#trying to explain to my friend why I’d let (redacted) hit

[ree-duh]

See the thing is I’m attracted to men that have something wrong with them not because I think I could fix them but more like a scientist studying a rat in a cage

[cooloddball]

This is going to be a super long analysis of jib3 starting with the opening ceremony to the closing ceremony so brace yourselves. 

Please note I believe in the breakup theory so maybe my opinion in this one might be biased so please don’t come for me, lol.

I will put it under the cut to avoid overcrowding your dashes with cockles shenanigans. 

Also, watch out for profanities and mature language.

And so it begins...

Opening ceremony

The camera used to record the opening ceremony is shaky. 

Misha, Jason Manns, and Jarpad seem to be having a lot of fun together and Jensen is just looking at his besties talking to the man he loves and he knows he can’t have that so he just stands there looking at them. Poor guy.

Jarpad asks who took Misha’s riffle? Things are awkward, I honestly don’t know what’s going on.

Misha kisses a plushie while making eye contact with Jensen and Jensen is like “oh, oh, wow” while making eye contact with Misha. LOL. Jack help me. This is a lot!!!

Jensen takes a plushie from Sebastian and Jared takes the one Misha had.

Are you guys flirting about trying to see whether you can keep plushies alive?

Misha throws something at the fans, I think he was throwing treats from earlier or whatever it was and Jensen says “Misha is still throwing” I mean why?

Cockles Panel

Jensen is so extra in this panel.

First of all, when he and Misha come out (no pun intended) a song starts playing and he starts dancing. Jensen is usually so poised while dancing but he is over the top throwing his back and shaking his tush for the mish.  I think he was trying a little too hard. Misha spares his ex-boyfriend’s tush a glance smiles and looks away. LOL. The whole thing was cringey, tbh. It was so unlike Jensen.

When Sebastian touches Jensen’s shoulder and says something to Jensen, he [Jensen]  laughs way too hard. I would say he laughs abnormally-it’s loud and he throws his whole body into it like he’s trying to prove what Sebastian was funny and it probably wasn’t. He laughs so hard he ends up right on Misha’s side. and Misha laughs at that though.

Rich says something about something in the sac that hurts(It’s incoherent) and Jensen says it hurts right here pointing at his heart (I can’t hear what they are saying exactly so if anyone knows please let me know)

I don’t know if Mark P. was going to hug Jensen or not or he was pointing at something behind Jensen, but at that moment, Jensen sees Sebastian going to hug Misha and whips his head away from Mark P’s direction so fast he almost broke his neck.

Sebastian humps Misha (these two are so playful I love them) and Jensen is just there acting awkward 

There’s a comment by Rich about “It’s over, the convention’s over I’m no longer your bitch” I don’t know who this is about.

Now, now, now. This whole time Rich is doing a kissy mouth with his fingers on the monitor behind Jensen and Misha. His hand is right where Misha is standing (you’ll understand once you watch it) so Jensen makes a kissy face back and Misha is blushing? Ummm wtf is going on here?

Jensen also does something strange that he never does during cockles panels he pulls his seat away from Misha.

Misha makes a very weird comment about Sebastian’s libido drying up and they have a weird conversation about libido and Viagra ads. It’s weird.

It gets even more awkward Jensen talks about bringing a total stranger, and a blind date. And it goes downhill from there with them. The it wasn’t you it was me speech. It was special. So heartbreaking. It was clearly not about the show but about their relationship. I always have a difficult time getting through that part. It’s so awkward that the fans are just there wondering what the hell is going on.

They decide to take questions and the fan is all over the place so Misha interjects but Jensen won’t let Misha say what he wants to say so he says, “This is why you make it awkward. You never let people finish what they are saying.” Ouch. Domestic dispute vibes anyone?

The way Jensen is looking up at Misha when he’s answering that question. It’s like he wants to sear his face into his memory before they leave Rome.

Jensen is explaining to a fan how one of the four sound stages they had on set was full of furniture and Misha adds “and soiled mattresses”  I mean what was the reason? Did they soil the mattresses with their [redacted]

A fan mentions something about Dean and Cas so these two adorable dorks smile and share a look. Things are starting to look up. Thank Jack.

The fan says something again (I can’t make out what he’s saying) but it must be something nice because they look at each other with smiles on their faces again.

Jensen playing with the head of his microphone. Is it just me or did the temperature rise a notch higher?

The way they look at each other when the fan says to help him choose the hottest female cast member on the show 

Then something freaky happens they say the exact same thing as twins or bffs do sometimes. LOL.

When they start talking about the hot women with the fans Misha moves his entire body and now instead of looking at the fans, he is seated facing Jensen.  The tension is simmering down.

A point to note is that in all their panels they always sit angled facing each other as opposed to facing the crowd save for this panel and DCCON 2019. But for DCCON I can understand that they weren’t comfortable being meant to be a J/2 panel and a creation event. So you know some people in that crowd are super mean to Mish and others to Jensen, so they had to tread carefully. But I digress back to the chaos.

They ask who wants to have a cockles panel the next year and they both raise their hands. I thought that was sweet

 It’s adorable how Jensen keeps repeating everything Misha is saying.

Misha forgets himself and moves too close to Jensen to listen to the song on the phone. Jensen turns to look at Misha, I don’t know what that look is but Misha backs away laughing.

Jensen’s face journey while listening to that song is gold.

Misha moves closer to listen to the song.  I have to say the way they are standing is not usually how two bros listening to music usually stand. If you know what I mean

 Misha agrees that’s definitely Jensen singing. Of course, he knows because Mr. “Jensen sings to me all the time”

He looks so proud of him.  I’d venture to say he’s happy to hear Jensen sing because he has always been so shy about that fact about himself. He even gives him a standing ovation. That’s so adorable. He loves him. My heart.

Jensen is so cute trying to deny it’s not him singing that song.  Yeah, it’s you, Jensen. Even your ex agrees it’s you and we bet he knows how your voice sounds in all kinds of situations ;)

we get a tingly feeling so we know it’s you. Jensen’s adorable smile when Misha says that. Aww.

The way they are not even looking at each other but they are seated the exact same way.

Allow me to explain to my friend here. Explains how his parents didn’t know whether he was a boy or a girl. Misha with the steel chair, “when did they figure out that you were a boy?”

How many years did they call you holly?

For six to seven years

Is it just me or is this conversation a flashback of teenage twink-lesbian Jensen years?

Fan asks whether Dean will ever forgive Cas. Watch Misha’s body language, he is trying to pacify himself by rubbing the back of his neck and fumbling with his shirt.

When Jensen says “ No!” without a moment’s hesitation, Misha looks distraught? I don’t know maybe I’m reading too much into this but I feel like this hit too close to home being that they were most likely broken up.

Misha however has a different opinion, “I think he has” 

Jensen says, “Wishful thinking” and that elicits a smile from Misha.

A fan asks about Dean giving Cas the trenchcoat back and things get interesting.  Weirdly, that Jensen can’t say the word gay out loud. He literally uses the word “unmanly” in its stead in the guise of censorship? It’s not a bad word Jensen you can say it. However, Misha and the fans say the word so I’m wondering who is censoring Jensen’s use of that word. He eventually says it but super fast.

Jensen says that saying “I always knew you would come back” is not something he would say to another human being, especially a man. Jesus, there’s nothing wrong with saying that to another human being you care about. He’s the one making it gay. He was extra when answering that one.

They spent one and half hours making that scene just to end up not saying anything and it ended up looking gay anyway. Anyway, that’s interesting.

 Jensen angles his body towards Mish and says in a very low soft and sexy voice “I guess I really hoped that you would come back some day” I would venture to say that Jensen at the moment in the panel was actually saying them to Misha. Who knows though?

They talk about it a whole lot for something that bothered him that much. 

Misha being so excited about recreating a scene when a fan told Jarpad he’s amazing and Jarpad said "you are welcome. 

 “I think I understand what she wants. I’m not sure what she’s gonna get.” This is a very good line Misha. I will be using it often.

The way they awkwardly stand too close and whisper to each other. Umm…what is going on here?

Jensen folds over laughing because of something Misha says. They are back. The tension is almost 90% gone now and they are in their element.

The chaos of recording the alarm ringtone for the fan was just great to watch. They kept getting closer and closer and I think they might have shared spit at that point. Gross….LOL

The way Misha is sitting is he you know.

Jensen asking Misha whether he was saying anything or just screaming while they were recording. I think he just wanted to see Misha smile.

Jensen’s joy when a fan mentions that they have Misha’s résumé.

Jensen saying the word shit made my day. I curse a  lot and it made me feel validated somehow.

Misha calls him dickhead in return and Jensen stops functioning and laughs instead . He also gets all hot and bothered trying to fumble with the lapel of his shirt.  He does this a lot when he is turned on. He has a humiliation kink I think.

They start talking over each other about Misha’s special skills. Looks like Jensen might have known beforehand because he went straight for that. Or maybe he didn’t know but he knew since Misha is a mad genius there must be some amazing things in there. Either way, it was a good moment.

OMG Jensen is so excited and the way he motions to Misha to bring that résumé to him, LOL. This man was thirsty AF.

He even goes down from the stage to meet Misha and invades his personal space trying to reach the résumé. I think this is the moment the tension between them dissipated completely and they were back to some form of normalcy.

Misha holding Jensen’s shoulder trying to get his résumé back. Unsucessfully, I should add.

They read something funny and they fold over laughing and spin around like overjoyed seals. It is far removed from the mollusk family but at least it’s still a sea creature (I don’t know what I’m saying please don’t mind me)

Jensen is still on his knees laughing and can’t get up. As I said, he is being too extra in this panel.

 Misha is trying to talk but they both can’t stop laughing. I think Jensen laughed so hard he got an extra set of abs that day.

Jensen is still laughing and you know what he is laughing at? Misha’s special skills being acting on camera. I mean it’s funny but man, prayforjensen.

 They are still laughing. Jack, help them.

The way Jensen looks at Misha with pure adoration here makes me so happy and reminds me of the fictional characters they played being all heart eyes for each other.

 Misha laughed so hard he cried.

Jensen trying to read the next ‘special skill’ Misha has but he can’t even talk because of how funny he thinks it is. He’s trying so hard not to laugh but he can’t help himself.

Jensen agreeing and also asking the audience to agree that Misha has a knack for certain accents. Accent kink anyone?

 Jensen is so excited when Misha starts Tibetan throating singing and does the unicorn laugh facing away from the crowd. Bet he has experienced Misha’s Tibetan throat singing skills on a personal when they are (loud overhead helicopter noises followed by thunder rumbling)

Jensen falling to the ground after feigning a heart attack once he saw that Misha is a certified EMT. I mentioned before that I honestly, 100% think he wanted mouth to mouth. There’s no other explanation. He could’ve feigned a nose bleed or just about any other illness but he chose to fall on a dirty floor and lay down so Misha could either give him the breath of life or straddle him. Luckily for him his dream came true 7 years later at Jib9 when straddle gate happened. But I digress

Too bad Misha was still mad at him and heartbroken so he kicked him instead.

Jensen knowing that Misha kayaks seems to be part of his personal knowledge. Maybe they did it together sometimes.

Horseback riding. Hmm is it just me or do they seem awkward here?

 Misha is so close to Jensen’s armpits. Must be missing his man’s musk and being held in those muscular arms again. Poor baby.

Misha can’t talk because of how funny he finds bicycle touring. I mean…I don’t see what’s funny but I guess he knows why it’s funny.

Misha laughing and raises his legs because Jensen is elaborating on the bicycle touring. Maybe it’s an inside joke or maybe it’s no longer funny to me because I’ve watched this panel like 5 times.

 I think Jensen’s goal was to see Misha laugh and be happy because he turned to look at Misha who was still laughing hard and the joy on Jensen’s face. Aww.

Misha gravitating towards his man again. He must smell really nice Misha. And those arms. Bet he used to lift you against the wall and (this fucking thunder won’t stop rambling. Are chuck and Amara fighting again?)

Jensen marketing his man’s carpentry skills but then makes sure to make it ‘no homo’ by saying he would never sit on anything Misha has built. Sure Jan. Then he circles back and says that he knows that he can build things.

Misha walks away from him and he looks up to make sure where he is going. Maybe he was afraid Misha was walking out on him. (PTSD from their breakup?)

They mention acting on camera again.

And laugh 

Jensen keeps talking about the acting on camera and watches to see if Misha is still laughing  He still is and Jensen is happy that his baby is happy. He looks at him again and he is still happy that Misha is still happy. Then once the laughter dies down he starts talking about bicycle touring  and checks again to see if Misha is laughing which he is so Jensen throws his head back  unicorn laughing and then looks at Misha again to see that he’s still laughing. Then they look at each other and say something maybe it’s about that was a good laugh. Jensen is wiping tears from his eyes because of how hard he laughed  Misha does the same. That entire thing was insane and they seemed to love it.

 Jensen starts saying that being this happy or goofing around is how they are on set sometimes and have to take a 5-10 minute break and Misha doesn’t seem too happy at the mention of the set. 

Jensen knowing that you can buy résumés on eBay. Did he buy Misha’s and then plant someone in the audience to bring it up or? Okay, yeah I know I’m reaching here but it’s probable.

 I guess my theory wasn’t farfetched because Jensen says that he’s pretty sure that Jarpad put it on eBay the previous night so maybe he is the one who did all that to win Misha back?

Jensen knows the appellation clogging is a stretch. Seems like Misha has told him about it before.

Jensen looking at his watch to see if they have time for  Misha to be telling a story about his high school sweetheart and now wife. I bet he wishes Misha could tell their love story so openly. He can’t stop looking at Misha.

The way Jensen is looking at Misha here. WTF man? He’s literally confused about what the question is.

The personal space question. This whole thing was just so many things. It was awkward, cringey, thirsty, funny.

when the fan asks whether there’s a funny fact between Jensen and Misha. I almost fainted. What? And Jensen repeats it. The two men are so stoic. They are not even looking at each other. They are looking at the fan like the way a statue stares at you, unmoving. Cringe.

The room is so quiet. Poor girl, I hope she didn’t feel awkward afterwards because if it were me, I would’ve cried from how stoic they looked and how quiet everyone was.

How they both scratch themselves, Misha on the head and Jensen on the nose. Maybe the question hit too close to home

Jensen turns to look at Misha as if to say ’help me out here man. We don’t wanna disappoint our fans.”

Misha gets it because he gets up. This whole thing is gold.

The way Jensen breathes out in anticipation. I know it was like they were playing a skit about personal space but why was he breathing like that? Shouldn’t he have been playing it as ‘uncomfortable’ not ‘turned on.’ Boudoir mannerisms.

Moving on Misha is unsure on where to touch Jensen 40.31. This is weird in and of itself because usually, they don’t have a problem touching each other’s faces, tush, eggplants, (jib4 anyone), backs et cetera. But now it’s weird? *cough* breakup *cough*

Misha touches Jensen’s ear and Jensen literally moans. He frigging moans people. In case it is not clear in the video, here is an isolated audio version of it. Jensen is also fumbling with his shirt like he’s all hot and bothered. Just like Misha did earlier. Was Jib3 their couple’s therapy that reminded them how happy and horny they made each other?

Jensen is really not answering the question, to be honest. He’s fumbling for words and trying so very hard to make sense but his word are  incoherent.

Misha going in for the nose dip. I know friends do this all the time but you have to be very close and familiar with someone such as a friend friend or a sibling for you to poke a finger in their nose. I mean noses are slimy and eww…anyway. That happened. They seem so comfortable with it. Jensen I love you but please stop talking.

The way Jensen looks at Misha. He has the cutest smile on his face as if saying thank you for making that fun and making me horny, I still want you.

Misha wiping his pinky that touched Jensen’s nose on his pants. (I wanted to add something disgusting about what heshould’ve done with that pinky but I won’t so let’s move on)

Jensen wiggling his nose.

When Misha suggests that Spn moves to Nickolodeon. Jensen laughs a bit too hard.

Misha talking about spn being a puppet show reminds me of how he mentioned them having a puppet show in Jensen’s backyard after the show is over.

Jensen also saying that in a way spn is a puppet show. I mean is someone making snide comments about how their strings get pulled and sometimes they are not happy about it. Like how they fired his boyfriend. It seems like it’s an inside joke.

They named the plushie Zippy aww :))

For jack’s sake guys, the way they look at each other when they mention that the  résumé was the highlight of the panel.

Jensen saying the more dirt you dig up on Misha, the more rewarded you are. Aww, someone’s trying to win his man back by any means necessary. You go girl…I mean Jensen.

He talks more about how he’s looking forward to next year when fans have more dirt on his friend Misha. Jensen didn’t want to leave the stage, he was lingering so he could spend more time with Misha.

It’s over guys.

Closing Ceremony

I know you didn’t ask for the closing ceremony but here you go. It’s a free gift.

Can I just mention how Jarpad is an overactive puppy? He has to play with anything and everything he finds.

The mc announces Misha twice for some reason. The second time Jensen looks in Misha’s direction with a small smile on his face. He [Jensen] is also chewing vigorously.

Jensen and Jarpad being typical dude bros and karate chop Rich. This is why the difference between his relationship with Jarpad and Misha stands out. He would be too busy making heart eyes to Misha to kick another guy. LoL.

Jensen hulking out when Jarpad is taking a video of everyone. Lol. This video keeps reiterating my point that his relationship with the two men is just different.

Jensen keeps looking in Misha’s direction, Misha who is busy talking to Steve and having fun. Let me also mention Steve is Jensen’s bestie and so are Jarpad and Misha, but I’m sure that Jensen felt some type of way, jealous when they were having so much fun with his man and he couldn’t. Jarpad also takes a while filming Misha for Jensen of course. They remind me of me having a crush back when I was in school. Wait, did Misha look at Jensen? It’s hard to see because the angle of the video is not expansive but I guess he was.

As soon as Jarpad gets back, Jensen takes the camera from him and starts filming fans. I’m sure he just wanted Misha to look at him

Rich mention’s Misha and something about acting on camera and Jensen licks his lips looking at Misha (I think).

Jensen then vigorously grabs the microphone from someone immediately and mention’s Misha. Jarpad’s reaction at that moment tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on between Jensen and Misha. It looks like he is pleading with Jensen in his head saying, “Don’t embarrass yourself bro. Please don’t” but it’s too late.

Jensen again talks about Misha’s résumé and specifically about acting on camera, the thing that made Misha laugh out loud during their panel. Someone’s smitten. Defending his ex-man.

Jarpad goes to whisper something to Misha. And they laugh while Jensen is thanking the jib staff for doing an amazing job. But when he sees the duo laughing, he loses track of thought and says “and they are all getting married”  dude what ??? How do you go from thanking people who worked on the convention and in .1 seconds you are talking about they are all getting married? Who is? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down? No one gets it, he says he’s kidding and gives Jarpad the microphone, spares a glance at Misha and he seems distraught from that moment on. I wish I could see Misha’s face through all this.

He’s glancing in Misha’s direction again. Man’s got it bad. What?! Oh to be loved by Jensen Ackles. Misha must be a prize, I know he is a mad genius and gorgeous and sexy as hell with that golden skin that looks like it was dipped in gold and honey, big blue eyes that are bluer than the bluest blue, but Jensen wtf man? You are in public.

 I think Jarpad is telling Jensen something maybe it has to do with what he and Misha were talking about earlier?

And it’s over people.

Overall, I agree with the breakup theory. I mean the way these two were acting around each other was very strange. If you watch Misha and Jarpad, they seem okay from the opening ceremony up till the end but Jensen and Misha are just being weird.

The panel was mostly fun but their body language told a story that something was definitely going on between them. 

@littlewolf2703

[pearldouglas]

forever stuck in our youth- ch 1

summary: A CUTE LIL FIC ABOUT A SUMMER CAMP CLOSING AND A WEEKEND GETAWAY, A SLOW BURN FIC

pairing: platonic obx cast x y/n, eventual drew starkey x reader

word count: 1.7k

a/n: so i didn’t want to write about (redacted) being rudy’s gf since i know like 3/4′s of the fandom is not a fan of her so i made up an oc and yes.... she’s me. i also gave jd a gf too, just go with it bc he deserves just as much love. also i have no idea if madison used to work at a summer camp, pls don’t question it

When Madison walks into the hair and makeup department of set one morning, you can immediately tell she’s upset.

“What’s up, buttercup?” you ask as she sits down in her usual chair. She lets out a long sigh and you frown as you take her hair out of the top knot sitting on top of her head, wondering what’s got her in such a bad mood.

“I just found out the summer camp I used to work at is closing down,” she rests her cheek on her palm and pouts. “I know it’s silly to be upset about it but I really loved it there, it was a big part of my life. Kinda felt like a place I grew up is just getting torn down.”

“It’s not silly,” you reassure her quickly, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze in attempt to comfort her. “I loved summer camp, I can see why you’re so upset.”

“I just wish I could at least go say goodbye to it,” Madison sighs again before looking down at her hands. You’re quiet for a few seconds as you begin to think, the silence filling the trailer uncomfortably.

“Well then, why don’t you?” you ask. She looks up immediately at your reflection in the mirror with her nose scrunched up in confusion.

“What are you talking about?” she asks.

“Filming for this season is almost over, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. Why don’t you go spend a weekend or something? I’d even go with you! It could be tons of fun!” you smile brightly at her. Madison turns around to look at your face, her eyes bright and full of hope.

“Really? You’d do that?” she asks, her voice about to break. You nod rapidly.

“What’s going on in here?” Madelyn asks as she walks into the trailer, you assume Chase isn’t far behind her.

“Y/N and I are gonna take a trip to the old summer camp I used to work with, you should come!” Madison says, her voice now happy and full of life.

“Is this just a girls trip? Because if so, you know I will be crashing,” Rudy’s voice startles you, you turn around and see him sitting in the back of the trailer and you wonder how long he had been sitting there or how you didn’t notice him before.

“Why don’t we all go?” Madison suggests. “Cline, Chase, JD, Y/N, Mariah, Rudy you could even bring Lily if you wanted.”

“That sounds like so much fun!” Madelyn says as she jumps up and down and claps her hands excitedly.

Rudy smiled at the mention of his girlfriend. “JD will want to bring Tayla too,” he points out.

“That’s totally fine.”

“Great, I’ll be the only single one there,” you let out a laugh, Madison hits you in the stomach lightly with the back of her hand. 

“Shut up, it will still be fun,” she assures you and you nod along with her words.

“I know, I can’t wait!”

About a week goes by when suddenly you find yourself packing all your summer essentials in one suitcase and sleeping soundly in a car as you and all your loud friends make your way to what Madison had described as ‘a little piece of my childhood.’ You were excited, really, but watching all the cute couples around you made your heart sink. Sure, you were all happy for them, but you wanted someone to experience a summer romance with you too.

“So I talked to the guy who owns the camp,” Madison explains as she turns around in the front seat to look back at the rest of you. “He said that he left a lot of the old equipment there and that we’re free to use any of it since it’s probably just gonna be donated at the end of the summer anyway.”

“What kind of equipment are we talking about?” Rudy calls from the very back seat.

“Fishing poles, bunk beds, oh and did I mention jet skis?” Madison smiles which causes the whole car to erupt in loud cheers.

“What did you wanna do first, baby?” Mariah asks as she looks over at her girlfriend. Madison reaches over and grabs her hand.

“I think we should settle in first, unpack and get everything ready, then we can go for a good old fashioned swim in the lake. After it gets dark out maybe we could have a bonfire and make s’mores or something?”

“That sounds amazing,” Mariah smiles.

The ride continues on, the sound of all your friends conversations are drowned out by your headphones. Eventually you feel a soft shake of your shoulder and open your eyes only to realize you had fallen asleep on Jonathan’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” you mumble, your cheeks growing an intense shade of red as you took off your headphones.

“No big deal,” JD lifts his shoulders into a shrug. “I just wanted to wake you up since we’re here.” You look out the window and see a bright red cabin sitting under the sun.

You smile and immediately jump out of the car, shielding your eyes from the brightness as you take in your surroundings. It looks just like a cliche summer camp with an arch over the cabin door that says the camp name. You get a feeling you’re on the set of a bad 80′s horror movie.

“So where are we staying?” Chase asks as he pulls suitcases out from the back of the van. You can’t tell if hes being sarcastic or not, considering the bright red double story cabin standing proudly in front of you.

“This is where the counselors would stay,” Madison explains as she gestures to the large building. “And the campers would stay a little farther down. The counselors have a bit more privacy and it’s nicer but technically speaking if you wanna be alone you can stay in the campers cabin.”

“Can we go look at the campers cabins?” you perk up. Madison turns to look at you with her nose scrunched slightly in confusion “As much as I love all of you guys, I don’t really wanna be rooming with only couples and hearing what you guys get up to in the middle of the night.” this causes Rudy to laugh.

“No, you definitely do not,” he agrees as he wraps his arms around his girlfriend whose face you notice is getting significantly pinker. JD lets out a gag.

“Yeah, I can show you the way to those cabins. Are you sure you want to be all alone though? It can get a little scary at night,” Madison asks you, her voice suddenly full of concern. You purse your lips together and nod your head.

“Yeah, I mean how bad can it really be?”

Bad, the answer to that question was.

It turns out unpacking and settling in took much longer than expected and you were all exhausted by the end of it, plus the sun had already gone down so there was no point in trying to go swimming and you were all too tired to start a fire. So you all just decided to call it a night.

And being alone in the campers cabin was definitely not a good idea.

First off, it was freezing at night so you were left to wrap yourself up tightly in your blankets. Secondly, it was so loud. The animals outside decided it would be a good idea to scream outside your window so you were left listening to owls and wolves howl the entire night. However you would have much rather preferred those noises to the ones you were sure were coming from Rudy and Lily’s room.

And lastly, no one talks about how scary it is to be alone at night.

You thought you hadn’t been scared of being alone at night since you were a little kid. Turns out old habits really die hard. You were sure someone was going to burst through the front door and put a bag over your head and drag you off into the night with you kicking in screaming. So naturally this resulted in you having horrible nightmares and a bad nights sleep. But you refused to tell that to your friends when you met up for breakfast in the morning.

“Hey, how did everyone sleep?” Madison greets, holding her cup of coffee with both hands and close to her face in attempts to warm herself up.

“Great!” Rudy announces, his mouth full of his breakfast.

“From the sounds and looks of it, you didn’t get much sleep did you?” you tease him, looking over at Lily who has tired eyes and is in the middle of a yawn. Rudy shrugs.

“What about you, y/n? How was your experience alone out in the campers cabin?” JD perks up, desperate to change the subject.

“From the sounds of it, I think I slept better than all of you guys combined,” you joked even though it was a complete lie. Everyone in the group laughs.

“Are we ready to go swimming?” Chase asks, throwing his napkin down on his plate.

“Aren’t we supposed to wait 30 minutes until after eating to go swimming?” Mariah asks.

“Isn’t that bullshit?” Madelyn rebuttals.

“LAST ONE IN THE WATER IS A ROTTEN EGG!” Rudy calls as he stands up and runs out of the room, JD running quickly after them which causes Tayla and Lily to yell for them.

“None of us are wearing our bathing suits!”

Eventually, everyone did make it down to the water. Rudy ended up beating JD in their mini race which resulted in JD pushing him off the dock which made everyone laugh, even Lily. Everyone else jumped in the water after that and were swimming around for a while before someone spoke up.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” Lily asked.

“No, why?” Madison asked. Lily points to the front of the camp where another car is pulling up. Turns out, this is a campy horror movie which will result in your death.

“Is that-” Chase starts. “No way, he said he couldn’t make it this weekend.”

“Who? What? What are you guys talking about?” you ask as you examine everyones faces and notice it was someone they all recognized. Then, out of the car, wearing swim trunks and a button up, steps out one of your close friends.

“I finished up filming early, now the fun has arrived!” Drew yells, causing you to smile.

Looks like you won’t be the only single one on this trip after all.

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

A/N: AYYYY FIRST CHAPTER IS UP!!!! this fic is based off a cute dream i hate that i told tayla @taylathornton​ about and she persuaded me to write a fic about it so.... here it is. also i hate the ending to this but whatever.

[redrabbitspod]

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE HERE:

(full, designed article. But if you don’t want to follow a magazine layout, read the transcript. Art by @bloodydamnit)

TRANSCRIPT BELOW THE CUT

Red Rabbits: The Rolling Stone Interview

Featuring Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten, and the Red Rabbits Team

By Angie Rodner

On a chilly Monday, Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard are standing side by side, looking at something on Andrew’s phone in our New York, Rolling Stone headquarters. The rest of the Red Rabbits team, consisting of Dan Wilds, Seth Gordon, Renee Walker, Robin Cross, Allison Reynolds, and pro Exy legend/honorable mention Matt Boyd, orbit around them. It's an interesting scene to take in, to say the least. No matter what they seem to be talking about, they all defer to the two hosts without any of them seeming to acknowledge it. 

I was lucky enough to sit down with all eight of them, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m a fan of the podcast and I’ve followed since Season 1. The story of Andrew and Neil (formerly known as Nathaniel Wesnisnki, the son of the Nathan Wesninski or the Butcher of Baltimore), and the revelation of their connection they’d shared as kids, was better than any true crime podcast I’d ever listened to. 

Now, the team takes on what they’ve dubbed ‘The Case of the Newark 9’ for their second season. It’s a case based around the hunt for a man known only as ‘Steven’, who they believe is responsible for a series of kidnappings and murders of young girls in and around the Newark area. They’re joined by Robin Cross, a victim and survivor of Steven’s, who is helping them investigate the case. 

I sat down with Robin and the other women of Red Rabbits first. 

What’s it been like to work on this podcast together? Was it strange to go from looking for Neil, to having him in the studio, to watching him and Andrew form the relationship they have?

Dan: It was strange, because in all honesty, it wasn’t strange. Does that make sense? None of us knew about the meeting they had as kids, but when Andrew finally told us, everything made a lot more sense. Really, they belong together. It was much weirder when they first got back and hadn’t acknowledged what was between them yet. We were all just kinda like... are y’all not seeing what we’re seeing?

Renee: They got there eventually.

How have things changed from Season 1 to Season 2? The cases are obviously different, but they still involve missing children. What’s the atmosphere like around the studio?

Dan: Tense.

Allison: I’m not even there that often and I can still feel it.

Robin: It is tense, but there’s also a sense of urgency. We know ‘Steven’ has another girl now, so it’s like every day that goes by is another day he has her... Another day we either find him, or we don’t.  

Mm... I can’t imagine how difficult that is. However, with that being said, the NYPD have made it pretty clear that they aren’t buying what you guys are selling. How does that make you feel?

Robin: I don’t feel anything about the NYPD. My anger is better placed elsewhere. I am angry. But the police didn’t listen to me when I was a kid and trying to tell them important information. Why would they listen to me now?

Renee: I think we all try and take our cues from Robin. Andrew and Neil are very careful to include her and get her opinion on certain things before moving forward. We’re not letting this thing with the NYPD deter us. 

Speaking of Robin then, what’s it like for you to have her on the team? As one of Steven’s victims that is, there with you in the studio?

Robin: Oh no. Say nice things about me.

Dan: Girl. [ laughs ] Honestly, she’s amazing. She’s my little sister and I’m not just saying that. I think we all kind of feel that way. I’ve never known a person as strong and determined as she is and I know - see she’s blushing! [ laughs again ]- I know she hates it when we talk about her like this, but it’s so true. She’s family now.

Renee: She is, and I think she brings a really unique perspective to the case. We have someone here who’s directly involved, who lived through it and can give us some idea of what the other girls went through. I think most people would really love to have that kind of resource during an investigation.

Allison: For sure. She’s even my muse for my fall line. Everything is going to be deep colors and fun modesty.

Seems like you’ve been properly inducted into the team, Robin.

Robin: [ smiling ] It feels amazing...

Now, last question. Are you confident you’ll find what you’re looking for?

All as one: Yes.

Speaking with the ladies was fun. They were easy and connected and you can tell that there was a real sisterhood in the studio that day. It was refreshing to see women supporting and helping each other thrive in such a competitive industry. There was a lot of laughter between them, and it was such a joy to be able to share it with them. 

-

My next interviewees were Seth Gordon, ‘resident TFN sound engineer/IT guy/anything to do with technology’, as he tells it, and New York Lynxes starting backliner, Matt Boyd. When I tell you I laughed throughout this entire interview, I’m being completely sincere. There was something about the way the two bounced off each other that had me smiling and understanding why they are both so well-liked. 

You guys are best friends aren’t you? I feel a bromance in this Chilli’s tonight.

Seth: Bet. Matt Boyd is my homie and BFFL. Do people still say that? Anyway, we have matching necklaces and everything.

Do you really?

Matt: No, not really, but I’d totally wear one if he gave it to me.

[ laughing ] Matt, how did you even end up here? I know you were friends with Neil, but I feel like the details on that are kind of murky.

Matt: I hit him with my truck. [ My jaw dropped ] No, really! I hit him with my truck in Midtown Manhattan when I was driving home. He refused to go to the hospital so I brought him back to my place to make sure he was okay. He didn’t leave after that.

Seth: Because you held him hostage? That’s the way I hear it.

Matt: Oh yeah, for sure. He takes up so little space, why not? [ laughs again ] No really, I did convince him to stay, but I just felt like he needed a friend. He was obviously running from something and he was scared. I just didn’t know from what or why at the time.

And when you found out?

Matt: Honestly? I just about shit myself, but it made so much sense. All the little questions I asked myself early on, finally had answers. 

I saw the interview you and Dan did with Essence. You guys look amazing together.

Seth: They are amazing together. It’s gross. 

Matt: Yeah, and you and Dion aren’t constantly fawning all over each other.

Is that Dion hovering nearby?

Seth: Yep, that’s my man. He’s amazing and fuckin’ fine as hell. Can I say fuck in this interview?

Sure.

Seth: He’s fuckin’ fine.

Seth, what’s it been like for you, putting together the shows? There’s been a lot of audio that’s hard for us as listeners to hear, and I’m sure there’s more we haven’t even heard. 

Seth: There is.

What’s that like for you to have to go through it all?

Seth: Really hard sometimes. There was some stuff in Season 1 we didn’t air that seriously gave me nightmares. It’s worth it, though. We found Neil and I think we’ll find Steven.

Are both of you confident in that fact?

Seth: Positive.

Matt: I think if anyone can find him, it’s Andrew and Neil. They’re determined and they’ll keep looking no matter what.

I believe them. 

Andrew and Neil were my last interview of the day, and a more determined pair I think I’ve ever met. 

Here’s the thing readers: They’re connected. It might make me a poor journalist, but I don’t know how else to explain it. At one point during the interview, Neil reached over to squeeze Andrew’s arm. At another point, Andrew reached over to squeeze the back of Neil’s neck. They were obviously a comfort to and for each other, and it almost seemed like they borrowed strength. It was intense and being able to witness it has been one of my favorite moments in my career.

So, let’s talk about this season before we get into everything else. You’re looking for a man you believe to be responsible for the disappearances of multiple girls in the Newark area. Do you feel like you’re any closer to solving the mystery than you were at the beginning?

Neil: Absolutely. We’ve gotten some really great tips and we think we’ve narrowed some things down. We don’t want to get too deep into what we’ve got at the moment, because we’re still investigating. But we’re confident in what we have.

What’s it been like working with Robin? I was able to interview her earlier, and she’s really something.

Andrew: She’s been the best resource we have. She’s incredibly strong and unbelievably quick. She’s taken this terrible thing that happened to her and turned it into fire, and it’s been amazing to watch. Most of the information we have comes from her.

The interview you guys did with her was absolutely chilling. I cried three times listening to it. How do you handle hearing these things? I feel like it’d be really hard not to take it home with you.

Neil: Yeah. It’s hard sometimes.

Andrew, I want to touch on the interview Riko Moriyama just did with Kathy Ferdinand and your response. What was that like for you, hearing Riko wrongfully expose something like that on live television?

Andrew: It was… I was stunned, I guess. That information was supposed to be sealed. My name was redacted. So I have no idea how he even got details of the case.

You’ve talked before about being in the foster care system. It sounds like you had a pretty rocky childhood.

Andrew: Yes.

Neil, I know yours was no picnic either. Do you think that this kind of... shared trauma, I guess, is part of why you two work so well together?

Neil: Yeah, partly. When we met as kids, I think a bond was cemented. We both knew how horrible adults could be to children. But now that we’re older, I think more than a shared trauma, it’s a mutual respect for that trauma. We both have shit, you know? I told Matt this one time and I didn’t really understand how true it was until recently, but we both have baggage that we share. We take each other’s on to lighten the load for the other. But, there are times when it gets really fucking heavy, and I think recently we’ve figured out that it’s better to lean on each other when that happens, instead of trying to carry it all ourselves.

Why do you think Riko felt the need to call you two out like he did? I know he mentioned Neil possibly being manipulated into the relationship.

Neil: [laughs]

Andrew: I wish I could manipulate him into having better taste in music.

Neil: My taste in music is fine. 

Andrew: It is absolutely not. And I don’t know why Riko feels the need to comment. I’d be interested to hear the reason. The things he said regarding Neil were ridiculous, and in his response, Neil has made sure to make that known. But the thing that really bothered me was his comments on mental health. He tried to basically call me unstable for seeking therapy and admitting that there came a point when I needed outside help. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country who seek out therapy every year. There’s no shame in it and I’m unsure as to why Riko believes there is. Honestly, I’m shocked the Moriyamas haven’t released a statement. He’s their mouthpiece, after all.

Do you think they should apologize?

Neil: Yes.

Andrew: I think they should at least clarify. I’ve already heard people are planning to protest their new documentary and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to give my money to people who think I’m less of a person because I struggle sometimes.

Speaking of struggle, let’s move back to the case. I know the NYPD has been giving you grief over your claims that the person you’re looking for is the same person that’s taken Haylie Clark. Robin, especially, seems completely certain. How does it feel to know law enforcement doesn’t have your back on this?

Andrew: Familiar. They’ve never had my back before, so why would they start now?

Neil: I’ve dealt with too many crooked cops to really take it seriously. I have no idea what their motivations are and to be clear, I’m not saying I think they’re crooked - I’m just saying that in my experience, the help doesn’t always come like it’s supposed to.

The rest of the team seems pretty confident in you two. They all said they absolutely believe you’ll be able to find him. Is it hard sometimes, not to lose faith?

Andrew: It’s hard all the time. But it doesn’t matter. We have to keep moving forward. We aren’t going to stop until he and Haylie are found. 

I think that’s really commendable and I look forward to seeing that happen. Now, tell me a bit about the team. Neil, since you came in at the end of Season 1, how did you find the dynamic as an outsider?

Neil: I didn’t really understand it in the beginning. Not really. It helped having Matt at my back for months prior, but I’ve never had the opportunity to make solid connections with people. So when I came into the studio, to this group of people who had known each other since college, it was overwhelming. 

Andrew: That’s funny, seeing as how they like you better than me.

Neil: It’s all the charm and charisma. 

[ laughing ] And now? You all seem really tight knit.

Neil: Now, yeah. We are. These people are my family.

Andrew?

Andrew: Yes?

Neil: She wants you to say something nice about the team.

Andrew: Every single one of them knows my coffee order, and it’s truly amazing that they can do what the interns cannot. [ he looks over at Neil, who’s tilting his head and raising his brows ] Oh, don’t look at me like that. Fine. We have a really strong team. I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing without them. Seth works harder than anyone I know, Dan keeps us all in line with just a look, Renee is the only reason I agreed to do this in the first place, Reynolds has a lot of money and she’s not afraid to use it for a cause she believes in, and Robin is the most inspiring person I’ve ever met.

And Matt?

Andrew: Who?

Neil: The guy that kept me alive for months while you were hunting me.

Andrew: [ rolls his eyes and shrugs ] He’s fine.

-

My take away from the interviews was this: these people will do whatever they need, in order to find their perpetrator. They believe in their cause, they hurt for these girls, and they’ll find justice for them in the end. They’re family, that much is clear, and I can’t wait to see how this ends. I can’t wait to say that I was there when it’s over.

Red Rabbits can be heard on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and GooglePlay. You can follow the website at redrabbitspod.tumblr.com and twitter @redrabbitspod.

And as the Red Rabbits team always says, “Keep Searching”. I know I will.

[shananigans402]

1-65 will do, please. Thanks fuck face :)

I knew exactly who this was and I was so tempted to not reply, but your punishment is having to read through all my answers and remember them forever or you fail the friend test. To everyone else, please do not click unless you want to be very bored, my answers are not interesting lol

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you? Nope

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you? Assuming 5 is the most, 1. Maybe 2. 

3. The person you would never want to meet? The person who sent me this (jk I’m excited for our eventual meet up where we hit up a strip club first thing 🙏)

4. What is your favorite word? I answered with ‘conniption’ the other day and still have not found a word I like more.

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be? Already answered this, fruit tree! I also like palm trees, maple trees, and willow trees. I know that’s not the question, I’m just saying random shit now.

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought? It took me a long while to remember where I was this morning. I honestly don’t remember, I was rushing to get ready for an early morning meeting.

7. What shirt are you wearing? My Orlando Strong shirt 

8. What do you label yourself as? Lesbian

9. Bright room or dark room? Bright room

10. What were you doing at midnight last night? Sleeping? Possibly checking on a feverish little beeb who was going through it with her second dose of the vaccine.

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far? No idea. I like various ages for different reasons, but this age so far is not bad. 

12. Who told you they loved you last? Probably my sister 🤷‍♀️

13. Your worst enemy? The person who sent this ask.

14. What is your current desktop picture? The apple pic of Catalina island that changes based on time of day (yes it’s the default, don’t judge me)

15. Do you like someone? Lol yeah I hope so 😂

16. The last song you listened to? Pretty Girl by Hayley Kiyoko 

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? Definitely @raginage

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face? I feel like I can only attack Raginage so many times. Can I pick a fictional character? This week I was real mad at Dave in The Darkness. BaBe!​

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do? Lol no one, you’re talking to a person who feels very uncomfortable with anyone doing anything nice for them.

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional) Not this again. Last time I said eyes? Still no pics, sorry

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do? What would I look like? Do I get to design myself like a sim? I honestly don’t know what I’d do because I doubt the world needs another clueless white man walking around, so maybe just stay at home. 

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it? Nope. And my last answer to this was awful. I do think I have a fantastic ability to annoy my friends but in a way that’s just amusing/endearing enough to make them still want to talk to me 😌

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of? Unique? Uhm well my two big fears are confined spaces and deep water so a submarine is like my worst nightmare.

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal. Oh this is going to sound so odd. To be clear, I’ve had better sandwiches, but my go-to is provolone, turkey, roast beef, and spicy brown mustard or whole grain mustard. Please don’t judge me.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it? Travel budget for future trips to visit my buds and get into trouble and eat food. I know $100 won’t go far, but it’s something.

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go? Well, after my last answer I want to visit my friends! But there are too many people to visit and I only have one ticket. So change of plans. I’m going on a solo trip to Greece. Or Argentina. Or Iceland. Or Bali. Damn, I’m indecisive. 

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be? Rabble red blend. Just a solid red wine. Also because @viola-lloyds stole my answer the other day (Juneshine; to be fair I asked her this question but whatever) and I don’t want to copy her.

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? Oh I answered this one, something about respecting others. Yeah, a nice rule like that. Want to establish some healthy communication on this island.

29. What is your favorite expletive? It’s still fuck

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno? But what about my PLANTS. Can they count as loved ones? Probably my laptop, I know that’s lame but like...I have a lot of stuff on here. Or the collection of cards I have that my granddad drew little drawings in, I want to get them all framed.

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? To be honest, I don’t know if I’d change big life events in case it altered the trajectory of where I ended up. So idk maybe the ending of Bly, let’s give those lesbians have a happy ending!

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world! Italy! But wait, let’s get back to this sleeping with celebrities and super-powers bit...

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back? Oh that’s a really tough question. I always wanted to meet my great-grandma Olga because she seemed like a really awesome lady. 

34. What was your last dream about? I can’t remember, this is bothering me because I wish I could! I’m sorry. My gf recently had a dream where I kissed a dude right in front of her. It made us both very uncomfy lol

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]? I hate this question because I can only think of one thing.

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital? For surgery, yeah

37. Have you ever built a snowman? But of course!

38. What is the color of your socks? Not wearing any? I was wearing blue ones earlier. Jfc my answers are so boring.

39. What type of music do you like? Lots! I tend to listen to indie, classic rock, and some pop

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets? Sunsets!

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor? Chocolate or a variant (chocolate peanut butter, chocolate caramel)

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer) LA Rams or Seattle Seahawks. I know they’re in the same division. It’s tough. (Please don’t ask me why these teams)

43. Do you have any scars? Yep, mostly from burning myself on ovens. I simply get too excited for my food.

44. What do you want to be when you graduate? I...have graduated? 

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Well bestie recently said I have “lesbian hands” and I think that’s code for man hands so maybe that hahaha

46. Are you reliable? I try to be!

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be? How many more times will I watch The Darkness before I learn my lesson? (Related: When does other bestie finally admit to her fetish?)

48. Do you hold grudges? Not typically, no

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create? A dog and an otter? Can we domesticate otters? No, a horse and a large bird, create a pegasus and then free travel.

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had? Oh god. I don’t even know where to start today tbh. Damie and pokemon and cosycon and looming and feet and [redacted] and developing apps for VP. So many fantastic conversations. 

In real life, probably the time I was at a laundromat in Italy and this guy wandered in with a beer, sat next to me and my male roommate, assumed we were a couple, and proceeded to give us bizarre life advice. I wish I could remember more of it, but it was so odd.

51. Are you a good liar? Hmm I’m okay at it I think, that is, I can convince people I’m serious when I’m actually joking. But I don’t like actually lying if it’s not just teasing someone. 

52. How long could you go without talking? Probably a few days if I had to.

53. What has been you worst haircut/style? The haircut I got before studying abroad! It was too short and I was so sad.

54. Have you ever baked your own cake? For a birthday? No. For fun? Absolutely.

55. Can you do any accents other than your own? Not well, no

56. What do you like on your toast? Butter and/or honey and/or jam

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of? My beautiful depiction of a scene of chapter one of Private Dancer. 

58. What would be you dream car? An electric car of some sort. I don’t know enough about cars tbh

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain. Nope but sometimes I’ll play music and dance and maybe softly sing.

60. Do you believe in aliens? Yep! Definitely 

61. Do you often read your horoscope? Almost never unless someone sends it to me.

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? Already answered, A

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons? Dinosaurs! 🦕

64. What do you think about babies? What do I think about them? They’re pretty cool. Just tiny little humans. 

65. Freebie! Ask anything interesting you can think of. I was very nice and let you correct your mistake and submit one after the fact:

In your opinion what is the best thing you can cook, like your speciality? My favorite thing to make is pasta, I started making my own sauce and I’d love to make pasta from scratch sometime.

[mistressxfmagnetism]

my heart is gold...

WHO: Lorna Dane and Julio Richter ( @rictorscales​ ) WHEN: 7 days before [redacted] WHERE: XFI HQ, NYC Docks WHAT: A grieving, angry Lorna seeks out Rictor to help her find something to break or fight. Rictor ignores the red flags, and Lorna’s distractions end in tragedy.  WARNINGS: Violence, death, trauma, memory alteration, PTSD, bigotry, guns, suicide ideation

LORNA: It had been a week,  or almost anyway. A week since she'd run from Genosha, from her father, from Jean. From her memories and her hurricane of emotions. But the only ones to follow her had been the last two, trying to tear her apart as they did. She hadn't slept in a week, far too wired, and had barely stopped moving either. When she stopped, the grief began to undo her (youkilledheryoukilledheryoukilled--). No, far easier to keep moving, to focus on the anger she felt towards Erik for the way he'd meddled with her mind. For hiding what she'd done. For making her witness what he'd done to her step father and then erasing his guilt with her memories. 

She didn't know who could help her with any of this. But when it came to anger that threatened to burst out, and powers that could destroy when that burst happened, Lorna turned to Ric. Maybe he could help her ground herself, with that connection to the earth he seemed to understand better than others. Or maybe he'd let her be angry and not tell her enough for how furious and hurt she was with Erik. That was how Lorna found herself letting herself into XFI to find him, unlocking the door with barely a thought. It was like unlocking the memories had unlocked more of her powers too, it was too easy.

RICTOR: A few months ago, things were quieter. Rictor could feel vibrations in the back of his mind, like a movie soundtrack. It was there, but it wasn’t overpowering. You didn’t notice it until certain notes began to swell, didn’t hear it until it needed to be heard. It was different, since Genosha. He’d pulled an island from the sea and everything was louder now. He heard the lock moving without a key, heard the thump thump thump of a heart in a chest, felt the vibrations of a body moving. Everyone on Earth gave off a slightly different frequency of vibrations, and he recognized Lorna’s the moment she got close. A few months ago, that might have been all he recognized. But now…

Anger was an energy. In theory, Rictor had always known that. He had felt it surge in his chest, felt it overpower his heart, felt it burn him from the inside out. He’d never felt it in other people before, but right now? Lorna’s heart was vibrating at a frequency he knew so well. Anger was an energy, and Lorna Dane was a goddamn nuclear power plant, an instant away from an explosion. And Rictor knew how that felt. He understood that better than he’d ever understood anything else.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” He called from the couch as she walked in, twisting his position to face her. “Because I’m sure I deserve it, but Tabby’s gonna be pissed if you kill me. I told her I’d buy beer for the fridge.”

LORNA: She should've known he'd know from the second she walked in. But she was still surprised by it. "No, Ric. I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at Magneto." And Jean. And herself. But Erik bore the brunt of it.

Lorna’s head wouldn’t stop spinning, even now. Her mind kept replaying the events of that night. Of how her powers had manifested because of the argument, because she'd been so scared for her mother, so upset by the shouting. She'd crashed the plane and killed them. Only she’d not killed them both, had she? Erik had killed Arnold Dane. Those screams wouldn't leave her mind either. Even if it had not been her, was it not Lorna’s fault? Lorna had practically summoned Erik to the scene by causing such a disruption to the magnetic field with the pulse that crashed their plane in the first place.

The destruction of the block seemed to have destabilised Lorna more than she could've expected. Part of her life so fundamental to everything had been a lie, had been hidden. Her powers were on edge, all week things had been sparking and creaking around her. "He fucking--He erased my memory when I was a kid, Ric. He had some telepath put a block in my head and then left me."

RICTOR: Magneto. The way she said it caught him off guard, had him freezing in his seat because it wasn’t right. He’d never heard Lorna refer to her father as the title before, but up until now, it had been Erik. It had almost been dad, sometimes. It had never been Magneto. There was a question in his eyes as he studied her, a silent inquiry that felt too deep to say aloud. So he said something else instead. He kept his voice light, he deflected from the seriousness of her tone. “Well, if you’ve come to talk daddy issues, you picked the right guy.”

(It wasn’t the right thing to say. He knew that. But if Lorna wanted someone to say the right things, she wouldn’t have come to Rictor to begin with.)

He didn’t ask her to explain, but he knew she’d do it anyway. Rictor might not be a master detective, might not have ever really earned the P.I. title he boasted, but he knew Lorna well enough to know that she liked to offer explanation to her anger. It wasn’t something he did himself, but he understood the appeal. Giving a voice to your rage allowed it validity. Explaining why your hands shook could steady them sometimes. And Rictor had never much cared about the validity of his anger, but Lorna did. So he listened, and he let the fire in his own chest burn to match hers.

“What an asshole,” he said, and he meant it. When he was a kid and Cable had wanted inside his head, Rictor had left his team, his family behind to prevent it from happening. Erik hadn’t given Lorna the chance to do the same. He’d made a choice for her, the same way Rictor’s father had always made choices for him. He didn’t have to feign anger on Lorna’s behalf --- it was an easy thing to feel. “What are we doing about it? What do you want to do?” Erik had taken a choice away from her, and Rictor couldn’t change that. But he could offer her a new one. And that wasn’t enough, but it was something all the same.

LORNA: She caught the way Ric froze, the question in his eyes. But she didn't want to address it straight on, letting her anger speak for her choices instead. And Ric, proving exactly why she'd come to him now, didn't ask. Didn't pry. He made a quip and then waited for her to get out what she wanted to say. Despite herself, she snorted at his comment, rolling her eyes. Trust Ric.

Getting it out in the open didn't still the shaking, nor dampen the burning anger--or the lighten the crushing guilt that she was still hiding from him--but it did feel good to hear someone agree with her. Someone else call Erik an asshole, and not even try to defend him. It felt good to have someone on her side 100% in this. To assure herself that she wasn't overreacting, to quiet that little voice that said she was only angry to absolve herself of what those memories had revealed.

"I don't know. I just... Fuck, I want to break something." She wanted to fight Erik, but Jean wouldn't let her and Erik wouldn't fight back. So she had to find another avenue for it.

RICTOR: If Lorna wanted to talk things through, she wouldn’t have come to Rictor. She would have gone to Rahne, to Terry, maybe even to Monet if she was feeling particularly brave, but not Rictor. Rictor was a man so incompetent about conversations on feelings that his first - and last - attempt at therapy nearly ended in a fist fight. He was a man who’d climbed to the roof of a building and contemplated exit strategies more than once without ever making an effort to talk about any of them. If Lorna wanted to talk about what was bothering her, she wouldn’t be here.

So Rictor didn’t talk.

He studied her, waited for her to tell him why she was here, because there was some reason for it. She’d left the group chat, left Genosha, could have left him along with them and he wouldn’t have been angry. (Hurt, maybe. But for all the anger that made a home of him, he rarely felt any aimed towards Lorna Dane.) When she finally spoke, when she told him her reasons for coming to him, they made sense. She wanted to break something, and everyone knew he was good at that. So he nodded, pursing his lips and getting to his feet. “Okay,” he said, stretching his back, “so let’s break something.”

LORNA: She trusted Ric. Despite what even he would say, Lorna trusted him. She knew he wouldn't judge her, that he'd side with her, and he wouldn't run back to Erik to tell him everything. Lorna didn't want anything getting back to Erik until she was ready. Eventually she would be, she knew that already, but not yet. And Ric would understand her need to break shit. To be destructive until there was nothing left. Until even she was barely left. Until she wasn't haunted any more. If anyone wasn't going to talk her out of it, it was him.

"Great. Let's go." She waited for him to get anything he needed, heading back to the door, which opened before she even reached for it. And if her hand trembled as she caught the door handle, she wasn't going to mention it. Anger was easier than grief or guilt. "I don't care where. You pick. Just not Genosha. Preferably not too far either."

RICTOR: If there was one thing Rictor understood, it was the anger that came with grief. The first time he shook the world was when his father’s body hit the ground, when he leveled three city blocks and called it mourning. No one ever really warned you about that. They told you there were stages in grief. He’d heard that as a little kid trying to wrap his mind around the death of a mother he hardly knew, heard it in the whispers of the adults who wanted to comfort his father not because they were concerned for him but because Louis Richter was a man everyone wanted at their side. You have to let yourself go through it, one family friend had said. Let yourself go through the stages. And Rictor thought he understood that. He thought he comprehended it. He didn’t.

Grief wasn’t ticking boxes as you moved from one stage to the next. It wasn’t wrapping up denial with a pretty bow before moving on to anger. For Rictor, grief was anger. It was anger and anger and anger and nothing else. It was tearing the earth to pieces beneath him as if shaking it enough would keep his father’s body from making contact with the dirt, as if keeping the body upright kept the soul inside, as if you could do anything for someone after they’d had a bullet put through their head. It was nearly bringing a roof down on his team’s head after Rusty died, it was standing in the graveyard and feeling the still heart beneath the dirt, it was shaking the ground, the soil, the casket. Grief was anger. Rictor knew that.

And Lorna was angry.

He gave her a nod, grabbing his phone from the table and sticking it into his pocket. “I’ve got a lead on some anti-mutant pendejos nearby,” he offered. “Don’t know how many, but I’m sure there’s enough to keep us busy. And they’re nowhere near Genosha.”

LORNA: Lorna had thought she'd known grief. Grief in the black dress she'd been forced into for her parents' funeral, grief in the doctors they made her see, and the nights she cried for her mommy, not knowing why she couldn't come. But this was different. This unburied all the grief she had thought she'd grown out of, and mixed it with guilt, heavy and poisonous, until it seeped into her very being. She remembered so clearly now that feeling of strength when she'd torn the plane apart. How powerful she'd felt for a split second when her parents had stopped shouting, only to scream as her world dropped out from under her and she tumbled from the sky. She'd never gotten a chance to wrap her head around any of it. Fresh in her mind, like the memories had happened yesterday.

"Perfect. The more the merrier." Lorna was itching for a fight. And anti-mutant assholes were a fight she didn't even have to feel guilty about. She didn't have to think. Just antagonise and piss off some assholes who hated her. No complicated feelings, no conflicting emotions or thoughts. She could turn all that off. It was exactly what she wanted. "Lead the way."

RICTOR: When you were in tune with the Earth, when you were as familiar with the spin of it under your feet as you were with the beating of your own heart, you could feel certain things in the air. Rictor had learned that a long time ago, learned it with the faint hum that always emitted from Shatterstar or the heat that seemed to rise off Tabby. It wasn’t limited to things like that, of course, wasn’t limited to just the quiet additions of people’s powers shifting the air around them. There was more to it. There was always more.

You could feel grief, if you tried hard enough. You could feel trauma. The way someone’s heartbeat shifted just a little to make room for it, the way their breaths came out more hitched than they ought to. Grief wasn’t a feeling --- it was an environment. It was in the air around you, in the ground beneath your feet. And it was in Lorna now, and if Rictor were a better friend he might do something more than he did. He might make tea or cocoa or whatever liquid people used to put the world back together when they themselves weren’t held up with duct tape and chewing gum. He might have turned on a movie, might have grabbed her a blanket, might have gotten a box of tissues. He might have done a lot of things if he were anyone else, but he wasn’t. He was a man in tune with the Earth and angry all the same. He was a man who poured violence into the hole in his chest and called himself fulfilled.

He grabbed his coat.

“They’ve got a spot at the docks,” he said, already walking that way. “They’re getting organized now, you know? Probably better we take them out anyway. Nip it in the ass before it starts.” His tone was casual, easy. As if the world wasn’t closing around her, as if this were a normal day, as if grief wasn’t a weight tied to her ankle while she stood on an unstable boat. “I was gonna kill ‘em. That cool?”

LORNA: "Stop it before they hurt anyone," Lorna agreed, walking beside him. Stop them before they needed to avenge people. Ric spoke so casually, as if he noticed nothing wrong with her. She knew he was more aware than that, but smart enough not to mention it too. Not to mention the crackling storm that followed her.

But if there was ever a red flag that Lorna wasn't okay, it was the lack of reaction to Ric's proclamation of intent to kill. Only twice had she ever even attempted to kill those who attacked them for being mutants. The second had been the attack on the Underground from Enforcers. The first... she rarely spoke of. Another memory, buried where others wouldn't see it, only this one she buried herself. "Whatever. Fine." Most days she tried so hard not to kill. To only do what was necessary. Today, she didn't care.

As they approached, it wasn't hard to spot the small crowd gathering. Individually, they were all dressed in nondescript clothing, but together it made for a suspicious crowd. Too many people trying to get away unnoticed. Lorna suspected they didn't just plan to protest, but to hurt. And it fueled that spark of anger well, enough that the weight didn't hold her back. "Come on," she said, not bothering with anything like a plan. Her plan? She'd figure it out as it came.

RICTOR: She didn’t argue. Rictor voiced his plans, and Lorna didn’t argue. He knew that was a bad sign, knew it meant nothing good would come, knew it meant he ought to turn her around and march her back into XFI to settle onto the couch, but he didn’t. He didn’t do any of those things. (Rusty would have. The thought was like a knife between his ribs, settling for a beat before twisting itself up in his insides. Rusty would have made sure Lorna was okay, would have never suggested what Ric did in the first place, would have talked to her instead of this, whatever this was. Rusty would have done everything right. Sometimes, Rictor thought that was probably why he was dead.)

Rictor fell silent as they walked, afraid to speak, afraid to pop the bubble of tension between them. The walk was a silent one, the kind where their footsteps seemed to echo only for a moment before being cut off, the kind where the darkness swallowed up every noise they made. When he saw the crowd up ahead, he was relieved. This tension, this not-talking when they should have been talking, it was unfamiliar. It was a strange weight, an uncertain heaviness. But violence? A fight? Those things were etched into his bones, tucked within his marrow. This, at least, was something he knew how to do. This, at least, was something he was good at.

(It was, he thought, the only thing he was good at.)

When they got close, Rictor waited for Lorna to stop. He waited for her to come up with some plan, some battle strategy. That was never Rictor’s scene. For all the violence he’d known, none of it had ever been organized. Rictor’s brand of violence was chaotic. It was wild, limitless. It wouldn’t do well against a crowd of this size, but… Lorna didn’t have a plan. And it was another moment where he should have stopped, another beat where he should have turned them around, but he didn’t. (He’d hate himself for that later. He’d hate himself for so many things later.) 

“All right,” he agreed with a shrug. “Let’s kick some ass.” The ground rumbled. Surprise, too, was not a thing Rictor did well.

LORNA: As they walked, it was like pushing everything down. Instead of tears, instead of guilt, she found strength and anger. The silence only helped. She didn't want to stop and think, knowing that if she did she'd only find reasons not to continue. Rictor wouldn't stop her unless she suggested it, it seemed, so she wasn't going to. Forget thinking; she'd spent a week overthinking everything.

The gathered humans looked up when the ground rumbled, destroying any hope of a surprise attack. Oh well, Lorna wasn't about to back down now. "I heard y'all are looking for mutants. Lucky you, you found them. Unluckily for you, you found us." She was far more used to keeping her balance as the ground shook than they were by the looks of things. But they recovered quickly, their shock turning to anger and anticipation. Perfect. Lorna smiled wryly, her hands glowing green as she hovered half a foot off the ground.

"Do your worst," she dared them. Half of them pulled weapons immediately, making Lorna laugh. So much metal. "Don't know know who I am? Or did you not expect someone like this?" In an instant, their weapons were pulled from their hands, turning towards them instead. But she hesitated before she could kill them. Because despite the lack of fight she'd put up against Ric's plan, she didn't want to. A flash of her mother's dead body rang in her mind before she tossed the weapons into the water.

RICTOR: There were more of them than he thought there’d be. That should have surprised him, but it didn’t. Rictor had learned a long time ago that there were numbers in hate, that nothing attracted a crowd faster than the promise of someone bleeding, that everyone preferred it when the person bleeding didn’t look like them. Genosha wasn’t a solution to the oppression mutants faced. It wasn’t a cure-all. It was a band-aid on a gaping wound, a quick patch-job on a mortal injury. Nothing drew people together quite like a common enemy, and no one made a better common enemy than a group of people not like you who lived on an island out of sight.

In place of surprise, perhaps he should have felt apprehension. There were more of them than he thought there’d be, and he didn’t have to be shocked by that but maybe he should have been hesitant. Maybe he should have taken a breath, taken a step back. He didn’t do that, either. They could handle it, he told himself, him and Lorna. They could handle it.

(He heard Guido’s voice in the back of his mind, low and gravelly and as close to gentle as Guido knew how to be. You ever hear of suicide by cop? The words echoed, bounced around in his head, and he wondered if there was a term for this, too. He wondered if there was a phrase that summed up his tendency to throw himself into death’s grip and be disappointed when he slipped through her fingers.)

The crowd noticed them quickly, but Rictor had known they would. He wasn’t subtle, and Lorna wasn’t in the right frame of mind to try to force him into that box. He didn’t flinch when the guns came out, didn’t look away, and the weapons were ripped from their hands in an instant. The weapons were gone, sinking into the ocean, swimming with the fishes, and Rictor snorted lightly. A few of the men charged forward, and he waved a hand. The ground rippled beneath their feet, rising up like an ocean wave. “She’s got the skies, I’ve got the ground. And you guys have jack shit.”

He could have told them to run, could have turned it into some kind of lesson. Stop being bigots, or picking on someone your own size means not picking on anyone bigger than you, either, maybe. It was what Scott or Jean would’ve done, what Rusty would’ve done, what Lorna would’ve done on any day but today. It wasn’t what Rictor did. It wasn’t who Rictor was. “So, do you guys like metal or rock? For, like, death. Not music.”

LORNA: They could handle it. Lorna knew they were outnumbered, and by a lot, but she didn't care. She could pull planes from the sky, tear them to pieces, at just three years old. These humans, these men--and they were almost all men--wouldn't touch her. Just off the ground as she was, Ric's powers didn't affect her as they did their attackers, leaving her to laugh as they were knocked off their feet.

But her laughter stopped quickly at Ric's comment. Metal or rock? For, like, death. Metal, like Arthur, pierced by the metal Erik controlled? Or rock like Suzanna, who hit the ground without a parachute? Or was Suzanna's death metal as well, the tearing of the plane under her feet? Lorna felt sick, blinking hard to push the images from her mind. Now was not the time. She couldn't afford to let it distract her, to consume her as it had threatened to do all week. Aside from one conversation with Scott, Lorna hadn't even begun to process it. But she couldn't allow that now.

She steeled her features, but her momentary distraction had allowed one opportunistic human to get closer than she intended. Lorna was quick to respond, beginning to summon a nearby discarded fixture to push the human back, but not quick enough. Before her projectile hit, he swung a wooden plank at her head. Lorna's feet hit the ground as she stumbled, her head spinning. She could feel blood there, but it wasn't enough to have her down and out yet. Pushing back to her feet, she scowled. The man who'd attacked her was down, having been hit half a second after he'd managed to hit her, but Lorna had plenty of others who seemed encouraged by the first blow.

RICTOR: Do you have to make everything a fight? It was something his cousin had asked him once, tired and irritated and disappointed, because those were the emotions Rictor had always been the best at drawing from the people around him. He couldn’t remember the specifics of the context now --- some argument with his father that had gone farther than he’d meant for it to, some petty disagreement that had become a war --- but he remembered those words. He remembered the way they drew a strangled laugh from his throat, the way he’d leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed, feigning indifference instead of heartache. Everything’s already a fight, he’d replied. I’m just the only guy smart enough to see it.

That was still true. Other people, people like the X-Men, they figured things could be solved with peaceful discussions and bloodless wars, but Rictor knew better. You couldn’t talk someone into seeing you as a person. You couldn’t convince someone to love you. Rictor knew now, just like he’d known as a kid in Mexico, that it was always a fight. You just had to be smart enough to throw the first punch.

So he did. He shook the ground, invited the men on it to come to him. And he lost himself, in the fight. There was one man, then two, then three. Enough to keep him focused. Enough to keep him entertained. Rictor was having fun. He usually did, when there was violence. 

(And he didn’t see Lorna’s hesitation. He didn’t see the way she faltered on the battlefield. He didn’t see the enemy landing punches. There was a fight. There was always a fight. But Rictor had a bad habit of focusing on the wrong one.)

LORNA: Her head pounded more than her heart right now. If the man who'd hit her hadn't been hit hard enough to knock him out by the metal fixture, she would've hit him again. But as it was, she pushed the nausea--and the desire for revenge for that pain--aside to deal with the rest of them. You're still thinking small, though. Scrap is easy for your opponent to see, easy to predict... Erik's voice echoed in her mind, making her lip curl. But he was right. She was thinking small. You could tear a plane to pieces. There's metal all around you. Use it. The voice still sounded like Erik, mostly. But at the same time it sounded like her. She knew what he'd felt when he'd killed her step-father, that righteous, murderous anger. The knowledge that it'd be so easy, that she held the power in her fingers. Had she not felt that anger and want to do something powerful just minutes before that in the plane?

Lorna pushed it aside. Instead, she pulled a fence, using it to shove three men to the water, and wrap the next two who tried up tight. She didn't kill them--she couldn't bring herself to. Until she heard one of the hurl insults at her. Echoing words she'd heard so many times, pushing and pushing and pushing her closer towards the edge of that cliff she had always danced on. People so often saw her as a hero, as a leader, as good. They didn't know how close that edge was. How similar she could be to the worst sides of her father if she wanted. Or that she feared that she might not just become angry or cruel, she might just break.

She stalked towards the man, reveling in the way his confident anger turned to genuine fear. That satisfaction seemed to fuel her. Especially as she finally finally tapped into that power Erik kept trying to tell her to use. Metal could be whatever shape she wanted. And she wanted something sharp. Only when she held it to the man's chest, threatening to push it through him, she heard screams. Her own. Her step father's. Her mother's. Lorna hesitated again, stumbling as her breath caught in her throat. There was no time for this. No time for memories overwhelming her. But the memories didn't care. They'd waited twenty years to be heard, to be seen. They wouldn't leave her alone.

Lorna dropped the metal, closing her eyes for just a moment. All she could hear was those screams, and the salt of the water around them was replaced with smoke in her lungs. She gasped, trying to force it from her mind. But in those precious seconds, one human saw his chance. He still had a gun, one he hadn't pulled on Lorna initially and so hadn't ended up in the water. Lorna felt it when he fired, but too late. Half a second, quarter of a second, but too late nonetheless. As her eyes opened, it tore through her chest. Pain erupted as blood blossomed onto her shirt. The force of it pushed her back, knocking her from the docks. As she fell, her powers--trying in vain to stop the projectile that had already hit--pulsed outwards. A wave of electromagnetic energy shocked through their surroundings, rippling the water and destroying electronics in her range. Echoes of it spread far and wide to those who knew what to look for. Perhaps as far as Genosha. But none of it could stop what had already been done. Lorna gasped for air as she hit the water, aware only of the cold for a moment before everything went dark.

RICTOR: When he was a kid in Mexico, Rictor remembered playing in the streets with his cousins. He remembered the lot of them taking two fingers and a thumb, shaping them into guns and pointing them at one another amidst giggles and squeals. He remembered his father watching from the window, a furrow in his brow that Rictor hadn’t understood then, a concern he hadn’t recognized. He’d been so small, barely old enough to move from the title of baby to that of toddler, and his father hadn’t yet started putting the pressure to take over the family business on his shoulders. He’d had a few years yet, even if he hadn’t known it then. The memories were hazy, hard to grasp, coming in bits and pieces. Flashes of the laughter, flashes of his father’s face, and a conversation remembered only in fractions. ’It isn’t a game, Julio.’ His father’s voice, stern and serious as it had always been. ’These things aren’t a game.’

Rictor should have listened to him, back then. He should have taken those words to heart. Even if nothing else his father said was true, that still was. Violence wasn’t a game. War wasn’t a hobby. It was cold and it was bitter and it was unforgiving and Rictor was good at it, but there would always be someone better. No matter what.

But he got cocky. He got arrogant, got reckless. He was so in the fight, so in his own head, that he didn’t recognize anything outside of it until the vibrations changed. A gun firing was a distinctive thing. The way the trigger acted as a catalyst, the way the firing pin shot forward and set off an explosion so small that most people didn’t know it happened at all. The way the gunpowder ignited, the way the pressure changed to force the bullet out of its casing. Those things didn’t happen with two thumbs and a finger, but with the real deal? It all went very quickly. Everything happened at once.

It was close by, close enough that he knew it could only be coming from one place. A trigger released. The dominoes fell. Rictor was a kid in Mexico watching his father hit the ground. He was a directionless twentysomething seeing Rusty fall from across the battlefield. He was a hanged man turning just in time to see a muzzle flash and blood spreading across a shirt, splattering out onto the tips of green hair. It was all happening at once, and for a moment ---

For a moment, the world stopped, and all Rictor could think about was the stupid magic eight ball his uncle bought him when he was eight years old. He remembered his cousin, a few years older and already so deep within the family business that there was no hope of any way out, furiously jealous that Rictor got a toy that was not a gun, bitter that Rictor got something to play with that wasn’t designed to hurt anyone. He remembered the way he’d slammed the plastic ball against the wall hoping it might shatter, remembered his own relief when the ball seemed unharmed at first. It was only when he tried shaking it that he realized the dice inside had gotten stuck somehow, realized it wouldn’t move off the same side, realized it answered every question with the same reply. Ask again later. No matter how hard he shook it, the dice stayed where it was. Ask again later, ask again later, ask again later.

The world was frozen, but it wasn’t because he was moving it. The whole damn planet was shaking furious and desperate and looking for an answer and those three words were burned into the inside of his eyelids even now, impossible to get away from. What had happened? How had they gotten here? How had they gone from having it under control to this in such a short amount of time? Why did tragedy always happen all at once?

Ask again later, ask again later, ask again later, ask again later, ask again - 

The world stilled all at once, and Rictor realized, belatedly, that he was the only one still moving. The protestors left standing were on the ground now, blood pouring from their eyes, their ears, their noses, and it occurred to him that it wasn’t just the world he was shaking, but them too. Their insides, their outsides, everything that made them them. None of them were breathing, none of their hearts were beating and ---

And neither was Lorna’s.

He felt sick at the realization, felt her in the water and understood that she’d already been in there too long. He should have jumped in immediately, should have stopped the gun from firing, should have saved his father, should have saved Rusty, should have saved her.

The distance between him and the edge of the dock disappeared before he knew he’d moved, and water rushed around his ears before it registered that he’d jumped in. ’You’re dissociating.’ That therapist’s voice in his head, just as smug now as it had been in the one session he’d sat through. ’Separating yourself from the trauma. Is that something you do often?’ He pushed it aside, eyes burning with salt water as he swam down, down, down. There was red in the water. There was green, too. Like traffic lights giving off opposing signals, signs telling him stop and go at the same time. His fingers found skin, and he gripped her tightly without knowing what he was holding, swam to the surface with all the strength he had in him. Later, he wouldn’t know how he’d pulled her back onto the dock. He didn’t think it mattered much.

They were out of the water, and her skin was still warm. That meant she hadn’t been in there long, he figured. But her heart was still in her chest, heavy like a stone, and Rictor fought to keep his mind here and not in the graveyard outside Xavier’s years ago, when he’d felt Rusty in his coffin, felt his heart unmoving in his chest, felt helpless in every way. His throat ached in that ‘about-to-cry’ kind of way, or maybe in the ‘already-crying’ kind. It was hard to tell, hard to concentrate on anything except for the fact that she wasn’t breathing and her heart wasn’t beating and ---

Another memory. Illyana -- no, Darkchylde, looming a few feet in front of him. I’ll pop your heart like a fucking balloon. Stopping a heart was easy. He’d just done it on the docks, done it to twenty odd men at once without even trying, without thinking.

Wasn’t starting one the same idea?

Rictor closed his eyes, clenched them shut so tightly it hurt a little, concentrated on that still, unmoving rock that was settled inside her chest. He concentrated on his own heart, racing and nervous but beating. He put a hand on her chest, and it wasn’t necessary but it was a comfort. A security blanket, a way of easing his mind. He focused on his heart beating, on hers laying still until --- 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound was deafening. Rictor fell backwards, choked on a sob as he landed on his back in a puddle that might have been water or blood or both. He let himself go still for a moment, a quick, shared heartbeat, and then dragged himself to his feet again.

She was dying. She was still dying. He started her heart, but he couldn’t keep it going indefinitely. He couldn’t keep it beating if there was no blood for it to pump through her veins. And there was only one place to take her.

He could see the lights across the ocean, and there were no ferries this late. It wouldn’t have mattered if there were, wouldn’t have made a difference because Rictor carrying a bleeding, unconscious woman onto a boat would raise too many questions and waste too much time. Steeling himself, he scooped her up into his arms and walked towards the dock, stiff and uncertain. A foot hovered over the ocean, and he could feel the earth beneath the water. He called it up to meet him, and there was a stepping stone of dry land.

He put another foot forward, and there was another.

Closing his eyes, Rictor nodded to himself. He could do this. He could. It was just one foot in front of the other and a soundtrack of two beating hearts.

He ran.

LORNA: Her world went dark. But there was a few moments before it ended. Before her heart stopped, as water filled her lungs. As blood soaked her shirt as much as the water did. And those moments stretched into eternity. Anger, finally, bled away, leaving her only with grief and sorrow. Leaving her only with the pain she had tried to escape, that ached worse than the bullet that lodged itself in her chest. Regrets bubbled up with the final gasps of air escaping her lungs. Leaving as she had, refusing to return even for the holidays she had so looked forward to (their first on Genosha), holding so tight to her anger as her shield.

All she could feel was pain. And yet, she still heard screams. Still smelt smoke. Tasted metal in her mouth. Was that the plane she'd torn apart, or her blood? Were those whimpers of fear from her step-father or the men she'd towered over as she gained only satisfaction from their fear? Anger was easier than grief, than guilt, than tears. But it made her reckless. She'd always been prone to recklessness. Episodes of feeling untouchable. But it was just that; a feeling. The pain was fading now, and Lorna regretted that she had left her family on such an angry note. Now that the anger left her as her heart beat did, what was she left with?

She didn't expect to feel anything else. Did not expect the pain to come rushing back like she'd been shot again, as air forced water to spill from her lungs, from her mouth. (She should've expected more of Ric. People underestimated him, but he'd just saved her from her own destruction.) Light filled her world again, but only for a moment, before pain eclipsed it, pulling her back under with an echo of the first pulse, rippling out across the water as she sank back into darkness and oblivion.

[one-true-houselight]

It’s me, doing stand up!

I cut out the spelling of my name for privacy reasons. Also, the bit that’s cut off the the end is just me saying that I never went skiing again, and that now I just do safe things, like trying to enter the adult job market. 

Transcript under the cut, and if you are so inclined, my Ko-Fi is in my bio. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I am Erika, and tonight I will be performing All Star by Smash Mouth.

I’m kidding, no one would want to hear that. I cannot sing.

(from the crowd: I would!)

(laughter) You don’t want to hear me sing, I promise you.

Alright! Hi! In actuality, I am Erika (last name, pronounced ko-kek), and you’re like ‘ooh, we get a last name now, a mystery, and you’re like it’s an interesting last name too!’ That’s probably because you’ve never seen it spelled out. Let me walk you through my last name (ko-kek), alright, are you ready for this, are you ready: [redacted spelling]. Yeah! Four Ks! That’s a lot of Ks, and they’re in a real strange order. If you- if you noticed, uh, it’s the same set of four letters twice, it’s [redacted spelling] but you may have also noticed that’s not how it’s pronounced! Cuz you know, that would make sense. This is apparently from, like, changes in immigration, that you know happen, which, this is according to my uncle. But my grandfather, who lived in the Netherlands in the 40s (yeah, those 40s), pronounces it like Ko-Kek, so I’m inclined to believe him.

Now, having a weird last name in school is always kind of a crazy existence, though I will say, most of the time when people are like ‘oh, that’s a weird last name’, it’s because people are racist, or at the very least are being like  ‘oh, I’m gonna put Western Expectations on things that shouldn’t have them’, but as you see, my last name, is Dutch, as I mentioned, and Dutch white people, which I am one of, have done some incredibly awful things, so I don’t feel bad mocking it. So we continue on. So, this, so with my last name in roll call, we could change my last name to [silence] and it would sound the same. Let me, let me walk you through…Let me walk you through a roll call, so like the teacher’s up here, and they’re like ‘Alright, let’s see…we have Ferris Beuller? Oh you showed up, very good, alright. Harry Potter? Oh, you didn’t die, that’s fantastic. And then, Erika…[long silence]. And I’m just over here like ‘oh yeah that’s me, hi.’ Now sometimes, I like to speed it up, and rather than say here or present or anything, I’ll just say my last name (Ko-kek) to like, speed up the conversation so it’s not like, uh, Erika, long pause, here, oh, how do you pronounce that?, Ko-kek, it just speeds up the process. So, I’ll go, they’ll go Erika… and I’ll say (Ko-kek). The problem is they’ll get confused sometimes. They’ll look at me and they’ll go ‘Oh, is that here in Dutch?’ No. But you did your best.

And not only does my last name have enough Ks to stop a substitute teacher dead in their tracks, my first name? Erika? Also with a K. My sibling is Kat with a K, my mother is Karolyn with a K, though that’s not her fault, she kind of like, came into it and was like ‘oh, I guess this works out’. And my father…is Doug. But, but, he has a middle name that’s very strange and has a K in it so it all works out, it’s fine. So, if you’re ever like reading something, and you’re looking at it and you’re like ‘huh, there should be a K in this word’, it probably wasn’t a typo, my family just needed to name another child and just like, stole it.

So, I do have to say I’m Erika with a K a lot, because most people will assume it’s with a C. Or, more recently, two Ks. Which is kind of fun, but it’s also at the same time like ‘I’m drowning in Ks, please don’t give me more!’ But no, so I say Erika with a K a lot, which means I realized something really really cool. That rhymes with Erika with a They! These are the puns the queer community was built upon.

I do use they/them pronouns, and I even wear a little tag for it, it’s right here, it’s very nice. Um, and, it’s just kind of weird sometimes, because people will sometimes not use my pronouns, which kinda makes me sad. But I’ve realized something. I was just assuming they were reading the tag and just being rude about it. But recently, I’ve realized that they’re just not reading the tag. The way I’ve realized this is I’ll be like, walking through Target, and someone will be, like, looking around, and they’ll see me and they’ll see the tag and go ‘A ha! A worker!’ And they’ll be like ‘Do you know where the towels are?’ And this is very strange for me, mostly because I know where the towels are. So I’ll go ‘Ok, they’re over there in that corner, but I don’t work here, please.’ And, and they’re like ‘Oh, I just assumed you did because of your name tag.’ Now there’s a couple of problems with that. My ‘name tag’, as they put it, doesn’t have a name on it, which means they clearly didn’t read it. The other big problem with it is that most stores or places of business have a sense of decorum, or at least consistency in their design. My tag, on the other hand, while I love it very much, how do I put this, it doesn’t look good. It looks like if an eight year old magpie with attention issues made it at summer camp. This is basically how the making of my tag went: I’m was just sitting there and I’m like ‘Alright, I’m gonna put five shiny things on it. Wonderful, wonderful, this random piece of gaff tape? That has to go on, that’s, like, that’s key to the whole pronoun tag process. Now, for the words. And I start writing, I’m like ‘they/them and-’ oh my god. What if I could fit more shiny things on it? I’m still writing, I don’t know what I’m writing at this point, it doesn’t look good. Oh, I could put more shiny things on it, maybe I could like, steal a rock and somehow affix that to it…And then I look down and I’m like ‘oh, I finished the words, guess I’m gonna just put it on my shirt!’ And it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. So, a lot of people don’t read the tag, but a lot of people do, and I have a lot of wonderful friends and family who support me very much.

Though, being openly trans can be, can get a little confusing sometimes. Sometimes I’ll tell stories about being in the Girl Scouts, and be like ‘Ha, that’s funny for obvious reasons!’ and people will be like, ‘oh, it’s the girl thing!’, and I’ll be like ‘no!’. Because the Girl Scouts are actually super cool about trans girls and non binary kids, which we appreciate very much, especially because it gives us a very good reason to buy Girl Scout cookies, beyond just buying something to fill the hole in your heart.

Crowd: support the gays!

Exactly! But no, the weird part about it for me is the scout part. Let me tell you a story. So one time when I was sixteen years old, I was a camp counselor for a bunch of small children, and we went to a playground one time. So I’m wandering around, like you do, like making sure the children don’t like, die, and I see two girls sitting under a tree, and they’re doing the whole, like,  ‘rub two sticks together to start a fire’ thing. So I go ‘I’m gonna wander over and see how they’re doing’, and I’m like ‘How’re you doing, kids?’ And they look at me and they’re like ‘Erika? Why do you rub two sticks together to start a fire?’ and I’m like ‘Well, that’s a very interesting question, so you see, there’s a fire triangle, and the fire triangle has heat, fuel, and oxygen, and you have to have all three because fire is just adding oxygen-‘ And I just go on this like, five minute tangent about, like, talking about the science of fire, and you’re probably sitting there thinking like. Erika, explaining how fire works is like, the most scout thing you can do, and normally I would agree with you. Except. I talked for five minutes about the ins and outs of fire science, and neglected to mention fire safety. So I realize this, and I’m like ‘oh no, I’m going to start a wildfire by proxy’, so I just start yelling fire safety tips with absolutely no context. So I’m like, ‘You need a bucket of sand!’, I didn’t tell them why they needed the sand, I just said you needed one, and I’m like ‘build a circle of rocks on the ground!’, and they’re just gonna do that and go ‘I can build fires for the rest of my life, perfect!’ And then I’m sitting there, so like, another counselor is walking behind me like ‘two minutes left’, I’m like ‘Oh no, I have two minutes to like, save my entire town’, and I’m like ‘You should probably have an adult present’, and then I realize I probably should have mentioned that first, and I was like, ‘alright, just imagine I said adult present first, and just, and then put everything else, remember everything else, but remember adult first, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.’ So, luckily, my town has not had any reports of wildfires. But suffice it to say, I am not exactly scout material.

I am going to finish out the night by telling you a story from my scouting days. I was about eight years old, and we went on a ski trip. Now, let me tell you a little thing about eight year old Erika. You may have noticed that up here as a 20 year old, I’m a little bit lanky, my limbs do weird things as I run about the stage like an excited golden retriever. But see, I’m like, at a controllable lanky now. When I was eight, I was just gangly. My limbs just changed like, lengths every day, sometimes by multiple feet. So I’d be like, walking along, and I’d like just, kick a doorway, or like I’d be sitting and raising my hand, you know how like, you sometimes hit your hand on your desk, and you did it like, once a month? I did it twice a day. And people would be like, ‘Erika why do you keep hitting your hand on the desk?’ and I’m like ‘Cause my hand wasn’t there before! It was over here, I don’t know what’s happening!’ It was like I was living in a world of cartoon physics that I didn’t have control over. So I’m just like, ‘I guess I’m walking and my arms over here now, great!’ So my scouting troop looked at this, and was like ‘you know I think would be a great idea to do to this tiny, eight year old, whatever this is? We’re gonna stick a piece of wood, long, skinny, really slippery piece of wood on each of their feet, and then we’re gonna push them down a mountain.’ So, uh, you can probably tell where this story is going.

So, we get to the mountain, and I have my skis, we had to like, wait in a really long line, and I’m like, ‘oh, I’m so excited to go skiing’. So I’m walking around and I’m like, ‘alright, this is very exciting’, I see there’s a ski lesson about to start, and I’m like ‘I should probably do that because I want to make sure I know what’s going on’, so if you’ve never been skiing before, here’s what a skiing lesson is. You have a large group of people that want to learn how to ski, and you have a very excited person ready to tell you about skiing. So, you all go with them, you walk sideways up the mountain because you know, whatever. And the person, the very enthusiastic person, tells you a lot of really good skiing tips, and I, an eight year old with undiagnosed ADHD, sat there, and uh, kind of cycled between looking at the person, watching their mouth move, and having my audio processing like, on the ski lift, OR, I would be watching them, and a skier would go by, and I would watch the skier and be like, ‘oh, maybe I can pick up some tips from the skier’, absolutely ignoring the person that’s just giving me the tips for free. So I did not pick up a lot of good ski tips, but I did pick up one, and this is, this is, I will always remember this. He was like ‘alright, if you’re going down the mountain, and you want to slow down or stop, you make a triangle with your skis.’ And so I was like ‘alright, I’ve got it. I make a triangle with my skis to go slow, great, fantastic.’ So then, I’m like, ‘alright. I know everything there is to know about skiing. It is time to get started.’

So the first time I fell a lot, which, you know, of course you fall a lot, it’s you first time, and like, who knows what skiing is. The second time I also fell a lot and you know, I’m still getting the hang of it. Third time, also fell a lot, but you know, it’s fine. I’m just going to like, skip to the end, because I fell most of the times. It was less of me skiing down the mountain, and more of me just falling over and over again until I reached the bottom. But then, the last run of the day, I’m like ‘alright, I’m gonna do this’, I get about three quarters of the way down the mountain and I haven’t fallen once. And I’m just sitting there like ‘oh my god, I’m the skiing master. Oh my god, I’m gonna go to the Olympics. It’s gonna be great.’ So I am, I’m going down the mountain and, if don’t know if you know this about physics, because I wasn’t stopping and starting by just falling down constantly, I actually picked up a little bit of speed, which was really nice. But at this point, I was going a little bit faster than I intended to go, and I was like, ‘Huh. I kind of want to slow down now’, so I go into the little card catalogue that is my mind and I’m like ‘a ha! Triangle equals slow! Perfect!’ So I, I look down at my skis because I want to make sure I’m doing it right,  and I’m like ‘alright, ready, here we go. Triangle.’ And nothing happened. Now the problem with this is, is that I was eight, and didn’t have critical thinking skills. So I looked at this situation, and I said, ‘huh. This triangle is not working. But it’s the only thing I know about skiing, and since I am a skiing master and know everything, this can be the only solution.’ So I double down on the triangle.

Now here’s the thing. I tell this story a lot, and one time I was telling it and I got to this part, and my friend looked at me and said the following: ‘You were doing the wrong kind of triangle!’ Which is a baffling thing to have yelled at you. So I was sitting there like ‘what are you ta- Was I doing an isosceles? Should I have been doing a scalene? Like, did you want me to yell the pythagorean theorem at it? I don’t know what you’re telling me!’ So she could not explain it, so we moved on. So then I told this story again, and another set of friends was like ‘Erika. She meant you had to do a triangle like this.’ And I was like, ‘oh, because that would actually stop the, oooooh.’ So now, twelve years after this story happened, I now know how to ski. So that’s cool, but back to me being eight years old.

At this point, I am going even faster than before, somehow, going much faster than any eight year old pile of limbs should ever be going, and I go ‘this is bad, I can no longer, uh, control which direction I’m going’, which is bad because I’m heading right for a circle of snowboarders. And so I’m I’m, I’m like, trying to turn and I can’t and I’m like ‘oh no’, so I just kind of look up at them, because I am approaching them at quite a speed, and I just start screaming, ‘HEY! YOU GOTTA MOVE! I CAN’T STEER!’ So they look up at just this banshee shriek from up the mountain, and they go, ‘huh. we should move,’ and they do, as well as they can, because they only have one piece of wood instead of the two that I was privileged to have. But they manage to make it out of the way, and I don’t hit anyone, and I continue down the mountain.

At this point, I literally, like, sit down on my skis and dig my hands into the snow in an attempt to stop myself, which works slightly better than the triangle, which isn’t saying much. So at this point, I have basically reached the bottom of the mountain, and I have reached, and at the bottom of the mountain there was a straight-away, and at the end of the straight-away there was a barrier of snow. Now the barrier of snow was about one, one and a half feet. The straight-away…I’m not really good with distances, but it was at least two feet, we’ll go with that. So I reach the straight-away, and I look up for this at least two foot distance. And I see this barrier of snow and I’m like ‘Ah. Here’s where my journey will come to an end.’

So I’m heading down this straight-away, I’m slowly slowing down, but I’m still going at quite a speed, and I’m like, ‘oh, it’ll be a little bit of an impact, but it’ll be fine.’ So here’s what happens. Here’s the barrier of snow, here’s me, here I go. Wheeeeee. And I hit the barrier of snow. And I go up and I go over it into the super secret special hill that they don’t show anyone, because it’s covered in bushes, and rocks, and leads to the parking lot.

So, at this point, I am now somersaulting down the hill, you know, fun times, and I’m grabbing bushes, I am desperately trying to like, not die, and at this point, I decide, I’m like ‘you know what would be a good, you know what would be good at this time? A flashback of my life.’ So my life flashes before my eyes, and it finishes I’m like ‘huh. That didn’t last as long as I thought it would.’ So I’m tumbling, and I’m just like ‘I’m gonna die! It’s fine!’ So I reach the bottom, and I kind of sit there and I take stock of everything, and I look around and I’m like, ‘Hey. I’m alive. I just wasted a life flashback, do you know how expensive that it?’ So I’m sitting there, and then I realize something. I realize that in my current state I cannot move because all of my limbs that change size all the time are tangled together. And I can’t get out of my limbs because my arm is so that like, I would have to hook it around my foot, but my foot is currently eight feet long because there’s a ski attached to it. So I’m-You know those like, Cracker Barrel things, the like, little metal puzzles that you play with for five minutes then give up because you want to play the peg game? I looked like one of those.

So I go into my mental autopsy, which you know, all eight year olds with anxiety have, and I go ‘we’re gonna just change the cause of death to…starvation.’ Which was very very silly, of course, because I would of died of thirst before I died of starvation. So I’m laying there, waiting for my eventual fate, and I look up into the parking lot I landed next to, and I see two guys walking towards me. And I go ‘huh. Interesting,’ and I go back to my mental autopsy, and I recross out starvation, and write ‘murdered in the snow, while tangled in my own limbs.’ So I’m just like, ‘there’s nothing I can do’, so I just kind of look at them, and they’re looking at me.

Luckily for me though, they were just coming over to help, because from their perspective, they had just seen a screaming ball of just, extremities, shoot over the barrier, tumble down a mountain, and then just lie there motionless for a while. So they walk over, and they’re very nice, they help me out of my skis, and they’re like ‘Do you, do you need to go into the lodge?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.’ So I, so they walk me into the lodge and we find my mother who’s there, hello, hi mom, and, and she’s like ‘what happened?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know.’

[k3nb]

Ky...

REBLOGS ENCOURAGED    BUT    PLEASE DO NOT REPOST.    PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE.

The way you used to say my name.

“Ky…”

I have not thought of you in weeks. But suddenly, in the middle of the night, musing blankly under the warm spray of the shower, I could hear your voice in my ear again.

“Ky…”

It was soft and sweet, and pouty and concerned, and sad and pleading, and all the different ways you used to say my name.

“Ky… Please don’t do this.”

“I have to.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’ll get over it.”

And that was a cold thing to say, but weakness was never a trait I liked to display. And emotion was a thing I struggled to express unless in written words such as this one. But you knew. I knew you knew.

“Describe me in 5 words.”

“Hmm…you never run out of things to say.”

“Yeah, I am rather chatty.”

“You’re sweet-”

“Sweet? I am not sweet. I fight you all the time.”

“You don’t see it but you’re a sweet person.”

And I knew right then that you knew me. That you understood my core personality and that everything I left unsaid did not need to be voiced. I was comfortable enough with the fact that you could easily read through my contradictions.

Heart on my sleeve.

Icy heart tucked away behind giant metal doors.

Because human beings are more complex than we can explain and I knew I was both. When was I truly telling the truth? Sometimes I didn’t even know myself. But you’d figure it out easily. Because you knew me.

“Babe.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?”

You laugh and I feel the urge to reach across the phone line and hit you over the head. And no matter how many times I tell you off for flirting with me, you do it anyway and it pisses me off because don’t you know how dangerous this is?

“Ky…”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Oh my god. Stop it.”

“What?”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You’re also stupid.”

“Did you want me to prove it to you?”

And I fall silent and I hastily redact my statement because what if you did try to prove it to me? And what if you succeeded? Then we can no longer dance around the topic. Then I’d have to acknowledge it. Then it would be real. And we would be over. We would lose what we have. I would lose you. Do you not know how much I rely on you?

“Ja…you know how sometimes I like to listen to horror stories to sleep?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you read me one, please?”

And you complied. It started as a random idea. For years willing myself to sleep has been a challenge but your voice is calming and soothing and just like that I’m fast asleep and it works like magic so pretty soon I always call you when I’m struggling to sleep.

“Psst.”

“Hm?”

“Read me a story. Please.”

“One second.”

“Okay.”

“Okay send me that link again.”

“Where are you right now?”

“In my boss’ office. He’s not in right now.”

“You’re going to get fired.”

“No, I’m not. What story did you want me to read?”

And I smile because it’s the middle of the day on your end in the middle of work and I can hear your coworkers’ voices muffled as they chat on the other side of the door, but you always make time for me even if it were something as silly as reading me a bedtime story. I laugh at your pronunciation as you start and you shush me and tell me to close my eyes and I do and the next thing I know I open my eyes and hours have passed and the line is dead. Why was the line dead? I missed you. Why was I feeling this way?

“Ja…”

“Hm?”

“Don’t sleep yet.” Don’t go.

“Okay.”

“I’m saying don’t sleep yet.” I’m lonely.

“Mm-hm.”

“You’re falling asleep.” Don’t leave me.

“No, I’m not.”

“I’m going to be annoying on purpose. Will you get annoyed?” Tell me what a selfish pain in the ass I’m being right now and that I should give you your rest.

“No.”

“…are you sure?” That’s not what I said. Are you challenging me?

“Yes.”

“Ja.”

“Yes?”

“Ja.”

“Hm?”

“Am I annoying yet?”

“No.”

“Ja.” Why are you so patient with me?

This was getting dangerous, I could tell. But you were there for me when I needed you and I was there for you when you needed me and when despair hits, as life sometimes likes to throw at people, we always helped each other through it.

“Ja…are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“Talk to me.”

“I don’t feel good enough.”

“We all don’t feel good enough. Doesn’t mean we aren’t.”

And remember that one time you woke up to me sobbing and your raspy just-woke-up voice called out to me in that familiar way you say my name?

“Ky?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My grandfather just died.”

“…shit.”

And you didn’t say a thing when I tried to pull myself together and pretended to be strong because I am strong and I am not weak and that’s what I do - pretend. Even when I’m breaking inside. You didn’t call me out. You let me pretend but you never failed to let me know that you were there for me when I was ready to stop struggling to hold the pieces together and just let it fall apart.

“Ja.”

“What?”

“Okay seriously, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“It is not nothing. You’ve been giving me attitude since earlier and I don’t understand so you better communicate. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I swear to god, man, you are stressing me out and you know I do not like to be stressed. Talk to me.”

“I was jealous.”

And oh, that was a pleasant surprise. But I did not skip a beat. My voice remained continuous and stern belaying that I wasn’t fazed at all. But if you could have seen my face, half red and half grinning and why was I feeling this way? This was dangerous.

“Look, I can’t be friends with you anymore.”

“Ky…no.”

“I’m getting too reliant on you and I feel like I’m taking advantage of you and I’m starting to become selfish.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Did you not just hear me? I’m taking advantage of you. And I’m becoming selfish.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do.”

“Ky…”

“So look we can’t be friends anymore, okay?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’ll get over it. I’m sorry.”

“Well, just know that whenever you need me, you can just call.”

“I will not be calling again.”

And my heart twisted in knots but my voice remained steady, if not rushed because I cannot show weakness even when it is killing me inside. Even when I know I want you. And the weeks following were the hardest because do you know how hard it is to sleep alone after having had someone? And how it’s twice as hard willing myself to sleep after knowing the peace that brought slumber that only your voice could give me?

It wasn’t the stories that lulled me to sleep it was your soothing voice. And there were nights I was so close to just picking the phone up and calling you. Wanting to say those familiar lines, “Read me a story,” But I survived. I knew I did the right thing by letting you go. Letting you return to the life you had before our lives collided. And I have not spoken to you since.

Do you know how much I miss you? Because you were also one of my best friends. You knew me and you were there for me and you understood me. You were one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

But you were in love with me.

And I was starting to fall in love with you.

And I couldn’t have that.

And I lost a best friend in the process.

Why are the sweetest people the most dangerous ones?

[robustcornhusk]

wondering why i get more harassment than i used to; awareness of other people

there’s too many other factors - moved from suburbs of a mediumish city in the southeast to university to big city on the west coast, went from driving everywhere to a shut-in to walking&transit, went from being bigger and tougher than (others in my reference class) to smaller and weaker than (others in my reference class), changes in how i dress, from unaware of others to hyperaware (at least compared to my old self, and compared to some of the people around me)... 

and i know that i get less of it than other people

(it is made certain that i am aware of this)

... holy fuck, do i get way more street harassment and weirdness now than i did when we all thought i was a girl. dirty looks and comments, when alone (slurs, “is that a man or a woman?”, ...) and and my partner (”y’all’re cute!” at best, “abomination” and worse, five minute long monologues about how it’s clear that we’re “soulmates”); people follow me, even into restaurants and stores, and grab me and don’t let go even when i start screaming; physically assaulted on the subway with bruising that lasted for weeks.

(nonpublic, more anonymous...contributing to a similar erosion of safety: the building i lived in broken into more than half a dozen times in a year.)

(once in high school, i bumped into someone. they got upset, put their hands on my chest, shoved me hard-"holy shit, you’re a girl! I’m sorry.” and ran the other way.)

a double-edged sword: be vigilant at all times, because if you don’t pay attention for a second, you’ll get got; being vigilant means being aware of the 99% of insults that would never escalate and wouldn’t have ever hurt you if you had just been unaware

it feels like... around 21, 4 years ago, i suddenly became very aware (but that’s not quite the right word) of other people (became suddenly aware that my models of other people were incomplete, unhelpful, needed to be developed further). suddenly, but over a period of months. multiple factors: living with housemates (not alone, roommates, family), later stages of brain development, i tried [redacted] many times that year, had a lot of free time (dropped all my classes, wasn’t working). 

i think it’s around then, too, i started to have issues being in some public places. fine: airports, walking through crowded places, friends, places where i knew what to do and was interested in it like movie theatres or climbing gyms. not fine: crowded places where i didn’t know what i was supposed to be doing or couldn’t focus on what i was supposed to be doing and if i thought it would be visible that i didn’t know and that i wouldn’t be able to leave: classes i’d missed, standing-room events like book readings or concerts, long flights, ...

and i can’t remember, fully, if these things bothered me before. i think less. i can’t tell, to what extent, it’s 1) i was bothered by these things before or 2) i was not bothered by these things before and A) the problems i have identified now are new and B) the problems i have identified are old.

it’s definitely that some of these i was okay with when younger (planes? i love flying! concerts? hell yeah) and some, not so much (inexplicably went from Excited to I WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET OUT of group trip to [place i was very interested in] as a middle school student, and in retrospect i wonder than my sudden anxiety is related to this...).

i guess two years ago was when the Emotional Labor thing became... a big thing? and at first i followed it with great interest. now... when it comes up, i flinch. i feel like i’m not doing enough, like i can never do enough. i was raised to do this, but i failed at it; i am perceived as someone who was not raised to do it.

it feels sometimes like i am being hit with both at once by people around me: you were raised to do this, so do it, but you’re perceived as someone who isn’t expected to do this, so any annoyance you feel doesn’t count. anyway, you’re trans! you were never really a woman, you weren’t really raised as a girl, so it’s fine, right? this is fair.

i can’t tell to what extent this is actually implied or stated and to what extent my brain is making demons.

the person who brings this up most often now... it’s frustrating to me because they talk about how it really opened their eyes, made them want to work to keep the shared space nice, ... ostensibly, i cook, they clean. in practice, i cook and clean up half as i go; they clean up half the remaining; i come back at 10, see it unfinished, see them not present, and clean it myself. later they tell me “I was going to get that!”. when i leave it at 10, i come in the next morning and find it still undone.

(”The feminist hope for equality was that images of femininity would become more realistic, more self-affirming, more attainable, not that images of men become as equally destructive and insane. The fact that that's the kind of equality we're moving towards is even scarier, and has to have destructive effects on our psyches”)

i don’t know, right? they have some of the same brain problems as i do. it took 20 years of concerted, painful effort from others and me to get me to be a clean person who gives a shit about their surroundings. if it takes that much effort, maybe it’s not a good thing to try to get other people to meet this standard. maybe it’s bad.

and on the other hand, our kitchens and bathrooms have ants and this person has watched me spend hours this week cleaning our kitchen and their bathroom, left the room when i started delegating tasks to people (”We’re just going to grab [cookies], we’ll be back in a bit,” they said, walking down the hall, talking to our other housemate for half an hour, finally leaving, coming back 1.5 hours after they said they were leaving... after I’d already cleaned all of it up.)

the last couple of nights, i had dreams of ants in my bed, crawling on me.

i saw it suggested once: an autistic programmer explained that it appeared that sexism in tech affected her much less than allistic women, because she wasn’t aware of it. she was enthusiastic about a project; in backchannels people talked shit about her doing it, but because she was unaware of social cues, she was never emotionally affected by it: she wrote the code, she shipped it. 

i know that, being aware of what other people might be thinking, doing, planning, i’m less likely to accidentally step on literal or metaphorical toes. it’s exhausting and it keeps being exhausting. for everyone, it’s probably better that i keep doing it. but ... 

[613526362]

Bags

I was just sitting. And then I started crying. And then I started kind of grunting and acting like I was going to fight the air. I've been totally blown the last 48 hours. I don't even remember how long ago my last shift was. I just remember these bullshit fries fucked me up bad. I told fucking Fuckeria that this restaurant got 2/5 stars so why the fuck are we ordering from it. She didn't seem to get it. I swear to god I have Hepatitis A and E now. I feel really weak, but I don't know how much of it is psychological. These shifts do affect me. They do. But it's hard to tell exactly how. I fucked up and scheduled three shifts in a week the week after step. But I'll never do more than two shifts in a week after that. I can't. I can't. Let's start. I walk up to him. God he must be two feet taller than me. I'm so glad they hire security guards based on are you huge and black here. He's reaching out a hand to me, but before I do, I reach my free hand out and grab the badge on the lanyard on his shirt, turning it around so I can see your credentials. "You work here, right?" I say. He laughs, then I hand the bag of weed to him in my gloved hand. This is the second time tonight I had to go searching for the security supervisor to hand over a large bag of marijuana. The first time was much worse, because the bag was much bigger, and I had to walk out in the patient waiting room, where some of the dudes made some comments and looked at me like they'd like to maybe roll me over real quick and decide their ailment was healed (Jesus) and head out with the weed bag I was sporting. I mean, I don't know weed values. But based on the looks on their face. I was holding a fucking Maserati. Redacted It was a bad night, the second night. Real bad. I was completely, utterly exhausted seven hours into the 12 hour shift. That's the main thing I don't like about this job. No eight hour shifts anymore. I got blood on my scrubs. But that's why I paid $30 for a custom screen print t shirt with my hospital's logo - so I could take off my scrub top if necessary and still be in uniform!!! (Dweeby white dude smile real big type of intonation) So I took my top off and the blood had soaked through to my undershirt. Obvious. Red. Blood. On my fucking expensive custom made organic cotton t shirt. So I put a patient label over the bloody streak and walked around with a patient's date of birth and ID number stuck to my shirt for a while. Looked better than the blood. I was doing some point of care at some point on a trauma, and I heard one deputy walk by another and casually ask, "What's the call so far?" The deputy sitting watching over some patient in custody casually replied, "Just 10 civilians so far." I had to think about that. Then it really hit me. Holy fuck. They're discussing how bad of a night it is. And, Either 1. It's not a bad night because only 10 people got shot Or 2. It's not a bad night because only "civilians" (meaning not law enforcement) have been shot Or 1 and 2? Well 7 of those motherfuckers showed up to Mog ER. I took five of them since I was assigned trauma side. I don't remember if the stab to the neck and hand was counted in those 7. I lost count of how many I had. The upper echelon of the surgical team was down in the ER for hours. That doesn't happen often. I was with the stab victim doing something and his transexual friend or brother or whatever was in the room and I realized he'd been there for hours and looked really young and. "Do you have any parents." "Yeah." "Are they going to come visit you?" "They have to get up for work in the morning." "How old are you?" "19" I just paused, kind of just kept doing what I was doing. I didn't know what else to say. I just said, "It's The Big City." That wasn't the right thing to say. But that's what I said. Redacted The night before wasn't as bad in some ways. Not many traumas. Just this fat old dude who was just shitting blood nonstop. The smell I will never forget. Reminded me of when I was a kid and we had parvo cases in my dad's vet ER. I was watching the resident (University of I'mTheBest) try and do a central line, he couldn't even figure out what fucking needle to use and I had to explain to him that the line probably wouldn't fit through that other needle and I would need to get him a new kit. I mean, I don't fucking do central lines, but all these doctors come from fraternities and sororities and going out for late night pizza and not from medicine. They come from universities and lives of privilege and middle class and rich ass parents with swimming pools out back, and then they don't know how to use any kind of needle or any kind of catheter. Jesus. You should have gone to fucking EMT school instead of studying so hard for chemistry. Oh wait, then you wouldn't be here fucking up this central line. Then he poked himself. I mean, I couldn't make this shit up. I said, "I'll get you some new gloves and an alcohol pad, and you can clean off your hand. You're lucky he's low risk for everything. Just a nice old white man. I'm sure his liver values were fine, right?" "Yeah. But I'll go ahead and finish the procedure." "Okay man, whatever you want." I saw the blood slowly spreading out under his glove. He didn't poke himself bad, but the needles are super fucking sharp,a dn all you need to do is graze yourself. He went on and on, and couldnt get the introducer needle into the internal jugular. Finally, Dr. Staff came over. Super sharp doc. She gives these medical students hell, in a very respectful and professional way. Actually, she's uncomfortably respectful and professional. Black lady. Maybe didn't come from privilege. Actually, she probably did. The statistics say she did. She looked at what he was doing, informed him he was probably accidentally in the aorta, and then looked at his glove. Uh oh, moment of truth. "You've got blood -n your glove." Okay University of I'mGod's best, did she say "in" or "on" your glove? Does she know. "Yeah, I got things a bit bloody here. Must be in the aorta." "No, I said you've got blood IN your glove. Did you poke yourself?" Oh fuck. You fucked it man. You really fucking should have listened to the guy in the tech scrubs. Bitch. Then Dr. Staff tells the guy in the tech scrubs to hold pressure on the aorta (unbelievable, I actually wound up putting on the sterile gloves I'd brought for Resident FuckAttitude) for a minute while he left and did something else. I saw her casually inform the triage nurse we had a exposure and the resident would need labs drawn. Redacted The weirdest part of the night was when a security guard disappeared. We were all stumped. I mean DISAPPEARED. Poof. His cell phone and radio were sitting at his post. He was gone. For hours. POOF MOTHER FUCKER. I said, "Does he smoke." "Yeah he does." "Well that's it man. He went out for a smoke and got killed. He's dead." You don't go out into the jungle at night. But my explanation of things was a bit flawed in that some other security bitch who was close to the door didn't see him go out. They searched the hospital for hours looking for him. Couldn't find him. It's a big hospital. Lots of open doors. Lots of floors. An old hospital. I was about to check the roof when he turned up. Said he fell asleep on the toilet in a bathroom. Guess he was working a double shift. Anything else I need to include. Well, I guess my feelings did get a bit hurt. I walked into the room and my patient had white shit all over his nose and was sniffing and licking his hand and shit. I was like, "What the hell are you doing man. Where did you get that shit." We took all his clothes from him hours ago. No, really, where did he get that shit. I started to tell the nurse, and she was just like, "Tell the doctor." The doctor and PA came over and into the room. He'd cleaned up his face a bit better since I was last in there and tried to lie to the doctor at first, but I wasn't having it. "You had heroin man, where did you get that. You had white stuff all over your face when I came in." Then he admitted to it. I left as he explained things to the doctor. I didn't even know heroin came in powder form a few days ago. I'm learning fast though. They say it comes in little bags. They call them bags. How many bags a day do you do, they say. I guess he had a bag in his mouth for a while.

[grizzlefur]

WWEm - Grindr Mahal

Transmission date: Monday 20/Tuesday 21 February 2017

Racing to catch up with reality like Mark Henry on his Royal Rumble scooter, this is TUESDAY AFTERNOON RAW! .

we open with an in memoriam for george the animal steele .

with the hairiest back in heaven .

i had forgotten he'd died .

something something news cycle .

and we open the show proper with a recap of the beautiful insanity that was the festival of friendship

.

looking back, i never realised before how adept chris is at holding a clipboard and a mic at the same time .

transferable skills right there .

my god, this video is long .

it's basically a 1:1 replay of the whole segment .

and now we hit the sad part .

and my soul weeps inside me .

finally getting to the actual show .

and we open on kevin sitting in the middle of the ring in a spotlight .

either about to explain himself to us or do his slam poetry set .

both of which i would watch .

the crowd is proper pissed .

i don't know where we are, but it doesn't matter, because everyone on earth is angry at kevin right now .

he's sitting backwards on a steel chair and wearing a suit and tie .

but the shirt is grey, so not full corporate yet .

but he will so be hhh in twenty years .

i'll be honest, i look forward to the future of wrestling, when people like kevin are our elder statesmen .

but yeah, basically the gist of this promo is 'goldberg ain't shit' .

delivered in the tone of a man who's bascially just doing his podcast .

funnily enough, the man knows how to talk about wrestling .

he's leaning on the fact that he can outlast the length of a goldberg squash .

"I know how to play the game better than anyone else" .

oh hey, remind you of anyone .

i totally made that connection first .

just sayin .

kevin says superheroes don't exist .

where's shane helms when you need him .

"And as far as Chris Jericho goes..." *drops mic, leaves* .

brutal .

that was a shit-hot promo all round .

oh yeah, we're in the staples center .

i know this, because i had friends in the crowd .

later we have show/braun, announced by cole having a small seizure midway through the word 'behemoths'

.

but next we have ceshearo v enzo and cass for the tag contendership .

after a replay of the tag debacle two weeks ago .

seriously, do we just have a lot of time to fill on this episode .

i mean, i know it's raw, but still .

cut the recaps, you could fit another cruiserweight match in .

so yeah, whoever wins this gets a title shot at fastlane .

cesaro and sheamus continue to just have fantastic chemistry .

enter enzo, wearing the worst hippy shirt seen in decades .

(also cass is there) .

enzo steals a fan's cuppa haters sign .

whoever is holding up a DELETE ROMAN sign right in the middle of hardcam is truly a hero of our time .

corey threatens to retire if enzo wins a title .

cass does a shit-ugly slam on sheamus, nobody is quite sure how to get out of it, cue botchamania chants .

cesaro starts mocking enzo's shtick, cole manages to accidentally call them 'bizarro and sheamus' .

a line i would totally have already used if i'd thought of it .

cesaro and sheamus are using an arsenal of cool duble-team moves to beat the shit out of everyone, corey is loving it more than anyone .

accidentally calls cesaro by his real name, gives up on the line he was trying for .

how can a match be this good and also this much botchamania fuel .

case in point, possibly the best double springboard crossbody i've ever seen .

corey: "Enzo, like a gnat, ruining everything." .

enzo annoys cesaro out of a sharpshooter attempt, east river crossing for the pin .

booooooo .

oh, and enzo's got his mic back for a post-match rant .

interrupted by sheamus punching him in the goddamn face .

frankly, a reasonable reaction to enzo amore .

oh wait, that was a kick .

also totally excusable .

thank you sheamus chants begin, i can't argue .

but now, kevin is backstage .

he's leaving because fuck this noise, mick chases him like dude you can't just leave you have a match with sami zayn .

kevin's like yeah cool i can injure him too .

like that's ever kept him down .

video package of how great braun strowman is .

followed by one about how great bayley actually is .

and the announcers trying to build hype about strowman/show .

pointing out that they're having to reinforce the ring .

which i'm guessing means that'll be our main event and they will kill the ring .

finally getting back to the actual show, charlotte is demanding bayley retroactively take the dq win last week and give her the belt back .

she will address this later .

but now we're backstage with mick, roman, and his stupid topknot .

confirming that brig showman is going to be the main event .

and WE HAD TO FORTIFY THE RING HINT HINT .

but here are gallows and anderson to antagonise roman .

mick offers them a tag match, roman says fuck you i'll do it alone because ONE AGAINST ALL BIG DOG OOOOOOOOO .

but now, in more interesting news, cruiserweightery .

enter a man with a plan, looking even more pissed than usual .

recap of the amazing kendrick/tozawa NOPE moment from last week .

so they've got a match now .

i've onyl just noticed tozawa's entrance consists of casually jumping from the outside while walking to land with one knee on the apron in one fluid motion .

as if i needed more reasons to love the man .

brian offers a handshake, then starts coldcocking akira before the bell .

does the captain's hook for a while, then grabs his jacket and flag and leaves .

booooooo again .

according to cole, this all started because tozawa didn't want to be kendrick's mentor .

next we have roman v gallzzzzzzzzzzz .

*snort* .

but first, charly and her boob window shirt ask brian about his nefarious deeds .

he gives a brief rant that basically boils down do I'M BRIAN FUCKING KENDRICK .

as do many of his speeches .

and apparently coldcocking your opponent while asking for a handshake and then choking them out is a lesson in respect .

because that makes perfect sense in the wrestling world .

but yeah, now we have roman/glanderbros .

because apparently that's what i'm calling them today .

hey, i've got to have something to keep me amused .

karl still hasn't got the hang of the backwards belt thing .

in other notes of wrestling realism, why the fuck does gallows have a shirt over his shirt .

and anderson's switched to tights with their logo and a bunch of other shit on, and they're really unattractively busy .

meanwhile, in less fashion-show-based news, there is a match going on .

and that's about the best i can say about it .

it is certainly an event that is occurring .

and then roman acquired a chair and starting beating them up with it .

dq, match is over, BIG DOG HOOOOO .

is roman even a face these days .

who knows .

gallows and anderson try to fight back, roman spears them both .

the announcers treat all these actions as a+ babyface .

sure, whatever .

let's mention reinforcing the ring again .

well, it's better than the bit where i was honestly worrying they were going to give roman a mic .

but instead, let's have a recap of kevin publically flogging goldberg with his beautiful canadian second-language words .

according to byron, kevin threatening to injure sami was 'cryptic' .

that is not what that word means .

up next, new day v rusev and jinder .

i thought that feud was over, but hey disappointment .

apparently the new day are going to be our hosts for mania .

because it's an event that needs hosts .

oh wait, i don't give a shit .

it means we can fill some of the 1700 hours it'll last with new day shenanigans .

making it more watchable than mania 32, i guess .

lana does a speech in russian before introducing the dashing rusev and that guy, and while my russian is p terrible, her accent and stress patterns are all over the place .

it's almost like she isn't actually [REDACTED STATE SECRET] .

but who cares, here are the new day .

so that big e can feed crowd members and xavier can talk about upupdowndown, SXSW and their attempts to get into the new lion king

.

and IIIIIIIIICE CREEEEEEEEEAM .

i still have no idea what's going on with the ice cream thing .

but i still can't get behind it until they offer a range of new day sorbet as well .

which they'd probably call sorbae or something .

kofi has a moment for continuity and explayins that yes, bo ripped the blueprints up, but the new day handiuly have photographic memories and made encrypted digital copies .

but lana has a copy .

which big e explains by being like hey, she's russian .

boom, topical .

in other news, what in the everloving shitfuck is going on .

but now we have wrestling, so things make slightly more sense .

apparently jinder is calling himself 'hardbody mahal' now .

waiting for him to gain his phantom of the opera mask .

big e starts grinding over jinder, comes perilously close to doing a crotch chop .

so there goes that wrestlemania hosting thing .

insert your own grindr mahal jokes .

kofi does big e's horrible suicide dive, xavier uses francesca ii turbo to scare lana into dropping her ipad, then rips it apart screaming like hulk hogan .

and meanwhile, midnight hour on jinder for the pin .

replays have shown that lana's scare reaction was horribly mistimed, and kofi actually did a slightly different horrible dive to the outside to land on his neck .

so that segment's over .

if it ever happened, and i didn't just change my painkillers .

neville/gallagher contract signing next, but first, a video package about why we all loved george the animal steele .

with testimonials from such luminaries of the industry as kevin hart and wcw champion david arquette .

but yeah, now we have the contact thing .

austin and his banana are here, as is jack .

and the sacrificial table has a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits, because of course it does .

although those look like langues de chats .

not very british .

where are your rich teas .

neville stomps in, signs the paper, leaves .

jack stops him like come on while you're here we could have a cuppa .

TEA AND BISCUITS *clap clap clapclapclap* .

actual chant that just happened .

neville is just like dude are you actually mad you are an embarrassing stereotype .

cue awful impression of jack's RP accent .

neville literally just accused him of being a stereotype and not really existing .

and says that he represents the real streets of england .

living as i do in england, i can confirm th*hit in the head by a flying geordie goblin* .

jack is taking the opportunity to school him in being a gentleman .

neville flips the table, breaks the good china, gets up in jack's face .

and so, naturally, gets chinned to within an inch of his life .

tries to get back at him, gets countered with william iii .

side note: i am 99.9% sure there was nothing in that teapot .

could have at least put some fake tea in there .

so...whiskey? .

in any case, now we have nia jax .

who continues to be unlike most girls .

and also sarah pearce, who has helpfully come wearing hi-vis gear so the medics can find her easily .

i guess since braun's having the main event, nia gets to have the squash match .

and that match literally lasted less time than it took me to type that hi-vis gear crack .

but now here's power girl (or possibly charly?) to ask nia about her opinion on the bayley/charlotte controversy .

she's of the opinion that the only problem with that situation is that she wasn't there to murder them all .

puts the champion on notice, take a shot as you stalk out of the arena .

time for black history month segment, this time about obama .

who...also hasn't been to mania? .

i honestly don't know .

but fuck it, is he doing anything in april .

the new day should totally have him guesting .

dammit, all these clips of obama being competent are dialling up my nostalgia .

but now, here comes bayley .

hugging random runners, as is her deal .

so good seeing her entrance with the title .

fuck it, i will never not love bayley's entrance .

ever since seing it live, i can confim that it is just the embodiment of happiness .

aww, her belt side plates have the little miss hugs logo on .

huge you deserve it chants start, bayley's like hey stop it guys i have a whole thing to do before i can cry .

apparently her friends as kids in california wanted to be a dental hygienist, a tattoo artist, and britney spears .

sure, go for it .

follow your dreams, californian 90s kids .

her dad is here tonight apparently, but fucked if the camera knows where he is .

like 80% of this promo is just bayley getting adorably choked up .

like thanks guys making me cry in front of my dad .

she gives her answer to charlotte's rants, which is basically 'fuck it, i'm the champ' .

and enter the commissioner .

for nefarious reasons, no doubt .

opens by talking up her match, followed by oh hey but it's a shame you almost lost and had to have someone else hand you a questionable victory .

she's like are you prepared to throw away all your moral principles and unimpeachable goodness to hold a belt you didn't actually earn .

such supervillain .

it's so weird hearing steph mcmahon talk up principles and idealism .

bayley tearfully takes off the belt and weighs the decision, but enter sasha .

to which steph is like gdi sasha let bayley do things on her own and stop treating her like a kid .

the angel and devil on bayley's shoulders are played here by sasha banks and stephanie mcmahon .

i know mine are .

sasha appeals to the common man to get bayley to keep her belt .

which steph is framing as her trying to get bayley to keep the belt so she can beat her .

ooooooh .

bayley's agreeing with steph .

never a good sign .

does a whole speech about how steph's probably right in a lot of ways, then just goes FUCK IT I WON THAT MATCH THIS IS MY BELT .

+12 chaotic good alignment points .

and now, here comes charlotte to browbeat her some more .

and to apologise to steph for these women being mean to her .

and invoke her rematch at fastlane .

so sasha challenges her for a match right now .

apparently her knee's ok .

steph's like fuck it why not .

so we've got that now .

with bayley on announce .

and charlotte promises to permanently put sasha in a wheelchair .

which i'm fairly sure steph would be against .

sasha tries a single leg takedown, charlotte just goes yeah ok and lands with her knee on sasha's head .

ouch .

charlotte appears to have taken serious exception to sasha's face tonight .

she'll be wearing the nose mask next week .

psychosomatic nose damage jokes aside, it's so good seeing charlotte/sasha matches again

.

dana tries to run in, bayley at the announce table is perfectly placed to catch her and fuck her up .

meanwhile in the ring, backstabber to bank statement for the tap .

other things that are nice to see: sasha winning things .

and now for the next hall of fame announcement .

it's ddp .

how much of his acceptance speech is going to be about yoga, i wonder .

this whole segment is full of clips where they've clumsily edited out every mention of wcw .

the fuck .

that is a trademark you own .

the hall of fame stuff is still using the not galaxy quest at all no sir music .

now power girl interviews sami about the fact that he totally warned jericho about the fact that this was going to happen .

sami's like no, i'm just sad to be right about that tool .

and apparently knowing kevin means he knows samoa joe .

they are different people .

protip .

sami is fired the fuck up tonight .

so yes, now we have kevin/sami round #NUM! .

but first, yet more festival of friendship video .

but at least this one's edited down some .

and sami barely has time to skank off the stage before samoa joe totally unexpectedly blindsides him .

beats all the piss out of him while kevin watches from the ring like sure, whatever .

running senton from samoa joe on the floor .

ouch .

seriously .

and then shouts some more and throws sami into the ring to feed the wild canadian .

ref tries to call off the match, sami does his usual thing of being your mate who's downed eight pints and four shots of sambuca but is still fine to walk home seriously guys totally fine totally

.

so unsurprisingly, kevin murders him .

with even more aggression than usual .

but sami is still totally fine to keep fighting guys seriously i'm good just a lil woozy i'll walk it off i can fight el ligero in an hour .

tale of the tape slide for bag strow, aka 'we have nothing else to fill your screen with at this time' .

and another in memoriam .

this time for ivan koloff .

sigh .

next, the brockberg interview, but first, mick and stephanie argue .

steph like where were you when those women were disrespecting me .

mick's just like well, tbh i was enjoying it .

the animosity here just continues to intensify .

mick blames steph for seth missing another mania .

and he's just like yeah, i know this is career suicide, fuck the police .

so steph literally does the careful how you go i wouldn't want you to have an accident thing .

because the mcmahons are just the wrestling mafia when they want to be .

but yeah, now cole interviews brock and paul, in a room made of curtains that are red on both sides and that contains no pieces of arbitrary furniture .

well thank fuck for that .

paul (and possibly brock, who knows) is pissed that owens/goldberg is happening and people think it might be better than brockberg

.

brock steals cole's chair so he can use it to stare into the camera while paul cuts a promo on goldberg and kevin over his shoulder .

it's kind of disconcerting .

and in other news, the fuck did i just type .

what the fuck happens on this show .

wrestles, everybody .

seriously, this is going on for far too long and i'm uncomfortable STOP LOOKING AT ME .

oh thank christ, he did .

but now we have a bunch of ring crew tightening up and reinforcing the ring .

i can't imagine what this could possibly be foreshadowing .

after all this, if it doesn't happen, it's not so much that they've pulled an unexpected twist as just shitty writing .

i know, shitty writing on raw, whatever next .

next week we have goldberg doing a thing, and seth giving an interview .

possibly from roman's featureless void again .

i have no idea what the quality of this match will be .

fuck, cole, stop reminding us that they've reinforced the ring .

jesus, looking at these two next to each other, it's like looper or something .

can anyone confirm or deny that big show has been sent back in time to fuck up his younger self .

it's taken one tie-up to elicit this is awesome .

really, angelenos? .

more impressively, braun just did a kipup .

huh .

just had to giggle because they have the tapout logo on the replay screen, and they just had cole shouting "That's an AMAZING clothesline!" over it .

yes, i am easily amused .

but hey, if i wasn't, you couldn't get me to sit through half of this shit .

corey compares this to godzilla vs mothra, then corrects that to ghidorah as he realises how utterly un-mothlike both of these men are .

to simulate this match, take two large steaks, drop them on top of each other, and stamp on them while shouting HWUGH .

loooooooong spot where they try and suplex each other .

show gets to do it in the end .

braun gets up almost immediately, proceeds to not give a shit while the announcers talk about how much damage it did .

show's getting some decent offence in, but blowing up like fuck .

as he does so well .

braun gets chokeslammed, kicks out at 2 because fuck that i'm braun strowman .

oh my god this match is so slow .

like, some of that might be coming across, but seriously guys .

i will never complain about slow superplex setups again after seeing that one .

strowman jumps from the second rope, show catches him with a ko punch, braun kicks out at 2 because fuck your magic fist i'm braun strowman .

show goes for a second rope splash, braun does a shitty clumsy counter into a shitty clumsy running powerslam, show kicks out at 2 because we have sinned and must endure this bullshit .

braun takes down his straps, picks up show, nearly falls over, and hits an even shittier powerslam for the pin .

thank fuck that's over .

*hits roman's music* .

FUCK .

superman punches braun, goes for a spear, but braun catches him with a dropkick because fuck gravity i'm braun strowman .

and then powerslam to end this whole messy affair .

and fade on him stalking out of the ring in search of his next prey .

welp .

that episode happened .

and didn't contain any update on the emma situation, which disappoints me .

so, in the spirit of trying to temper said disappointment with the fact that bray wyatt has a title belt, let's roll straight on into some TUESDAY EVENING SMACKDOWN! .

opening with recaps of bray being awesome, so i'm straight in with that .

happiness returns .

and randy pledging his fealty .

i'd forgotten that particular weird-ass ending .

apparently announced on talking smack, tonight we have a battle royal for the title contendership at mania .

because randy is straight refusing to fight .

so like four weeks after the rumble, that cena/orton main event no longer features cena or orton .

and i'm ok with this .

we're kicking off in the arena with bryan, who will presumably try and clear up this whole weird situation .

leading into it with a thing about the twists on the road to wrestlemania .

doesn't point at the sign, which is frankly a missed opportunity .

so he introduces...naomi? .

huh .

that is not the way i saw this going .

she entrs with a conspicuous lack of dancing and a massive knee brace .

fuck .

knee injuries are 2017's shoulder injuries .

and now it's her turn to get choked up at you deserve it chants .

and now the student has become the master, as daniel bryan asks someone with an injury to relinquish their belt .

no chants are deafening .

she's taking the opportunity to do a speech beforehand .

calls him bryan, which is technically breaking kayfabe, but fuck it, everyone's emotional and total divas has blurred that line .

acknowledges that giving up the belt probably means missing mania, points at the sign, and gives him the belt .

and many tears were shed .

at least she gets to do a speech and threaten the division for when she gets back instead of just getting quietly sidelined .

alexa enters while naomi's still going up the ramp, just in case we needed to hate her more .

and gets on the mic to laugh at naomi and build up some phenomenal heel heat .

she's magnanimously offering to resolve this whole sticky situation by taking her belt back .

and also responding to crowd chants without sounding stupid .

which is a skill .

bliss is p great on the mic .

but we knew that .

bryan's like hmm well yes i suppose it would make sense to give it back to you .

BUT FUCK THAT .

so he's giving her a chance to win it back in a match right now .

with becky .

because we all knew that was coming .

i guess it makes sense, given that these two form 100% of all former champions .

i'm guessing becky's taking it back, since we had plans for a face champ and god damn it we're gonna use them .

but frankly, whichever way this goes, i'mma enjoy the match .

i can't really see these two having a match i don't .

jbl heckling otunga for his commentary having factual inaccuracies when he's a lawyer .

seemingly not understanding that these are different jobs .

and now jbl's claiming that there's a conspiracy between irish people and 'people who live up near bigfoot' .

i can't tell if that's racist or just the incomprehensible ravings of a man whose daily scripts are constructed out of those magnetic words you put on fridges

.

except the fridge is in a tornado

alexa messes up the ring skirt, then hits becky in the throat while the ref's fixing it for the pin .

welp, guess i should stop trying to call matches .

mickie appears to celebrate with her evil apprentice .

and either point out alexa being a two-time champion or flick the v's at becky .

hard to tell .

mickie tries to run in for a post-match beating on becky, gets kicked a lot .

so there's that at least .

and now we get dean doing a vignette about his worldview from what might be the back room in a disused aquarium or a toilet cubicle or something .

and he has a picture of baron corbin blutacked to the wall? .

and now kalisto, from in front of a climbing wall .

and the miz, halfway through getting his makeup touched up .

this is the start of a series from all 10 of the people in the battle royal .

miz lists all his films with barely a breath .

it's almost like the man can learn lines .

side note: one of the people in this battle royal is luke harper .

so i wonder who could be heading into a big match with bray wyatt .

ooh yeah, later tonight we get nikki/nattie fca .

on which, renee collars nattie in a loading dock or something .

natalya describes nikki as "grown in a lab for Instagram likes" .

which is the best line she's had in living memory .

and shoos renee away, because heel .

but now we have american alpha v the fashion police, because sure why not .

one day we'll have a narrative in the smackdown tag division .

but it is not this day .

breezango blindside alpha as they come into the ring, stamp on jj for a while before the bell .

unlikely to help, but hey .

you take the opportunities you find .

anyone else remember when tyler breeze had a singles career? .

alpha quickly kill fandango with a huge electric chair bulldog, so here come the usos through the crowd to have a massive rant about being bros and having nothing to lose while wearing hoodies, baseball caps and bandanas because have we leaned on the gang signifiers enough

.

jimmy claims chad isn't able to sleep because he has "little hairs standing behind his neck" .

which i heard as 'hares', and fuck but i love that image .

jey takes off his hoodie, and he's wearing a bunch of chains, because of course .

so hey, let's roll straight into a black history month segment about jackie robinson .

fucking hell, wwe .

i swear you couldn't be this racially tonedeaf if you tried .

but at the same time, please don't try .

talking smack tonight is with becky, the usos, and...aj? .

he has not had anything happen tonigoht .

will this change .

aj's vignette is him walking backstage and terrorising production crew .

dolph is standing in front of a bad graphic of his logo, which he then kicks down .

mojo is in the training room, because THAT'S WHERE HE LIVES BRO .

and fully 50% of his words were 'wrestlemania' .

luke's in his lightbulb room, talking about how he's going to kill bray .

and now, nikki bella .

is not in the battle royal .

she's being interviewed by renee .

and she's planning to fuck nattie up .

which i think is kind of expected in an fca match, tbh .

reasons we love mauro ranallo: he just fit "seething cauldron of enmity" into wrestling commentary .

but before we have the match, let's have a bunch of recap videos, brought to you by something something chicken something .

nattie's got new gear, now with even more black and straps .

looks kind of like off-brand psylocke cosplay .

nikki kicks off proceedings with a spear and a nasty facebuster, then goes for a table .

nattie taunts the crowd by putting it away .

but nikki manages to procure a kendo stick from nowhere .

wrestling has led me to believe that every live venue in the world has a secret stash of furniture and kendo equipment .

they've ended up out in the crowd .

nattie goes for a suplex off the outside barricade, it backfires .

shocker .

nikki teases a moonsault, then just jumps off and kicks her in the head on the way down .

brings her back to the ring while checking if she's okay enormously loudly .

nattie gets the kendo stick, then throws it away and strips the announce table .

while blatantly disrespecting jbl's sacred hat .

and otunga stands directly in front of the steadicam guy .

jesus fuck, david .

nikki tries to powerbomb nattie into the announce table, only succeeds in geting humped in the face a bunch .

pg-13, guys .

and then alabama slams her onto it and goes for a pin on the table .

nice moment there .

this match is going back and forth so much i have no clue where they're going with it .

nattie suplexes nikki on the ramp, and throws her into some tech crates .

and now we're backstage, with production staff, tech crates and a handy stretcher .

nattie throws nikki through a random curtain into maryse (nice), nikki throws nattie headfirst through a mirror .

this is bonkers .

we head back, nattie goes for a sharpshooter, nikki reverses into a fearless lock, maryse breaks it up by beating nikki with a stick, miz drags her away kicking and screaming, and nattie gets the pin .

the fuck did i just watch .

i have no idea, but i enjoyed it immensely .

and now they're leaning on the fact that maryse hit nikki in the knee with a pipe .

is she ok .

so i'm guessing that's where the angle is going .

who knows, maybe maryse'll wrestle one day .

brief video about ddp getting hall of famed, but next we have the battle royal .

still some vignettes to go .

baron gets one about how he likes hurting people and breaking things, delivered from the random alley he hangs out in .

apollo's in the locker room, because fuck being interesting, i'm apollo crews .

and he's in this to fuck dolph up .

and...randy? .

you're not in this match .

bray is here to tell randy how he's earnt all of abigail's wisdom, and to promise to sacrifice whoever wins this at mania .

which, fuck it, we'll have been watching the show for three months at that point, do what you like .

here comes cena, who didn't get a vignette? .

presumably because it'd just be JAWWWWWWWWN CEEEEEEEEEENAAAAAAAA .

dolph, apollo kalisto and mojo got to enter in the ad break, because fuck those guys .

and then we play jack doing an incredibly well-spoken advert for 205 over dolph as well .

here come baron and EXTREME CLOSEUPS OF WOOD .

oh wait, it's harper .

miz is back to his solo entrance, presumably because maryse is in protective custody .

THEY DON'T WANT NONE .

ahem .

aj is here too .

and finally, dean .

who i totally forgot was the ic champ .

he gets in, brawl immediately starts, officials say fuck it and ring the bell .

cue loose commentary as fourteen things happen at once .

according to the crowd chants, this match is aj, cena, and...others .

dolph and aj briefly team up to take out cena, then aj just goes fuck it and tries to throw dolph out instead .

to simulate this match, stick your head in that machine they use for the lottery balls .

cena tries to aa baron, falls over instead .

ladies and gents, your 16-time champion .

mojo has a brief offense phase, then baron throws him out for the elimination .

because fuck that guy

.

kalisto gets a bunch of big spots, knocks everyone down, then just stands there looking around like now what .

brief interruption by dodgy stream, during which dolph kicks kalisto out .

and then apollo kicks dolph out .

dolph attacks kalisto with a chair, baron throws apollo out just in time for him to get a chair and chase dolph out of the arena with it .

cena tries to aa styles, who just kind of flips out of it like fuck you i'm phenomenal .

miz is the only one standing, starts doing the yes dropkicks to all four corners .

and then yes kicks to cena .

who just kind of stands up and throws him out .

selling, cena-style .

cena double suplexes aj and dean, displaying what our esteemed announcers call 'freaky strength' .

cena goes for a five knuckle shuffle, runs right into an end of days .

and then dean eliminates baron .

slides out to pick a fight with baron, takes an end of days on the outside .

miz runs in to eliminate cena, walks off through the crowd doing the you can't see me as the refs are all like yup seems legit out you go john .

so we're down to styles and harper in the ring, with dean outside but still in the match .

harper trying to wrestle aj over the ropes like i am bigger and stronger than you

.

stop slithering around you little ferret man .

now all three are fighting on the apron, because wrestling .

harper kicks dean off as he drops aj back inside .

harper half-suplexes aj onto the apron, punches him in the head .

this is surprisingly tense .

they're both back in now, back to some more standard wrestling .

aj gets a sleeper on harper, because that makes sense in a battle royal .

aaaaand back on the apron .

they are spending a frankly inadvisable amount of time up there .

aj tries to climb over the turnbuckle, luke pulls him down, both hit the floor .

the refs are here to say they hit the floor at the same time .

which is blatantly untrue, but canon .

crowd are unimpressed, but rooting for luke .

now we have four refs and two wrestlers all arguing in the ring .

but here comes bryan to actually make a decision .

or argue with the refs some more .

hard to say .

aaaaaaaand he's calling it a draw .

and putting the conclusion of this match of to next week .

a decision which precisely no people are happy with .

so luke discus clotheslines aj's head off, to general approval .

wyatt cut to bray cackling .

that's it .

that's how we're ending the show .

wyatt cut, several seconds of laughing, wyatt cut, end .

so in that vein