#usually when I get sucked into something there’s at least a Wikipedia page for it but nothing!!

[goblindsay]

Why does Birds of Empire not have any fan following. Wh

[astridthevalkyrie]

chand ko chakor dekhe, tujkho naseebo wala (the bird looks at the moon, a lucky one looks at you) | hawks x reader | chapter 2

“You’ve died twice? From clocks?” “I know you’re not blind to the rocks and debris flying literally everywhere! The world would be better off without you in it!” you scream at the villain. The machine is even louder as it breaks and jams into the ground. “Flying building pieces or something, I don’t know—one hit me yesterday. The first day I got knocked into a wall, and then I woke up hugging my body pillow. Same thing the next day. And the next, and the next. Did my number three pro hero partner save me? No, he let me get stuck in a fucking time loop!” Or, you’ll do a lot of things with infinite time on your hands, but falling in love with Keigo Takami isn’t one of them.

a/n: you know it's a good writing kick when i'm updating despite no one liking this but me LOL

warnings: afab reader with she/her pronouns. FOUL language, reader curses so much, and just general rudeness, lots of death because reader is morbid, reader slutshames hawks

1

“So how many times have you told me?”

“Jesus, you must be allergic to asking original questions.”

Hawks levels you with an unimpressed look. “I’d say something about how I obviously wouldn’t remember my past self’s questions—”

“‘But you’ll probably make fun of me by repeating verbatim what I’m saying.’” You smirk at the pained look on his face that accompanies your air quotes. “Yeah. Now you’re going to try and think of an original, out of the box question to ask, which, if you can believe it or not, varies on how I move or what I say. I look right, you ask me what past you has said so far, but if I look left, you ask me about how I’ve been keeping myself entertained.”

After a long pause in which you think about how much you hate this fucking coffee, Hawks says, “You’re going to be a pain to talk to.”

“I’m a goddamn delight. You’re the one I’ve had to convince of this six whole times.”

“But you keep tellin’ me, sweetheart.” Ew. Ew. “Why is that?”

“I told you, you’re a constant everyday. Besides me dying.”

“You die—”

“Yes,” you sigh impatiently, “I never get through the day without dying. The longest I’ve gone is till 4 PM.” Gesture to the clock that you know is five minutes ahead. “So, one hour left to go! Yay me.”

Now you both only stare at each other, which is new, since Hawks can usually never shut the fuck up. There’s a question you want to ask, have wanted to ask for the past few days you’ve told him (with some breaks in between because come on, you’re not a walking Wikipedia page for fucking time loops and Hawks has no idea how to not be a pain) but you’re not going to because. Uh. Insecurity or some shit. 

Taking a long swig of his yucky strawberry bright pink dark-as-his-soul drink, freaky golden eyes observe you. You only darken your own gaze. What is this? A death match? Well, you’ve died several times and he’s still stuck at zero so. You know. He can suck your dick.

“Why don’t you ask me some questions?” he finally offers, and when you narrow your eyes, he grins cheerfully. “C’mon, songbird, you know you want to.”

“What’s the ratio of men you’ve been with versus women?”

“Four to nine. Challenge me next time.”

What a smug little shit. “Slut. How crazy do you think I am right now?”

“Not any more than normal.”

“How do you not sweat in that oversized jacket?”

“Bird stuff. And style takes priority over comfort.”

“Wild.” This is boring. Fucking boring, you’re bored, and you could die at any time. How boring does something have to be for you to not be nervous about death? Goddamn. 

You’re nearly beaming when a gunshot hits the ceiling, only for your happy mood to be replaced by a horrified one when a literal mini feather takes the robber out of the store and knocks him against a lamppost. What the fuck. What the fuck, dude.

The waitress who makes the least shitty coffee in the whole cafe has tears in her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Hawks! Thank you! I was so scared!”

“When?”

A fat tear catches on her lip as she quivers. “W-what?”

“When were you scared? He dealt with that in a second! The asshole didn’t even give you time to be scared!”

“I’m fast,” Hawks winks at her, stepping too close for your comfort. Slut. WHORE. “Oh my god,” he snaps his fingers in realization, “you knew that was going to happen. You’re a bad person.” For some reason, that thought is abso-fucking-lutely hilarious to him. “You were so about to let this store be robbed.”

“Um, no. For your FYI—”

“Redundant—”

“The same things don’t happen everyday. I mean that stupid fucking shit for brains asshole clock bitch always shows up, but the cafe has never been robbed before. That’s just the universe trying to kill me. Look.” You stomp out, waving away the waitress who seems too hesitant to tell you that you have to pay they can put you in jail give you a life sentence it won’t matter now innit and kneel down by the robber.

“Aha! One more bullet. This was my death instrument. But you interrupted.” 

SCARY shimmery golden eyes get closer closerthanhewastothewaitress until you’re knelt up against the same lamppost that gave Mr. Robber a concussion. “So I saved your life. Do I get a thank you kiss?”

“You get a choke on my balls, man. Also, you’re being, like. Really casual about this. Consistently. You’re telling me to try stuff and I’m trying the stuff, like I watched the Bill Murray movie and I gave myself a really good orgasm, and none of it worked, but if I didn’t know better I’d say you were living this with me.”

“Nah.” The corners of his lips quirk up genuinely. “I’m just trying to match whatever you’re giving me. You’re not panicking, so I’m not gonna be the one who tries to push you over the edge.”

“But I am panicking. Like, it’s whatever because I can’t stop it, but Hawks, I’m still...” You blink, looking at him, for the first time, with a defeated look. “Stuck.”

The pro catches your chin before it falls, forcing it up to meet his gaze. Ugly, lemon-colored eyes. Lips that at least four men and nine women have kissed. You wonder if Hawks is into degradation. He looks like he has a praise kink.

His hand encircles your wrist, he leans in, and then he blows a cherry on your cheek.

“Gross, dude, you’re gross!”

“Tell me everyday.” he replies cheerfully, “not that I’m gross.” You’re going to tell him exactly that everyday. Even when you’re not in a time loop. If you’re ever not in a time loop. “But about what’s happening. I’ll help get you unstuck no matter what.”

Why. You’re not gonna ask that. You’re just gonna accept the help that he owes you for not saving you the first day. And fuck that little butterfly-flutterfly shitstain feeling that’s usually reserved for your pussy that’s creeping up higher and twisting into knots in your stomach.

(The only time you’ve ever felt it with Hawks in the past was that one time he was fucking stuffing his gob with cheap street vendor fried chicken and when he swallowed he. Groaned. Out loud. All disgusting and unghhhh and shit.  And your womanly wiles liked it. The fuck.)

“Fine.” Your palm touches his cheek right as the robber comes to, taking the gun that you cleverly left at his side and blowing a hole in your head. 

—————————————————

You will not be telling Hawks you died while caressing his prickly bird face.

—————————————————

In three days actuallynodaysatallhowSPOOKY, it’s 4 PM, and you and Hawks are at the top of the highest building in the city. 

“You never did ask.” Hawks looks and sounds like a villain, surrounded by so many feathers pointed outward. You feel like a civ too, in the middle of it all, standing helplessly. But you’re not scared of him. If you weren’t sure you could take him? Then maybe. Are you sure? Maybe. Whatever. You can work on that confidence todaymorrow.

“Ask what?” The way your hands are up as though you’re ready to fight invisible demons would you make you fucking cackle if it was anyone else.

“Why my questions are different depending on the way you turn.”

You release a heavy laugh, eyes darting around like a madwoman. What will it be? A comet? A criminal? The building itself crumbling? You’d think a person would know what to expect after…nineteen? twenty? however-many-the-fuck-days. “You shit. That’s why you’ve been telling me to ask you stuff each day. Clever little birdbrain.”

A fly barely gets into the fray before a crimson feather wraps around it and tosses it to the side. Hawks does many things, but taking chances when it comes to doing his job isn’t one of them, apparently. Not that this is his job. Or at least you didn’t ask for it to be if he’s making it his personal mission to ensure you live that’s on him and only him.

“So why?”

“Oh, I’m not gonna tell you.”

“What!? Why not?”

“Because now there’s at least one piece of info that you won’t know and can’t parrot to poor tomorrow me.” He grins, showing you his stupid pearly whites. “Sucks to suck.”

“Fuck you.” You flip him off. “I’ll just manipulate it out of you tomorrow.”

Hawks’ voice comes out in a song—only this bitch would somehow find a way to one-up you when you’re literally immortal. “No, you woooon’t, songbird. Oh, hey!” He holds up his phone. “4:01!”

“4:01?” Your eyes bulge.

“Four o fucking one!”

“4:01!” you shriek happily, throwing yourself into his arms. Hawks squeezes you tight, burying his face in your hair like you two are the parents of some graduating high school student who was also the class president as THOUGH your combined genes would ever create such a genius. 

Hawks is warm.

A plane fucking crashes into you. He’s miraculously spared.

Bitch.

[utilitycaster]

Wizard Breakdown Tracker, Episode 138

I think it is easy to forget that literally every episode that aired in the year of Our Common Era, 2021, has taken place over the span of *Spurt voice* eleven days. Well. It has. And, indeed, the last seven episodes have covered roughly two days.

The reason this is only about wizard NPCs is because they serve as a sort of audience surrogate in that they are nerds who don't go outside, vs. D&D PCs who see more shit in two to eleven days than most people would see in a lifetime; case in point, Essek's current state of shock. This is also making it very hard to check in with the other wizards. But also this is not about accuracy, even though I am usually right about everything. This is about...honestly I'm not sure, other than wizards.

What I'm trying to say is:

Caleb Widogast is a PC, not an NPC, and is not included in these strange statistics*.

Currently sidelined: Pumat Sol, Oremid Hass, Ludinus Da'leth, Astrid Beck, E_dwulf Grieve

Obligatory self-indulgent Vess Derogna song parody: Tomb....takers, killed you in your room, they’ll end the world soon but hey/you cult wizard, lost in a blizzard, whatever you’ve done, well, murdered, you’ll stay

Trent Ikithon: I am 100% serious that while I have made Narrative Sense In Actual Play Media in the rock on which I will cast my Temple of the Gods, if the final boss is Trent riding on Uk'otoa...I won't be mad. Like does it seem tonally off? Yes; Critical Role is not humorless high fantasy by any means** but they are not actively trying to seem like something that should be airbrushed on a van, usually. But will it be pretty awesome? Yeah.

Trent on the other hand is pretty fucking mad, presumably, because Caleb continues to leave him on read and also picked up a little something called Mind Blank, which is actually useful and not in fact No Thoughts Head Empty. With that said I don't think it's increased; I think we're just at a steady simmer.

Conclusion: 7/10.

Essek Thelyss: Okay I am a dabbler in both cosmic horror and mathematics; I enjoy many elements of both but am an expert in neither. But if I may drop the jokes for a second, how incredible is it that in this alien setting of a city that is an unwitting and unwilling amalgam of consciousnesses, with all the trappings of classic cosmic horror, two people decided to take a scientific risk with things seen as forbidden or foreign by their respective cultures...and won.

I don't know what will befall Essek and he's clearly still having a pretty rough time of it, even though unlike Caduceus I don't think he was brought to the brink of profanity again, yet; but no matter what happens at least he'll have the nat 20 of instant long rest. No matter what happens...he was right about dunamancy. Fucking ironic how much potential the dynasty is wasting, really.

With that said he does have a red eye now even though all he (and, to be fair, Fjord, Veth, and Caduceus as well) did was fight off an eldritch abomination without rolling what must have been like a 20 Wisdom save DC. Like, he (and Fjord, Veth, and Caduceus) do not deserve this. You think this man has a positive wisdom score? In this economy? (actually, he might, I say, looking at Caleb 'Wisdom Ostensibly 16' Widogast).

Conclusion: keeping him at 8/10. It's funny because he is fully on an emotional roller coaster but it's averaging out to about an 8/10 each time; it's just that he's constantly beset by horrors beyond imagination and really terrible rolls but also incredible validation of his beliefs that had so long been ignored. The man's mental state is basically a sine wave, which interestingly enough is itself influencing his mental state.***

Yussa Errenis: The Prodigal Most Interesting Man in Exandria returneth! Wensforth, play Freedom! 836 PD. You know, he should probably feel a little bit of shame, because he should know better, but also he probably does not. Anyway please enjoy the lines I had for Yussa while he was trapped in Cognouza that I did not ultimately use:

aha no don’t get your consciousness sucked into an ancient city you’re so sexy

Here am I floating in an ancient and terrible world-devouring city/far out in the planes/Threshold crests are blue and there’s nothing I can do

Making bad choices and joining the voices it’s...YUSSA ERRENIS

Conclusion: I'm going to say 6/10 but rapidly decreasing. Also Wensforth has had several days to clean the tower...maybe he just won't tell Yussa? He probably will though.

Allura Vyesoren: she's going to facepalm so long that Kima starts timing it, isn't she. She's going to get a series of messages like "hey so the Mighty Nein seem to be doing well! they freed me from the city which sucked me in like some spicy ramen when I did an astral projection...also something happened in my tower?" She's going to just stare out the window for a long moment. She is going to ask herself, much as I have many a time, what the fuck is in the water in Wildemount.

Conclusion: 3/10. Hey, at least she got some news on the Mighty Nein and the city!

Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk: consider: after over 35 years, give or take, in your own perception of time, trapped in a gem, you finally come across some people. Consider that one of them apparently can't resist a big shiny wizard trap. Now consider that this guy went into your +1 Demiplane of Wizard Murdering AND got his mind fully schlorped by Aeorians and yet you are still, inconceivably, stuck in this fucking gem. This is where he draws the line? At a teensy little bodily possession? What the fuck dude.

Conclusion: I'm pretty sure he's already a few large handfuls of iron filings short of a component pouch (which is to say, full up on the batshit) already but this cannot be helping.

*this will be the first but probably not the last cosmic horror and/or math joke because I actually forgot to make cat jokes last night, so thoroughly did the Nein demolish Cree. Speaking of Cree's fate...call that a Furrier Transform.

**high fantasy is a complicated distinction and the wikipedia page includes Discworld which does not seem right to me; it also includes the Belgariad, a series for which I have great fondness having inhaled the first three books while sick in bed as a fourteen year old and having reread several times, but which is explicitly written by a guy who was like what if I made something as formulaic as possible but also literally everyone is either super sarcastic or a huge moron but anyway imo High Fantasy is actually frequently fucking hilarious and a sign of the skill of the creator(s) is whether it's hilarious by accident or on purpose.

***something something Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I had a joke here but it got very convoluted and that is actually not a pun although if you understand why it could be a pun, good work.

[listentothelittlebird]

TW: dissociative episode

This was a whole scrapped oneshot, mostly because I couldn’t fit it in properly... I misread something on a wikipedia page and somehow ended up with “Jason revisited Ethiopia sometime during the Red Hood and the Outlaws, and had major PTSD”. I’m fairly sure I was sleep deprived at the time... (I’m honestly happy with how this one turned out, but it was just out-of-place with the rest of the other oneshots)

This is a “deleted scene” from my series on ao3, Code Bat! 

It was a quiet, peaceful night, until the comms crackled to life.

“N,” Oracle called, “RH entered Gotham an hour ago. The new Super he befriended brought him in, but he hasn’t moved from his location since. Can you go check on him?”

Nightwing frowned. Jason was in town? 

He was happy to have a chance to see his Little Wing, of course, but this was an unplanned visit. Usually he would at least radio in ahead, and dramatically announce his return by searching for them during patrol time.

Something was wrong.

“R and I are still dealing with the drug ring,” Batman grunted, “We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

It seemed even the Bat himself was getting worried.

“I’m turning in for the night. BG’s headed towards RH right now. Let me know how he is, alright?” Spoiler paused, before adding, “I can pull an extra patrol or two, if he needs you guys for company. I’m not an official fam’ member, but I’m more than ready to help.”

Nightwing would have hugged Spoiler if she was standing next to him.

Batgirl was already at the rooftop when Nightwing arrived. She was crouched directly in front of Jason - in his Red Hood outfit, skull-like helmet still on his head - and staring. Nightwing had learnt to read Cass’ body language, and right now she was practically screaming concern. She straightened when Nightwing touched down.

“Unresponsive,” she signed, “Alive, but not there. Like the victims we saw last week.”

Nightwing sighed, a rush of air escaping his chest. It was relief mixed in with new pain, because something had happened to his brother for him to shut down. Something had triggered this.

“RH is dissociating,” Nightwing reported to the comms, “BG says he’s unresponsive. B, once you and R are done, get the Batmobile here.”

“We’re on our way,” came Robin’s tight response, crisp and serious but betraying the slightest of quivers.

In the meantime, Nightwing busied himself with removing Jason’s helmet. His face was blank, devoid of his usual snarky grin or unimpressed eye-roll. His chest was rising and falling in slow, mechanical breaths.

“We’ll take care of you, Little Wing,” Nightwing laid a hand gently on his brother’s shoulder, smiling warmly, “Take all the time you need, okay? We’ll be here.”

There was not so much as a twitch to acknowledge his words. Dick’s gut clenched tighter, even having expected the lack of response.

Batgirl had drifted away, standing several steps back. At Nightwing’s questioning glance, she murmured haltingly, “Scary.” She raised her hands to elaborate.

“No body messages. Nothing. Cannot tell what he is thinking, or if he is thinking. I’m scared for him. With other victims, it’s bad. With family...” the next motion was not proper sign language - she made a heart with her hands, then split it. 

It hurt to see family like this.

Nightwing gave a sad, quiet smile in response, and the way he turned back to eye Jason was enough to convey his agreement.

-

Jason came back to himself slowly.

He was never truly gone, not quite. Not for a while, he thinks. 

He’s… not sure about much. Just that he had been able to tell Artemis and Bizarro that he was going to pull a few strings in Gotham to get them a permanent base. 

He remembered fumbling out an address for a safe house that he had, which would be able to last his two teammates for more than a week. He remembered Biz dropping him off in Gotham. He remembered sitting down on the filthy rooftop.

He thinks Batgirl came, then Nightwing. He thinks they helped him into the Batmobile, and he thinks he saw Batman and Robin. 

He… can’t quite recall what happened next. It was like his memories were grinded to a pulp and then drained of substance, leaving behind the crusts of barely-coherent scenes. Flashes of what had happened.

He was in the Batcave, then he was being walked up the stairs to the Manor, one large arm wrapped around his shoulders, one large hand gripping firmly onto his elbow. 

There was the rustling of old paperbacks, distant and distorted, like hearing through water. 

There was Bruce, blue eyes focused on him, gazing at him and murmuring something soft.

“...here for you. You’re safe, Jaylad.”

He felt a sliver of pressure on his face.

Jason blinked. His hand rose to the spot, to where the mildest of pressures were, a calloused hand cupped against his cheek. He blinked two, three times, Bruce’s face morphing into the most genuine of smiles, even as the smell of the library and faint tightness of hunger greeted him.

“B?” Jason croaked, his voice hoarse from something more than dryness. Bruce was still quick to supply him a cup of water. The hand had yet to leave his cheek. Jason, still thrown off and trying to piece together his scattered mind, leaned into the hand even as he downed the glass.

There was a reason his throat felt scratchy. He had been screaming. Screaming at…

By the time Bruce had plucked his empty glass from his hand and set it down, Jason had jolted violently, as the realisation of how he got here, on exactly why he had returned back to Gotham, hit him like a train.

Ethiopia. The rebuilt warehouse. The living nightmare of his latest Outlaws mission.

“B?” Jason’s voice was desperate now. Logically, he knew Bruce was right there. Trying to convince his tortured mind though, as it finally came to terms with what had happened, was not as simple. 

“Dad? Dad…” Jason’s hands reached blindly for Bruce’s arms, scrambling to tighten clenched fists into the fabric of the man’s sweater. Bruce pulled Jason into his chest.

While Jason tried and failed to quell his breakdown, Bruce had maneuvered himself back onto the couch, Jason sat half in his lap and half on the couch. Jason’s arms, tight around his father’s shoulders, loosened as he let out a shaky gasp.

“We - we had a mission,” Jason rambled before he could stop himself, “Artemis was looking for something, and we were helping her look, and-“

“Jay,” Bruce cut in gently, “Don’t force yourself. Please, son.”

Jason, his forehead pressed to Bruce’s shoulder, shook his head even as he barreled on. He had to get this out before his walls went up again, before it became too blissfully peaceful to even broach the subject.

“I- fuck. We went to Ethiopia,” Jason gave a hollow laugh, even as Bruce sucked in a sharp breath of air, “It was fucking hell, B. Pretty sure they were just doing the generic torture shit on me, but they didn’t even need to do anything, really. The location was enough to…to-“ Jason’s voice cracked. There was something wet leaking out of his eyes.

“It looked exactly the same, B. I checked after - it was the same place. It was-“ Jason’s voice gave out for real, then. 

Bruce pulled him tighter, holding his son close as he cried himself dry. Bruce was just glad that Jason had been able to come back to Gotham, that his son was here for him to comfort - was willing to accept that comfort from him still, even after everything that had happened.

“You’re here,” Bruce hushes, when Jason’s sobs had died down to sniffles. He gave the boy - he would forever be a boy in his eyes - a squeeze around his broad shoulders. “You’re here.”

Jason sniffed again, and squeezed back, tight and desperate.

Later, Alfred would enter, guided by his butler senses to bring a meal for Jason. Later, his siblings would check in on him, and Dick would pile everyone into the living room with a movie marathon and a sleepover. Later, Jason would figure out a permanent base of operations for the Outlaws.

For now, it was just a father holding his son, both undeniably grateful to be alive.

-

Jason led Biz and Artemis to an underground bunker at the outskirts of Metropolis. They were right under Superman’s nose, which was both exhilarating and concerning.

He did not fancy meeting any one of Bruce’s colleagues. 

On the other hand, if Superman did stumble upon them someday soon, Bizarro would finally get to meet someone like him. Well, someone who might see him as family, at least. Jason had heard from Tim that Superman was a big-hearted family man that had taken in Kon-El the moment he had trusted the clone.

He hoped Superman would take Bizarro in. The big guy deserved someone else besides him and Artemis.

Speaking of…

“Say, since we’re gonna be working with each other a lot more from now on, can I get insurance that you won’t take a swing at Wonder Woman while I’m in the collateral damage zone?” 

Artemis glared at him, but Jason had weathered Bat-glares, and this was nothing compared to the man. His helmet was off, so she could see his smirk, his red domino stretching as he raised an eyebrow. 

“I’d have thought you’d be on better terms with the lady. I mean, she’d gladly offer you any support you need,” Jason pointed out.

Artemis huffed, “Themyscira should have done more to aid my tribe. They still have yet to do more to aid my tribe. As Diana is a representative of her people, my grudge is against her tribe, and not her personally. Truthfully, Diana saved my life, and I am grateful for that.”

Jason hummed contemplatively. “Well, you should be a bridge between the two tribes,” Jason thought aloud, “Just saying, you basically became your tribe’s champion by getting back the Bow of Ra. If anyone could get them more aid, it’d be you.”

He could tell that the Amazonian needed time to think on his words, so instead of continuing. Jason splayed his arms, “Besides, sweet-talking gets you places!” 

It was implied that such was how he had gotten their base, but the circumstances were probably far from what Artemis assumed. All Jason had needed to do was talk over conversations during dinner and Bruce was showing him possible locations even before patrol rotations had begun.

Artemis latched onto the new topic, regarding their new base with a satisfied tilt to her head, “What were those connections that you managed to find? Gotham is one place in Man’s World that I have yet to understand.”

“Eh, you learn to deal with the city’s fuckery. Like I said, I just had some old strings that I could pull to get us here,” Jason shrugged, and paused for a moment. Everything had been moving a mile and minute, from when Jason had first met Artemis to when they and Bizarro became a team.

He had neglected to tell them his name. Not that Bizarro needed his name, since he even called Artemis Red Her, but Artemis herself had always referred to Jason as Red Hood or Red.

“Jay.” 

At Artemis’ questioning glance, Jason huffed, “It’s my name, I guess. Close enough.”

It was the name the Titans, Roy and Kori, knew him by. Artemis and Bizarro were shaping up to be his second round of Outlaws, and he wanted them to have his trust, too.

There was a weighty glint in Artemis’ eyes. “It is an honour to work with you, Jay,” she stated solemnly.

Jason cracked a grin, “Aw, c’mon, don’t go all mushy on me. Let’s go get Biz before he ransacks the whole pantry.”

He turned to head in Bizarro’s direction, his loud rummaging making Jason glad he had chosen to put them significantly low underground. Artemis trailed behind with a warm smile.

[the-fixation-zone]

a drink from hell

okay so i haven’t written fanfic in literal years (and even then, it was only one, unpublished) and my writing in general is rusty, but i saw this  answer by @hurricanezukka and i just. i had to write something. so here it is! it doesn’t follow the prompt exactly, the plot got a little away from me, and if i didn’t just write something i was going to take a billion years on it/not finish it at all so! anyway! the Work!

~5k words

“Your change is three dollars.” Zuko hands over the bills, trying not to wrinkle his nose as yet another person purchases his Uncle’s…concoction. The customer smiles and walks down to the end of the counter, awaiting what Zuko believes can only loosely be considered a drink. He sighs through his nose, turns, and begins crafting. A Thai tea with…boba. He tries not to gag as he finishes it and hands it over with its obnoxiously large straw. The customer’s eyes light up when she sees it, her “thank you!” almost lost in the loud popping of the drink’s seal. Zuko does not say you’re welcome. Instead, he tries to keep his eyes from rolling and goes back to the register. Another day, another delusional person. When Uncle Iroh had said he wanted to try something new in his tea shop, Zuko hadn’t questioned it. It was his shop, after all, and Zuko was only there because of his Uncle’s love. Uncle obviously knew how to run a business without outside influence. But when Uncle had shown him the little…black…balls he intended to put into the most finely brewed tea in the city, Zuko had nearly put his foot down.

“Uncle. What…what are those.”

“They are tapioca balls, nephew! Don’t they look delicious? It will add a bit of fun to drinking tea, if I say so myself!”

Right. Fun. As if drinking hot (or, in this case, cold) leaf juice needed to be a diverting activity. Zuko had said nothing and had dutifully tried one. And then he had just as dutifully spit it out when Uncle wasn’t looking. Honestly, what the fuck was he thinking?

So now Zuko stands behind the counter of the Jasmine Dragon and waits for people to come in and order the monstrosity, forcing him to relive his waking nightmare. Cold tea. And tapioca balls. It isn’t enough to make him rethink working here, but it’s damn close.

“Gooooood afternoon! I hear you guys have something called boba tea?”

Zuko’s eyes clench close reflexively before he remembers the customer service etiquette Iroh tried to drill in him. He opens his eyes and says, through clenched teeth, “Yes. We do. Only place in the city.”

“Wooooow.” The customer is flashing him a bright smile, one that takes Zuko off-guard for a moment. Sure, sometimes customer’s smile at him. It’s usually because they want something. A bit knocked off the price of their drink; to be able to use an expired coupon. But this customer doesn’t seem to want anything. Just the boba. “Is it good?”

Zuko raises his eyes from the smile to the man’s eyes, intending on telling him the honest truth, but he’s arrested by how bright blue they are. Zuko forgets how to form sentences. The customer’s tanned skin makes his eyes look even bluer, the little blue beads in the single braid that comes down into his face tying the whole package together. He has laugh lines.

“Uh—what?”

The customer’s smile falters, just a bit. “The boba? Is it good? I mean, my sister says it’s great, but who can trust a little sister’s taste?” He winks, bringing Zuko into the joke. Zuko thinks about Azula’s taste in, well, anything, and finds himself nodding along.

“Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Uh, a lot of people say it’s good. Like, uh, it’s ordered a lot? Instead of regular tea?” Zuko does not know why he’s asking his customer these statements, but Zuko also doesn’t know why he isn’t just telling him that the boba fucking sucks and to try something else. Maybe it’s because the customer is still smiling, even though by now he’s sure to have gotten a proper look at Zuko’s marred face. Maybe it’s because his hair, the rest of it that’s not in the little braid but is instead in a wolftail, looks so soft…

Maybe Zuko is a bit preoccupied.

“Well, that’s good enough for me! How about I get a small black milk boba tea and let you know what I think?”

Zuko nods numbly, tells him how much it is, and exchanges currency. He’s fairly certain he doesn’t look at the till to do it, but the customer doesn’t say anything about incorrect change so maybe he’s done it right. Zuko makes the tea with shaking fingers. When he finishes, he turns and sees the customer leaning against the counter, looking down at his phone. He looks up, as if he knew Zuko was looking at him, and flashes that smile again. Zuko passes over the tea and their fingers brush.

“Thanks!”

“You’re welcome.”

Zuko watches as the customer walks to a table near the windows, pulls out a laptop (how long had he been wearing a messenger bag?) and gets to work. Zuko, unfortunately, finds it hard to get back to work for the rest of his shift.

 ***

Zuko’s off the next few days and he spends his free time reading. Mostly Wikipedia articles, but if pressed Zuko would defend his habits as educational to the last breath. Besides, it isn’t as if he is just reading them for fun, not that anyone asked. He’s editing. The nature of Wikipedia is such that anyone, even idiots, can create a page. It is a beautiful idea in theory, but in practice it gives Zuko a headache. He doesn’t edit every inaccurate page that he comes across (he’d get nothing else done) but he does look through pages he considers himself an expert on. Species of turtle, types of candle wax, the furnace manufacturing industry—well. There are plenty of things to keep him occupied until his next shift. He very pointedly does not think about the blue-eyed bombshell from the other day who stayed in the shop for several hours, long after he had finished his tea. He also doesn’t think about how, after finishing the tea, the blue-eyed customer had looked up and unerringly found Zuko’s eyes to give him a big, hammy thumbs up with another grin. He doesn’t think about how he’d fumbled the teacup that had been in his hand and blushed furiously, thanking the gods the cup had been empty. He doesn’t think about how, though he didn’t look back at the customer’s table ever again, he could feel the man’s eyes on him. He really doesn’t think about that.

Instead, he thinks about how someone has changed all the mentions of “tortoises” to “turtles” as he viciously changes them back. Honestly, if there weren’t a difference why would there be two separate words?

His next shift is an early one. 7am. Zuko doesn’t mind; he tends to rise early anyway. He comes in a few minutes before his shift starts, unlocking the door and bringing down chairs from their upside-down position on tables. He can hear Uncle in the back, counting change.

“Zuko, is that you?”

Zuko sighs. “Yes Uncle. Were you expecting someone else?”

Uncle Iroh’s chuckle can be heard clearly in the front room. “No, no, just glad you are here. Today is going to be a great day!” Uncle comes through the door to the back, tying his apron around his generous belly. Zuko still doesn’t understand why Uncle, the owner of this shop, insists on working when he could easily just hire someone to take his place. He’s asked a few times, wondering why his uncle doesn’t take an early (or, honestly, past due) retirement, but Uncle always gives him the same answer. He grins, slaps Zuko on the back, and says, “Can’t leave all the fun to the young!” before busying himself with some part of the tea process. Zuko doesn’t understand it, but he’s long learned not to question it. He grabs his own apron and gets behind the counter, taking the glass jars of tea out from the cabinets to display them next to the till. Uncle is insistent that people see the tea before it’s brewed, so they know exactly what they are getting. Zuko doesn’t get it. He looks in the jars and sees different shades of dried leaf, which doesn’t help him choose which one he’ll hate least. But Uncle is the boss, so.

The morning goes quickly, a rush hitting a half hour after they open and holding steady until around nine. Perks of being located near the college campus, the best of which being that students in the early morning are dead-eyed and silent. They take their caffeine and go, without much small talk. Zuko decides to take his break after the rush, knowing another one will start up again in an hour or so. Uncle had decided pretty early on that tea was much better with a snack, and so had added café food to the menu. Oatmeal, avocado toast, and smoothie bowls are part of the Jasmine Dragon’s repertoire, among other tasty things, which brings more people in for lunch than they’d get just serving tea. A blessing and a curse, Zuko thinks. A blessing, because more customers mean more tips. A curse because…well, customers. Zuko throws together a sandwich and starts to head to the back. Uncle always says he’s welcome to eat in the dining room, where the seats are more comfortable, but Zuko prefers not to be seen while he eats. Usually, Uncle leaves it just at that. Today, however, he pushes Zuko a little more.

“Are you sure, nephew? I chose these couches myself for their comfort! I think you will enjoy your lunch a bit better if you sit out here today.” Uncle has an odd twinkle in his eye as he says this, one Zuko doesn’t have the energy to parse through. He looks at the clock, then back at Uncle, and realizes if he wants to have any food at all it’s better to just give in now. Zuko shrugs and heads to the dining room instead, taking an armchair close to the back. The room is, thankfully, empty for now. Not knowing how long that will last, Zuko starts to take a bite of his sandwich when the bell over the door rings. He sighs, moving to get up, but Uncle waves him off and heads towards the till to take care of the customer. Grateful, Zuko sinks back into the armchair, eyes drifting to the newcomer in case they try to give Uncle any trouble. As his eyes find him, Zuko freezes. It’s. The blue-eyed man.

Zuko does not drop his sandwich.

The man walks to the counter, familiar grin on his face, and greets Uncle like they’re old friends. Zuko watches, confused, as they immediately launch into a hushed conversation too quiet for him to make out. He does catch Uncle attempting to subtly point in his direction, though, and feels his ears go red. Better not to worry about it, Zuko thinks, and hunches deeper into his armchair to nibble on his sandwich. Not worrying about it, he keeps his eye on the customer.

Eventually, after it seems the man has finally ordered, the customer moves down the counter away from Uncle, and Iroh starts his tea. Instead of looking at his phone like he did last time, the man looks directly at Zuko and makes a beeline for his corner. Zuko eats a bit faster.

“Hey! You on break?”

Zuko wishes he hadn’t eaten so fast. “Mmph? Uhk, er—”

The other man’s eyes fill with concern and he puts his hands up, palms out. “Whoa, whoa sorry! I should’ve waited, take your time!” He watches Zuko swallow with a soft smile, getting comfortable in a nearby armchair. Zuko tries to tone down his impression of a human tomato.

“I—fuck—hi. Hello. Again.”

The customer’s smile stays soft, but a light comes into his eyes. “Hello. Again. Name’s Sokka,” and he reaches a hand out to shake, “what’s yours?”

Zuko definitely drops his sandwich now (onto the table, thank fuck) and quickly meets the man’s—Sokka’s—hand with his own. Sokka’s hand is pleasantly cool. “Uh, I’m Zuko.”

“Zuko. Cool.” Sokka keeps looking at him, and smiling at him, and should Zuko let go now? Or is it okay, since Sokka hasn’t let go either? Zuko wracks his brain for the last time he shook anyone’s hand and how long the shake lasted and comes up maddeningly blank. Has Zuko shaken anyone else’s hand before?

Sokka’s smile grows. He slowly removes his hand from Zuko’s grip, fingers lingering. Zuko has just enough presence of mind to bring his hand back to his lap, and not leave it dangling in midair like an idiot. It’s a near thing, though.

“Uh, so. What were you and Uncle talking about?” Zuko asks, the first thing that comes to mind.

“Oh! That’s your uncle?” Sokka looks over his shoulder for a second, then looks back. “Oh, uh, nothing? Would you believe nothing? We were just shooting the breeze, you know, real casual small talk.” Sokka does not sound very convincing, but he also doesn’t sound like he’s going to change his story so Zuko doesn’t push it.

“Oh, okay. Yeah, he’s, uh, he’s good at that. Small talk.” Unlike me oh gods strike me down now.

“He seems like a good guy!” The nervous look leaves Sokka’s eyes, which is just as well because that means they’re not shifting all over the place and are firmly planted on Zuko’s face. “Must be nice to have such a nice uncle to work for. All the free boba you want! What a dream.”

Zuko’s eyes widen and he coughs. “Uh yeah. All the…the free b-boba…I’d want. Because it’s so good. Who doesn’t like boba? You like it, right?”

Before Sokka can answer, Uncle comes to their little corner with Sokka’s order: same as the other day, black milk tea with boba. This time, though, it’s a much bigger serving. Sokka’s eyes light up when he sees it, and he thanks Uncle profusely as he stabs into the drink’s seal. Zuko tries to hide his grimace, his question thoroughly answered. He looks at Uncle, intending on asking if he should get back to work, but Uncle just gives him a wink and walks off without saying anything. Flustered, Zuko stays put. Between slurps of tea, Sokka begins to ask him about himself and, helpless, Zuko answers. He makes sure to keep his eyes on Sokka’s face, rather than the abomination he’s inhaling, but really that’s not much better. Looking at Sokka makes Zuko feel like he’s on fire. Every time Sokka asks him something his tongue trips over itself trying to provide the best, most accurate answer. He’s sure he looks like a buffoon but Sokka never comments, just keeps smiling at him and encouraging him to answer. He just wants to know and Zuko doesn’t get it.

“Uh, so. What about you? You were working on something the other day…what was it?” Immediately Zuko wants to take it back, sure he’s asked something too personal, maybe the guy doesn’t want to talk about his work, honestly Zuko just think sometimes—

“Oh! I’m glad you asked, I’ve been meaning to bounce some ideas off someone!” Sokka’s eyes light up like he’s been given another boba as he launches into an explanation of his work. He’s a PhD student apparently, trying to hammer out a decent thesis proposal for his dissertation on medieval war tactics. War isn’t really Zuko’s interest, but he does know a bit about medieval history so he offers advice when he can. He’s sure it’s not very helpful, but Sokka seems to take it all very seriously, even pausing for a moment to bring his laptop out and take some notes. Zuko doesn’t have the heart to tell him most of his information was collected from his Wikipedia hunts. Before Zuko knows it, the lunch rush has come and gone and evening is swiftly approaching. When he finally notices a clock he swears, standing up quickly.

“Oh shit, I should go back to work! Oh man, I left Uncle all alone, I—” He looks around frantically hoping to catch his uncle’s eye.

Sokka stands too, seemingly also unconscious of the time. “Oh wow, yeah it’s later than I thought. I’ve got to go, Katara’s gonna kill me…” He quickly packs up his things, having over time brought out papers and folders along with his laptop, haphazardly shoving things back into his messenger bag. “This was good, though! I really liked talking to you. Until next time?” Sokka shoots Zuko a hopeful look as he puts his items away. Zuko blinks a few times, still in Red Alert mode, but takes a second to look back at Sokka. And nods.

“Yeah. Next time.”

***

Next time is apparently the very next day. Zuko isn’t scheduled but Uncle calls him in last minute, as Jin, one of the other employees of the Jasmine Dragon, apparently called in sick. Zuko isn’t planning on doing anything but sweep through Wikipedia so he agrees, taking a quick shower before heading over and arriving with his hair still a bit damp. Uncle gives him a wide smile when he sees him arrive, which Zuko returns, albeit in a more subdued manner, before he spots Jin behind him. His eyes narrow.

“Uncle. I thought you said Jin called in sick.”

“Ah, nephew, you see….” His uncle has the good grace to blush. “She had called in sick, but it seems she felt a bit better and decided to come in anyway!”

“Uncle, you called me twenty minutes ago. Did she get sick and better within the span of half an hour?”

Uncle shrugs, unperturbed by being called out in an obvious lie. “Who is to say, nephew? Illnesses come and go, sometimes. Since you are here already, why don’t I make it up to you? You go sit in your corner and I’ll bring you some tea!” Uncle has that look in his eye, the one Zuko knows means he’s been caught in something he can’t see yet, which doesn’t make any sense….

It’s then that Zuko looks to “his” corner. And sees Sokka sitting in the same chair as yesterday, tapping away on his laptop.

“Uncle! Did you--?” Zuko doesn’t even know how to finish the sentence, but one look at the conniving old man tells him all he needs to know. Zuko groans. “I’m going home, Uncle.”

“No, no! Why go home if you are already here? You may as well relax your poor feet and have some good conversation while you are at it. Go, go sit and I will bring you and your…companion some tea and pastries.” Uncle makes a shooing motion and Zuko finds his feet have decided to make their own decisions, choosing to carry him over to Sokka. Sokka seems to know he’s there because when he gets close, Sokka turns to greet him.

“Zuko! I didn’t know you were working today! Good to see you.” He indicates the chair opposite him, snug in the corner. “Join me?”

Zuko nods numbly and goes to sit. “I wasn’t working today. Uncle called me in, said Jin called out sick…but she’s not sick. She’s right over there.” He points to where Jin is laughing with Uncle about something. He hopes to the gods it’s not him.

“Hmm. Sick but not sick huh? Well, I guess it’s my lucky day then,” Sokka says, beaming a smile at Zuko. Zuko feels warm down to his toes and musters a small smile back.

“Yeah, I guess.” Zuko scratches the back of his neck, feeling the weight of conversation-making drop onto his shoulders. How do people do this?

Thankfully, Sokka seems to feel no such weight and launches right into a story about his sister and their roommate, a blind girl named Toph who sounds like a handful. Sokka doesn’t look like Zuko’s one-word answers bother him, seemingly content to talk about whatever, switching topics on a whim. It’s…comforting. When Sokka wants something from Zuko, he asks. He doesn’t push and doesn’t stray into awkward territory. He doesn’t’ ask about the scar. At one point, Zuko looks down and sees there’s tea in front of both of them, the usual for Sokka and a smaller version of the same for him along with two croissants. He didn’t even notice Uncle coming by. He doesn’t say anything about the cup of boba in front of him, choosing to pretend he doesn’t see it.

“Oh! Can I get your opinion on something?” Sokka asks, his laptop now out. He looks a little nervous, typing at some keys.

“Yeah, sure, I guess. What is it?” Zuko doesn’t know what Sokka could possibly want his opinion on, but he can’t possibly say no.

“Well, it’s this paragraph. I think I’m describing the reign of this king right, but the way you said it yesterday made so much more sense…” Sokka lifts his laptop to hand it over to Zuko, and Zuko doesn’t understand because he could just slide it over and—oh. Sokka’s fingers brush against Zuko’s in the handoff, and Zuko has no more complaints. He takes the laptop, feeling his face heat up, and tries not to fumble it as he turns it around.

“Oh, uh. Yeah, let me read it.” He does, half his mind on the highlighted paragraph and the other half on how nice Sokka’s fingers had felt on his. “This seems right. If anything I’d just, well…” He turns on track changes and does a few minor edits, hands it back. Hopes Sokka’s fingers will touch his again and is not disappointed. Sokka’s ears seem a bit red but otherwise he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, great! Yeah, see that’s what I meant, you just are so good at that. The words, I mean.”

Zuko looks at him like there’s worms coming out of his eyes. Him? Good with words? What planet is Sokka from? He doesn’t say anything though, just shrugging.

The day passes the same as the one before, Sokka alternating between asking Zuko questions and working on his thesis proposal. Zuko tells him about his love of turtles, and his Wikipedia obsession, though he refrains from calling it an “obsession” and refers to it as “an academic obligation.” Sokka nods as if this makes sense. Zuko finds the courage to ask Sokka a bit too, about his sister (Katara, a bit of a pain but the way Sokka talks about her Zuko knows he loves her), his roommate Toph (exactly as much of a handful as that story made her sound like), his parents (dead mom, Zuko regrets asking, and great dad, Zuko really regrets asking) and his school program. Occasionally Zuko will catch Sokka looking at him in a way he can’t read, like Sokka is puzzling something out. When Zuko catches him, he raises his one eyebrow in question but Sokka shakes his head and goes back to his laptop. Zuko leaves it at that.

When it’s time for the Jasmine Dragon to close, neither are ready for it.

“Time sure flies, huh?” Sokka asks, looking genuinely bewildered at the position of the sun. “I should be getting back.”

“Yeah, me too.” Zuko stands, instinctively clearing the table. “This was. Nice. I’m…glad I came in today.”

Sokka gives him a soft smile, pausing in putting his laptop and papers away. “I’m glad too.”

***

For the next week, Zuko is working every day. When asked why he signed up for seven days in a row, Zuko shrugs.

“Rent is coming up.”

His Uncle, who is very familiar with his nephew’s finances, smiles and says nothing.

And if Zuko’s breaks are spent in the corner of the dining room with a certain blue-eyed regular, well. It’s nobody’s business but his.

He makes sure he doesn’t go over time, feeling guilty about the work he skipped last time, but when he goes back behind the till Sokka doesn’t leave. In fact, he just moves tables, sitting in a chair closer to the counter, angled towards Zuko. Zuko doesn’t know why, but he isn’t complaining. It’s much easier to watch Sokka this way.

The man really was beautiful. Zuko’s never been very good at describing people, wrinkling his nose at the labels people use for body parts. All he knew was that something about Sokka called to him, somewhere deep down, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Or if there was anything to do. Sokka was a customer, after all! He came for his (disgusting) tea and a quiet place to work. And, apparently, to talk to Zuko, sometimes. But that didn’t mean anything. Still. For seven days, Sokka came in and ordered his boba, they chatted during Zuko’s breaks, and Zuko watched him work when he had to go back behind the till. He might have dropped a mug or two. But who was counting? Apparently not Uncle, who only gives him mysterious looks whenever it happens and sweeps up the glass without comment. He also seems to be oddly occupied in the back of the shop, leaving Zuko at the front. Alone. On days when Uncle is not in the shop, but Jin or Piandao are working instead, they also seem to make themselves…scarce, unless there’s a rush. Zuko doesn’t question it, as it leaves him more chances to watch Sokka unobserved.

Somewhere in the middle of the week, Sokka starts coming up to the counter after the lunch rush to ask Zuko some more questions. Mostly about his proposal, but sometimes not. He always goes back to his chair when a customer comes in, ever courteous of Zuko’s job, but Zuko kind of wishes he wouldn’t. Zuko would much rather explain to Sokka his disinterest in organized sports than watch a customer stare at the menu above Zuko’s head for five minutes, just to give a fake laugh and ask what Zuko thinks they should get. Zuko really wishes they would stop asking his opinion on tea.

By the end of the week, Zuko desperately needs a break. All his clothes, even his non-work ones, reek of tea. He doesn’t know how, but they do, and he’s tired. His feet hurt. He thinks he’ll do something violent if he has to make small talk with another customer. But he looks over at Sokka and thinking about the prospect of not seeing him for a few days fills him with panic. Maybe he could come in anyway? But, surely that’d be obvious, right? Maybe he can ask Uncle to loudly call him on the phone…

It’s nearing closing time and Zuko is still thinking about what to do. Sokka’s still there, which isn’t unusual. He hasn’t left before closing time all week. He gets up, stretches, and starts packing his things away. Also not unusual. What is unusual is that, instead of giving Zuko a wave and heading out, he walks up to the counter.

“Hey.”

“…hey?” Zuko’s mind switches from thinking about how to see Sokka in the next few days to how to deal with the Sokka in front of him. “Want a tea for the road?”

“Well, actually…” Sokka brings a hand up to tug at his braid, biting his bottom lip. Zuko tries not to track this motion and utterly fails. “I was wondering. You, uh. You’ve been working a lot this week, haven’t you?”

Zuko blinks. Sokka had noticed? “Uh, yeah. I’m supposed to be off a couple days soon.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah, that makes sense, cool. Would…would tomorrow be one of those days?”

“Maybe? It, uh, could be? Why?”

Sokka tugs a final time at his braid before planting both hands on the counter. “Wellyousaidyoulikedturtlesright?”

Zuko frowns. “What?”

Sokka takes a deep breath. “Well. You said you liked. Turtles, right?”

Zuko nods slowly. “Yeah…?”

“Okay. Okay, so, I’m planning on going to the aquarium tomorrow. I have a free day from—” he gestures to the messenger bag on his shoulder, as if that explains anything at all, “—and was wondering if you wanted to join me?”

Zuko’s eyes widen. “Oh, like. You and me? At the aquarium?”

Sokka seems to gain his equilibrium in the face of Zuko’s awkwardness and grins. “Yeah, you and me. Like a date?” As confident as Sokka suddenly looks, Zuko can tell he’s a little nervous. Zuko rushes to reassure him.

“Yes! Yes. I would. I would like that. A date.”

“Great! Meet here at 2?”

“Yeah. See you then.”

Sokka leaves and Zuko allows himself a solitary fist pump.

***

The next day, Zuko comes in to find Sokka already out front, holding two cups.

“I thought I’d get us some boba for the trip over! Here,” and he hands one to Zuko. Zuko looks at it like it’s going to bite him. Sokka doesn’t notice, having already popped the seal on his and taking a big slurp. Zuko watches the boba balls go up the straw with dread.

“Come on, man, no need to be shy. Don’t even think you have to pay me back, just go ahead and enjoy!”

Zuko’s eye twitches but, as if on autopilot, he stabs into his drink. Takes a few sips. He tries his best, but a ball of boba gets stuck in his straw and he has no choice but to bring it all the way up. The moment it touches his tongue he makes the loudest retching sound, dropping his drink onto the pavement and launching the ball from his mouth to land on Sokka’s shirt.

Sokka, for his part, is in hysterics.

He laughs at him the whole way to the aquarium, and a bit more while they’re there for good measure. In fact, he doesn’t stop laughing until Zuko kisses him, right next to the turtle tank.

 fin

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 3

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: Meta baby. Pure meta. Word count: 2,100. Chapter Summary: Your google search turns up something unexpected. A/N: No author in this one for... reasons. Also this one is kind of short and lame. A means to an end if you will, but trust me, Ch 4 is a doozy. P.S it’s nearly 3am so Chapter 4 will be up when I wake up, ya dig.

Ao3 if you prefer

It’s almost funny how dramatic the voice in your head wants to be about those suited criminals and yet it doesn’t care to elaborate on anything important. Like, say, your imminent death. The mention of it was so casual, calm, but a couple of weirdos want to pretend to be insurance adjusters and suddenly it’s all pretty prose and run-on sentences. Flowery language about broad-shouldered men in roaring muscle cars that are going to change your life. She’d kept going while you’d interviewed Maggie Hall. She’d harped on and on about how you couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Of course, you couldn’t stop thinking about them, she wouldn’t shut up about them.

After an entire monologue about the way the paper felt in your hands and could never be replaced by computers—purists are the worst—you finally get to leave. That's when you get some respite. You’re walking out into the late afternoon sun and thanking Maggie for her time and it's bliss. Maggie's story sounds a little off, after years doing this you have this gut instinct for when you should investigate further. Funnily enough, you have drama in your life that you’ll submit a valid claim anyway. Just so you can get this cursed case out of your hair. You might even hurry it through the system before the thing has the chance to kill you.

You’re still not sure how a case could kill you. You’re a pencil pusher at best and the interview with Maggie is an excellent example of the majority of your fieldwork, obviously excluding the criminals at the start. Unless your demise is death by papercut.

For now, you’ve given up trying to fathom out the voice you’re hearing, especially since she's chosen to once again go radio silent. If she won’t say anything useful, like say how not to die, then you were going to have to figure out how to skip ahead on your own. Since she kept talking about the imposters you’d met that day, they seemed to be an excellent place to start.

CNK 80Q3. Ohio plates. That's as much as you know without google.

That evening you set yourself up in the same way you would to work from home. There's a desk in the corner of your dining room with a chair that offers enough lumbar support for the longest of research sessions. Although it’s your personal laptop and there’s not normally a large glass of wine sitting next to you when work.

After it powers on you’re assaulted by the usual pop-ups; windows you forgot to close last time and your emails. Procrastinating is not a new routine, and you’re on a mission, so they all get minimized instead of closed completely. Then you open a new browser window and a stark google homepage stares back at you. A hopeful new beginning.

CNK 80Q3. You’re genuinely surprised that she hasn’t started talking again to describe the change in the air as you type in the plate number. Or some drivel about the way your fingers emphasize each letter and number. It’s all there happening anyway, making the moment foreboding, but your narrator doesn’t seem care.

The first row of results are images. Weirdly its images of the license plate itself. That doesn't strike you as odd at first glance and then you think about it a little more. Why are there so many pictures of this particular license plate? Who is running around taking these pictures? You're pretty sure if you typed in your own plate number there would be no pictures of it. And then you see some shopping results where you can actually buy the plate. While the online shops might explain the images, it only really poses more questions. Why are so many people buying that license plate? What’s so special about it?

You take a sip of your wine before you scroll further, savoring the taste as well as the way it relaxes your shoulders. You don't own any 'fun' novelty coasters that say it but you're inclined to agree with the statement you've heard before. Wine really does make everything better.

You’re not yet into the murky depths of page 2 but you’re far enough down the page now to make it past the sponsored results. These links come thick and fast from websites that all seem to have one word in common. Supernatural.

Then you see your salvation. A page called Supernaturalwiki—the link is simply titled: Impala—and you stop scrolling, a grateful sound slipping past your lips as you do. Wiki, you know that word. Like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has references and moderators', clear and concise explanations. This was the easy way out you were looking for.

That’s what you hope as you click on the link anyway. Your naivety lasts all of twenty seconds before the page loads. With its stock image of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, and a quote about it being the most important object in the universe.

Or it's the most important object in some books at least.

Further clicking and longer sips of wine reveal it’s a series of books called Supernatural—with the title of the wiki you should have seen that coming. These were story after story of ghosts and demons and angels? There are pages that describe monsters, urban legends, and two men. Sam and Dean Winchester. They each have dedicated pages with their whole lives mapped out.

Sam and Dean are fictional brothers and apparently the heroes. Each of their respective profiles begins with an illustrated image from book covers, and then a series of quotes that contradict those pictures. Then their lives are intricately detailed, or should you say they are chronologically recorded according to each book. You would read their histories in full if it wasn't for how tiny the scroll bar is, indicating that these profile pages are ridiculously long.

You sit back in your chair and take a deep breath in the hopes of it being soothing. Or answering all your questions. It does neither. You have no answers and more stress.

This went beyond two men pretending to do your job now. Those guys were driving around in a car with fictional license plates. What was this? Some weirdly immersive cosplay? Was that something Sam and Dean did in the books?

Even so, those two guys weren’t roleplaying at comic con, they were actually in that woman's home. If you hadn't arrived they could have done anything. They could be doing anything now.

There's a ding from the kitchen which means the frozen meal you’d thrown in the oven is ready. Not that you stop thinking about this while you go and grab it because the more you think the less sense everything makes. Like why is a narrator who, until now, was obsessed with those guys, so very silent all of a sudden?

Back at your desk with hot food, you head back to google to see if you can buy these books anywhere because knowledge is power. Unfortunately, not even Amazon has copies. It’s only when you add the term “ebook” to your search do you find a Tumblr blog with links to download all the files, split into two categories. Published and unpublished. There are a lot of Supernatural books and from the looks of it there’s an equal amount of drama over how the unpublished ones got out.

You start downloading them without consciously making a decision to read them. Downloading kind of happens because your macaroni cheese is too hot for your mouth to handle yet, and your hands still need something to do. Besides you didn’t necessarily need to read all of them, if they were truly terrible you’d delete the files. No harm, no foul. But if this was the only way to get answers then you and your kindle were going to be pretty busy this weekend.

“Morning Laura.” Nobody likes Mondays, yet you have a little bounce in your step having made your usual green tea, got dressed, and driven to work in complete and utter silence. In fact, you’d heard nothing all weekend. The caveat was that, yes, you’d spent all weekend reading those books.

You liked reading and without discrimination. Trashy romance novels at the airport? You betcha. Fantasy books thicker than your mattress? Sure thing, order a pizza. But a mystery? Well, those were your favorite. Of course, the detective needed some sort of sketchy backstory and there had to be a fishy amount of red herrings. Most importantly there had to be something to solve. It was an elevation of your day to day life and you always get sucked in. In your job, you try to solve the most benign mysteries; people faking insurance claims. More often than not there isn’t even a mystery to solve, someone really did slip and break something. So, a mystery that grabs you out of nowhere is like a promotion for you, a challenge.

That had been how those Supernatural books had dragged you in. Ghosts and ghouls you could take or leave, you might have stopped reading if that’s all there was. Then this Carver Edlund went and put in that damn side plot about their missing father. It was too enticing, addicting. From the cryptic disappearance to the indecipherable journal of clues. John Winchester would be the death of you.

Or case 24-01 would be. The jury was still out on that.

And now it’s Monday. You’ve heard nothing more from the voice in your head—it may have been a low-level case of carbon monoxide poisoning—and the boys are so close to figuring everything out you can taste it. Technically they know John is alive by now, you finished Shadow some point yesterday afternoon and felt yourself choke up at the emotional goodbye with a father they just got back. But they still have no clue what he's up to, which is a hideous funhouse mirror reflection of your own life. Hopefully, by the time they figure out John’s game plan, you'll have your life figured out too. And fingers crossed figuring everything out will involve staying alive as well.

“You look like you’re feeling better this morning.” Laura is her perky self, always a little too happy for this side of 9am.

Oh right, you went home sick on Friday. You should remember things like that. “I think it was a bug or something I ate maybe.”

“Sure, sure. One of those convenient Friday bugs.” She winks at you.

If she accused you of that say, last week, you’d have laughed it off given that's a thing everyone has in common; trying to skip out on work. So, that's what you try to do this side of the weekend. You push out something that hopefully resembles a regular person's laugh like you’re in on the joke. You have to fake it because you’re still thinking about Providence. The book you’d finished that morning instead of watching the news. You’re still wondering if Sam is starting to move on after Jessica. 

Needless to say, you understand now. The many fan blogs and the artwork you’d glanced at before you started reading. All those things that you’d disregarded as an unhealthy fascination for a bunch of books. Now you’re one of them, obsessed. Walking into the office with your kindle tucked in your bag and Salvation just begging to be read.

This goes beyond finding John. That plot got its hooks in you but you’ve known John was alive since Home and you’re still reading. You could also blame this on your general love of reading except it goes beyond that too. Honestly, it’s hard to pick one thing. They’re really great books. Sam and Dean have such turbulent lives but they still have each other. They’re snarky, lost, angry, and caring. They’re both so different but the sibling relationship is so real. And the stories go beyond a new monster every book, there are these huge interesting story arcs that you couldn't stop reading if you tried. John Winchester had been the first example of these addictive plot points, but not the only one.

“Y/N?”

You snap your head up, “sorry, sorry.”

“I was only saying you’re going to be here all day then, lunch?”

Even though Laura must see the decision on your face she still pretends to hope until you start speaking. “Actually I have a lot to catch up on so I’ll probably be working through. Tomorrow?”

She smiles brightly and nods, “sure thing.”

As bad as you feel about lying to Laura she has presented you an opportunity. Everyone thinks you were sick on Friday. They even think you're behind on your work and they don’t know you’ve already conducted the initial interview. Which makes your decision to sit at your desk and prop your kindle up next to your screen even easier. Nobody would notice the difference between you concentrating or reading. If you skip lunch you might be able to get to Bloodlust out of the way too.

Continue to Chapter 4.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23  Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278​ @bloodydaydreamer StrangerThanFiction tags: @jaylarkson

[dlwritings]

Who Do You See? | Tom Holland

masterlist found here

pairing - Tom x reader word count - 2,086 warnings - SAD TOM IS SAD AND I’M SAD A/N - This was inspired by an excerpt from “I know What You Think of Me” by Tim Kreider for the New York Times -- this is for @your-1up-girl @little-elizabeth @racewife2004 and @tragicluver who voted for this!

summary - Sometimes all the comments get to Tom. All the press and the fans and that opinions coming in from the world. And sometimes, he just needs some of your wise words of affirmation to bring a smile back to his face.

You were the one who advised Tom to take a break from social media. You could see it was draining him, trying to please the fans all the time. He wasn’t good with technology, and constantly trying to figure out what to post and how to post it correctly was exhausting.

And people were just so critical of him. During Civil War, he wasn’t fit enough. During Homecoming, he was fit but not muscular enough. During Far From Home, he was too muscular. He felt weird in his own skin, knowing that people were scrutinizing every ridge and divot across his body. At what point did that become an interesting or appropriate conversation topic? Sure, he pretty much signed his life away to Marvel, but did that mean his body too?

And he hated talking to anyone about it, because things like that weren’t supposed to bother men. They weren’t supposed to bother him. Who cares what people say about his body, right? It shouldn’t matter.

But it did bother him, and you knew it. Some days, you would see him standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing his teeth, turning his body at different angles like he was studying himself. He always had a little crease on his forehead like he was thinking too hard, which he was. He started to wear his shirt around the house way more than he used to. Some days he’d be in sweatpants and a sweatshirt even if it was hot outside (He would just crank the AC.) like he was hiding his body away. If he was on the couch scrolling on his phone and you walked past him, you could see he was reading comments on his Instagram pictures. Something that he used to enjoy now only made the crease on his forehead a touch more permanent. Tom wore his heart on his sleeve, and it was easy to see when he was taking things personally.

So you suggested he delete Instagram and Twitter from his phone for a while and block the sites on his laptop’s internet browser. “Just take some time away,” you said to him. You had caught him pity scrolling again and sat beside him on the couch. He rested his head on your chest, and you brushed your fingers through his soft curls.

“Don’t wanna upset anyone,” he mumbled. His eyes were closed, and he wrapped his arms around your torso.

“No one’ll be upset,” you said. “And fuck ‘em if they are.”

Well, Tom couldn’t argue with that.

And for a few days, it was good. He didn’t have any projects he was working on, so the two of you got to spend a lot of time together. Without being under the microscope of a million fans, you could tell he was more relaxed. He was back to your goofy boyfriend who was shirtless way more than he needed to be and stood beside you while you brushed your teeth just so he could wrap an arm around your torso and stare at your reflection instead of his own.

And then, it wasn’t good. He wasn’t good. Because Tom was still human, and sometimes the insecurities crept up when he least expected it: after a workout, after a date night, cuddled up with you on the couch, taking a shower, waking up, going to sleep…

And he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t not think about it. What were people saying when he was offline? What pictures surfaced of him during his social media hiatus that caused the fans to analyze and critique him? He had to know. It was like an itching in his fingers that he could only scratch by scrolling.

The curse of growing up in the age of technology, he supposed.

There was no harm in googling his name. It wasn’t Instagram or Twitter. He probably wouldn’t even find any relevant hits. Nothing but his Wikipedia page and social media links, he was sure. So while you were out picking up lunch, he let his curiosity win out.

After the expected hits, he saw news articles. They all had something to do with his hiatus or a trip to the gym or do fans prefer Homecoming Tom Holland or Far From Home Tom Holland or or or-

So he locked his phone and went into the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror, that familiar crease growing on his forehead. Had he gotten too muscular? Who did he prefer: Homecoming or Far From Home Tom Holland? Or Civil War Tom Holland? Or pre-Marvel Tom Holland? He knew, technically, he was currently Far From Home Tom Holland, but what did that even mean? Had his identity officially been reduced to what movie he was currently promoting? Or how big his muscles were during each film shoot? Honestly, looking at the news articles and fan polls, he didn’t recognize any of those Tom Holland’s. Even the one in the mirror felt like a manufactured copy of who he once was.

He wondered then which Tom Holland you saw when you looked at him. You had known him longer than anyone in his life, so you experienced every Tom Holland. Who did you like the most? Who were you most comfortable with? Who did you find the most attractive? Who were you in love with? Who did you see when you looked at him now?

You came home to silence. You expected the TV to be on or music to be blasting, but there wasn’t. When you left to get food, Tom was showering. Was he still getting ready? Or had he gotten lost in his mind again? You assumed the latter but hoped you were wrong. So you set the food on the counter and headed into your bedroom. Tom was still in the adjoined bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, and staring blankly at his reflection. His hands were gripping the countertop, his eyes squinting like he was criticizing every flaw, and that crease etching itself into his forehead.

“Was it Instagram or Twitter?”

Tom jumped when you spoke. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard you come home. “Neither,” he said, finally looking away from his reflection. He leaned up against the bathroom door frame and folded his arms across his chest. You raised your eyebrows at him, and he shrugged. “Google.” You sighed and walked over to him, wrapping your arms around his waist and burying your face into his chest. He hugged you back, but it wasn’t his usual tight bear hug. It was hesitant, like he didn’t want you close to him.

Like he was afraid you’d feel a ridge or divot you didn’t like.

You pulled away and put your hands on his shoulders. He hung his head so he didn’t have to meet your eyes. His curls fell in front of his forehead, so you brushed them away and urged him to look at you. Tom didn’t cry very often. When he was sad, he just looked exhausted. His eyes would get red (not teary, just red), and he’d be sporting bags under them. That was how he looked then, and it was how you knew that he wasn’t good again.

You pressed your lips into a tight line and took Tom’s hand, leading him back into the bedroom where you had a full length mirror. You sat on the floor in front of it and patted the ground between your open legs. “C’mere,” you said. He hesitated but did as you said. He faced the mirror, and you wrapped your arms around him and put your chin on his shoulder. You peppered kissed across his skin, and Tom hung his head again. Just as you were ready to say something, he spoke first.

“Who do you see when you look at me?”

You looked up at him and cocked your head to the side. “What do you mean?” you asked.

“I mean-” He sighed. “Who do you see? Everyone talks about Civil War Tom Holland and Homecoming Tom Holland and Far From Home Tom Holland, and I don’t even know which one I am anymore. Or which one I’m supposed to be. Or which one you want me to be. It’s like-” He cut himself off, annoyed for getting so emotional over something so stupid. Something that men were not supposed to be bothered by.

“It’s like what?” you asked, rubbing your thumbs across his soft skin.

He sighed again. “It’s like I don’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror anymore. And I’m scared that one day you won’t like this Tom Holland. I’m scared I won’t like this Tom Holland.”

You were quiet for a long time. Tom worried he had said the wrong thing. Maybe you hadn’t thought about whether you liked this Tom Holland before, but now he brought it up and you were considering it. Maybe he had ruined everything just like that. He was preparing himself for you to say the worst.

“I read something once about a guy who dreamt about a weird invention.”

He hadn’t prepared for that.

“It was a staircase where you could go deep underground, and you’d hear recordings of everything people have ever said about you- the good and the bad. The catch was, you had to pass all the horrible things in order to get to the best things at the very bottom. I don’t even think I would make it four steps down, but the guy explained the logic behind it: if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

You brushed your fingers through Tom’s hair, and he relaxed against your chest. “You’re a star, Tom,” you said. “And you have to handle the really bad things in order to reap the benefits of being famous- as much as that sucks. And your staircase would be so much longer than mine because people think they have the right to say whatever they want about you. But if you want to reach the bottom of the staircase, you have to be secure enough in yourself to hold your head high through the horribleness.” You paused. “But you know what else?” He met your eyes in the mirror. “You’re not going down this staircase alone. I think that’s where it’s logic fails. It thinks that we’d have to go down on our own, but we wouldn’t. Because I know I’d want you to be with me when I heard whatever good things have been said about me at the bottom, because that’s a joy I wouldn’t want to celebrate alone. And you’d help me through all the horrible things, so it’d be worth it. And I’d do the same for you.”

You nuzzled your face against Tom’s neck and kissed him. Your thumbs were still rubbing soft circles on his stomach.

You loved all his ridges and divots.

“When I look at you, I don’t see Civil War Tom Holland, or Homecoming Tom Holland, or Far From Home Tom Holland. I just see Tom. I see my beautiful West London boy whom I love with my whole heart, not despite the flaws, but because of them. Because you’re not perfect-” You scoffed. “-and thank god, because I’m an absolute disaster.”

Tom laughed, the smile on his face more genuine than it had been in ages. He turned around to face you, so you were sitting with his thighs crossed over yours. You giggled and draped your arms over his shoulders, curling your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. The kiss you shared was so soft and so caring and you were both so so in love.

“C’mon,” you said, moving your legs from under his and standing up. You reached your hand out to him and helped pull him off the ground. “I went to the sandwich shop on the corner.”

“Yes!” he cheered, pulling you in for a playful yet bone-crushing hug before you hit his shoulders and made him let go.

“What a weirdo,” you said. He laughed and slapped your butt as you walked ahead of him to go back to the kitchen.

Sometimes, Tom just had to be reminded that, despite the films and fans and critiques and polls, he would always just be Tom. And he liked that guy more than any Tom Holland the world had opinions on.

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

TAGLIST

@bangtan-serendipity | @planetdemon | @the-singing-clown406 | @tomshufflepuff | @bluelalal | @grandloser | @jackiehollanderr | @mindset-jupiter | @bisexual-sk8r | @feel-like-gold | @runaway-apple | @miraclesoflove

[jeanjauthor]

No Fandom Flame Wars, But...

...I am prefacing this with the statement that I am NOT going to participate in any arguments over ANY of this.  You have a right to your opinion, and I have a right to my own. Respect that.  There is NO need for a fandom flame war of any sort (and y’all will be ignored if you try to ignite one with me).  There is room for all sorts of viewpoints.

With that said...

Time for one of those Controversial Opinions™* that we keep seeing on Tumblr and Twitter, etc, ad nauseam...and here is my own (potentially very but who cares) Controversial Opinion:

I like the way The Witcher series has been plotted and filmed.

You don’t have to read any further (and I’m implementing a cut to avoid #spoilers for those who haven’t seen it yet), but that’s my take on it, and the TL;DR version of why is because The Show Is Making Me Think About All The Things In It.

This is a rare thing these days, because so much is spoon-fed to us in other shows...but I like it.  And for me...it works.

The rest is behind a cut.  Be warned, if you click the Keep Reading, you’ll be entering the *spoiler*-filled mists on those archaic medieval maps where cartographers usually put warnings like “Here Be Dragons” and such...

And yes, that IS a deliberate pun. *spoiler spoiler spoiler!* It was also a good episode, and yes, I want that tent. I just don’t want to have to transport it physically, yeesh...trust me, I KNOW how much tent that is to try to transport, the tent on the inside. (The one on the outside still requires a horse at the very least, but only one horse.). I’ve been playing around in the SCA, medieval society, for decades!

Anyway...on to why I like the series:

At first, I was hella confused. I literally had to rewind and repeat several time the scene where Renfri talks of Calanthe just having won her battle...when earlier, I’d seen Ciri telling Calanthe that “when you were my age”...  (Which, on a side note, is what I thought was the age of 14 years old. Dunno why I stuck on that number, but apparently in the chronology she’s actually 11yo, I guess, when Ciri’s storyline takes place?  Since Geralt left 12 years before, when she was still a nausea-stirring little zygote or whatever...but I digress.)

So the first episode confused me.  But holy hellz ballz, the fight scene was freaking awesome!  That was like...some grandmaster fight choreographer’s fightporn wetdream!  Every move Geralt made in the fight against Renfri’s men was believable.  Fast, realistic, hella good choreography!  ...Gross, gory, and at a few points I could see hints of the CGI used, but I was actually rather grateful to see some of the CGI, because that kept me from flinching too much...though certain scenes later on definitely made me Look Away.

[Btw, for anyone watching, #spoiler for #implied #suicide #attempts. Also, magical #cannibalism, yuck.]

Anyway, that first episode was fascinatingly good in its fight choreography, Geralt was pretty to watch, and I found myself interested in what was going on.

I’ll also admit I was confused enough to go looking for spoilers, and found some comment somewhere explaining that the different scenes were being told non-sequentially. That each different main character was in a different time period.  The post I read reassured the readers that, if we paid attention, we could figure out which stories were being told in which era, the more we went along.

THAT made sense to me...and I decided I’d give it a try...but to be honest, I wasn’t entirely wasn’t sure if they could pull it off.

I do think that is what has put a lot of people off, the way the story is initially being told, by the way.  Some people have compared it to a (grimdark) version of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys...but I really don’t think that’s a decent comparison.  Not because H:TLJ is better or worse in any way, but because it and X:WP were their own things, without consistent story-threads woven throughout each and every episode as a single tapestry.

...That’s actually a pretty good comparison.  In fact, it’s so good, let’s use this as a metaphor for the difference between the two.

This is Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as tapestry art:

Here are several different tapestries.  Each one is full of plantlife and people and animals.  Sometimes the animals are mythical, like unicorns.  Sometimes there are hunting dogs and horses.  Often times there are flowers and fruits.  A number of the tapestries have similar objects repeated over and over from one to the next...but for the most part, they are separate stories even if they have similar themes.  This is H:TLJ.  A series of separate or similar-themed tapestries.  Sometimes you’ll even get some telling a progression...but for the most part, they’re a bunch of different tapestries woven by different storytellers.

This, on the other hand, is The Witcher as a tapestry:

...Most people will recognize this as the Bayeux Tapestry (Do NOT @ me about it being technically an embroidery, not an actual woven tapestry, shush!)...but what you may not realize is that I’ve taken pieces of it from the very long single image posted on Wikipedia (located here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry just click on the images on that page, click through, and find the really long super skinny horizontal version).

More than that, I’ve taken pieces from it, and mixed up where they come from in the chronology...but it is all still one and the same story.

These seemingly disconnected bits and pieces are like finding a bunch of chests in an old storage room in a cathedral somewhere, opening them up, and finding folded bits of cloth with magnificent images embroidered on them...but not knowing that you’ve opened the chest with panels 4-6 first, and that the next chest you open has panels 25-27, and the third chest you open has panels 13-15.  You see these images, they’re fascinating, yet they seem disjointed and unconnected...but...they’re not.

We just have to put them into the right order to tell the full tale.

This is something we don’t get in storytelling.  Not very often, at least!  The storytelling invites us to put the pieces together.  Now, I’ll freely admit they could’ve done a somewhat better job in the very first episode, and finding that spoiler-warning that the chronology is mixed up did help...but I do like to think I would’ve figured it out as I went along.

Yes, I only just started watching the series, after all 8 episodes were out of the first season (prequel season? whatever) so that all the spoilers were already out, yadda yadda.  And yes, it’ll suck having to wait for the next season.  I am not sure if they’ll keep telling the storyline in this same open-a-random-tapestry-chest fashion, but since I do know (haven’t watched it yet, but it’s next in the queue) that in the 8th episode, Geralt and Ciri finally meet (and he’s already met Yennefer), that we finally have most of the pieces spread out on the walls.

They may not be originally laid out in their proper order...but we have enough to put things in order.  And that, dear readers, fans, etc, is our job to do, in the way this story is being told.

It is not for everyone.  I freely admit it.  But it does make those of us who stick with it invest more of ourselves in the story.

We’re the archaeologist finding these treasure chests full of these tapestry stories, and we’re just now realizing that this is a HUGE SINGLE TAPESTRY, with massively intricate details...some of which are just lending color to a scene, but others of which will be referenced later, or be a foreshadowing of something to come, or a flashback of what has already occurred.

That is why I truly like how this story is being told.

It’s not something I could enjoy within each and every story across all of creation...but I don’t need a bloody Bayeux Tapestry each and every time.

I got to puzzle out some really cool things.  I got to experience several aha! moments.  I had a number of wtf was that?? moments, too...and lord knows I got plenty of delicious eye-candy.  (Also the scene of the half-paralyzed bard dropped into the midst of the orgy scene was freakin’ hilarious, because you know he was being tormented, heaven-and-hell all at one and the same time, the lustiest night of his life...and he could not participate, poor fellow.

Also, “Toss a coin to your Witcher” and the other songs are actually pretty decently done. I love the fact the actor playing Jaskier is the one actually singing these end-credit songs.

...One last thing.  Some of the people don’t appear to age.  That might give the impression that most do not...and that did lend some to the illusion of chronology confusion.  In truth, most folks in this universe do age, but they’re mostly background characters.  Calanthe and her husband showed signs of aging, Mousesack certainly aged, and Yennefer gets in a good crack at the bard about his crow’s feet, a common sign of aging, if not one instantly visible to most. (Since he doesn’t get many close-ups, you can’t tell he has crow’s feet...but neither can you not tell...so that and the quality & style of his clothes changing help tell you that he’s been aging.)

To be honest, your genetics does quite a lot to determine how “old” you will look.  I knew a woman who looked like she was 92 (roughly the age my grandmother died) when she was actually only 62 (about a year before she died).  At the same time, I knew a woman who was celebrating her 90th Birthday, but she looked like she was at most in her late 60s.

Some people don’t get grey hairs until they’re in their 60s.  Some turn grey-haired in their 20s or 30s.  When I think back on the differences in appearance for people like Calanthe, she did look younger in the earlier era scenes...and she did look older in the later era scenes.  Plus, the better your diet and exercise are, the healthier and thus younger you’ll look...so it’s expected that a queen wouldn’t age nearly as fast as a commoner.

Additionally, when you have magically modified characters who cannot age, and they’re the main / primary characters...well, we really don’t spend nearly as much time looking at the secondary & tertiary characters.  Yet they did put some effort into aging those characters appropriately.

So with that observation made, I think they did a reasonably good job...because they’re also dealing with the constraints of a production budget.  Netflix took a risk on this series.  They sunk a lot into the special effects, blood splatters, choreography, magic effects, etc.  But I think it’s also a case of deliberately obfuscating the puzzle pieces.  They didn’t go in for the overblown obviously older effects (makeup, CGI, whatever)...because they want their viewers to think about what we’re watching.

But I’ll bet that, if we go back and take a second look...we’ll see the little details of non-immortal (or at least regular lifespan) folks actually aging, if they get to appear in two different timelines.  When you have a story this large and this long, however...not everyone will get to reappear.

Anyway...that’s my Controversial Opinion™.  I genuinely like the way The Witcher has been told in its first season.  For me, it genuinely works.  I’ve had fun discovering and opening all the tapestry-boxes, and am having fun trying to fit together all the puzzle pieces of each story section so that I have the full chronology in my head.

I like the amount of time that I’ve had to invest in this story to make sense of it.

...And I especially like the use of the word “Fuck.”  If you’ve watched the series, you know which one I mean.  The one that was quietly said, in the very quiet room, in front of a whole bunch of very quiet people.

Very well said.

*applauds*

[ladynonsense]

A Royal Disgrace: Part 1 (TRR/PM Crossover)

OK guys! Let’s do this! This is part 1 of what I expect to be a pretty short little series about King Liam, Riley, and Damien Nazario. Will be NSFW in future chapters but this one is mainly place-setting tbh. I just want you to know that this is not going to be good clean family fun moving forward 😅

Main pairing (for now): Liam x Riley

Rating: PG-13? Nothing too crazy here, just some flirting with sexy older women

Summary: Damien is hired to keep an eye on a visiting royal whose fidelity is in question, and is stunned to see a familiar face.

Tagging @brightpinkpeppercorn @annekebbphotography @choiceslife aaaand wishing I had sorted out a proper tag list at some point but I HAVEN’T. So if anyone else wants to be tagged moving forward let me know!

The duchess looked remarkably relaxed and at home in Damien’s office, despite the stark contrast of her beautiful, designer clothing and the cheap decor. He watched her anxiously, not sure what to make of her. He had expected someone stuffy and snobby, and thought she must have made a terrible mistake by reaching out to him rather than one of the fancy firms who usually took on this kind of work. But she looked perfectly happy with her selection, lounging in the cheap upholstered chair across from him with a warm grin on her face.

“Everything OK, Mr. Nazario?” She fiddled with her long blond waves, and he fought back a smile. Get it together, Damien. She’s almost old enough to be your mother.

“Of course, Duchess Krona. Just gathering my thoughts before we begin.”

She leaned in conspiratorily. “Please, call me Adelaide. We’re friends now, right?”

He resisted the urge to loosen his collar under her gaze. “Of course, Adelaide. Do you mind if I ask who referred you to me?”

“A friend,” she answered cryptically. “I’m told you’re both gifted and discreet. Is that correct, Mr. Nazario?”

“Of course,” he answered confidently. “I’m very discreet.” Why did that sound like an innuendo all of the sudden? Seriously, pull it together.

Adelaide let out a small, sharp laugh. “If only my daughter’s fiancé could say the same! This should be an easy task for you, I’m afraid. The poor dear never expected fidelity from him, but his boldness and complete lack of discretion is proving to be quite embarrassing.”

Damien tapped his pen against his teeth, nodding. Royal intrigue had never been his thing, but at its core this was just one more infidelity case. “What do you hope to accomplish from hiring me, Adelaide?”

She sighed, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I haven’t entirely figured that out yet. What I know for sure is that this must be handled quietly, out of the eyes of the press and the court, so as to spare my own family from embarrassment.”

“Is it your intention to blackmail the king?” Damien asked plainly, trying to keep his tone neutral.

“Oh, heavens no! Despite everything, he’s a fine man and I wouldn’t want to undermine him as a ruler or make an enemy of him. But perhaps if I’m the one to present him with evidence of his inappropriate relationship, he’ll see how easily he could be put in a compromising position and end it.”

Damien nodded, satisfied. “OK. I’ll take your case. But I’d like to keep this arrangement private, and I have some papers for you to sign to that effect.” Making enemies of a powerful royal family was not something he was comfortable with.

“Of course.”

“Did you bring the photographs I requested?”

“Yes, of course.” She pulled a small stack of photos out of her handbag. “This is King Liam,” she said, placing a photograph of a handsome man in regal attire on his desk. Damien was surprised at his appearance; he wasn’t expecting an actual king to be younger than himself. Adelaide laid another photograph down on top of it, showing a beautiful young blond. “This is my daughter, Madeleine. And this...” she added one more photograph to the small pile, “...is Lady Riley, whose company the king is rather...fond of.”

Damien’s breath caught in the back of his throat. Riley. No fucking way. “I’m sorry...Lady Riley?” He tried to cover his own disbelief. “That’s an unusual name for a Cordonian noble, isn’t it?”

Adelaide rolled her eyes and nodded. “Yes, it would be. Lady Riley is an American commoner, but she was sponsored by a prominent noble family to win the king’s hand. It seems she was...partially successful.” Adelaide frowned, her face marked by worry. “She was expected to be chosen before a scandal arose. I was thrilled when Madeleine was chosen in her place, but I suspect there is much more to this story.”

Damien gave her a sad smile. “There usually is.”

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

Once he’d seen the duchess back to her car, Damien sank into his worn office chair with a sigh, lifting a photograph off his desk. Fucking Riley.

He supposed he shouldn’t even be surprised. She had always been destined to woo her way into fame and fortune. He figured he’d been a practice run for her.

He’d been obsessed with her when he met her. As much as he tried to be a gentleman and not a creep, there was no denying the nature of his feelings: pure obsession. She’d been the only person to take his mind off of Kai in years, and while they were together, he’d practically forgotten Kai’s name. From the night she flirted with him as she waited his table, he was hopelessly hooked.

He’d tried to fight his own feelings. But she was dogged and persistent in a way that made him think she could’ve been a great cop. She’d attached herself to him and refused to listen to his doubts and objections. When Riley declared you as hers, there was nothing to do but try your best to please her.

The doubts only got worse during the time they spent together. He wasn’t stupid; he knew he was attractive and could keep her satisfied in bed. She was so young, though. 22-year-old Riley might be OK with a low-rent P.I. who made her laugh and made her scream when it counted, but he knew that eventually she’d realize she was slumming it.

And so he left her before it could come to that.

Her fury was a force of nature. They’d screamed at each other until they were both hoarse. He’d had to change his phone number to stop her from sending him bitter tirades and, worse, heartbroken pleas for him to reconsider. He resisted the urge to look her up for the next year and a half, but he thought about doing it at least once a week, still.

Now, it was time to do it.

Almost. After exercising restraint for so long, it felt wrong to dive in. So he started with the king. Never hurts detective work when your subject has a Wikipedia page...

He wanted to hate King Liam, but it was hard not to root for him as he read about his life. His face didn’t match Damien’s idea of a European royal, for starters. He wanted him to be a doughy balding middle-aged white guy, not a younger Daniel Henney. He didn’t want to get sucked in to the tale of his mother’s tragic and mysterious death, or his older brother’s surprise abdication that led to him unexpectedly being handed the crown only a couple of years later. Or the fact that his people adored and respected him. He just wanted him to be another rich prick, but in reality he was either perfect or extraordinarily skilled at PR. Or both.

Except for this one thing.

Riley Brooks.

He hadn’t expected her to have her own entry. But she did, although the translation into English was spotty in places. Clearly she’d made an impact on Cordonia, becoming a popular public figure with her Cinderella love story, until she’d been publicly exposed and humiliated for an affair with a lesser nobleman.

Damien winced as he pulled up the news story from just six weeks prior. The photos were intrusive and cruel. Riley may have been a bit wild, and it was entirely possible that she did indeed get involved with two men at once, but she didn’t deserve this, regardless. His heart ached for her with an unexpected intensity.

He had to dig deeper for the conspiracy theories. And there were plenty of them.

For instance, that Madeleine, Adelaide’s daughter, had orchestrated the whole thing in order to claim the king for herself.

Or that the King Father had set it up, in order to control his son’s choice of queen.

And an overwhelming number of sources were certain that the king and the mysterious American were still romantically entangled. There were dozens of dark, blurry cell phone photos, not clear or convincing enough to hit major publications, claiming to show King Liam and Riley together in compromising situations. If they were genuine, then the king was shockingly indiscreet and borderline fetishistic about hooking up outdoors, in public.

Damien glanced at his camera. This might be too easy. But he would never forgive himself if he was the photographer behind the next round of humiliating photos to damage Riley’s reputation.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number of the hotel that Adelaide had told him about. She hadn’t even bothered to give the front desk a fake name.

“Hello?” Her voice was chipper but somewhat confused when she answered the call. His mouth suddenly went dry when he heard her voice on the other end of the line.

“Riley,” he croaked awkwardly, “It’s uh...it’s Damien...Nazario. Can we meet?”

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

Riley kept to the sidelines at the UN ball, praying for the night to end already. Her friends were off dancing...well, except for Drake, who was just off drinking. But Liam was still busy circulating the room, charming everyone he came across in that easy manner he had. She tried not to be too obvious about staring at him, but he just kept drawing her eye. He was irresistible.

She pulled herself away with a sigh, realizing she was staring again, and snuck up to the roof to pull out her phone. Damien had texted her his new number -- I can’t believe that son of a bitch actually changed his number to escape me in the first place -- and she was itching to find out what was so important that he had tracked her down after all this time. She wanted so badly to say something, anything, but couldn’t come up with any words that didn’t seem desperate and depressing.

“Ah, I’d hoped I would find you out here.” She jumped at the voice behind her, but grinned as she turned to see Liam, suddenly right behind her with a huge grin on his face.

“You snuck up on me,” she scolded, turning around and wrapping her arms loosely over his shoulders. “I thought you were busy.”

“Never too busy for you,” he said softly, kissing her forehead. She pulled away and shot him a glare that made him wince. “OK, sometimes too busy for you, but I always make time eventually. Right?”

“That’s true,” she sighed, rising to her toes to kiss him properly on the lips.

“You said earlier that we needed to talk...is everything OK?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered, frowning and biting her lip. “An old boyfriend reached out to me today.”

“Oh? Should I be worried?” Liam smirked, a little bit of genuine nervousness showing through his confident facade.

“Well...maybe? He said he had to talk to me...about you.”

Liam frowned. “Why would a stranger know anything about me that you don’t already know?”

She hugged him then, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not like that, OK? But he’s a detective, and a pretty good one. He might have important information. Or it might be something he thinks is important that we already know...I have no idea. But he wants to meet me later tonight.”

“OK,” Liam said, pulling away and nodding thoughtfully. “OK, that’s good. I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t do that. You’re busy with the court. Plus Bastien would never let you go out alone, and I don’t know if I trust him yet.”

“I’m sorry Riley but I have to insist. I can lose Bastien. How can we be sure this man doesn’t pose a threat to you?”

“I trust him,” she insisted. “Things got bad between us, but he’s a good person.”

“I trusted my father,” Liam stated simply, a slight edge of bitterness to his voice. “I trusted Bastien. You trusted Penelope. Even good people can be turned against you.”

Riley pondered that for a moment, unable to give a good response. He was right. Damien was a good person, but that didn’t mean he was on her side. Especially after everything they’d been through.

“OK. He’s going to be pissed when I don’t show up alone, though.”

Liam smiled, giving her one last quick kiss before heading back inside. “Let him be.”

[plaseasteka1979-blog]

Sex with someone you not in love with can be fun, but you don get the added oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine in your body that makes you feel warm fuzzy, haha. You do still get some dopamine, because sex DOES feel good overall. But there extra when you do it with someone you love.. But English borrowed different words with similar meanings at different eras. So borrowed words from Latin, Norman French and Parisian French that mean the same thing coexist in English. Like the example of the adjectives kingly (the Old English word for king is cyning), royal (from old French roial) and regal (from Latin regalis), that all mean the same thing. On top of that, companies kept giving early release access to the bigger guys. I lost my niche and stopped.Probably the most subs i had after being partnered was 7 or 8. I then realized that without my niche, i probably just a terrible streamer and took a break.I not saying you suck at streaming, but maybe it just isn your thing.trippingtoadfunk420 2 points submitted 9 days agoHey man. I might be going back on the pill once I done with ADHD testing since it might interfere. I thought it was not doing much as an antidepressant since it makes me suicidal if I take it without any addons, but look at me, I can do both and now I just as angry and obsessive as when I first started it! Anyway, I calmed down a bit today and things are looking up but I just realized I have no gifts, no gift prospects and no money to buy gifts for my brother and sister, neither of which wear jewelry or have any use for homemade knickknacks. A U G H. There's also no bonuses either. The other sad part? The employees here who get help from me and others, to do their job, continuously call off or slack off because they know I have to help them or someone else has too. So basically they take advantage of it. I totally get that mindset, but when I worked with homeless adults with 남양주출장안마 mental illnesses, people giving them money was such a big problem. We were the payees for our clients to help them learn money management skills and to help them avoid drugs while in mental health treatment, but people would try to be kind and give them cash which really caused some problems for our clients. Of course not all homeless people are in that position, and it up to the individual to decide where their money goes, but IMO it more helpful to donate to a nonprofit or to give grocery store gift cards to the homeless folks. They dry ish but usually ok with an eye cream. I have super gray discoloration and even with my color corrector, my usual concealers aren covering it well enough. I really just want a good, full coverage undereye concealer if anyone has any reccs!! Thank you in advance!Thanks to a few people on this sub I finally buying the Tom Ford cream shadow in Spice :) I so excited, I feel like it be a really good everyday shadow for my skintone (NC40ish) something easy I can just throw on and go when I want a simple 남양주출장안마 eye look.. Want to see the pool from their kitchen and living area, Mr Gray said. Need a visual of the kids, so it needs a connection with the kitchen and living area. That where people will want their pool now. Straight copy and paste. At least here they seem to either be not needed in the first place, not sterile, idk. Looking at the wikipedia page it seems like they need almost perfect conditions to breed anyway (long rivers).

[radramblog]

television tropes dot com

It’s about 10:30 PM while I’m writing this, and that means I’m behind schedule again. Not that I have so much a schedule as a “get it done by midnight you goshdarn son of a gun” rule, but that’s besides the point. So what have I been doing, aside from get vaguely annoyed by new COVID restrictions that I refuse to write about for a third time?

I’ve been browsing fucking Tvtropes, of course.

TvTropes (I’m not really certain of the official capitalisation) is effectively a monstrous trivia site with wiki-like editing and moderation, among other things, for the sake of collating information about tropes, media, and which go where. I’m hesitant to call it a wiki, despite the site’s insistent terminology for Wikipedia being “The Other Wiki”, because there’s an inherent subjectiveness to it that doesn’t suit the more detached style Wikis usually take.

That, and the lack of moderation, and of updating content to reflect current reality. I respect that actually getting people to edit every single page on the site would cost well beyond what they can afford (though I’m certain they’d be able to find people), but it’s somewhat jarring to read something that is speculative towards a future that we’re well beyond.

The site is infamous for getting people sucked into holes of tabs and pages. At least to the point that XKCD made reference to it, though I’m sure that was from the author’s personal experience. And from my personal experience, that distraction is so much worse when you have attention issues. The site has been a bad browsing habit for probably a decade at this point, and one I would kind of like to kick.

Because TVTropes has unquestionably shaped how I look at media, and I’m pretty sure it’s not for the better. Recognising tropes and cliches is all well and good, but it is ultimately a surface level of analysis. It’s recognition and trivia.

I don’t think the site is in of itself a bad thing. The idea of a more opinionated, subjective, hell even positive information repository is interesting, and I can guarantee that I wouldn’t have checked out some extremely cool things- including my favourite anime- were it not for the site. I think people usually get media recommendations from people they know or other content (e.g. Youtube) they consume, but what about their interests that they don’t share with their friends, and what if they prefer reading to watching? The intricate web that is TvTrOpEs is a perfect fit for the niche.

And that leads to the only place on the site I will browse without feeling at least a little guilty- the fanfic recommendations page. Shame is for nerds, and I will embrace my inner trash goblin re:fanfiction.  But without friends in those spheres (outside of the Nuzlocke Forums community) I don’t really have much to highlight the good stuff without manually trawling through the repositories themselves, which is an experience that proves Sturgeon’s Law several times over. It’s at least an alternative to the top lists on said sites, one that can show underrated gems that someone, somewhere decided to write about for a bit. Sounds a bit familiar, I suppose.

Ultimately tvtropes isn’t going anywhere, even if the UI seems to be getting worse (ah, 2020s design, I hate it). And if it’s a problem for me that it exists, then that’s a problem I need to solve, not really the fault of the site. And yet it’s siren song sounds again and again. I have so many things I want to do, games I want to play, shows I want to watch, and I’m sitting around reading this goddamn website.

…just one more tab?

[my-never-ending-nightmare]

03/17/2021 (II)

Coincidences always mess with my head because the emotional side of my mind wants to believe that they don’t exist and that everything in this universe happens for a reason and that I can derive some meaning from it - but then the rational side kicks in and lets me know just how crazy that line of thinking of is and that anything, no matter how small the odds, is still possible because the universe is just that random and meaningless. I want to believe the former because it’s comforting, but I’m compelled to believe the latter even though that fills me with nihilistic despair. This can all really suck me into a downward spiral if I overthink it too much. So even though I still feel at a loss for words over this morning’s coincidence, I think I may as well try to get this down right now so that I don’t exhaust too much mental energy on this particular topic the rest of the day.

I’m sitting on my computer this morning eating breakfast and watching youtube like I usually do every morning, about an hour or so after writing what I wrote previously. Lately I’ve watching this obscure English speaking Malaysian youtuber who does these expert playthroughs of an obscure late 90’s video game that masterfully blended ancient Roman history & Roman aesthetics with a city builder sim – the masterpiece that is Caesar III. Probably my third most played game as a child, right after DOOM and Duke3D respectively. Anyway, really impressed by how well he understands the game and intrigued by his rather unique personality so I decided to try to find his twitch link so that I could follow him there, too. Noticed in the info section he had a link to his Spotify account so I head over to follow him there. Was a little surprised though because he’s got over 100k subscribers only YT but only 35 followers on Spotify and two playlists. Was intrigued that I was part of such a small percentage of his fanbase that had gotten here, and decided to check out what kind of people our small little group consists of. One account instantly stood out from the rest because it was someone’s facebook linked account thus real name and photo and she looked like a young arts school/nerdy type (I don’t mean as an insult) which didn’t seem at all like the type of person I’d imagine watches his content. There was nothing that stood out about the rest of the accounts at all, except this one was some old bloke who’s probably in retirement lol. They were what I’d expect the audience of an obscure Asian youtuber who plays retro strategy games to be.. men of my generation and above. A woman who could be young enough to have not been alive when the twin towers came down really just stood out. Curiosity made me dive down the rabbit hole and click her profile.

I’m going to have to digress for a moment and explain what I mean by that rabbit hole. I’ve found that – in the online world at least - 6 degrees of separation is very much real. Whenever I bother to read facebook comments on news articles or memes I often will click on someone who stands out for whatever reason and find someone they’re interacting with on their profile then click on them – repeat the process and you quickly find someone who has a mutual friend of you. Or, when I’m reading YouTube comments I often do the same thing but in search of truly obscure content – like channels with videos not exceeding 150 views. You find these strange communities consisting of like half a dozen people but eventually you find someone you have something in common with. It’s kinda like how you can go on Wikipedia, click random article, and from there you can click any random link on the page and continue that process until you can get to the page of Adolf Hitler. You can do it within 6 clicks. I’ve literally never lost it. Go try it, it’s fascinating. Because that means every single wikipedia article is only seperated by 6 degrees from Hitler.

Anyway, so yeah, was curious about this person who stood out from the rest and wondered what I could find down that rabbit hole. This persons not got many followers, but one rather unique username stands out instantly.

I’ve seen that name before. Where have I seen that name before?

Someone I know must be following this person or something, I know I’ve seen this account name before on here.

Hmm, small world.

So I click on it. They’ve got two followers.  Click. On follower is this person where this rabbit hole began.  But the other follower is her.

Oh shit.

I think I know who this is, it must be him. Fuck.

Small world indeed.

I anticipated feeling this sort of way if I ever accidently bumped into her somewhere, sometime. But I wasn’t expecting this. What are the fucking odds of that happening.. at all, let alone within an hour of me writing what I wrote this morning. What the fuck. 

[psychic-refugee]

Where To Post: Archive of Our Own (“AO3”)

Pros: I really like their tag/filtering system. You like x/y ship? Here is literally every story with those tags with one click. You don’t have to keep going to the bottom/top of the page and set filters. This doesn’t work as well if you like a rare pair, but then you just use their search feature and you’ll get what is there. There is no automatic filtering out of adult rated fics. It’s up to you to read the tags and skip those. Same for tropes or genres, you just go to the page of your fandom and you can scroll through, find a tag you like and then you get all those fics with those tags.

I like all the different features they have: Sign-ups, Assignments, Claims, Related Works, Gifts. I haven’t used these and I’m not 100% sure how they work or what they do. But I believe most of these are for like if you do  “challenges” and choose a prompt/topic/trope etc…These are features that really create a community of writers to interact with each other via fanfiction.

Interface:

There is very little you can do to get kicked off. It’s very self-regulated. If you don’t like something, it’s up to you to avoid it. It’s not the admin’s job to put mental bubble wrap around you. What else is good because there is basically nothing off limits. This makes it so you won’t be kicked off by a vindictive troll/competitor that has a bone to pick with you. On Fanfiction.net, there is censorship, meaning if you write smut within your story then all someone has to do is report you and that story is deleted. None of that BS on AO3.

From their Terms of Service (“TOS”) page: “Unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that content to be.”

The TOS that would get you kicked off is harassment, spam, and stuff that would threaten the integrity of the site (viruses). Everything else is basically suck it up buttercup.

Bookmark feature is analogous to Fanfiction.net’s “Favorite” feature, shows up in your profile.

Subscribe: Same as “Follow” on Fanfiction.net.  Doesn’t show up in your profile but it emails you when the author updates.

History is if for some reason you don’t want to bookmark or subscribe, it lists all the fics you’ve read and how many times you’ve visited the story. Maybe you prefer not having emails to go through to get updates or just forgot to bookmark/subscribe.

Kudos: This is the “Like” button of AO3. People have various reasons for not writing a review, one might be social anxiety and even leaving a comment is hard. Others don’t speak the language of the writer and don’t want to appear “dumb” or something. So the Kudos button still lets the writer know their story is good.

It’s really cool that it allows you to put in links, pictures, playlists, and translations.

They also have side projects that collect and save fanfiction/projects that are on older defunct sites (e.g. Geocities). They’re like a real Archive.

No advertisements. So much less clutter and I love it.

Cons: You have to wait to be “invited” in order to join. I want to say it took like a 3 days to a week from getting in the queue until I could post.

The site is glitchy. I want to say at least once a month or couple of months, the site goes down. It’s only for a couple of hours, but if you’re in the middle of a fic or addicted then it can be devastating. lol

For some features you have to be pretty computer savvy. There is a lot of HTML and other coding to fully use some of their features.

I kind of hate their review feature. They call it “commenting” and it’s like a forum where x comments and you reply and it’s right under the review. What annoys me is that it counts your reply as another “comment.” So x comments, you say “thanks!” and it shows up as 2 Comments in your stats. I feel like this gives a false stat of how popular your story is. And sometimes people have like whole conversations about the story so that can really give a false impression on how much the story is reviewed.

They don’t have any Direct Message feature, so you can’t be polite and say thanks without screwing up your stats.

No forums to do any role playing or discuss fan discourse.

I think their statistics feature could be better. They only have a running cumulative count of hits you get. There are no daily counts or any further breakdown.

Because there are no advertisements, there are “fundraising drives” like with Wikipedia. I have yet to see them not meet a goal, so other than them begging for donations, it’s not really invasive. I’m usually never really bothered by it.

There are so many things you have to go through to post a chapter/fic. Because of its tagging system, it basically asks you a million questions and to hit a bunch of stuff.

No uploading a document feature for your chapter. It’s copy and paste and hoping you got everything. The preview post feature generally takes care of that. It also doesn’t take all your MS Word coding, like horizontal line breaks. So I have to go back and put those in using their Rich Text feature which is also limited. To avoid this, you could post to Fanfiction.net and then “import” it. I haven’t tried it but not everyone is going to cross-post. 

I think the tagging system is a double edged sword. It’s easy to find similar fics with specific tags, but I think people use them to complain they weren’t “warned” enough for some aspect of your fic or “misled” about a pairing/topic/genre/whatever. I saw a comment on someone’s fic where they complained that they thought it was “x/y” pairing. It turned out to be another pairing and they were “disappointed.” I thought the comment, which I won’t repost, was rather bitchy and unnecessary. Yes, x/y was listed as the pairing. But so was x/z, so that should have clued them in that x/y was not going to be end game. I think sometimes there’s too much pressure to be like, I need to tag EVERY little thing less I offend someone. I totally support trigger warnings to an extent and tagging to help you find fics of what you want to read. But sometimes I just don’t think of it or I’m being over inclusive. And sometimes tags are subjective. Like getting a papercut to me is not something I think needs a warning. For some, it reminds them of some trauma from childhood. For the most part I think most make a good faith effort to properly tag. If you’re disappointed because I missed something or tagging gave the wrong impression of how the story was going to go, deal with it in your own head and move on.

There’s also a “spoiler” aspect to tagging. Like I want people to read the story and find out certain things at certain times. If I put x tag then they know where it’s going when I don’t want them too. Or for pairings, I want you to wonder if they end up together etc…I don’t want to have to write entire sentences for tags to avoid that or add mystery.

There are also times where a story is actually an anthology, and they tag literally every potential fandom, warning, trope, etc…and the tags take up like pages. I can’t stand that kind of clutter, drives me nuts. I would like it if there was a filter for “if there are more than like 10 tags, then don’t show me those.”

Overall I want to say AO3 is my favorite site so far for reading.

[aristotleblinked]

Transformers World Building

@balloonarcade I’ve greatly expanded this from the last time we talked.

@harutemu I was told you’d enjoy this. :)

GEEKERY TIME!

(You can skip to the head canons section, but you’ll be lost if you don’t at least skim this primer!) Radiation. What is it, and how does it work? So, ya got your electromagnetic waves and your particles. Electromagnetic waves are light, but not light we can see. Our eyeballs suck, so we’re blind to anything not on the visible spectrum. Gamma rays, X rays, and UV rays fall under this category. Here is the wikipedia page for your perusal. If you took a look at it, you may have noticed all the rays I mentioned are ionizing rays. Ionizing basically means they have enough energy to break chemical bonds, and knock your atoms out of alignment. They do this by kicking our electrons out of orbit. All the rays travel at the speed of light, because that is literally what they are. Gamma rays can travel great distances, and are the most penetrating of the rays. Favored by hospitals to treat cancer, and sterilize equipment. Gamma rays are usually seen with their posse, the radioactive particles. Alpha, Beta, and Neutron, they can get really wiggly, so wiggly they throw off Gamma light to get rid of the excess energy. Gamma gets around, if you know what I mean.

Gamma rays also hang around cool dudes like lightening, pulsars, neutron stars, and supernovas!

Gamma ray bursts are the brightest, and most powerful events in the know universe. They mark the destruction of a massive star in a hypernova, and the birth of a baby black hole. They release more energy in 10 seconds, than the sun can over its 10 billion year lifetime. Its a million trillion times brighter than the sun, which sounds like a made up number, but is true.

They are thought to have caused a least one mass extinction event that wiped out 86% of the species on earth by shredding our ozone layer.

If one happened close enough to the earth, it would cause a colossal bright flash, people on the ground would have severe burns, and be at risk for gamma radiation to finish them the rest of the way off.

In order to blow up a planet you need to overcome a little something called “Gravitational binding energy”. Gravity is the glue holding all this stuff together, and it’s very strong. It would take a massive amount of energy to destroy earth, a weeks worth of output from our sun in fact. Huh, Flashback //more energy in 10 seconds, than the sun can over its 10 billion year lifetime.\\ Wow, that’d vaporize us many times over! On the bright side it is extremely, extremely unlikely that a Gamma ray burst would hit us head on, and from the right distance to do that.

If a more technologically advanced species managed to weaponize Gamma ray bursts on the other hand.

X rays younger, wimpier sibling of Gamma rays. They’re used to see your bones without removing them first. This is because it can pass through your flesh, but not your bones. There is typically 200cm (6 feet) of concrete around radiation chambers. That stops about 99.99% of the radiation.

Don’t go getting them willy nilly! They are cancer causing, and deadly. They are responsible for half the radiation exposure for people in the U.S. It’s best to only use them as needed

Our Sun’s corona emits mostly X rays. The corona is the millions of kilometers long plasma sweater it wears. It’s also hotter than the surface of the sun.

If you can see an Aurora, then above your head are some X rays. Some space particles bang into our electromagnetic field causing geomagnetic storms. Yes those pretty lights are from particles and magnets fist fighting. Little electrons get lost in the hubbub and crash face first into our ionosphere hard enough that instead of seeing stars, they see X rays. You don’t need to fret though they get eaten by our atmosphere before they can reach us.

FYI if you had x ray vision you wouldn’t be able to see under people’s clothes, you’d be dosing them in dangerous radiation! Oh yeah, the skeleton structure on that one. It’s the only way I evaluate my potential dates, mmkay?

A lot of stuff in space gives of X rays including stars, black holes, comets. X rays gets invited to everybody’s parties.

UV rays also known by their street name ultraviolet ray. This the very same radiation that our sun puts out. Don’t mistake this guy as a friendly. If it wasn’t for our friend, the ozone layer, reflecting and absorbing a good deal of it, it would kill all life on earth. Plants would be wiped in days, you would get a dangerous sunburn in only five minutes, any longer than that and you’d be toast. Which may be the better option, without a food chain, what are you going to eat, rocks?

UV rays would increase to a whopping 650%. Negative side effects include, cancer, blindness, immune system suppression? You can’t win with this guy.

There are levels to them A, B, and C. UVA was thought to be less damaging than the other two, so people used it in tanning booths, and black lights. It turns out Mr. UV has no good side, and it will still cause significant damage to our DNA.

Our buddy the Ozone layer is made up of pure oxygen, which I’m sure doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people, yeah and so is the rest of our atmosphere, what about it?

A common misconception. If all of our atmosphere was oxygen, it would turn into a giant ball of flame the moment someone used a lighter. It’s 78% Nitrogen, so a thick layer of nothing, but oxygen is notable. Earth is one of the few planets that can have a fire at all, because of bacteria who are thought to have produced oxygen, so you need organic life for fires! Oxygen is normally partnered up with other elements, you don’t find this shy cutie on their own.

They’re better as a long distance friend, they’d be smog on the ground, and would suffocate us. Gamma ray bursts are thought to cause Ozone to form on ground level, which is the icing on the cake really, Gamma ray bursts. Why you always gotta be so excessive?

Particles as in subatomic particles. They’re a natural part of radioactive decay. Decay happens when large atomic nuclei notice they are unbalanced, and start shedding these guys like fleas off a dog. Eventually they’ll stabilize, which means they stop being radioactive. The bigger it is at the start the longer it takes, some materials last millions of years.  Don’t underestimate them just because they aren’t as cool as rays, they’re still ionizing. Alpha particles are basically helium gone wild. They are big and heavy. They can travel only for a few centimeters, before they get tired and need a nap.They get stuck in your dead skill cells, and your clothes; they can’t get at your living cells. They’re unlikely to be dangerous, but I wouldn’t suggest eating some of it, that will kill you. Imagine Skyfire trying to fit into a human house, he’s unlikely to manage it, but if transported inside via unnatural means. He’ll destroy the house and everything inside it. Very bad, these guys are no gentle giants. Beta particles are hopped up electrons and positrons. This teeny tiny duo can travel 10 meters away. It’s best to keep your distance, unlike Alpha particles they’ll slide right in you, causing some serious damage. But you can stop it with some aluminum foil.

They are speedy, but they run into a few things, and they get discouraged, and give up. Poor microscopic schmucks.

Neutron radiation is what the name implies some freaky neutrons that have been spat out. This stuff is fairly rare, you aren’t going to find it laying around.  Sprung from nuclear fusion and fission, It’s most common in places like nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, or our atmosphere (cosmic rays run into it). Technically this isn’t ionizing radiation, it can’t touch your electrons. These jerks are able to make things radioactive by shoving themselves into the nucleus of your atoms, causing everything to get unbalanced like a jenga tower.

This means no matter how far you run the radiation killing you could be yourself. Talk about poetic.

They can travel several hundred feet! Neutron radiation is stopped by high hydrogen sources like water, concrete, and certain types of plastics. Boron is also effective at absorbing it. It isn’t stopped by lead or any other heavy metal, unlike the rest. This guy is a wild card who doesn’t play by the rules.

Luckily for us this nasty customer only lasts for about 12 minutes.

They can be used to make things called neutron bombs. They don’t damage buildings, only people. It was appealing, because then you could go in and occupy cleared out land without having to rebuild every dang thing. They got very little, if any use. Because 1 nuclear weapons, no matter how small, are a PR nightmare, 2 they weren’t able to stop tanks which limited their effectiveness, 3 and, this is just a guess, nobody wants to live in a radioactive building.

Radiation that doesn’t fit in the above categories, but are still cool.

Cherenkov radiation happens when particles move faster than the speed of light. But wait, I hear you gasp, nothing is faster than the speed of light!!! That is true, in a vacuum, but light moves differently when it has to travel through stuff, like, say for instance, WATER!

What does it do you swoon. Uh, yeah, it does this blue glow.

It seems to be mostly UV rays, and that’s pretty much it. Seriously, that’s it. I’m not kidding.

Pretty great right??

Hey! Hey! Cut it with the tomatoes; this is dry clean.

Cosmic rays are liars. They are not actually rays, they only said that in an attempt to make themselves look cooler. If you take off their fake nose and eye glasses, underneath are just a bunch of particles. I propose we rename them to “Cosmic fastballs” or “Rude aliens”. 

These guys are not very good at steering, so they’re always bumping into our planet, and they don’t even have insurance! They speed around at near light speed, because these outlaws don’t follow the speed limit their electrons fly out of their seats. Only 1% of electrons make it on this dangerous ride.

If you’re planning a trip off planet you to have be prepared to run into these punks.

Hawking radiation also know by its alias, black hole evaporation. This is a theoretical radiation, because nobody is willing to get close enough to a black hole to see if it holds true (The ones on earth are too small to see the effect!).

The idea is you have pairs of antiparticle and particles flying around, but they never see the light, because they cancel each other out. Taken from us too soon, but black holes work some magic, by eating one of the twins, and presto changeo, we have a healthy baby particle!

Except, they’re right next to the event horizon of a black hole, and black holes are able to move around, and they’re invisible, so the particle will never see it coming... We will remember you, brave little prince.

 a close up of the above image.

Nuclear radiation There are three guys you’ll see mentioned Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. These are the deadly trio. Nuclear reactors generate heat, a lot of it. Cooling is the utmost priority of any reactor without it you’ll have a meltdown, or an explosion. The explosion at Chernobyl had been so intense that the people closest to it were vaporized. Ouch.

The core got hot enough that it burned through the floor, the people who went in after it found radioactive lava! It’s called corium, after the reactor, a proud parent. Meltdown is not figurative language. It’s still burning to this day. If it reaches the ground water it might cause another explosion or get its contaminants in peoples drinking water.

It is called the elephants foot for obvious reasons. Any photographs taken of it have to be done with a mirror, because if you stand next to a melted nuclear reactor core, you die.

Geiger counters are used to detect radiation, but during Chernobyl they used dosimeters that could only detect up to 3.6 roentgens per hour. Which is alarming, but not immediately fatal. In reality it was giving off 30,000 roentgens per hour. Hot damn!

They wanted to put a lid on all that radiation it was spewing off. The roof was covered in debris impeding them. The roof was too rickety to use a bulldozer. Well, I’d like to see how stable you are after an explosion the roof harrumphs. They thought they could use robots, autonomous robots. The robots took one look at this mess, stopped obeying orders, and flung themselves off the roof. I’m outta here echoed in the dark. Only one didn’t, but it sucked at its job, kept getting stuck.

So they used a new type of robot called people. The workers would have about 40-60 seconds to clean, before the lead shielding would no longer protect them. It cannot be reused.

This is because lead acts as a net to catch the radiation. It’s really dense so those slippery rays can’t get past it. The more electrons it has the more likely it is that the radiation will smack into it. When those electrons are gone there’s nothing stopping them from having a hoedown showdown in your body.

There is material denser than lead like gold, tungsten, platinum, uranium...

Wait what was that last one?? You cry. Yeah depleted uranium, it only has lazy Alpha so it is the lesser evil.

They weren’t the only disobedient machines, camera film would corrupt, helicopters crashed to the ground.

The people who died from radiation poisoning were buried in zinc welded coffins.

Radiation exposure can cause a giant list of diseases, most notably cancer, schizophrenia, burns, and radiation poisoning, also know as acute radiation syndrome.

*WARNING* GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TERRIBLE SUFFERING.

Radiation poisoning is a terrible way to die. Vomiting and nausea begin after a few moments of exposure. Your eyes and tongue will swell as will the rest of your body. You’ll be weakened, unable to move easily.

Your skin will turn dark red within minutes, nuclear sunburn. An hour after exposure you’ll get a furious head ache, diarrhea, and fever. Hopefully by then you’ll have passed out from the shock.

Often, after this initial bout of symptoms, you’ll seem to recover. The swelling and nausea will recede, but the other symptoms will remain. Depending on the dose it can last for a few days. Just enough to hope, to make it that much worse.

The symptoms will return with a vengeance alongside delirium, and agonizing pain throughout the body. You’ll bleed from the mouth nose and rectum. Hair falls out, your skin will crack, blister, then turn black. One man from Chernobyl had his skin slide off of him, like a sock, after he stood up.

Your blood cells hemorrhage, the GI track shuts down.

Your bones rot leaving you unable to make new blood cells. Towards the end, your immune system collapses. Your internal organs begin to disintegrate, you’ll start to cough them up. Then you finally die.

There is no cure for it only prolonging the inevitable. The most famous example of this is Ouchi Hiroshi.

A victim of the Tokaimura nuclear criticality accident. He was kept alive for 83 days after exposure.

His chromosomes had taken a direct hit from radiation, and now looked like this.

They had fragmented into pieces. Cells need the recipe contained in them, without it you begin to slowly decompose while alive.

Within a week he needed a stem cell transplant from his sister, the theory was if his body won’t make any white blood cells, so somebody else’s will!

They had to stop using tape on him, because the skin would peel off with it. Not long after that the rest of his skin slid off.

On day 11 he needed to be put on a ventilator. After this point he can no longer speak.

Day 27 the membrane of his intestines are deteriorating, causing diarrhea. This causes his intestines to hemorrhage. He was losing 10 liters of fluid a day, so he needed daily blood transfusions, up to 10 times in 12 hours.

They tried to give him skin transplants, but it wouldn’t bind to him, even though they were using special bio skin.

56 days after his admittance he goes into heart failure. They were able to revive him, but it happens again 2 more times for a total of one hour without blood circulation. For reference brain death begins about 6 minutes of no oxygen.

Day 83 it’s over.

There are written records of this being against his will, that he had said “Please stop”, “I’m going home”, and he had begged for his mother. They continued for, at the most generous number, 72 days after hearing his pleas. They sincerely thought they could save him.

Radiation poisoning is a terrible, terrible way to die.

Well I’m not going to go into detail, but here’s a couple of cool tidbits about nuclear bombs!

The nuke map used in said video. This allows you to see what would happen if various nuclear bombs hit various cities, and what the death toll would be.

HEAD CANONS TIME!

Are you still with me? Haven’t fallen asleep yet? Great! Time to talk about what the heck this has to do with transformers!

If mechs are covered in heavy plates to protect from radiation what are medics scanning for? I like to think they’re looking for things like temperature, if spark activity is detectable (i.e, is there a breech), maybe fuel line pressure. This is why medics need to hook up to their patients to get direct access to their bodies readouts!

If Cybertron lacks organic life, thus no free oxygen, what protects their planet from all those rogue rays? There have been interesting theoretical talk about magnetic shielding, but nothing concrete yet. Lucky for us we can make up whatever we want! I say they do have magnetic shielding that is able to reflect most of the radiation.

Shuttles needing to be heavily reinforced, because they have direct exposure.

Mechs needing to get their plating checked like a trip to the dentist!

Or their sparks protect them from damage, by extending a field of electrons that interrupt the radiations wicked ways! When injured it reduces the energy released, so it opens them up to other aliments, like rust, nanobot parasites! Low yielding sparks having more problems or even an equivalent to immune system suppression.

Or Sparks need particle radiation to live, without it they’ll slowly get sicker and sicker. Trapped by alien captors who don’t understand why’d you want dangerous stuff like radiation. They assume they got a crazy robot, as the guy fades.

There are a lot of fun ways to add it to your stories, some examples!

A gamma ray burst destroys their ozone layer entirely. Medbays now have to be heavily shielded, because to operate on their patients they need to remove their protective plating. A place where being outside is a death sentence. Like with Chernobyl machines you have mechs slowly go crazy the longer they are exposed. This is great Apocalypse fuel. Or! Or!

Imagine Ratchet going where angels fear to tread, an irradiated colony, that was left to languish after a quick pronouncement of their “inevitable fate”. Ratchet is like Challenge Accepted. He has to deal with supplies being thin on the ground, the only support he manages to scrounge up himself. He has to fight his patients into to submission first, before he can treat them.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker crash land on an alien planet after exchanging fire with Decepticons. Sunstreaker is severely injured by the landing he’s left insensate. Sideswipe has to carry him across a radioactive desert, while the planet beneath him gets hotter and hotter from decay.

Decepticons have weaponized Gamma ray bursts. They wipe out several Autobot outposts. Ever since, the Autobots have to live like scavengers, constantly on the move, sometimes they have to leave the sick and wounded behind. There is a last ditch effort to end this internecine madness. Lead them into a naturally occurring Gamma ray burst. Incredibly dangerous. What suicidal moron would do that? Oh yeah realizes Getaway unfortunately.

Thank you for reading this giant mess.

Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions. I’m not an expert, but if I know the answer I’ll tell you it.

[itsteaveetime]

"The Miracle of Judaism" in which Mike has his Bar Mitzvah and invites Violet because she's *kind* of cute. (Could feature other characters idk)

Mike Teavee taught himself C++, Java, Perl, LISP, and Python while other kids his age were still getting a handle on inches and centimeters, but Hebrew is hard.

He isn’t good at talking.  He says a lot (more than a lot of people would like him to).  But he isn’t great at saying stuff.  Not how it should be said; not the right way, and vocal inflection sometimes escapes him completely.

There are challenges he likes (video games, hacking, math), because they make sense; are conquerable even if time consuming.  This?  He doesn’t know.  Boys before him have done it.  It’s do-able.  But his mouth doesn’t want to cooperate, and Mike’s body does not respond to programming like a reasonable thing should, and why can’t everybody just speak English?  This is America.  This is Idaho.

He hasn’t been to temple in a while, either, so that’s working against him too.  But winning a world famous chocolate contest buys a lot of forgiveness, and he and his mom are suddenly welcome a lot of places again, and Mike doesn’t care…

But Ethel is so happy.  So proud.  

And Mike gets that he’s a lot.  (Do people not realize he has to deal with himself 24/7?)  And as much as she gets on his nerves, she’s also…all he has.

Mike isn’t really sure he believes in anything, but he’ll do this for her, and then that’s all she gets for a while.  She’ll maybe even owe him.

There’s another problem, though.

“Who do you want to invite?  To your Bar Mitzvah?” His mother asks.

And nothing comes out of Mike’s mouth.

Because the kids around here suck, and he wasn’t friends with them even when he did go to school with them.  They’d probably come now; maybe spend the whole party asking stuff about Wonka that he’s not legally allowed to answer.  But so what?

Mike rolls his eyes at her and turns his attention back to his iPhone, and Ethel surrenders, for the moment.

“Who do you want to invite to your Bar Mitzvah?” His mother asks, again, a few weeks later.

“Not dad,” Mike mutters, not even looking up from his Nintendo Switch.

Ethel is silent and still for a moment, before nodding once.  She invites all his dumb cousins and Uncles and Aunts though: the ones that stopped inviting them to/coming around for Thanksgiving and stuff.  Whatever.  As long as he gets gift cards.

“Michael,” his mother asks, exasperated, as the date draws near.  “Who do you want to invite to your Bar Mitzvah.”

“Violet Beauregarde,” he says.

It just comes out.  Tumbles from his lips before he has a chance to think; to stop it.

He’s been following her on Twitter since the factory, and more recently: Instagram.  And Snapchat.  He hates accounts like hers: it’s all selfie after selfie after OOTD after sponcon for lip glosses that all look alike to him, and weird teas that he’s ninety-nine percent sure she has never even touched.

But for some reason he can’t unfollow.  She purses her lips at her camera and he hits like.  It makes zero sense, but he also can’t help but respect that kind of clout.  She’s as much a computer wiz as he is, she just doesn’t deal in code.

And at least she follows him back.  For all her thousands of followers, she only follows a handful of people, and he is one of them.  He posts gaming memes he’s pretty sure she doesn’t get, and she hits like anyway.  She liked his new sneakers.  She liked his new haircut.

“Violet Beauregarde,” he says.

His mother looks at him strangely.  It’s a cross between confused, surprised, pleased, and afraid.  He stares defiantly and flatly back at her cocktail of emotions.

“…Alright,” Ethel says, eventually.

An invite is mailed to California.  An email is also sent.

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” Ethel says.

Mike shrugs.

“It’s a long way to travel.  If she can’t make it, I’m sure it doesn’t mean-…”

“Shut up, mom!” Mike yells, stomping to his room and shutting the door.

He practices the stupid Haftarah until he can say it in his sleep.

“I didn’t know you were Jewish,” Violet Beauregarde says.

She is the shiniest thing in Idaho.  She is practically a cloud of glitter and rhinestones and velvet, and Mike doesn’t usually like textures, but on her: it works.  Her ridiculously tiny backpack bounces between her shoulder blades as she struts through his boring suburban town.  Her hips move in a way that he doesn’t think Idaho girls are capable of.  He also isn’t sure why he thinks that.

“It’s not like I talk about it,” he shrugs.  “It’s not a big deal.  I just have to make a bunch of weird noises and then people give me stuff.”

“Oooooh, swag,” Violet grins.  “But there’s, like, dancing and stuff, right?”

He shrugs again; shoulders hunching, his chest collapsing into itself.  He looks to the left of her.

“I guess,” he tells her.

She looks to the left of herself.  Nothing is there.

“You gonna dance with me, Teavee?” 

She’s smirking.  She’s making fun of him.  He should throw something at her.  Hack her wikipedia page.

“‘Cause I think you gotta,” she continues.  “It’s, like, the rules.”

“I don’t do ‘rules’,” he says defiantly, shoving out his chin and his scrawny chest.

Her eyes sparkle like her track suit.

Mike Teavee is not a good dancer, but Violet Beauregarde doesn’t say a word about it.

[firstladyoftherenaissance]

Why the “Dark Ages” Weren’t So Dark After All

    The “Dark Ages” is a term commonly used to refer to the time interval between the fall of Rome and the beginning of the Renaissance. It’s plastered everywhere – from children’s books to that subpar fantasy show you watch because, honestly, at this point you’ll take what you can get. I’m not a huge fan, mostly because it’s very deceiving. As you’ll soon see (or at least I hope), the “Dark” ages are actually a time full of innovation and art. 

   The use of light and dark was already common during the Middle Ages. The “light” was Christ, while the “dark” was heathens and the time before Christ and his teachings. Light was good, and dark was evil. Petrarch, an Italian poet that lived during the 1300s, popularized the idea of “Dark” Ages, but he certainly didn’t invent it. The idea was common long before he wrote it down. He did, however, like many of his contemporaries, believe that classical antiquity (the Romans and the Greeks), were the epitome of greatness. Hence, the 900 or so years between the fall of the Roman Empire (at least, the western part) and the rise of the classical rebirth known as the Renaissance, were littered with ignorance. I think it’s important to note that, although Petrarch is often called a “Renaissance” poet, he considered himself to be a part of these “Dark Ages”. What many of us consider as true “Renaissance” did not happen until at least 150 years later. To give you some context, Petrarch died in 1374, Lorenzo de Medici in 1492, Botticelli in 1510, and Michelangelo in 1564. The apex of the Renaissance was long after Petrarch’s lifetime.

left: Portrait of Petrarch by Altichiero / right: Monty Python’s hilarious yet misleading interpretation of the Middle Ages

   So now you know what some grumpy old white guy thought. Yet does it make sense to still refer to this time period as the “Dark Ages”? Does this outdated term refer to religion, history, culture, or art? It was used to compare the medieval period to the Romans, who were perceived to be better. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of accepting what a dead white guy says just because he has a Wikipedia page, so let’s look at the “Dark Ages” further and see if they truly deserve the name.

    First, I want to break down some of the common misconceptions of the medieval period.

It was a time of ignorance and fear

Little art was being created, and it was usually either very weird or very ugly

Everyone was dying of the plague and, consequently, nothing was really happening

   Let’s start with number 1. I’m sure everyone can recall that one graph that makes its way around Tumblr every once in a while (if not, it’s the one pictured below). Now, don’t get me wrong, the burning of the library in Alexandria was certainly a stain on the history of humanity. Still, let’s look at this graph a little closer. Would you be able to tell me what the line represents? Why does this graph of “scientific advance” only show European events (apart from Egypt)? How did the author get these measurements? If it’s scientific knowledge that includes metallurgy, agriculture, and other technical knowledge (since, last I checked, technology was science), the people of the European Dark Ages would certainly have known more than the Egyptians or Greeks. What does “scientific advance” mean? What qualifications did the author have to make such a graph? Were the “Dark Ages” really a flat line? First of all, let’s establish that the average plebian in Ancient Rome wasn’t walking around with the same knowledge (or access to knowledge) possessed by an upper-class Roman.

What the graph suggests is that, once the Roman Empire, and consequently the patricians, fell, the knowledge they held was “lost”. However, this was a time of massive innovation and scientific growth in non-western societies. The Arabs and the Indians were making crucial discoveries in astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. This is the knowledge that was passed on to Europe during the time period marked as “Renaissance”. The graph makes it look like the knowledge was sucked into a black hole, and during the Renaissance we had to start from scratch, when that absolutely not the case. It’s clear that “Dark Ages” certainly does not refer to any society outside of Europe, which seems to be what most people focus on or consider. But was it really a time of ignorance and fear in Europe as well? Most of the knowledge “lost” after the fall of the Roman Empire was actually preserved in monasteries. You may say, well, it wasn’t available to the public! It was restricted. To which I reply, well, do you think an average, working-class Roman would have just pulled out his library card and checked out some treatise on mathematics?

    The “Dark Ages” were also not uniform throughout Europe. The Byzantine Empire (The Eastern part of the split Roman Empire) was still in full swing. By the time the Byzantine Empire fell, other regions of Europe had become organized enough that the knowledge was able to spread back in. In a sense, it never actually left Europe. It certainly wasn’t lost, and it certainly was not a flat line. Scandinavia also never went into a “slump”, mostly because they were never really that closely affiliated with Rome. The Norse were a major European power which spent a large part of the “Dark Ages” exploring and setting up communication networks. They reached Iceland, Greenland, and the Americas (take that Columbus, no one likes you anyway). The pushed into Russia, down to the Black Sea, sailing down all the way to Constantinople. If anything, it was their Golden Age. And just to put a cherry on top of this plague-ridden dessert, they were also probably the only European society that, by our modern standards, would be considered democratic and feminist.

left: Mihrab, c. 1270, an example of the price and complex beauty of Islamic art / center: mosaic from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in ravena, displaying the intricacy and luminosity of Byzantine art / right: the Viking Thing (yeah, its actually called a “thing”), a Norse council that displays the somewhat democratic side of Norse society

    What about the fear part? “Dark Ages” is almost synonymous with “plague”. However, the plague we know and love occurred in the High Middle Ages, after the period that most people would point to as the “Dark Ages”. It also continued throughout the Renaissance (Decameron, anyone?). People tend to think the “Dark Ages” is a time full of violence, but weren’t the Romans violent too (even though they did it in a much more systematic and organized way)? Isn’t that what we’re doing right now? There were certainly war zones and killing, but not quite to the extent that Hollywood makes it out to be. If it makes it any better, during the Middle Ages Europeans did not keep slaves, while the Romans most certainly did.

     As for the second point (finally), let’s move on to something I’m quite passionate about–art. Medieval art is mostly famous for its weird snail vs. knight battles and strange depictions of human anatomy. Not many people point to medieval art as their favorite. That’s fine (it’s not my favorite either if I’m being completely honest), but you shouldn’t mistake that for thinking that art was not being created during this period. Apart from beautiful cathedrals and castles, there were two absolutely stunning artistic innovations and styles during this time, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts. The art during this period was religious (cathedrals and illuminated manuscripts), mostly because the church was the one with money, power, and knowledge. I’m going to concentrate on stained glass, but please look into illuminated manuscripts during your own time, and then tell me if you think the “Dark Ages” were really dark.

above: paying homage to my hometown, this is the Bibbia di Borso d’Este, a 15th century illuminated manuscript (a bit later than intended, but you get the point)

    I want to preface this by saying that colored glass was present in Europe before the Middle Ages and was also used in non-Western societies, but for time and argument’s sake, I’m going to stick to the Middle Ages in Europe. One thing people usually get right about this time period is that the vast majority of people were illiterate. How does a priest make sure his flock can understand the church’s teachings? Why, put it everywhere. Literally. Cover the walls with sculpture, draw pictures for every exposed corner, put it on the stained glass, and you’ve got yourself a Gothic cathedral (by the way, the term Gothic was used as an insult by Renaissance scholars, who also perpetrated the idea that these “barbaric” people caused the downfall of human knowledge. Do you really want to take the word of a bunch of old men? I don’t think so). Stained glass was so awe-inspiring that it was called lux nova, or “new light”. To someone who had never seen such a thing before, it must have seemed like heaven itself was lighting up the church. I felt a similar sensation when I visited Sainte-Chapelle. Just to relate back to my original point, the people that created cathedrals so tall that they reached the limits of what stone can bear and decorated them with beautiful stained glass and decoration certainly had some understanding of science and technology.

above: a picture I took when I visited Sainte-Chapelle. The beauty of this chapel is really beyond words, and photographs don’t do it justice. After visiting this room bathed in colored light, I found it impossible to refer to the Middle Ages as “Dark”.

    So now you know that art was certainly being created, the term “Dark Ages” doesn’t actually refer to any place outside of Europe, and even then most European regions were flourishing. No knowledge was lost to humanity, and the term Gothic, or “Dark Ages” were derogatory terms used by Renaissance scholars because they were butt-hurt that the Goths had risen up against an empire that had waged war against them (and other Germanic tribes) for centuries.