful, annoying, funny, talented, lovely, handso-

"Hey."

Janus' sleepy thoughts halted. He tried to meet Roman's eyes, but likely failed because he could only make out the vague outline of a face. He tried his best to show acknowledgement, but was too tired to put much effort into it.

"Why are you awake?" Roman asked from where he was sitting on an armchair.

Janus thought about that for a second, his brain refusing to remember at this time. Eyebrows furrowed, he tried his best to retrace his steps. His eyes then fell on the glass in his hand, thoughts calming as they recalled. Janus held up his water glass to indicate that it was dehydration that woke him and then made a noise, trying to ask Roman the same question.

"Ah yes, dehydration: the more vicious demon in the early hours of the morning," Roman said with a strained smile. He then bit his lip, knowing Janus wanted to know his reason for being awake as well. "I, uh, couldn't sleep. Too many exciting thoughts, too little time...the price of being Creativity, y'know?"

Janus did know. Or, at least, he was pretty sure Fully Awake Janus knew. (Fully Awake Janus could not count the number of times he'd got up for a glass of water and ended up finding Remus setting something on fire at some ungodly hour. To Fully Awake Janus, it would follow that Roman would be similar in regards to insomnia.)

Janus made a noise of understanding, shuffling over to the sofa. He clumsily set his glass on the coffee table (the contents almost spilling as he fumbled with its placement) and collapsed onto the cushions.

“Are you sure that you shouldn’t go back to sleep, Boa Conflictor? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were sleepwalking.”

When he figured out what the nickname was saying and why it fitted him, Janus snorted. He shook his head to indicate a negative to Roman’s question. “Need water,” he mumbled, taking a sip from the glass.

“Makes sense,” said Roman, moving from the armchair where he was sitting to the sofa next to Janus. “But you should go back to sleep immediately after.”

Janus shook his head again. “Won’t be able. Tried, first need to stuff.”

Roman chuckled. “’Need to stuff’? We better get you stuffing soon, or else you’ll be speaking a whole new language.”

Janus huffed and rolled his eyes. He never appreciated being teased. He was too tired (and perhaps too in love) to be angry, however.

He continued sipping the glass of water, finishing it quickly with no more commentary from Roman. He set it back down on the coffee table, deciding that he would put it in the sink in the morning when he could walk and think like a normal human being (or, well, side). He pulled his knees to his chest; he always got cold in these early hours.

His plan was thwarted, however, when Roman stood from where he was sitting on Janus’ left, picked up the glass, and headed to the kitchen. Janus made a confused noise before he saw Roman place the glass carefully in the sink. When Roman returned, Janus looked up at him in confusion.

“Didn’t havffe, I could’vve mor’hing.”

“Surprisingly, I understood you there.”

“Thanmkh.”

“You’re welcome.”

Janus buried his head in his knees, wondering what he could do that wouldn’t disturb Roman. He figured the prince would be bothered by him watching TV (and also make a lot of comments on whatever he watched, potentially waking the others), so he pondered over other activities.

He heard music start to play quietly through the room. His head lifted slightly to see Roman set his phone down gently on the coffee table. His bare feet then took two smalls steps to stand in front of Janus, where he offered him a hand.

“You said you ‘need to stuff’ before you go back to sleep,” said Roman, sounding like he was trying to mock him but not fully getting that tone across. If Fully Awake Janus were here, he’d say Roman sounded nervous. “I figured, leading you in a dance could perhaps convince your brain to allow you to sleep. Besides, I could use some physical stimulation.”

Janus looked at Roman’s trembling hand for half a second. He then removed his left arm from where it was clasped around his legs and took Roman’s right hand. As soon as Janus’ hand was in his, Roman brought Janus’ hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles. Janus blushed furiously at this and was too tired to figure that he should hide such an obvious display of weakness. He let go of his legs and stood up from the sofa. He lost his balance from the position change, but Roman's reflexes were quick and he didn't let him fall more than a few inches. He pulled Janus to his feet and held him securely in his arms. Janus' face flushed an even darker red than it already was and he turned his head away from Roman, casting his gaze to the floor.

"Look at me," Roman murmured lowly.

Janus complied, despite not wanting Roman to see his blushing. He smiled warily at him, anxiety caused by the possibility of Roman seeing the real reason for his flushed cheeks.

"There we go," said Roman, at the same low volume. Janus noted how he wasn't as hyper or dramatic during these early hours, yet still just as passionate (if not more). "Since you need to do stuff in order to properly go back to sleep, I figured I could lead you in a couple of dances. Unless you think that you would collapse of fatigue like Sleeping Beauty...?"

Janus nodded. "Okay."

Roman grinned, tightening one hand's hold on Janus' waist and moving the other hand to hold Janus'. Janus was allowed a couple of seconds to sort himself into a proper dancing stance before Roman started to lead.

"I sh'ld lead."

"You'd walk into every piece of furniture in this room."

Janus made a wounded noise.

"Only because you've shown just how clumsy you are at this time of morning."

Janus huffed. "I'll st'p on foot."

"I can take it," Roman replied with a teasing smile.

Janus rolled his eyes, tightening his grip on Roman's hand and shoulder so he wouldn’t fall.

"Okay, JJ. One, two, three, four," Roman started counting under his breath to help Janus' walnut brain, "...one, two, spin, four, you're wonderful at this, Snakerella..."

---

Janus could feel his brain start to adjust to being awake and a bit of Fully Awake Janus start to have influence in his thoughts. Well, it wasn't exactly "adjust", because it wasn't gradual.

It was just a bit slower than a snap of the fingers.

Nothing was new in his actions, Roman didn't startle them, hell, it was during the middle of a slow song. But without any obvious triggering factor, his brain abruptly shifted into a more awake state of mind. And he realized his situation.

He was dancing...

...in the living room...

...with the love of his life...

...at half-past two in the goddamn morning.

Janus, still a far cry from Fully Awake Janus but with a lot of his mental capacities, couldn't quite remember the exact turn of events that got him here. Things were a bit blurry, events were splotchy, and he could only remember bits and pieces. So, ultimately, how he—while sleepy and filter-less—managed to get Roman "Princey" Fucking Sanders to dance with him was almost a mystery. He did know, however, that the only way Roman could have agreed was if he was extra sleep-deprived too.

"You like this song, Janus?"

He considered saying the truth, that he wasn't listening; or a well-thought-out lie, that he hadn't heard it before but thought it would fit with a playlist he had; or saying that he'd heard it before and liked it very much. But suddenly, Roman pulled him close and to his chest—and he smelled so good and his white sleep shirt was so snuggly and his hair was just inches away and oh so very soft and Janus was in love, so in love and he couldn't help but make a noise of happiness about their current situation instead of answering the question.

"I'm glad you like it."

Janus almost laughed; Roman mistook his noise for one of confirmation, also implying that he thought Janus was still in his state of Properly Out Of It. Janus had an act to keep up if he wanted Roman to continue being so intimate with him, so he decided he would play along—not more than he needed to, of course, but whenever Roman would prompt him to talk, he’d respond how he would if he had just woken up.

More songs went by, their almost-clumsy dancing that they exerted very little energy in doing continuing with it. Roman rarely spoke, but it was comfortable that way, with Roman just holding him as their feet glided across the floor with only the crescent moon as their witness. Janus knew very well that his emotions were senseless and cheesy, especially at this time of the morning in his current situation, but he almost scoffed when he realized that he felt loved—loved by Roman, and loved in a way he had never felt before. It made him feel warm and hopeful, and if he was fully awake, he would probably vomit. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant feeling no matter how much he didn't want to admit it, so he relished in it, soaking up the unfamiliar emotion he figured he would never get again and savoring it as one does with hot chocolate during the coldest winter nights. It was warm and calming, with an underlying hint of melancholy and bittersweetness. Just like how Janus perceived Roman.

Roman and Janus had differences that they were slowly putting behind them in an attempt to advance into a tentative friendship, so it made sense for Janus to think he would never get this again. He was tired, Roman was tired, and he remembered the dashing prince saying something about 'rousing thoughts' so this was probably serving as a release of all the stress that built up in the later hours. Tomorrow, things would be back to normal, but he would never forget.

The song started to slow to a speed that seemed inadvisable to Janus because the song was already quite a slow song in itself, but he couldn't help but acknowledge that the speed was romantic too. Roman's feet stopped taking larger steps and started swaying.

"Sway with me, mi cielo," said Roman in a voice that was practically silent. "This is the last song."

Janus' face burned from the Spanish nickname Roman gave him. Janus didn't know Spanish, but he was able to piece that it might have been a term of endearment. It was late, so it made sense that Roman would slip up like that, especially since he's the romantic side and their current situation was rather intimate. Of course, that assumption could also be Janus' wishful thinking.

"Thank you for dancing with me," muttered Roman, thumb starting to trace circles on Janus' waist. "I needed this outlet too."

From the way Roman phrased it, it seemed that Janus was mistaken in his assumption that he had convinced Roman to dance with him, that it seemed that things happened the other way around. This made Janus' heart flutter.

He hummed, closing his eyes. "M' ple'srre."

Janus peeked one eye open to see Roman's head turn down and smile at him warmly—lovingly, Janus would say, if he didn't know better.

The song started to come to an end. When the last beat played, Roman guided Janus into a small dip. Roman's happy smile as he stared down at Janus was hypnotizing, and Janus knew that he would fight a thousand wars just to see that smile again.

"Let's go to bed, hm? Neither of us wants to be tired in the morning."

Janus nodded. Roman pulled him to his feet and put an arm around his waist. They walked up the staircase together, Janus leaning his head on Roman's shoulder as they walked.

Janus' room was closest, so they paused there as Roman opened the door and led them inside. He kissed Janus hair and slowly removed his arm from Janus' waist.

“Goodnight, Janus,” whispered Roman, pushing a strand of Janus’ hair behind his ear.

Janus kissed Roman’s cheek. “G’nigh.”

He slowly closed the door, smiling to himself. He knew he would come to remember and regret his sleepy clumsiness in the morning, but he would be thankful for it until then.

~

Taglist: @somehow-i-got-an-account @justanotherhumanstuff @neo-neo-neo @fander-fic-recs

~

Sorry this took so long to finish. I hope you liked it! [Edit: here’s part two again so you don’t have to scroll all the way back up lol]

[misha-moose-dean-burger-lover]

Happy vacation! 🌴 For your prompt request, may I submit Dean and Cas taking a non-hunt road trip for you consideration. Maybe they're on vacation too? As much as they can ever be? Destiel ship or not, and whatever other characters you want to include, if any. I hope that gets your brain juices going, and you have a not-sad before long! 😘 Thank thank thank you!

Thank you very much for the prompt!! Yeah, I had a not-sad XD It did get some of my brain juices going, and I did write something - it’s like a five-piece drabble, but I hope it’s up to your liking! The pleasure was all mine! You’re awesome!! ^-^

***

“‘Driver picks music, shotgun shuts his cakehole’, I know.” Cas declared, quoting Dean to Dean, and earning himself a grin, as he withdrew his hand from the music deck. “I was just trying my luck.”

“Your bad,” Dean shrugged, before turning up his own music. Bob Seger.

But around the time 'Beautiful Loser’ ends, Dean has given in, and is actively trying to reach a compromise with Cas on the music decision.

They listen to 'Let it be’, and okay, that’s a fine enough coincidence. Sam would’ve abused any such right Dean gave him to listen to One Direction maybe, so Dean’s grateful its Cas with him on this long-ass drive, when he’s in a sharing mood when it comes to Baby’s casette player.

*

Cas was looking out the window, serious and pensive, as if he was contemplating the truths of the Universe.

Dean could’ve scoffed, but he tried a novel approach. 'Vienna’ had just ended, following some other inspirational songs like that - and the mood was all set for a joke. Dean cleared his throat.

“And that’s the thing about life too,” Dean began, all of a sudden, hiding his smirk, one hand on the wheel and the other demonstrating in the air with vague hand motions, which Cas tried to follow, squinting and trying to process it. “Its about the journey and not the destination. You hear me, Cas?”

“I do.” Cas replied stoically, perfectly serious.

“Yeah, that’s life, man.” Dean dramatized, pulling off a straight face with much efforts. “A road, which goes on and on, and there’s no destination in sight, only in mind. Such is life too, man, and it’s the journey that’s important, because you may have goals in your head, but you can’t see them - you’ve just gotta keep living, and keep going down that road.”

“Oh.” Cas absorbs, like Dean is spilling gems of wisdom here.

“Driving to a hunt is something completely other than driving for the sake of driving, Cas,” It’s getting harder and harder for Dean to keep up the act of wise, when Cas looks at him that straight-faced. “Driving on an open road, on the road to nowhere yet everywhere is the best feeling - driving without a destination that’s the true essence of living, and of driving.”

“Dean.” Cas blinked, and began to speak in his monotonous baritone. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we do have a destination.”

Dean frowns at him.

“Do you not remember?” Cas goes on, sincere as all hell. “We’re going to the beach. Sam is driving there with Jack, but he took a detour to pick up Claire and Kaia - and I - I have Google Maps on my phone, in case you forget the route as Sam said you might.”

“Goddammit Cas,” Dean rolls his eyes, unable to believe his freaking ears. “Did you really just think I was serious, right there?”

“You sounded explicitly like you meant it. I believed you were influenced by all the Billy Joel we’ve been listening to.”

“It’s called a goddamn joke.” Dean glared back, incredulous. “It hurts me to think you could ever think of me as that kind of a pretentious dumbass, I sounded worse than Kale-Sam, you dumbass!”

Cas fell silent. “I’m sorry..?”

“You just lost the right to be subjected to a joke ever, Cas. Think about what you did, I’m not talking to you anymore.” Dean smirked at him, and turned his attention more dedicatedly to the road, feeling the nag of Castiel’s disappointed-in-himself stare until he turns up the volume and Bon Jovi begins to play.

*

“We could talk instead,” Cas suggests, all of a sudden, when Dean’s sifting through his CDs. “There’s been a lot of songs, all day.”

“You say it like that’s a bad thing.” Dean shot back. “And talk, Cas? What about? The whole point of a vacation is that we don’t work or talk about it -”

“Then let’s talk about something else, Dean.” Cas adds, as if it were that obvious.

“Like?”

“I don’t know,” Cas defended. “The talking was my idea. If I suggest the topics too, what will be your contribution, Dean?”

Dean laughs at that, because it’s a well-worn joke but hearing Cas say it is different, because he’s Cas, and he’s not really supposed to say things like this. Except when he does, and surprises him, and Dean’s speechless for a pleasant fucking change. “'Kay, smartass, I’ll contribute.”

Cas waits, with a smile prompt on his lips, bringing out some newish dimples.

“I’ll contribute by laughing or in monosyllables, as you tell me a story.” Dean spoke, without really thinking about it. “I’m driving, so you should be the one doing the talking anyways - and it was your brilliant idea, so hit me with your best move now! Amuse me, Castiel.”

“Fine. May I speak of themes which don’t include your Earth?”

Dean has to turn his head ninety degrees to see the expression on Cas’s face before he realizes that the angel is hella serious.

He nods, stifling a grin, and Cas begins - sounding more into 'talking’, than he’s hardly ever been - and it’s a good look on him.

*

“Its getting late, Dean.” Cas remarked. “Will we drive all night?”

“Yeah, probably.” Dean replied, unthinking. “Why?”

“Well, Sam told me you’d probably put up at a truck stop since we’re on a vacation, and I’d like to be ready if you do.” Cas answered, simply.

“Ready?” Dean repeated.

“I mean, mentally.” Cas nodded. “To be around company.”

“Yeah, you around freakin’ chicks is a fairytale.” Dean chuckled, before shaking his head. “And, nah. No truck stops, no cheap roadhouses. If you want, though, we can check in at some motel.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Peachy. Then we can dine in that awesome steak place in Aspen,” Dean hummed under his breath as he reminisced upon the said item. “And take it on from there, for the rest of the night.”

“Of course. And if you’re ever tired,” Cas smiled. “I don’t sleep, so I can drive.”

“That’s never happening, but hey, you offered,” Dean raised his eyebrows and smirked at him. “Points for efforts, Cas. But I’m staying behind the wheel and you can stay put just where you are, all night.”

Almost obstinately, and with a deliberate frown, Cas shifted an inch towards the middle. “I’m more comfortable here.”

“Ah, a rebel,” Dean threw his head back and laughed, having to swerve dangerously to get out of the way of a truck - which made Cas stretch to take the wheel from him, which resulted in Dean swatting his hand away and telling him to trust my skills, Cas, driving’s the one thing I can actually do!

*

Cas was smiling. That was the thing. He didn’t smile all that much, and when he did, it was mostly because of a lame joke that earned him a courtesical smile - or genuine prevention-of-an-apocalypse happiness. But here he was, smiling for the sake of it, fucking glowing even in the little light of the moon. All eye crinkles and multiple dimples, and absolutely no words on his lips, as he prepped his elbow on the rolled down window - mirroring Dean - and looked our the window.

Dean liked seeing him like this, and if there was a warm feeling behind his ribs, it was probably because he felt sorta responsible. He had to be, right? Cas and him had driven, side by side, across miles and miles of road, for hours on end. They’d listened to classics, talked about craters on the moon, and occasionally, steaks medium rare. It had been a good day.

“You’re in a good mood today, buddy.” Dean couldn’t help himself, when Cas sipped from his beer with the smile consistently dangling from his lips.

“Yes, well, I do not like being stuck in the backseat as much as you’d think.” Cas threw back, with as relaxed a tone as one’d ever get from him.

“If you want me to advocate you being shotgun, or at least suggest rock-paper-scissors between you and Sam for getting to sit next to me - what’s in it for me?” Dean smirked, sliding closer to Cas.

“I’d like to believe that I take up less space, will let you play your albums without sneaking mine into the player, and am considerably less likely to complain about your driving.” Cas returned, crinkling into a smile that even showed his gums, and yep. Dean could live with this sort of smiles from his Angel.

“Throw in being like this all the time, and Sold.” Dean winked, resisting the urge to lean in and do something, because Cas looked happy and wonderful and yeah, this was a goddamm vacation that they’d earned, and he was gonna celebrate the hell outta it.

[a-v-e-z-a]

Fanfic of Fanfic, or Fanfic Squared

So... y’all know that @ahiddenpath is my fellow Digimon fanfic writing ladybro. 

She’s been exceptionally critical in why I’ve written as much Digimon fanfiction as I have, because a) she has always been supportive and encouraging when it comes to my writing and b) she sets an inspiring example for the craft of writing itself. 

Moreover, the plots and settings and characterizations that she develops are SO GOOD. They have--and continue--to influence my own writing, so much to the point where I found myself writing fanfiction of HER FANFICTION. 

YES. YOU READ THAT RIGHT. 

So, in honor of Fanfic Author Appreciation Day, I thought I’d share a snippet from my fanfic of her fanfic Four Years. 

Scenario is simple: Tai has a harebrained scheme involving getting the Chosen to run an obstacle race (think Spartan or Tough Mudder sort of of thing). Chaos ensues. 

I may or may not eventually post this on FF.net. Part of me is too embarrassed (like, really? Fanfiction of fanfiction?) But, honestly, why the hell not? 

But for now, here’s a tidbit. 

And if you read this, Hidden, I hope you’re not abashed or angry. I just love that story too much. I can’t help it. lol. 

More below:

King of the Mountain 

(Excerpt)

Izzy followed Amy unwillingly down the creaky staircase, each step dropping onto the next with a plodding thud. Tai had called a general house meeting, the nature of which happened to be important enough to merit an emailed invitation—which didn’t make sense. He, Tai, Amy, Sora, Matt, Mimi, Joe, and Hana all lived in the same house, rented from Mimi’s father. If Tai wanted a meeting, all he had to do was yodel, “Asses in the living room! Now!”

“You know that was probably Hana’s idea,” remarked Amy, seemingly able to peer into his thoughts. Izzy glanced up from his feet and looked at her as they reached the first floor.

“The email invitation?” he asked, wondering if he had, in fact, been muttering his musings aloud.

“Tai is not a planner, Izzy.” She passed him into the living room. “It was definitely Hana.”

Her lack of suspicion over the meeting had Izzy pursuing her with a wrinkling brow. True, Tai was the innovative one, chockfull of ideas—crazy and some, surprisingly, astute—but Hana was the orchestrator, the executor, the (perhaps less endearingly) conniver. She was the Loki to Tai’s Thor. Izzy would never admit fear, but the two of them together did present a certain force majeure.

Everyone else was already in the room, situated in various (or favorite) spots. Izzy was surprised to find Ken and Davis sitting on the floor, in front of the couch Matt, Sora, Joe, and Mimi occupied. Kari and TK were also, oddly, present. They shared half of a mismatched loveseat, the latter sitting on the armrest rather than on the cushions. Kari must have spotted them both. She gestured at the empty spot beside her.

Amy sat, and Izzy, mimicking TK, parked his bony rump on the opposing arm rest. He crossed his arms.

Hana sat in a folding chair by the front of the room, adjacent to the TV. Her laptop rested flat on her thighs, Tai leaning over behind her, pointing at the screen at things the rest of them couldn’t see. Despite sending the invitation, the appointed start time was not respected.

Izzy rolled his eyes, annoyed with the needless tax on his time.

“So, guys…” TK pitched his body towards them, nearly falling over Kari before she extended a hand and corrected his balance. Stable, TK continued, his voice dropping low. “What do you think’s going on? I thought this was a house meeting, but we don’t even live here and we got invited. Davis and Ken, too.”

“You seem to have ideas already, comrade,” Amy replied, supplying the prompt TK didn’t need to share his theories. “Let’s hear them.”

The smile he cracked split open too readily, white teeth gleaming, blue eyes shining with light.

“You don’t think they are going to announce they’re getting married, right?” he conjectured. Izzy sputtered an unpleasant sound, as if he were being throttled, rudely depleted of oxygen.

Amy set a hand on his shoulder and patted, gently. She gave TK a knowing look.

“You did that on purpose.”

The freshman did nothing to conceal his shame. He grinned widely.

“Sorry. Had to do something to wake up the senses. Everyone’s been complaining when they enter the room. That’s no fun.”

Amy tipped her head, unknowingly (or knowingly) leaning into Izzy as she considered the observation.

“Have they?” she asked.

“Yeah,” TK reaffirmed. “No one is even contemplating the possibilities of such a meeting. I mean, what if they are planning a trip?”

“In the middle of the school year?” questioned Izzy, insulted by the sheer inconsideration of such a proposal. “That smacks of massive irresponsibility. And even if they were, it doesn’t merit a scheduled, one-hour meeting on a Sunday.” He continued to rant. “Any trip information could be shared and coordinated via email. That is why cloud-based share drives exist.”

A testy silence followed. Izzy returned his glance to the others in the room, how they were preoccupied with side conversations with their neighbors, apparently not as concerned about the now late meeting the two people at the front of the room had arranged. He felt Amy shift behind him, her body peeling away, and he peeked over his shoulder to see what had caught her attentions.

She faced TK, who had tipped forward himself, the edge of his hand pressed to his cheek.

“Did you give him his vitamins this morning?” he heard him ask. “Because yikes.”  

Izzy snorted.

Both Kari and Amy admonished TK in their flippant, doting way. Amy shook a finger at him and Kari poked a dimple.

As tempted (or provoked) as Izzy was to rebut, he never received the opportunity. Tai clapped his hands, once and loudly, and the room quieted.

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve called this meeting…”

Izzy tried to soften his glare to a stare of mild disgruntlement, going so far as to rub his forehead to smooth away any furrows—if only for politeness. If Tai could read on anyone’s faces a hint of displeasure or a roll of the eyes, his enthusiasm was no less incandescent. His hands were fused at the palms, suggesting he’d start rubbing them together maniacally like Dr. Frankenstein’s mad lab assistant.

“I’ll get right to it.”

He turned sharply and volleyed finger guns at Hana, who, playing along, saluted him with a wink. Laptop keys were pressed, and in a second, the blank TV screen behind Tai lit up to show the black and orange vector graphic of what looked like the silhouettes of a man and a craggy, forested horizon.

Tai stepped aside and gestured at the image like a magician completing his trick—proudly, and with a dash of flair.

“Anyone know what this is the logo of?” he asked.

Izzy’s poor posture worsened. He slumped, planting elbow on knee and chin on raised fist like an emaciated version of Rodin’s The Thinker. Tai’s prompt had all about it the beginnings of an infomercial. He was the smooth-talking spokesperson and marketeer, shouting questions at an audience cued to reply monosyllabic answers in loud and spiritless unison.

True to his metaphor, his group of friends began offering their thoughts.

“The Bionic Man?”

“Daniel Boone.”

“Forrest Gump?”

“Sasquatch.”

With the quality of educated guesses deteriorating (if any were educated to begin with), Tai closed the call for suggestions.

“What the hell, TK?” he yipped. He didn’t so much point at the screen as he poked it. “You think that’s fucking Bigfoot?”

“Brawny guy in the woods, my dude,” TK replied, calmly. “It practically wrote itself.”

With a snort, Tai again tapped the screen with his finger.

“This,” he explained, “is the logo for the race ‘King of the Mountain.’”

Despite the regal name, it inspired no immediate curiosity or interest. The room simmered in silence, all of them collectively trying to find the significance in Tai’s words. No one even asked the obvious. “What is ‘King of the Mountain,’ Tai?” Instead, Mimi used the time to express her displeasure with the gendered name.

“Why not ‘Queen’? Better yet—royalty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tai muttered. “It’s a name. Girls can be kings and vice versa. Anyway, it’s a race, all right? Held on a local and national level.”

“Oh, like a marathon?” piped Davis.

“Yeah!” Tai jumped, perhaps overjoyed someone had finally shown intrigue. “Well… sort of. Marathons are 26.2 miles, Davis. King of the Mountain—max—doesn’t even reach half.”

Davis scratched his collarbone, prompting a slight puff of the chest.

“Walk in the park if you ask me,” he boasted, glimpsing at Ken.

“Dude, you didn’t let me finish. King of the Mountain goes anywhere from ten to twelve miles, but along those miles will be a series of up to twenty-five obstacles you’ll need to get through to reach the finish line.”

“Obstacles?”

“Twenty-five?”

Tai looked at Hana, and the screen blipped to its next slide, which listed all twenty-five potential obstacles. In skimming the list, Izzy found events colorfully and deceptively named “Ice fishing,” “The Matterhorn,” “Lightning Rod,” “Mudskipper,” and “Krakatoa!” Whoever named the events might as well have been captioning images in a history textbook.

“And there you have them,” said Tai. “Next slide.”

It surprised Izzy little that Tai forewent any explanation whatsoever into the particulars of the dubiously named events. Luckily, hands rose and interjections voiced the instant the slides changed.

“What in God’s name is the Executioner?”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

“Or life threatening.”

“The hell kind of race is this?”

Exasperated, Tai shut the disturbed and muttering public with a sharp “Just hold it! Jesus!”

Outburst released, he turned, more calmly, to his girlfriend. “Han, can you go back to the previous slide?”

“Firstly,” Tai resumed, “the race, as I’ve said, is only a maximum of twelve miles.”

Only? Izzy retorted. He could barely run a mile, let alone eleven more, with God knows what booby traps lie in wait. Did he also really intend for Amy to run the same race?

“Secondly, the race isn’t tomorrow, or next week, or in three weeks. It’s in three months. We have plenty of time to train and prepare. Speaking of—Han, skip ahead a bit, please.”

Izzy’s brain still buzzed from Tai’s unexpected foresight. He shared Amy’s opinion that Tai rarely planned for anything, but to plan for something three months ahead of schedule qualified as a miracle. Though, all it took was for Izzy to peek in Hana’s direction, and there was his answer. She regarded her boyfriend with an affectionate, engaged attention, nodding subtly in agreement with his points, one crossed leg swinging idly in his direction.

“Now, there’s a prize for the team that completes the race first—along with individual winners—but I thought this would be a great thing to do as a group.”

Never one to avoid publicly contesting Tai’s harebrained schemes, Matt raised a hand, though he was already speaking before Tai acknowledged him.

“Tai, not all of us are athletes.”

About half of the heads in the room nodded, encouraged by the challenge. Izzy nodded so vehemently his chin nearly hit his clavicle.

“The hell did I just say, guys?” Tai answered, exasperated. “This is three months away. If you aren’t an athlete now, you will be by then.”

Izzy raised his eyebrows, momentarily distracted by the mechanics Tai hoped to employ to reach such an end. But the curiosity was short lived when he realized he would be subject to those designs.

TK raised a hand, pointing a pen at Tai like a reporter at a press conference.

“I noticed you are using the general, pluralized ‘you,’” he began, “is it your intention to involve all persons present in this athletic endeavor?”

Tai shrugged, crossing his arms.

“Well, not all,” he admitted, a tad too readily, a natural at the hypothetical pulpit.

“What do you mean?” Matt demanded.

“Could you elaborate?”

TK’s softer, more professional question was overwhelmed by Matt’s complaint, and Tai answered the former.

“It means not everyone will participate in the race.”

“So, what?” Matt countered. Sora laid a hand on his shoulder, ever sensitive to her beau’s warning signs. “You going to run a lottery to see which of us has to do this with you?”

As acidly as the question was given, Tai was impervious to its sting, as if he were forcefielded against negative feedback—or cobra spit. Their fearless leader even smirked.

“If you’re not up to task, Matt,” he said. “Just admit it. No shame.”

The instant Matt stood, Hana rose as well, all five or so feet of her. Carefully, she set down her laptop and stepped in front of her boyfriend, though not without shooting him a pointed look.

She opened her twiggy arms the way actresses on stage performing Shakespeare did, like they were swans unfurling their wings, placating the tense air.

“Everyone can calm the fuck down,” she said, in contrast to her soothing movements. “This isn’t the Hunger Games, okay? We understand that not everybody here is an athlete, but we have arranged a regimen that includes diet and training, each generally accommodated to everyone’s schedules. We also looked at everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and took that into consideration, too.”

Matt sat back down, but his anger was replaced with indigestion.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “You’re not giving us the option to say no, are you?”

“It’s called the power of preparation, Matt,” replied Hana, all smiles, evidently pleased with herself.  

“Yeah, and anyway,” Tai interjected, with a shrug, “I already bought us the tickets and ordered team shirts, so… it’s a done deal.”

The blond musician’s well-coiffed head sprang up.

“You inconsiderate son of a bitch,” he growled. “You stinking little—”

[spamzineglasgow]

Blissful Tendencies: An Interview with Robin Boothroyd

Robin Boothroyd’s pamphlet Another Green World, which takes its title from a 1975 Brian Eno album, will shortly be released through SPAM Press. In advance of the pamphlet’s launch in London this week, SPAM editor Maria Sledmere caught up with Robin to find out more about his thoughts on procedural strategies, ambient poetics, influence, post-internet poetry and writing as an act of attention.

Robin published his crowdfunded landscape poem Quintet for Wind and Light in 2016. He also has a debut collection forthcoming with Sine Wave Peak.

You can pre-order a copy of Another Green World here.

Can you talk about your first encounter with Brian Eno’s album Another Green World, and what drew you to write a pamphlet after it?

I read about it before listening to it. This was in an article on the Quietus celebrating the album's 40th anniversary. Instead of focusing on historical context, as is usually the case with such pieces, the writer had foregrounded their personal experience of the record, and there was something in the way it had made them feel which struck a chord with me. Further, the piece mentioned Eno's Oblique Strategies cards used during the album’s composition – flash cards drawn at random to open creative pathways – which I instantly knew would be useful in my work. So the album has always been associated with creativity for me. With this context, and the way the music floored me when I first listened to it, it was perhaps inevitable that I'd write a pamphlet inspired by Another Green World. In fact, I've written two!

What was the process of writing, responding and revising?

In 2016, I went to a workshop at the Poetry School led by Emily Berry. One of the exercises she gave us to do, I think via Wayne Holloway-Smith, was to give us a sheet of song lyrics with every word of every line erased apart from the first. We then had to write a poem using this skeletal structure. I enjoyed working with the tension between improvisation and constraint, and thought it might be worth applying the exerciseto a sequence. And what better source than an album which was already central to my personal mythology? Turns out it's pretty hard to write more than one though! So I sought out some prompts to finda way into the poems. I realised I had a string of key words, so I decided to use Google's suggested searches to 'autocomplete' some of the lines. These were then used either as a springboard for improvisation or verbatim asa new line.

Can you talk a bit about what the title means to you. It could imply a kind of iteration: Oh look, another green world. Or maybe it’s an invitation, a gesture towards/into some alternative space. Are we exhausted with utopia, or is this doing something different? What kind of green world do you want to conjure?

You know, I haven’t really given the title much thought! It’s always just denoted the album. It’s surprising how often such things go unnoticed. For example, it took me around 20 years to realise that The Beatles is a pun. But to answer your question, I’d lean towards the alternativespace idea. Because I’m very much interested in the power of the imagination to conjure an alternate reality, another green world.

Your practice of generating lines from Genius song lyrics and Google search results mixes improvisation with intertextuality, a kind of poetic aleatory that has its lineage in everything from Mallarmé to Sam Riviere. What drew you to this technique, and who are some of your favourite influences that use variations of it?

I have to admit that I needed to look up the word 'aleatory', an anagram of a Tory ale. I see that it means 'used of the element of chance in poetic composition', so it's bang on! I'd be lying if I said that Riviere's work wasn't an influence. There are certainly parallels between the generative technique he used for Kim Kardashian's Marriage and my own. Another influence would be Jackson Mac Low's Complete Light Poems, which were composed using chance operations, a chart listing 280 kinds of light and a code based on dedicatees' names. It’s such a fascinating book!

What do you understand by the term ambient poetics? Would you describe Another Green World in this vein?

For me, poetry – whether writing or reading it – will always be an act of attention. And the ambient, at least by Eno's definition, is the opposite: an atmosphere, a vibe. Which is to say, a form which is intentionally undemanding of your attention. So the idea of an ambient poetry is a paradoxical one, and therefore attractive to me. I’d describe the work of Aram Saroyan as ambient, and Void Studies by Rachael Boast. Another Green World is more concerned with mood than it is with meaning, so I suppose it is in some ways ambient, yes.

I’m interested in what happens when you structure a poem in song form, with verse, chorus and instrumental sections. It’s like something escapes, deliciously, in my reading: I’m aware that the poem is a compression of something bigger, like it retains its virtual charge. How did you find using this structural constraint: was it a mode of compression or expansion? Do you see the lines as playfully ‘set’ to music or is it more complicated than that?

Every poem is a performance. Poetry is performed when it’s written, and it’s performed when it’s read. When I sourced the album’s lyrics from Genius, they included various descriptors in square brackets – [Verse], [Chorus], [Epic guitar solo] – which I found amusing and theatrical, so I chose to keep them in as remnants of the songs. I’m glad you feel that these make them retain their charge. For me, their presence highlights the performance of the poem. I invite the reader to imagine – which is to say perform – the guitar solo, for example. So it’s a compression before an expansion.

When you first submitted the pamphlet, you highlighted the fact that Eno’s album Another Green World is ‘pre-internet’. Given SPAM is self-described as a post-internet publication, obsessed with putting the internet on the page, as it were, how do you see the relationship between post- and pre-internet in terms of both music and poetry?

Many people would have you believe that we read less these days, but it’s simply not true. If anything, we read more – instant messages, articles, emails, social feeds. It’s just that reading isn’t centred on the book any more. I’m fascinated by the different attitudes and registers between these bodies of text, and seek to recreate them in the poem. That’s post-internet poetry for me. I was born in the mid-80s, so I experienced the majority of my childhood before the invention of the internet. And there’s a tendency, among my generation, to yearn for those blissful offline days when we weren’t barraged with information or paralysed by the anxiety of the infinite. Pre-internet as prelapsarian. Another Green World is interesting to me because it demonstrates the hopeful yearning of much late-70s experimental music, which has often been characterised as ‘nostalgic for the future’. Perhaps every generation is defined by their nostalgia.

Many of the poems are, like their Eno namesakes, ‘instrumentals’. How do you understand this working of a clearing, of silencing voice or lyric articulation in the space of a pamphlet?

It started as a joke. I was surprised to find entries for the instrumental songs on Genius, which is fundamentally a database of song lyrics. The idea of a poem withno words was amusing to me, so I kept them in at draft stage. But the more I read them, the more I felt that they could also offer an imaginative space – room to dream – triggered by the titles. When you silence the poem, the poem sings.

Another Green World has obvious environmental connotations. You describe a previous publication, Quintet for Wind and Light, as a ‘landscape poem’. Do you see Another Green World, as well as its procedural germination, as ecological in any way, a kind of reflexive, pastoral intervention within the contemporary?

Hmm. I’m not sure. What I remember finding in Google’s suggested searches was a desire for connection &/or information, most often regarding technology. Very few were pastoral or ecological in nature. But as I touched on before, the poem is a space for the imagination to go to town. This is how Another Green World is linked to the Quintet, by conjuring (sometimes imaginary) landscapes. Looking through the pamphlet, I see that the titles are pastoral: ‘Over Fire Island’, ‘In Dark Trees’. And some of my original lines concern nature: ‘Picking rosehips in winter’, ‘Who knew snakes don’t have legs’. Perhaps I wrote them to emphasise the contrast between the physical and digital worlds, which could be ecologically motivated.

It strikes me that there’s this strange quotidian tenderness throughout. Lines like ‘I’ll frogtie you with twine’, ‘Just add plant food’, ‘I’m eating a gluten rich flapjack’, ‘Taking my sweet time’. I’m seeing this as a sort of recognition of what’s worth keeping, an ethic of noticing and sharing. I love that line, ‘Everything not saved will be lost’, how it reminds us of our contemporary over-archivisation of every tiny detail of life. What function does poetry have as an everyday archive; is it something about accumulating a more humble mythos for the present, or something else?

When Frank O’Hara writes 'It is 12:20 in New York' and tells us about the walk he goes on, I really feel that it is 12:20 in New York. The poem becomes the present moment. I value the quotidian in poetry because it’s where life takes place. Not every moment is an epiphany. A few years ago, I wrote a set of lighthearted ‘rules’ for my poems, and the first one is 'be attentive'. Even outside of poetry, I’ve always made a point to enjoy the little things in life because they add up to something bigger. I suppose you could describe it as a kind of grounding technique, self-care. The everyday is also intensely personal. One of my favourite books is The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, written around the year 1,000. It’s a diary in which she kept lists of her likes and dislikes. ‘Things that can't be compared’, ‘Things that create the appearance of deep emotion’, ‘Splendid things’. These give us such a clear portrait of what she was like as a person; her hopes, dreams, fears, desires (and, by extension, those of the society at the time) are all there in the lists. In a way, our internet search histories give us the same portrait today.

In the pamphlet’s epigraph, comprising the opening words of Eno’s record, there’s this line ‘Everyone just ignores them’, the words that ‘float in sequence’. Do you think we tend to ignore the elements of poetry or music we find difficult in this way? Is there something about beauty or function in meaning’s recalcitrance here, or are we just lazy readers/listeners?

I’m not sure whether people do ignore difficult artworks. I think they tend to hate or dismiss them. ‘Rubbish!’ Or, ‘My toddler could’ve done better!’ Perhaps that’s the same thing. For Eno, I think he was commenting on the fact that a great pop song doesn’t need good lyrics because no one pays attention to them anyway. They just hum the tune. You can’t not pay attention to the words in a poem, so I thought it would make an interesting epigraph.

How do you want people to read Another Green World?

As an invitation to play. I'd hope to elicit laughter and spark daydreams.

How do you see this pamphlet in relation to your other work and ongoing projects? What’s next in the world of Robin Boothroyd?

Quintet and Wind and Light, my previous pamphlet, was also inspired by Another Green World. It even quotes some of the lyrics! So they’ve always been two sides of the same coin. As for what I’m working on at the moment, I’ve started to gather a selection of concrete/minimal poems that I’ve been writing on and off for about five years. They’re a mixture of word associations and hybrids (e.g. ‘rhinoctopus’), and a couple were published on M58 back in 2015. My working title is Atomised. I’ve also begun a new landscape poem, ‘Vermilion Cliffs’. In terms of publications, Holiday Eyes, my first collection, is forthcoming on Sine Wave Peak.

~

[joeybelle]

Oh, how the tables have turned -- Part 3

Clyde Logan x Reader

Inspired by @clyde-prompts: “Some guys are rude and use ableist slurs against Clyde. The reader is with them, and although she feels bad about what’s happening, is too scared to say anything in front of her “friends”. She comes back to the bar a couple nights later to try and show him she’s not a bad person. They get to know each other and fall in love”. Doesn’t fully follow the prompt

Warnings: Language, first person POV, driving under the influence cause I assume everyone does it in that movie, IDK what I’m doing.

Rating: Mature

Setting: Pre-Heist

Tags: @lonelyravenclaw​ @kyloren-supreme-ben​ @onmyknees4steve​ @elsablackswift​ @helloimindelaware​ @mwcritics

A.N: I’ve decided to slice this fic into 3000-ish words parts for people to be able to scroll past it without much annoyance. Pert 3 ended up being much longer than expected, so i had to cut it into two parts somewhere in the middle. It’s not perfect, but you’ll be getting both parts today. When I finish editing. Might take a while. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the story. Feel free to drop me a line anytime or just message me if you wanna squee about Clyde Logan in general.

Rejection is always a tough pill to swallow. It wasn’t the first I’d gotten rejected and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it still didn’t go down easily. I found myself moping at home the next few days, following what I’d gotten used to calling the ‘series of unfortunate events’ related to Clyde Logan. Not that I had that many alternatives anyway, being a friendless nobody in a small town, but this time it felt self-imposed.

In the meantime I cut the grass in my yard and discovered a few rose bushes that were beautiful, but mean to my hands, I watched how the living room ceiling started leaking one rainy afternoon, signalling a pretty serious hole in the roof, nearly broke my neck going into the basement because there was a missing step I hadn’t seen before; I opened the vodka bottle all by myself and realized that he had been right, drinking alone wasn’t fun at all, but I was doing it anyway to hide my shame; I ate ice cream and binged Netflix shows for the rest of the week.

But there’s a limit to how much time you can spend alone at home before starting to go insane. I reached mine the next weekend and for a moment I considered paying Mellie a visit, but then I remembered the whole Clyde ordeal and I decided against it. I was sure that he’d told her everything and I really didn’t feel like talking about it. It was bad enough that I was beating myself up over it, I didn’t need someone else to rub it in. So, since the Duck Tape was off-limits for obvious reasons, and I didn’t feel like exploring for another bar in the neighbourhood I was left with only one option: the country fair.

I used to really love country fairs and carnivals and all that when I was a teenager, but it was probably because I’d be with my friends and there would be booze and food and we’d just be stupid together. I wasn’t sure I’d find them as charming nowadays, but at least I’d be moping outside, in public, which was an improvement to being secluded in my own home, waiting for another rain to invade the living room through the ceiling. So I showered, dressed like a semi-decent swamp witch and went to the damn thing.

As expected, the country fair didn’t impress me at all but it was a way to kill a few hours while feeling like less of a hermit than usual. I ate something, tested some insanely sweet drinks, and stuffed my face with enough ice cream to endanger my health, so in the end I found myself sitting on a bench, dangerously close to a food coma, with nothing better to do than to watch the crowd. Other people seemed to have way more fun than me. There were couples holding hands, parents with their kids, teenagers in groups visiting attractions and Clyde Logan with a blonde kid attached to his arm. Wait, what?

I have to say, this was the last place I had expected to see Clyde Logan. In my head, country fairs didn’t really fit his style (because I had spoken to him twice and I knew all there was to know about the man, obviously), and I assumed he’d be too busy with the bar to come to one anyway. I remembered that it was pretty early and the bar probably wasn’t open yet, but his presence in my field of vision was still unexpected.

I sighed dramatically and leaned back, arms crossed over my chest. Speak about bad luck, I thought. I came here to avoid him and here he was, swinging a blonde kid on his very toned arm. Actually, I didn’t mind the view. He was distracted by the kid and far enough not to notice my staring, so I indulged in it for a moment. There’s no harm in looking, right? Especially when he was wearing a dark, short-sleeved shirt that seemed at least a size too small, the buttons threatening to give in anytime he flexed his muscles while lifting the little girl in the air. His niece? Maybe. She seemed vaguely familiar, so I assumed she had been part of the onslaught of school kids that were sent to visit the college I worked at. Or maybe she was his kid. I had no way of knowing for sure.

Whatever the case, he looked really good doing it. He was smiling for a change. An open and honest smile lit up his usually somber face, and I just couldn’t look away. I caught myself wishing he would smile at me like that, but then I realized that we were practically strangers and I hadn’t made the best impression the first time we met. And since he clearly rejected me, I had to get over this crush ASAP if I wanted to live peacefully in this town.

The little girl let go of his arm and ran back to a couple that, after a bit of squinting, I recognized to be Jimmy Logan and his sister Mellie. They both looked different—after all it had been more than a decade since I’d last seen them—but not so much that I didn’t recognize them. Jimmy lifted the girl in the air and kissed her, then put her down and looked straight at me with a shit eating grin on his face. The feeling was similar to being punched in the gut. I remembered that in another life I’d dreamed of Jimmy Logan looking at me with a smile, but right now the only thing I felt was panic, so I decided to get the hell out of there before Mellie noticed me and I’d have to be part of a very awkward conversation.

But luck definitely wasn’t on my side today, because the little girl started running towards me yelling ‘Miss’ at the top of her lungs. Oh, now I recognized her: she was the pageant girl. Really smart kid, very bubbly and friendly, talked my ear off during the college tour. Her favourite subject was, of course, pageants.

“Hi!” I said, when she stopped in front of me, grinning from ear to ear. “You must be… uhhh… uhhhh.” Crap. I had been calling her pageant girl in my head for so long that I’d forgotten her name.

“Sadie!” she helpfully reminded me.

“Sadie, right. How are you today?”

“Good. Daddy brought me to the fair to see the auctioneers. And later uncle Clyde will win me a unicorn.” I did my best not to steal a glance at Clyde at the mention of his name, not wanting to invite any more attention towards me. Hopefully I’d be able to get out of here before the adults ganged up on me.

“Awesome!” I said, panic clearly noticeable in my voice, because Jimmy Logan was rapidly approaching (despite his visible limp) with Mellie following closely. “It was nice seeing you today, Sadie, but I have to go now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for your unicorn.”

“Aw, leaving already?” She looked genuinely sad and I felt bad for her, but I felt even worse for myself, so I had to go.

“Yeah, leaving already? Without even saying hello?” Jimmy caught up to us before I was able to disappear, so I put on my most believable fake smile and hoped for the best. “Come on, don’t be a stranger, Baby,” he said, pulling me into a hug.

“Well, I kinda thought I was,” I mumbled, but returned the hug. He seemed like a nice person, plus I’d held him on a pedestal for so many years that I could indulge in a hug.

“Daddy, why are you calling her baby?” Sadie aske, giggling.

“Cause that’s her nickname,” he said, ruffling her hair. He explained to her that I’d been called baby ever since I was little, but she had to be polite and call me by my real name. The kid giggled again and I mouthed ‘I hate it’ which made her laugh harder, before turning to face her dad once again.

“I am surprised you know that. I lived under the impression that you had no idea who I was,” I said, going to hug his sister. “Hi Mellie, long time no see.” In hindsight, I should have kept my mouth shut and pretended we were at least acquaintances. And although I knew it could be interpreted that way, I wasn’t bitter that he never acknowledged me in my teens—after all, it was just puppy love and it had been a decade since then—but I was curious what had prompted this sudden display of familiarity. If anything, I would have expected Mellie to come alone to say hi.

“Hiya, sweetheart. It’s good to have you back.” She warmly returned my hug.

“What do you mean I had no idea who you were? You’ve been coming to my games since you were twelve and cheered louder than the whole cheerleading squad.” That was true. “How could I not know my biggest fan?”

“So you what, ignored me on purpose?” I said, arching an eyebrow.

“Well, it’s not like I did it on purpose,” he said and laughed. His laugh was still the same as I remembered, loud and contagious. “But my brother here had the biggest crush on you and I just didn’t wanna make him more jealous.” Well, this was unexpected.

Clyde had conveniently stayed out of my line of sight, keeping his distance, but now I turned to look at him. Never in my life had I seen anyone blush so furiously in a matter of seconds, his whole face even his ears becoming a deep shade of red. He was glaring at Jimmy who seemed really unfazed by it.

“Is that so?” I pressed, feigning innocence, but deep inside me there was a little devil laughing maniacally. I mean, I was aware that it wasn’t very nice of me, but I was feeling a tiny bit of petty satisfaction knowing that I wasn’t the only one embarassed by the whole situation. Misery loves company.

“Yeah, he only ever came to my games to see you cheer,” Jimmy said, same shit eating grin plastered on his face, seeming completely oblivious to his brother’s discomfort.

I smiled back but wonder what Jimmy’s motive was. Talking to me out of the blue, after never acknowledging me before, snitching on his brother in a matter of seconds. I knew he was insanely loyal to his family, so why sell him now?

On the whole, the situation was beyond comical. Jimmy was grinning, Clyde seemed set on killing him with a glare, Sadie attached to his arm again asking ‘Is that true, uncle Clyde’ over and over again until he finally mumbled something that sounded like ‘It was a long time ago’. He looked at me like a deer (or a moose) caught in the headlights and I could feel my own cheeks burning. I was in hell.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?” I asked Mellie, who stood next to me, arms crossed and an amused smile playing on her face.

“‘Cause he’s a bit of a coward and you were infatuated with my other brother,” she kindly explained.

“Right.” Made sense. I still felt like something that I should have known about back then— who knows, I might have liked him back—or you know, forever hold your silence type of thing. But knowing this now explained a lot of things.

Now that the petty satisfaction that I had felt for embarrassing him had died down a little bit, I understood why Clyde rejected me and didn’t seem to react to my flirting. If someone I had been crushing on in my teens showed up on day, insulted me or trampled on my insecurities then tried flirting with me I would have been much less gracious in rejecting them than Clyde had been. Yes, it had been more than a decade since highschool, and I was pretty sure his crush on me was dead and buried (like the one I used to have on Jimmy), but it was something that could potentially still hurt after years. So once again I was flooded by guilt.

“Well, it was… uhh… fun meeting you guys, but I have to head back now,” I said, getting ready to bail. Enough embarrassment for a day. Served me right for wanting to get out of the safety of my home. Never again.

“Come on, we’ve just met and you wanna leave already?” Mellie said with a disappointed look on her face.

“It’s not that, I just have some things to do at home,” I tried excusing myself. “Give me your phone number and we can hang out another time,” I said fishing my phone out of my pocket.

“The things will still be there tomorrow, but you’re never getting back today,” Jimmy said with a wink.

“Wow, who knew my brother was a philosopher,” Mellie arched an eyebrow at him. I laughed.

“Please, Miss,” Sadie latched onto my hand, pulling me towards the booths. “Daddy said I’ll get to be your guide today, show you around the fair. Pleaaase.” How could you say no to a kid? Big-eyed, freckled, and more full of life than I’d ever been.

I looked over to Clyde who had returned to a somewhat normal shade, although there was still some pink tinting his cheeks. He still seemed highly uncomfortable about this whole thing, his whole body looking tense. I tried imagining what he felt: a week ago he was living a (supposedly) peaceful life and then Baby was back in town and he’d been insulted, hit on and then embarrassed by his brother in front of his family. If I’d been in his place, I would have faked my death and left the country by now.

“I don’t think I should…” I said, hoping that at least one of the siblings would take the hint and leave it be.

“Nonsense!” Jimmy proclaimed, patting me on the shoulder and nudging me towards Sadie. “Come stay with us a while and I promise you’ll have plenty of time to do whatever you were planning on doing.”

“Are you willing to help out?”

“If that’s what it takes…”

I snorted. “Half an hour then I’m gone,” I said, following them towards the booths. I send Clyde an apologetic look, hopefully he wouldn’t be bothered too much by my presence for the next half an hour. He seemed to have regained his composure and was following us closely.

Sadie was still holding my hand as we were mingling into the crowd of people staring at the attractions. She diligently explained to me what everything was, like it was my first time going to a country fair. It was entertaining to watch. She was a really cute kid and honestly, after so many days of self-imposed isolation, it was nice to interact with people in my free time.

“So, how’s it like being back in your hometown again?” Mellie asked, once Sadie ran over to her dad.

“Nice, peaceful.” Or that’s how it should have been, if I’d been a little smarter. “But it’s gonna take a bit of getting used to. It’s definitely keeping me busy. My roof just started leaking, something I never thought I’d have to experience, but hooray for adult life,” I laughed.

“Did you get it fixed?” she asked, a little concerned.

“No, not yet. Called a couple of contractors, but they didn’t have any opening this month.” I sighed. “I don’t have that many contacts in the area, but I’ll keep looking and hope there won’t be rain anytime soon.”

“That sucks,” she said and turned to her brother. “Hey Jimmy,” she yelled, “do you know anyone who can fix a roof?”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “It’s just raining into my living room.”

“I can come take a look when I’m free. If it’s not something big I can fix it for you.” He offered.

“Thanks, but…” Was I stupid enough to refuse? Yes.

“You don’t trust my skills?”

“Oh, I do, but I don’t want you to waste your free time fixing my leaky roof.” It wasn’t just that. I generally preferred to work with people I didn’t know, who were paid to do a job and with who I could argue at the end if the job wasn’t done properly. With friends and family, you just accept what you get, smile and then pay someone else to fix it later. Plus, if they refused payment, you’d have to find a way to make it up to them which meant more complications. And in this particular case I knew I shouldn’t be spending more time with Clyde or his family if I wanted my unrequited crush to die anytime soon. But how do I tell Jimmy that, when he seemed so eager to help?

“It’s no problem. I’ll take a look and if it’s something I can’t do, I’ll put you in touch with some people. When are you free?”

“Not sure, my schedule isn’t fully decided yet.”

“Then give me a call and we’ll see what works for the both of us. Clyde gimme your phone.” That earned him a frown from his brother.

“Why? What happened to your phone?” he said on what I guessed was a rather disapproving tone, but handed him the phone nonetheless.

“It’s broken.”

“He forgot to pay for it,” Sadie explained with a giggle.

“I didn’t forget, I’m not paying it in sign of protests to the shitty plan they forced down my throat,” he muttered. “Anyway, what’s your number?”

He punched in the number and gave me a call. I typed the name Clyde but then changed my mind and saved it as ‘Logan Bros’. Clyde never really wanted my number, so it was just a way for me to get in touch with Jimmy if I needed help. I decided to never call it unless the roof caught fire and I was trapped underneath.

The phone went back to Clyde and I saw him fiddle with it a bit, probably saving the number. I wondered what he saved me as. Probably used my real name, since I’d never heard him call me Baby. Although for some strange reason, I wouldn’t have minded even if he did. No matter how much I hated the nickname, I was sure I’d very much enjoy it if he moaned it in my ear as he pulled me closer to his chest and… stop. Restrain yourself, woman.

Sadie kept her promise and was a very good guide, which meant I was now very well acquainted with everything at the country fair. Jimmy had bought us corn dogs and cheesy fries and donuts and refused to let me pay for anything, so I retaliated by buying everyone snow cones and funnel cake. By the time we reached the shooting galleries, I was so full I was ready to burst.

As Sadie was searching the booths for the toy she wanted I bought a bottle of water, hoping to wash away the nausea caused by all that deep fried food I had shoved down my throat earlier. Seeing that Clyde had fallen behind and we could finally be alone for a bit, I decided to go and talk to him.

“Sorry for crashing your family outing,” I said, standing besides him as we both watched Sadie’s quest to find the best toy. “It wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s alright” he said, briefly glancing at me. “I have to apologize for how my brother acted today. I guess he’s just excited that you’re back in town. He doesn’t have that many friends.”

I had to admit that Jimmy Logan being lonely and not surrounded by hordes of friends was something that I would have never imagined. But I could see it now, after all we were both in the same position: two formerly popular kids that had fallen from grace and were now regular nobodies. Most friendships we made in our teens weren’t the kind that lasted a lifetime.

“I’m actually really enjoying this,” I said, trying to open the water bottle and failing. My hands were still very greasy from all that deep fried food. “But don’t tell anyone or I have a feeling I might get friend-dopted by your family and you’ll never get rid of me,” I said with a wink, to which he smiled. An actual smile. Directed at me.

“Lemme help you with that,” he said, noticing my pathetic attempt at opening the bottle. He held it under his left arm, effortlessly unscrewing the cap.

“I’m completely useless” I mumbled retrieving the bottle, and he chuckled.

In the meantime Sadie seemed to have found what she was looking for and dragged both Clyde and me towards one of the booths. She showed him what he wanted and after paying he was given a shabby airgun. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone look at a rifle with more contempt in their eyes. I was certain he was used to a different type of guns, especially since he had been in the military.

“Piece of crap,” he mumbled, to no one in particular, disgust clear in his voice.

“Welcome to the glamorous world of carnivals, Mr. Logan,” I laughed.

He shot me a dirty look and aimed. He missed the first two targets, but got the other three. It was still quite impressive, I was sure the only thing I’d be able to hit with any rifle would be my foot, especially since everyone knows the games are rigged and the guns aim screwed on purpose. He paid for another round and I kept my fingers crossed. Sadie had climbed onto her father’s shoulders and was cheering from above.

This time he got the first target with very little effort. And the second one. And the third. By the fourth I was probably as excited as Sadie, although a little less vocal. The fifth target came down just as effortlessly as the others and both Sadie and I cheered loudly. The vendor faked excitement and handed him the toy, making a bit of a spectacle to attract other customers. ‘Look everybody, you can win even with one arm!’ he bragged, and I hated him already, but Clyde didn’t even seem to notice.

“Which one do you want?” he asked Mellie, after giving Sadie her toy.

“One of those,” she said, pointing to a bunch of little plushies that could be hanged on the rearview mirror.

“Alright,” he said, and paid for another round. This time, it seemed like he didn’t even have to aim. He just pointed the rifle and the targets went down one after another, to the vendor’s increased irritation and to my delight.

Clyde gave the toy to his sister who thanked him with a kiss on the cheek, then turned to me. “Which one do you want?”

“Me?” I said, taken by surprise. “You want to get me one too?”

Masterlist

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[southeastasianists]

Shortly before Malaysia’s general elections in 2008, I sat on a cool floor with blank placards and marker pens, beneath a whirring ceiling fan in a bungalow house in Kuala Lumpur. I sat there with friends, some younger, some older than my 31 year old self, thinking of slogans for our campaign to educate voters about the representation of women in Parliament and the hurdles that women face in having their voices heard and issues addressed.

The Women’s Candidacy Initiative (WCI) that we were a part of sought to draw attention to the reasons that have led to the ongoing underrepresentation of women in Malaysia’s political system. It did this by publically confronting candidates from the ruling coalition and opposition parties in equal measure and asking them about their commitment to women’s rights, and their dedication to addressing women’s issues if elected.

As we all sat on that floor surrounded by materials bought from a nearby stationery shop, I experienced a moment of sadness and smallness when I thought of the vast resources and professional advertisements being deployed by the Barisan Nasional (BN), Malaysia’s ruling coalition. But moments later I was invigorated with pride and admiration for my colleagues. I realised that what WCI was doing was challenging notions about who could and ought to participate in Malaysia’s democratic processes. WCI was creating a space within which young women in particular could engage with the processes of democracy. By drawing on the creativity and vitality of younger activists, WCI formulated a youthful and media-savvy campaign and got its message out through diverse media, including Al Jazeera and the front pages of national publications.

The particular energy that these young people brought to our campaign is worth drawing attention to. Malaysians, and especially young Malaysians, have often been characterised as being averse to political activism. But the work of scholars like Meredith Weiss has persuasively demonstrated that Malaysia has a rich history of student activism, one which has been actively suppressed and obscured such that many young people today have little idea of it. In this context, work such as Weiss’s book, activist Fahmi Reza’s documentary Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka, and discussions such as this on New Mandala, have a potentially important role in reconnecting people with lost histories and stories.

What makes the political role of these young people distinctive, says Weiss, is that they tend to differ from other activists in terms of the their collective identity, the moral value they place on that identity, and the “breadth of issues they may champion, including matters with no apparent connection to students’ own interests and positions”. My own experience with activists in Malaysia largely bears this observation out; I have used Nick Crossley’s concept of a “radical habitus” to describe the disposition of many long term or “career” activists—many of whom cut their teeth during their university years—for “contestation and a willingness to explore unfamiliar forms’ to pursue their goals”.

An example that I have written about is that of David Teoh, who was a key figure in Global Bersih, an international movement that seeks to support the work and demonstrations of Bersih, a civil society coalition that seeks reforms to Malaysia’s electoral systems and practices. Shortly after completing his university studies in Melbourne, Teoh became involved, more by accident than by design, in facilitating political speakers from Malaysia. During the 2011 and 2012 Bersih rallies in Kuala Lumpur, he found himself using social media to coordinate rallies in dozens of cities around the world that coincided with, and were supportive of, the momentous Bersih demonstrations in Malaysia.

Alongside this organisational improvisation, the creativity of young activists has loomed large. One symbol seen at recent Bersih demonstrations that has become well-known throughout Malaysia is that created and propagated by the young artist-activist Fahmi Reza. The image is of Prime Minister Najib portrayed as a clown, with text beneath stating “Kita semua penghasut” (We are all seditious). This image, which has now received global attention, was developed following allegations of the prime minister’s role in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. But so cutting has been the impact of the critique that this image undertakes, that Fahmi has himself been charged with sedition.

At first glance, such risks and sacrifice may seem futile. As a BBC journalist observes while interviewing Fahmi in the aftermath of the Bersih rally in Kuala Lumpur in 2016, Najib “is still in power”. But in response to the interviewer’s doubts, Fahmi affirms that protests are successful. “One of the success[es] of the protest,” he says, “is to create this culture of protest in this country. Look where we are today, hundreds of thousands of people are down on the streets protesting, and they are protesting without fear.”

A young person’s game?

Two things come through for me in this remark of Fahmi’s about the developing “culture of protest”. First relates to Weiss’s comments about activism being stymied by its histories being obscured. The now obvious presence of regular protests in Malaysia has rewritten the narrative of Malaysia as a place of popular acquiescence to government threats and directives. The second is that some of the ethos of the “radical habitus” of more seasoned activists may be rubbing off more generally on the citizenry of Malaysia which is, as Fahmi observes, increasingly comfortable with protesting, and is doing so with much less fear. If this trend continues, it has to be regarded as a major success for Malaysian civil society.

But it is not just seasoned activists who are attempting to inspire and motivate the younger generation. The influence also works in the other direction.

A senior women’s rights activists remarked, during an interview with me in 2016, that younger people sometimes persuade her to join or help them in entering into dialogue with the government on a particular issue. When this happens, she recollects the countless fruitless attempts she has been a part of over the years and said, “Ah…but I’ve been there, done that. And then they will [say] ‘No, we have to, we have to.’” At which point, she said, she sometimes relents to their insistence and enthusiasm.

While enthusiasm, idealism and youth are often thought to be synonymous, it is by no means necessarily the case. If we consider the vast array of highly accessible distractions in the form of mobile phone apps, or season after season of highly addictive television series, or the pleasures of consumerism that adverts constantly bombard people of all ages with, political disengagement is all too easy and attractive. This is especially so when young people are dissuaded so actively from any critical activity.

But the realities of the world always break through distractions—such as when people’s economic position means they struggle to afford items they desire or need, when the future offers no realistic promise of improvement, and when the seemingly ill-gotten wealth of the country’s elites is so evident. These realities have been among the factors that prompted the massive protest rallies in Malaysia and which, note James Chin and Wong Chin Huat, have “energized urban young people” who have access to the online media that are “unafraid to discuss sensitive subjects such as high-level corruption, abuses of power, ethnic discrimination, police brutality, religious controversies, and racist remarks by UMNO politicians”.

When voting isn’t enough

The threat that the overt expression of popular discontent poses to ruling parties is considerable, and according to William Case, necessary in the case of Southeast Asia’s semi-democratic or “hybrid” regimes. Although “voting in hybrid regimes is not inconsequential for bringing about change, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient factor in the Southeast Asian setting”. In the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, Southeast Asian governments were challenged by failing prosperity and rising popular discontent. The upshot of this discontent was that some countries such as Myanmar became more authoritarian, whereas others, such as Indonesia, moved towards greater democratisation.

In the same period, according to Case, others countries, such as Malaysia, were able to ride the rough times through “artful manipulations”, including curbing civil liberties. Although suffering setbacks in the 1999 elections, the Barisan Nasional retained power and later re-cemented its dominance in 2004 with considerable electoral success after the country’s economy recovered. Thus, “while transitions to democracy have surely taken place in the [Southeast Asian] region,” writes Case, “they have been driven not by voters, but more forcibly by protestors”. And it is in this respect that the Barisan Nasional has much to be concerned about in Bersih, which has mustered regular and massive street demonstrations and put paid to the image of Malaysians as docile citizens.

In the face of this, the Malaysian government has been far from idle and has sought to quell the expressions of discontent and protest. The success of the repression that has been unfolding since the revelations about 1Malaysia Development Berhad has led some to observe that in its hope for political change, “Malaysia is waiting for foreign action”.

Putting the desirability of “foreign action” aside, what such sentiments reflect is the seeming lack of options that Malaysians have for bringing about political change or registering their voices. Engaging with political parties would appear to many young Malaysians as a highly undesirable avenue for a raft of reasons. The biased nature of the electoral process has been laid bare, not least by Bersih; political parties all have entrenched power structures, networks and dynasties; and for most young people there are often more immediate concerns about making a living. Against this, the options for engagement in the civil society sphere would seem to offer greater accessibility, more immediacy in terms of efforts bearing fruits, and potentially way more fun—so long as one is not arrested.

And such civil society efforts need not be thought of as separate from party political engagement. It was just this pragmatic engagement that those involved with the Women’s Candidacy Initiative have recognised. They took advantage of whatever opportunities and openings presented themselves. They understood the interconnectedness of the issues at play and the close relationship between what happens in the party-political sphere and the rest of Malaysian society. They also understood the importance of involving young people who not only could communicate effectively with their peers, but who would be able to take over the mantle in the years to come.

“The ideas lying around”

Although I could point towards WCI’s successes in educating both some voters and MPs with respect to issues facing women, and attention given to women’s issues in the media, the importance of civil society ventures—even small ones— must also be seen in terms of its potentialities should opportunities present themselves. In his book How Change Happens, Duncan Green describes the importance of having pre-existing networks, organisations and ideas ready, irrespective of the seeming likelihood of their coming into play.

To illustrate, Green notes that when the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh occurred, an “Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh” soon came into effect. This accord, however, happened as it did because of the substantial work already done in developing policy, networks, and trust with key actors. Although far from being a subscriber to Milton Friedman’s economic policies, Green cites Friedman, who argued that when a crisis occurs, the actions that will follow will “depend on the ideas that are lying around”, and that what is needed is “to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the political impossible becomes politically inevitable”.

Thus a vibrant, pro-social, inclusive, creative, and hopeful civil society is needed in Malaysia and Southeast Asia more generally—indeed, globally—for when crises emerge, as they undoubtedly will. How countries and societies will navigate their way through those moments will depend on the networks, values, and ideas that are taken into them. In this, young people have been, continue to be, and need to be key in articulating and communicating that which matters, and that which is right.

[teamdoubleoh]

Masterlist of Already Posted Fics

Since commenting earns points and not everyone has read everybodies already posted fics, here is a list beneath the cut of those posted before the Fest begins. That way we have an easy way to pick/go to our team mates fics and comment or rec to our hearts contents

Organized by writer

List of Writers:

amottledrose (thebookworm214), beaubete, brookebond, Castillon02, Gwyllion, hippoprima, Iambid (Flantastic), IAmVengeance (Venstar),  JaimiStoryTeller, opalescentgold, sunaddicted, timetospy

amottledrose (thebookworm214)

Been Waiting My Whole Life (For Someone Like You) - Q takes independent IT contracts and James works as a security guard. All Q wants to do is start over in London after time working abroad, but he never could have imagined he would meet a blond, ex-Navy officer with a sense of humor and a ridiculously cute pet lizard.

Snapshots - James Bond and Q- perfect for each other even if they don't always know it.

00Q Jukebox - Music inspires many to write, and that's what it's done here. Each chapter will be the title of a song that in some way influences the content of the chapter. The story will be a series of short stories and one-shots featuring everyone's favorite Quartermaster/Agent. Some might be AUs, some might be angsty, others will be so high on crack/humor that hopefully you cry from laughing. All of them are inspired by the songs that give each chapter its name.

Unplanned - A glimpse into Q's mind, someone who never planned on ever loving anyone.

Double-Oh Doctor - It's dangerous to work in R and D, especially when things catch on fire.

Be The One You Bleed - Set back in Medieval England, James Bond takes the throne after his parents die, but there's more danger in his court than even he suspects. During the celebration of his coronation, a young traveler arrives: a strange man with pale skin named Q...

We Fell - An RP about Q, the angel tasked with guarding MI6, and Bond, the spy who loves him.

What's Said in the Silences - James and Alec are ex SAS who now work at a bakery in Oxford. Bond is struggling to adjust to civilian life after a career ending injury retired him from duty. Little does he know that he will soon meet a young bookshop owner, the enigmatic and curious Q.

Smile - His favorite memory of Q

Holiday Memory - It's James and Q's first real Christmas together since they began dating, and the agent is slowly remembering something that he'd forgotten a long time ago, buried under loss and pain.

Strangers on a Train - Two strangers meet on a train. Sometimes it's just as simple as that.

Happy Holidays - Q is feeling a bit like the grinch with all the holiday cheer, but James can fix that.

You Are Beautiful - After years of being together through missions and strife, James and Q are finally getting married! The big day is not without its struggles, particularly since both men are nervous about the actual event.

The Way of the Glamping - Q surprises Bond in Japan. Bond surprises Q in return.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane - James returns from a mission gone wrong and discovers something about Q.

In sickness and in health - In light of recent events here in the US, we decided that we needed a fic of James taking care of a sick Q. And that turned into all sorts of fluff :)

Kitten Q comes out to play - BDSM pet play James/Q/Alec

Pop Goes the Weasel - Memorials for fallen agents are typically somber affairs. Then James Bond gets up to speak.

Hand Talk - What better way to welcome James home than with unexpected sex?

My Fault - It was never going to be. It never could be.

Unrequited - Q knows falling in love with James Bond won't be good, but it doesn't stop him trying.

Longing - It's hard when you've been left behind. It's even harder when you blame yourself.

Second Chance - Dreams

My Skin the Colour of your Eyes - Eve sets up James and Q, not knowing about their soul mate marks.

A Kiss and a Good Scotch - James has to rescue the Quartermaster after he's kidnapped. But there's more to him than what appears on the surface.

The Hacker and the Hit Men - (I Am) Q is an up and coming hacker (and a Submissive), living next to married Doms James and Alec. When Q stumbles on something he shouldn't have seen, he has to go to his neighbors for protecti

Caring Goes Both Ways - (I Am) Set after "The Hacker and the Hit Men" Q wants to help James and Alec with their work, and he learns quickly that his Doms have a penchant for getting intro trouble.

Migraine (Prequel) - (Retirement Bliss?) Q sometimes suffer migraines from his long hours in front of his screens. He usually pushes through them. Set before the main events of the rest of the series.

The Tummy - (Retirement Bliss?) James and Q are retired now, and James is feeling self conscious.

Lazy Afternoons - (Retirement Bliss?) Cuddling on the sofa is a nearly daily activity now.

Mad Scientist - (Retirement Bliss?) Q likes to tinker...

Bail - (Retirement Bliss?) Just because they've left MI6 doesn't mean they've left the memories behind.

Gardening - (Retirement Bliss?) Everyone has to have a hobby.

Kitten - (Retirement Bliss?) Turing is getting older, so he needs a companion.

Chores - (Retirement Bliss?) Arguing over chores and picking up

Dancing - (Retirement Bliss?) Q discovers a secret James has been hiding for quite a while.

Touch - (Retirement Bliss?) Timetospy's headcanon of how James and Q comfort each other. It looks like a hug but it means so much more.

Strays - (Retirement Bliss?) James is something of an animal whisperer. Q thinks it's hilarious.

Watch Over Me - (Retirement Bliss?) All this time and James still can't properly believe that Q is really his.

Contemplation - (Retirement Bliss?) ames isn't he only one contemplating old age. Q does too.

Constellations - (Retirement Bliss?) James loves stargazing, but Q is easily distracted.

beaubete 

The Witches of MI6 - An old spell made in a youthful temper, an old sea witch managing in a new era, alone and broken. Old and new clash together within MI6.

Skuld - Dread is knowing a man will hold your heart in his palm before you meet him. 

Within Me - “I need it.” / Here, Q could play coy. He could pretend not to know what Bond means. He could be cruel, could mock Bond his obvious weakness. Instead he hums thoughtfully, considering. “Yes,” Q agrees. “You do."

2016 LDWS fics! - (ficlets and drabbles ) A collection of six drabbles from the 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing 2016.1 - genre: canon; theme: game; 100 words / 2 - prompt: "bet you didn't expect this"; 200-250 words / 3 - genre: AU; prompt: trope role reversal; 300 words / 4 - prompt: fantasy; 150 words / 5 - genre: historical AU; prompt: trouble; 250 words / 6 - prompt: trust; 300 words

Prompts and Bites  - (ficlets and drabbles )  A collection of all of the prompt fic and fic bites that are too short to be on their own but long enough to archive.

In the Shadow of the Forest - (Here, There be Dragons) - Written for the 00Q Reverse Bang 2015/2016! / Sent to the edge of the world to look for dragons no one believes in, Sir Bond finds something.

A Year And A Day - (Here, There be Dragons) - Bond has lived with his dragon for a year now. A long, chaste year.

In Memoria Res - Memory is a tricky business. / After Franz's machine, the cup of Bond's mind becomes a sieve.

Only Style - Q takes the job because it's a ridiculous fluff job with an even more ridiculous salary. Things only get more bizarre from there. 

Hands-On Approach - What if the scene in the ski lift had gone differently?Spoiler-tastic, obviously. [Noncon Warning] 

[...and tons of other stories, because beaubete has 77 posted Bond fics! -Cas ] 

brookebond

Control - What else was he meant to do when he got caught? {DARK FIC}

Exposure - Bond is a photographer. Q is a model. What more do you need to know? (There is lace involved.)

Tangled Hearts - Nothing's ever easy when you work an almost 24/7 job, have a department to run, a boyfriend, and a cat to feed. Then there's the ever unruly 007.

No Accounting for Taste - Even though soulmates were common, James had been content without knowing who his was. He was happily married to Anne, the loveliest person he had ever encountered. She put up with all his bullshit and they were expecting a child. Things don't always go to plan though, and when complications arise during birth, James may just end up on his own after all.

Say yes? - (Diamonds are Forever) It’s Christmas Day, Q’s favourite day of the year, and Bond is nervous as fuck. He wakes Q up at 6am and Q is drowsy, half asleep when Bond starts asking questions.

Mr & Mr Bond - (Diamonds are Forever) Q and James get married.

Free to a Good Home - (Diamonds are Forever) Q has had enough of Bond's shit and puts flyers up in Q-Branch.

Another One Bites the Dust - (Diamonds are Forever) Bond has lost something rather important.

Castillon02

If I Had a Functional Pancreas I Could Love You - Q fears that revealing his diabetes will make Bond think less of him. Bond surprises him. (Fluffy just-established relationship fic.)

Pre-flight Jitters - Q experiences some flying anxiety and Bond offers him a (chemical) solution. Fluffy ficlet.

Wild Nights Should Be Our Luxury - Q decides that he and Bond should start having sex. Bond avoids choking to death on cannelloni

Luminous Beings Are We - In an effort to persuade Q to accept him and his feelings, Bond learns the way of the nerd and creates a special Halloween cosplay.

No Cock Tuesdays - Bond, Q, and Madeleine are snowed in and anticipating some hot OT3 sex. Only one problem: Bond’s cock is not cooperating.

And I laid me down with a will - Bond knows where he wants Q to be when the world ends. He finds him at Q Branch instead. (Written for the h/c prompt "World Explosion.")

Rubbish Flirts - Bond and Q’s first sexy weekend together ends with a bit of practical domesticity.

Post-coital Breakfast - Bond convinces Q that he had only the purest of motives when he snuck downstairs to make French toast on the morning after.

Tanner's Mission - Tanner goes on a mission to thwart his arms-dealing doppelgänger. Bond goes undercover and tries out a new form of transportation.

In the Office - Q makes a mess of Mallory in his own office; Mallory enjoys the hell out of it.

A Case of Good Etiquette  - Having recently moved into Q's house, Bond returns from a mission to find that his first welcome home has gone a wee bit awry.

Waiting for Spectre - Fills for MI6 Cafe prompts on Tumblr, written pre- and post-Spectre. Chapter eleven: Felix helps Bond on a mission; Bond wins a bet. James/Felix ficlet

It is not the wine that makes us drunk - Bond, Moneypenny, and Tanner take Q out for drinks to celebrate the end of a very long day. Fluff ensues, including Q's glasses getting passed around like a party favor and Bond having an honorable intention.

Q Branch Professionalism - Q finds his staff acting inappropriately.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear - One of Bond's targets tries to hide in the wilderness.

The Trick is Slick Code - Bond decides to woo Q in a way that Q will surely understand--with technology! Meanwhile, Q strongly suspects that Bond just wants a new Aston or something

First Cat to Feed - (Cats to Feed) The story of how Q, with a little help from Bond, acquires a cat after Skyfall. 

Worth Killing - (Bond Women Loving Women) Camille finds out that Mr. Greene’s boss has a daughter working with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Bolivia. She pays Doctor Swann a visit, hoping to find leverage and discovering something else.

For Want of a Moneypenny - (Bond Women Loving Women) Moneypenny changes the course of events on Silva’s island. Séverine lives.

Sparks in Six Saloon - (Bond Women Loving Women) Moneypenny helps out a woman who’s gotten on the wrong side of Mr. Greene. Old West AU.

Due Donne a Roma - (Bond Women Loving Women) MI6 and Lucia Sciarra both need the Spectre goons in Rome to go away. They work out a deal that involves Moneypenny.

Acceptable Loss - (Bond Women Loving Women) Field agent recruit Moneypenny starts dating Fields and learns a hard lesson.

A Conversation in Heaven - (Bond Women Loving Women) In the afterlife, Vesper asks Severine an important question.

Motivation - (Bond Women Loving Women) Yusef’s captors instruct Vesper to make a drop in Bolivia. Camille gets curious about why someone from the British treasury would walk into a known criminal hang-out.

Table for Two - (Bond Women Loving Women) The Treasury sends Vesper to Macau; the people who hold Vesper’s leash send her to meet Séverine.

A Question of Commitment - (Bond Women Loving Women) Back before Ms. Dowar had been an MP, she’d asked M to call her “Claire.”

Gwyllion

Five O'clock in the Morning - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing.

Hello Weekend - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Transform, genre-fluff, Fibonacci number sentence per paragraph construction.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: AU “I must be dreaming.”

Sputter - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Bright.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Eve goes on holiday alone and picks out the perfect Secret Santa gift for Q. 

2020 - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Dare hurt/comfort

My Little Finger - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Dialogue only 

My Heart Will Go On - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. / Prompt: Fusion “I expect you to die.”

Big Spoon - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing.

Prompt: wager. First word beginning with "M." Second word beginning with "I." Last word must be "six."

Blackbird - James Bond didn’t need anything or anyone. He had already lost the war that circumstance had waged against him. When his affection for Q flared, he got the love he never had, and the home he never knew he was missing. 

Baby - Written for alby mangroves’ Lip Service – the Panfandom Commentfest.

hippoprima

Give and Take - Q wants and gives all that he could (exploding tech, hidden feelings, secret fears). Then he realized he should just take instead because Bond was more than happy to give.

A Bit of Supernatural in Your Life - Daemons are supernatural manifestations to meet human desires and expectations and MI6 decides to summon a couple of them to join its employment roster, such as one for protection, one to replace a lost Quartermaster. Bond's inextricably stuck dealing with them for better or for worse because that's how his luck is.

Iambid (Flantastic)

Le Beau Garçon - Bond comes home from a mission to Q.

Oh, Won't You Be My Valentine? - Q has a crush and asks Bond to help him out.

Completely Plastered - After a mission in Bruges goes horribly wrong, Bond finds himself confined to Medical. / In which Bond is a bloody awful patient, Eve is a crafty cow, Tanner is oblivious and Q has some wonderful ideas about how to relieve a 00's boredom.

Never Fearful - In a post-apocalyptic world where technology is a thing of the past and magic runs riot; James Bond, a warrior cleric of the Palace of Vauxhall, is the ultimate fighter.  / Will his bone-deep hatred of magic prevent him from protecting House Emisyx’s last, best hope for peace? And what is the deal with the kid with the goggles anyway?

Beholder - Bond's own concept of beauty.

One More Bruise - It’s been eleven hours since M changed the status of field agent 007, Commander James Bond, from ‘Active’ to ‘Missing in Action’.

Silence Is Golden - James Bond is a porn star who's been in the business for years. Q is the newcomer who's been drafted in as his co-star.

La Rata - Fourteen years ago James Bond lied to the man he loves and now that lie has come back to haunt him. / As the time approaches for him to confess what he did, he thinks back to the events that led to them meeting

Blacktail - When M loses patience with the way that James Bond conducts himself while out on missions she thinks she has the ideal solution. She has no idea she's about to change the agent's life forever.

All I Am - Finally falling into bed together after months of flirting, Q has a confession to make. Q seems to think his secret might scare Bond away. Bond thinks all his Christmases have come at once.

The Birthday Girl - When Eve Moneypenny’s birthday celebrations go wrong there's one man she can rely on to make everything better - her friend, Bill Tanner.

Breathe With Me - When James Bond goes back to MI6 following his disastrous relationship with Dr Madeleine Swann, Q wants nothing to do with him. / Then there's an accident in Q-Branch...

Lumos - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry holds its secrets well.  Born six months after the famous battle in which Voldemort was defeated, James Bond is just weeks away from leaving the school when he stumbles across an unusual portrait of a young man.  Who was the mysterious ‘Q’ and why does James get the feeling that the painting is in terrible danger?

The Valentine Dinner - Bill's determined to make Eve a lovely dinner for Valentine's day. Unfortunately things don't go exactly as planned...

The Glastonbury Sprite and the London Spy - A chance encounter at the Glastonbury Festival leads to a passionate relationship between James Bond and Thomas “Q” Holt. / When James's true identity is suddenly revealed and it abruptly ends their relationship, James realises that he is in love and he will do everything he can to try to prove it to Q. Even if that means digging into his twin brother’s past.

Kissing It All Better - James visits a poorly Q.

2017 Last Drabble Writer Standing - A little collection of drabbles which I wrote for this year's competition over on MI6-Cafe's page on tumblr.

This Is Our Beginning, Coming To An End - (Devotion) Following the aviation accident which killed his family, Q uses a wheelchair. Fiercely independent, this is the story of how he fell in love and the three times he allowed James Bond to carry him.

I'm Right Where I Belong - (Devotion) After four years together, Q and James are as happy as they have ever been. This is never more evident than on a rare day off spent together. Although the dark repercussions of their employment are never far away, even the quietest day can be filled with surprises.

Dress Up In Dreams - (Devotion) James and Q's lives are turned upside-down when a kidnap plot sees them both taken, hundreds of miles apart. For Q it's a battle of wits and survival. For James, it's as much a fight against his own demons as the people who take him. [rape/non-con]

The Evening Shift - (Devotion) James Bond, from three different perspectives.

All Of Our Ghosts And Secrets - (Devotion) Following on from the events of Dress Up In Dreams, James and Q's relationship is struggling but a terrible injury turns out to be a blessing in disguise as they are thrust into a series of life or death events.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies - (Halloween Fun) Q takes dressing up for Hallowe'en far too seriously...

That's Just Wizard - (Halloween Fun0.) Just what did happen in that deserted office?

The Assumption - (The Surprises) Unbonded Alpha James Bond would lead a pretty solitary life if it wasn't for his Beta friend Q. They get on well and Q always knows the best restaurants. However James soon learns that Q is full of surprises...

The Homecoming - (The Surprises) What was supposed to be a straightforward covert op for the alpha James Bond turned into an extended, deep undercover mission.  Almost six months after leaving England he returns to London and the omega he was forced to leave behind; his beloved Q. / He thinks he’ll surprise Q by turning up unannounced in the middle of the night. As it turns out, Q has a much bigger surprise waiting for him...

The Arrival - (The Surprises)  It’s been a hectic time for alpha James Bond since returning home and finding out that his omega Q is expecting twins.  On leave from field work, James has spent his days trying to make up for lost time by being as close to his mate as possible and learning all he can about the intricacies of giving birth.  Unfortunately all his training hasn’t quite prepared him for things not going quite according to plan…

The Nanny - (The Surprises)  Three gorgeous pups and James and Q are still surprising each other.

IAmVengeance (Venstar)

The Subterranean God of MI-6  - The mind of a God is never still, even when it’s forgotten what it once was… Q flickered between himself and Hades on the way home, the riders in his train giving him wary looks and space, something about him now unsettled them. The kindly grandparents pulled their purses and coats close around them. The large youths pushed their earphones further into their ears, trying to lose themselves in the sound of their music. Small children peeped shyly out at him from over their parents shoulders. Those same parents would glance back and then quickly pull their children down to face away. Q kept his head down as he exited the tube station and made his way to the entrance to his building, bypassing the elevator and running up the stairs, where he finally stumbled through his doorway.

Getting A Word In - Some days, Q is so busy that James feels like he just can’t get a word in. Maybe it’s just the right word in or maybe it’s the right place.

Just Checking - You can’t have it both ways, much less three. I’m either a Wizard, or I’m...

Ping! - Old people and technology. Somehow 007 had accidentally group texted him and 006. There’s an attachment included and being curious in his little soul, Q opened it...

Inhale, Exhale - It was supposed to be routine, simple bodyguard duty for the Quartermaster of MI-6...instead it ended in a series of mistakes.

A Price -Death came to me on sock footed feet, stepping softly and silently across the hall floor, for it seems that Death didn’t care to wear shoes. For the MI6-cafe challenge for October.

Just Dance - Q walks in on some agents, absolutely killing it at Just Dance 4.

Banner Graphic for rivermoon1970 - IT'S A BANNER. THAT'S MY SUMMARY. YO. HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

Good King James - A short re-telling of one of my oddly favorite Christmas carols, Good King Wenceslas.

The Boffin and The Badass - a rewrite of a holiday favorite, The Holly and The Ivy. Sing along! inspired by Rigel99's pics titled "The Boffin and the Badass"

The Greatest Responsibility is to Hide the Truth... Because Superpowers Suck. - Sometimes the greatest responsibility is to hide the truth from the ones you think you know. Other times, the greatest responsibility you can have, is saving each other’s asses. Bond has a secret that he doesn’t want anyone to know, it’s what fuels his “resurrection” hobby. Okay Alec knows, but they’re besties, he was bound to find out! Q is suddenly hit with a secret that he doesn’t want anyone to know, except for his cats and Rufus the roomba, or else he could be stuck in a lab forever and not as it’s Supreme Overlord! A failed kidnap reveals what the urban hero and the supreme lab rat have in common. They must get their shit together and work as a team, for the greater good and a bit of kissing.

Memoirs of a Quartermaster - You can wish for a different beginning for your ending, but sometimes you’re not allowed that luxury. In Japan, a pair of siblings are sold by their fisherman father. One to a geisha house (okiya) and the other one, to a brothel. Along the years of training and failure, one sibling escapes from the brothel where they lived and the other is left alone, becoming indebted to their okiya. However, years later, he earns the opportunity to become a taikomoshi apprentice, with the help and support of a successful ally. While still a young man, he falls in love with The Commander, at a chance meeting. Years pass before they meet each other again...

Growing Up - Now, it wasn’t that James couldn’t remember how he passed most of his youth, it’s just that it wasn’t very pleasant. So he chose to forget, like we all do.

There's Always Cats - It used to be a lonely walk, but with the discovery of two little fluff balls, Q's valentine's day might not be spent alone.

Demons by Candlelight - if you summon it, it will come.

The Bond Letters - Q has a whole notebook filled, with private writings, all about James. James was unaware of this, until he stumbles across a small, ratty, tatty notebook that was so at odds with the pristine and crisp Quartermaster. James was never supposed to ever find it or be aware of how Q really felt, but spy is always a spy. Now James can't help but wonder what it would be like to actually be on the receiving end of something so powerful outside of the journal writings.

Summer Bucket List - bond has a list. a list of things to do that will be done. he also has a reluctant quartermaster

1000 Paper Things - there's an old Japanese legend that if you make 1000 paper cranes, you get a wish. for james, well, he only has 999 paper things. not sure if it counts but q seems to think so.

The Witches of MI6 - An old spell made in a youthful temper, an old sea witch managing in a new era, alone and broken. Old and new clash together within MI6

The Origin of R -There comes a time, when your past catches up to your future. For Adam, the future Quartermaster (although he totally doesn't know this, sssh don't tell him), this is how his meager beginnings at MI6 collided with R’s rebellious nature, and how she came to be. Desperate to escape a situation of her own making, R turns to an old hacker mate and drags him through his own worst case scenario of past meeting present...they adopt a trusty 00 agent along the way, or perhaps, he adopted them.

Mission to Invite - (Mission Transcripts) It was just supposed to be the weekly read through, followed by Tanner summarizing the bullet points to M. Unfortunately, Mallory had requested unedited copies of the most recent missions, regardless as to if they were complete. 007 and 006’s joint mission had been part of that call for transcripts.

Mission to Date - (Mission Transcripts) Another transcript review by Tanner and another job of reminding a couple of agents that the Quartermaster of MI-6 is NOT a customer service agent or a call...center...girl.

Mission to Play - (Mission Transcripts) The minions need reminding that the deadly agents are not playthings, especially the Double ohs. Alec continues to try and be helpful.

Mission to Sell - (Mission Transcripts) Q’s eyes closed and he listened to the two agents as they left the safety of the hotel room for the unknown risk of the auction. To sell, perchance to buy - ay, there’s that rub. For in that sell of death, what dreams may come? Q twisted the lines of Hamlet for his own purpose. Slowly he began to work at his bindings.

Mission to Steal - (Mission Transcripts) The minions looked around the room, there were very few of them left in the branch. There were a few other double-oh’s in the field presently, but 006 and 007's mission was the only active mission that was currently going tits up, with one of the most important and heavily guarded assets in dire straits. They looked to R and she began to give orders.

Smile - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) post-SPECTRE

The Trap - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) Demons keep the wings of angels that they kill as a prize.

Transformation - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) MI6’s ruler Queen M, sent Q, his protectors, his feline advisors and Q's true love James Bond into the future to be reborn through the power of the LEGENDARY QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Q and James can transform into the SPECIAL GUARDIANS OF MI6. They fight for love and justice, and in the name of MI6, they’ll punish you. (DON’T LOOK AT ME LOOK AWAY!!!)

When the Sky Fell - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) That which we are, we are; made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. When he is gone, I work my work, but he is still mine.

JaimiStoryTeller

Seducing Q - Bond comes to a realization that he wants his quartermaster for more than just a night and sets out to win him over.

After Seduction - Originally called Teasing, changed the title when I decided to add other drabbles to this

Stillness in Silence - (Bonds of Friendship) Doctor John Watson runs a rather unique practice, its entire purpose is to help those who are deaf or mute, either by birth, illness or trauma. Sherlock is brought to his practice by his concerned older brother after he spends months refusing to speak. Things do not go as planned or expected for any of them. 

“It’s for me.” 1 -  (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: Somebody says “it’s for me” - whether a question, statement, or demand. Have fun! 

Flash Fics Set 1: 2- (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: You get into your car one morning only to have your GPS inform you that it forgot all directions and needs your help remembering them.

Phrases Said 16 -  (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt “Have you lost your damn mind!?”

Phrases Said 19 - (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: “I need you to pretend we’re dating…”

Bad Advice - (Bonds of Friendship) Q is in need of some advice and decides to ask his best friend for it.

Christmas Preparations - (Bonds of Friendship)  Jasper and Jim set up the flat for Jasper's first Christmas with his partners.

Different Paths - (Paths Taken) Soulmates Alec Trevelyan and James Bond find themselves at odds when Alec is given a mission that he assumes that James knows about. But they’ve both been betrayed. James’ briefing isn’t the same as Alec's. Alec’s life undercover is hard, and becomes harder once he learns his soulmate has been killed. Feelings of guilt and anger cause him to fight back against MI6 for his loss. When James turns up unexpectedly, he is shocked to find his soulmate is still alive - a soulmate who attempts to kill him and sets a chain of events into motion that he never would have expected.

Night Out - (Paths Taken) Time stamp event during Alec and Q living in Paris

Wrong Answer - (Answers Verse) Nine years is a long time to be undercover and the longer Alec's mission drags on, the harder it gets. He doesn't expect the teen he is given to actually change the course of his mission, but that's exactly what happens

Through the Ages - (Answers Verse) A series of short stories about James Bond, Alec Trevelyan, and Q over the years in the various life times. Each one is complete as is and will include which tags belong to it in the notes at the top of the story.

“It’s for me.” 5 - (Answers Verse) Prompt: Somebody says “it’s for me” - whether a question, statement, or demand. Have fun!

Deciding His Future - (Real Legends: Moments in Time) Aiden's a young adult now and its time to decide what he wants to do with his life

Interesting Person - (Real Legends: Moments in Time)  Aiden's observations lead to him meeting one of his classmates he finds interesting

Q's Gift - (Moriarty Twins) Q's twin decides to do something about his love life for their birthday, it definitely doesn't go as anyone expects.

Lost in the Echo - (Legends in the Multiverse) Alec's thoughts over the years

Diverted - (Legends in the Multiverse) What if Jon met James first instead of Alec?

Of Unicorns and Fate - A unicorn goes searching for the others of his kind, along the way he meets those who would both hurt or help him, and a most unexpected thing, he finds himself in love

Cuddles and Threats 6 - Prompt: laying in bed with each other, one whispers “I could beat the shit out of you” and the other says “I know”. Thoughts?

Around the House 19 - Prompt: Must use these words: Screwdriver. Curtains. Phone. Chair

Phrases Said 1 - Prompts: “Who crawls through someone’s window at 4 am to go for ice cream?!” and “Before you decide to murder me, let me explai n

Our Soulmates 7 Sentinel Verse 1 part 1 - Prompt: Soulmate AU

Our Soulmates 11 Sentinel Verse 1 part 2 - Prompt: Soulmate AU

opalescentgold

Sugar and Kisses - In which Q is (terrifically) bad in the kitchen, James is sweetly indulgent (with ulterior motives), and Q and James are (very much) in love.

For His Wallet - Bill doesn't know what he's done to deserve this. It's all Moneypenny's fault anyways. Christ, who has this much money?

Redamancy - If you write something on your skin, it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well. James doesn't quite fall in love over physics discussions and cheeky book quotes and coding and riddles inked onto his skin, but he comes close. And then he actually meets Q.

sunaddicted

Meow - Cats - James never was fond of them.

Tea Party For Two - "Good afternoon, Q. May I help you with your little predicament?"

Unspoken - It’s as normal as they get and they’re both fine with it: in the end, they don’t need words to profess their love.

Il Marionettista - He hadn't expected things to be the same as when he had walked out of MI6, his mind clouded by the illusion of a happily normal life and Madeleine's sweet perfume - 007 wasn't naïve: MI6 moved at a dizzyingly quick pace and those who didn't manage to keep up disappeared, promptly replaced by someone who supposedly was more competent

Shade: Blood - Q's head snapped upwards so quickly and forcefully that the protesting of his vertebrae was clearly audible and jade-green eyes burned with incredulity "What?! I don't do fieldwork"  / "This is going to be so far from fieldwork that I'm wondering whether we'll even be payed" James smirked, folding his hands behind his back so that he wouldn't give in the itching need to comfortingly pat those messy curls - somehow, he knew Q wouldn't appreciate it.

Lovers' Spat - James smiled cheekily, icy-blue eyes twinkling "Have I told you lately how adorably fluffy your hair is?

White - As James watched Q and Danny shriek like bloody children in the snow blanketing the park, courting pneumonia with childish glee, he couldn't help remembering the quote from the TV adaptation of "North and South" his lovers made him watch and think that Thornton was wrong: hell definitely wasn't snow white.

Hole In My Head - There's a hole in Q's head, where Silva used to be and that now he's trying to fill with James' presence

All About Us - “He looks delicious, doesn’t he?” Raoul smiled sweetly, his lips seductively brushing against Q’s earlobe and fingers possessively tightening onto his jutting hipbones. / [...] / “I think he needs to be gagged” Q offered quietly, leaning back in Raoul’s embrace as if to find a new position to better contemplate the way sunlight was painted over that tanned skin, stretched taught over deliciously powerful muscles.

Burning Ink - The day the youngest Quartermaster ever in the history of MI6 and the legendary 007 shook hands in front of a vaguely mocking and depressing painting by Turner, they both ignored the simmering heat burning a name on their skin. / [...] / The day a desperate young man like any other in London and an early riser jogger brushed fingers while swapping a bottle of water in the cold and humid air of a grey dawn, the surprise was so great that their paths immediately parted and left them to wander alone the city with the feeling of having let luck slip out of their hands.

Lingerie - "Wow" James couldn't prevent the three words engorged with admiration and lust from escaping his suddenly dry mouth "Wow" he praised again after uselessly and desperately gulping down nonexistent saliva: the vision offered to him truly was worthy of such honest and bare admiration.

#improper use of marshmallows - Q was bored to death, alone and sprawled on the still unmade bed, gorging himself with sickly sweet and gummy marshmallows and the tablet propped on his stomach to better watch stupidly cute cat videos

Yellow -  00QAD - Relationship

Hearts In Atlantis - "Stop frowning, mi querido, or you'll get wrinkles" Raoul ruffled Q's curls passing by, leaving a freshly baked biscuit by his elbow - a white chocolate and almonds concoction designed to uplift bad moods "You're usually not so pensive after having just woken up" he pointed out.

Bottled Happiness - "You do know that you don't need to bring me presents?" Q inquired as he caught Bond leaving a neatly wrapped package at the corner of his eyes. / 007 smirked and moved the little box in front of the boffin, who still was focused on the screen of his laptop, its light and algorithms reflected on the smudged lenses of his spectacles "I just want to show my appreciation for your hard work, Q"

Blossomed Hope - "Are you okay?" she kept asking and no, Q was not okay - very far from it. But he lied smoothly at her with a smile, not trusting his voice not to betray him if he let it out his vocal chords "You could come to dinner: James has been telling me how he misses your takeaway nights here in Q-branch"

Violet Hour - The first breath of fresh hair burned down Q's throat and he gasped, coughing and laughing with exhilaration at the same time while he spied at the horizon with half-closed eyes, the brilliance too much to stand for his pupils used to the darkness of the ocean's depths. His pale arms were thrown open up towards the sky, seafoam sliding down his wrists as if the ocean itself was having difficulties with letting its fairest child go; not that the flimsy hold would have ever been able to hold Q back, not once he managed to peel his eyelids open and the vastness of the world was forever seared in his retinas - an invisible brand of ownership.

00Q LDWS - I realised I never posted these so, here they are

Selfish Prayers - "Why do they always make them look like glorified whores?" James muttered, shivering as he remembered the late High Priest - an odious fat man that had been made leader of the Cult at the questionably venerable age of sixty-seven - thusly clothed; at least, he was thankful that the new High Priest was such a finely boned and handsome boy.

Royal Presents - Saying that James Bond wasn't a particularly big fan of Christmas would have been a pretty big understatement: he quite detested it, in fact, and tried to avoid anything to do with it - especially at work, which was the reason why he always requested to be sent out in the field, preferably in a country where Christmas wasn't celebrated.

Shattering Stars  -  James selected a piece by Rachmaninoff he knew Q was particularly fond of and tried to pretend everything was fine.

Twisted Games - "Last time Bond fucked you, the whole floor heard you" Silva tutted reproachingly, reaching over to spoon some cream into his tea. / Q merely arched an eyebrow: it wasn't as if he cared whether anyone knew about the little arrangement he had with Bond - and neither should his colleagues care, since having a sexual relationship with the agent didn't prevent him from doing his work. Anyway, it was widely known that Bond was his favourite agent: the fact that they were fucking couldn’t have changed that much people’s already malicious opinions "Jealous?" / "You don't even know where that cock has been"

Ode To The Broken - "Grow a pair, Q" 002 snarls over the comms, gritting her teeth as she scales the wall just using her pigheadedness and a huge amount of luck. / Q rolls his eyes: she could have easily used the elevator - after all, he could control it easily "Of what? Boobs?"

00qad LDWS - What it says on the tin

Feathers In My Head - (Tumblr Kink Meme) Josephine Bond. Of fucking course, Q should have bet her favourite sweater on it: the woman not only made heads turn with her natural and sensual beauty, enhanced by her colourful attires and heeled shoes, but she also conjured a nervous atmosphere with her reputation of ruthless assassin clinging to her even in the safety of MI6.

Break Time - (Tumblr Kink Meme) "I just want to know one thing" Q panted [...] "Why do we always end up having sex in my office?"

The Odd One - (Omega!Bond series) "James, you're painful to watch" / "Don't watch then" James shot back, turning on his side to have a look at his arse: he knew it looked good but instead of being plump, its cheeks were toned and firm.

One Of A Kind - (Omega!Bond series) To be honest, James had never particularly been fond of cats [...] but Q and the cats came together as a package deal and James had welcomed them all in his flat, which no more was depressingly bare.

E.T. - (Alien!Q series) "That's... a mouthful" James pointed out rather uselessly. / "You can call me Q" the other said with the poshest accent James had ever heard in his life - keeping a startled laugh from escaping his throat was quite an hard job.

Rainbow  - (Alien!Q series) James had some bad mental associations with red: it was the colour of blood - freshly spilled or already drying - and of gore; it was the colour of Vesper's sundress when she had drowned under the scalding Venetian sun of an Italian summer; it was the colour of Q's skin whenever he was hurt and in pain.

Comets - (Alien!Q series) "Will you stare at him for much longer or are you dragging him home any time soon?" Eve asked, a teasing grin appearing on her lips

Octopus - (Alien!Q series) "What is it?" He inquired [...] / "It's a lifejacket: it will keep you afloat in case you fall overboard" / "Does it come in another colour?"

timetospy

Riding in Cars with Spies - (la Vie en Rose) Riding along on a test drive with James Bond is never a good idea. /  Unless it turns out to be the best idea Q has ever had.

Slippery When Wet - (la Vie en Rose) He took the last few steps to the door, paused a moment, then burst in, assuming his firing stance and scanning the room. The refrigerator door was open, and he could see someone bent over, rummaging around in the crisper. / “Oh for the love of….” / He recognised that arse. He could pick it out of a lineup, should the need arise.

Acapulco - (la Vie en Rose) Something is missing in Bond's idyllic retirement, and he can't place what it is...

Descent - (la Vie en Rose) Q had been tiptoeing around the flat on eggshells or weeks. The tragedy was that Q was still on that beach, hundreds of kilometers away, lost along the dark shore as he tread over the remains of the battered and broken bits the ocean had seen fit to throw against the sand. It hadn’t been eggshells under Q’s feet as he tried to navigate himself back to the wreck of his happiness, a sand castle that the tide had reclaimed and broken into nothingness. No, it had never been eggshells. It had been the ever-widening drifts of the remnants of his life ground into his raw soul without mercy.

I'll Be Seeing You - (la Vie en Rose) A drink. He needed a drink. Maybe it would shake something loose from the cobwebs that were his unreliable memory.

Acapulco (Reprise) - (la Vie en Rose) Madeleine frowned. She turned and re-entered the bedroom, stopping at the dresser to retrieve her mobile. As she reached for it, a small slip of paper caught her eye. It was tucked underneath the vase filled with day old flowers, a routine she had adopted in futility to inject some kind of joy into the room that had become their battleground.

Writing on the Other Side of the Wall - (Either Side Will Do, 00Q) What happens when you drop a heavy bag through your neighbor's wall? Head wounds and dinner dates, apparently.

Writing on the Wall - (Either Side Will Do, 00Q)  What happens when you drop a desk through the wall of your flat? Q's about to find out...

Before My Eyes - “He must choose,” Death had said in the slow, raspy voice of wind through dead leaves. “And since you knew him in life, you are the one to give him this choice.” / Why me?” / “Because he loved you.”

Tease - It’s been a long day. Which isn’t an excuse for shouting, really, but Bond is leaning against Q’s desk, hands shoved into his pockets, which does things to the front placket of his trousers that Q would rather not be thinking about at the moment, but can’t seem to ignore, and his frustration is leaking out of his mouth.

Save Our Souls - The first time I save your life, it’s an accident.

007 Fest Ficlet Collection - The following ficlets are what I created during 007 Fest 2016. They were based on a prompt list I created - one quote for every day. The ficlets run the gamut from crack to angst to tooth-rotting fluff, so each one has a small content explanation in the notes. Fic rating is for only three or four of the 30 ficlets collected here. Most are T/M.

00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing Contest Entries - These are my entries for the 00Q LDWS contest held for 007 Fest in July 2016.

Cup cakes and anniversaries - Q makes cupcakes to celebrate, but James ruins his plans. Or does he?

For the Love of Peach Pie - After discharge from the Royal Navy in 1946, James finds himself adrift with no clear future. Hoping to find direction, he travels to America./ In which Q is a mechanic in a small Midwestern town, M runs a diner, and life still isn't as simple or peaceful as anyone would like.

A Face in the Dark - When Q suddenly vanishes, James tries everything to find him with no luck.

[jaimistoryteller]

Team DoubleOh Fic Masterlist

Since commenting earns points and not everyone has read every bodies already posted fics, here is a list beneath the cut of those posted before the Fest begins. That way we have an easy way to pick/go to our team mates fics and comment or rec to our hearts contents

Organized by writer

List of Writers:

amottledrose (thebookworm214), beaubete, brookebond, Castillon02, Gwyllion, hippoprima, Iambid (Flantastic), IAmVengeance (Venstar),  JaimiStoryTeller, opalescentgold, sunaddicted, timetospy

amottledrose (thebookworm214)

Been Waiting My Whole Life (For Someone Like You) - Q takes independent IT contracts and James works as a security guard. All Q wants to do is start over in London after time working abroad, but he never could have imagined he would meet a blond, ex-Navy officer with a sense of humor and a ridiculously cute pet lizard.

Snapshots - James Bond and Q- perfect for each other even if they don't always know it.

00Q Jukebox - Music inspires many to write, and that's what it's done here. Each chapter will be the title of a song that in some way influences the content of the chapter. The story will be a series of short stories and one-shots featuring everyone's favorite Quartermaster/Agent. Some might be AUs, some might be angsty, others will be so high on crack/humor that hopefully you cry from laughing. All of them are inspired by the songs that give each chapter its name.

Unplanned - A glimpse into Q's mind, someone who never planned on ever loving anyone.

Double-Oh Doctor - It's dangerous to work in R and D, especially when things catch on fire.

Be The One You Bleed - Set back in Medieval England, James Bond takes the throne after his parents die, but there's more danger in his court than even he suspects. During the celebration of his coronation, a young traveler arrives: a strange man with pale skin named Q...

We Fell - An RP about Q, the angel tasked with guarding MI6, and Bond, the spy who loves him.

What's Said in the Silences - James and Alec are ex SAS who now work at a bakery in Oxford. Bond is struggling to adjust to civilian life after a career ending injury retired him from duty. Little does he know that he will soon meet a young bookshop owner, the enigmatic and curious Q.

Smile - His favorite memory of Q

Holiday Memory - It's James and Q's first real Christmas together since they began dating, and the agent is slowly remembering something that he'd forgotten a long time ago, buried under loss and pain.

Strangers on a Train - Two strangers meet on a train. Sometimes it's just as simple as that.

Happy Holidays - Q is feeling a bit like the grinch with all the holiday cheer, but James can fix that.

You Are Beautiful - After years of being together through missions and strife, James and Q are finally getting married! The big day is not without its struggles, particularly since both men are nervous about the actual event.

The Way of the Glamping - Q surprises Bond in Japan. Bond surprises Q in return.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane - James returns from a mission gone wrong and discovers something about Q.

In sickness and in health - In light of recent events here in the US, we decided that we needed a fic of James taking care of a sick Q. And that turned into all sorts of fluff :)

Kitten Q comes out to play - BDSM pet play James/Q/Alec

Pop Goes the Weasel - Memorials for fallen agents are typically somber affairs. Then James Bond gets up to speak.

Hand Talk - What better way to welcome James home than with unexpected sex?

My Fault - It was never going to be. It never could be.

Unrequited - Q knows falling in love with James Bond won't be good, but it doesn't stop him trying.

Longing - It's hard when you've been left behind. It's even harder when you blame yourself.

Second Chance - Dreams

My Skin the Colour of your Eyes - Eve sets up James and Q, not knowing about their soul mate marks.

A Kiss and a Good Scotch - James has to rescue the Quartermaster after he's kidnapped. But there's more to him than what appears on the surface.

The Hacker and the Hit Men - (I Am) Q is an up and coming hacker (and a Submissive), living next to married Doms James and Alec. When Q stumbles on something he shouldn't have seen, he has to go to his neighbors for protecti

Caring Goes Both Ways - (I Am) Set after "The Hacker and the Hit Men" Q wants to help James and Alec with their work, and he learns quickly that his Doms have a penchant for getting intro trouble.

Migraine (Prequel) - (Retirement Bliss?) Q sometimes suffer migraines from his long hours in front of his screens. He usually pushes through them. Set before the main events of the rest of the series.

The Tummy - (Retirement Bliss?) James and Q are retired now, and James is feeling self conscious.

Lazy Afternoons - (Retirement Bliss?) Cuddling on the sofa is a nearly daily activity now.

Mad Scientist - (Retirement Bliss?) Q likes to tinker...

Bail - (Retirement Bliss?) Just because they've left MI6 doesn't mean they've left the memories behind.

Gardening - (Retirement Bliss?) Everyone has to have a hobby.

Kitten - (Retirement Bliss?) Turing is getting older, so he needs a companion.

Chores - (Retirement Bliss?) Arguing over chores and picking up

Dancing - (Retirement Bliss?) Q discovers a secret James has been hiding for quite a while.

Touch - (Retirement Bliss?) Timetospy's headcanon of how James and Q comfort each other. It looks like a hug but it means so much more.

Strays - (Retirement Bliss?) James is something of an animal whisperer. Q thinks it's hilarious.

Watch Over Me - (Retirement Bliss?) All this time and James still can't properly believe that Q is really his.

Contemplation - (Retirement Bliss?) ames isn't he only one contemplating old age. Q does too.

Constellations - (Retirement Bliss?) James loves stargazing, but Q is easily distracted.

beaubete

The Witches of MI6 - An old spell made in a youthful temper, an old sea witch managing in a new era, alone and broken. Old and new clash together within MI6.

Skuld - Dread is knowing a man will hold your heart in his palm before you meet him.

Within Me - “I need it.” / Here, Q could play coy. He could pretend not to know what Bond means. He could be cruel, could mock Bond his obvious weakness. Instead he hums thoughtfully, considering. “Yes,” Q agrees. “You do."

2016 LDWS fics! - (ficlets and drabbles ) A collection of six drabbles from the 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing 2016.1 - genre: canon; theme: game; 100 words / 2 - prompt: "bet you didn't expect this"; 200-250 words / 3 - genre: AU; prompt: trope role reversal; 300 words / 4 - prompt: fantasy; 150 words / 5 - genre: historical AU; prompt: trouble; 250 words / 6 - prompt: trust; 300 words

Prompts and Bites  - (ficlets and drabbles ) A collection of all of the prompt fic and fic bites that are too short to be on their own but long enough to archive.

In the Shadow of the Forest - (Here, There be Dragons) - Written for the 00Q Reverse Bang 2015/2016! / Sent to the edge of the world to look for dragons no one believes in, Sir Bond finds something.

A Year And A Day - (Here, There be Dragons) - Bond has lived with his dragon for a year now. A long, chaste year.

In Memoria Res - Memory is a tricky business. / After Franz's machine, the cup of Bond's mind becomes a sieve.

Only Style - Q takes the job because it's a ridiculous fluff job with an even more ridiculous salary. Things only get more bizarre from there.

Hands-On Approach - What if the scene in the ski lift had gone differently?Spoiler-tastic, obviously. [Noncon Warning]

[...and tons of other stories, because beaubete has 77 posted Bond fics! -Cas ]

brookebond

Control - What else was he meant to do when he got caught? {DARK FIC}

Exposure - Bond is a photographer. Q is a model. What more do you need to know? (There is lace involved.)

Tangled Hearts - Nothing's ever easy when you work an almost 24/7 job, have a department to run, a boyfriend, and a cat to feed. Then there's the ever unruly 007.

No Accounting for Taste - Even though soulmates were common, James had been content without knowing who his was. He was happily married to Anne, the loveliest person he had ever encountered. She put up with all his bullshit and they were expecting a child. Things don't always go to plan though, and when complications arise during birth, James may just end up on his own after all.

Say yes? - (Diamonds are Forever) It’s Christmas Day, Q’s favourite day of the year, and Bond is nervous as fuck. He wakes Q up at 6am and Q is drowsy, half asleep when Bond starts asking questions.

Mr & Mr Bond - (Diamonds are Forever) Q and James get married.

Free to a Good Home - (Diamonds are Forever) Q has had enough of Bond's shit and puts flyers up in Q-Branch.

Another One Bites the Dust - (Diamonds are Forever) Bond has lost something rather important.

Castillon02

If I Had a Functional Pancreas I Could Love You - Q fears that revealing his diabetes will make Bond think less of him. Bond surprises him. (Fluffy just-established relationship fic.)

Pre-flight Jitters - Q experiences some flying anxiety and Bond offers him a (chemical) solution. Fluffy ficlet.

Wild Nights Should Be Our Luxury - Q decides that he and Bond should start having sex. Bond avoids choking to death on cannelloni

Luminous Beings Are We - In an effort to persuade Q to accept him and his feelings, Bond learns the way of the nerd and creates a special Halloween cosplay.

No Cock Tuesdays - Bond, Q, and Madeleine are snowed in and anticipating some hot OT3 sex. Only one problem: Bond’s cock is not cooperating.

And I laid me down with a will - Bond knows where he wants Q to be when the world ends. He finds him at Q Branch instead. (Written for the h/c prompt "World Explosion.")

Rubbish Flirts - Bond and Q’s first sexy weekend together ends with a bit of practical domesticity.

Post-coital Breakfast - Bond convinces Q that he had only the purest of motives when he snuck downstairs to make French toast on the morning after.

Tanner's Mission - Tanner goes on a mission to thwart his arms-dealing doppelgänger. Bond goes undercover and tries out a new form of transportation.

In the Office - Q makes a mess of Mallory in his own office; Mallory enjoys the hell out of it.

A Case of Good Etiquette  - Having recently moved into Q's house, Bond returns from a mission to find that his first welcome home has gone a wee bit awry.

Waiting for Spectre - Fills for MI6 Cafe prompts on Tumblr, written pre- and post-Spectre. Chapter eleven: Felix helps Bond on a mission; Bond wins a bet. James/Felix ficlet

It is not the wine that makes us drunk - Bond, Moneypenny, and Tanner take Q out for drinks to celebrate the end of a very long day. Fluff ensues, including Q's glasses getting passed around like a party favor and Bond having an honorable intention.

Q Branch Professionalism - Q finds his staff acting inappropriately.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear - One of Bond's targets tries to hide in the wilderness.

The Trick is Slick Code - Bond decides to woo Q in a way that Q will surely understand--with technology! Meanwhile, Q strongly suspects that Bond just wants a new Aston or something

First Cat to Feed - (Cats to Feed) The story of how Q, with a little help from Bond, acquires a cat after Skyfall.

Worth Killing - (Bond Women Loving Women) Camille finds out that Mr. Greene’s boss has a daughter working with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Bolivia. She pays Doctor Swann a visit, hoping to find leverage and discovering something else.

For Want of a Moneypenny - (Bond Women Loving Women) Moneypenny changes the course of events on Silva’s island. Séverine lives.

Sparks in Six Saloon - (Bond Women Loving Women) Moneypenny helps out a woman who’s gotten on the wrong side of Mr. Greene. Old West AU.

Due Donne a Roma - (Bond Women Loving Women) MI6 and Lucia Sciarra both need the Spectre goons in Rome to go away. They work out a deal that involves Moneypenny.

Acceptable Loss - (Bond Women Loving Women) Field agent recruit Moneypenny starts dating Fields and learns a hard lesson.

A Conversation in Heaven - (Bond Women Loving Women) In the afterlife, Vesper asks Severine an important question.

Motivation - (Bond Women Loving Women) Yusef’s captors instruct Vesper to make a drop in Bolivia. Camille gets curious about why someone from the British treasury would walk into a known criminal hang-out.

Table for Two - (Bond Women Loving Women) The Treasury sends Vesper to Macau; the people who hold Vesper’s leash send her to meet Séverine.

A Question of Commitment - (Bond Women Loving Women) Back before Ms. Dowar had been an MP, she’d asked M to call her “Claire.”

Gwyllion

Five O'clock in the Morning - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing.

Hello Weekend - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Transform, genre-fluff, Fibonacci number sentence per paragraph construction.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: AU “I must be dreaming.”

Sputter - Written for the 2017 00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Bright.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Eve goes on holiday alone and picks out the perfect Secret Santa gift for Q.

2020 - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Dare hurt/comfort

My Little Finger - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. Prompt: Dialogue only

My Heart Will Go On - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing. / Prompt: Fusion “I expect you to die.”

Big Spoon - Written for the 2016 007 fest Last Drabble Writer Standing.

Prompt: wager. First word beginning with "M." Second word beginning with "I." Last word must be "six."

Blackbird - James Bond didn’t need anything or anyone. He had already lost the war that circumstance had waged against him. When his affection for Q flared, he got the love he never had, and the home he never knew he was missing.

Baby - Written for alby mangroves’ Lip Service – the Panfandom Commentfest.

hippoprima

Give and Take - Q wants and gives all that he could (exploding tech, hidden feelings, secret fears). Then he realized he should just take instead because Bond was more than happy to give.

A Bit of Supernatural in Your Life - Daemons are supernatural manifestations to meet human desires and expectations and MI6 decides to summon a couple of them to join its employment roster, such as one for protection, one to replace a lost Quartermaster. Bond's inextricably stuck dealing with them for better or for worse because that's how his luck is.

Iambid (Flantastic)

Le Beau Garçon - Bond comes home from a mission to Q.

Oh, Won't You Be My Valentine? - Q has a crush and asks Bond to help him out.

Completely Plastered - After a mission in Bruges goes horribly wrong, Bond finds himself confined to Medical. / In which Bond is a bloody awful patient, Eve is a crafty cow, Tanner is oblivious and Q has some wonderful ideas about how to relieve a 00's boredom.

Never Fearful - In a post-apocalyptic world where technology is a thing of the past and magic runs riot; James Bond, a warrior cleric of the Palace of Vauxhall, is the ultimate fighter.  / Will his bone-deep hatred of magic prevent him from protecting House Emisyx’s last, best hope for peace? And what is the deal with the kid with the goggles anyway?

Beholder - Bond's own concept of beauty.

One More Bruise - It’s been eleven hours since M changed the status of field agent 007, Commander James Bond, from ‘Active’ to ‘Missing in Action’.

Silence Is Golden - James Bond is a porn star who's been in the business for years. Q is the newcomer who's been drafted in as his co-star.

La Rata - Fourteen years ago James Bond lied to the man he loves and now that lie has come back to haunt him. / As the time approaches for him to confess what he did, he thinks back to the events that led to them meeting

Blacktail - When M loses patience with the way that James Bond conducts himself while out on missions she thinks she has the ideal solution. She has no idea she's about to change the agent's life forever.

All I Am - Finally falling into bed together after months of flirting, Q has a confession to make. Q seems to think his secret might scare Bond away. Bond thinks all his Christmases have come at once.

The Birthday Girl - When Eve Moneypenny’s birthday celebrations go wrong there's one man she can rely on to make everything better - her friend, Bill Tanner.

Breathe With Me - When James Bond goes back to MI6 following his disastrous relationship with Dr Madeleine Swann, Q wants nothing to do with him. / Then there's an accident in Q-Branch...

Lumos - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry holds its secrets well.  Born six months after the famous battle in which Voldemort was defeated, James Bond is just weeks away from leaving the school when he stumbles across an unusual portrait of a young man.  Who was the mysterious ‘Q’ and why does James get the feeling that the painting is in terrible danger?

The Valentine Dinner - Bill's determined to make Eve a lovely dinner for Valentine's day. Unfortunately things don't go exactly as planned...

The Glastonbury Sprite and the London Spy - A chance encounter at the Glastonbury Festival leads to a passionate relationship between James Bond and Thomas “Q” Holt. / When James's true identity is suddenly revealed and it abruptly ends their relationship, James realises that he is in love and he will do everything he can to try to prove it to Q. Even if that means digging into his twin brother’s past.

Kissing It All Better - James visits a poorly Q.

2017 Last Drabble Writer Standing - A little collection of drabbles which I wrote for this year's competition over on MI6-Cafe's page on tumblr.

This Is Our Beginning, Coming To An End - (Devotion) Following the aviation accident which killed his family, Q uses a wheelchair. Fiercely independent, this is the story of how he fell in love and the three times he allowed James Bond to carry him.

I'm Right Where I Belong - (Devotion) After four years together, Q and James are as happy as they have ever been. This is never more evident than on a rare day off spent together. Although the dark repercussions of their employment are never far away, even the quietest day can be filled with surprises.

Dress Up In Dreams - (Devotion) James and Q's lives are turned upside-down when a kidnap plot sees them both taken, hundreds of miles apart. For Q it's a battle of wits and survival. For James, it's as much a fight against his own demons as the people who take him. [rape/non-con]

The Evening Shift - (Devotion) James Bond, from three different perspectives.

All Of Our Ghosts And Secrets - (Devotion) Following on from the events of Dress Up In Dreams, James and Q's relationship is struggling but a terrible injury turns out to be a blessing in disguise as they are thrust into a series of life or death events.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies - (Halloween Fun) Q takes dressing up for Hallowe'en far too seriously...

That's Just Wizard - (Halloween Fun0.) Just what did happen in that deserted office?

The Assumption - (The Surprises) Unbonded Alpha James Bond would lead a pretty solitary life if it wasn't for his Beta friend Q. They get on well and Q always knows the best restaurants. However James soon learns that Q is full of surprises...

The Homecoming - (The Surprises) What was supposed to be a straightforward covert op for the alpha James Bond turned into an extended, deep undercover mission.  Almost six months after leaving England he returns to London and the omega he was forced to leave behind; his beloved Q. / He thinks he’ll surprise Q by turning up unannounced in the middle of the night. As it turns out, Q has a much bigger surprise waiting for him...

The Arrival - (The Surprises)  It’s been a hectic time for alpha James Bond since returning home and finding out that his omega Q is expecting twins.  On leave from field work, James has spent his days trying to make up for lost time by being as close to his mate as possible and learning all he can about the intricacies of giving birth.  Unfortunately all his training hasn’t quite prepared him for things not going quite according to plan…

The Nanny - (The Surprises)  Three gorgeous pups and James and Q are still surprising each other.

IAmVengeance (Venstar)

The Subterranean God of MI-6  - The mind of a God is never still, even when it’s forgotten what it once was… Q flickered between himself and Hades on the way home, the riders in his train giving him wary looks and space, something about him now unsettled them. The kindly grandparents pulled their purses and coats close around them. The large youths pushed their earphones further into their ears, trying to lose themselves in the sound of their music. Small children peeped shyly out at him from over their parents shoulders. Those same parents would glance back and then quickly pull their children down to face away. Q kept his head down as he exited the tube station and made his way to the entrance to his building, bypassing the elevator and running up the stairs, where he finally stumbled through his doorway.

Getting A Word In - Some days, Q is so busy that James feels like he just can’t get a word in. Maybe it’s just the right word in or maybe it’s the right place.

Just Checking - You can’t have it both ways, much less three. I’m either a Wizard, or I’m...

Ping! - Old people and technology. Somehow 007 had accidentally group texted him and 006. There’s an attachment included and being curious in his little soul, Q opened it...

Inhale, Exhale - It was supposed to be routine, simple bodyguard duty for the Quartermaster of MI-6...instead it ended in a series of mistakes.

A Price -Death came to me on sock footed feet, stepping softly and silently across the hall floor, for it seems that Death didn’t care to wear shoes. For the MI6-cafe challenge for October.

Just Dance - Q walks in on some agents, absolutely killing it at Just Dance 4.

Banner Graphic for rivermoon1970 - IT'S A BANNER. THAT'S MY SUMMARY. YO. HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

Good King James - A short re-telling of one of my oddly favorite Christmas carols, Good King Wenceslas.

The Boffin and The Badass - a rewrite of a holiday favorite, The Holly and The Ivy. Sing along! inspired by Rigel99's pics titled "The Boffin and the Badass"

The Greatest Responsibility is to Hide the Truth... Because Superpowers Suck. - Sometimes the greatest responsibility is to hide the truth from the ones you think you know. Other times, the greatest responsibility you can have, is saving each other’s asses. Bond has a secret that he doesn’t want anyone to know, it’s what fuels his “resurrection” hobby. Okay Alec knows, but they’re besties, he was bound to find out! Q is suddenly hit with a secret that he doesn’t want anyone to know, except for his cats and Rufus the roomba, or else he could be stuck in a lab forever and not as it’s Supreme Overlord! A failed kidnap reveals what the urban hero and the supreme lab rat have in common. They must get their shit together and work as a team, for the greater good and a bit of kissing.

Memoirs of a Quartermaster - You can wish for a different beginning for your ending, but sometimes you’re not allowed that luxury. In Japan, a pair of siblings are sold by their fisherman father. One to a geisha house (okiya) and the other one, to a brothel. Along the years of training and failure, one sibling escapes from the brothel where they lived and the other is left alone, becoming indebted to their okiya. However, years later, he earns the opportunity to become a taikomoshi apprentice, with the help and support of a successful ally. While still a young man, he falls in love with The Commander, at a chance meeting. Years pass before they meet each other again...

Growing Up - Now, it wasn’t that James couldn’t remember how he passed most of his youth, it’s just that it wasn’t very pleasant. So he chose to forget, like we all do.

There's Always Cats - It used to be a lonely walk, but with the discovery of two little fluff balls, Q's valentine's day might not be spent alone.

Demons by Candlelight - if you summon it, it will come.

The Bond Letters - Q has a whole notebook filled, with private writings, all about James. James was unaware of this, until he stumbles across a small, ratty, tatty notebook that was so at odds with the pristine and crisp Quartermaster. James was never supposed to ever find it or be aware of how Q really felt, but spy is always a spy. Now James can't help but wonder what it would be like to actually be on the receiving end of something so powerful outside of the journal writings.

Summer Bucket List - bond has a list. a list of things to do that will be done. he also has a reluctant quartermaster

1000 Paper Things - there's an old Japanese legend that if you make 1000 paper cranes, you get a wish. for james, well, he only has 999 paper things. not sure if it counts but q seems to think so.

The Witches of MI6 - An old spell made in a youthful temper, an old sea witch managing in a new era, alone and broken. Old and new clash together within MI6

The Origin of R -There comes a time, when your past catches up to your future. For Adam, the future Quartermaster (although he totally doesn't know this, sssh don't tell him), this is how his meager beginnings at MI6 collided with R’s rebellious nature, and how she came to be. Desperate to escape a situation of her own making, R turns to an old hacker mate and drags him through his own worst case scenario of past meeting present...they adopt a trusty 00 agent along the way, or perhaps, he adopted them.

Mission to Invite - (Mission Transcripts) It was just supposed to be the weekly read through, followed by Tanner summarizing the bullet points to M. Unfortunately, Mallory had requested unedited copies of the most recent missions, regardless as to if they were complete. 007 and 006’s joint mission had been part of that call for transcripts.

Mission to Date - (Mission Transcripts) Another transcript review by Tanner and another job of reminding a couple of agents that the Quartermaster of MI-6 is NOT a customer service agent or a call...center...girl.

Mission to Play - (Mission Transcripts) The minions need reminding that the deadly agents are not playthings, especially the Double ohs. Alec continues to try and be helpful.

Mission to Sell - (Mission Transcripts) Q’s eyes closed and he listened to the two agents as they left the safety of the hotel room for the unknown risk of the auction. To sell, perchance to buy - ay, there’s that rub. For in that sell of death, what dreams may come? Q twisted the lines of Hamlet for his own purpose. Slowly he began to work at his bindings.

Mission to Steal - (Mission Transcripts) The minions looked around the room, there were very few of them left in the branch. There were a few other double-oh’s in the field presently, but 006 and 007's mission was the only active mission that was currently going tits up, with one of the most important and heavily guarded assets in dire straits. They looked to R and she began to give orders.

Smile - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) post-SPECTRE

The Trap - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) Demons keep the wings of angels that they kill as a prize.

Transformation - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) MI6’s ruler Queen M, sent Q, his protectors, his feline advisors and Q's true love James Bond into the future to be reborn through the power of the LEGENDARY QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Q and James can transform into the SPECIAL GUARDIANS OF MI6. They fight for love and justice, and in the name of MI6, they’ll punish you. (DON’T LOOK AT ME LOOK AWAY!!!)

When the Sky Fell - (2017 DRABBLES FOR LDWS) That which we are, we are; made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. When he is gone, I work my work, but he is still mine.

JaimiStoryTeller

Seducing Q - Bond comes to a realization that he wants his quartermaster for more than just a night and sets out to win him over.

After Seduction - Originally called Teasing, changed the title when I decided to add other drabbles to this

Stillness in Silence - (Bonds of Friendship) Doctor John Watson runs a rather unique practice, its entire purpose is to help those who are deaf or mute, either by birth, illness or trauma. Sherlock is brought to his practice by his concerned older brother after he spends months refusing to speak. Things do not go as planned or expected for any of them.

“It’s for me.” 1 -  (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: Somebody says “it’s for me” - whether a question, statement, or demand. Have fun!

Flash Fics Set 1: 2- (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: You get into your car one morning only to have your GPS inform you that it forgot all directions and needs your help remembering them.

Phrases Said 16 -  (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt “Have you lost your damn mind!?”

Phrases Said 19 - (Bonds of Friendship) Prompt: “I need you to pretend we’re dating…”

Bad Advice - (Bonds of Friendship) Q is in need of some advice and decides to ask his best friend for it.

Christmas Preparations - (Bonds of Friendship)  Jasper and Jim set up the flat for Jasper's first Christmas with his partners.

Different Paths - (Paths Taken) Soulmates Alec Trevelyan and James Bond find themselves at odds when Alec is given a mission that he assumes that James knows about. But they’ve both been betrayed. James’ briefing isn’t the same as Alec's. Alec’s life undercover is hard, and becomes harder once he learns his soulmate has been killed. Feelings of guilt and anger cause him to fight back against MI6 for his loss. When James turns up unexpectedly, he is shocked to find his soulmate is still alive - a soulmate who attempts to kill him and sets a chain of events into motion that he never would have expected.

Night Out - (Paths Taken) Time stamp event during Alec and Q living in Paris

Wrong Answer - (Answers Verse) Nine years is a long time to be undercover and the longer Alec's mission drags on, the harder it gets. He doesn't expect the teen he is given to actually change the course of his mission, but that's exactly what happens

Through the Ages - (Answers Verse) A series of short stories about James Bond, Alec Trevelyan, and Q over the years in the various life times. Each one is complete as is and will include which tags belong to it in the notes at the top of the story.

“It’s for me.” 5 - (Answers Verse) Prompt: Somebody says “it’s for me” - whether a question, statement, or demand. Have fun!

Deciding His Future - (Real Legends: Moments in Time) Aiden's a young adult now and its time to decide what he wants to do with his life

Interesting Person - (Real Legends: Moments in Time)  Aiden's observations lead to him meeting one of his classmates he finds interesting

Q's Gift - (Moriarty Twins) Q's twin decides to do something about his love life for their birthday, it definitely doesn't go as anyone expects.

Lost in the Echo - (Legends in the Multiverse) Alec's thoughts over the years

Diverted - (Legends in the Multiverse) What if Jon met James first instead of Alec?

Of Unicorns and Fate - A unicorn goes searching for the others of his kind, along the way he meets those who would both hurt or help him, and a most unexpected thing, he finds himself in love

Cuddles and Threats 6 - Prompt: laying in bed with each other, one whispers “I could beat the shit out of you” and the other says “I know”. Thoughts?

Around the House 19 - Prompt: Must use these words: Screwdriver. Curtains. Phone. Chair

Phrases Said 1 - Prompts: “Who crawls through someone’s window at 4 am to go for ice cream?!” and “Before you decide to murder me, let me explai n

Our Soulmates 7 Sentinel Verse 1 part 1 - Prompt: Soulmate AU

Our Soulmates 11 Sentinel Verse 1 part 2 - Prompt: Soulmate AU

opalescentgold

Sugar and Kisses - In which Q is (terrifically) bad in the kitchen, James is sweetly indulgent (with ulterior motives), and Q and James are (very much) in love.

For His Wallet - Bill doesn't know what he's done to deserve this. It's all Moneypenny's fault anyways. Christ, who has this much money?

Redamancy - If you write something on your skin, it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well. James doesn't quite fall in love over physics discussions and cheeky book quotes and coding and riddles inked onto his skin, but he comes close. And then he actually meets Q.

sunaddicted

Meow - Cats - James never was fond of them.

Tea Party For Two - "Good afternoon, Q. May I help you with your little predicament?"

Unspoken - It’s as normal as they get and they’re both fine with it: in the end, they don’t need words to profess their love.

Il Marionettista - He hadn't expected things to be the same as when he had walked out of MI6, his mind clouded by the illusion of a happily normal life and Madeleine's sweet perfume - 007 wasn't naïve: MI6 moved at a dizzyingly quick pace and those who didn't manage to keep up disappeared, promptly replaced by someone who supposedly was more competent

Shade: Blood - Q's head snapped upwards so quickly and forcefully that the protesting of his vertebrae was clearly audible and jade-green eyes burned with incredulity "What?! I don't do fieldwork"  / "This is going to be so far from fieldwork that I'm wondering whether we'll even be payed" James smirked, folding his hands behind his back so that he wouldn't give in the itching need to comfortingly pat those messy curls - somehow, he knew Q wouldn't appreciate it.

Lovers' Spat - James smiled cheekily, icy-blue eyes twinkling "Have I told you lately how adorably fluffy your hair is?

White - As James watched Q and Danny shriek like bloody children in the snow blanketing the park, courting pneumonia with childish glee, he couldn't help remembering the quote from the TV adaptation of "North and South" his lovers made him watch and think that Thornton was wrong: hell definitely wasn't snow white.

Hole In My Head - There's a hole in Q's head, where Silva used to be and that now he's trying to fill with James' presence

All About Us - “He looks delicious, doesn’t he?” Raoul smiled sweetly, his lips seductively brushing against Q’s earlobe and fingers possessively tightening onto his jutting hipbones. / [...] / “I think he needs to be gagged” Q offered quietly, leaning back in Raoul’s embrace as if to find a new position to better contemplate the way sunlight was painted over that tanned skin, stretched taught over deliciously powerful muscles.

Burning Ink - The day the youngest Quartermaster ever in the history of MI6 and the legendary 007 shook hands in front of a vaguely mocking and depressing painting by Turner, they both ignored the simmering heat burning a name on their skin. / [...] / The day a desperate young man like any other in London and an early riser jogger brushed fingers while swapping a bottle of water in the cold and humid air of a grey dawn, the surprise was so great that their paths immediately parted and left them to wander alone the city with the feeling of having let luck slip out of their hands.

Lingerie - "Wow" James couldn't prevent the three words engorged with admiration and lust from escaping his suddenly dry mouth "Wow" he praised again after uselessly and desperately gulping down nonexistent saliva: the vision offered to him truly was worthy of such honest and bare admiration.

#improper use of marshmallows - Q was bored to death, alone and sprawled on the still unmade bed, gorging himself with sickly sweet and gummy marshmallows and the tablet propped on his stomach to better watch stupidly cute cat videos

Yellow -  00QAD - Relationship

Hearts In Atlantis - "Stop frowning, mi querido, or you'll get wrinkles" Raoul ruffled Q's curls passing by, leaving a freshly baked biscuit by his elbow - a white chocolate and almonds concoction designed to uplift bad moods "You're usually not so pensive after having just woken up" he pointed out.

Bottled Happiness - "You do know that you don't need to bring me presents?" Q inquired as he caught Bond leaving a neatly wrapped package at the corner of his eyes. / 007 smirked and moved the little box in front of the boffin, who still was focused on the screen of his laptop, its light and algorithms reflected on the smudged lenses of his spectacles "I just want to show my appreciation for your hard work, Q"

Blossomed Hope - "Are you okay?" she kept asking and no, Q was not okay - very far from it. But he lied smoothly at her with a smile, not trusting his voice not to betray him if he let it out his vocal chords "You could come to dinner: James has been telling me how he misses your takeaway nights here in Q-branch"

Violet Hour - The first breath of fresh hair burned down Q's throat and he gasped, coughing and laughing with exhilaration at the same time while he spied at the horizon with half-closed eyes, the brilliance too much to stand for his pupils used to the darkness of the ocean's depths. His pale arms were thrown open up towards the sky, seafoam sliding down his wrists as if the ocean itself was having difficulties with letting its fairest child go; not that the flimsy hold would have ever been able to hold Q back, not once he managed to peel his eyelids open and the vastness of the world was forever seared in his retinas - an invisible brand of ownership.

00Q LDWS - I realised I never posted these so, here they are

Selfish Prayers - "Why do they always make them look like glorified whores?" James muttered, shivering as he remembered the late High Priest - an odious fat man that had been made leader of the Cult at the questionably venerable age of sixty-seven - thusly clothed; at least, he was thankful that the new High Priest was such a finely boned and handsome boy.

Royal Presents - Saying that James Bond wasn't a particularly big fan of Christmas would have been a pretty big understatement: he quite detested it, in fact, and tried to avoid anything to do with it - especially at work, which was the reason why he always requested to be sent out in the field, preferably in a country where Christmas wasn't celebrated.

Shattering Stars  -  James selected a piece by Rachmaninoff he knew Q was particularly fond of and tried to pretend everything was fine.

Twisted Games - "Last time Bond fucked you, the whole floor heard you" Silva tutted reproachingly, reaching over to spoon some cream into his tea. / Q merely arched an eyebrow: it wasn't as if he cared whether anyone knew about the little arrangement he had with Bond - and neither should his colleagues care, since having a sexual relationship with the agent didn't prevent him from doing his work. Anyway, it was widely known that Bond was his favourite agent: the fact that they were fucking couldn’t have changed that much people’s already malicious opinions "Jealous?" / "You don't even know where that cock has been"

Ode To The Broken - "Grow a pair, Q" 002 snarls over the comms, gritting her teeth as she scales the wall just using her pigheadedness and a huge amount of luck. / Q rolls his eyes: she could have easily used the elevator - after all, he could control it easily "Of what? Boobs?"

00qad LDWS - What it says on the tin

Feathers In My Head - (Tumblr Kink Meme) Josephine Bond. Of fucking course, Q should have bet her favourite sweater on it: the woman not only made heads turn with her natural and sensual beauty, enhanced by her colourful attires and heeled shoes, but she also conjured a nervous atmosphere with her reputation of ruthless assassin clinging to her even in the safety of MI6.

Break Time - (Tumblr Kink Meme) "I just want to know one thing" Q panted [...] "Why do we always end up having sex in my office?"

The Odd One - (Omega!Bond series) "James, you're painful to watch" / "Don't watch then" James shot back, turning on his side to have a look at his arse: he knew it looked good but instead of being plump, its cheeks were toned and firm.

One Of A Kind - (Omega!Bond series) To be honest, James had never particularly been fond of cats [...] but Q and the cats came together as a package deal and James had welcomed them all in his flat, which no more was depressingly bare.

E.T. - (Alien!Q series) "That's... a mouthful" James pointed out rather uselessly. / "You can call me Q" the other said with the poshest accent James had ever heard in his life - keeping a startled laugh from escaping his throat was quite an hard job.

Rainbow - (Alien!Q series) James had some bad mental associations with red: it was the colour of blood - freshly spilled or already drying - and of gore; it was the colour of Vesper's sundress when she had drowned under the scalding Venetian sun of an Italian summer; it was the colour of Q's skin whenever he was hurt and in pain.

Comets - (Alien!Q series) "Will you stare at him for much longer or are you dragging him home any time soon?" Eve asked, a teasing grin appearing on her lips

Octopus - (Alien!Q series) "What is it?" He inquired [...] / "It's a lifejacket: it will keep you afloat in case you fall overboard" / "Does it come in another colour?"

timetospy

Riding in Cars with Spies - (la Vie en Rose) Riding along on a test drive with James Bond is never a good idea. /  Unless it turns out to be the best idea Q has ever had.

Slippery When Wet - (la Vie en Rose) He took the last few steps to the door, paused a moment, then burst in, assuming his firing stance and scanning the room. The refrigerator door was open, and he could see someone bent over, rummaging around in the crisper. / “Oh for the love of….” / He recognised that arse. He could pick it out of a lineup, should the need arise.

Acapulco - (la Vie en Rose) Something is missing in Bond's idyllic retirement, and he can't place what it is...

Descent - (la Vie en Rose) Q had been tiptoeing around the flat on eggshells or weeks. The tragedy was that Q was still on that beach, hundreds of kilometers away, lost along the dark shore as he tread over the remains of the battered and broken bits the ocean had seen fit to throw against the sand. It hadn’t been eggshells under Q’s feet as he tried to navigate himself back to the wreck of his happiness, a sand castle that the tide had reclaimed and broken into nothingness. No, it had never been eggshells. It had been the ever-widening drifts of the remnants of his life ground into his raw soul without mercy.

I'll Be Seeing You - (la Vie en Rose) A drink. He needed a drink. Maybe it would shake something loose from the cobwebs that were his unreliable memory.

Acapulco (Reprise) - (la Vie en Rose) Madeleine frowned. She turned and re-entered the bedroom, stopping at the dresser to retrieve her mobile. As she reached for it, a small slip of paper caught her eye. It was tucked underneath the vase filled with day old flowers, a routine she had adopted in futility to inject some kind of joy into the room that had become their battleground.

Writing on the Other Side of the Wall - (Either Side Will Do, 00Q) What happens when you drop a heavy bag through your neighbor's wall? Head wounds and dinner dates, apparently.

Writing on the Wall - (Either Side Will Do, 00Q) What happens when you drop a desk through the wall of your flat? Q's about to find out...

Before My Eyes - “He must choose,” Death had said in the slow, raspy voice of wind through dead leaves. “And since you knew him in life, you are the one to give him this choice.” / Why me?” / “Because he loved you.”

Tease - It’s been a long day. Which isn’t an excuse for shouting, really, but Bond is leaning against Q’s desk, hands shoved into his pockets, which does things to the front placket of his trousers that Q would rather not be thinking about at the moment, but can’t seem to ignore, and his frustration is leaking out of his mouth.

Save Our Souls - The first time I save your life, it’s an accident.

007 Fest Ficlet Collection - The following ficlets are what I created during 007 Fest 2016. They were based on a prompt list I created - one quote for every day. The ficlets run the gamut from crack to angst to tooth-rotting fluff, so each one has a small content explanation in the notes. Fic rating is for only three or four of the 30 ficlets collected here. Most are T/M.

00Q Last Drabble Writer Standing Contest Entries - These are my entries for the 00Q LDWS contest held for 007 Fest in July 2016.

Cup cakes and anniversaries - Q makes cupcakes to celebrate, but James ruins his plans. Or does he?

For the Love of Peach Pie - After discharge from the Royal Navy in 1946, James finds himself adrift with no clear future. Hoping to find direction, he travels to America./ In which Q is a mechanic in a small Midwestern town, M runs a diner, and life still isn't as simple or peaceful as anyone would like.

A Face in the Dark - When Q suddenly vanishes, James tries everything to find him with no luck.

[cleopatrarps]

Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate

BERLIN — Security is tight at this brick building on the western edge of Berlin. Inside, a sign warns: “Everybody without a badge is a potential spy!”

Spread over five floors, hundreds of men and women sit in rows of six scanning their computer screens. All have signed nondisclosure agreements. Four trauma specialists are at their disposal seven days a week.

They are the agents of Facebook. And they have the power to decide what is free speech and what is hate speech.

This is a deletion center, one of Facebook’s largest, with more than 1,200 content moderators. They are cleaning up content — from terrorist propaganda to Nazi symbols to child abuse — that violates the law or the company’s community standards.

Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law, has become a laboratory for one of the most pressing issues for governments today: how and whether to regulate the world’s biggest social network.

Around the world, Facebook and other social networking platforms are facing a backlash over their failures to safeguard privacy, disinformation campaigns and the digital reach of hate groups.

In India, seven people were beaten to death after a false viral message on the Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp. In Myanmar, violence against the Rohingya minority was fueled, in part, by misinformation spread on Facebook. In the United States, Congress called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to testify about the company’s inability to protect its users’ privacy.

As the world confronts these rising forces, Europe, and Germany in particular, have emerged as the de facto regulators of the industry, exerting influence beyond their own borders. Berlin’s digital crackdown on hate speech, which took effect on Jan. 1, is being closely watched by other countries. And German officials are playing a major role behind one of Europe’s most aggressive moves to rein in technology companies, strict data privacy rules that take effect across the European Union on May 25 and are prompting global changes.

“For them, data is the raw material that makes them money,” said Gerd Billen, secretary of state in Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. “For us, data protection is a fundamental right that underpins our democratic institutions.”

Germany’s troubled history has placed it on the front line of a modern tug-of-war between democracies and digital platforms.

In the country of the Holocaust, the commitment against hate speech is as fierce as the commitment to free speech. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is only available in an annotated version. Swastikas are illegal. Inciting hatred is punishable by up to five years in jail.

But banned posts, pictures and videos have routinely lingered on Facebook and other social media platforms. Now companies that systematically fail to remove “obviously illegal” content within 24 hours face fines of up to 50 million euros.

The deletion center predates the legislation, but its efforts have taken on new urgency. Every day content moderators in Berlin, hired by a third-party firm and working exclusively on Facebook, pore over thousands of posts flagged by users as upsetting or potentially illegal and make a judgment: Ignore, delete or, in particularly tricky cases, “escalate” to a global team of Facebook lawyers with expertise in German regulation.

Some decisions to delete are easy. Posts about Holocaust denial and genocidal rants against particular groups like refugees are obvious ones for taking down.

Others are less so. On Dec. 31, the day before the new law took effect, a far-right lawmaker reacted to an Arabic New Year’s tweet from the Cologne police, accusing them of appeasing “barbaric, Muslim, gang-raping groups of men.”

The request to block a screenshot of the lawmaker’s post wound up in the queue of Nils, a 35-year-old agent in the Berlin deletion center. His judgment was to let it stand. A colleague thought it should come down. Ultimately, the post was sent to lawyers in Dublin, London, Silicon Valley and Hamburg. By the afternoon it had been deleted, prompting a storm of criticism about the new legislation, known here as the “Facebook Law.”

“A lot of stuff is clear-cut,” Nils said. Facebook, citing his safety, did not allow him to give his surname. “But then there is the borderline stuff.”

Complicated cases have raised concerns that the threat of the new rules’ steep fines and 24-hour window for making decisions encourage “over-blocking” by companies, a sort of defensive censorship of content that is not actually illegal.

The far-right Alternative of Germany, a noisy and prolific user of social media, has been quick to proclaim “the end of free speech.” Human rights organizations have warned that the legislation was inspiring authoritarian governments to copy it.

Other people argue that the law simply gives a private company too much authority to decide what constitutes illegal hate speech in a democracy, an argument that Facebook, which favored voluntary guidelines, made against the law.

“It is perfectly appropriate for the German government to set standards,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy. “But we think it’s a bad idea for the German government to outsource the decision of what is lawful and what is not.”

Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in Europe and the leader of the company’s lobbying effort against the German legislation, put it more simply: “We don’t want to be the arbiters of free speech.”

German officials counter that social media platforms are the arbiters anyway.

It all boils down to one question, said Mr. Billen, who helped draw up the new legislation: “Who is sovereign? Parliament or Facebook?”

Learning From (German) History

When Nils applied for a job at the deletion center, the first question the recruiter asked him was: “Do you know what you will see here?”

Nils has seen it all. Child torture. Mutilations. Suicides. Even murder: He once saw a video of a man cutting a heart out of a living human being.

And then there is hate.

“You see all the ugliness of the world here,” Nils said. “Everyone is against everyone else. Everyone is complaining about that other group. And everyone is saying the same horrible things.”

The issue is deeply personal for Nils. He has a 4-year-old daughter. “I’m also doing this for her,” he said.

The center here is run by Arvato, a German service provider owned by the conglomerate Bertelsmann. The agents have a broad purview, reviewing content from a half-dozen countries. Those with a focus on Germany must know Facebook’s community standards and, as of January, the basics of German hate speech and defamation law.

“Two agents looking at the same post should come up with the same decision,” says Karsten König, who manages Arvato’s partnership with Facebook.

The Berlin center opened with 200 employees in 2015, as Germany was opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

That year a selfie went viral.

Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, posed with Chancellor Angela Merkel and posted the image on Facebook. It instantly became a symbol of her decision to allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Soon it also became a symbol of the backlash.

The image showed up in false reports linking Mr. Modamani to terrorist attacks in Brussels and on a Christmas market in Berlin. He sought an injunction against Facebook to stop such posts from being shared but eventually lost.

The arrival of nearly 1.4 million migrants in Germany has tested the country’s resolve to keep a tight lid on hate speech. The law on illegal speech was long-established but enforcement in the digital realm was scattershot before the new legislation.

Posts calling refugees rapists, Neanderthals and scum survived for weeks, according to jugendschutz.net, a publicly funded internet safety organization. Many were never taken down. Researchers at jugendschutz.net reported a tripling in observed hate speech in the second half of 2015.

Mr. Billen, the secretary of state in charge of the new law, was alarmed. In September 2015, he convened executives from Facebook and other social media sites at the justice ministry, a building that was once the epicenter of state propaganda for the Communist East. A task force for fighting hate speech was created. A couple of months later, Facebook and other companies signed a joint declaration, promising to “examine flagged content and block or delete the majority of illegal posts within 24 hours.”

But the problem did not go away. Over the 15 months that followed, independent researchers, hired by the government, twice posed as ordinary users and flagged illegal hate speech. During the tests, they found that Facebook had deleted 46 percent and 39 percent.

“They knew that they were a platform for criminal behavior and for calls to commit criminal acts, but they presented themselves to us as a wolf in sheep skin,” said Mr. Billen, a poker-faced civil servant with stern black frames on his glasses.

By March 2017, the German government had lost patience and started drafting legislation. The Network Enforcement Law was born, setting out 21 types of content that are “manifestly illegal” and requiring social media platforms to act quickly.

Officials say early indications suggest the rules have served their purpose. Facebook’s performance on removing illegal hate speech in Germany rose to 100 percent over the past year, according to the latest spot check of the European Union.

Platforms must publish biannual reports on their efforts. The first is expected in July.

At Facebook’s Berlin offices, Mr. Allan acknowledged that under the earlier voluntary agreement, the company had not acted decisively enough at first.

“It was too little and it was too slow,” he said. But, he added, “that has changed.”

He cited another independent report for the European Commission from last summer that showed Facebook was by then removing 80 percent of hate speech posts in Germany.

The reason for the improvement was not German legislation, he said, but a voluntary code of conduct with the European Union. Facebook’s results have improved in all European countries, not just in Germany, Mr. Allan said.

“There was no need for legislation,” he said.

Mr. Billen disagrees.

“They could have prevented the law,” he said. YouTube scored 90 percent in last year’s monitoring exercise. If other platforms had done the same, there would be no law today, he said.

A Regulatory Dilemma

Germany’s hard-line approach to hate speech and data privacy once made it an outlier in Europe. The country’s stance is now more mainstream, an evolution seen in the justice commissioner in Brussels.

Vera Jourova, the justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could not stand the hate anymore.

“It felt good,” she said about pressing the button. She added: “It felt like taking back control.”

But Ms. Jourova, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in what is now the Czech Republic, had long been skeptical about governments legislating any aspect of free speech, including hate speech. Her father lost his job after making a disparaging comment about the Soviet invasion in 1968, barring her from going to university until she married and took her husband’s name.

“I lived half my life in the atmosphere driven by Soviet propaganda,” she said. “The golden principle was: If you repeat a lie a hundred times it becomes the truth.”

When Germany started considering a law, she instead preferred a voluntary code of conduct. In 2016, platforms like Facebook promised European users easy reporting tools and committed to removing most illegal posts brought to their attention within 24 hours.

The approach worked well enough, Ms. Jourova said. It was also the quickest way to act because the 28 member states in the European Union differed so much about whether and how to legislate.

But the stance of many governments toward Facebook has hardened since it emerged that the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million users. Representatives of the European Parliament have asked Mr. Zuckerberg to come to Brussels to “clarify issues related to the use of personal data” and he has agreed to come as soon as next week.

Ms. Jourova, whose job is to protect the data of over 500 million Europeans, has hardened her stance as well.

“Our current system relies on trust and this did nothing to improve trust,” she said. “The question now is how do we continue?”

The European Commission is considering German-style legislation for online content related to terrorism, violent extremism and child pornography, including a provision that would include fines for platforms that did not remove illegal content within an hour of being alerted to it.

Several countries — France, Israel, Italy, and Canada among them — have sent queries to the German government about the impact of the new hate speech law.

And Germany’s influence is evident in Europe’s new privacy regulation, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R.. The rules give people control over how their information is collected and used.

[Here’s what G.D.P.R. means for you, and the internet.]

Inspired in part by German data protection laws written in the 1980s, the regulation has been shaped by a number of prominent Germans. Ms. Jourova’s chief of staff, Renate Nikolay, is German, as is her predecessor’s chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, now the European Commission’s secretary general. The lawmaker in charge of the regulation in the European Parliament is German, too.

“We have built on the German tradition of data protection as a constitutional right and created the most modern piece of regulation of the digital economy,” Ms. Nikolay said.

“To succeed in the long-term companies needs the trust of customers,” she said. “At the latest since Cambridge Analytica it has become clear that data protection is not just some nutty European idea, but a matter of competitiveness.”

On March 26, Ms. Jourova wrote a letter — by post, not email — to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer.

“Is there a need for stricter rules for platforms like those that exist for traditional media?” she asked.

“Is the data of Europeans affected by the current scandal?” she added, referring to the Cambridge Analytica episode. And, if so, “How do you plan to inform the user about this?”

She demanded a reply within two weeks, and she got one. Some 2.7 million Europeans were affected, Ms. Sandberg wrote.

But she never answered Ms. Jourova’s question on regulation.

“There is now a sense of urgency and the conviction that we are dealing with something very dangerous that may threaten the development of free democracies,” said Ms. Jourova, who is also trying to find ways to clamp down on fake news and disinformation campaigns.

“We want the tech giants to respect and follow our legislation,” she added. “We want them to show social responsibility both on data protection and on hate speech.”

So do many Facebook employees, Mr. Allan, the company executive, said.

“We employ very thoughtful and principled people,” he said. “They work here because they want to make the world a better place, so when an assumption is made that the product they work on is harming people it is impactful.”

“People have felt this criticism very deeply,” he said.

A Visual Onslaught

Nils works eight-hour shifts. On busy days, 1,500 user reports are in his queue. Other days, there are only 300. Some of his colleagues have nightmares about what they see.

Every so often someone breaks down. A mother recently left her desk in tears after watching a video of a child being sexually abused. A young man felt physically sick after seeing a video of a dog being tortured. The agents watch teenagers self-mutilating and girls recounting rape.

They have weekly group sessions with a psychologist and the trauma specialists on standby. In more serious cases, the center teams up with clinics in Berlin.

In the office, which is adorned with Facebook logos, fresh fruit is at the agents’ disposal in a small room where subdued colors and decorative moss growing on the walls are meant to calm fraying nerves.

To decompress, the agents sometimes report each other’s posts, not because they are controversial, but “just for a laugh,” said another agent, the son of a Lebanese refugee and an Arabic-speaker who has had to deal with content related to terrorism generally and the Islamic State specifically. By now, he said, images of “weird skin diseases” affected him more than those of a beheading. Nils finds sports injuries like breaking bones particularly disturbing.

There is a camaraderie in the office and a real sense of mission: Nils said the agents were proud to “help clean up the hate.”

The definition of hate is constantly evolving.

The agents, who initially take a three-week training course, get frequent refreshers. Their guidelines are revised to reflect hate speech culture. Events change the meaning of words. New hashtags and online trends must be put in context.

“Slurs can become socialized,” Mr. Allan of Facebook explained.

“Refugee” became a group protected from the broad hate speech rules only in 2015. “Nafri” was a term used by the German police that year to describe North Africans who sexually harassed hundreds of women, attacking and, in some cases, raping them. Since then, Nafri has become a popular insult among the far-right.

Nils and his colleagues must determine whether hateful content is singling out an ethnic group or individuals.

That was the challenge with a message on Twitter that was later posted to Facebook as a screenshot by Beatrix von Storch, deputy floor leader of the far-right party, AfD.

“What the hell is wrong with this country?” Ms. von Storch wrote on Dec. 31. “Why is an official police account tweeting in Arabic?”

“Do you think that will appease the barbaric murdering Muslim group-raping gangs of men?” she continued.

A user reported the post as a violation of German law, and it landed in Nils’s queue. He initially decided to ignore the request because he felt Ms. von Storch was directing her insults at the men who had sexually assaulted women two years earlier.

Separately, a user reported the post as a violation of community standards. Another agent leaned toward deleting it, taking it as directed at Muslims in general.

They conferred with their “subject matter expert,” who escalated it to a team in Dublin.

For 24 hours, the post kept Facebook lawyers from Silicon Valley to Hamburg busy. The Dublin team decided that the post did not violate community standards but sent it on for legal assessment by outside lawyers hired by Facebook in Germany.

Within hours of news that the German police were opening a criminal investigation into Ms. von Storch over her comments, Facebook restricted access to the post. The user who reported the content was notified that it had been blocked for a violation of section 130 of the German criminal code, incitement to hatred. Ms. von Storch was also notified too.

In the first few days of the year, it looked like the platforms were erring on the side of censorship. On Jan. 2, a day after Ms. von Storch’s post was deleted, the satirical magazine Titanic quipped that she would be its new guest tweeter. Two of the magazine’s subsequent Twitter posts mocking her were deleted. When Titanic published them again, its account was temporarily suspended.

Since then, things have calmed down. And even Mr. Allan conceded: “The law has not materially changed the amount of content that is deleted.”

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

The post Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2LegVfa via News of World

[dani-qrt]

Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate

BERLIN — Security is tight at this brick building on the western edge of Berlin. Inside, a sign warns: “Everybody without a badge is a potential spy!”

Spread over five floors, hundreds of men and women sit in rows of six scanning their computer screens. All have signed nondisclosure agreements. Four trauma specialists are at their disposal seven days a week.

They are the agents of Facebook. And they have the power to decide what is free speech and what is hate speech.

This is a deletion center, one of Facebook’s largest, with more than 1,200 content moderators. They are cleaning up content — from terrorist propaganda to Nazi symbols to child abuse — that violates the law or the company’s community standards.

Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law, has become a laboratory for one of the most pressing issues for governments today: how and whether to regulate the world’s biggest social network.

Around the world, Facebook and other social networking platforms are facing a backlash over their failures to safeguard privacy, disinformation campaigns and the digital reach of hate groups.

In India, seven people were beaten to death after a false viral message on the Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp. In Myanmar, violence against the Rohingya minority was fueled, in part, by misinformation spread on Facebook. In the United States, Congress called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to testify about the company’s inability to protect its users’ privacy.

As the world confronts these rising forces, Europe, and Germany in particular, have emerged as the de facto regulators of the industry, exerting influence beyond their own borders. Berlin’s digital crackdown on hate speech, which took effect on Jan. 1, is being closely watched by other countries. And German officials are playing a major role behind one of Europe’s most aggressive moves to rein in technology companies, strict data privacy rules that take effect across the European Union on May 25 and are prompting global changes.

“For them, data is the raw material that makes them money,” said Gerd Billen, secretary of state in Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. “For us, data protection is a fundamental right that underpins our democratic institutions.”

Germany’s troubled history has placed it on the front line of a modern tug-of-war between democracies and digital platforms.

In the country of the Holocaust, the commitment against hate speech is as fierce as the commitment to free speech. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is only available in an annotated version. Swastikas are illegal. Inciting hatred is punishable by up to five years in jail.

But banned posts, pictures and videos have routinely lingered on Facebook and other social media platforms. Now companies that systematically fail to remove “obviously illegal” content within 24 hours face fines of up to 50 million euros.

The deletion center predates the legislation, but its efforts have taken on new urgency. Every day content moderators in Berlin, hired by a third-party firm and working exclusively on Facebook, pore over thousands of posts flagged by users as upsetting or potentially illegal and make a judgment: Ignore, delete or, in particularly tricky cases, “escalate” to a global team of Facebook lawyers with expertise in German regulation.

Some decisions to delete are easy. Posts about Holocaust denial and genocidal rants against particular groups like refugees are obvious ones for taking down.

Others are less so. On Dec. 31, the day before the new law took effect, a far-right lawmaker reacted to an Arabic New Year’s tweet from the Cologne police, accusing them of appeasing “barbaric, Muslim, gang-raping groups of men.”

The request to block a screenshot of the lawmaker’s post wound up in the queue of Nils, a 35-year-old agent in the Berlin deletion center. His judgment was to let it stand. A colleague thought it should come down. Ultimately, the post was sent to lawyers in Dublin, London, Silicon Valley and Hamburg. By the afternoon it had been deleted, prompting a storm of criticism about the new legislation, known here as the “Facebook Law.”

“A lot of stuff is clear-cut,” Nils said. Facebook, citing his safety, did not allow him to give his surname. “But then there is the borderline stuff.”

Complicated cases have raised concerns that the threat of the new rules’ steep fines and 24-hour window for making decisions encourage “over-blocking” by companies, a sort of defensive censorship of content that is not actually illegal.

The far-right Alternative of Germany, a noisy and prolific user of social media, has been quick to proclaim “the end of free speech.” Human rights organizations have warned that the legislation was inspiring authoritarian governments to copy it.

Other people argue that the law simply gives a private company too much authority to decide what constitutes illegal hate speech in a democracy, an argument that Facebook, which favored voluntary guidelines, made against the law.

“It is perfectly appropriate for the German government to set standards,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy. “But we think it’s a bad idea for the German government to outsource the decision of what is lawful and what is not.”

Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in Europe and the leader of the company’s lobbying effort against the German legislation, put it more simply: “We don’t want to be the arbiters of free speech.”

German officials counter that social media platforms are the arbiters anyway.

It all boils down to one question, said Mr. Billen, who helped draw up the new legislation: “Who is sovereign? Parliament or Facebook?”

Learning From (German) History

When Nils applied for a job at the deletion center, the first question the recruiter asked him was: “Do you know what you will see here?”

Nils has seen it all. Child torture. Mutilations. Suicides. Even murder: He once saw a video of a man cutting a heart out of a living human being.

And then there is hate.

“You see all the ugliness of the world here,” Nils said. “Everyone is against everyone else. Everyone is complaining about that other group. And everyone is saying the same horrible things.”

The issue is deeply personal for Nils. He has a 4-year-old daughter. “I’m also doing this for her,” he said.

The center here is run by Arvato, a German service provider owned by the conglomerate Bertelsmann. The agents have a broad purview, reviewing content from a half-dozen countries. Those with a focus on Germany must know Facebook’s community standards and, as of January, the basics of German hate speech and defamation law.

“Two agents looking at the same post should come up with the same decision,” says Karsten König, who manages Arvato’s partnership with Facebook.

The Berlin center opened with 200 employees in 2015, as Germany was opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

That year a selfie went viral.

Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, posed with Chancellor Angela Merkel and posted the image on Facebook. It instantly became a symbol of her decision to allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Soon it also became a symbol of the backlash.

The image showed up in false reports linking Mr. Modamani to terrorist attacks in Brussels and on a Christmas market in Berlin. He sought an injunction against Facebook to stop such posts from being shared but eventually lost.

The arrival of nearly 1.4 million migrants in Germany has tested the country’s resolve to keep a tight lid on hate speech. The law on illegal speech was long-established but enforcement in the digital realm was scattershot before the new legislation.

Posts calling refugees rapists, Neanderthals and scum survived for weeks, according to jugendschutz.net, a publicly funded internet safety organization. Many were never taken down. Researchers at jugendschutz.net reported a tripling in observed hate speech in the second half of 2015.

Mr. Billen, the secretary of state in charge of the new law, was alarmed. In September 2015, he convened executives from Facebook and other social media sites at the justice ministry, a building that was once the epicenter of state propaganda for the Communist East. A task force for fighting hate speech was created. A couple of months later, Facebook and other companies signed a joint declaration, promising to “examine flagged content and block or delete the majority of illegal posts within 24 hours.”

But the problem did not go away. Over the 15 months that followed, independent researchers, hired by the government, twice posed as ordinary users and flagged illegal hate speech. During the tests, they found that Facebook had deleted 46 percent and 39 percent.

“They knew that they were a platform for criminal behavior and for calls to commit criminal acts, but they presented themselves to us as a wolf in sheep skin,” said Mr. Billen, a poker-faced civil servant with stern black frames on his glasses.

By March 2017, the German government had lost patience and started drafting legislation. The Network Enforcement Law was born, setting out 21 types of content that are “manifestly illegal” and requiring social media platforms to act quickly.

Officials say early indications suggest the rules have served their purpose. Facebook’s performance on removing illegal hate speech in Germany rose to 100 percent over the past year, according to the latest spot check of the European Union.

Platforms must publish biannual reports on their efforts. The first is expected in July.

At Facebook’s Berlin offices, Mr. Allan acknowledged that under the earlier voluntary agreement, the company had not acted decisively enough at first.

“It was too little and it was too slow,” he said. But, he added, “that has changed.”

He cited another independent report for the European Commission from last summer that showed Facebook was by then removing 80 percent of hate speech posts in Germany.

The reason for the improvement was not German legislation, he said, but a voluntary code of conduct with the European Union. Facebook’s results have improved in all European countries, not just in Germany, Mr. Allan said.

“There was no need for legislation,” he said.

Mr. Billen disagrees.

“They could have prevented the law,” he said. YouTube scored 90 percent in last year’s monitoring exercise. If other platforms had done the same, there would be no law today, he said.

A Regulatory Dilemma

Germany’s hard-line approach to hate speech and data privacy once made it an outlier in Europe. The country’s stance is now more mainstream, an evolution seen in the justice commissioner in Brussels.

Vera Jourova, the justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could not stand the hate anymore.

“It felt good,” she said about pressing the button. She added: “It felt like taking back control.”

But Ms. Jourova, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in what is now the Czech Republic, had long been skeptical about governments legislating any aspect of free speech, including hate speech. Her father lost his job after making a disparaging comment about the Soviet invasion in 1968, barring her from going to university until she married and took her husband’s name.

“I lived half my life in the atmosphere driven by Soviet propaganda,” she said. “The golden principle was: If you repeat a lie a hundred times it becomes the truth.”

When Germany started considering a law, she instead preferred a voluntary code of conduct. In 2016, platforms like Facebook promised European users easy reporting tools and committed to removing most illegal posts brought to their attention within 24 hours.

The approach worked well enough, Ms. Jourova said. It was also the quickest way to act because the 28 member states in the European Union differed so much about whether and how to legislate.

But the stance of many governments toward Facebook has hardened since it emerged that the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million users. Representatives of the European Parliament have asked Mr. Zuckerberg to come to Brussels to “clarify issues related to the use of personal data” and he has agreed to come as soon as next week.

Ms. Jourova, whose job is to protect the data of over 500 million Europeans, has hardened her stance as well.

“Our current system relies on trust and this did nothing to improve trust,” she said. “The question now is how do we continue?”

The European Commission is considering German-style legislation for online content related to terrorism, violent extremism and child pornography, including a provision that would include fines for platforms that did not remove illegal content within an hour of being alerted to it.

Several countries — France, Israel, Italy, and Canada among them — have sent queries to the German government about the impact of the new hate speech law.

And Germany’s influence is evident in Europe’s new privacy regulation, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R.. The rules give people control over how their information is collected and used.

[Here’s what G.D.P.R. means for you, and the internet.]

Inspired in part by German data protection laws written in the 1980s, the regulation has been shaped by a number of prominent Germans. Ms. Jourova’s chief of staff, Renate Nikolay, is German, as is her predecessor’s chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, now the European Commission’s secretary general. The lawmaker in charge of the regulation in the European Parliament is German, too.

“We have built on the German tradition of data protection as a constitutional right and created the most modern piece of regulation of the digital economy,” Ms. Nikolay said.

“To succeed in the long-term companies needs the trust of customers,” she said. “At the latest since Cambridge Analytica it has become clear that data protection is not just some nutty European idea, but a matter of competitiveness.”

On March 26, Ms. Jourova wrote a letter — by post, not email — to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer.

“Is there a need for stricter rules for platforms like those that exist for traditional media?” she asked.

“Is the data of Europeans affected by the current scandal?” she added, referring to the Cambridge Analytica episode. And, if so, “How do you plan to inform the user about this?”

She demanded a reply within two weeks, and she got one. Some 2.7 million Europeans were affected, Ms. Sandberg wrote.

But she never answered Ms. Jourova’s question on regulation.

“There is now a sense of urgency and the conviction that we are dealing with something very dangerous that may threaten the development of free democracies,” said Ms. Jourova, who is also trying to find ways to clamp down on fake news and disinformation campaigns.

“We want the tech giants to respect and follow our legislation,” she added. “We want them to show social responsibility both on data protection and on hate speech.”

So do many Facebook employees, Mr. Allan, the company executive, said.

“We employ very thoughtful and principled people,” he said. “They work here because they want to make the world a better place, so when an assumption is made that the product they work on is harming people it is impactful.”

“People have felt this criticism very deeply,” he said.

A Visual Onslaught

Nils works eight-hour shifts. On busy days, 1,500 user reports are in his queue. Other days, there are only 300. Some of his colleagues have nightmares about what they see.

Every so often someone breaks down. A mother recently left her desk in tears after watching a video of a child being sexually abused. A young man felt physically sick after seeing a video of a dog being tortured. The agents watch teenagers self-mutilating and girls recounting rape.

They have weekly group sessions with a psychologist and the trauma specialists on standby. In more serious cases, the center teams up with clinics in Berlin.

In the office, which is adorned with Facebook logos, fresh fruit is at the agents’ disposal in a small room where subdued colors and decorative moss growing on the walls are meant to calm fraying nerves.

To decompress, the agents sometimes report each other’s posts, not because they are controversial, but “just for a laugh,” said another agent, the son of a Lebanese refugee and an Arabic-speaker who has had to deal with content related to terrorism generally and the Islamic State specifically. By now, he said, images of “weird skin diseases” affected him more than those of a beheading. Nils finds sports injuries like breaking bones particularly disturbing.

There is a camaraderie in the office and a real sense of mission: Nils said the agents were proud to “help clean up the hate.”

The definition of hate is constantly evolving.

The agents, who initially take a three-week training course, get frequent refreshers. Their guidelines are revised to reflect hate speech culture. Events change the meaning of words. New hashtags and online trends must be put in context.

“Slurs can become socialized,” Mr. Allan of Facebook explained.

“Refugee” became a group protected from the broad hate speech rules only in 2015. “Nafri” was a term used by the German police that year to describe North Africans who sexually harassed hundreds of women, attacking and, in some cases, raping them. Since then, Nafri has become a popular insult among the far-right.

Nils and his colleagues must determine whether hateful content is singling out an ethnic group or individuals.

That was the challenge with a message on Twitter that was later posted to Facebook as a screenshot by Beatrix von Storch, deputy floor leader of the far-right party, AfD.

“What the hell is wrong with this country?” Ms. von Storch wrote on Dec. 31. “Why is an official police account tweeting in Arabic?”

“Do you think that will appease the barbaric murdering Muslim group-raping gangs of men?” she continued.

A user reported the post as a violation of German law, and it landed in Nils’s queue. He initially decided to ignore the request because he felt Ms. von Storch was directing her insults at the men who had sexually assaulted women two years earlier.

Separately, a user reported the post as a violation of community standards. Another agent leaned toward deleting it, taking it as directed at Muslims in general.

They conferred with their “subject matter expert,” who escalated it to a team in Dublin.

For 24 hours, the post kept Facebook lawyers from Silicon Valley to Hamburg busy. The Dublin team decided that the post did not violate community standards but sent it on for legal assessment by outside lawyers hired by Facebook in Germany.

Within hours of news that the German police were opening a criminal investigation into Ms. von Storch over her comments, Facebook restricted access to the post. The user who reported the content was notified that it had been blocked for a violation of section 130 of the German criminal code, incitement to hatred. Ms. von Storch was also notified too.

In the first few days of the year, it looked like the platforms were erring on the side of censorship. On Jan. 2, a day after Ms. von Storch’s post was deleted, the satirical magazine Titanic quipped that she would be its new guest tweeter. Two of the magazine’s subsequent Twitter posts mocking her were deleted. When Titanic published them again, its account was temporarily suspended.

Since then, things have calmed down. And even Mr. Allan conceded: “The law has not materially changed the amount of content that is deleted.”

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

The post Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate appeared first on World The News.

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