#um so how is everyone else coping with the fact that the season has ended

[karlkapri]

― What Will You Do?, Rainer Maria Rilke

Hockey Poetry Post 43/?

(Photo credit: link, Nicole Fridling, Eric Hartline, link, Len Redkoles, Heather Barry, Kyle Ross, link, Andy Lewis, Andy Lewis, Andy Lewis, Kyle Ross, Len Redkoles, Len Redkoles, Kyle Ross, link)

[wastelandlovingscenarios]

crushing companions reacting to f!sole being caught under the mistletoe by someone who ISNT him?

omg, that’s so funny to think about. some are longer than others so i hope you don’t mind (also i got a little carried away). please enjoy! ❤️

i feel like i moved away from the topic but yknow.. ☠️

christmas/new years reacts are still open!

-

somehow, he was dragged into this and had no choice but to attend upon soles request, not being able to say no due to his obvious crush on her. now he was here, mindlessly listening to the chattering of the person who accompanied him during the party, being absolutely bored out of his mind despite the liveliness of the party. as the person continued on, words not being absorbed, his eyes scanned the area for sole, wanting to at least see her once during the whole event and hopefully strike a conversation before it ended.

he expected to see everything; her chatting with some people, maybe putting out some food, or playing with the kids, but what he didn’t expect was to find her under the mistletoe with someone else. someone that wasn’t him.

Danse:

his world stopped for a mere second, all his surroundings becoming blurred as he focused on the scene the raveled before him, unknowingly holding his breath while he did so. his mind slowly processed what was happening and once it completely settled in, a wave of genuine irritation and jealousy began to crash over him. danse being danse, he tries to keep his emotions under control as best as he can. on one hand, sole has the freedom to do anything and everything with anyone she pleases with... and on the other? he wants to pull her into his arms for him and him only.

as the person leans in for a kiss, he leaves no room for debate as he unconsciously rushes his way there, unable to cope with the idea of his precious crush sharing such contact with someone else. sole would yelp in shock as she was pulled away from the person without explanation. he ignored sole’s questions as he dragged her to a quiet corner, not thinking straight.

his eyes stayed on the individual, glaring at them silently with a displeased look as if sole wasn’t staring up at him with the most confused expression. the protective hold on her wrist never detached, the grip still as tight as when he first grabbed it.

she coughed to get his attention and his gaze immediately fell on her, forgetting that he had dragged her without a reason. he would be struck with horror, his heart stopping at the realization that he had done so without registering it. “so, uh. mind explaining what that was for?”

his face would go completely red, his mouth opening to respond, but much to his dismay, nothing came out. the words became tangled in his throat as he tried to come up with anything to cover him from the truth but eventually came to the conclusion that there was no way he could save himself at this point. swallowing nervously, he slowly slid the hand that grabbed her wrist to enevelope hers and with a flushed expression, he knew he had a lot of explaining to do. no better time to do it than christmas day, right?

Deacon:

if someone were to ask deacon why he was so afraid to fall in love again, this would be the exact reason why. he didn’t like the familiar feeling that began pooling in his stomach and the unwanted envy and insecurities that began to surface. instead of showing his discomfort, he smiled through it all and excused himself from the conversation, quickly sneaking up on them. he didn’t have a plan, but he knows damn well that he could at least make one.

before the person could lean in for a kiss, he’d pop out of no where, cutting the individual off even before they had the chance. with a “panicked” expression, he’d grab sole by the shoulder before she could let a word out, ignoring the confusion on her face. “charmer! i just came here to say...” he stopped for a moment, giving her the longest stare as the awkward silence began to build up, “..that you look great today, partner!”

she would send him a look of disbelief. “seriously, deeks? all that just to say i look good?”

“someone’s sounding a little ungrateful during the holiday season, tsk. a thank you would be nice.” he shook his head disapprovingly, both ignoring the individual that watched them dumbly, unsure of what to say. he then pointed to the door behind him while keeping a disappointed expression, “also, dogmeats totally destroying your vault suit.”

“he’s WHAT?!” sole nearly yelled, covering her moth instantly as she received stares left and right. with a paled expression, she’d laugh nervously and run towards the other way, excusing herself in a hurry. “sorry, gotta go!”

deacon would smile and pat himself on the back at the accomplishment of his mission. the person would be left dumbfounded at what just happened. “uhhh..”

with a smirk, he’d turn over to the individual and look up back at the mistletoe that hung above them. “so you gonna kiss me or what loverboy? these lips can’t wait forever.” and just like that, the person immediately shook their head and left the area with an embarrassed expression. he scoffed as he watched them drag away to another area of the party. that’ll teach them not to mess with him.

now he just needed to find another lie to tell sole when she realizes that dogmeat wasn’t at all destroying her vault suit but was instead sleeping by the fire.

Maccready:

maccready is many things; petulant, angry, and absolutely jealous to his core and does not bother to hide it. he disregards the person he’s talking to, immediately stomping off towards soles direction without a word spared to the individual that accompanied him. sole would hear the loud footsteps behind her and would turn around upon hearing the noise, seeing a red faced maccready making his way to them with the biggest scowl ever. the person would raise a brow, absolutely bewildered at macs behavior as they stepped forward in attempt to shield sole.

“hey man, you good-“

“take a hike, buddy.” mac shot back through gritted teeth, his tone full of venom. the persons confused and concerned expression would soon turn into a surprised one, full of disbelief at the words that left the mercenary’s mouth. before they could respond with just as much attitude, sole would stop the situation from escalating, a sweet tone in her voice.

“okay, okay. take it easy.” she cut in between the two heated individuals and slipped her hand in macs own, instantly earning a surprised and flustered from him. she looked at the person with a apologetic smile, “i’m sorry, please give us a moment.”

and just like that, she’d pull him to a more private area of the party, folding her arms with a demanding expression.

“what the hell was that?”

mac would try to pretend as if he was irritated, whining quietly but loud enough for her to hear. he’d throw his arms in the air dramatically in response, letting his emotions take over the best of him. “they were gonna kiss you!” then he began to panic more, realizing the position he dreadfully put himself in with little to no ways to take him out. “i mean- uh- they were gonna- i was-“

“so what if they were gonna kiss me?” she raised a brow, a small smirk forming on her face as she pieced together what was happening. “what then?”

“i- i-“ he began stammering, unable to find excuses this time around. he mentally beat himself up, instantly regretting the fact that he allowed his emotions to take control of the situation instead of his mind. ultimately, he gave up as soles eyes bored into him, his voice dying down into a quiet whisper. “i-i don’t know.”

sole would let out a laugh, entertained by his reaction, leaving mac a blushing and embarrassed mess as he looked towards the other direction, hands stuffed in his pockets. “don’t laugh at me.” he murmured, face growing more red.

she would immediately stop upon request but the smile on her face never left as she stepped forward, placing a hand on his bicep. “if you were trying to let me know you liked me, you got the message across.” mac grew rigid at the words that left her mouth but made no attempt to deny them, knowing the truth of it , “and just to give you a straight up answer..” she tiptoed and placed a quick kiss on his cheek, his eyes widening upon contact. he felt himself freeze at the softness of her lips.

“i like you too.” she whispered against his flushed skin and he nearly fainted from the intensity of the situation. what a way to celebrate christmas.

Hancock:

everyone knows hancock has it absolutely bad for sole, so for someone to approach her in such a brave manner secretly ticked him off. he saw the stupid ass smile that plastered that persons face and he wanted nothing more but to slap it off them. he’d look at the person accompanying him, holding a finger up to shush them for a moment with force, “hold that thought, sister/brother. got something i need to take care of.” and he’d immediately make his way to them, not wasting a precious second.

“sunshine!” he’d call out to sole with open arms and a smug smile, immediately attracting her attention away from the individual who wore an irritated expression upon seeing hancock. her face lit up with happiness, a grin stretching across her cheeks. “hey hancock!”

hancock would throw an arm over soles shoulders, gazing lovingly at them as she giggled. “looking beautiful as always, i see.” he chuckled at the redness forming on her cheeks. “so how’s my favorite girl doing?”

they’d continue on their conversation as if the other person wasn’t currently in their presence, wanting to continue where they left off. the endless compliments and inside jokes made them uncomfortable, unsure of what to do or say at the moment. “um hello?”

sole would smile sympathetically upon seeing the irritated expression on the persons face. “oh, sorry. got a little distracted.” hancock would cut in with a smirk, feeding off the persons reactions. “sorry brother/sister, we’re busy.” he pointed at the mistletoe above them, going straight to the point and sole let out a surprised, “huh?” with a flushed face. “now scram before i make you do it.”

the person cursed under their breath and stomped off elsewhere, leaving hancock satisfied and accomplished. sole would shyly look up at him. “so did you mean what you said or was that to help put me in a more comfortable position?”

he looked down at her, thinking for a moment but smiled warmly to ease her tension. “a mix of both, sunshine. if you’re still up for that kiss, i’d be more than happy to do so with your permission.”

she would become more flushed at his response but would grin happily. “you didn’t need a mistletoe to kiss me, hancock. i was more than willing to if you felt the same.”

“guess now we know, huh?” he’d whisper softly and tilt her chin up, slowly closing the distance between them both.

Nick Valentine:

nicks smile faltered in response, his eyes observing the scene before him for a little while. something in him throbbed with pain at the way the person smiled at her confidently as she stood still, not rejecting his offer and he took that as a sign that she allowed it. he excused himself from the conversation politely before it could happen and walked out of the room without a second thought to allow himself to have a breather. the muffled holiday music would fall on his ears as he took a seat on the patio, quietly attempting to push away the idea that sole was indeed having fun with someone else.

lighting up a cigerrate, he quietly watched the christmas lights that lit up the street with a sigh and took a drag, wanting to get the thought out of his mind as soon as possible. perhaps he’d head on back to diamond city as soon as he was done with his cigar, hopefully having the courage to thank sole for inviting him with a smile. nick wouldn’t realize how much time had passed or how long he’s been out in the cold until he heard a voice calling out his name faintly behind him.

“nick?” he’d look over his shoulder and immediately throw the cigar on the ground, stepping on it upon realizing who the voice belonged to. composing himself, he’d address her with a forced smile.

“hey there, doll.”

sole would smile back at him and stop in her tracks, looking at the empty spot near nick. “is this seat taken?”

“not at all. never taken for you.” sole giggled softly and sat near him, giving him some space. he quietly removed his jacket, placing it over her shoulders and she chortled, sending him a small thanks in return as she pulled the coat closer to her body. a silence surrounded the two for a moment before he broke it, not wanting to appear suspicious. “what brings you out here, doll?”

sole thought for a moment before responding, “i just came here to check on you.” she said with a worried smile, “i saw that you weren’t around and well.. they told me you just suddenly up and left the party, so i just had to check.”

he smiled, a warm feeling filling his body. even at times where she was occupied by other things, she still cared about his well being. “i’m doing just fine, no need to worry. besides, i know you’re busy with your date, so i wanted to give you some space.”

“my.. what?” she was pulled back at the words that left his mouth but then responded quickly upon realization, “oh! you mean the person you saw me with? no, no, nick that’s a misunderstanding!” she laughed. “they were just doing that whole mistletoe tradition thing, yknow. where they kiss and stuff... but i’m pretty sure you know about it.”

he gazed at her as she continued to speak, pausing in between as she processed her thoughts. she stared at the ground. “i didn’t kiss them though. i rejected them and told them i wasn’t interested.”

a sudden flood of relief washed over nick and he let out a breath he never knew he was holding, the dreading feeling in his chest immediately turning into nothing. “is that so?”

“yeah. i had other plans too, so it just wouldn’t work out either way.” she smiled with a blush, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. he looked at her with a curious expression. “did you manage to get around to those ‘other plans’?”

she blushed and scooted closer to him, leaning in to place a kiss on his cheek softly, immediately sending him to shock. his eyes fell on her the moment he realized what was happening and felt something inside him whir loudly. once she pulled away, she grinned at him shyly with a completely flushed face. “i have now.” she beamed happily as he touched the spot where she kissed, a smile of his own growing. “merry christmas, nick.”

he pulled her in, wrapping both his arms around her and kissed her temple lovingly as he whispered.“merry christmas, sole.” sole let out a pleased sigh at the contact, melting into his embrace.

Sturges:

sturges would swallow with a small, forced smile, trying to hide his discomfort in front of the eyes of others. much to his luck, he was great at doing that. his eyes would remain on her, not being able to avert it elsewhere no matter how hard he tried. despite his strange change of behavior, he’d still try to contribute the the conversation he was held hostage in, but give shorter replies, uninterested. a series of ‘uh-huh’, ‘yeah’, and hums would leave his mouth instead of well thought replies as he continued to focus on the scene nearby.

once sole presented a sign of discomfort that he was well aware of, he’d immediately excuse himself as apologetic as possible, quickly pacing to her. as he made it closer to them, he’d speak with a friendly tone, not wanting to make the situation worse. “hey now, is everythin’ alright here?” his eyes would flicker from sole for a while and then to the person who stood in front of her, a scowl on their face as they looked straight at him. he didn’t mind; if it meant irritating the person away from sole as far as possible, then so be it. he had no plans to leave now and he definitely wasn’t going to do so, even at soles commands.

“yeah, it’s just fine.” they said with an annoyed tone and sturges would reply with just as much attitude. “i wasn’t askin’ you.” he would then turn back to sole who smiled at him with relief, and he knew he made the right decision. “i’m okay, sturges.”

“i hope this fella wasn’t botherin’ ya too much, sole.”he commented loud enough for them to hear and their face went red with anger as they shot him a glare. “whatever, man.” and would stalk off towards the other direction with mumbled insults.

he’d sigh disapprovingly as he watched the person walk off childishly and then look back at her with a smile. “you okay, sweetheart?”

“of course i am. i was about to tell him off anyway.” she smiled happily at him and he felt his heart melt at the sight. “i’m glad you stepped up and saved me the trouble though. i really appreciate it.”

“no need for a thank you. i just did what was right.”

sole laughed and tiptoed, resting a hand on his cheek and before sturges could react, she placed a lingering kiss on his cheek, closing her eyes in bliss as she did so. once she retreated, she caught the familiar crimson that dusted his cheeks and giggled at the surprised expression on his face.

“my way of saying thank you since you won’t accept it and, uh..” she pointed at the mistletoe above them and he smiled nervously, letting out a shaky laugh. “gotta follow the tradition, yknow?”

“well, ain’t that a lovely way to say thank you.”

she nodded, taking both his hand in hers and stepped closer so that he could hear her murmur. “hope you don’t mind me saying thank you like that from now on.”

he leaned his forehead on hers and chuckled. “not at all.”

Preston:

preston would immediately show reaction to it, his smile dropping completely and his eyes widening in what seemed like terror and devastation. the words around him would become nothing but static and the music would be blurred as he felt time slow down. he knew sole deserved the best, but deep down, he hoped he was the best for her and maybe this was just the answer he was waiting for all along. with a heavy heart, he’d look away from the scene before it could happen and grow uncharacteristically silent throughout the whole conversation. he didn’t even bother to spare a second glance and tilted his hat down, afraid of what he’ll see.

when sole approached him later that night during the party, he jolted and automatically felt his heart drop as he met eyes with the one person he had it bad for. he tried his best to pull a smile but failed miserably as it looked absolutely forced.

“hey preston, not enjoying the party or something?” she said quietly, taking a seat next to him on the couch. the concern on her face meant she was picking up the unusual signs he was exhibiting and he felt panicked, knowing there was no escape.

“just not feeling it, that’s all.” he responded, looking back down at his drink on in his hand.

“we both know that’s a lie, preston. i can see right through you.” well it was worth a shot. “mind telling me what’s on your mind?”

he thought for a moment, wondering if it was worth telling sole about his feelings at this point since he had already gotten his answer. maybe he could fake it with a smile and carry on with the conversation casually in hopes that she’ll eventually drop it or maybe he could excuse himself elsewhere for the rest of the night to think to himself. instead, he just let out a deep breath and put down his drink.

“mind if we talk outside then?” sole smiled and nodded, standing from the couch and offered him a hand to help him up. they exited the building and walked down the quiet streets of sanctuary, side by side. sole remained quiet, waiting for preston to break the silence instead of forcing it out of him.

“you know what i’m about to tell you, i hope it doesn’t change anything between us.” he filled the stillness of the air and felt a small hand gently grab his bicep to stop him from walking any further. he looked back and caught the reassuring smile on her face. “you know it won’t change anything.”

he looked down at his feet, a blush forming on his face. “i know.” he breathed, “ i know it wont. you’re not like that.” she let out a hum of agreement.

“i guess.. i guess i was just upset that i saw you with someone else under the mistletoe.” he murmured, voice dying down the more he spoke, “and that i lost my chance.”

sole looked at him, baffled for a moment. “lost your chance? what do you mean?” he picked up his head to gaze at her with a defeated smile, lightly scratching the nape of his neck. “to tell you i like you, i guess. seems like someone already beat me to it.”

“what?” she looked confused and stepped forward, trying to explain herself, “preston, you’ve got it all wrong. i didnt kiss them! i left to go find you after i checked up on a few people.”

he stood there, wide eyed while trying to process the words that left his mouth and he realized in horror that he based off things due to his assumptions. “i- uhm, excuse me? you didn’t uh-“

“no, i didn’t kiss them preston and well, you could say i know who i want.” she grinned happily at him with a blush on her cheeks, keeping her hand on his bicep. he felt his heart beat loudly against his chest and he was caught off guard upon registering what she meant. “oh. oh!” a smile slowly grew on his face as he beamed at sole, holding both her shoulders in excitement. all signs of devastation and sadness immediately washed away as if it wasn’t there in the first place. “that’s - that’s great! oh my god! i-i don’t know what to say!”

“you don’t need to say anything.” sole laughed and moved her hand to his cheek, brushing her thumb over his skin. “just kiss me. you know, a celebratory one.. since it’s christmas and as my way of saying i feel the same way.” he nodded, leaning in to connect their lips.

“of course.”

Gage:

as if this party wasn’t bad enough already; the person talking was annoying the shit out of him and now the only person he’s ever had a crush on was being hit on by some low life. his scowl that was already there would only deepen more upon seeing that unsettling scene but would watch from afar, hand ready on his gun just in case some funny business were to arise. as much as he wants to put a bullet right between their eyes, he resists, waiting for some kind of signal from sole to give him the go.

without looking at the person who accompanied him, he’d speak gruffly, his expression absolutely twisted in anger. “shut the fuck up, will ya?” and they did, slowly sliding away from him in fear. he kept his eye on her, patience running thin as they grew closer to sole by the second. the second their hand stroked her arm flirtatiously, he snapped and made his way to them without a second thought, hand already drawing his gun.

“youd look better with a smile.” they commented as sole rolled her eyes, obviously unintimidated by their behavior. the sound of a gun cocking behind the person would stop her from responding and she’d peek behind them, seeing a furious gage glaring at the back of their head. the room went quiet, watching the scene before them but not daring to butt in, knowing gage was a tough one to take down. after all, they knew the safest route to this was for sole to take care of the situation before it escalated.

“and you’d look better with red,” he threatened, pressing the gun harder against the back of their head. “lots of it.”

the individual would turn a deathly white as they shook in fear, paralyzed. through stuttered words, they’d try to explain themselves, “i-i-its a tradition, the mistletoe! it’s - it’s just something w-we do every ch- christma-“

gage would shoot the mistletoe above them and sole watched as it fell to the ground, broken into pieces as sole sighed at the sad sight. “stupid ass tradition if ya asked me.”

she’d sigh and fold her arms, tapping her foot almost impatiently. “gage, quit it.” she demanded with an irate expression, “leave it and let’s go.” when gage refused to withdraw the weapon, sole sent him a sharp look. “now.”

and just like that, the person would let out a breath as gage retreated, mumbling some colorful language under his breath as he made his way to sole. they both walked past the silence crowd and once they made their way far enough from the party, she stopped in her tracks and faced him with a smirk. “jealous much?”

“i ain’t jealous. that was just getting’ ridiculous and embarrassin’.” he commented, looking elsewhere with a scowl.

“sure you weren’t.” she teased, earning a glare from the raider, “can’t deny that you wanted to kiss me though and you definetly wouldn’t think that tradition was stupid if you were under the mistletoe with me instead.”

he rolled his eyes and walked past her, wanting to hide the growing blush on his cheeks. “shut the hell up and keep walking, boss. we ain’t ever gonna make it back to nuka world with all yer blabberin’.” he stayed silent, knowing well that whatever sole had just told him was utterly true to the core and there was no absolute way he could deny it.

[pointnumbersixteen]

How do you see The Captain's coming out, and growth in confidence and self acceptance thereafter taking place?

I like this question! …and I’m probably going to elaborate on it a bit more than many people will want to read (I noticed back when I was regularly writing essay length posts that they did not get a lot of love) and it’s probably going to get even more ramble-y than usual (brain has not been braining as cooperatively as it should recently and the decision to drink half a bottle of wine right before answering this- sorry- probably does not help), but here we are.  

 About coming out scenarios, none of mine are particularly elaborate. While I do think he needs to come out for his story line to progress, I can’t imagine him making a big thing out of it (long or elaborate announcements, heart-to-hearts, emotional displays of bearing his authentic self or any of the like), either with the group, or person-by-person, for several reasons:

First off, that sort of a coming-out to-do is a more modern notion, and I doubt he was a particularly modern person even when he was alive, seventy-five years ago. His notions of privacy and propriety are probably much more conservative than ours, and I feel like that makes it unlikely that he’d go into any sort of detail, at least at early in this process, about his feelings/emotions or the specificities of his attractions. We’re talking about a man who doesn’t even use his own name. It’s difficult to picture him going into depth about his desires and love life.

Secondly, he’s a bit of a social coward. (He’s not a physical coward, of course, he jumped on that bomb in the garden without hesitation, and acknowledged after the fact that he gotten caught up in the moment, and therefore hadn’t really thought about how a bomb couldn’t hurt him.) And I get it, I’m a bit of a social coward, too, so no judgement. He probably faced a lot of ridicule in his life. Being a social coward is totally fair. But he doesn’t put himself into situations that might involve awkward interpersonal interactions if he can help it, and legs it whenever interactions he’s already in become to awkward for him. I feel like he’s probably quite desperate (although he’d never admit to it) to save face and protect what bits of his ego remain unscathed.

Think about it: he could have spoken to Fanny on his own about her nightly screaming disturbing him in s1e1, they have a clear association established at the outset of the show, they leave Heather’s room together at the end of the very first scene, but he doesn’t do so until he has the weight of the whole group to back him up about the screaming at their meeting. He had to buck up his courage and give himself his little ‘over the top we go’ pep talk before going to speak to Alison in Gorilla War. Also, if there was actually something wrong with his soldiers’ horseplay after hours in Reddy Weddy- if it was breaking regulations or even his own orders for quiet hours- and he heard it, he could have gone down directly when he heard it, confronted whoever was involved and order them to stop or put them on report. But no, instead he addressed the entire group of soldiers in a sixteen point morning brief. He even dispatched Pat to confront Alison about the party in s2e2, instead doing it himself… and spit out his apology/reconciliation with Pat at the end as fast as possible. And as for legging it when things get awkward, see his retreats following the group confronting him in Getting Out and after Alison telling him he wasn’t needed in the Grey Lady- and on a more figurative than literal level, but most relevantly, his quick turn from ‘I’ll miss you’ to ‘we’ll miss you’ with Havers in Reddy Weddy.

This is not a man who wants to be in awkward or embarrassing situations. And I think that coming out, at least at first, will probably be a bit embarrassing for him- it was scandalous in his time, and I think it will take him longer to get over that feeling and come to terms with himself than it will to finally acknowledge that he’s gay. So I doubt he’d make more of it than he utterly feels he has to, at least at first. And of course, he’d have to be a bit afraid that people would judge him or stop associating with him over it, as sadly, in his own time many people would have done, and most of the ghosts are from even earlier times than he was. So that might add more hesitation…

And thirdly, he doesn’t like and/or respect many of his house mates. The other twentieth century ghosts are the only ones he spends much time with. I doubt he’d go out of his way to communicate much of anything to the rest if it wasn’t “mission related” much less discuss his sexuality with them. He mostly disregards Humphrey. See his, “Oh, it’s you.” Mary obviously doesn’t like him and he only associates with her when it might be useful for his ‘missions.’ He clearly doesn’t think much of Thomas and doesn’t really even bother including him in his plans. These aren’t people he’s going to have heart-to-hearts with.

With those constraints in place, here’s a non-exhaustive list of possibilities by which I might see his coming out finally happening. They’re really just scenarios I made for myself on how I might see him coming out and I like to keep my options open (the first three are strategies he might go for, the last is an alternate scenario, presented in decreasing levels of directness on his part):

1) The ‘pull the bandage off quickly and hope it doesn’t sting too much’ strategy.

The Captain waits for the end of one of their various group activities or meetings, where all announcements seem to be made, gets up, clears his throat, stammers a bit, announces it tersely, using the most proper popular word for homosexuality that existed in his time (think: “Heh-hem. Er. Um. Well. It has recently come to my attention that I am- er- well- as it happens- gay. I, uh, thought it should be noted. That is all.”), and then beats a hasty retreat, so he doesn’t have to try to cope with the potentially negative aftermath. Of course, there isn’t a negative aftermath, because many of the ghosts already have guessed and the rest don’t really care. Someone, probably Pat, because he does the bulk of the emotional labor in the group, and more importantly, he’s Cap’s closest friend, would have to go after him. He would of course be initially defensive, and Pat would have to sooth his feathers a bit- or maybe just spit it out over his defensiveness- that he guessed a long time ago and so had plenty of other people, and they were just waiting for him to be ready, and really, it’s fine, and no one’s going to disown him for it.  

2) The ‘well maybe I should tell my friends with the hope they support me’ strategy.

He gets together with a small group, the people whose company he actually values, definitely Fanny and Pat, maybe Julian, probably Alison either at the same time or after he finishes with his ghosts pals, and says it in much the same way as the previous scenario, but waiting for their reactions rather than retreating straight away. Pat and Alison, I expect, would answer with something like ‘yeah, we figured that one out a long time ago, actually, and it’s completely fine’ and Julian’s reaction would probably be something like, ‘well, obviously.’ Fanny’s had a lot of character growth since season one, when I expect her reaction would have been very shrill and judgmental, probably still would be a touch less warm and/or nonchalant, but I picture it as something like a sigh, followed by a pat on the arm and something like, ‘well, I still like you better than everyone else here, anyway.’ Word would eventually trickle to everyone else by way of social osmosis. Or not. No one seems to care if Humphrey or the plague ghosts are well informed.  

3) The ‘I’m not brave enough to actually go through the process of actually telling anyone anything about me so let’s just drop hints and hope everyone figures it out without making a big deal about it’ strategy.  

The indirect approach (I’m rather fond of this one, but mostly because it was my own primary coming out approach)… he first sends out feelers to certain people on the topic of homosexuality, probably Alison, since she’s modern, hosted a lesbian wedding, and very much implied that she’d be ready to keep scandalous secrets for him in Reddy Weddy, and  possibly maybe also Julian, as he’s the most sexually experienced/knowledgeable, and after Alison spent a while inundating him with ‘it’s okay to be gay’ messages (along with a sudden and entirely unexplained influx of LGBT media) as she’s socially clever enough to see that’s what he’s looking for and after Julian spent a while telling him probably far more than he ever actually wanted to know about the potentialities of gay sex, that might boost the Captain’s confidence enough to let him start dropping hints to people, instead of telling them outright (consciously commenting on the attractiveness of men they see rather than occasionally accidentally blurting it out- see ‘the handsome one’- occasionally putting forth an opinion or stance on the LGBT world ‘it would have been nice if gay marriage was acceptable when I was alive,’ maybe occasionally mentioning how certain men would make cute couple), expecting them to meet him in the middle and figure out the point on their own… of course, many of them have already realized, so this isn’t a problem. It’s entirely possible, though, that Mary (world view not terribly grounded in reality) and Kitty (lack of life experience and/or instruction about life, see the how are babies made subplot) never pick up the hints on their own and someone else eventually has to tell them.

4) The ‘someone puts him out of his misery’ scenario.

Cap acknowledges to himself that he’s gay first and then, wishing to avoid embarrassment or lack of acceptance, obviously, awkwardly, painfully tries to disguise it and in doing so draws attention to it, until a third party decides to put him out of his misery and tell him that many of them figured it out ages ago and that everyone is fine with it. Maybe Pat. Maybe Alison. I kind of like the idea of it being Fanny (with her lovely character growth and her couple of suspicious glances his way in the Perfect Day), actually, by way of something like ‘You know, I was entirely prepared to continue on living with my husband, George, keeping his secrets, about the, uh, sort of person he was, and you’re at least one better than him, given that you at least never murdered me- or, for that matter, never married some poor woman you had no interest in to shield yourself from scrutiny… and so, what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t turn my back on you for being the, uh, sort of person you are, either, and maybe things have progressed enough that you don’t actually have to keep secrets at all.’ Cap would take all of this in with a mixture of mortification and relief. I’m rather fond of this scenario, too.  

 As for the second bit of the question, once his sexuality is out there, though, and no one judges him or hates him for it- and some are quite supportive- I do see him becoming more self-accepting. If no one’s judging him, does he need to judge himself so harshly? And also more confident. Because some of those things that he’s always felt different about and in the past has probably been ridiculed about in the past (even if he’s in denial about being gay, he and quite a few other people had to at the very least note that he’s not particularly interested in women), are, apparently just fine now. So he’s a bit more just fine now himself. And that weight of always trying to be someone else, someone who’s just right, can lift and he can relax a bit more. And that would probably help him a lot, too. I see it as a slow sort of thawing process. No matter what way he comes out, I still see Alison as very helpfully providing a variety of LGBT media to help this process along. And maybe he’d eventually get to the point where he processed enough and warmed up enough to be able to talk more in depth, at least with his friends, about what it was like being him in repressed pre-war Britain, and what sort of men he’s attracted to (I enjoy the idea of him and Fanny- gradually overcoming her own repression- scoping out hot men together). Maybe he’ll even luck out one of his male housemates will decide (or has already decided) that bisexuality is a valid option and he’ll get a date (insert whichever ghost y’all ship him with here). I bet Alison would totally help him set up a nice date, too, with her convenient still-functional-in-the-mortal-realm hands. And it would be nice to maybe see him get a taste of actual happiness.    

[sprnklersplashes]

songwriter!janis fic (unrequited crush, no-very-happy-ending) 

also on ao3

It all started because she loved Taylor Swift when she was in middle school. Who is she kidding, she still loves Taylor Swift, but that’s where all this began. A middle school girl’s obsession with Taylor Swift. A confused, sad girl with a broken heart and smudged black eyeliner, finding refuge in lyrics about loneliness and anger and revenge. They became anthems for her, mantras to mutter when the warzone of middle school became too much for her.

“Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city, and all you’re ever gonna be is mean.”

“Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in.”

“I can still see you, this ain’t the best view.”

It amazes her. It’s honestly as if Taylor Swift has managed to look into her life and given her a bundle of songs for whatever she needs. For when Regina has thrown her one too many snide looks, for when she’s standing at the door of North Shore High on her first day, for when she eats lunch alone, for when her mom is the best mom she could have asked for, for when she and Damian are lying on the grass in her backyard, staring up at the sky, laughing at absolutely nothing. The songs become the soundtrack to her life, the chords and those raw, honest lyrics an emotional outlet she so desperately craves. Taylor, and her songs, become a confidant, almost a close friend who always knows what to say.

With all that in mind, perhaps it was only a matter of time before she asks for a guitar for Christmas. She’s fourteen, braces and a slight lisp, and jumps up and down like a mad woman when she sees it under the tree.

She practices for three days straight, until her fingers bleed, but Should’ve Said No is the first song she learns off by heart. She yells the lyrics with maybe a little too much passion, but her parents applaud her nonetheless.

Like she said, that’s how it all started.

Because that same Christmas, she realises that screaming her feelings while playing guitar actually feels pretty cathartic. And that if it worked for Taylor Swift, it could work for her. So she writes stuff down, plays around with chords and strumming until the beat on the guitar matches the one in her head. She grabs a page and a pencil and writes and re-writes her innermost thoughts and feelings on the page until they sound the way she wants them to. She plays around with rhyme schemes and structure and everything she’s been taught about in English class, and a thrill runs through her as she does so. It’s the same breathless high she feels when she paints or draws, the rush that comes from creating something.

Her parents sit on the other side of her bedroom door, no doubt exchanging worried glances as she repeats the same verse, same chorus, with only a word changed. She watches them when they think she can’t see, peering through the crack in her door. The conclusion they seem to come to is ‘well, as coping mechanisms go, it’s pretty good, and she’s happy, so who are we to stop it?’.

It takes her four days to finish her first song. And it sucks. But she keeps it, writes down the lyrics and chords in one of the few empty notebooks she has, and there’s no going back from it now. She writes, and she writes, and she writes, near enough every day. She likes to think she gets better with each one. She learns more chords, buys a cheap ukulele the summer after freshman year, tries her hand at piano during a particularly difficult few weeks. She doesn’t plan on doing anything with them. They’re just her little pieces to hold on to. Her therapy sessions outside the carpeted office.

No-one knows about it. She has a reputation to keep up, after all. The loner-by-choice, too-cool-for-school, aloof art freak. Everyone has their roles to play in the ecosystem that is high school and, much as she hates the entire system, that is hers to play. And she plays it well, if she may say so. The fact that hardly anyone knows her past that facade suits her just fine. After all, if people think she doesn’t care, she can’t get hurt. No-one needs to know that Janis Sarkisian actually has feelings.

Even less need to know that she writes songs about said feelings.

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By the time she reaches her junior year, she’s onto her third notebook. She keeps them tucked away in her sock drawer, expertly hidden so only she can find them. Damian teases her about it, calling her “the protagonist of a Disney Channel Original Movie”. She just rolls her eyes and reminds him that “if either of us is gonna be Disney’s first openly gay character, it’ll be you”. He can’t argue with that.

It should be noted that when Janis said that no-one knows about her songwriting, Damian was the obvious exception. He found out just weeks after she started. There’s no keeping secrets from him.

Between all her notebooks, she’s written around forty songs.

Then she meets Cady Heron one day. The human embodiment of a labrador puppy, complete with wide, lost eyes. She likes her instantly, decides to take her under her wing because Lord knows the girl needs it. Cady’s smile is infectious, her laugh like a summer breeze. She has dimples and caramel-coloured hair and really likes maths.

She meets Cady on a Monday.

By that Saturday, song number 41-titled “Dimples and Curls” is more or less complete.

She plays it for Damian, hands only slightly shaking as she changes chords, the strumming short and upbeat, the melody strangely happy for such a bittersweet song.

He applauds her, but the subject of the song hangs in the air even after she’s played the last chord and the music fades. Unsaid, but not unknown. Just like her songwriting, Janis couldn’t keep a crush from Damian if she tried.

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“Hey, check it out.”

Cady drops onto the seat across from Janis, the whole table shaking as she does so. Like a small meteor just hit Earth. Janis looks up from her lunch, pretending like she had been doing her own thing and not watching the door until Cady came in. Pretending like her stomach doesn’t do little flips at the sight of her crossing the cafeteria. She pulls the flyer towards her and hums in amusement.

“The winter talent show,” she reads before chomping off a carrot stick. “Oh, is it that time of year already?”

“Seems like only yesterday we was welcoming the young’uns into this brave new world during the harvest season,” Damian sighs, putting on a delightfully over the top Southern Belle accent, no doubt influenced by their reading of Streetcar Named Desire in English class. Janis cackles, and nearly chokes on her lunch as she does.

“And now the cold winds of winter are descending upon us,” she replies, her accent equally heavy. She bats her eyes for good measure, because she can and because it makes Cady laugh. “Oh but I pray the children will survive this season, it is often rough for them.”

“I am never showing you two anything winter related ever again,” Cady says.

Janis just shrugs and runs her hand through her hair before her eyes go back to the flyer. Clearly, whatever sophomore they got to design it this year did their best; found the prettiest looking snowflakes on Google Images to put on the cartoon stage, decided to write in some swirling, slanted font rather than the start-studded block lettering they usually went for. It’s still the same as it is every year, meaning just as mockable, but she’ll give them points for tying.

“Well, anyone here going for it?” she asks. She looks from Damian to Cady and back again, a teasing smirk on her lips. “Last year and all that.”

“Not sure I can,” Damian sighs. “I mean, I’m booked up with Spelling Bee rehearsals and spring cabaret auditions happening next semester.” He drums his fingers against his throat. “Gotta give the little vocal chords some rest, you know?”

Janis’ response is to sing the lowest note she possibly can before turning to Cady and giving her a pointed look, the corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Who? Me?” Cady’s cheeks turned crimson and she shakes her head so much that the caramel curls bounced around her shoulders. “No way. Damian can take the stage, I’m fine with my calculators and textbooks.”

“You could always solve equations in front of everyone,” Janis says. “I could call out college-level questions from the audience and you solve them in under 30 seconds.”

“I think I’ll pass,” she giggles. She leans forward slightly, eyes glittering, and Janis does her best not to squirm. The effect Cady Heron’s eyes have on her should be studied by scientists. “What about you, Janis?”

“I don’t know.” She thinks back to when she helped on stage crew last year, as well as helping out (or taking over) with the set design. It had been fun, the kind of challenge she needed to keep her mind off the slowly-going-off-the-rails plan. And she was told it looked good on her college applications, because all people can think about apparently is college, college, college. “Maybe. They might need another genius stage manager.”

“And you’ll step in if they can’t find one?” She digs Damian in the ribs for that comment.

“But not performing?” Cady asks, and Janis freezes. Performing had never even crossed her mind before. She’s used to backstage, hell, she likes backstage. It’s not that she has stage fright or anything, and if she had, her stunt at Ms Norbury’s little healing session would have squished it. She had just never thought about it.

But Cady had, apparently.

“I-No, I-I don’t think so,” she stammers out. “Um, I might do backstage again, but not actually doing something, you know, talent related.” She bites her tongue and clamps her lips shut before anything else can come out.

“Okay then,” Cady replies slowly. She gets up from the table, her little empty water bottle in her hands. “I’m going to go for a refill, save my seat.”

“No problem,” Janis says, but Cady’s already jogging away.

She doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that Cady’s known her too long to think of her as cool, and so this kind of awkward babbling isn’t really surprising to her. Instead of thinking about it, she just sets her head on the table and lets Damian rub her back.

“You were nowhere near as bad as you think you were,” he assures her.

“Title of your sex tape,” comes her murmured reply. Damian chuckles and runs his fingers through her hair, like she’s his pet cat. It helps.

“So you’re definitely not going for the talent show then?” he asks.

Her first instinct is to say no, because of course she isn’t, because she never has before and she sees no point in breaking a three-year streak, but the answer catches in her throat. At the same time, something begins forming in her brain, pieces of a melody she’s already known, words filling in blank spots in her brain, and her fingers twitch involuntarily, playing the chords on an invisible guitar. Without a word, she grabs a notepad and pen from her bag and scribbles the words down before she forgets them, quickly becoming breathless just by sitting there. She forgets, for a moment, everything else, the talent show, Cady, even Damian next to her, and just revels in the task and the quick buzz she gets just from writing. Just like that she has one eye on the clock, itching to get home and put her notes into the rest of the song.

But with those notes came an idea, an idea so completely out of left field she almost laughs at it.

“Janis?” Damian asks, just slightly unnerved by her. If anyone else were at this table, even Cady (especially Cady), she would have had to excuse herself and run to the bathroom, or just hope the words stayed in her head long enough for her to get a quiet moment. “Did the Goddess of Music just possess you again?”

“Maybe,” is her response. He doesn’t know it, but she answered both the questions he asked in the past minute.

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She sits on her bed that night, her homework half-done and strewn across the desk, abandoned in favour of the guitar sitting in her lap and notebook open on her bed. She’s been working on his song for the better part of a week, inspiration and motivation seemingly striking and then fading whenever she gets a free moment. Abandoning it has crossed her mind-she’s no stranger to abandoning things that aren’t working-but for some reason she hasn’t quite been able to shake this particular song off.

Maybe it is Euterpe, the Goddess of Music, descending upon her because this song has to be finished, it has to be, Olympus willing it so.

Or maybe it’s because this song is one of the most personal things she’s ever written, a love letter she’ll never send, and the idea of it sitting unfinished drives her crazy.

She plays another chord and sings the line again, changing the ending slightly, and makes the adjustment in her notes.

She’s crazy. This is already crazy, her secret double life as a wannabe T-Swift, but now she’s gone beyond that. Thinking of actually playing it. On a stage. In front of people. She doesn’t care what people think of her, she stopped caring about that a long, long time ago, but holy shit what will people think of her after she does this? Life isn’t like the movies, she knows that much. It won’t be some pretty, softly-lit moment where the crowd sits with teary eyes, Cady runs onstage and kisses her and she’s offered a deal by some big shot producer, and they all live happily ever after the end. What could happen is people think she’s even more of a weirdo than they do now.

Or she gets tomatoes thrown at her head and she’s booed off the stage. That’s a possibility.

She calls Damian, because that’s the only way she sees out of her little thought cul-de-sac. She puts the phone on speaker and props it up against a pillow, keeping her hands free for her guitar and her pen. He picks up on the third ring, just as she’s strumming out a G chord.

“Oh, is someone prepping for her Grammy?” he asks. “You’re still taking me as your date, right?”

“Only if my dog can’t go,” she replies. She taps her nails against the wood, the rhythm too fast and frantic to just be a habit. Yes, she can tell Damian anything, and being nervous in front of him is laughable, but sometimes her body forgets that. “So, I was thinking about the talent show.”

“Oh? You’re going for stage crew again? Cool.”

“No-not exactly.” She knows he can’t see the smile creeping across her face, but she’d wager he can hear it through the phone. A small swarm of butterflies flutters in her chest, leaving her just slightly out of breath. “I… I. think I’m going to try performing in it.”

A burst of laughter comes through the phone, slightly tinged with static, and Janis wishes he were here so she could slap him. Even if it’s not malicious in intent at all, and she’s laughing right along with him. Slapping is kind of a love language for them.

“Okay, okay cool. What’re you going to do?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” she says, and then she plays the opening chords to her latest experiment. She doesn’t add in the lyrics, not yet. Still, she sits back and basks in his applause when she finishes, cackling into her hand. He might be one person, but he’s got enough enthusiasm to match a packed auditorium. “What do you think?”

“I’m into it,” he tells her. “So… that’s the one you’re doing?”

“Think so.” She tosses the pick between her fingers. Like he could feel her smile, she can feel his raised eyebrow through the phone, the elephant in the room poking her with its trunk. “Yes, I know.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it,” she tells him, and he doesn’t deny it. She looks back over the lyrics she’s written and re-written. Despite some adjustments, it’s still in essence the same. Still about a girl with pretty hair who smells like vanilla and cinnamon, who has a boyfriend and is unknowingly breaking the heart of a girl with black eyeliner and paint stained fingers. Because her boyfriend is pretty and clean and smells like soap and can do math, and how is the poor art girl even meant to compare to that?

“Yes,” she says after a while. “It is about Cady.”

“Aw, my poor lovestruck songstress,” he sighs. He shifts then, and the air shifts with him. “You sure that’s the one you want to sing? I mean you have dozens of other non-Cady related songs. I’m sure Mr Duvall would love to hear Angry Teenage Lesbian Anthem.”

“First off, I gave that one a title, it’s called Shattered,” she reminds him. “And-” She freezes, the rest of her sentence catching in her throat. He’s right. She could perform one of her other songs, that are already finished and therefore removing the pressure to have this one finished, polished and stage-ready. And of course, it would mean she wouldn’t be standing in front of her entire grade and telling them all how badly she’s in love with her best friend. Showing her deepest secret to the people who have already driven her out of school once. It’s a far safer, potentially less traumatic option for her.

But…

“No,” she says. “I know it sounds crazy but I feel like… I feel like I need to do this.” She swallows thickly and picks softly at the guitar strings. “It’s like… like this way at least I’m telling her, you know? Even if she doesn’t know it.”

Of course, Damian gets it.

“That’s beautiful, babe,” he tells her. “So you’re actually doing this?”

“I’m actually doing this,” she replies firmly. “And tomorrow, I need you to make sure I don’t chicken out before I sign up.”

“Got it. I’ll just order you to do it as Senior Co-Chair of the Student Activities Committee.”

“That’s an abuse of power.”

“Then consider yourself abused baby.” He laughs and she laughs with him, and then she hears something on Damian’s end. “I have to go. A certain little sister of mine has a princess costume that needs attending to. See you later.”

“See you later,” she replies before he clicks off the call. She looks down at her paper, then at her guitar, and thinks about what she just committed to. “I’ve got some work to do.”

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The song goes through four rewrites in the weeks leading up to the talent show. The whole first verse is changed, the chorus scrapped and replaced with a new one, then that one is scrapped and she goes back to the old one. She sits hunched on her floor with a pencil in her mouth, wondering if what she’s written is too personal or not personal enough. If it’s too obvious that Cady, smart cookie that she is, will work it out and that’ll lead them down a new, scary path. She cuts some lyrics that give the game away, opting to replace one about love for numbers with love for learning, because that opens up the pool to half their grade. She writes about Cady’s blue eyes rather than specifically those double dimples that make her melt. Maybe she’s compromising her artistic vision, but it might be worth it if it’ll keep her crush a secret. She keeps the old lyrics tucked in the back of her notebook, just to have them.

Meanwhile, she’s also dealing with the fact that people know she has signed up for the talent show. That Miss Too Cool For School Loner Art Freak Janis is actually performing at a school event. And she doesn’t even get extra credit for it. They’re surprised, and curious, and none more so than Cady. The other girl appears at her side almost instantly after first period, skinny little arms wrapped around her bicep and blue eyes alight.

Oh, the things those eyes do to her.

“Janis!” she squeaks. “I saw-on the sign up sheet-your name! Oh my God, is this a joke? Did Damian put you up to it?”

“No, no, I signed up of my own accord,” Janis tells her. That only makes Cady bounce more, ponytail bobbing up and down.

“Oh wow, that’s amazing!” she says. She stops then, her mouth freezing in its place and her cheeks turning pink. Slowly, she comes down to Earth, like a balloon that had the air let out of it. Janis can almost hear the wheeze. “I mean um, it’s pretty cool, I guess.”

“It’s pretty grool,” Janis replies, and just like that Cady bounces back up again.

“Oh my gosh, what are you going to do?” she asks. “Or do you want it to be a surprise?”

“You think I have some secret knife-throwing talent?” she grins. She hesitates for a moment, looking down at Cady’s excited face, because even if this isn’t telling her… it’s telling her. “I’m… I’m going to sing.” She pulls on the strap of her backpack and avoids Cady’s eyes. “Something I wrote.”

“Okay,” Cady says. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

“Hey!” she laughs. “I can write stuff. I can be deep.”

“Oh, I have no doubt about it,” Cady says, bumping her arm against Janis’. “But for real, Janis, I can’t wait to see it. I know you’ll be amazing.”

Warmth spreads across her pale cheeks, a pink blush no doubt colouring her face, and she somehow manages to choke out a “thanks” as her brain turns to static. Her only thought is ‘Cady thinks I’m going to be good’, and it’s written in glitter pen across her brain.

“This is going to be great,” she goes on. “Oh, wait until I tell Aaron. He’s got a break in his schedule that week so he’s coming up to see the talent show! Isn’t that great?”

And just like that, Janis’ good mood falls. Her face stays the same, because she’s trained to do it, but everything behind it crumbles.

“Yeah, that’s great,” she replies. Cady squeezes her hand, oblivious, and drags her along the hallway, chatting away about some lion documentary she had watched last night.

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She finishes the song that night. She arrives home with a heavy chest, so full of complicated, messy feelings, and her conversation with Cady still so fresh in her mind, her ears still ringing from the emotional whiplash. Her parents barely get a ‘hello’ as she enters and bolts up to her room, her hands shaking, the thoughts swirling around her brain desperate to be let out.

And let them out she does. She writes so quickly they look more like smudges than words, her fingers flying over rapidly changing chords, her voice broken and panting as she sings. The words almost write themselves, like the song has taken on a life of its own and she’s just along for the ride. She barely remembers to pause, to breathe, so wrapped up in the storm she’s created with just her guitar and pen.

It’s only when she finishes and falls back on her bed that she notices the tears in her eyes. She blinks them away and pulls herself up, her notebook in her hand. It’s done. The perfect blend of her own honest feelings and just enough smokescreen to keep people from knowing who it’s really about.

There’s no backing out now, she thinks. Her stomach drops, like she’s on the top of a roller coaster about to go down. A laugh bubbles up in her throat and leaves her breathless, her head spinning while she’s still laying there.

If holy shit were am adjective, she'd use it to describe how she feels. Because holy shit.

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Being backstage when she’s not on crew is a strange experience. She stands with her guitar slung around her body, in the middle of a current of students moving around her, half with the clunky microphones and walkie-talkies she’s used so many times before. She asks five of them if she can do anything to help-because they’re her people and she needs to do something to occupy her time-until she finally takes the hint and leaves them to it. Stagehands are the most efficient parts of any production, as she told Damian once. They’re a well-oiled machine at this point.

“Yo!” For a second, Janis thinks she imagined the whisper, just one in a jumble of backstage noises, until Damian appears at her side. A tiny ‘shit’ escapes her mouth, her body jerking. Barely anyone bats an eye at her, except him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you.”

“Don’t worry. I think at this point a small breeze could knock into me and I’d crumble.”

“The great Janis Sarkisian gets nervous?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

“Only when she’s doing something incredibly personal and scary in front of her entire grade,” she whispers back. She swallows past the lump in her throat. “Aside from that I’m a beacon of confidence and unshakable will.”

“Hey.” He taps his knuckles against hers. “Remember how scared you were at Norbury’s assembly?”

“You mean after I had my picture all over the school with the d-slur written underneath it?” she mutters. “Yeah, I was shitting myself.”

“And yet, look what you did there,” he reminds her. “You were amazing. And you’re going to be amazing here too. Once you get on that stage, all those butterflies are going to make you fly, kid.”

She smiles, her heart warm, and pressed her face into the crook of Damian’s neck.

She doesn’t know how she got so lucky to have him, but she knows better than to tempt fate.

“Janis Sarkisian?” She lifts her head to find a freshman girl with a headset around her neck looking at her. “You’re up next.”

“Okay.” It’s only now she becomes aware that the last minute of Fairytale Of New York is playing, the notes will soon fade out, and that’s her cue. She turns to Damian and lets him straighten her black cardigan and fiddle with the collar of her shirt. “Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it.” He drops a whisper of a kiss to her nose. “But good luck.”

She holds her half-heart necklace as he goes, the twin to the one around his neck. It’s as close as she can get to having him with her. Her chest tightens as she makes her way to the stage and she tries to breathe through it, because the next thign she knows, Mr Duvall is announcing her name, and she’s being greeted by a blinding spotlight that thankfully obscures most of her peers’ faces.

“Uh, hi,” she says into the microphone placed out for her. It’s just people , she reminds herself. Somewhere in that crowd, second row, seat 14, is Damian, and she breathes easier. And next to him is Cady, the girl this song is about, and for some reason that straightens her spine and irons out the shaking in her voice. She takes the pick out of its holder and tosses her hair back. “This is a song I wrote about being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back.” She blinks and hopes no-one sees the tears in her eyes. “So sing along if you get into it, because we all know it’s a shitty ass feeling.”

She plays the first chord, and then any and all doubts she had about this flee her. As cliche as it sounds, the song takes over her, and she blows through the nerves in the first verse. The experience becomes cathartic instead, like releasing a pressure valve on her soul. Even with the little diversions she threw in, she hasn’t felt this open and god damn free since last year, paraded on her peers’ shoulders with both middle fingers up. Except now she’s not flipping anyone off, or proving a point, she’s just finally telling someone how she feels, and holy shit, it’s amazing. Whatever the aftermath of this is, she won’t care, it’s worth it just for this feeling.

As she sings the last word, and that final note rings in the auditorium, her hands are shaking, her cheeks wet with tears and her hair sticky with sweat. She touches beneath her eye and her fingers come away stained black.  She hasn’t cried in front of people since middle school. She doesn’t care.

The cheers of her classmates ring in her ears, Damian’s whooping the loudest of all, and as she takes her bow, she hopes she’ll remember this moment for a long time.

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

���Oh my God!” she’s barely into the auditorium when Cady launches herself at her, arms wrapped around her neck and legs circling her waist. Janis nearly topples over, digging her back leg into the ground just in time, and hugs Cady with the same ferocity. “You were amazing!” she yells into her shoulder, the sound muffled by Janis’ hair.

“Really?”

“Absolutely.” She sets Cady down, but the other girl keeps a tight grip on both her arms. Janis wonders if it’s to keep herself from flying away, given the amount of bouncing up and down she’s doing. “I can’t believe you wrote that! It was so good! You need to record it, Jan. Do you have any other songs?”

“Just a few,” she says. “And I don’t know if I’m in the business of making an album any time soon.” She swings her guitar case a little. “This might have been a one-time thing.”

“Well, even if it was, it was awesome,” she says.

“Thank you, Caddy,” Janis replies. “That means a lot.”

Her mouth runs dry as Cady smiles, all baby pink lipgloss and sparkling eyes and full cheeks. If this were a movie, she thinks, this would be the part where they kiss. No need for talking, or an explanation. Because Cady would have just known. The music would turn soft and twinkly, and the lighting would match it and it would look like they’re in a dream and they’d just kiss, and it will fix all of Janis’ problems. Maybe a single tear will run down her cheek. And then they’ll run off into their new lives as the end credits roll.

How sweet that would be.

But her life isn’t a movie. If she wants anything, she has to go for it herself.

And that includes-

“Caddy.” Her name is delicate on her lips, handled with care. Cady looks at her, giving a simple ‘mm-hm’ in response, and Janis’ heart beats out of control. “That song I just sang, it-”

“Hey, guys.”

Also if this was a movie, Cady’s sweet, lovely, nice boyfriend would not be barging in right now. He’d either be a douchebag who she doesn’t feel bad about hurting, or he’d be nonexistent.

Unfortunately, this is not a movie, and Aaron Samuels exists and is the human equivalent of a squishmallow.

“Hey Aaron.” He slings his arm around Cady’s shoulders, and she leans into his touch almost instinctively. “Janis, you were great up there. I didn’t know you wrote songs.”

“It’s a bit of a new hobby,” she says, her voice hoarse. She clears her throat, and finds a bottle of water being handed to-thrown at-her.

“Hydrate those chords,” is Damian’s greeting.

“This is what I get for being friends with a theatre kid,” she sighs before she takes a drink. She hadn’t realised how dry her throat was until now.

“Okay, so we’re all going for pancakes,” Aaron says. “I take it you two are coming?”

“How can I say no to pancakes?” Janis asks. “Uh, you guys go ahead, I have to get my stuff from the green room.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for you,” Cady says. “Aaron brought his car so he can drive us.”

“Grool.” Cady and Aaron turn around together, Aaron spinning his eyes around his finger and Cady lacing her fingers through his, talking about something she can’t hear. It’s like watching them through a sheet of glass.

Not a movie. Not unless it’s one of those really, really sad movies. Sad homophobic movies.

“You okay?” Damian asks. She snorts at the question. Nothing has changed, so of course she’s okay. But then, nothing has changed, so she’s not really okay.

“I did it,” she sighs. “It’s out there. I told her, unofficially. Whether or not she works it out…” She runs her hand through her tangled hair. “That’s something else entirely.” Damian hums in agreement, a sympathetic look on his face that soon morphs into a grin.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks Mom.” They snort, Janis caught between a laugh and a sob, and squeezes Damian’s hand. She’s not optimistic about any romance in her future, at least where Cady is concerned. She and Aaron are still rock-solid and she’s happy for them, whenever she isn’t angsting about it. It’s a weird combination to have.

And at least she’s done this now. Despite a future for her and Cady not being in the cards for now, she’s glad she did it. The secret isn’t out, not entirely. Just written on the walls in invisible ink.

“Come on,” she tells Damian. “I actually do have to get my bag, and you can use this as an opportunity to double check the ghost light is on.”

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

Cady and Aaron keep their promise and wait for them, waving off their apologies as they jog across the parking lot. Cady lets Damian take the front seat with Aaron and slides into the back with Janis instead. Janis frowns, confused as to why she isn’t taking her normal seat up front, and Cady rolls her eyes.

“There was a draw on the way here, and we lost,” she explains. “And now Damian has control of the aux chord,” She gestures with her head to the passenger seat, and Janis turns just in time to see him open his Spotify and scroll through his playlists. As the opening notes to Waving Through A Window fill the car, it’s met with three loud groans. Damian only turns it up louder, and adds in his own backing vocals.

“So, that song you sang,” Cady asks, leaning back in the seat. “Was it about anyone in particular?”

Janis looks down, her hands pressed together in her lap. If this is the moment the universe decided to give her, it’s a really terrible moment. Not only is Cady’s whole boyfriend sitting an arm’s length away from her, but she left her nerve back in the auditorium. Clearly, her and fate aren’t on each other’s wavelength.

“You wouldn’t know her,” she says. “She doesn't even go here.”

“Oh,” Cady replies. Her face falls, but she’s not too put out by it. Why would she be? She nudges Janis’ shoulder, a proud smile on her face, and squeezes Janis’ hand. “Well, if she has someone like you into her and she hasn’t taken the chance yet, then she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

Janis only thanks her, and quickly changes the subject.

Someday she might tell her for real, but for now she'll stick to the songs.

[votederpycausemufins]

Surprisingly Familiar Ch 1

The first chapter of the sequel to Summoning Family. I'm going to be working on my scattered au fic more, but you might still see some chapters of this scattered around

@petrichormeraki made the hermit!Tommy au, and @helleborusangel did amazing rambles for the chapters of Summoning Family.

Now, Let's see how things have gone since the ending of Summoning Family.

It had been eleven days since Grum’s birthday and now it was Jrum’s. He was excited by the party, playing games and trying to scam people of their diamonds. Cake was nice, his mask getting a special cake of his own with diamonds since Grum had gotten the same. And then it came to presents.

Jrum was especially happy at any toys he got and glad if he was just getting diamonds. Kokatori had also managed to get another ribbon around its neck and try to be a present again. Jrum wasn’t the most pleased about that since he was still coping with everything that happened with the egg, but he still took the present before handing them off to Grum.

Just as the presents were just about all gone, two more were placed on the table, each one with a different label. Jrum went to grab the last present when he saw the new ones being placed, so he looked up at who was putting them down, surprised to see an unfamiliar face. “Um, who are you?”

The question made everyone look over, most people looking confused, but three people had different reactions. Phil looked surprised, recognizing the man. Grian was also surprised, but also awestruck. Lastly, in Grum’s arms, Kokatori hissed.

“What the heck are you doing here? Who even let you in?” Phil asked, walking over to the man.

“I let myself in. I mean, I sort of already had permission to be here, just never used it. Building big was never really my thing.”

“Who are you then?” It was Scar who spoke up. The person looked at a few of the hermits who seemed to also look as confused as Scar sounded.

“I think the beard is messing with them.” Phil said, elbowing the man, who then ran a hand through his beard.

“Right, spend a month on an abandoned island and then get captured by pirates and you can’t really do much for that. Anyone got a raz...or…” he trailed off as Jrum pulled out some special shears. He was stunned by the bot having such a thing, but took them with a thank you and stepped out of the room.

After a few minutes, he stepped back in, and immediately some of the hermits were no longer confused. “Oh my god, it’s been so long!” Bdubs was the first to say, going over to the man. “What have you been up to!”

“Eh, mainly family. You’ve been working with someone named Scar?” Bdubs nodded and gestured to the mayor. “Got it. Nice to meet you.” He moved over to Doc. “And how about you? How’s the family life?”

“Eh, some days are always better than others, I haven’t been around here as often because of it. What about you?”

“Well, the kids are all grown up at this point, I’ve got more time on my hands so I’ve gone back to filming.”

Doc nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ve got to tell you more about what we did last season.”

“I’m sure you do.” The man chuckled, moving over to Keralis. “Hey, can’t wait to see your city. The pictures seemed crazy enough. I can’t believe you built all that.”

“Why spank you, but I have had help with designs.”

“Yeah. And you said you own it with someone named Cleo now?”

“Yes, in fact, she’s got a relative that is in Bub’s troop last I checked.”

Cleo spoke up at this point. “Yep! Got an order in for popcorn just the other day.”

“Nice to hear. By the way, Etho’s behind me, isn’t he?” The hermits unfamiliar with the man were surprised by that comment, as Etho was indeed behind him. Pretty much no one could tell when Etho was sneaking around, so this new person doing it was very shocking. “I’ll be asking everyone about your shops so I can stay awake from them.”

“Oh come on, some of them would be fun for a survivor like you. In fact we could get Tango to open up decked out for a session for you.”

“Right, sure Etho. Now is Beef around?”

“No actually. He had something really important come up.” Etho answered, another hermit nodding to agree with the statement.

“Ah, that’s too bad. Well, I guess the only person left to greet is ol’ rap battle over here.”

Wels suddenly looked embarrassed. “Oh that’s why you look familiar. You’re the OBP leader.”

“Yeah.” The man nodded. “You know green wasn’t really your c-”

“Please don’t bring that up again.”

The man laughed. “Alright, I won’t.” He then looked at the rest of the hermits. “Well, I think I know a few of you from the letters I’ve gotten from these guys.” And he gestured to the hermits he had been talking to. “Like I know Scar and Cleo now, then TFC and Xisuma I’m familiar with, also Zedaph.”

“Yeah, so who are you exactly?” Mumbo spoke up. “While I’m glad you’ve come to celebrate Jrum’s birthday, I’m not familiar with you.”

“Right, forgot to give my name I guess.” The man started to say. “I’m-”

Grian cut him off. “You’re the Soarvivor Paul! I remember watching your shows when I was in highschool! I had some friends at my school in England who went to an event of yours!”

“Wait, this is Paul?” Scar spoke up. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about him from Doc and Bdubs.”

Paul smiled at that. “Yep, that would be me.”

Grian took over the conversation again. “So wait, you said you were recording again, are you making MvM again?”

Instead of answering happily like Paul had to everyone else, he just gave Grian a bit of a nod before giving him the cold shoulder.

“Wait, are you that uncle Phil’s always talking about?” Tommy asked. He had stayed out of the conversation when he had no clue what was going on, but now that he recognized the name, he had some things to say. “The one he always complains always uses letters instead of a phone call or texting.”

Paul nodded. “Yeah, that would be me. Letters are the most reliable when you’ve got a job like mine.”

“Then stick to a comm then Paul.” Doc said, resting his arm on Paul's shoulder. “I’ve offered to make you a special one who knows how many times. I’m sure your kids wouldn’t mind it either.”

“Why do I feel like I’m still missing something?” Tommy spoke up again, Doc explaining for him.

“A number of us hung out with Paul in the past. Most of us he knows from the old Minecrack worlds, but he met Keralis on some other worlds.”

“Yeah, and met Wels when we were dealing with an apocalypse world. Beef was there too.” Paul sighed. “So Phil, what’s your family been getting up to other than the obvious?”

“Well, Tommy’s actually living in hermitcraft now.” Phil answered. “Wilbur’s getting through some things, and Techno’s trying to keep up his hardened warrior mask, but Grian’s kid is making that hard.”

“Well, this group seems to have that effect on people.” Paul nodded. “And how’ve they been doing with Xelqua?” Paul jabbed a finger on Grian’s direction.

“Right, shit, forgot to say that part. Grian is Xelqua.” Phil quickly explained, Paul’s mouth turning to a small ‘o’.

“Ah, I guess that explains that war and the hippies I heard about in letters. At least It’s a little tamer in a world like this.” Most of the people in the room were confused, and at first Grian was one of them, but then he made a connection and his legs were suddenly struggling to keep him up. “He has told you about Tokyo, right?”

Before anyone could answer, Kokatori was hissing in Grum’s arms again, drawing Paul’s attention. He pulled out a stone sword and immediately the hermits that knew Paul were holding him back. “No! Hey! Paul, that is a kid’s pet!” Bdubs said. “I know you don’t like them but that’s like the one chicken you’re not allowed to kill!”

“Just get him a pet other than a chicken! You can’t trust a chicken! They’re spies, killers and thieves.”

“Killer chickens?” Wels, who wasn’t holding Paul back, asked.

“Oh no, he’s telling the truth about that.” Doc answered. “I saw it for myself.”

“How do you get killed by a fucking chicken?” Tommy asked.

“You forget to kill it first.” Paul answered, finally putting his sword away. “Well, you said that kid’s one of Xel’s.”

“One of Grian’s.” Phil corrected. “And yes. That’s Grumbot, or Grum, the older of the two. His birthday was a week and a half ago.”

“Well, figures they’d just try causing more problems.”

Phil rolled his eyes and then grabbed Paul’s arm. “Alright, you and I. Talk. Now.”

When Phil and Paul had left the room, Grian finally allowed himself to go to the floor. The hermits that knew Paul were immediately apologizing for him, not sure why he was acting that way. But Grian knew. And Mumbo helped Grian up, pretty sure he knew too. “I’m going to help Grian lie down. Grum, maybe I should take Kokatori with me so they don’t cause more problems.”

Grum nodded and handed the chicken over, it being very upset about being moved and pecking at Mumbo’s arms. But he was too worried about Grian to let that stop him. So soon they had left the room too.

For a while, everything was silent. But then Jrum spoke up. “Well, for my birthday, I want to eavesdrop! And no one can stop me!” And he ran off to listen into Phil and Paul’s conversation, leaving the rest of the party members confused on what to do.

[troop-scoop]

Mistakes & Regrets V

Summary: When a trip to your Dad’s hometown of Hawkins goes wrong, you end up in the year 1983, and have to learn how to cope with being stuck in the past.

Pairing: Steve Harrington / Future!Reader (like, a really slow burn)

A/n: Italics are memories!

•••

You were scared, and alone.

The star and moonless sky sent chills up your spine, and the cold made you feel like it was winter. But this place didn’t have any seasons. It was just cold, and empty. And slimy.

It always felt like your feet were slipping whenever you tried to sneak around whatever those things were around you. They were terrifying, growling, and faceless.

And you made a big mistake, you’d ran away, you broke the rule of never going into the woods alone. This was on you. And you wanted nothing more for your phone to work. To be able to call your dad, either one of them. You wanted to apologize for being an idiot, for not being responsible.

You were hiding, holding your keys. They were too loud. All the keychains you had on it were jingling drawing attention. You were trying to take them off of the ring as quietly as you could, the first one to go was your Millennium Falcon keychain, quietly slipping it into your backpocket. The second was the Avatar keychain, that one being slipped into your hoodie pocket. You needed to seperate them, keep it so the jingle was no longer there. So you could get by them easier.

The last one you hesitated on. The rose quartz crystal keychain your brother had bought you from the dollar section in Target for your birthday. You didn’t really have an opinion of crystals, you thought they were pretty, so you kept it on your keyring.

You hesitated, before deciding against it, holding your pepper spray as if it would do anything, the pale pink can being gripped in your hand, fingers wrapped tightly around it, your nail polish a dark shade of purple, contrasting the pink, even in the dark.

“Could you find a way to let me down slowly.” You sang as quietly as possible, holding the keychain in your hand, trying to calm your down as much as possible. They’d seen you once. You didn’t want to risk it again. You’d lost your skateboard along the way, having dropped it the moment you saw one of those. . . things.

“A little sympathy I hope you can show me.” Tears were close to going down your cheeks as you grabbed your bag, holding it to your chest as tightly as you could. Your phone died a day before. And you’d been here a total of two. Evading the creature’s, never really getting a good look at them. Just knowing that they towered over you and looked emaciated, and their hands were huge, if you could even call them hands. They looked more like claws. And reminded you of the Windigo from that one video game whose name kept slipping your mind. And that’s what you called them, because that’s what they looked like, even if they weren’t because you knew these things had to be a different species, not a cannibal turned monster from Native American lore.

“If you wanna go then I’ll be so lonely.” Your low voice cracked a bit as your grip on the

sketchbook inside of your bag tightened. Your knees meeting your chest as you held the red material of the Jansport bag.

“If you’re leaving, baby, let me down slowly.” A loud noise came from down the street. Away from where you were hiding. Looking from the tree branches to the dark uninhabited houses you saw one of them moving. But you moved quicker. Hopping down from the tree and carrying your bag while you ran

•••

You didn’t know where you were going, you were pretty sure you were just running. Maybe there was something behind it. Some reason you were going towards the center of town, like a gut instinct telling you that you needed to go, run away from the motel you’d been living in for the past months.

The second the bowl had shattered and Linda snapped you out of it, you’d ran, going for your room again, and packing a few things you thought were necessary, and you went running down the street, it’d been 15 minutes now.

And at the end of those 15 minutes, you turned a corner, and almost ran straight into an older woman, who looked upset, and frazzled. An unreadable look on her face. But you knew it wasn’t a happy one. Maybe one of being deep in thought? Contemplation maybe.

It took everything in you not to call her what you knew her as, but you also knew that would get a strange look before she left. But as she steadied your by grabbing onto your shoulders, you grabbed her arms.

“Mrs. Byers! I was just looking for you.” Realization struck, your instincts telling you to run into town, where Joyce would be at the coroner's office, to tell her that Will couldn’t possibly be dead, because you were still there, you hadn’t disappeared like in all of those movies where something bad happens and someone was never born.

Or this could be like in Avengers, where something caused another timeline to happen. But then what would that mean for you? For the rest of your family here? For Will? Would he really be dead?

You refused to believe that. It didn’t feel right.

“I’m sorry? Do I know you?” Joyce looked more confused than she could have ever been in the entirety of her life.

“No, you don’t.” You spoke sadly, looking down to the ground, blinking away quick tears before looking back up to Joyce. “I’m new to Hawkins, just please listen, this is about your son-”

“If Jonathan told you anything-”

“There’s no way he’s dead!” You interrupted, grip on her sleeves growing tighter before she slowly pulled her hands away from your shoulders, eyeing you cautiously, almost as if you’d found out a secret.

“Wh-what?”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy, like, psych ward level crazy, like needing to be so heavily medicated that I wouldn’t be able to function normally-”

“Sweetheart, I’ve been the crazy one in town the past few days. I’ve seen it. . . What’s going on?”

You felt your heart swell a bit when she called you ‘sweetheart’ because that was what she’d always called you. Dad called you ‘baby’ and she always called you ‘sweetheart’. You blinked away more tears as you tried to muster up the courage to speak, but you couldn’t.

Carefully, and almost hesitantly, you pulled off your bag, and opened it. Taking out the large notebook and closing the backpack again, flipping to the page you were looking for, the image you and your dad had drawn together. You handed over the  sketchbook, and you saw her eyes widen a little as she looked down at the carefully drawn image.

“This is- this is Will’s Dungeons and Dragons character-”  

“Will the Wise, Right? A Cleric, a healer, he’s clever and smart, and he helps people! And that’s my character that he helped me make when I was nine, she’s a half-elf rogue, I named her after Elizabeth the first!” You explained.

Growing up, you played D&D with your Dad and uncles whenever they came to visit or you went to visit them. They weren’t actually related to you, but rather the kind of uncles that everyone else had, the uncles that were your parent’s best friends. They all helped you make your favorite character.

“When you were nine? Will’s only been playing with his friends for a year and a half? Right after he turned 11, he asked for the set for his birthday, there’s no way, and he doesn’t know you. He has three friends.”

“Check the date. Upper right hand corner.” You told her, watching as he eyes darted to the date on the paper, and you watched as her face fell before she looked back up at you.

“January 21st 2019? That’s. . . like 40 years from now-”

“36, actually.” You corrected quietly, a small shrug given when her face now turned into a scowl at how you corrected her.

“What are you saying?” She asked cautiously, flipping through the sketchbook. “I know I have no right to say someone else is crazy, I mean- I’m talking to Will through my christmas lights, you being from ���2019’ sounds more believable.”

“There’s no way that Will’s dead, because I’m his daughter.” You admitted to her.

“Tell me something about him then. Only someone who knew him would know.” She demanded, closing the sketchbook and handing it back to you.

“He has a birthmark on his right arm, I had the exact same one, but then I burned myself on a pan, and it went away. . . Um- His favorite song, it’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ from The Clash. Uncle Jonathan introduced him to it. Dad introduced it to me.”

Joyce’s face was once again, unreadable as she stared at you, eyes tracking over your face carefully, catching every detail, and everything that was asymmetrical. Everything that made you look like a Byers.

“Oh my God. You’re not lying.”

•••

“So, I’m your grandmother.”

You nodded as you grabbed the boombox, setting it down on the table, examining the christmas lights she’d put up around the house. It looked like something a crazy person would do. Put up this amount of christmas lights. And paint the alphabet on the wall.

“And you have two dads?”

You turned your head to her, giving her a look. You’d explained everything to her, how your dads had met, how you’d been conceived and born, how you’d grown up, and who your brother was. How close you were to your Uncle Jonthan, and that your favorite non-related uncle was Uncle Lucas, which sold her even more into the fact that you were really from the future, and were really her son’s daughter.

“Yes, I have two dads. But I’m biologically Will’s.” You explained once again.

“Okay.” She said quietly, taking the tape out of the boombox, rewinding it with a pencil. “Alright, one more question.” Joyce started again, making you sigh. “How’d you get here?”

You paused, looking down at your dirtied and almost ripped converse. You didn’t quite remember. All you could remember was running into the woods after getting away from Enzo’s, trying to take a short cut to the motel, and then you fell through the ground, into something cold, and gooey. What you imagined it would feel like to stick your hand into a dead body for an autopsy. But you didn’t remember anything after that. Just waking up, in dirty clothes laying on the ground in the woods, backpack on, skateboard gone. And you had gotten up, legs feeling weak, and wobbly, before you’d found yourself back in town, but it had all been different. You hadn’t realized that it had been a different century until you’d gone into Melvad’s and saw something with the expiration date of ‘November 28th 1983.’

“I don’t remember. But I remember I made a mistake, and I ran off. And I regret it. If I could take it back I would.” Looking back up you noticed she was looking up at you, sympathy written on her face, and you knew what she was thinking. And you knew that one day her sympathy or your situation would turn to empathy for your Dad. Who would be going through what she was now.

You reached down and pressed ‘play’ before standing up straight again, giving her a soft smile as you looked up at the lights. This was not the house you’d assume belonged to a perfectly sane woman. And yet, it did.

“Come on Will!” You yelled “Do your weird magic bullshit!” Joyce started a bit before standing up.

Banging came from the wall, and you turned your head to look over. Joyce stopped the music and went to the spot on the wall where the banging continued, with you following shortly after.

“Mom?”

Joyce gasped. “Will?”

“Holy shit.” You murmured

“Mom?” The boy asked again, banging on the walls continuously as if trying to get through. Something told you that it wasn’t as easy as Joyce thought it was by running outside while you placed a firm hand on the wall, nails digging into the wallpaper and peeling it away.

“Will?” You questioned.

“Where’s my Mom?”

“Will!” Joyce yelled, running back inside seeing that the wallpaper in her living room was ripped off and you were staring at what looked like a thin layer of skin. Maybe a membrane. You didn’t like it, and that feeling came back, of being on a roller coaster drop, but the drop never ending. It was a bit sheer, and you could see the outline of the small boy banging against the membrane.

“Mom!”

“Will! I’m here! I’m here!” Joyce yelled back.

“Hello? Mom?”

But when she put her hand over the membrane you froze up, standing and watching in terror, because all of a sudden, you knew how you got here, and the growling of something getting closer to Will made a shiver run through your entire body, goosebumps showing up on your skin.

“Mom, it’s coming!”

The image of what ‘it’ was was fuzzy, but you saw it, like a memory. Almost ten feet tall, and so skinny their bones protrude, and almost sickly pale, white skin stretched out over the body. And the claws. You could almost feel the scratch of one of them against the back of your neck.

Reaching a hand up to your neck you could feel a skinny and elongated bump in your skin

that had never been there. But it felt like a scab. Like a scab over a healing scar.

“Tell me where you are! How do I get to you?” Joyce cried, her hand over Will’s.

“It’s like home, but it’s so dark. . .It’s so dark and empty. And it’s cold! Mom? Mom!”

You couldn’t even attempt to hold back the tears that were burning at your eyes and making

your vision blurry as you could hear the echoes of your own voice, calling out for an older version of him, the version that knew you the entire time you’d been alone. You’d been scared, and freezing in just a t-shirt and pair of ripped jeans. Holding a broken skateboard that you’d landed on in your fall.

It came to you briefly, running into the woods after Pa had yelled at you at Enzo’s. But then the rain had gotten worse, turning into the thunder, and loud noises never really scared you, it was the lighting that was a little too close to you that had you running, searching for any way out, yelling and screaming for both of your fathers, for anyone.

And then you took one wrong step, in the wrong direction. And you fell into the ground, instantly feeling cold, and as if the temperature was going to kill you. It felt like falling through cold slime before you’d landed on your skateboard, breaking it in half.

Everything there had echoed, and it felt like the entirety of the town had been placed inside of an infinitely large and inescapable cave. You’d cried out even louder for your Dad, getting no response. You’d begged and pleaded for the nightmare to go away, but it never did. You remembered screaming out “Dad! Dad please, I’m sorry!” And then you remembered waking up in the woods, sun shining down on you, a real sky in view.

•••

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[rennyforpresident]

Renny’s BBSim: First Boots Week 8

Welcome back to Biiiiiiiiig Brother!

@ashleaevans @bathroom-sand @kaysarswhore @kayysarridha @kelleekim @lahallucinations @maxdoesbb @misshoh @music-obsessednerd @nerdphobic @nomwastaken @pawn2393 @phylisisley @remember-caltoru @rennyforpresident @shaolinbynature

Previously, the Double Eviction claimed both @remember-caltoru and @nomwastaken as its victims. With only 8 people left in the game, allies have to start turning on each other. Who will take the first shot?

After the double, alliances have DWINDLED

The Fearsome Four became the Fearsome Two last night, and the Block Destroyers lost their first number. But these alliances are only half the house; @kelleekim, @shaolinbynature, @phylisisley, and @ashleaevans still have a shot against the alliance!

The dreaded chicken wire competition! A few people fall out of things early, and just can’t keep up

@phylisisley in the DR: “I am LIVID that I can’t just win a fuckin comp! We’re at final 8! I mean, how do I keep losing??”

These three all have a good grip on this comp. Each of them are at 10 eggs each, when disaster strikes for one

@misshoh: “NOOOOOOOO, my egg!!”

@misshoh dropped her eleventh egg, essentially taking her out of the comp.

No matter what happens, someone will be HOH for the THIRD time (can someone else win a comp I’m tired of congratulating these two). Will @kaysarswhore win it for the Block Destroyers, or will @shaolinbynature win it for the Leftovers?

By an insanely close margin...

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@shaolinbynature! You have won your THIRD HOH of the summer, securing your safety and earning the right to nominate two of your fellow houseguests for eviction!

Feeling defeated, the Block Destroyers all hug each other solemnly. On the other side of the yard, @ashleaevans happily hands the key to the HOH room to @shaolinbynature

@shaolinbynature in the DR: “This week, my one and only goal is to finally take OUT @kaysarswhore! She’s snuck by for TOO LONG, and I can’t have her making it any further.”

Late at night, the day before the nomination ceremony, @pawn2393, @ashleaevans, and @shaolinbynature are all in the HOH room.

@pawn2393: “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but @kaysarswhore and @nerdphobic are the final 2 we have to worry about. I’m willing to work with you all because @kaysarswhore just doesn’t have my back. I’m on the bottom over there”

@ashleaevans: “I personally feel like we can trust you, so I’m happy to work with you.”

@shaolinbynature: “I feel like I’m getting some weird readings right now... are @ashleaevans and @pawn2393 working together? I mean, it’s great to get intel on the other side, but can I trust him?”

At the nomination ceremony, @shaolinbynature stands up to make her decision

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@shaolinbynature: “I have decided to nominate you @kaysarswhore and you @nerdphobic. @kaysarswhore, you shouldn’t be surprised at this point. You’re the biggest threat in here, and @nerdphobic, you’re just guilty by association. I would wish you luck in the veto, but I really hope you don’t win so we can send you out the door. This ceremony is adjourned.”

@kaysarswhore in the DR: “I am so tired of being vilified by these people. I have been nothing but good to these people, and I’ve gotten nothing but targeted in return.”

*at this point, shady editing shows all the shady things @kaysarswhore has done throughout the season to prove that she has not, in fact, been nothing but good*

@nerdphobic in the DR: “I am just hoping that the veto doesn’t get used by anyone but me. I’m staying here no matter what, and my best shot at staying is against @kaysarswhore. I love you girl, but I will cut you if it means I win half a million.”

It looks like the veto drawings are not in the Block Destroyers’ favor. @shaolinbynature draws @pawn2393, and says later in the DR, “This is his chance to prove which side he wants to be on.” @kaysarswhore and @nerdphobic both pick people from the other side of the house, and know that when push comes to shove, they’re the only ones they can rely on.

In this elimination style competition, two people will go head to head to beat each other’s scores. By random draw, @kelleekim is up first! He challenges @kaysarswhore, and with a score of 7 to 5

@nerdphobic is up next, and chooses to take on @shaolinbynature. Both do a good job, but with a score of 8 to 7, 

Next up to choose is @pawn2393. Here is the moment of truth. Who will he pick to go up against, and which side of the house will @pawn2393 choose to work with moving forward.

@pawn2393: “I choose, uh, I choose...”

@pawn2393: “I choose to go up against @kaysarswhore.”

Live footage of @kaysarswhore and @nerdphobic‘s reaction

The two face off, but after an intense round, @pawn2393 just can’t beat her

Unfortunately for @kaysarswhore, she’s the next person to choose and doesn’t get a break. She picks @shaolinbynature, and with a score of 9-7

That means it’s down to the showmance, @phylisisley and @shaolinbynature. As soon as she’s eliminated, @kaysarswhore goes over to the losers bench and sits in angry silence until the end of the comp.

The last round is just the two remaining houseguests having fun, not caring who wins. But in a surprise twist, the person walking away with the veto is...

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@phylisisley! Congratulations, you have won the Power of Veto!

The Leftovers celebrate, and the Block Destroyers (minus @pawn2393) are looking crestfallen, to say the least.

But @kaysarswhore isn’t going down without a fight. That much is for damn sure. The next night, @kaysarswhore gathers both @phylisisley and @shaolinbynature in the HOH room to make her pitch.

@kaysarswhore: “Listen. This game? Finished. I’m willing to spill the details of everyone’s games right here right now. @pawn2393 and @ashleaevans have a little flirtmance thing going on that they’re never going to break. They think they’re slick and that no one knows, but I figured it out a long time ago. @misshoh and @kelleekim have a secret deal that I overheard them talk about a few weeks ago. They’ve both been throwing comp after comp because they’ve never been nominated and never even been targeted. The only person in this house who hasn’t been sneaky and underhanded is @nerdphobic, and yeah, he’s loyal to me, and I’m loyal to him, but I promise you, if you flip this script and keep me here, you’ll have the numbers for sure going forward. The four of us, will definitely take on @kelleekim, @ashleaevans, @pawn2393, and @misshoh. They don’t have a shot in hell at winning a comp.”

Stunned, it takes a second for anyone to respond.

@shaolinbynature: “And what guarantee do we have from you that you’ll be true to your word? You’ve burned us both before, how can we trust you now?”

@kaysarswhore: “I can’t give you anything other than my word. But it’d be stupid of me to lie to your faces like this when we’re already in jury.”

The conversation continues for another hour, and @kaysarswhore gives their heated and passionate campaign. The next day, @shaolinbynature confronts @ashleaevans about his secret relationship with @pawn2393.

@ashleaevans: “What?!?! No! Do you think @pawn2393 is stupid enough to jeopardize his alliance weeks ago? Do you think I’m stupid enough to jeopardize my position in the house?

His response was defensive, but really convincing. It made way more sense than @kaysarswhore‘s argument.

The time for the veto ceremony has come. @phylisisley stands and delivers her speech.

@phylisisley: “Hey folks. I just want to say that I am very very happy to have finally won my first competition, and it has been very, um, enlightening to see what people will tell you when you have power. People’s true sides have come out, and I think it’s time for us to stop playing pretend and start playing Big Brother. That being said, I have decided...

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Live footage of me seeing the sim tell me this happened and wondering how the FUCK I’m supposed to justify that

@shaolinbynature: “Since one of my nominees were vetoed, I must now name a replacement nominee. It has come to my attention that some of us haven’t been playing as hard as others. I don’t want someone like that to win this game, so unfortunately...

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@misshoh in the DR: “I can’t fucking believe it. What the fuck did @kaysarswhore tell them to convince them to use the veto on her? I thought I had this game in the bag, and now here I am on the block. *breaks down and cries*”

With noms locked, the house is left to their own devices for the rest of the week.

Feeling dejected that his final 2 with @misshoh is exposed and his ally is probably going home this week, @kelleekim chooses to spend lots of time with her before Thursday

@misshoh: “If I go this week, I’m rooting for you. All the way. That jury is all gonna be voting for you to win because I’m gonna tell them to.”

The two of them lament their friendship, and resolve to get to work on getting the votes for @misshoh to stay.

In other news, @phylisisley is having a tough time figuring out how to cope with the game-changing decision she made.

@phylisisley spends the night in the HOH room being consoled by @shaolinbynature.

@shaolinbynature: “We did what we had to do. We’re playing this game. If she betrays us, we know she lost this game, she’s not getting a single jury vote for being such a fake.”

@phylisisley: “But we had people depending on us! I just feel bad.”

The two comfort each other for a few hours, and when they next wake up, it’s

EVICTION DAY

Julie Arisa: “Hey houseguests! It’s me Arisa!”

The houseguests all look extremely confused, because the woman before them is definitely Julie Chen. 

Julie Arisa: “Why do you all look so concerned? It’s just me!”

Then, the real Arisa runs on stage looking extremely disheveled and yells, “Take her down boys!”

Julie is once again dragged offstage screaming, “I’ll get you Arisa, I’ll get you and BB will be MINE again! Grodner is on her way and she won’t put up with this!”

Arisa: “Well houseguests, I’ve been through a lot today, so let’s do this eviction thing. Get to it folks.”

@misshoh: “Just to let you all know, if you go to the end with @kaysarswhore, you’re a fool. I’m done with her, and I’ll never protect her in this game again. @shaolinbynature and @phylisisley, both of you got played this week. If I am on jury, neither of you will get my vote. That’s all!”

@nerdphobic: “All I can say is that I hope you keep me here! Peace and love to you all!”

Arisa: “Thanks for keeping it short folks! Now let’s voteeeeeeee”

@phylisisley votes out @misshoh. This blindside would be meaningless otherwise.

@kelleekim votes out @nerdphobic. He knows that @nerdphobic will go wherever @kaysarswhore does, so taking him out is his best bet.

@ashleaevans votes the same way for the same reason. The house has to pick a side, and this is the side he has to pick.

Now this one is a surprise! @pawn2393 goes into the DR and says, “I’ve learned this week to trust in the Block Destroyers. It looks like you haven’t learned that yet.”

The vote is tied. Two votes for @misshoh and two votes for @nerdphobic. Who will @kaysarswhore​ vote out? Will she honor her deal with @shaolinbynature​ and @phylisisley​? Or will she defect back to the Block Destroyers?

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@kaysarswhore​ votes out @nerdphobic​ in a SHOCKING twist. 

@kaysarswhore​: “The Block Destroyers are done. This is an individual game, and my plan is to cause as much chaos as possible. Sorry, but this is my best bet at making it further.”

Arisa: “When I reveal the name of the evicted houseguest, they will have one minute to gather their belongings, and exit the Big Brother house.”

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Arisa: “Come on out, @nerdphobic​!”

Arisa: “What happened?? How did you end up going home this week?”

@nerdphobic​: “I blame @pawn2393​ 100%! @kaysarswhore​ told me how tight he was with @ashleaevans​, and he’s the only one I can imagine flipping on the Block Destroyers like that. If he makes it to the end, he’s finished.”

Arisa: “It sounds like there’s some hard feelings! Do you think people are gonna start playing harder than ever now?”

@nerdphobic​: “I can’t imagine things NOT heating up after this. I have no idea who’s going next, I just hope that it’s someone I don’t like leaving soon! *audience laughter*”

Arisa: “Thank you so much for playing, and we’ll see you soon on finale night where you will help crown a winner.

Only four more weeks until finale night! Who’s the next one out? For now, from outside the Big Brother house, I’m Arisa Cox, and remember, someone is aaaaaaaaalways watching!”

Okay writing this episode was IMPOSSIBLE I literally had no idea what the fuck y’all were doing but I LIVED! Sorry to @nerdphobic​ but we still stan!!

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 39: How to rebalance a lopsided conversation

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 39: How to rebalance a lopsided conversation. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 39 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about analysing conversation. But first, thank you for spending another year with us travelling around the sun.

Gretchen: It’s been so much fun doing this again for a third year. Thank you for sending in all of your examples and quotes and fun facts for our anniversary. We’ve also been enjoying, so much, seeing your photos of the socks, and the glottal bottles, and the liquids for your liquids, and the other Lingthusiasm merch in your lives.

Lauren: We’re looking forward to bringing you another year of Lingthusiasm, both our main episodes and our bonus episodes, in 2020. Our current bonus episode is about onomatopoeia.

Gretchen: You can get access to the onomatopoeia bonus and 33 other bonus episodes at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website.

[Music]

Gretchen: When we talk about kids learning language, we often get really excited about a baby’s first word. But before kids can even get to that first word, let alone first sentence stage, they’re already doing something that’s really cool linguistically. That’s having conversations.

Lauren: I’m already having great conversations with a kid who doesn’t have any words yet and that’s because she can participate in that back and forth, and taking turns, and I make a noise and then she responds. And then I – as a good, supportive parent structuring her through her language acquisition – will respond as though she’s given some kind of opinion, “Ah, oh, really?” I love it when grownups are like, “Ah, that’s interesting,” at kids because they’re kind of motivating them through learning this skill of having conversations.

Gretchen: I love it. I mean, suddenly, all my friends are having babies now. So, I’m beginning to practice this kind of pseudo-conversational skill with a lot of different small kids. You also see fun videos of this on the internet. There’s these two twins in a kitchen. They seem to be having this nonsense conversation back and forth with each other. There’s one with a dad who’s having this conversation with his kid and he’s responding to the kid as if it’s a real conversation. The kids are learning something from that.

Lauren: Those videos get me every time. I love it so much. One thing they’re doing is using intonation, which is that way of changing the tone and the melody of your voice. Nicole Holliday talked about that in our Episode 13 on intonation. We do other things to show people that we want to speak or that it’s their turn to speak – and how we build conversations like this. There’s a whole field dedicated to studying this from the perspective of linguistics.

Gretchen: Yeah. Conversation analysis is such an interesting subfield of linguistics because a lot of us think about the sounds or the words or the sentences, but there’s also this broader conversational level where there are also interesting patterns going on. A thing that I found most satisfying about encountering conversation analysis was how understanding how there are different cultural conversational norms, which helped me navigate different kinds of conversations that I was having in different kinds of norms that other people were having, even if you’re all speakers, ostensibly, of English. Even if you’re speaking the same language, you can have slightly different conversational norms depending on your personality type, or what region you’re from, or various other factors. Understanding those more explicitly can help make those conversations more rewarding.

Lauren: Conversation analysis has definitely helped me through holiday season, family conversations, interacting with small kids, job interviews, all of these places where back and forth conversations happen. Understanding them from what’s happening on the linguistic level is a really useful way to think about conversation.

Gretchen: Yeah. Travel, when you’re interacting with people from different backgrounds and stuff like that, also really helps with that. There’s this great metaphor that gets used with conversation, which is already present in English in general, that conversation analysts have really seized on, which is the idea that conversations have a floor. When you have the floor, you’re the one who’s talking. So, I have the floor right now –

Lauren: I could interject, and I could take the floor. The metaphor is from places like parliaments where there is a literal speaking area on the floor where a person comes to and does the speaking. In formal contexts there are formal ways to officially take the floor, so to speak. If you’ve been in high school debating, you’ll know that the person has to walk to the middle of the room or stand up. If you have been to Parliament, you’ll see where they physically walk to on the floor to speak.

Gretchen: Even in less formal contexts, like when you start going to school and you get taught you need to raise your hand before you talk, that’s a way of saying, “We’ve got 30 people in here and the only way to manage the floor is to do some sort of more formalised things.” Because, by default, the teacher has the floor. Or in some contexts you have something like a talking stick that you can pass around and that also helps signal who has the floor.

Lauren: Those formal ways of showing who has the floor are great in formal situations or in large groups of people where lots of people might be competing to be the one to speak or negotiating who’s going to be the one to speak. Where there’s smaller groups of people, we can also signal our interest in taking the floor. We can do that with our voice by kind of going, “Uh, yeah” or kind of saying, “That’s a great point,” and then waiting for them to speak and then stepping in. We can use the way we look at someone. We can lean forward or use a gesture that we kind of hold in space to show that we are ready to take the floor if someone will give it over to us.

Gretchen: I’ve been talking at a lot of conferences on panels recently. The interesting thing about being on a panel of four or five people is that you’re figuring out how to navigate who has the floor because you’re trying to present a good experience for the audience and let each of the panellists talk about their area of expertise. You wanna negotiate that “Who has something to say next?” sort of thing. I’ve become very attuned to what I call the “I have something to say about that” body language/gesture combination, which is like you have one hand that’s kind of raised a little bit, just below the level of your face with maybe your index figure extended and the other fingers kind of curled. And then your eyebrow’s a little bit lifted and your mouth kind of half open. You might say something like, “Uh...” Of course, I’m doing it, but you can’t see it. But you can just picture that, “Hello, I would like to interject politely, please” gesture set, and facial expressions. That’s one way of signalling “I’d like to talk” in a semi-formal context.

Lauren: In those contexts, a really good panel moderator or a really good chair of a meeting will read that and go, “Okay, we’ll hear from this person and then that person,” as a way of managing that. In more informal situations, it really is a matter of everyone in the conversation trying to be as receptive as possible to the needs of each of the speakers.

Gretchen: Sometimes, deliberately not doing that and saying, “I know you have a thing to say, but let me finish this.” You can not let people have the floor as well.

Lauren: I think the really interesting thing about conversation analysis is it shows just how much negotiating we do. We might be talking about a topic over here, but so much of our energy about talking around that topic happens around the edge of who has the right to speak, who’s gonna finish their turn, who’s gonna talk next. There are lots of ways to not give the floor over to someone. We talked a bit about the “I’m willing to speak now” body language and things you can say. But there are also strategies to stop people from taking their turn: continuing to speak. You can use intonation to stop people talking over the conversation by making your voice go up a little bit at the end so that it makes it clear that you still have something more to say. Then, people will be less likely to interject.

Gretchen: See, look! I didn’t interject at any point there because I was like, “Lauren clearly has something to say because she’s going up at the end and she doesn’t want me to interrupt her.”

Lauren: Thank you very much for taking the floor-maintaining cue that I was using.

Gretchen: Even things like a filled pause – when you say something like “um” or “uh” or “well, uh, I think, maybe,” that can be a way of saying, “I’m still searching for the words that I wanna try to get out, but I have words to get out.” It’s not just a silent pause where the other person might take it as their turn to talk.

Lauren: Also holding your gesture up in the gesture space – if you go up and make a gesture and you don’t put it down, even if you don’t say anything. I like to use this when I teach language and gesture. I kind of see how long the students can cope with me having my hands up without saying something before they start looking a bit uncomfortable. You can stretch it out really far. If you have a conversational situation where you don’t wanna give someone else the chance to speak for a particular reason, there are lots of strategies that you can use to maintain being the person who’s doing the talking.

Gretchen: One that I found really interesting is the use of eye gaze in this because if you think about the simple notion of eye gaze, you might assume like, “Oh, people are talking to each other. They must be looking at each other.” But in actual fact, what often happens is that the person who’s listening is more likely to gaze at the person who’s talking, but the person who’s talking is more likely to gaze away. Then, the talker can use that return of the eye gaze to the listener or to the groups of listeners to signal that they’re finished with their turn.

Lauren: Listeners can also do things to support the person who is talking. You can nod your head. You can go, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.” You can kind of give them some vocal feedback. But that gaze is also really important. It’s why people find it really stressful if they’re the one talking if people are looking at their phones because it indicates that they’re not respecting that this person’s talking at this point.

Gretchen: Right. We should say that there are different sorts of gaze norms. Not everybody is comfortable maintaining eye contact and that can sometimes result in conflict if people have different sets of – whether they’re expecting somebody to be holding their gaze as if they’re listening or whether you can say, “Actually, I’m doodling and that makes it easier for me to listen,” but it’s not necessarily part of the same set of norms.

Lauren: I’m also a very vocal supporter of people who have the floor. I will do lots of smiling and nodding and hm-ing. That’s not the case for everyone. It’s also a matter of different audiences, whether that be because of cultural differences or just personal preference differences, respond differently.

Gretchen: I try to be that person when I’m a larger audience of that person who’s just gonna nod at the speaker, especially if they seem, maybe, they’re a little bit nervous or I know it’s the first time giving a talk or something. I’m just going, “I’m just gonna sit here nodding,” because it’s always really reassuring to look out at the audience and see someone there nodding every time you make a point.

Lauren: Because that’s how we’ve learnt to structure a conversation. Then, suddenly you have a different genre, which is a formal talk, and you’re not getting those cues that you’re used to from conversation. It can be really confronting. It’s really confronting when you have someone who sits there and doesn’t really smile or nod. Then, at the end, they’re like, “That talk was...” – they were clearly engaged. And you’re like “Oi, I have a very conflicting set of cues from you right now.”

Gretchen: I was giving a talk a number of years ago. I had a person sitting in the back row at some point just put their head on their palm, like face down, like kind of facepalm, during the talk. I was like, “Oh, no! What have I just said?” It turned out it was fine. But it definitely freaked me out.

Lauren: Just a long day of talks from this poor person.

Gretchen: Yeah. One of the things that I think is really interesting when it comes to conversation is how people structure the amount of silence and the amount of overlap that happens in between conversational turns – how you structure that passing back and forth of the floor to one another.

Lauren: We’ve talked about different strategies people can use to keep the floor, to hand it to someone, to be the supportive listener who’s letting them keep the floor or to take it, but they happen at different paces and in different ways in different conversations.

Gretchen: Have you ever been in a conversation where you felt like you either had a hard time getting the floor because the other person was just talking so much you couldn’t get a word in edgewise, or you’re stuck with the floor because the other person just wouldn’t talk at all and you’re carrying both ends of the conversation?

Lauren: I’ve definitely been involved in conversations with you where I’m pretty sure other people would have a hard time getting a word in if they weren’t particularly assertive about it. We’re both very good at talking. As soon as you give over the floor, I’m happy to take it. We often overlap. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our producer, Claire, who makes this sound like a conversation people can listen to sometimes. I definitely know that I have a habit of being very in a conversation, and as soon as someone hands me the floor, I’ll take it. And I’ll hand it back just as quickly. If they’re not in there, I’ll probably have something else to say.

Gretchen: For me, if I’m excited about what someone’s saying, I wanna be anticipating what they’re going to say and – not finishing their sentences in a, like, trying to cut them off sort of way, but in a like, “I’m showing that I’m following you so closely that I can anticipate what you wanna say because of how much I’m paying attention right now.”

Lauren: There’s a part of me that always wants to be the wise, wait for someone to talk, and take a moment’s breath, and come back with an incredibly pithy reply that is very efficient. But actually, no, I actually find the cut and thrust of a face-paced, enthusiastic conversation much more satisfying.

Gretchen: I think of the Owl character from Winnie-the-Pooh of like, “Ah, yes. That’s very interesting. Let me retreat to my cave and ponder it for a week. And then I’ll come back to you with a reply.” I’ve been in the situation where, even though normally I’m really keen on the cut and thrust of the conversation – I’m definitely more on that side – sometimes I have been in conversations, especially if I’m a little bit tired, where someone else will just be talking and I’ll be like, “Yeah, I guess I could say something, but I’m just silent right now. You’re just doing all the talking, and I’m sorry about that, but that’s what you’re doing.”

Lauren: When I’m in Nepal, that is definitely more the pace of conversation. I think it’s partly just that it takes having a conversation in a second language to slow me down a little bit. I think also conversation styles in general with the people I talk to tend to be a bit more, “I’ll say my thing. Then, you’ll say your thing. And then I’ll say my thing.” It’s a different pace of conversation.

Gretchen: I will say that I grew up in eastern Canada, in Nova Scotia, and I have been very used to having these high-overlap conversations. Then, I moved to Ontario for undergrad and this was the first time that I ever heard people saying the phrase, “No, you go ahead,” in conversation. I was like, “What? Why would anyone ever say this?” because, clearly, the thing that people do is just you both just keep trying and then eventually either you give up because you didn’t actually think your thing was that important or you eventually get it out. Nobody takes any offence about this because that’s just how conversations happen. Why would you ever tell someone, “No, you go ahead?” You could just be talking at that point. Why would you be spending this time on conversation management phrases? But now I go back to Nova Scotia and I’m like, “Wow! People talk really fast.”

Lauren: In different contexts you have people who are very involved in the conversation and get right in there. Then, as a spectrum of individual preferences or larger cultural preferences at the other end, you have people that are very considerate of the other person’s right to be the person who has the floor and is taking their turn.

Gretchen: Yeah. This was why it was really satisfying for me to read Deborah Tannen because she has several books which have been very popular pop linguistics books about conversation. One of the distinctions that Deborah Tannen makes is between high-involvement conversational styles and high-considerateness conversational styles. When I read this it was like, “Oh! Here’s this thing that I’ve been doing, that I’ve noticed in different types of conversation where you have some kinds of conversation where you have this cut and thrust, and this back and forth, and this high level of overlap.” I think it’s probably not a coincidence, Lauren, that we became friends because we both have this type of conversational style, so we don’t feel like we’re interrupting each other. I’ve noticed that I tend to be friends with more people that have high-involvement. I’m sorry, high-considerateness people, I’m sure you’re all lovely, but it just doesn’t always click as much.

Lauren: I think there’s something about someone who you click with is in some way a factor of how you interact.

Gretchen: I noticed that I tend to be friends with other people who also talk quickly or other people who also have this high level of involvement in conversation. The thing that I like about the distinction that Tannen makes here is that “involvement” and “considerateness” both sound really positive. They both sound like really nice things to be. It’s not like the “fast talkers” and the “slow talkers,” which sounds sound of pejorative for both groups to be honest. Both traits that are really positive as long as you understand that’s what’s going on.

Lauren: I think it’s worth remembering not only are these traits a scale and that, as an individual, you can move up and down them depending on who you’re talking to and the context that you’re in, but also – and we talked about this a little bit in our Episode 23 about nothing and how silence can be meaningful in conversation – the differences that we’re talking about here are millisecond differences. But we’re so sensitively attuned to when we can take the floor, or when someone else wants to interject, that these differences are really small and there’s not a lot of difference between individuals. But overall, we’re very sensitive to it.

Gretchen: They’re so tiny. The example that Deborah Tannen has is she recorded some of her friends at a Thanksgiving dinner. Some of them were New Yorkers and some of them were Californians. She found that the New Yorkers were move high-involvement. The Californians were more high-considerateness. That’s within even the same country. You have two different coasts with two different sets of norms. You can build out that continuum even more. I said I’ve noticed it in Canada. If you think of it in terms of particular countries or particular nationalities, something like maybe Italians or Spanish speakers are gonna be more high-involvement. Whereas, something like, I think, Finns was Deborah Tannen’s example. In Finland, they’re very high-considerateness. They have a lot of silences between statements. But even that, it’s still milliseconds.

Lauren: We learn these things really early. I am raising what is probably gonna be a relatively high-involvement child because I’m teaching her the type of turn taking that I find acceptable.

Gretchen: The thing that I also found really interesting about Tannen’s research is that she also gives you a set of tips for what to do if you find yourself in a conversation with someone who is at a different point than you from the scale.

Lauren: This is a delightful applied use of conversation analysis.

Gretchen: It’s so useful! I tell this to people at parties because a) I’m that kind of person and b) it is really one of the most “Here’s how linguistics can make your life better” examples that I have ever encountered. I think this is why people like her books so much.

Lauren: So, as a high-involvement person, if I’m gonna have a conversation with someone who has a really high-considerateness threshold, what should I do?

Gretchen: Right. As a high-involvement person, something we may encounter more often is that you’re in a conversation with somebody and the other person is just not talking. And you’re like, “Oh, my god. I did not sign up to give a monologue, here. Why is this person not keeping up their end of the conversation? Are they bored? Are they unengaged with me? I have to do all the work myself.” The temptation when that happens is to kind of go into monologue mode of, like, “I guess I’m just doing all this work myself. I didn’t sign up for this, but I guess I’m just giving a monologue now because this person just won’t talk.” Tannen points out the temptation is to dig in deeper into the thing you’re already doing. What’s actually probably happening is that this person is waiting for a pause that’s long enough that they can interject, and they don’t feel like they’ve gotten one yet.

Lauren: This is why I find, sometimes, having coffee as an actual activity is quite useful because even the most high-involvement person has to stop for a few milliseconds to have a drink.

Gretchen: Sometimes, I do this very explicitly if I’m having lunch or something with someone. I notice that I’ve been doing a lot of talking and so their food is almost all eaten and my food is not eaten, and I’ll be like, “I’m gonna eat my food now. You should talk to me.”

Lauren: That should be a quantitative analysis – counting how much food is left for each person at different points in the conversation.

Gretchen: It’s like, “I still have three quarters of a sandwich here and you have barely any sandwich left, so it’s your turn to do the talking, and I’m gonna eat my sandwich now.” It’s great because a) I get a sandwich and b) I also don’t have to do the whole side of the conversation, and the other person doesn’t feel like I’m monopolizing the conversation as much.

Lauren: So, what if I’m a high-considerateness person, or I’m in a conversation where I feel like that’s my interactional style, and I’m being bombarded by a high-involvement person?

Gretchen: Yeah. Even though I would consider myself fairly high-involvement, sometimes I’ve been in the flip side of that where you have somebody who’s doing all the talking and not letting you get a word in edgewise. The temptation, if you’re more on the considerateness end in a given conversation, is to say, “Okay, well, I guess I’m just not gonna get a word in edgewise. I’m gonna just sit back here because this person seems totally content to just do all the talking. I’m just gonna give up.” Like how just doing all the talking yourself, if you’re on that end, is also a kind of digging yourself in deeper rather than trying a different strategy, the person who seems to be giving a monologue actually really wants to be interrupted – or what, for you, will feel like interrupting. I had a friend that I knew a number of years ago who was part of a larger friend group. This person was kind of known in our friend group for being a person that was prone to monologue or would get into conversational monologue. Because I’m pretty high-involvement, I was often able to interrupt this person and then other people could get in after me. We had this meta conversation among our friends that was like, “Do you guys mind that I keep trying to interrupt this person’s monologue?” And the other people were like, “No, no, no! This is great. Because once you’ve interrupted her, then I can get in.”

Lauren: Not because she didn’t want to be interrupted, just that you were the person who could do that.

Gretchen: No, I just had enough tolerance for overlap that I was willing to do something that, to the rest of this group – and this was early on when I had moved to Ontario. So, this was when I was in undergrad and I was still used to this really high-involvement style. Most of the people around me also had this high-considerateness style, except for someone else who also wasn’t from the same area who also had this really high-involvement style. So, I was able to get in this person’s very high-involvement style, and then all of these considerateness people were like, “Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, I can talk because there’s been a long enough gap that I feel like I can get a word in edgewise.” It’s really tempting to keep doing the strategy that you’re most comfortable with, but, in fact, it can be useful to do the thing that seems rude to you – whether that's it seems really rude to leave silences or it seems really rude to interrupt. That can sometimes help break a conversation out of its fail state where one person is doing all the talking and the other person isn’t talking at all.

Lauren: Thinking about cues to give over the floor or to take the floor and then using those to do the thing that probably feels like the thing you don’t want to be doing can make it a bit easier.

Gretchen: Yeah. Reading this on paper – and this is why I tell people, “Hey, there’s research about this because it feels really rude to do the thing that doesn’t come naturally." It feels rude to me to leave too many silences because then it’s like I’m not interested. But if I know that the other person is waiting for silences or if I know the other person is waiting for interruptions, even though an interruption might feel rude, it can be cooperative in the right set of circumstances. It gives you permission to help make the conversation better.

Lauren: Of course, remember you have other linguistic tools in your conversational toolkit for doing this. So, taking a moment to ask someone questions if you feel like you need to give them a chance to take the floor can be one way of very actively handing the floor over to someone. A question is a big “Here is the floor and I am handing it to you” strategy.

Gretchen: This was something that I also found really interesting about Tannen’s research because she talks about how some conversation styles – and I’m not sure if it completely correlates with the high-involvement versus high-considerateness thing – but she talks about how some conversational styles use questions and other conversational styles use one person’s anecdote as a springboard for me to give my version of that anecdote. And the other person uses that as a springboard for their anecdote. Then, I use it as a springboard for my anecdote. And you go back and forth with “You’ve shared something, so that’s my cue to share something,” even without questions. Whereas, for me in a conversational style, I actually find questions fairly rude.

Lauren: Because it’s assuming that I have the right to ask you about a part of your life that you may not feel like you wanna share with me.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. Like, not the “How are you” question. That’s fine. But if someone’s like, “What do you think about this?” or –

Lauren: I may or may not be willing to disclose that information.

Gretchen: That’s confidential. My name? You’re not allowed to have it.

Lauren: I guess I’m the same. I won’t ask people directly if they have kids, but I might say a story about my little kid and then that’s an invitation to them to talk about if they have kids or not if they want.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. I’m not gonna ask someone point blank, “Do you have kids?” Or if they mention a dog, I might be like, “Oh, your dog! How old is your dog?” or something like that. But I’m not gonna say, “Do you have any pets?” That just feels weird to me. But, in the inverse, it can also feel weird if you’re used to a conversational style that doesn’t have direct questions, if someone’s just doing what Tannen calls this “mutual paired disclosure” – so you tell a story, I tell a related story, you tell a story, I tell a related story. If someone’s just doing that style and you’re waiting to be asked a direct question, you could be like, “Wow, this person’s only talking about their life. Don’t they care about mine?” I’ve had to get used to saying, “Well, if someone asks me a direct question, at least I can assume that they won’t consider it rude for me to ask them the same question back,” which is about where I’m at. I’m still not really starting with questions, but at least I’ll reciprocate questions and hopefully people don’t find that rude.

Lauren: You’re doing some in-conversation real-time conversation analysis to figure out how best to proceed with the conversation.

Gretchen: Absolutely. That is exactly what I’m doing. Because linguists gotta ling. You can’t take the linguist out of the conversation. Have you done any official conversation analysis, Lauren, speaking of direct questions?

Lauren: I’ve done a lot of recording conversations and looking at how people use language in them. But it’s worth saying that conversation analysis is a really specific approach. The detail in the transcription is meticulous compared to, say, the transcripts that we create for the show. When we create a transcript for the show, we’ve already had Claire do wonderful audio editing and we’ve already really structured the conversation to be as clear as possible. She takes out all of the ums and uhs and a lot of those pauses and a lot of those overlaps that make it hard for people to listen. And then when Sarah does our transcripts, she cleans it up even more. We do this because we’re not trying to do conversation analysis on the transcripts. We just want something that people can have a pleasant experience reading. That’s very different to a conversation analysis transcript where you’re recording every single pause. You’re really making clear where those overlaps are. All of the false starts, all of the laughter, this all indicates how people are building the flow of conversation.

Gretchen: It can be really weird to look at a transcript of a conversation because you’re used to hearing a conversation or directly experiencing a conversation in its natural environment. Then, seeing that written down, especially with all of the annotations, it doesn’t look like a play script. It doesn’t look like a conversation in a novel. Because we don’t actually talk the way people talk in novels or in plays. We do have these overlaps. And we do have these sort of starting to say one thing and then ending up somewhere else, and misspeaking a little bit and then repairing it, and we don’t even notice it when we’re having it in real time. Then, you see it on the page and you’re like, “What is this mess?”

Lauren: In some ways, we can only really do this level of conversation analysis – and it’s not surprising it only really started in the '70s, '80s, '90s as it’s built up with affordable audio recording and now video recording.

Gretchen: That’s true.

Lauren: Because conversation analysis requires this revisiting, and transcribing, and more detail, and more detail. Conversation is so fleeting. It’s so hard to bring people back to it and even accurately recall conversation. We do a lot of editing in our head. I don’t think it’s surprising that conversation analysis is really closely tied with the evolution of technology.

Gretchen: Which also makes it interesting to think about conversation in the computer context. Because, of course, you also have chat as a format. One of the things that I found really interesting when I was researching my book, which perhaps you’ve heard of – we’ve been talking about it a lot on other episodes of this podcast – one of the things that I was interested in looking at when I was researching Because Internet was how the chat format had evolved. Because some of the very earliest formats of chat actually transmitted people’s messages character by character – letter by letter, space by space, punctuation mark by punctuation mark. You could see it in excruciating detail as someone was typing. Then, it seems like it would be a technological regression to say, “Actually, we’re just gonna send it one message at a time rather than every single letter.” It turns out this seems to be better for controlling the floor and taking turns in between stages of the conversation because it’s not quite as real time but it is more like a dialogue that a conversation actually happens in.

Lauren: I hadn’t ever really thought of that before. It would be very distracting to me to compose a message if I saw your message being composed at the same time.

Gretchen: Do you remember those old school PowerPoint animations where they’d drop in one letter a time in the title? It would just be really painful to watch.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: I think that’s what real-time chat would be like if it was character by character. This technology has existed since the '70s. There are conversations in the '70s that are character by character. Now, we don’t do it anymore. You also get platforms – so, like Google Docs – where if you’re collaborating on the document itself, you see other people’s messages character by character. But if you wanna chat about what’s in the document, you go back to a turn-based thing where you either use the comments, or you use the chat side bar, or sometimes people will each go on a new line and they’ll talk that way. You have to do stuff to make the turns more evident which, again, seems like it should be a regression until you think about conversation as a thing that’s not just composed of individual sounds or individual signs, but actually of turns.

Lauren: Whether it’s a conversation with someone who still doesn’t even have words, or a conversation across a great distance using computer chat, I really love that, in many ways, conversation really is a central feature of language, an essential feature of something we should be analysing when it comes to language. Because we talk about language being a really human thing, but I think in many ways, conversation is what makes language a fun and delightful human thing.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA and syntax tree scarves, ties, and socks, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. To listen to bonus episodes and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include onomatopoeia, reading fiction as a linguist, and a behind- the-scenes look at the writing of Because Internet. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our music is “Ancient Cities” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[mittensmorgul]

5.11, Sam, Interrupted. Right on the heels of seeing their roles in the story from an outside perspective, we shift in the complete opposite direction, into a deep internal perspective.

Still, there's a primary manipulative force. Only it's manipulating them from the inside instead of from the outside. And Sam and Dean "pretend" to be insane to get themselves admitted to a psych hospital believing they're actually in control the entire time, when they were basically screwed and being manipulated from the moment they had their intake exams...

Hello, wraith!

(heh, and the creature I took my AO3 handle from, so maybe this gives folks some insight as to why I chose that name now... manipulating TFW and readers from the inside since 2015... my new catch phrase I guess?)

They're Sam and Dean get admitted for telling the absolute truth, about the apocalypse, monsters, angels, demons.

SAM: Okay. Look...um...last few weeks, you've kind of been worrying me. DEAN: (rolls his eyes) Oh, come on, Sam. Stop. Look, just because we're in the loony bin doesn't give you the right to head-shrink me. SAM: Dean-- DEAN: Ellen and Jo dying--Yeah, it was a friggin' tragedy, okay? But I'm not gonna wallow in it. SAM: Dean, you always do this. You can't just keep this crap in. DEAN: (chuckles) Watch me.

Yeahhhhhhh... that won't lead to problems down the line... I mean, we've talked for years about Dean's chats with his psychiatrist, who turns out to be entirely a hallucination on his part, and just how flippant he is about his own problems, so I probably don't need to dwell on that here. Or on the fact that this is a Dabb episode, wherein it's made completely obvious that the doctor who tries to separate Dean and Sam for their own good, because they're "dangerously codependent" is thought for a good while to be the monster, partly because of that assessment... when like... he was completely innocent and literally just doing his job pointing out the obvious. Their codependence has broken the world how many times now? Yeah... they definitely really could do with some time apart.

(throws up in my mouth a little bit thinking about the conversation I accidentally got myself wrapped up in a week or two ago with people who were upset at the thought that Sam and Dean wouldn't end up sharing a heaven and like.... hoooooly fuck we see this show from very different perspectives...)

Meanwhile, some of the narrative manipulation can be summed up quite tidily through some of their interactions with other patients:

--the girl who wanders the halls randomly kissing them, first Dean, and then Sam, because he's bigger... --Ted and the other patients in Sam's group therapy session: TED: (lowers his hand) I am calm. And I'd very calmly like to talk about the monster that's hunting us. DR. FULLER: Ted, we're not going to have that discussion again. It's not good for group. TED: I agree. You know what else isn't good for group? A monster eating all our faces off. DR. FULLER: Alright, fine, thank you. Now, anyone else? TED: I saw it...when it killed Susan. OTHER PATIENT: I did, too. It had big lobster claws. TED: No, it didn't. OTHER PATIENT: Yeah, and it was an alien, like on X-Files. TED: Stop it. Stop helping. Listen to me. We're all dead! DR. FULLER: That's enough. (leans forward, taking off his glasses) There is no monster.

"STOP HELPING!" Ted says. Because the lies aren't actually helping here. The other patients are just making stuff up, whether for attention or because they can't help themselves, but Ted is actually telling the truth, which gets drowned out and dismissed as just more delusional ravings. And then he ends up as the wraith's next victim.

Truth, lies, what's the real story here? And how do you see the truth? In mirrors.

YOU SEE THE TRUTH IN MIRRORS.

Except, sometimes the wraith can even affect what you see in the mirror-- both about yourself and others. For example, even Dean's entirely mentally invented doctor shows up in the mirror with him. She makes Dr. Fuller appear as a wraith, fueling their mistaken belief that he's the monster. And then when the wraith is closing in on them and knows they're on to her, she makes EVERYONE appear as wraiths in the mirror so she can continue hiding in plain sight, while also driving Dean's paranoia through the roof.

Dean, trying to convince the doctor he's fine, she starts throwing all the accusations he's had burning guilty holes in him for a long time:

DR. CARTWRIGHT: Come on, even you don't believe that. All this pressure that you're putting yourself under, all this guilt; it's killing you. You can't save everybody. You can't. (her voice becomes hard) Hell, these days, you can't save anybody, Dean. (turns to leave) DEAN: What did you say? DR. CARTWRIGHT: (turns back to him) The truth, Dean. You got Ellen and Jo killed. You shot Lucifer, but you couldn't gank him. DEAN begins to get confused and a little afraid. DR. CARTWRIGHT: You couldn't stop Sam from killing Lilith, and--oh, yeah--you broke the first seal. All you do is fail. Did you really think that you, Dean Winchester with a GED and a give-'em-hell attitude, were gonna beat the devil? DEAN gets a little more afraid. DR. CARTWRIGHT: Please. The world is gonna burn, and there is nothing that you can do about it. DEAN: Who are you? (voice rising) How do you know that stuff?

but it's then that he begins to realize just how bad he's been messed with:

DR. CARTWRIGHT: I'm not real, Dean. I'm in your head...because you are going crazy.

and he literally goes and huddles in a corner, having completely lost his grip on reality.

Meanwhile, Sam gets confronted by the real doctor, and has his problems listed off to him:

SAM: Yeah. Thanks. I, um...I just wanted to apologize. I feel horrible about what I did to you. I thought you were a monster. DR. FULLER: I know that. The question is, why? SAM: I was...It doesn't matter, um...because after what happened last night, I had a...moment of clarity. I realized...there's no such thing as monsters. DR. FULLER: Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, but, honestly? Monsters are the least of your problems. People can learn to live with delusions, but the anger I saw in you...You hurt those two men, and you were going to kill me. The look in your eyes when you came after me, I...It was like you were barely even human...like a man possessed.

like a man possessed... lol >.> Again, how much is is foreshadowed that Sam is due for Bad Things, and Dean will be left collapsed by his own guilt and loss by the end of the season? Especially as Dean sits nearly catatonic at a table in the corner while Sam starts an imaginary fight inside his own mind and gets himself dragged off to isolation. Dean, however, is still coherent enough to put together the clues and hunt down the wraith despite being drugged and manipulated by her.

At first he mistakenly believes they were infected by Wendy the random kissing patient, but they arrive at her room in time to watch the actual wraith attack her. Martin creates a distraction and tells Dean that he needs to go kill the wraith, but he's received a MASSIVE dose of her venom and can barely walk. Yet he is determined.

MARTIN: You've gotta get out there and kill that thing. I'll take care of her. MARTIN'S voice echoes in DEAN'S ears. DEAN: (shakes his head) I can't. MARTIN: You have to. You have no choice, son. The two orderlies walk in and grab MARTIN, who fights back. The orderlies are distracted by MARTIN. MARTIN: Go. Dean, run! Run!

And what the wraith tells Sam is interesting, too:

SAM: You did this to me! THE WRAITH: Well, I helped. But that rage? No, no, no. That's all you. I don't make crazy. I just crank up what's already there. You build your own hell, but I give you the Legos. And when you're ripe... I make all of your problems disappear.

And this terrifies Sam, because he knows she's right:

SAM: She was right. DEAN: No, she wasn't. She's dead, okay? Let's hit the road. I need a drink, or twelve. SAM: Most of the time, I can hide it, but...I am angry. I'm mad at everything. I used to be mad at you and Dad, then Lilith, now it's Lucifer, and I make excuses. I blame Ruby or the demon blood, but it's not their fault. It's not them. It's me. It's inside me. I'm mad...all the time...and I don't know why. DEAN: Stop. Stop it. So what if you are? What are you gonna do? You gonna take a leave of absence? You gonna say yes to Lucifer? What? SAM: No, of course not. I-- DEAN: Exactly. And that's exactly what you're gonna do. You're gonna take all that crap and you're gonna bury it. You're gonna forget about it, because that's how we keep going! That's how we don't end up like Martin! Are you with me?

So... pushing it all down, not the best strategy for long-term mental health, but pushing anger down specifically? That's something Dean's spent a lifetime doing. Sam, maybe not so much. When Sam's gotten angry in the past, he makes a plan and removes himself from the situation-- running away from home as a kid, running away to Stanford, making a totally new life for himself and just pretending the Bad Things didn't happen at all. Dean, on the other hand, just puts his head down and continues plowing through the bad things head first like a bull. And honestly neither of these are great coping strategies in real life, but the fact that Sam is just... so baffled as to the source of his anger, when he doesn't WANT to be angry but has so much legitimate REASON to be angry, is just heartbreaking. He thinks it's a personal failing, though, instead of a rational response to being so horrifically manipulated his whole life.

When Dean's anger reaches a peak, he just lets himself explode and doesn't feel guilty about exploding after the fact, you know? Which makes the manipulation he suffered via the wraith all the more painful for him. He just takes it and keeps on plowing through. He'll have a valid excuse to let that anger out sooner or later.

Meanwhile, his guilt over all of this will power him through to the next manipulative adventure the narrative has in store.

[sanoiro]

Lucifer Season 2  Extras: (Transcript)

 I’m not going to give you the link of this video. The issue here is that such videos are deleted once they get too much attention. Thus trying to protect the account and the uploader I’m not going to post the video here. Also one more note, I get that you are excited about the show but I’ll not deal with juvenile vulture tendencies in this fandom. I have seen it and it’s quite disturbing.  And so it begins a really long post.... (Google will not be your friend by the way)

Ellis Tom - Lucifer Morningstar

German Lauren - Chloe Decker

Ildy Modrovich - Executive Producer/Writer

Henderson Joe - Executive Producer/Writer

Philip Cousineau - Author, “Once and Future Myths”

Garcia Aimee - Ella Lopez

Alejandro Kevin - Dan Espinoza

ABOUT L.A.  • Ellis: Los Angeles is the epicentre of the entertainment industry, so this is a classic place for people who want to go and pretend to be someone else.

• Garcia: You can be a DJ in the club, and the next day you are already on the billboard.

• German: It ... you know, as a place where you can re-discover yourself.

• Henderson: It's sex, drugs, rock'n'roll.

• Alejandro: What better place than Los Angeles?

• Henderson: Underneath it, you’ve got greed, you’ve got desire. You’ve got murder. You’ve got this just this strange underbelly of Los Angeles. This combination of glitzy top and gritty underbelly is a lot of what helps make Los Angeles not only the city it is, but the perfect place for Lucifer.

• Ildy: One of the biggest themes of Lucifer is duality. The dar always has a light, which is what appealed to Lucifer about coming to Los Angeles. 

• Henderson: It's a city where the devil can go any path, be any person.

• Ildy He is supposed to be the worst villain of all time. And there is somebody who also wants to be forgiven, who also wants to be understood and loved. I think it goes hand in hand with Los Angeles. What you see is not always what you get.

• Phil: California is significant. It is the end of the world, is a kind of paradise, which is a beautiful old Arabic (PERSIAN!!!) word, that means: "A walled garden."  So it’s always had the mythology of being dreamlike. It’s is a world of beauty. It’s is a world of fantasy.

• German: No matter where you came from or what your circumstances are, there is this red-coloured glasses opportunity, where it presents itself as a place where you can go and try and reach your hopes and dreams.

• Phil: Every artistic city throughout history has had a magnetic draw to it. Painters, sculptors, artists of all kinds went to Athens, Paris, Rome, New York and then Los Angeles. These are all "edge" cities. These are all places where you can gaze out at water and transform and reinvent yourself.

• Henderson: It's a city of rethinking. This is a city where you can be whatever you wanna be.

• Ellis: I must say: when I first got to Los Angeles, I thought it was really ugly. (Chuckles). The architecture leaves a lot to be desired. But then you realise it’s not about that. People are living, how they wanna live, and that's what that city is about.

• Alejandro: I come from a really small town in West Texas, landed in Canoga Park. And when I came here I saw palm trees and I thought: "Yes, this is LA, this is the life."

• Garcia: Coming from the Midwest, Los Angeles was a big city. Everyone had an agenda. Everyone had it out for you. I came out there thinking that I was literally going into the devil’s lair.

• Ildy: I went to UCLA. Go Bruins. I remember walking up the steps to the quad area. I remember thinking, "I have arrived in nirvana."

• German: I went to college at USC. Met a friend who knew a manager, who is still my manager, and called my dad just before my senior year. My dad said: "Okay, I'll either pay for school and you'll stay at school, or I will give you nothing, and you are on your own, but I believe in you and good luck!" (Laughs)

• Henderson: I moved out here 15 years ago, trying to figure out who I wanted to be, I tried to reinvent myself as a kid from Iowa who’s gonna be a screenwriter. That line "Where else would I go?" was one of the first lines of dialogue I wrote on Lucifer. Um, and it's partly because I was trying to wrap my brain around who the character was. What I think unconsciously Lucifer is doing is exploring who he is, in this place where you can be anybody.

ABOUT LUCIFER:

• Ildy: Lucifer is unaware that he really wants to reinvent himself.

• Ellis: He believes that everything he has done thus far has been part of his Dad’s grand plan. He’s always playing a part in his Dad's play. What his Dad has decided to do, Lucifer has to do.

• Phil: Lucifer was God’s favourite angel. We need to honour our fathers, but on the other hand, we have to express ourselves, and it is painful when we do (it). What’s the pain? It’s the pain of separation. You do not fit anywhere else, so you come to a world ... Lucifer comes to Los Angeles, to a world where everybody is reinventing themselves day and night. (Linda’s voice by the show: But here’s is the thing. When angels fall they also rise. All you have to do is to embrace who you are. Lucifer: So much punishment so little time.)

ABOUT DAN:

• Alejandro: Dan is going through a big transition in his life when he has to face the facts of moving on from his relationship with his wife and his daughter. He is taking a turn for himself to become a stronger individual, taking improv classes to work on his social skills and to understand who he is as a human being so that he can move forward in his life.

• Ildy: Dan might... Shh. He might be the writers’ room favourite. We love ourselves some Detective Douche. 

• Henderson: Dan eventually became someone who understands Lucifer, grows close to Lucifer. Dan has no idea what he's doing. He is trying to figure out where he stands in life. And them bonding over that mutual attempt at reinvention, I think really lets us pivot their relationship and get them closer to an unlikely buddy-cip duo, that we plan to explore much more in season three.

ABOUT MAZE:

• Ildy: Maze had a very specific job, which was taking care of Lucifer. When she came to Los Angeles, she was like, "Oh, this is another playground for us. We're going to bring Hell here on Earth." "That'll be fun." When she saw Lucifer find his own thing, she realised that she was living for Lucifer.

• Henderson: Season two is about her going: "You know what? I'm tired of protecting you from yourself. More importantly, I'm tired, of defining myself by you. Who is Ma`e outside of Lucifer?”  The answer started to come from her friendship with Linda. We knew her arc was gonna be to find herself. We didn’t know how fundamentally Linda would fit into that until we kept seeing how these two very different women helped each other get out of their own shells.

ABOUT LINDA:

• Ildy: If there is a word that describes Linda, it's "brave." She’s seen everybody’s bad sides, everybody’s ugly bits. She says: "You know what? I walked in with my eyes open, and I made this choice to be your friend, so I’ll take the good and the bad, and all that comes with it."  ABOUT AMENADIEL: • Ildy: I think that Amenadiel is a little bit of a cautionary tale. He thought he was the big responsible brother doing the right thing. And he was a little high and mighty. The truth is, he’s not.

• Henderson: He's weirdly like Lucifer. He is all about himself. He’s not looking outwards. He’s looking inward. And, really, what he’s looking at is: "Dad, what am I gonna have to do to make you love me?"

• Ildi: When he comes back in season two and he’s fallen, he’s starting to lose his wings, and he’s starting to lose his powers. He thinks that it’s God punishing him, but he’s punishing himself, which is something he realises by the end of season two.

ABOUT ELLA:

• Henderson: Ella is a character that I'd always wanted to bring as an archetype. And I think there is something so interesting about someone who believes in God, and then the characters all around her are proof that He actually exists, but she doesn’t know it.

• Garcia: She is a bundle of fun. She has no filter, no screener. She obviously, she works with dead bodies all the time. All the other detectives are like ... (Imitating robot) Like, so serious. And she just busts in speaking Klingon. I love her combination with Lucifer, because he is judgemental and she is so not. It’s Ella’s perfect coping mechanism of a city, because she is allowed to escape. And the best playmate is the Devil. ABOUT CHLOE AND LUCIFER: • Ellis: The relationship between Chloe and Lucifer is ... It is a very important part of our story. These two characters are most disarming of each other in each other’s presence.

• German: I think that Lucifer coming into her life was really the catalyst to even be aware of wanting to change (her life). I think she is a very hard worker, can be stoic. He affects her where she opens up and can let loose a little. 

• Ellis: Chloe offers something to Lucifer, and Lucifer offers something to Chloe, that no one else can. And for some reason, they can be completely themselves with each other.

• Ildy: I think that Lucifer is our eternal teenager. And Chloe is the eternal adult. She, I think, became an adult when she was 16. So she’s learning to have fun from Lucifer, and Lucifer’s learning how to have meaning in his life.

• German: In the second season, they fall in love, and they do not really know how to deal with it. He is always off with another girl or guy. So It’s not a natural relationship to fall into. But I think that there is great love there.

• Henderson: Be it love, be it friendship, be it trust, be it intimacy, there's always gonna be a bond between them.

ABOUT LOS ANGELES:

• Ildy: The Golden beaches and the palm trees and the twinkling lights of the city... It’s a beautiful place, an unreal place.

• Ellis: It's very easy to get tempted in various directions and lose yourself.

• Henderson: It's a city of “If you can do anything you want, do you do the wrong things? Do you choose the wrong desires?”  Some people might say: “Ugh... You went and lived a hedonist life in this city of sin”. Other people would be like “You had a really fun Tuesday.” What is embracing desire in a healthy way? What is embracing desire in an unhealthy way? And that’s the fascinating part of this city, and that’s the fascinating part about all the characters that are in our show because they represent all the different aspects of it. They are having a great time, but I think they’ll also find that maybe there’s more to life. And maybe you can do those things, and mayby there is also value in slowing down and looking around you and enjoying the people around you. And that duality, I think, is our show. 

• Ellis: When we’re talking about "It’s a city where you can reinvent yourself,” It’s also a city of lost souls, and it can be quite a lonely place for people if they haven’t got some kind of epicentre of love around them.

The End

[magalamantle]

SO THIS IS... a really long post of a bigass ask meme, all the answers, about a fallout oc!!! ummm for warnings. #violence #alcohol #alcoholism #drug abuse ?

IM LIKE INFINITELY SORRY if this is just long, and the whole dash, on like, mobile or anything, i got carried away and had a lot of fun with it um,,,,

OK SO TO START OUT a quick summary of this character: marion tremblay, 26 years old, they/them pronouns, a courier six (but i might write them into a non-six role idk) with Sight Gone Wrong. imagine savestates, but the character only experiences the "canonical" ie last save. so they go from neutral to knowing exactly how to process a situation, but it causes a LOT of stress on them, including an incredibly distinctive negative feeling when a "save" occurs and nightmares depicting all the plays gone wrong. in addition, the successful path isnt always harmless, and often leads to heavy injury - just not death. not to mention the fact that the successful path doesnt always help people theyre trying to help, just them.

http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyles5/carpy-hairstyle7.htm

http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyles6/hairstyle-carpy12.htm

marion is incredibly stressed and doesnt get it, runs into danger and knows exactly what to do, doesnt know why, doesnt understand how it all adds together, and doesnt understand to maybe take it a little slower. then again, when they try to chill out and live normally the nightmares just get worse and worse. so basically they self medicate to dull the dreams a bit and it just makes everything even more stressful.

theyre a courier/jack of all trades/mercenary type that uses a recharger pistol, and has no self of self preservation. is struggling, indulges often, and is impossibly easy to charm. does things for the fuck of it, anxious, hesitantly affectionate, eventually very protective and supportive, childish and constantly tired lol.

anyway heres the questions!!!

Which Fallout game are they from? new vegas :Y

Which faction(s) did they join and which did they destroy? Why? they end up joining the ncr - they have plans and intentions to go for a free vegas, but realize eventually that the ncr is probably a lot closer to a safe vegas than they were before. kind of insists that the people get a say in things.

DOES have enough time to basically fuss with all the families on the strip and various societies - basically destroys the omertas, takes a long time and a lot of trauma to fix the situation of the white glove society, keeps house alive but out of power which basically really fucks marion up for a long long time, they then spend a million years slowly working their way into the brotherhood of steel to try to get them to kind of... not be involved anymore, same with the khans

they dooooo clear out vault 3 entirely though

What is their S.P.E.C.I.A.L.? str 4; per 8; end 5; cha 4; int 7; agi 3; luk 9. peep that luck bro

Give us a summary of their backstory. OK SO... marion was part of a pretty biggish family closer up north, just kind of, they did business and were vaguely well off. they were always pretty pretentious and loved reading books n shit, tinkering with tech, so their parents were v happy with it. then around the age of thirteen their sight started kicking in, which manifested itself at first as just like a really heavy uneasy feeling whenever something was about to happen, and later kind of... worked itself into what it is now. anyway, they didnt cope very well with it and ended up fucking up a lot of relationships and things when they booked it at about seventeen.

at which point they kind of became a jack of all trades, constantly travelling, settling generally in the mojave. courier mostly at first, then eventually also a mercenary when the business started booming. they constantly had like, at least a couple dozen things going on, so occasionally they would forget a job or two. but considering their sight, they more or less had the ability to go into places that literally no one else could and come out bruised and bloodied but alive. so generally? business was good.

they did a lot of putzing around the strip, helped the followers a bit, etc. just generally has a little bit of history in most parts of the mojave.

after they got shot they forgot some... importantish things, but anyway they eventually fucked off, got ed-e, wandered around, rescued raul+visited him until they eventually just invited him along.

What’s their full name and does it have a meaning? Do they have any nicknames and how did they get em? marion tremblay - a quebecois name basically, uh pretty much their family line came from canada pre annex and were bitter about it.

What’s their sexual, romantic, and gender orientation? Do they feel comfortable telling other people? theyre nonbinary, just kind of, everythings a mess. nothing is definite. they have bigger stuff going on lol. just accepts whatever theyre labelled, but will explain if pressed

Do they have any mental illnesses? How do they cope? uhhh technically they have... some sort of flashbacks, from their sight, that gives them really horrible nightmares. they definitely self medicate its pretty bad. of course they dont really associate their habit of running into danger with their anxiety and attacks and shit, so they basically end up dissociating and confused most of the time, and figure thats just the way it is. and drink. gestures

Do they have any medical conditions? Is medicine/ treatment available for them? nah marions got nothing. theyre surprisingly physically healthy considering the fact that theyre basically useless physically

How much do they care about their outer appearance? What’s their “beauty routine”? How often do they shower/ bathe? they care just as little about bathing as most people in the mojave, but appreciate the ability to wash their hair - comb it pretty regularily. it gets really bad and knotted if they dont

What do they fear the most? their shitty vision failing to manage to do anything for people they love. its done it before

They’re biggest flaw? Do they recognize it as a flaw? their total lack of self-preservation and knowledge of self. like theyll do unhealthy stuff and get totally confused why they feel like shit, dont understand that running into things carelessly is what is making them constantly anxious and depressed, and they think that their inability to talk to people is what is fucking things up

What are they most insecure about? they pretty much lack any insecurity. they know theyre pretty bad at talking to people, but theyre not so much nervous about it as just dont really like doing it

What Wasteland threat do they fear the most? (ex. Deathclaws, super mutants, raiders) most bugs actually. since their sight kind of just keeps them from dying, it usually keeps them from dealing with deathclaws at all - but hanging around cazadores and getting poisoned just kind of means downing so many bottles of water and antivenoms, and it fucking Hurts. plus they just find the way they move really really disgusting lol

What’s their zodiac sign or which one do you think they relate to the most? What are their placements (if you know them)? (ex. Aries sun, Taurus moon, Aquarius Venus) mnmnnmn pisces sun. taurus moon. 

What’s their Myers–Briggs Type? (ex. ENTP, ISFJ) infp lol

What Harry Potter house would they be in? (ex. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw) gonna say hufflepuff because theyre a big softie when it comes to people they actually do like

Which Pokemon Go team would they choose? (ex. Instinct, Valor, Mystic) uh probably instinct? i think thats the yellow one right? 

Out of the nine forms of intelligence (rhythmic, spatial, linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential) which one(s) are they really good at and which one(s) is(are) their weakest? theyre really good with math and rhythm - not quite as good with interpersonal stuff, or intra for that matter. they dont know shit about themself lol. theyre really good at science stuff in general, though - comes from fiddling with that sort of shit

What natural alignment are they? (ex. Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil)

im not too good at pinning down characters, but honestly somewhere between chaotic good and true neutral. will help people, sure, for a price - or if they seem really really desperate. dislikes copious rules but wont go out of way to topple rules so long as they seem more or less fair

Do they have any hobbies? What are they?

they play harmonica! they like to think up songs, make harmonies to the songs on the radio. when they were little they liked to fuss with math puzzles and science shit but lost a lot of the focus as their sight got stronger, stopped being able to sit still long enough to really work on stuff. they like to fuss with ed-e sometimes lol. upgrades n stuff. polishin him

Do they have a favorite holiday? How do they celebrate it? when marion was more into consistent courier-ing, they liked pretty much any holiday that people sent gifts to each other. good for business, it was nice to see people so happy, PLUS people always tipped really well and gave them free food n stuff out of thankfulness.

What’s their favorite season? autumn, mostly - most fair weather. loves the winter when theres no storms or anything - nice to wear lots of layers of clothing and have it be appropriate.

Do they have a temper or are they level headed? pretty level headed, but when they lose their temper they sound kind of ridiculous because their voice gets really high and they??? talk like???? this?????? and theres a lot of gesturing.

they dont really so much lose their temper when they go into combat situations simply because they tend to go from zero to everyones dead, pew pew pew. it does happen sometimes in really tough, long situations, but as it turns out being angry doesnt really make your laser pistol shoot any better or harder Do they express their emotions freely or hide their true feelings? theyre so un-in-tune with their own feelings that they tend to not understand why or what theyre feeling. so its not so much hiding as like ????!??!!?!?!?!?

Are they a leader or a follower?

a leader out of necessity.

How do they come off to others? What first impression do they usually make? creepy. first impression is generally that theyre very businesslike, probably too frail to complete a job. “whys this person being so nice when they look like they want to eat me”

Do they prefer to travel alone or with company? Who have they traveled with if any? Current companion if any? they basically never travelled with a companion until recently. started traveling with ed-e, basically just because he makes sounds when things are happening, eventually found raul and after a good couple times of going back to him to get their laser pistol fixed just kind of invited him to come along. didnt realize he wouldnt be able to fix their pistol on the way lol

Would you describe them as selfless or selfish? Does it depend on the situation? they have the ability to be pretty selfless for the most part since theyre pretty well off from all the work they did before getting shot in the head. on the other hand, theyre not really used to hanging out with other people so theyre kind of selfish when it comes to food n stuff, at least until they got sassed enough for it

What do they find most attractive in others? Name at least one psychological and physical trait. (doesn’t have to be romantic attraction) they usually like people with silver tongues and wide shoulders

Do they flirt often? How easily do they fall in love? they basically do not flirt. they dont register flirting, either. its pretty easy to charm them, but marion is not... a charming person

What’s their love life like? Are they interested in anyone or in a relationship? listen i made the with the almost exclusive purpose of dating raul so. interested lol

Do they prefer to solve things diplomatically or using violence? diplomatically. they generally dislike having to actually, be in danger, but theyre really not charismatic so it usually ends up resorting to either violence, or very well-backed up threats

What is their combat style? What range do they prefer? Do they sneak? they are TOTAL SHIT at sneaking, for like no reason. theyre just... really not athletically inclined. their strategy is usually run and gun, dont stop moving, ABS - always be shooting. turns out when you have a rechargeable gun and the luck of the devil, it doesnt matter how many bullets you take as long as you win lol

What weapon(s) do they always carry with them? recharger pistol!!! they also carry a tiny bowie knife just in case. mostly used to cut plants off stems and cut meat off things. its a whole experience

Their most prized possession? pretty much everything they own is replaceable. the harmonica is nice, cause it pretty much still works entirely, but its definitely not super special or anything. theyd still sell it for a nice meal though

Their thoughts on power armor? a nice idea, but full heavy armor makes it kind of difficult to travel large distances, especially over mountains n shit

Favorite armor/ outfit? gecko-backed leather armor, plus a shitty hood they slapped on top of it. they think it looks so cool, plus its plain enough that its comfortable. they really want a tux lol

How’s their aim? Do their hands shake while pointing a gun? a gun? yes. a laser pistol? no. the second things have like, physical bullets in it, they get super stressed. using lasers instead of pistols or bullets allows a certain level of, like, disconnection from the situation.

What are their thoughts on having to kill on a daily bases in order to survive? Does it take a toll on them? Or do they shake it off rather easily? they really hate it. but honestly they get worse nightmares if they dont keep doing things, like constantly. they prefer to not really have to kill people, so tend to like... threaten and bluster their way through things pretty often. they wont chase down a fleeing enemy unless theyre really super in the zone

Thoughts on death if any? (ex. Fear it, accept it) definitely fear. they pretty much cant die, so theyre pretty confident about it, but its mostly because they manage to disconnect so much from situations that it basically just gives them night terrors. like i said before, complete disconnection from their own emotions. basically a whole lot of marions problems could be fixed by accepting that maybe running into danger is a bad idea, even if they basically cant die.

tl;dr, they think they accept it, but 100% fear

Do they move around a lot or prefer to have a place to call home? they move around SO much. marions pretty much been on the move since they turned 17, constantly doing just about anything they could get their hands on. a million jobs all at once

What’s their favorite location? the strip. they pretty much used to spend most of their spare time down there - loved the food at the ultra luxe, the booze n drugs at gomorrah, and the music company and games at the tops. a couple days of throwing caps down the drain, followed by doing a bunch of odd jobs in the area is a good way of spending a whole week. then, once they had enough messages and packages and people to kill/find, theyd take off again

Their opinions on ghouls, feral and not feral? marion kind of sees themself in feral ghouls. impossible to kill, but at what cost, etc etc. very angsty. thinks ghoul voices are actually kind of pretty

Do they scavenge for their supplies or simply buy them? combination. scavenges what they can, buys the rest. when youre as lucky as they are when finding bullets and bits, you definitely have enough caps for everything else. since theyre shit at repairing, they always get their equipment repaired while out

Are they the type to get distracted and go off to an unknown nearby location or do they stay on track? they definitely amble. long term plans are definite, but when you have maybe five jobs happening at once it doesnt hurt to step aside and grab a new one on the way

How do they sleep? Are they picky about where and how or can they sleep basically anywhere? they tend to get themself pretty blitzed to be able to sleep with few dreams. as a result they can pretty much sleep anywhere, but theyre pretty fitful about it

What’s their favorite radio station and song? (post-apocalypse) they used to like butcher pete but got pretty tired of it after a good, long amount of time. now they think aint that a kick in the head is super funny. since they got shot in the head.

theyre okay with literally every radio station, but likes black mountain radio a lot even though its a lot weirder than it was before. theyre really not sure if the people on the radio are uh ok but uh. makes it a point to eventually check that out.

What’s their favorite post-apocalyptic food? Are they a picky eater? Do they know how to cook? they fucking LOVE fresh fruit - trail mix is a huge fave, nd theyll pay pretty much any amount of money for it, especially since it keeps pretty well. theyre also a fan of like, gourmet shit, since they have the money to spend on it. good steaks are nice. theyre pretty picky, but they usually have a pretty good supply of long-keeping foods to eat on the road. they cant really cook that well though

What’s their favorite beverage? Do they drink alcohol? vodka is a fave. gets them real drunk real fast. a long time ago they managed to trade for some nuka-cherry and its basically their favourite thing in the whole world??????? has a weird distaste for sunset sarsaparilla and gives it all to raul

Do they have any tag skills? energy weapons, science, medicine. really good with e.weapons, more than decent with science, pretty good with medicine. mostly out of patching self up.

Anything they like to collect? (ex. Unique weapons, Bobbleheads) Caps Lol. nah but really they pick up anything that seems interesting to sell. they do have a big intention to buy the unique recharger pistol but its never in stock whenever they go to the kiosk

Are they good at disarming traps or do they constantly miss them? theyre pretty shitty at getting traps, but their luck is amazing with it. they can pretty much walk through a minefield just fine. like running through is safer than trying to disarm, because when you run through a minefield you either die or you dont - when you try really delicately you might blow some important bits up, but you wont die lol

[darkcloud-kcalifornia]

OK, got a lot of things to do today, but first off I really do want to get the next episode of Nanoha down. Um… where were we again?  Oh yeah.

That’s where.  So, let’s get down to business with episode 10, “Destiny”.

* The episode starts off with a flashback to a dimensional ship called the Hestia, and how everyone’s panicking over a little thing like their losing control over the BoD.  I wonder why that caused a bunch of roots to appear in the ship?  I mean, obviously it’s supposed to represent the Book spreading its control and what not, but why roots?  Did it take over some potted plant left in the room it’d been sealed in?

* Graham is in one of the other ships in the fleet, and has been informed that the BoD has gotten control over Hestia’s flight controls and Arc-en-Ciel, which it’s now charging and pointing at the rest of the ships.

* Graham orders Clyde to evacuate, but apparently there isn’t time, though he’s gotten everybody else off. So Graham sadly orders his own Arc-en-Ciel fired.  Yeah, you know those parts jutting out from the TSAB ships?  Unlike Star Trek, those aren’t engines.

* Those are part of one big gun.

* The Hestia was a very pretty, albeit tragic, boom.  Surprisingly loud boom too, considering they’re in space and all.  But eh, sci-fi shows gotta have their noisy space, I guess.

* Graham blames himself for this incident.  And it’s revealed Clyde was Chrono’s dad via desktop picture.  There’s also the fact that Graham had a desktop picture of Clyde and his family shows how close they were.

* Back in the present, the Arthra gets visuals back now that the Wolkenritter are no longer around to jam the signal.  Also, the masked men have the Durandal that the Lieze Twins mentioned to Graham earlier. DUN DUN DUN

* Uh, Fate.  I know this is all a shock and all, but it would probably be a good idea to shift out of Sonic mode and help Nanoha with defense here.  Just saying.

* The Masked Men think it’d be nice if Nanoha and Fate can keep the BoD busy until it goes completely haywire.  Chrono thinks they left themselves open to a bind attack.  One that dispels other magic, revealing the Masked Men to be Aria and Lotte.  Dang it, I blew my “dun dun dun” too early.

* Oh sure, Fate switches back to her normal form after Nanoha saves them from the Diabolic Emission.

* The BoD has a very impressive aura around her.  Very menacing.  Thing takes up almost the entire rooftop.

* Arf and Yuuno show up as reinforcements!  It doesn’t matter!  The BoD raises her own barrier so the heroes can’t escape.

* Her next spell is Sleipnir which, um, allows her to flap her wings to fly?  Gotta say, the coolness of that spell name is in contrast to the results.

* Meanwhile in space Chrono is making the arrest of not only the catgirls, but Graham as well.  Nice to see Chrono remembered to have guards outside the door if things turned violent.

* Wait, if the book has been with Hayate for 11 years, what with that being when Graham had to fire upon the Hestia… that’s pretty much since she was an infant.  Literally a newborn.  She still must have had parents at that point at least.  Well, unless she was a ward of the state from the word “go”. Did they ever think that the creepy chained eldritch tome that appeared next to their baby girl might be something to worry about?

* Anyway, Chrono guesses at what Graham’s plan is here.  Early attempts at capture or destruction would just cause the BoD to reincarnate again, so instead Graham found where it appeared and then proceeded to bide his time until completion so he could try and seal the thing away for good.

* Graham’s perspective on this whole thing is interesting.  As much as he felt that Hayate’s situation was pitiable, she was already an orphan and in failing health due to the Book.  Once she died, nobody would mourn her.  If he tried to force the book elsewhere, well, even assuming he could find it again in time that wouldn’t make things any easier with the next potential victim, nor would it necessarily improve Hayate’s chances for survival or change the fact that she was all alone.  Graham found himself in the hypothetical situation where you can throw a switch to divert a runaway train away from an orphan trapped on the tracks, but in doing so direct it towards others.  And he made his choice.

* I like how Graham derides his own financial support of Hayate to try and at least give her a comfortable misery before sealing her and the Book away in an icy prison between dimensions forever.  Dude has some serious self-loathing here, and it actually helps to make him sympathetic.

* Chrono argues that Hayate hasn’t actually done any criminal deeds, and thus there’s no grounds to take action against her even in these kinds of messed up circumstances. The counter argument from Lotte is that while it’s illegal that particular law in getting in the way of saving lives here, going for the low blow of pointing out Chrono’s dad was a victim of this thing.

* Chrono’s rebuttal to that is an interesting one.  Setting aside morality Graham’s plan here is still a mistake because it relies on people not looking for and freeing the metaphorical end-of-the-world button. There are a lot of people out there with delusions about what they can handle, and so Graham’s “final solution” for the problem of the BoD would be anything but.  Some idiot would look for it, would free it, and then the whole would start all over again with Hayate having died for nothing.

* You know what you never see in other sci-fi shows?  The space admiral with a mad and amoral plan actually deciding to back away from the crazy and work with the heroes after all.  While it’s hard to read Lotte and Graham, Aria actually seems to consider Chrono’s argument here, and Graham gives Chrono the Durandal and trusts him to make the right choice.  Graham is probably hoping that Chrono will go through with the plan now that it’s gotten to what he sees as a point of no return, but he’s at least admitted it’s out of his hands now and isn’t going to interfere.

* Yeesh, how’s that for a cheery eye-catch.  Don’t those families look so happy in those photos?

* Meanwhile back at the fight, the Book is dominating.

* So, one bright side to having a knowledge devouring instrument of destruction around, you get to find out what the full chant for some of the heroes’ spells are.  Like Starlight Breaker.  By my subs at least it’s “Shed the light of destruction on the criminals.  Stars, gather.  Become a light that penetrates everything.  Penetrate, beam.”  It’s also hilarious that Nanoha protests that they don’t have to get that far to mitigate damage while Fate grabs her and nopes away as far as she can.

* Why is Bardiche giving measurements in yards?  I’m pretty sure that Japan uses the metric system.  Oh, and also HE AND FATE ARE FROM SPACE.  I DON’T THINK THEY HAVE THE IMPEREAL SYSTEM IN SPACE.  And don’t tell me that’s a translator’s error, that axe speaks English and clearly says yards.  Is Bardiche secretly an American axe or something?

* So, speaking of noncombatants, do you think Suzuka and Arisa wound up inside the barrier because of their connection to Hayate, or because they actually have some latent magical talent?  Also, I can’t blame them for being scared and confused about the world undergoing color shift and splotching while everybody around them suddenly vanishes.

* Poor fools don’t even know to be terrified of the pink spirit bomb building up in the air.

* Unfortunately for Nanoha and Fate, their magical girl costumes don’t come with any identity concealment.  Though it might be best for everybody to save their shock until you get further away from Little Miss Death Star.

* And here we see the proper distance for actually avoiding a Starlight Breaker.  Namely, don’t even be in the same city as the thing when it goes off.

* Suzuka and Arisa are gonna need some coping time after this.  Everybody around them disappeared, their two friends suddenly show up wearing weird costumes and shield them from a pink nuke, and them while they’re still trying to recover from that they’re suddenly transported onto a spaceship.  I’d be very surprised if they didn’t faint out of shock after all that.

* Yeah… they just need to talk down the genocidal monster who think they killed her family.  Good luck with that.

* It’s interesting that the Book expresses Hayate’s wish not as vengeance for her loss, but wishing that it was all just a bad dream.  But if she wants reality to be a bad dream, then well, reality is going to have to go.

* And the Book of Darkness is actually hurt that even those who know the truth about her past call her the Book of Darkness.

* So… apparently the spell they got from the sand worms was to, well, summon sandworms.  With all those rapey looking tentacles. Yeesh.  …Did Hayate keep that spell after all this was over?  Because I may not have finished the next season, but I still know that girl’s got a certain reputation among the fan base. Not that I’m saying that she’s actually rape somebody with a sandworm.  Just, well, she might get an idea or two for a “fun film project” once they’re all of legal age.

* Fate and Nanoha have a point.  It’s hard to believe the Book’s claims of being a heartless device when she crying right in front of them.

* And so the episode ends with Fate charging the Book, only to get flat out absorbed into it.  Which is odd when you think about it.  Unlike the Wolkenritter she doesn’t have a body composed entirely out of magic.  As stated in a previous episode, they’ve run the tests and found her to be completely human, just born a weird way.  So, was this transportation into a pocket dimension?  Conversion of matter into an energy signature and then absorbing that?

 So yeah, that’s it for that episode.  The reveal of the mastermind is made, but honestly, I can’t bring myself to hate Graham for what he did.  The last moments of Hayate’s consciousness were cruel to be sure, but unlike Precia Graham actually does obviously feel guilt over that.  He thought he was doing something horrible, but necessary.  And unlike her, like with the Wolkenritter, there’s no actual malice in his actions.  He doesn’t hate Hayate.  He even tried to do what he could to at least make her life more comfortable before he ruined it.  Which ruing was a terrible act, but well, he’s not the one who gave her the book or took her parents from her.  He just happened upon an already crap situation and tried to do what he thought would be the best for everybody with it.  He screwed up massively, but he’s not a bad person.

 Other than that though it was a whole lot of fight scene, and the heroes are clearly already out of their depth here.  And with Fate being nommed down, half defeated already.