#why would you choose to twist your plot into something so ridiculous just to avoid using any realistic strategy

[glitter-stained]

*reading Dixon's Birds of Prey* Well DC stands for disrespect canon apparently, who tf left that guy in charge of anything

[slashingdisneypasta]

Mickey Altieri x AFAB!Reader || Oneshot

*I have been watching Santa Clarita Diet and remembering how cute this man is so I decided to finish this! Yayyyy, Mickey fanfiction.

Plot: You and your best friend Mickey fuck, and to nobodies surprise... it causes issues.

Warnings: Porn with Plot, so yes there's smut and sexual references throughout. Specifically oral (f receiving), slight inebriation, forcefulness, p in v, and a little fingering

"Hey Y/N, just callin' to check in but your phones off, I guess. When you do hear this though, call me back. I was thinkin' we could go to movie, or something."

~

"So... what, you didn't like the movie idea? Haha. Yeah, I get it, I'm a pain to go to movies with, I know. Thought it was worth a shot, though... Call me back and we'll get a bite or something."

~

"Are you really doing this? Ignoring me? This is a little junior high, don't you think? Come on."

~

"Look, Y/N... I hate to pull this card but I gave you an orgasm. You could at least call a guy back for that."

~

"It was a fucking good orgasm, too, actually, and we both know it. Call back."

~

"*Sigh*... You came in my mouth Y/N, don't fucken ignore me."

~

Mickey's messages were becoming increasingly more frustrated, and lewd, and you don't blame him, really! But at this point you're honestly a little scared to talk to him, much less look him in the face.

The tone his voice is developing in these messages is undeniably hot, and you can’t face him the way you're feeling about him right now. The... incident, he's referring to, was a mistake. A slip.

A slip that is still flower fucken fresh in your mind- which is why you can’t face him.

And you try to tell yourself that you were... tired, that day! That it had been a long week, and Mickey is, honestly, objectively... quite an attractive dude! And because he was, well, there, you accidentally… well, you... alright, you don't know what happened. Or how to explain it without sounding awful, or ruining your friendship.

"Ugh," You cut off your own thoughts, tired of thinking about it as you lift your shoulder bag over your head and drop it onto your opposite shoulder passive aggressively, and unlock your dorm door. Then you twist the knob with an eye roll and pull it open. "Class. Shakespeare.” You chant. “That's all you need to be thinking about right now, Y/N. Get your head in the game… "

The moment you leave your room though, you see Mickey leaning on the wall two centimetres from your face and let out a yelp; Jumping back. "Where do you think you're going?" He asks, raising his brows at you from where the side of his head is, resting on the wall.

"To class!?" You exclaim, reeling from the shock of him being right there, waiting for you to come out. Can you run back in and slam the door or would that be going too far?

"Nahhhh, see I don't think so." Mickey moves in closer, causing you to step back, until you're both swiftly back in your dorm. He then closes the door behind him and your heart gives a dreadful thud.

This is absolutely the situation you’ve been trying to avoid. Too emotional, too alone-

"Look, Mick, I'm sorry for ignoring you- that was wrong, but can we talk about this later?” You ask, desperate and almost begging. God, Shakespeare sounds good right now. Even Trigonometry would be great! Anything that will take the heartbeat out of your pants.

“Uh uh uh, see you lost the right to pick a time slot about two messages ago. Now I choose, and I think now is a good time.” He locks the door, then, and you actually wince. Noooooo…

“Fine, Mickey. Uh… what’d you wanna talk about?”

“Oh, you’re gonna play dumb?” He looks surprised, and impressed, and dangerous as he gets closer to you. “Okay, okay… how about we talk about this?”

Then Mickey reaches over, cups your face and drags your mouth to his in a ridiculously heated kiss that makes all the blood in your body rush somewhere other than your brain- which is suddenly quite silent. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, this is not how this should go!- You let the kiss end on its own, though, until he pulls his lips away from yours oh-so-gentle, though doesn’t let go of your face; Just looks darkly down at you, waiting. “About that,” He snaps, and its odd because your friend Mickey has never been the angry sort… always calm, even when he was frustrated. Always cracking jokes. And even now, he doesn’t look vicious or wounded at all, but there’s a definite vibe… something in his voice… that tells you he is totally pissed off. He straightens his head again before his big hands move down to your waist. He turns you around and guides you to the nearest wall.

Breathless, you give a hesitant nod. “… you’re right. We definitely do need to talk about that.”

“Right, yeah, or we could talk about this,” He goes on, pressing what seems to be an erection at full mast into you and you actually have to resist moaning; Biting your bottom lip so it actually hurts. Yeah… that too. “Yeah, we’ll probably have to talk about that too, right? Like, urgently.”

When you open your mouth this time to respond - with what you don’t know, -, Mickey doesn’t let you; Instead swooping down to kiss you again and swallowing all thought from you. God, this just what happened the other night! Mickey’s lips get involved and you turn Idiot. You’re so caught up in the kissing in fact, fighting to keep up with him, tasting him back- that you almost miss the hand going down your pants.

“Ah~ fuck.” You swear, when you feel two strong fingers slip up through your folds, collecting the moisture that he created when he walked in like he did.

“Or we could talk about this… “He murmurs, waving the two fingers between your faces, coated in slick as he makes a mockery of your reaction to him. Then you watch him stare into your eyes and suck on those fingers. “Mm, yeah, I’m not the only one with a problem here. This we definitely gotta discuss, right?? Right!” At that he lets you go entirely, pushing away from you and taking a few steps back in his frustration.

Thank god- you can breath now.

“… Mickey you’re a little manic,” You start, once gathering your composure again quickly. “Are you okay??”

“No I’m not fine!”

“Well… I’m your friend. We can talk this through- “

Before you’ve even got the sentence out, Mickey’s talking over you. “Ughhhhh!” He turns around, upon you again as you press back into the wall and he holds up a stern index at you in some kind of psycho mommy finger. “… That’s the thing,” He whispers. “I don’t think we are friends, Y/N.”

“What?- “

“We fucked.” He says, bluntly, and it makes your face heats up. “And I liked it. And you did too, don’t even- don’t even try to deny it.”

After a moment, you give out a sigh and shake your head; A sad look on your face. “I wont deny it.”

“Great. So, you agree. We can’t be friends anymore. At least not in the traditional sense of the word- I don’t think I can spend another movie night with you,” The way he says ‘movie night’, like they mean nothing to him anymore honestly hurts, but the next words that come out of his mind have you all twisted up inside. “You know, lay my head in your lap and not wanna rip your pants off. So!- what does that leave us?”

“I… I don’t know. We could… “Before your face was warm, but now the areas from your cheeks to your collar bones are piercing hot under the duress of his intense gaze. You wish he would just calm down, and discuss this without all the pressure! “d-date? I gues- “

“Date?? Date? I’ve been your best friend since we were fourteen. Dating is for suckers who don’t know eachother like we do. Fuck dating.”

“Then what!?” You snap, getting tired of his tantrum. Is this going somewhere?? Is he breaking up with you?? If so, can he get it over with and stop embarrassing you!?

“Y/N- FUCK!” He swears, like you’re frustrating him now- any hint of a humorous undertone gone despite the still-calmness of his face.

“Mickey you walk in here, kiss me, lick my precum off your fingers and then start yelling at me. What is your end goal!??”

Mickey’s hands are on you, then, probably leaving indentations in your arms with how tightly he’s holding you. “Y/N, I love you.”

“… “You stop, and close your mouth. He… “What!?” You snap.

“I love you,” He informs, all matter-o-factly, and finally a little grin quirks at the left corner of his mouth. “So we cant be friends anymore. I kinda wanna be more than that.”

You honestly don’t know what to say. Your heartbeat is calming down again to homeostasis after all that hubbub, but you’re anything but calm. This is Mickey- your best friend, the only one who knows you have a crush on Jason Voorhees. This man, who is ridiculously sexy and intelligent, has seen you sick as a dog before, and sobbing after getting broken up with, and stupidly hyped over winning a game- and… he wants to be your boyfriend? You’re dumbfounded, so not much comes to mind as response. In fact, all you manage to squeak out, is “… kinda?”

“Kinda- a lot-… do we need the logistics?”

Despite yourself, your lips fight to quirk up into a small smile. “Altieri, you are a mess.” A hot, manic, mess.

“I’ve been thinking about your pussy all week, what do you really expect?” He asks, grinning back. The lewdness of his words make you groan, closing your eyes and letting your head fall back against the door in light mortification. “What?” he shrugs, “It’s true.”

“… so you like me, huh?”

“Derek said I’m full on whipped, actually.” Mickey clarified, and you can’t help a giggle. He talked to Derek about you? “So can we stop fighting and break one of Randy’s horror flick rules, now?“

“Just a moment,” You stop him, your own mommy finger coming out. He steps back, hands up in surrender even as that amused look stays on his face. A sternness creeps onto your own as you push off the wall, towards him. “I don’t want you to ever come into my room like that again. Don’t kiss me, then yell at me, and tell me you love me like that makes up for it. I mean come on man- were you born in a barn??” You try to add a little humour at the end there, for the moods benefit, and he gives that sexy half smile of his. “… And I promise I’ll always return all your calls from now on- within reason.”

“Done.” He agrees, easy, and you shrug- good. That’s that then, all that you wanted to add. Mickey senses this being the end, too, and meets you halfway in the middle of the room; Curling some of your hair around his ear. “So… “

Looking all hard-done-by, you shrug and offer you hand to him. “Damn, you nympho. Yeah, I guess we can fuck now- Woah!“

He’s already dragging you to your bedroom, and you’re laughing; Your Shakespeare class is forgotten when he pushes you back onto the bed, if it wasn’t already.

~ A week ago ~

Mickey’s lips leave a hot trail all the way from your worn cunt, over your stomach and your breasts, your neck, your jaw and when he finally reaches your lips once again you kiss him back fervour; Finding that you don’t mind the taste of yourself, at all.

Despite cumming already, you spread your legs once again and wrap them around your friends’ hips and arch up into him when he grinds his still-covered erection into your naked pussy; Moaning into his mouth at the rough feeling. You know that this is going to change everything, but damnit- a shit of an essay due tomorrow, one viewing of your favourite movie and only 3 jelly shots caused this! And damn it just feels too good right now to stop it.

Besides- Mickey hasn’t come yet. You wouldn’t leave him without helping him too! What are friends for??

Disconnecting from his lips in order to reach down, you unbutton and unzip him before shoving his pants and underwear down just under his ass- too impatient to get them completely off of him. And, clearly, he’s feeling the same because as soon as his dick is free, he’s plunging it into your sobbing pussy. The groan that escapes him then is downright pornographic- and you certainly aren’t fairing much better, fingertips digging into the mattress.

“We shoulda done this before,” He pants, thrusting in and out of you in a desperate search for release.

You don’t quite hear him, or you tune it out, or you pretend you didn’t hear it, because having heard it would mean responding. And responding would mean accepting that this is happening outside of a really good daydream. And accepting would mean you had to have a conversation, and a conversation could mean a million things including losing your best friend- so, officially, you didn’t hear him. You turn your head into the sheets, grinding your hips in pace with his thrusts, chasing another amazing orgasm from him.

God, you’ve never been fucked like this. It’s never been this good. How is this possible. “Aghhh okay- okay- gonna come. Yeah. Wh- Where- where do you want it?” He pants, struggling with the words as his nuts threaten to bust any second.

You’re on the pill, and he’s wearing a condom, and he just feels so good filling you and stretching you that the idea of him pulling out too early make you want to beg him no, no, no. So you wordlessly shake your head and lock your legs around him, pulling his body flush against your so his cock really goes as far inside you as possible, before pulling Mickey mouth back to yours once again. His tongue meets yours in a very clumsy, needy kiss and he cums right then.

He shoots hard into the rubber wrapped around him. His hips stutter in their thrusts, but he goes on until you follow suit; The knot of pleasure exploding in you once more. The sensation of his shallow, slow thrusts after that are over the top, and oversensitive, but fuck they make you whine louder then any before.

When he slips out of you and lays back on the bed beside you, your heads near the foot of the bed rather then the top and on top of the sheets, you decide to just go to sleep. Feeling like this; Tingly and warm.

Let the mess be a dilemma for future you.

[yellowocaballero]

Human Relations Snippet: Tim teaches Jon the internet and odious goats are sacrificed to the cult of Bezos

There’s no reason for this to exist. I was rereading a bit of HR and I saw a throwaway joke about Jon wanting to buy Martin a Portal Gun. I started wondering about how that would even work. The answer is, obviously, a 200 year old man squinting at a computer screen wondering why there’s so many horny singles in his area. I get possessed by demons easily, so I took three hours out of writing my daemon au and wrote this instead. Bon Appetit. 

(Edit, quick clarification: I think that Jon would refuse to use the name for the Beholding that Smirke made up, and although all of this exists in my head and you guys don’t know this, there was a lot of tension between Jon and Jonah’s ‘circle’. So Jon hated Smirke and thought he was a hack. He uses Smirke’s terms to others sometimes for ease of understanding or in deference to Jonah (:/) but I think that mentally he mainly calls the Beholding his own name, The Witness. It rings of that personal and intimate connection Jon and the Beholding has. Anyway, onto the story.)

After one hour in anguished uncertainty, fifty popups that advised Jon of very many ‘hot singles in his area’, six separate sites that Jon’s God had to inform him were covers for thieves that stole money from you, and a very confusing retreat to Jon’s favorite internet page ‘Wikipedia’ as to what an Amazon was, Jon had given up.

Normally this was where he asked one of his personal assistants for help. Normally, he wouldn’t even be trying, and he would have just told one of them to do it. This was how Jon had cunningly mostly avoided using computers for the past twenty years. Some endeavors were unavoidable, and Jon was proud to say that he mastered email in 2010. Or was it 2008? He liked to think it was 2006, but it was possible...never mind. If it was important, the Witness would tell him. 

After one hour in anguished uncertainty, fifty popups that advised Jon of very many ‘hot singles in his area’, six separate sites that Jon’s God had to inform him were covers for thieves that stole money from you, and a very confusing retreat to Jon’s favorite internet page ‘Wikipedia’ as to what an Amazon was, Jon had given up.

Normally this was where he asked one of his personal assistants for help. Normally, he wouldn’t even be trying, and he would have just told one of them to do it. This was how Jon had cunningly mostly avoided using computers for the past twenty years. Some endeavors were unavoidable, and Jon was proud to say that he mastered email in 2010. Or was it 2008? He liked to think it was 2006, but it was possible...never mind. If it was important, the Witness would tell him.

Peter Lukas was right on almost nothing, Jon thought disgruntledly as he slammed his laptop shut - including in his taste of men, company, philosophies, men, patron deities, professions, and men - but he was right in his proclamation that the internet was the degradation of society. Not that he hadn’t sacrificed his morality and sold out, feeding his patron through something called “incel forums” and “Reddit”. Between him, Jonah’s “Excel spreadsheets” and “TurboTax”, and Annabelle Cane’s ridiculous “MMO guilds”, the Society was filling with computer geeks. Jon could always read the wind: he had to keep up, and quickly. 

Besides, Martin had kindly educated him on how it was almost unheard of for a young man like Jon to not understand how to work that Goggle thing. Giggle? Martin was very streetwise and was one of the most insightful people Jon had ever known, he was definitely right. 

Which is why he had to buy him this “Portal Gun” that he wanted. He had even shown Jon the website! And if Jon was in desperate times trying to navigate these confusing webpages entirely with URLs he memorized, then he would take desperate measures!

“I’m going down to the Archives,” Jon said, slithering off the couch and clutching his laptop to chest. Jonah had bought it for him. He appeared surprised that Jon was using it. “I may not be back for a while. I need...a book.”

Jonah didn’t look away from his own infernal machine. It seemed he was on that ‘Excel’ program again. Was it one of those ‘video games’ he kept hearing about? “Do I want to know what you were doing on that laptop.”

“Reading Wikipedia,” Jon said immediately, and somewhat defensively. Jon had discovered Wikipedia in 2001 before promptly funding it and throwing his weight behind its development. He had spent a solid five years convinced a computer was a kind of electronic screen that let you read digital Encyclopedia pages, like in Star Trek. He’d seen Star Trek. Georgie made him. “Did you know that -”

“Yes, yes, have fun. Haven’t you read that entire site already?”

“Not even,” Jon said defensively. “I can’t just sit and read through entire Encyclopedias anymore, Jonah. We know more things now.”

“What a way to describe the last two hundred years,” Jonah said, not even looking away from his computer. “We know more things. Never change, Jon.”

“You’re the one who never changes,” Jon grumbled. But it was a weak comeback, and considering his brand new delightfully short stature somewhat untrue, so Jon breezed out of Jonah’s office with full knowledge that he’d think of a better comeback halfway down the steps to the Archives.

In fact, it wasn’t until he was at the door, and by then he felt stupid for losing a point against Jonah anyway. He easily opened the door, stepping inside and quickly bee-lining for Sasha’s office. Her burgeoning powers were wonderfully flowing in the shape of access to and understanding of technology. He had never seen such gratuitous breeches of privacy as she casually committed. Every day Jon was validated in his decision to save her from the Stranger. A balance, an equal yet opposite Archivist from Jon, would be invaluable. Not that Jonah and Jon weren’t their own yin and yang, but Jonah’s powers were paltry and out-of-date. Mind reading and spying through iconography was so 1960. They needed fresh blood. 

Sasha had been a wonderful choice, and Jon didn’t regret choosing her to act as saviour. Most of the time. Some of the time she -

“She’s not in.”

Jon’s fist halted in front of the door, about to sharply rap on her office door. He turned around to actually look through the bullpen, only to see that Timothy was sitting in his chair chewing a sandwich. Somehow angrily. Definitely suspiciously. 

“Are you sure?” Jon asked dubiously. “Because you’ve lied about this before.”

“Because you should stop coming down here and bothering her.” Timothy balled the saran wrap in his hand and dunked it in the trash can, somehow undoubtedly giving the impression that he wished it was Jon’s head. “Just bugger off.”

Someone was in a snit. Normally Timothy wasn’t this hostile. Jon had thought that learning his name might make him less mean, but it did little to help. But when Jon looked around he didn’t see Martin, and a quick check assured him that both Sasha and Martin were having lunch at their favorite deli and engaging in that plotting hobby they both enjoyed. Timothy had elected to stay behind, stewing in his own angry and paranoid juices. 

He would have to do this with Martin out of the Archives...and he really wanted to take care of this now so Martin would get it before the weekend...and it wasn’t as if Jon was scared of this boy he was one hundred and seventy years older than…

“Uh,” Jon said intelligently, “can you help me with...something…”

Timothy’s face twisted in a novel combination of surprise and disgust. “What,” he sneered, “your evil fear god or whatever can’t figure it out for you?”

“I don’t need others to think for me,” Jon said stiffly. It was something he’d had to say far too many times. “The Witness is less helpful with...troubleshooting...look, do you know how to work a computer?”

Timothy stared at him blankly. “Like, at all?”

“I’m trying to buy Martin this toy he desires,” Jon said desperately. Fuck it all, he walked over and sat down in the chair next to Tim’s desk. He pulled a little bit closer, placing his laptop on Tim’s desk, and ignored the way the other man leaned away. “But whenever I try I keep on seeing alerts about hot singles. I’m not interested in young women, I just need to buy a ‘Portal Gun’. Do you know what a Portal Gun is?”

Timothy continued staring at him, eyebrows raised. Clearly involuntarily, so quick that he may not even have noticed, one corner of his lips was ticking upwards into a smile. 

“How many credit card scams have you fallen for?”

“Absolutely none,” Jon said, very quickly. He pulled out his credit card, placing it on the table. He knew a credit card was involved, although he didn’t know how. “What do I do? Do I swipe it? Is there a port?” He picked up the laptop and squinted at its sides, looking for a port. “I wanted to ask Sasha for help, since she’s the expert in hacking, but surely you know the basics?”

“I mean...I can’t, like, code, but yeah, I can work Amazon.” Timothy carefully opened the laptop, watching the display light up. He effortlessly navigated to an icon on the screen, clicking it open. 

“That’s not right,” Jon said urgently. “You’re supposed to press the E.”

“I do not want to know how many toolbars you have,” Timothy said bluntly. “We’re using Chrome. That’s another way to look at the Internet.” He rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, I got a grandmother, we can do this.”

Jon perked up. “So you’ll help?”

Went unsaid: even though you hate me?

“Whatever,” Timothy grumbled. Jon decided not to press his luck. 

Jon decided that he liked the Chrome better than the Internet Explorer, because it was simpler and Google was on the first page. Tim rapidly typed on ‘Amazon.com’ into the search bar and easily scrolled through the very busy and picture filled page that immediately popped up. Why was everything so fast? Maybe this was why the young people had no attention span: these pages just came up immediately. No flipping for indices for finding anything in phone books. 

“Right. What was it, a Portal Gun? Like from the game?”

“A board game?”

“Video game.”

“Like on a VHS…?”

“Right.” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know, Sasha said that you’re one of the most famous sociologists and anthropologists in British history.”

“I am extremely intelligent, Timothy, and I won’t abide any insinuation otherwise,” Jon said curtly. “I cannot be expected to keep constant track every time there’s another - iPhone or whatever. You have teenagers in your family, correct? Do you always know what they’re talking about? That’s, what, a twenty year age gap? Multiply that by ten.”

That shut him up. Timothy sighed again, much more aggressively, but he clicked the white bar and typed in ‘portal gun’ anyway. “Right. Not fucking apologizing, but right. I still don’t fucking know what ‘Twitch’ is.”

“It’s a brief spasmodic contraction of the muscle fibers,” Jon said helpfully. “Fascinatingly, this phenomenon was first observed in frog’s legs before I was even born in 1780, by Luigi Galvani. Erudite man, by the way, but he couldn’t hold his liquor. It was the birth of the study of bioelectricity, although the exact mechanism of muscle contraction eluded scientists for years.”

“Never mind.” Timothy sighed again, the perfect mix of aggravated and long-suffering. It seemed to be the man’s two favorite emotions. “My grandmother has a PhD and she still can’t figure out her cell, either. We had to get her a Jitterbug.”

Amazon, as Timothy explained, was a kind of shopping mall, except you could pick out what you wanted by its picture and have the shopping mall pack it up and send it to you. Jon didn’t quite understand why people preferred this to just going to a shop yourself, seeing as you could get it immediately instead of with a three or four day turnaround, but Tim explained that Amazon was cheaper, had a wider selection, and didn’t make you get off the couch.

“Oh,” Jon said, finally getting it, “this follows the economic model of large scale businesses underpricing their products to undercut smaller businesses in the area, driving them out of business until they hold monopoly over the market and can raise their prices without worrying about staying competitive.”

Timothy stared at him. 

“I mean,” he said, “I guess?”

“This explains why my Alexa project was successful so quickly,” Jon mused. “With a lack of competition or alternatives, consumers are more likely to accept the dramatic invasions of privacy as normal. Normalizing intrusions into privacy took ages, but my early efforts paid off very well. The Ring doorbell was even better, along with the line of security and home protection systems. We’re now working on live streamed 24/7 surveillance to social media platforms.”

Timothy stared at him further. 

Finally, he said, “Alexa was...you?”

“Of course,” Jon said, baffled. Who else would it be? “I gave Jeff the idea and convinced him it would be profitable. I didn’t understand the whole mechanics of it, but once I gave Jeff a vision from the Witness he was eager to implement the divinely inspired spyware.”

Timothy continued to stare. 

“The evil fear god controls Jeff Bezos.”

“He thinks I’m a prophet, actually,” Jon said helpfully. “I let him become Cardinal of the imaginary cult in exchange for funding some of my more esoteric programs. Had him sacrifice a goat and everything, it was great.” At Timothy’s alarmed look, Jon was quick to elaborate, “It was the most evil goat you’ve met in your life. Morally odious.”

“...for my sanity I’m going to pretend that you said none of that.”

In retrospect, although Timothy had worked at the Institute for a few years, it did take quite a bit of time to acclimate to the fact that the Avatars permanently shaped the shape of human existence in order to better feed their gods. Jon knew better than anyone: when humanity made gods, and gods made man, and man made gods...the feedback loop could self-perpetuate for years. Eternity, if needed. 

But they had no luck on ‘Amazon’. With Jon’s eidetic memory he was able to easily pick out the one that looked most similar to the one that Martin had showed him, but all of the little toy guns were for someone named ‘Rick’. Then Timothy took twenty laborious minutes explaining the entire plot of ‘Rick & Morty’ to him, which Jon patiently sat through. 

“I think young people today deeply enjoy explaining media,” Jon said, once Timothy finished telling him the funny jokes. “I’m very interested in your interests, Timothy.”

“You are so fucking condescending. And please call me Tim, you’re sounding even more like my grandmother.” When Jon brightened, Tim - Tim! - quickly said, “This does not mean we are friends.”

Granted, Jon had never once in his life gave a shit about making friends, but he felt as if he should be making more of an effort with Tim. He was a sort of supernatural brother in law, wasn’t he? Although Sasha perhaps Sasha was more of a favored niece. At least, he would be, if today’s generation found some morality and stopped living in sin. 

Good lord. Now he was sounding like Jonah. Georgie used to joke that he was born in the wrong generation - he should have been born a 17th century Puritan instead. Jon found it a very funny joke. Jonah did not. 

“Are there any other shopping websites?” Jon asked finally, after Amazon failed them. He’d have to call up Jeff later and complain. “Or is this the only one?”

Tim sighed. “Let’s check Google.”

Quickly and efficiently, yet with many lightning fast detours, Tim found another site called ‘eBay’ - pronounced ‘e-Bay’, not ‘ehbay’ - that listed off exactly what they needed. They weren’t under the toy section, instead listed as something called ‘cosplay’, but Tim seemed highly resistant to explaining that one, so he dropped it. 

They picked a likely looking white toy gun that looked the most similar to the one that Martin had liked and Tim talked Jon through punching in the numbers on his card into the website and sorting through the billing and shipping information. Tim helpfully took down the numbers on his card to file later. 

“And...done!” Tim said, pressing a button and leaning back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It was ten times as complicated as I thought it would be,” Jon assured him, “but also much more fun. What else can you buy online?”

“Oh, god. What can’t you buy.”

Jon brightened. “Can you buy books?”

“Old Gertrude used to buy Leitners on eBay,” Tim said dully, “so yeah, sure, why not.”

Jon stared at his computer. He carefully navigated the mouse to the big red x and clicked out of the internet browser. “That’s enough of eBay, then, I think.”

Guess he would have to stick to buying Leitners in person. It was no good buying fucked up books from sketchy sources. Always stick to people you trusted, or at least trusted to be themselves. Mikaele was Jon’s favorite supplier since the kid Leitner disappeared, and they had a pleasant working relationship. Mikaele shared his grandfather’s stories about the history and culture of the Maori, and Jon told him which of his haunted artifacts would be the most helpful in the imminent apocalypse. 

“Well,” Tim said finally, gently pushing Jon’s laptop away, “that was...something, great bonding session with my local supervillain, please run back to Elias and bother him instead.”

“You were very helpful, Mr. Stoker,” Jon said, as professionally yet paternally as possible. Tim was six years older than his body, so he’s not sure how it came off, but the touch of grey at his temples helped with the dignified air. “And as soon as you start acting like a man and propose to my Archivist, you’ll make an excellent brother in law -”

“Uh, excuse me?”

Jon spun around in his chair to see Sasha and Martin standing at the door, holding doggy bags and looking somewhat flummoxed. Probably confused at the sight of him and Tim having a civil conversation, which admittedly had never happened before. Possibly also confused at how completely mortified Tim looked. 

“Who said anything about proposing?” Sasha asked incredulously. “Tim, are you -”

“No! No, god no!” Tim stood up quickly, holding his hands out as if he was placating a raging bull. “Nobody’s been saying anything - I would never do that to you -”

“Oh,” Sasha said frostily, crossing her arms and letting the bags swing, “would you.”

That was a domestic Jon should stay out of, even though he definitely caused it. He and Martin sidled away in tandem, huddling near the back of the Archives as Tim frantically pled for his life. 

Sneakily, Jon glanced at Martin out of the corner of his eye. He looked happy. Happy, and just as stressed as he always looked - Jon had never known Martin when he wasn’t constantly stressed out, and he was more than aware that it was his fault. 

He looked good, too. Really nice, broad jawline that gave his face a friendly round shape. Just friendly and round in general, it was really handsome. His hair was as nicely short and ruffles as ever. The big glasses were super stylish, and really framed his face well. Really big, broad hands. Jon, who had always been so poky and tall and thin and gaunt, like some kind of haunted scarecrow that lurked through the corners of time, was envious. He wanted some of that softness and gentleness. Really, he wanted some of Martin’s -

“So what were you and Tim doing?” Martin asked. “I didn’t know you knew he existed.”

“You told me his name,” Jon said anxiously. “I don’t forget the things you tell me, you know.”

Martin smiled shyly and him, and Jon found himself smiling back. “It’s pretty good for my ego to hear that I have something to teach the immortal genius.”

“I don’t know,” Jon said, as Sasha yelled in the background, “I’ve been learning a lot lately.”

“Really?” Martin teased. “Anything interesting?”

“Oh,” Jon said, watching the yellow fluorescent light cast Martin’s dim smile in soft relief, “I can think of a few things.”

[greycappedjester]

"If ATFO isn’t up by the end of the month, feel free to ask me for an already written scene from one-shot from that universe." is the offer still open?

Gotcha! Sorry this is late 😬

Here is young Jason's POV. It's from right after Year 4 so before Tim and right after Jason was formally adopted (still in training to be Robin)

Here's the first eight pages

-------

Year 4.5: The Vacation

Alright, so here’s the thing.

Jason is a city boy. He grew up in a city. It was Gotham so it was a shit city and the part that he lived in even shittier; but, it was, without question, a city. And one where he had lived the entire fourteen years of his somewhat depressing life. Jason was familiar with said city.

So, Jason is decidedly not familiar with the so-called “great” outdoors. Fuck, he’s pretty sure the closest he’s come to nature is fights with Poison Ivy.

All of which is just too fricking bad because Jason also happens to be the recently adopted brother of Dick Grayson, who has for some unimaginable reason decided camping is the best way to spend a vacation.

And Jason is coming along.

Why? Because apparently Dick’s first thought had been this was a great time for brotherly bonding. Okay, actually his first was that it was perfect for Jason’s birthday but Jason had flat out refused and Dick moved it to the week after.

So, now, the newly fourteen year old is watching as Dick somehow crams a tent, sleeping bags, and camping gear into one of the Wayne’s very fancy and very compact sports cars.

Jason looks back wistfully to the manor door.

It’s probably not too late to back out.

But, as lame as it most definitely sounds, this camping trip actually seems really important to Dick. Like important enough to give Donna his Titans duties for a few days and ask Roy to be back up for Barbara in Gotham if she needed it. Plus, more terrifying, getting Barbara to agree to that.

And, as much as he refused to say it aloud, Jason could privately admit that Dick Grayson may have a very large part in why his recently somewhat depressing life is a now a lot less depressing.

Whatever. So, Jason might not actually think it’s too terrible to spend a few days with his older brother. Even with the camping.

That still doesn’t explain the other part.

“Why can’t we bring our uniforms again,” Jason complains, crossing his arms.

Dick doesn’t stop in his work to get the trunk shut. “Because that would mean we’re working and I’ve been informed by both Raquel and Zatanna that working vacations don’t actually count as vacations.” The trunk pops back open and Dick’s head disappears inside. “Besides, we won’t need them where we’re going.”

“Yeah, cause that doesn’t sound ominous,” Jason mutters under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

Dick emerges and the trunk finally closes with only a slight creak of protest. “Ha, there! What did I tell you? Circus performers always know the best packing tips.”

Jason is reluctantly somewhat impressed.

“Come on, get in! We’ve gotta get to the grounds while there’s still light to set up the tent.”

Jason slumps into the passenger seat. “Are you sure this isn’t like you stealthily training me in advanced wilderness survival or something?”

“It’s a vacation, Jason,” Dick insists, starting the car and backing down the drive way. “Believe me, if it was training, I’d pick a lot trickier place than twenty minutes out of Gotham city limits.”

Crap, if it was training, Jason would at least know it sucked for a reason. Doing it for fun makes it even worse.

“You know you’re an heir to like billions of dollars, right?”

“We’re the heirs,” Dick corrects because of course, he does.

Jason rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying if you wanted nature, we could go to like the Bahamas or the Galapagos or even just buy an island if that’s what you really wanted.”

“We don’t need an island.”

“Sure, we do. We could even use it as a secret prison for supervillains when we’re done. It would be great!”

Dick’s grinning, checking briefly before pulling into Gotham traffic. “Secret island prison bases definitely fall a bit too far into the supervillian category, Jay. They'll sue us for trademark infringement.”

“Still beats camping.”

“Camping’s fun!” Dick laughs. “Trust me. Millions of people do it every year. They can’t all be wrong.”

Per usual, Jason is far less trusting of the populace’s intelligence than Dick is.

As if to spite his skepticism, the hour or so drive out to the woods doesn’t go so bad. Jason commandeers the radio so they’re listening to a good classic rock station instead of being subjected to the weird mix of folk songs and pop music that Dick likes. The dark buildings and usual smog of Gotham starts to fade out around the forty minute mark, somewhere between one of Dick’s Titans stories and Jason complaining about a plot thread in the last book he read.

The drive is nice. Peaceful, even.

You know like most horror movies start.

“We’re here!”

Jason eyes the stretch of trees for any kind of sign or even a distinguishing feature. There’s nothing.

“Dick, this is definitely not a campsite.”

“It’s a few miles off,” Dick explains, dropping a bag in Jason’s arms. “I wanted to avoid the usual campgrounds in case the tabloid reporters found us. Don’t worry, I checked with the owner. No one’s used this stretch in years.”

Jason thinks there’s probably a reason for that since there’s not one hint of a trail in sight.

“Where are we even going to set up a tent?”

“Not sure,” Dick says way too cheerfully. “Finding a spot’s part of the fun!”

Jason gives him a look.

Dick rolls his eyes. “Relax, Jay. The owner told me there’s a stream about half a mile in. We’ll set up camp there.”

Jason still gives a token grumble just because.

By the time night rolls around, they do manage to find a camping spot, set up the tent, and Dick even starts up a small fire right in the middle of the campsite.

If pushed, Jason would admit the entire thing is a bit picturesque.

He bites down on his hot dog as Dick digs through the rest of their stuff.

“Oh! I almost forgot to tell you!” Dick pulls something out of the bag. “Look, I brought stuff to make s'mores!”

“Cool, hand them over” Jason grabs for the bag of marshmallows only for Dick to pull them away.

“Not yet, they’re for our last day. Gotta ration out the food.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous. Why not bring enough for every night?”

“Cause then it’s less special,” Dick answers sagely. “Think about it like a prize for surviving camping.”

Because Jason is the generous sort, he doesn’t even make a crack about “surviving”.

“So, okay, let’s say I buy that camping is a vacation,” he says instead between bites.

“It is a vacation.”

“Yeah, fine, sure. Real question though, why are we taking a vacation?” He waves a hand. “What ever happened to ‘crime never sleeps’ and everything?”

“I’ve never said that!”

“You said it to Babs last week!”

“That was so she’d help me run the Poison Ivy samples! That doesn’t count! She didn’t even believe me!”

“Definitely counts!”

Dick rolls his eyes. “You know most kids don’t need a reason to go on vacation before school starts.”

“So, that’s what this is,” Jason accuses. “This is for you! You wanted a vacation before college!”

Dick turns his face down to poke at the fire. “I’m not going to college...not this year anyway.”

Jason frowns. “I thought you got accepted to Gotham U. Shit, I know you did. Alfred still has the letter hanging on the fridge.”

Dick shrugs. “I’m going to turn it down. There’s too much going on right now. Gotham. The Titans. I’ve gotta start sitting in at the Wayne Enterprise meetings soon, too. I don’t have time for classes.”

“Pretty sure, the classes would help with the Wayne Enterprise crap,” Jason says. “And you know Roy and Donna can help with the Titans and Babs and I can cover more in Gotham if--”

“Jay, it’s fine,” Dick cuts him off. “I need to choose what to focus on and it just can’t be college right now. It’s okay.”

Jason wants to argue more but then Dick’s continuing

“And, hey, I know camping’s not exactly your thing; but, I’m glad you decided to come anyway.” Dick gives him a blinding grin. “You deserve to do some normal summer stuff after all the Robin training. And I’m glad I get to spend some time with my favorite little brother.

Jason glares, ignoring the way his cheeks have gone warm. “Shut up, I’m your only brother. And you know I hate it when you say stuff like that.”

“No, you don’t,” Dick says, shit eating grin in place.

Jason flings the bag of hot dog buns at him.

He catches it, still grinning. The asshole.

-----

Something that’s always jarring but becomes really fucking obvious once he thinks about it is the fact that Dick gets nightmares.

Of course, he does. How could he not? Jason’s doesn’t know why he never expects it.

It’s not even loud nightmares with like screaming and flailing arms and shit. It’s just these short, sharp little gasps as his body goes entirely too stiff and face twists in pain. Sometimes, Jason thinks that’s worse than screaming.

Jason shifts in his sleeping bag, turning to face the top of the tent. He briefly contemplates waking Dick up; but, he knows from experience, it won’t help much. Better to let him get some rest until the nightmare goes away on its own.

Only problem is that Jason still can’t fall asleep. It’s kind of funny. He’s never really thought of himself as a picky sleeper before. Fuck knows he’s slept on way too many of Gotham’s mold infested roofs back when his dad was on parole. But, there’s something about the cold feeling of hard dirt that he swears he can feel even under the layers of sleeping bag and tent.

Camping sucks.

Screw it. Jason’s not just going to lay here all night. Least he can do is get up and explore around the campsite so he can have a better idea of whatever “fun” activities he’s sure Dick has planned for tomorrow.

He slips out of the tent without waking up Dick--which actually does serve as a fairly good challenge for his new Robin training--and heads into the woods, careful to keep note of how far away he goes from camp. He feels ridiculously like he should have bread crumbs or some other kind of fairy tale stuff to track his way through the forest.

He swears if he survived living in Crime Alley, Black Mask, and a freaking explosion just to get lost and die in the woods, he’s going to haunt Dick forever. Jason the Unfriendly Ghost.

He gets to the stream that he and Dick found earlier so at least he’s not that lost.

SNAP!

Jason’s head whips around in the direction of the noise.

Nothing.

He lets out a long breath. Dumb, of course, it’s nothing. It’s the forest. Forests make weird noises. It’s reason #357 why they’re terrible.

SNAP!

Okay...that definitely sounded like something big….but, maybe it’s something normal like a tree branch snapping or--

Snap!...Snap!...Snap!

That’s footsteps.

Jason moves back into the tree line, crouching down until he’s covered in the darkness of the bushes. His hands run over the ground, trying to find anything even remotely useful other than a slightly pointy stick.

Snap!...Snap!

Shit, he really is going to die here, isn’t he? In this stupid forest before he even gets to go out as Robin. Of all the dumb fucking--

Snap!...snap!...snap...snap.

The footsteps are getting further away. Echoing deeper and deeper into the forest on the other side of the stream.

snap...snap...snap…

Jason listens, in slight amazement, as the sounds slowly fade off into the distance until they finally disappear. Slowly, Jason counts in his mind to sixty, then a hundred and twenty, then two hundred.

On three hundred, he bolts--tearing through the forest in the direction of the camp until he finally catches sight of the obnoxiously bright yellow of the tent Dick bought, shining in front of him like a heavenly beacon.

He tears through the opening, breathing heavily, just a half a second before there’s an arm jammed hard against his neck.

“Jay?”

The pressure disappears and then Dick’s looking down at him with wide eyes and a slight blush. “Sorry about that. Was surprised. What’s wrong?”

Jason’s heart rate’s finally slowing down. And here in the safety of the tent, in the face of Dick’s patented concerned face, admitting to getting freaked out by noises in the woods seems beyond stupid.

“Nothing,” he mutters. “Just thought I heard something?”

“Heard something?”

“Yeah, like footsteps.”

Dick frowns. “We’re on private camp land. There shouldn’t be anyone around here. You sure?”

Jason shakes his head, face feeling hot, as he sits back down on his sleeping bag. “No. Don’t worry about it. Like I said, it was probably nothing. Maybe it’s just a mountain lion that’s gonna eat us in our sleep.”

Dick pats his shoulder. “Mountain lions don’t really live in this region, Jay.”

Jason rolls his eyes before turning over pointedly to try to get some more sleep.

“It’s bears you need to worry about.”

[larauthorized]

Clique Bait Book Analysis

Clique Bait was originally a Wattpad phenomenon written by Ann Valett titled previously as “High School’s Hit List” but upon the fame, it caught the eye of traditional publishing, “Harper Teen” but also Wattpad itself, where it led to the title we have now. For this review though, despite stumbling on the book through the website first, I’m going to use the one published traditionally for reference. 

The story starts every chapter with letter entries supposedly to Monica from best friend and also our protagonist, Chloe Whittaker. In each chapter, it’s divided by stages of Chloe’s ways in taking down every one in her hit list. The list involves five not only popular but ridiculously wealthy, elite teenagers (Lola Davenport, Sophie Rutherford, Francis Rutherford, Madeline Danton, Zachary Plympthon, and William Bishop) all of which might or might not be the cause or involved in Monica’s disappearance. Chloe insists on bringing the case of her best friend justice by messing up those said names above. 

In this book, we learn that Chloe is a very determined, well-structured girl who  thinks of every single thing to detail. She even maps out a chart of the school system, calling it as Level Five, Level Four, Level Three, Level Two, and the highest and untouched of them all, Level One. With her determination in exposing the truth on her best friend and critical thinking but also high on observation skills, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to make each of every one on her list pay. Even the one whom she promises will stay on the safe zone, the one who will become her winning or breaking point - that is, if she plays her cards right and sticks to the plan. 

Through this scheme that she put out by herself, she learns that the Level One, in spite of how glamorous and powerful it might seem on the outside, is more complicated than she realizes. The more she sticks around, the more secrets that begin to unravel by themselves - be it with the help of Will or her own snooping self. When she finds out that the most golden couple isn’t what they lead people to believe, toxic for lack of a better word. And then there’s Maddy Danton who seems to be excluded by the other two girls, all because she’s always the one who only appears to get drunk in parties and possibly be a next target. One night, Will does something that drives her mad, so mad that she avoids him while still maintains appearances in the hallways. However, this act of silent treatment leads her to have yet another secret - a way to get the plan back in motion. She questions whether or not to it’s a good idea to use that for another leverage in taking all of them down. After all,  the cunning, wicked Sophie Rutherford came in with a threat. Her insecurity and mentally unstable self take over that she’s afraid that they may use it against her now that she’s gone down the same rabbit hole, just like her best friend did, especially with her feelings starting to show.  

Like any other teenager, Chloe is anything but easy. Her home life, though her parents were just as ridiculously rich, she knows that her mother is in denial about her father’s “business” trips that aren’t necessarily for business. Because of this, she’s the type to have deep trust issues, hence why she doesn’t like when she doesn’t have the upper hand after Will decides to take lead the first time she confronts him. She doesn’t usually rely on anyone, not since Monica anyway. Speaking of which, Monica’s the exact opposite of her. While she’d rather remain off the radar, Monica would want to be in the spotlight, which was what got her to be in a place where she was now, probably. Monica’s perfect and confident - the pretty one - as opposed to her. Sometimes, she mulls over how her best friend can be that way almost all of the time, and that she wishes that Monica would just want to stay invisible just so she could look after her easily. Even she knew that was too much to ask for considering Monica was anything but. 

With the Pretty Little Liars twist meet some Gossip Girl, this book is definitely worth checking out, because not only it has the main character plotting to seek for revenge, but it contains a slow-burn romance that might just be your cup of tea. You’ll also find yourself feeling sorry for the supposedly antagonist, Lola Davenport herself, all because she’s actually far more complex and vulnerable than she’s letting on. In the end, no one can really be trusted. Everybody gets what they deserve, even if it’s not what you expect, but it’s for the greater good. As all layers have been lifted, a shocking revelation might just fall on Chloe’s shoulders, making her choose one or the other. Either choices would either make or break her entire plan, it can even break some hearts in the process - even if it’s hers.  

[ahh-fxck]

Warrior’s Blues Ch 11: What Would I Do Without You?

WOW! It is finally here, the much-awaited chapter 11 of Warrior’s Blues! As @stressedspidergirlsfandomblog​ (most excellent editor and co-creator of this fic) can tell you, getting this chapter into shape was uphill both ways in the snow. I am super pleased with how it shaped up though, and I think you guys will like it, too!

Jaskier shows up to work after Yennefer’s visit drunk, and his best friend is there to help him sort himself out. CW for smoking, drinking, implied death of an OC, grieving

Please let me know if you’d like to be tagged (or untagged) for future updates!!

@astouract​ @ladyknight-keladry​ @yes-im-the-violin-girl​ @smolpoe​

Rating: M

On the day of Yennefer’s visit, Jaskier arrives at work on a bicycle. He’s late and on a bicycle for the same reason, which is to say, he is drunk and cannot drive his car. He is drunk because he’d been so full of mixed emotions after Yennefer left that he’d sat down to eat the rest of the fruit and whipped cream. Somewhere in there, it had seemed like a brilliant idea to pour half a bottle of bourbon after it. 

It was not. Luckily for him, the person working the bar tonight is Julia.

She is a stocky woman in her mid-forties. She has tawny skin and skeptical hazel eyes, and there’s a kind twist to her lips that she often hides. She has a tuft of cropped blue hair and wears a denim vest with a white t-shirt. Even though she is exasperated when he staggers through the door, she feeds him a sandwich and coffee while she fills him in on the meeting he missed. From there, she lets the crew in for the night. 

Jaskier feels like the whole world is an itchy sweater, even after the sandwich and coffee. It’s like his brain is on fire, and he can’t quite settle into the usual friendly chatter that his job requires. He passes an irritable and lonely night out by the door. By the time it’s time to clock out most of the staff is eager to clear out from underfoot; Jaskier is a great boss, but when his nearly infinite good humor runs out he can be a real asshole.

The only one who doesn’t give a fuck is Julia. She knew from the second she saw him wheeling in the door that it was going to be a late night, so she lets the rest of the staff out before pouring herself a big glass of gin. Then she settles her elbows against the bar, watching Jaskier mop the dancefloor. He is flailing wildly with the mop, clearing the floor with brutal inefficiency. Internally she begins to count down the time until he knocks the bucket over. Sure enough, a moment later he does just that. She nods in satisfaction, pleased that her timing is still on point.

Jaskier throws his head back and lets out a shout of pure frustration as his poorly-contained feelings boil over at last. Julia smirks and grabs a bunch of towels, then ambles over to him and starts tossing them on the floor to soak up the mess. 

As she does so she says nothing, but the look she gives him makes him feel transparent. Jaskier avoids her eyes as he tosses some towels down onto the puddle. 

Julia gives a little harrumph, unimpressed, bending to help him clear the towels away. They right the bucket and clean the floor in silence. When they’re done, she turns to him and gives him a long look. 

“So… What’s eating you?”

Jaskier grumbles and straightens. “Nothing.” He hauls the bucket away, fills it with water, and returns. Without making eye contact he begins to mop again.

Julia hums, crossing her arms. “Yeah, and nothing made you stink like bourbon, too. Cough it up.” She leans against a nearby wall, giving him a skeptical look. He looks at her from under the fringe of hair that has fallen over his face. Something about the wide-eyed, guilty glances that he keeps shooting her makes him look sixteen again. She smirks. “I think you wanna tell me but you’re embarrassed, so how about I start making guesses?”

Going pale, Jaskier groans. “Why are you so hell-bent on pushing my buttons?” The last thing he wants is Julia making guesses about what is bothering him. She has a terrible habit of being accurate and she has a memory like an elephant.

“Because you’re not a dumbass kid anymore and you haven’t shown up drunk in years. You missed an important meeting! What the fuck, Jaskier? Don’t make me call you Julian, I swear to fucking god I’ll break out your birth name.”

“Julia…!” Jaskier protested. “I d-”

“Julian Alfred P-”

“Fine! Stop! Oh my god, you are merciless!” Jaskier cries, but secretly he’s glad that she cares enough to needle him. He stops and holds the mop for a moment, blowing his hair out of his eyes as he gathers his thoughts. Then he starts pushing it across the floor again. “I’m sure you heard about the man who rescued Pride this year.”

“Heh, I feel like I’ve met him. Yarpen won’t shut up. Heard from him recently?” She narrows her eyes at him, sure that she’s about to hear some sort of horny idiot story. 

Jaskier blushes hotly, confirming Julia’s suspicions. “Well, funny thing about that.”

“What did you do now?” Julia asks, smirking. She retreats to the bar and picks up her tumbler of gin, then lights a cigarette. 

“We-e-elll…” Jaskier prevaricates.

Julia gives him a long look, and he folds. 

“Um, so I might have brought him back to my house after Pride.”

Julia barks a short laugh. “Color me not surprised. What’s the problem? Is he why you were wearing that birdy when you came in?”. 

Jaskier’s flush deepens. “I meant to take that off before his wife showed up. After that my day got all sort of… muddled.”

“You mean you got chewed out and then got drunk, right?”

“No! You know what, Julia? She yelled at me when I met her in the hospital, but when she came to my house she was…” He pauses, seeing the bewildered look on Julia’s face. “All right, let me back up and explain. He broke his hand, and I had to take him to the hospital. Two weeks later we go for his followup appointment and his wife is there waiting for him. Tracked him down all the way from fucking England! Got the third degree from her there, but the wildest part is, she showed up at my house the next day to talk. About me dating him.”

Julia laughs again, harder and longer. “What the fuck, Jaskier?”

Despite himself, Jaskier breaks into a rueful grin.“Right? Seriously though Julia. If I talk to you about this it stays strictly between you and me, got it? All of it. He’s in the closet and no one else here needs to know any of this.”

“You got it. No gossip. Your secrets are my secrets.” Julia smiles crookedly, sipping at the last of her gin. She’s been keeping Jaskier’s shit to herself since he was a teen. At first, it was out of a desire to not get involved, but by now she genuinely likes the dingbat. He’s dumb but sweet, and he’s been good to her. “So what’s the deal, kiddo?”

“So what it all boiled down to is that she’s not mad at me for sleeping with him… she’s mad I slept with him so fast. Turns out she’s okay with me seeing him again.”

Julia puts her glass down on the bartop, eyes twinkling with amusement. “Okay, that is a new one on me, I gotta admit. What’s the story there? She into watching or something?”

A surprised laugh escapes Jaskier. “No, thank fucking god, I don’t think I’d survive. This woman… oh Julia, you should have seen her. She’s like, five foot four inches of lightning in a bottle. A total force of nature. I think she could snap me like a twig.” A wry twinkle comes into his eye as Julia’s eyebrow goes up.

Smirking, Julia taps some ash off of her cigarette. “Sounds like a hell of a woman.”

Jaskier snorts, cutting her an amused look. “She is, but I don’t think you’d get very far with her. She’s asexual.”

“Oh? The plot thickens.” Julia grins wolfishly, leaning her chin on her hand. Jaskier had a way of getting up to his neck in crazy situations, and it had become something of a spectator sport for her over the years. 

Flushing with embarrassment, a crooked grin flickers across Jaskier’s face. “Yeah, well.” He turns his glass in a full circle. “So it turns out, they uh… have a kid together. And I want you to understand how terrifying this woman was because there was no way in hell I was going to ask for more details. But. What she told me was this. They got married because of their daughter, but Geralt… her husband, the man I was sleeping with… He’s gay.”

“Oh man, you really have a way of finding them, don't you?" This is top-notch Jaskier fuckery, it really is. She’s glad she’d stayed to get the story out of him, even though she knew it meant that she’d be dragged into his shit sooner rather than later. 

“I really do,” Jaskier agrees with a little groan. 

“What’s her name?” 

“Yennefer.”

“Hm. Nice names. Yennefer and Geralt. So she got mad at you for sleeping with Geralt so fast, and then what?” 

“And then, Julia! She told me that she’d always hoped that he’d find someone special. She looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘maybe someone like you’ and I just lost my mind. Just- Pow!” He makes an exploding gesture out from his head with his hands, then shakes his head and returns to mopping. 

“Wow. That was not the reaction I was expecting.”

“Yeah. Yeah! No kidding! Apparently, he’s always been free to choose his lovers. He’s never wanted to bring one home before, though.”

Julia lets out a low whistle, her eyebrows going up. “So he likes you, likes you. And his wife is… okay with this?”

“I don’t think she likes me very much, Julia, but she gave me the phone number to their hotel room. Says I should have a real talk with him before I think about dating him.” He stalks past her into the kitchen to dump out the dirty mop water.

“Just like that?” Julia laughs, leaning in the doorway.

“Threatened to bury my dead body if I didn’t treat him right, in those exact words,” Jaskier says over his shoulder.

Julia leans against the doorframe, shaking with mirth. “Oh my fucking god, Jaskier.”

“I know!” Jaskier cries, flinging his hands up. “This is absurd, Julia! And you know what’s even more ridiculous? I really think I could fall for him, I really do. He’s just so…” He sighs, tossing the mop and bucket in their corner and washing his hands.

“Yeah, Yarpen wouldn’t shut up about him. Six feet plus, white hair, amber eyes, stacked? Sounds very striking.” Julia drawls, eyebrows arching. 

“No, Julia- Well, I mean, yes, but…” He walks back out to the bar, flopping onto one of the tall stools.

“But what?” She smirks, returning to the bar and tapping out her ash.

“Well, I was gonna say beautiful, but I didn’t mean it like that.” Jaskier puffs, drumming his hands on the bar top, trying to find a way to put it. “Like… ohh, I sound like a fool, but he feels like a warm hearth. I just wanna curl up next to him with a book and a cup of tea and fall asleep because I feel so good around him. Safe. And don’t you go telling me he’s a stranger-” Jaskier breaks off as Julia rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to speak. “I know that! I know, and that’s what makes it so weird, Julia. But like, good weird.”

Julia hums thoughtfully, tipping her head to the side. Jaskier has been getting more self-aware as he ages, and for once, she’s inclined to believe that he remembers this guy’s a stranger. “Have you called your therapist yet?”

“For once in my life, yes. I called her before I came in. Hopefully, she’ll have gotten back to me by the time I get home.”

“Good for you. So this is why you came in here drunk off your ass this morning? This whole mess?” She pours him a shot glass of rum and passes it to him.

He takes it with a nod of thanks. “Yeah… I guess I got a little freaked out after his wife grilled me this morning, didn’t cope with it well.” Taking a sip, he frowns. “Julia, I’m in over my head. I don’t really know what to do here. He’s never had a boyfriend before.” 

Letting out a low whistle between her teeth, Julia stubs out her cigarette. “Ain’t he about my age?” 

“Yeah… He’s… I guess he spent his whole adult life in the military and never let himself have one. That’s what his wife said.” Jaskier worries at his lip, blue eyes wide as he shoots a glance at Julia. His glass scrapes on the bar top. 

Annoyed by the sound, Julia tosses him a coaster. Then she hums thoughtfully, swirling the dregs of gin in her glass. “That’s a long time to be lonely.”

Puffing out a long, slow breath, Jaskier nods. He draws the coaster over and sticks it under his drink with a guilty look. “Yeah.” Slumping to the bar top, he puts his chin on his hands. “She said… if I cheated on him it would crush him. She said… ‘Please don’t make things worse by being irresponsible with his very fragile heart.’” Putting his face into his arms, Jaskier gives a little groan. 

Julia sucks in a breath, watching Jaskier crumple in front of her. He’d at least grasped the concept of fidelity by now, but until recently his romances had never been particularly stable. Her heart goes out to him. She finds herself walking around to the other side of the bar to stand awkwardly by his side, her stocky frame only coming up to his shoulder where he sits on the stool. She awkwardly pats said shoulder, then gives it a squeeze. “That’s gotta feel pretty big to you. How are you doin’ with it?”

“I’m feeling massively intimidated, Julia. He’s gorgeous and I really want to date him, but I’m really afraid I’m going to be bad for him. I don’t exactly have the most amazing track record.”

Julia hums, sucking her teeth thoughtfully. She rubs a gentle circle between Jaskier’s shoulderblades, an unusually affectionate gesture for her. “Kiddo, you know I wouldn’t say this normally, but you’ve put a damn ton of work into your personal relationships. I trust the man you’ve grown into, and I think you should try trusting yourself for once. See how it works out for you. It’s been a long time since you let anyone in.”

Jaskier sighs, leaning into the touch. “I know. I worked so hard, and Rue didn’t even get to see much of my life after the dust settled. I hope she’s proud of me.”

A smile lights Julia’s face, but as she speaks a note of grief creeps into her voice. Her partner Rue had passed two years ago, but the pain was still fresh and hot. Rue had been more than a friend to Jaskier, she’d been his absolute favorite person. He missed her almost as dearly as Julia herself did. 

“She’d be proud of you all ‘round, kiddo. You’ve really shaped up. Hell, you stepped up when I needed you.” She gives Jaskier a little shake. “You might be a dumbass, but it matters that you try to get things right. It matters more that you do your best now to fix it when you don’t. That’s all anyone can do.” Julia’s hand moves back to his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. “You’re a good man, and I think she’d tell you that, too.”

Jaskier nods, swallowing hard. As Julia’s hand closes on him he realizes all of a sudden how much he misses Rue. His heart contracts with terrible grief. “Oh!” He gasps, surprised by the abruptness of the pain. Reaching back to squeeze Julia’s hand, he can feel his throat tightening. “I feel really lost right now. She’d know what to do.”

A crack appears in Julia’s heart. She nods and steps closer to Jaskier, reaching around his hip and pulling him close. Jaskier leans into her and she grips him tightly with her strong arm. Her cheek presses against him and she squeezes her eyes shut, nodding. “Me too. I miss her like hell.” As she grips Jaskier, silent tears dampen his cheeks. Before long, Julia’s eyes begin to well over too.

Rue had been the center of both of their lives. Julia had been in love with her since they met one hot summer on Coney Island as teenagers. They had kissed in the rain under one of the piers, and that had been it for her. By the time they’d moved in together as adults, Julia would have gone down on one knee and married her in a heartbeat. 

Every summer they took a long vacation on Fire Island, where Julia would pick up part time work as a bartender. They’d met Jaskier one summer there when he was just sixteen years old. He’d been a disaster of a baby queer, but gregarious little Rue had seen something of herself in him. She had taken him under her wing, and he had thrived.

When Rue was diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years ago, it had been at a quiet time in Julia’s life. Jaskier had gotten a therapist a year before and was finally out of her hair. The bar was thriving. Rue and Julia had settled into their home just the way they’d liked it, tea settees and all. Julia remembers looking at this yellow, gold, and cream-colored doily on their tea table after they got home from Rue’s diagnosis. The little sunburst pattern had seared into her mind as she sat in shock. 

The following two years had been hell on a plate. The bar came closer to folding than it ever had as both Julia and Jaskier bent themselves completely out of shape trying to get Rue the care she needed. In the end, that had meant hospice and a funeral. Jaskier had ended up having to plan it for her, and he’d stepped up to the role with a seriousness that she hadn’t thought him physically capable of. It changed something about his personality. Julia watched him go almost overnight from a happy-go-lucky kid to a closed-off and responsible adult. The only exception had happened shortly after Rue’s death. 

When the fuss from the funeral had died down, Jaskier had disappeared for the better part of two weeks. Scheduled everyone in, made sure payroll was cued to go properly, and just… vanished. He’d come back with a bloody lip and fear in his eyes, and Julia had been too heartsick to ask questions. That night they’d grieved Rue together, sitting next to one another and crying their eyes out. Jaskier had fallen asleep on their dinky little couch, and she’d tucked one of Rue’s crocheted blankets over him before she went to bed. 

Since then Jaskier had been eerily quiet. At least, until Pride. After that his mood had been so pleasant that it was making Julia downright nervous. She’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now, at last, it had. 

Jaskier takes a few napkins out from under the bar top, passing them to Julia. They wipe their faces in sticky silence, and afterward, Julia pulls out a smoke and hands him one too. The click of her lighter is loud in the silent bar, echoing off the far walls. 

“Can you imagine what she’d say about this mess?” he asks, a soft huff of laughter escaping him as he shakes his head. His wide blue eyes turn up to take in the fairy lights over the bar, the smoke twisting among them.

“Oh! I can just imagine.” Julia chuckles damply, shaking her head. “She always said you found love in the strangest places.” 

Jaskier smiles crookedly. “She’s not wrong.” Smoke drifts from the cigarette between his long fingers, swirling eddies forming as it rises. 

Julia nods, then blows a slow, lazy smoke ring. “She’d say… don’t listen to your heart anymore. Don’t listen to your head. You’ve heard enough from them for now. Go find someplace quiet, where the silence can slip in through the cracks of you and fill you up. Sometimes the answer slips in alongside the silence." 

The damp groan of chagrin that escapes Jaskier makes Julia smile. "That's right,” he replies, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “And I would say, I hate silence, it makes me nervous."

Julia nods, amused. "And she would say-" Jaskier's voice joined Julia's and they finished together, "There's your problem right there." 

With a damp chuckle, Jaskier shakes his hair out of his eyes and blinks away the last of his tears. “Oh lord, Julia. I’m glad you’re still here. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Suffer.” Julia jokes, knocking back her gin. “Suffer and die, probably.”

“Crash and burn, at the very least.” Jaskier snorts. He knocks back his glass of rum, then rises at last from the bar. He stubs out his cigarette as he rises. Then, with a soft clinking, he gathers all the glasses and takes them back to the sink to wash. A hush falls over the room, broken only by the splash of water against the metal sink.

Julia turns to watch him, leaning her elbows against the counter. Her head tips to the side as she watches Jaskier dry the dishes, then start scrubbing at the already-clean sink. He takes sanitizer and sprays it on a towel, then starts trying to evict the microscopic grit left around the base of the faucet. After a while, she stirs. “You think this guy might be it?” she asks, her eyes soft as she tips her head to look at her friend.

Jaskier looks down at the wet towel dripping in his hands. “I don’t know. I just… he’s different. I feel really different around him. I think I want to try, but I’m trying to just...” He grimaces, tossing the towel into the bin with a little too much force. “Take a minute to look before I leap.”  

Julia breaks into a wry smile, hazel eyes sparkling with gentle humor. “Good for you. Does that mean I’m gonna be staying late a few more nights?” 

“Could you? I could use the company.” Jaskier looks at her out of the corner of his eye, moving on to wipe the counter. 

Julia scoffs, but there’s a playful note in her voice. “Fine, but you gotta cough up those kreteks you've been teasing me with. You owe me.”

“Oh! I actually have those back at my house, thank you for reminding me!" Jaskier exclaims, smacking his forehead. "I can't believe I forgot. I’ll bring them in tomorrow, I got you a whole case. They came in from Indonesia last week and I just spaced out about them what with everything else going on.”

Eyes lighting up, Julia socks Jaskier affectionately on the shoulder. “Hey! My man! That’s what I’m talking about.” 

Jaskier laughs, rubbing his shoulder. “Anytime. It's the least I can do.”

Julia takes one last drag off of her cigarette, then turns to stub it out. “Listen. You want a ride home? It’s late.”

Jaskier wavers, then turns to look at the storeroom where his bike is. It’s a long ride home in the cold and dark, and he’s heartsick as all hell. It’s hard to turn her down. “Got room in your trunk for my bike?”

“Yep. No sweat. I’ll pull the car around front while you shut down.” Julia pats her pockets, making sure that her wallet, keys, and cigarettes are all in place. 

By the time she’s parked in front, Jaskier is locking the door of the bar. They wordlessly wrestle the bike into the back of the car together, working with the ease of practice. In the car, Julia flips on the stereo and pops in a Patti Smith cassette. Patti’s smoky, dry voice floats through the car, twining through the bouncing and jangling guitar riffs of the opening song of the album. Oh, she looks so fine… I’m gonna uh-uh, make her mine… 

They drive home in comfortable silence. Julia pulls up behind Jaskier’s car and parks. She eyes the white truck in the driveway silently, finishing her smoke as she considers it. Jaskier sits beside her, making no move to get out of the car. Finally, she stubs out her smoke and says, “Is that his?”

Jaskier nods. “Engine keeps overheating. He knows what’s wrong with it but I don’t have the tools for him to fix it, so it’s gonna stay there until I can get them for him. Honestly I don’t have the faintest idea what he wants, it all goes in my ear and then out the other. If he’d just let me take him to the store it would be fine but no-”

Putting her hand on the door, Julia eyes Jaskier kindly. “Kiddo, I don’t need every single detail. It’s his truck, I get it. Let’s go in.”

Jaskier puffs as he’s thrown off track. Then he smiles crookedly, face catching in a bar of orange light from the streetlamp outside. “Sorry. You go on in, I’ve got to bring the bike around back.”

Flourishing her keys, Julia nods. She ambles around the front of Jaskier’s house and unlocks his door, letting herself into the dark entryway. Flicking on the lights, she looks around. The place is uncannily clean and stinks of floor wax and furniture oil. Jaskier’s home usually looks a bit rumpled, like a bed that’s been slept in and then had the covers thrown back into place without being smoothed or tucked. Not dirty, precisely, but not clean. Lived in. This, though… she gives a low whistle under her teeth. Her friend had been understating the distress he’d been experiencing. His home didn’t get this tidy unless something really got under his skin.

She kicks her boots off and heads to the kitchen to get a pot of coffee going, then snags a pudding out of the fridge. As she’s digging around for a spoon, she hears the jingle of keys announcing Jaskier’s arrival through the back door. 

He notes the pudding cup in her hand and the very corner of his mouth turns up, but he doesn’t comment. Instead, he slips past her to drop his bag in his bedroom. When he returns to the kitchen he smiles at her, leaning against the fridge.

“Better?” she asks, tearing open the plastic lid.

“Better,” Jaskier agrees, eyes dancing with a teasing light. “Still like the taste of stolen pudding?”

“Tastes better if you swipe it,” Julia grins unrepentantly. She settles on the stool with her pudding. “Gonna cough up those kreteks?”

Jaskier grins. “You’ve got it. Just a minute, darling. I have to figure out where I put them.” He turns on his foot and bounds off to the other end of his house, rummaging around until he remembers where he stuck the package. It turns out it’s still next to the front door in plain view, hidden on a shelf by the other oddities it’s been stuck on top of. Jaskier’s house is unusually clean, but it isn’t that clean. Making a triumphant noise, he grabs it and heads back towards Julia. 

Pleased, Julia opens the case up in a few quick movements and takes out a carton. She flicks it open, smelling it with great satisfaction. The rich smell of clove and tobacco wafts up to her, and she sighs in contentment. “Ah, that’s the good shit. Thanks, man.”

“You’ve got it. I’ll order more tomorrow, you deserve them. Takes them a while to import but we should be seeing them in the next month or so.” 

Julia laughs. “Man, I’m earning them signing up to listen to your shit like this. Go check your message machine, I ain’t subbing in for your therapist.”

Jaskier huffs a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. “Fine, fine, I’ve got it.” He pours himself a cup of coffee, then ambles over to the message machine and picks up the receiver. He punches in a code and waits, then jots something down on a pad of paper next to it with a brief smile flashing across his face. He turns back to Julia, wiggling the notepad at her. “Got an appointment tomorrow before I go to work. She shoehorned me into her lunch hour.”

“Huh,” Julia grunts, amused. “Better bring that poor woman lunch, she’s a saint for taking you back like that on short notice.”

Jaskier looks chagrined. He settles himself back on a stool with his back to the refrigerator. “Yeah, you're not wrong. Best kind of saint. I thought I’d bring her Thai from that place up on Market street. You know the one with the little golden treasure bag dumpling things?”

“Man, she gets treasure bags? Do I get some?” Julia teases.

“If you come hold my hand tomorrow, you get anything you want.”

“Mm, no dice. I’m doing enough hand-holding as it is. Speaking of which, you could still bring it to me at the bar...” she grins over her mug, eyes sparkling playfully.

Jaskier rolls his eyes and sighs. “Extortionist.” 

“You love me,” she snorts.

“I do,” he breaks out into a smile, leaning against the island top with his elbows. “Thanks for running me home.”

Julia shifts in her seat and sighs, leaning forward onto her elbows and giving Jaskier a frank look. “I got you, it’s no problem. It’s not every day you get blown out of the water by something like this. You gonna be ok?”

Jaskier considers his mug with a thoughtful moue, then nods. “I think I am, Julia. I’m sorry about this morning, it won’t happen again.”

Smirking, Julia shrugs. “Just do better.”

Fluffing the hair on the back of his neck, Jaskier nods. “You got it.” He takes a thoughtful sip of his coffee, then asks, “How are you doing?” His voice is gentle as he asks the question, sensitive to the ongoing nature of her pain.

Julia shifts uneasily, squinting at her mug. “I dunno. I’m making it. Don’t wanna look for a new place yet, but I know it’s gonna be time soon.” She casts a short, hard-to-read look at Jaskier. She appreciates him asking, but she’s also not sure how much she wants to talk.

“When’s the lease up?” Jaskier asks, his eyes soft. 

“Uhm…” Julia cleared her throat. “June.”

“Julia!" Jaskier gasps, exasperated. "That was over a month ago! You didn’t just sign a new one, did you? Why didn’t you talk to me first?” 

“I didn’t wanna talk about it,” Julia growls, scowling.

Jaskier rolls his eyes. “Oh, don’t get all growly with me. You’re miserable there! Rue is all over that place, darling! I can barely turn around twice in there without bumping into something that breaks my heart, I don't know how you go and live there every day."

Julia presses her lips together, tapping her carton of kreteks between her fingers. She shrugs. "I can't imagine being anywhere else. All I have left is there."

Heart breaking a little, Jaskier sighs. He regards Julia kindly. "You can't hold on like that forever." 

Scowling, Julia shrugs. That might be true, but she didn’t have to like it.

Pursing his lips thoughtfully, Jaskier looks her over for a moment. He hesitates, then says, "Why don't you just start looking? There's no harm in at least checking the paper…" he nudges her gently. "Worst that can happen is you don't fall in love with the first place you see. No harm, right?"

Julia shuffles uncomfortably, taking a big gulp of her coffee. She frowns at her cup, then looks out of the corner of her eye at Jaskier. “I can’t afford to break the lease.”

“Nonsense, you’ve got plenty of savings to cover shit like that,” Jaskier replies, still exasperated. “Besides, even if you didn’t, I’d cover you. You know that!”

“I know…” Julia grumbles, “But-”

“So what you mean is, you’re still stuck and you’re not ready to go yet.”

Julia scowls. She wants desperately to argue with him, to lash out and protect herself, but the impulse passes before the words can even form. She shrugs. “Maybe so.” 

Jaskier sighs. “Julia darling, I’m convinced there’s a place in the world for you. Somewhere that will feel good and be just for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll even meet someone soon? Stranger things have happened.”

“Stranger things can eat my ass,” Julia snaps.

Unimpressed, Jaskier shrugs. “Okay.” He pops open his pudding cup and spoons up a mouthful, sucking it off of his spoon thoughtfully. “Mm. Should you ever decide to come out of that suck-ass hedge-maze of grumpiness you’ve built for yourself I’ll be here. I love you, despite all your best efforts to turn into an unmanageable troll.” 

“Oh what, and you’re Prince Charming?” Julia scoffs. “Puh-lease, you little drama queen.” They both eye each other for a moment, wavering, then break out in quiet laughter. Jaskier reaches over and pats her hand, and Julia smiles crookedly. She drains the last of her mug, then sets it down with a final-sounding ‘thunk.’ “All right, mijo. I won’t keep you talking all night. Thanks for the kreteks, I hope you work everything out. Call me if you need me.”

“I will. Same goes for you, darling. My phone is always on for you, and my door is always open. I don’t care what time it is, if you need me you come. Ok?”

Julia eyes him uncertainly, then nods. She had taken him up on the offer before, showing up at odd hours eaten alive by grief and unable to be alone with it anymore. “Ok. See you tomorrow.” She punches his shoulder affectionately, then heads for the door.

“Good night, Julia. Safe drive, I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

~*~

Jaskier puts himself back together during the intervening days. He attends therapy, brings Julia her takeout, and things return to normal at the bar. Sunday morning he rides his bike, but this time he’s sober, more himself. At the end of the night, he pulls Julia to the side as she sighs in exasperation. 

Jaskier gives her a sheepish smile, leaning back against one of the counters. “Sorry, I’m not going to keep you long tonight.”

“Yeah? Good, my fish are starting to worry I’m seeing someone new,” Julia cracks. “What’s up?” Her eyes travel to the closet where the bike is and back to him. “Car ok?”

“What?” He looks over his shoulder in the direction she’s indicating. “Oh! No, it’s fine. I just wanted to take a long ride tonight after work, maybe catch the sunrise out south of my house.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s Geralt. I finally decided to call him. I think I’ve got my head on straight and I still wanna do it.”

Julia sucks her teeth thoughtfully. It’s sweet to see him excited, but she worries about his heart, too. He doesn’t always guard it as carefully as he should. “You sure? From what you’re telling me, it doesn’t sound like you’re lookin’ at a walk in the park. He’s married, he’s got a family halfway across the world, he’s in the closet…”

Jaskier sighs. “I know, Julia. I was there, I remember.” 

Julia arches her eyebrow at him but doesn’t comment. 

Jaskier chews his lip. “I know it’s probably stupid, and I know we could break each other’s hearts, but…” he ruffles his hand through his hair. “I don’t meet men like that every day. Besides. I will definitely regret it if I don’t at least see him one more time.” 

Julia rolls her eyes, but a fond smile creeps across her tawny face. “I’ll give you wanting to see him again one more time, you two really should talk. Just try not to be a dumbass, ok? Go slow. You’ve gotta take care of yourself, you’re not twenty anymore.”

The look on Jaskier’s face softens thoughtfully, and he nods. “I know. I’ll try to be good.”

“Good. Where are you planning on taking him? This doesn’t sound like public conversation material.”

“Well… that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I was thinking maybe the best place would be the bar.”

“What, don’t want to use your house?” Julia asks dryly. 

“Nnnoo, uh…” Jaskier rubs the back of his neck, turning red. 

“I get it.” Julia cuts him off with a quick gesture, smirking.  “You wanna keep it on the up and up. Don’t you have somewhere else you could meet him though?”

“Mmm… I mean, there are some parks I could take him to, but that feels weird for a private conversation, you know?” Julia nods. Jaskier continues, “He’s staying with his wife at the hotel, and I feel like it would be rude to ask him to kick her out so we can talk. Most of my friends have these teeny apartments so I can’t exactly borrow space from them. The bar seemed like the best place.”

Julia hums, then nods. “I get it. Not like I have a porch I could offer you or anything.”

“Yeah. So…?”

Shrugging, Julia stuffs her keys into her pocket. “Go for it. Just don’t fuck all over the furniture or I’m gonna fire you,” she cracks.

Jaskier laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She might not be able to actually fire him, all joking aside, but Julia has a way of finding truly horrifying tasks to saddle him with. He isn’t about to try her and they both know it.  He pushes off of the counter, then digs a faxed receipt out of his back pocket and unfolds it. “Kreteks are on the way, by the bye. Here’s the tracking number.” 

Julia lights up, making grabby hands as Jaskier hands the receipt over. She scans it, then gives a satisfied smile and folds it up to stick in her wallet. “Great. All right, I’m gonna head outta here. Let me know how it goes, ok?”

“As if I’d leave you out of the loop,” Jaskier hums fondly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Am I gonna lose a hand if I try to hug you?”

“Yep,” Julia says with a chuckle. She reaches over and slaps Jaskier’s shoulder companionably on her way out the door. “Good night, mijo.” 

“Good night, Julia. Drive safe.” Jaskier says to her retreating back, smiling. He turns away as the kitchen door swings shut and makes one last circuit of the bar. When he gets outside he closes up; there is a satisfying click as the tumblers lock into place. It has been a good night, and tomorrow is full of possibilities.

[wordsnstuff]

20 Mistakes To Avoid In Science Fiction

This is also available on wordsnstuffblog.com!

– This is a continuation of a series that began with 20 Mistakes To Avoid In Young Adult Fiction/Romance. I included a couple exterior sources throughout the article that covers certain points in more detail for those who would like further advice. I hope this is helpful. Happy writing!

–Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlists || Work In Progress || Studyblr || Studygram

Referencing Current Culture Inappropriately

Not all references to pop culture are misplaced in sci fi. For instance, in Ready Player One, it’s integral to the plot. However, it’s random references to political things or important people that do not have anything to do with the movement of the plot or are misplaced within the context of the universe. This can bring your reader out of the story and confuse them in terms of world building and basic information about the history of your constructed universe.

Not Understanding Space & How It Differs From Earth

Do your research about space if you’re writing about space, and learn about how different planets work, the rules of physics, the laws of gravity, the conditions in other parts of the galaxy, etc. This information is available to you in may places and in many formats that are broken down simply for you to understand, especially for writers. You just have to look for it. I actually have a resource master post called “Resources For Writing Science Fiction” that would be really, really useful for this.

Putting No Thought Into Aliens

Aliens shouldn’t just be modified versions of humans. Coloring a human purple doesn’t make them interesting. Think about the environmental factors on the alien’s home planet and how those conditions would affect their biological makeup and physical/mental features. Take the time to do this, because readers appreciate it when it’s done well.

Technobabble

This is just a word for technological-sounding gibberish that writers put into their book to make it sound legitimate. However, what a lot of them do not realize is that science fiction readers are often interested in science, and therefore know that it’s 3 sentences full of nothing. This is okay in some circumstances, but it can never hurt to do 10 minutes of googling to maybe learn a bit about what you’re about to feed to the reader before writing it. Technobabble is really useful for writing the first draft (where you’re just telling yourself the story to have something to develop), but it shouldn’t live past that point. 

Conlangs (Unless You’re A Linguist)

Do not take on constructed languages if you aren’t ready for years and years of study and practice with linguistics, because your conlang will flop. J.R.R. Tolkien, who is famous for not only his series Lord of The Rings and his novel The Hobbit, but also the invented languages within them. He had a long career in linguistics and was well-versed in it, and that is why they’re such a sticking point of his works. It took years of study and practice to create the conlangs in those books. Conlangs are no game. 

Prologues

Most authors do not like prologues for a plethora of reasons, but with science fiction there’s really not a good justification for having one. Start where the action is and input the important highlights from the past as they become important to the reader’s understanding of the present.

Info-Dumping

Long paragraphs or pages upon pages describing the setting or the way the character is feeling and so-on has no place in any book, let alone science fiction which is already packed to the brim with detail no matter what. Sprinkle detail in as it becomes relevant instead of getting it all out in one spot and then expecting the reader to see the significance in every one. 

Over-Explanation

It’s good practice to avoid over-description of things that don’t matter. The general rule of thumb is show, don’t tell, but also, don’t bore the reader with 3 sentences describing each button on a control panel that the main character walks past once and never appears again. 

Overly-Complicated Names

This is simply a pet-peeve of a lot of people, and it doesn’t really add anything to your story. It’s cliche and kind of laughable when a writer names their character “Celeste Apollo Saturn” or something like that. Sure, it makes you feel original, but it doesn’t add to the reader’s experience much. It’s okay to have unique, space-themed names, just don’t overdo it.

Not Exploring

Overthink your world. Overthink your characters. Overthink the details. Explore all the possibilities. The better you know your world and everything in it, the more vivid your storytelling will be, even if 80% of the details you’ve explored are left out. You should be an expert in your story, because that will make you tell it better.

Regurgitating Popular Sci-Fi

Please don’t rewrite Star Trek, Star Wars, The Avengers, etc. and just change the names. There’s a difference between taking a trope or a popular type of science fiction story and putting your own twist or speculation on it, and handing your reader a book version of an existing story.

Not Thinking Critically About Fictional Elements

"Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works."

- Terry Pratchett

Underestimating The Audience

Your audience can deduce things, and doesn’t need every implication explained to them. You don’t need to beat the symbolism and implications into their brain by constantly alluding to it or reiterating it in a million different ways. Subtext is important, and it should be left as subtext, otherwise there’s no need for thinking about the story and your reader will forget it (or worse, be irritated by it).

Leaving Plot Holes Because You Think Nobody Will Notice

Don’t do this. Just don’t. There’s always going to be someone who notices even the most minute details that are not explained when they should be, and then shares with a friend, and then it becomes a thing. If the thought “eh, I don’t have to include this detail because nobody will notice that this whole scene is ridiculous without it” crosses your mind, kill it. However, there’s a difference between a plot hole and a detail that was cut due to irrelevance, and that’s explained in the next point.

Forgetting To Actually Deliver Information

You, after months or even years of planning, may forget to include important details for the reader’s understanding due to the fact that overtime they seem so obvious to you. Be careful about this, and make sure that every scene you write is set up with the information the reader needs to know in order to understand what’s going on. This is easy to do as long as you have someone on the outside who can tell you where things get confusing and where the holes are. 

Putting World Building Before Storytelling

You’re telling a story, and it’s important that you have an actual story to tell before you develop the world around it. Not every detail you plan out will be relevant to the story and won’t make it to the final draft, and that’s okay. Put the story first, and don’t sacrifice the reader’s focus to add detail that doesn’t enhance the story, because it will take away from it instead. 

Poor Choice Of Writing Style

point of view, tense, person You should be very careful about the stylistic decisions you make about the way in which you will deliver your story to the reader, because this is often what makes sci-fi convoluted and boring. The three main details you need to decide on carefully are which point of view you tell the story from, so which character you’re choosing to focus on, the tense  (past, present, or future), and person(first, second, or third). Most stories are told in third person surrounding the main character in past tense. Future tense and second person are pretty rare, but can be pulled off by authors who are willing to take on the challenge (though I don’t recommend it if you’re not willing to do a lot of problem solving and workshopping in following drafts).

Ignoring The Speculative Aspect

When your story deals with something like, say, time travel, you need to not only imagine the implications for your characters’ present, but their future along with everyone else’s. You also have to recognize that small changes may have a butterfly effect, but the universe has a way of straightening history out, and not all of them will have eternal lasting effects on the future. You’re speculating, and speculating doesn’t stop at how your characters’ situations change at the immediate moment, but also in the long run, as well as what implications come with each new detail you change between your world and ours.

Not Planning

This genre is not for the writers who identify as pantsers rather than planners. This genre is very, very difficult to approach as even a very organized author, and its readers are typically very observant and nit-picky. That isn’t a bad thing. It’s a great thing, as long as you’re prepared for what you’re in for. 

Historical Absolutes

Mark Vorenkamp actually explained this really well in this article, so I recommend heading over there because he articulates it way better than I ever could.

You’re Not A Scientist (And That’s Okay)

Accept that you’re not a world-famous scientist and that you don’t have all the answers or all the research to back up the speculation and estimation that comes with science fiction. That’s okay, and as long as you do your best to know what you’re talking about and do as much research as possible to add substance to detail, you’re fine. This is fiction, after all. Not a dissertation. 

This article is really, really detailed and extensive, and it’s a good continuation of what I’ve covered in this article. I recommend giving it a read if you’re about to sink your teeth into the editing or second-draft onward of your story, because it further examines things like the use of passive voice in sci-fi, and other, more advanced details of writing for this genre specifically. 

Support Wordsnstuff!

FIND MORE ON WORDSNSTUFFBLOG.COM

If you enjoy my blog and wish for it to continue being updated frequently and for me to continue putting my energy toward answering your questions, please consider Buying Me A Coffee, or pledging your support on Patreon.

Request Resources, Tips, Playlists, or Prompt Lists

Instagram // Twitter //Facebook //#wordsnstuff

FAQ //monthly writing challenges // Masterlist

MY CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS (Check it out, it’s pretty cool. At least I think it is.)

Studyblr || Studygram

Check out my YouTube Channel!

[faketextsfromlastmight]

Best of tags #13

A compilation of my favorite reactions to this blog.

A chat about Iida wanting to move to South America (Link):

@displacerlovesmyhero said:

I mean, some people just want to hide the bodies in South America.

@frankly-ludicrous said:

Toss 'em in the fucking Grand Canyon or something! We don't need your corpses stinking up the place, we have our own corpses to take care of!

I feel like I stumbled upon two rival crime bosses arguing about territories and now I’m terrified.

@theproxy066 on Shigaraki recruiting Bakugou and Tokoyami: (Link)

I like this, but wasn't Tokoyami picked out last-minute by Mr. Compress?

You know that shitty friend who only wants to hang out with you at the beginning of the month when your credit card is full? Well that’s how I treat the canon.

@hotonten on the D.E.K.U. method: (Link)

The U should be changed to "unconditional love"

LOVE?!!! Urgh! Are we even reading the same manga? Midoriya is a creeping black widow and he’s here to get the DOUGH. Watch out, Iida, Midoriya’s looking at your inheritance!

@abraxax-heart on Aizawa playing favorites: (Link)

This is a lie because Aizawa also dearly cares for Bakugou, Mirio and Eri (though she’s not her student… Yet). AND is also incapable of restraining himself when faced with problem children. He has to adopt them.

Forget the gender spectrum! The new way to illustrate your personality is: where do you fall on a scale from “Aizawa hates kids” to “Aizawa adopts every single kid he meets”. And now the weather.

Joke aside, I do think Eraserhead likes his students, he’s just terribly demanding of them because of his... troublesome history with the superhero system. Does he train Shinsou on his work hours, though? There might be an issue with that as he’s not part of Class 1-A (yet) so spending that much time on training a kid instead of his own students might get Aizawa in trouble. My personal headcanon is that Nezu doesn’t mind because Mineta is inevitably going to get expelled and they’ll need another student to replace him.

@nemon0416 on Kaminari and the lack of a Nobel maths prize: (Link)

Denki. I hate to break it to you...

I think Kaminari’s still correct. The Nobel prize does not reward mathematicians because that field does not directly and immediately help Humanity in a practical, applicable way (this policy has been criticized over the years and does not reflect my own views on the matter).

Although the Fields medal and the Abel prize are commonly nicknamed “the Nobel prizes of mathematics” by journalists because they’re of equal prestige, these two awards are not affiliated with the Swedish Academy which chooses the Nobel laureates.

@samqui801 on the short-lived Todoroki family sitcom: (Link)

#the fuck is todavia todos todoroki#i mean the real name of the show

The backstory I imagined for this is that Endeavor wanted to build up his image as a “family values” superhero because that was the one thing he could do that All Might couldn’t. So his plan was to coerce his wife and children into playing fictionalized versions of themselves in a family sitcom he produced, wrote and directed himself. An unholy mix of “Full House” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians”. He chose to film it in Bolivia because he heard that country had a special tax loophole which allowed him not to pay child actors (in that case, his own children). However Bolivian law required Endeavor to produce the TV series under a Castillian name rather than a Japanese one. Annoyed, Endeavor simply opened a dictionary and looked for words beginning with “Tod-”. Hence “¡Todavía todos Todoroki!” was born... and cancelled after only one episode. Endeavor considers one of the most shameful failures of his career and turns red at the mere mention of it. However the pilot episode did not fall into obscurity as Endeavor as hoped. Instead it has developed a cult following similar to Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”. Fans post memes of the ridiculous TV pilot all over the Internet and perform reenactment during live viewings. Natsuo sometimes attends them to recount his miserable experience filming the pilot and to throw some shade at his father. Shouto is however too young to remember the shoot as it was produced during his enfancy (when Enji was still trying to “make the marriage work”).

Wow, that was longer than I expected.

@cjgryffindor714 on Shotuo taking soba baths: (Link)

Don’t forget he only likes soba cold so he’s in a cold soba bath

Oh my gods, you are right. This is even less sexy than I envisioned.

@inbrightshadows on Shouto helping Inko plan her husband’s murder: (Link)

#also Inko: What kind of laser are we talking about?#have any gun recomendations?

Well Endeavor’s still alive so obviously Shouto can only recommand which guns to avoid when purchasing online.

@chr0nosaur on Iida’s birthday gift: (Link)

#imagine getting an alarm clock for ur birthday..

Well some people don’t have to imagine it. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

@theodericc on Sero being an underdog: (Link)

#sero isn't an underdog#he's amazing

I mean he’s an underdog in the sense that he’s really overlooked. Then again not being a protagonist also has its perks... I guess he doesn’t have to worry about having a tragic backstory and stuff. My fear is Horikoshi kills him off for easy drama.

@eduarddragonpaw on Todoroki playing Minecraft: (Link)

Weirdly I feel like this is what todoroki would do or call creepers :bakugoes"

I don’t know, Bakugou doesn’t seem to like giving hugs. Creepers definitely do.

@haisley on Shigaraki’s big speech: (Link)

#hes doing his best

Or his worst, depending on your point of view.

@emkamereon-kaiba on Rei also being a conspiracy theorist: (Link)

*inhales* THEORY-ROKIS

Plot twist: Dabi is not a Todoroki but started believing he was one because he read conspiracy theories on the Internet. Shouto and Rei also subscribe to the theory which involves a complex plot of Enji/Endeavor hyponitizing them to make them forget what Touya actually look like, and hiring an actor to play Touya. Heroes and villains have to make an alliance of circumstances to sit Dabi and the Todorokis down for an intervention and help the real Touya explain he’s not an actor.

@yuuri-katsuki-nikiforov on Midoriya’s step-dad: (Link)

Who is it?? The stepdad

For the sake of the joke, the stepdad is just an original character. In my mind he’s a lover Inko took while Hisashi was abroad and who started taking on a fatherly role out of convenience. He’s now more of a father to Midoriya than Hisashi, hence him refering to him as his “step-dad”.

@ghostintheshale on Toga wanting to skin Spinner for a handbag: (Link)

#if toga so much as points a knife in spinner's general direction i will personally stomp her to death with my hooves

In this house we stan A+ scalies/centaurs solidarity representation in the media, haters don’t interact!

@samqui801 on Iida’s dietary habits: (Link)

#maybe this is the reason why im not tall i didnt wash my bananas before i eat it#and i was blaming the lack of exercises when i was young

I think I remember a paper implying that eating banana skins increased the risks of cancer, so who knows?

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 10 - Candy Part 1 again

I was told that finishing the epilogue MAY make me feel better by some with opinions, with some vague hints that the ridiculous start of Candy may have underlying reasons, so now that I’m awake again (though my stomach is roiling a bit again) I’m gonna take another crack at it.

Alright, so I was also hinted that this Candy part ends with a different cliffhanger, so maybe those two will cancel out?  That’s my hope anyway.

Reading page 1 again since I didn’t finish the very tail end of it... alright, so WHY IS ROXY CRYING again????  Was she just PRETENDING that she didn’t know it might turn out bad for John if he went at the end of the last one?  Was there some weird mind-rewriting going on?  Is the crying a symptom of this whole thing potentially being an our!Callie fanfic and she knows what’s being dodged??  Don’t know.

Alright, let’s have him save Gamzee and... is Vriska going to get saved in this version?  Or is that descent into the black hole without seeing what happens her well-deserved comeuppance while only the ghost version of Vriska truly figured out how to be happy?

==>

Dirk acknowledges him when he zaps back, but it’s YOUNG Dirk so hopefully there isn’t any stupid Meat stuff going on.

...Yeah, Gamzee immediately being repentant is weird as shit.  Maybe he Chucklevoodoo’d Callie into escaping him into this whole candied mess so he could start shit, I dunno.  That or this isn’t really Gamzee or someone’s manipulating him or etc etc etc.  The hint I got earlier was that if I thought Calliope wanting to bring Gamzee back and everyone just rolling with it was a little out of character, there are “reasons”, so I’m just going through all of this under the assumption that some emotion-manipulating weirdness is going on regardless.

Oh shit, Gamzee’s going to start recounting his character reasons for doing bad stuff in a surface-hope of justification and understanding.  All the characters immediately recognize how painfully groanworthy this is going to be.

GAMZEE: AnD sUcH iS wHy I’m GrAbBiNg HoLd Of My RePeNtAnCe As FiRm AnD sErIoUs As I wOuLd A wHoRe’S tItTy!

Yeah, that really encapsulates how “serious” all of this is.  And of course, John’s not having any of it.

Yeah, Terezi wouldn’t have any of it either, remotely.

Something feels different, but he can’t put his finger on it.

Hm.  The aforementioned manipulation-weirdness?

==>

Okay, so it’s kind of Dirk who notices something different and is cancelling his stupid villain plans, got it.

Volatility of causality, huh?

(I’m going to be going through these parts a little faster than the Meat section, unsurprisingly.)

==>

Okay, Rose and Kanaya, are we gonna cure her substance abuse or--

With all the distance between them lately,

God damnit, have Dirk’s manipulations extended that far OFFSCREEN or is this legitimate character distancing???? Because either is BAD.  >:(

Right, now that the plot and “relevance” has been sidelined over to a different timeline, Rose can now breathe easy free of her condition.  And whichever parts of her condition were, perhaps, IMPOSED on her.  Fuck.

I’m going to try my fucking best to cling to this, hope I can carry on a memory after this is over that DOESN’T imagine Rose trapped in a fucking existential dying villain coma with a hard fucking cutoff that promises nothing is ever coming to resolve it ever.  (Or Jade in a somewhat-similar sidelined situation, or Jane doomed to fuck herself over and everyone else too, or...)

What’s slipping away instead is the feeling that any of it mattered at all. Was she insane to be so consumed by such lofty concerns, and is she only beginning to experience clarity today, for the first time in ages?

Yeah, you’re no longer in a timeline of Light and relevance.  And that’s not so bad, which is something you never expected to be true given your derision of the concept.  Void is pretty goddamn alright.

--Oh right, the illness and substance abuse probably caused plenty of distance between them.

KANAYA: There Was A Feeling I Couldnt Shake That Something Terrible Was Going To Happen To Us KANAYA: Something That Neither Of Us Could Stop KANAYA: A Powerful Outside Force That Would Take You Away From Me KANAYA: And I Couldnt Stop Myself From Thinking That Maybe KANAYA: Maybe That It Would Be For The Best ROSE: Kanaya... KANAYA: I Can Now See That This Is Completely Ridiculous

For some reason, this doesn’t settle my stomach much?  It’s clear Andrew wove this in here so that if you read Meat first, you’d be able to acknowledge readily how this diverged in a way the characters kind of recognize, and... I’m not sure what I’m even saying.  It’s like there’s hope that this is TRYING to take the bad taste out of my mouth, but I don’t believe it overly much.

ROSE: What a relief, considering that we are both going to be young and magically fit literally forever.

Wait, so they DID find a way to extend their non-ascended friends’ lifespans to practical immortality?  Jane’s Life powers?  Something else?

==>

yay jade.  more extended dave metaphors.  calm down stomach.

JADE: i never thought id be thinking of you as my weird nerd friend by the time we were in our twenties

Heheheh.

DAVE: yeah well i never thought youd be like the premiere woo girl on the planet

Had to look up what a “woo girl” was.

Yes Jade go flirt them to death

What she’s planning isn’t a seduction. It’s a public service.

Pff

(And yeah, she’s being pushy but at least she doesn’t go DIRK FAR about it.)

DAVE: its incredible hes driven at least ten people off the site by creating thinly veiled parody accounts of their usernames

Oh my gosh, Karkat’s good enough to ANDREW HUSSIE them?!???  :D

That’s incredible.

Karkat knows damned well what a husband is. He’s been force-fed enough bad movies from Dave to pick up any human euphemism you could name. He still plays dumb sometimes, for comedic effect, to irritate his friends, or simply to avoid a topic of conversation altogether.

Yeah, it was always pretty clear that about HALF of the trolls pretended not to understand something human that they knew about just for comedic effect and they knew it.  :)

It would be pretty easy to mistake his reaction for arousal, so it’s understandable that Jade is extremely surprised when Karkat snaps his jaw shut and chomps down on her hand.

PFFFFHahahahah :D

And yep, Jane cancelled her run at Dirk’s direction.

DAVE: lets all just thank whichever christ was responsible for making whatever decision resulted in her deciding not to do that

*nod nod*

JADE: well i hope she gets a better hobby JADE: there are a lot of less ominous things she could do with her time KARKAT: WHAT, LIKE FUCKING HER WAY THROUGH HALF THE POPULATION OF EARTH C?

Jade pinches his ear and twists hard, smiling pleasantly.

JADE: get fucked karkat

Yeah, this is about the level of violence/threat I’d expect from Jade when anyone slut-shames her for perfectly acceptable behavior.

==>

There is almost no crime on Earth C, and so almost no one locks their door.

Huh.  I guess post-scarcity might do that.

Alright, we get to see Jane being less of a fuckass.

Dirk was the one person on Earth C who took the state of the locksmith industry with the seriousness it deserved.

Pffff

JAKE: Thats my theory at least. Maybe its tommyrot but i have faith that dirk will be back. After all where is he going to go?

Good question that wasn’t answered in Meat, so of course Jake says it here obliviously.

JAKE: I must admit i am rather half rats at the moment. JANE: You’re what? JAKE: Haha sorry that was a pretty obtuse way of putting it wasnt it. JAKE: What i mean to say is that ive been powdering my hair quite a bit today.

Andrew is SO good at making Jake sound completely incomprehensible.

...Ouch, Jane, don’t drink so hard! D:

The “morbs”??

JAKE: Dirk has that manner about him does he not? JAKE: A way about him that makes you feel like whatever you do as long as it does not involve him it doesnt count for dick.

Yeah, fuck Dirk.

Hm... is the absence of relevance affecting them, or some other manipulation? It’s not just the LACK of Dirk’s manipulation.

JAKE: Except of course for that time when you were under mind control and had me trussed up in your lair as you pontificated villainously about using me as a breeding stud to create a blood lineage for your incumbent corporate space empire.

A fate Dirk seems to agree with, judging by Meat.  Let’s sidestep that fucking entirely, thank you.

...yeah, I didn’t expect Jake’s response to be any less oblivious than exactly that.

==>

So why DID Callie bring Gamzee back, anyway?  Is there some secret use for him in mind?  Was she manipulated into it?  Maybe BY Gamzee?  Hm.

...alright, priestly with followings.  That ain’t good.  Is he aiming for Clown President MK2?

Everything Callie and Roxy have done and said in this Candy section so far seems creepily contrived, possibly by design.

...okay did they have some kind of weird agreement? Like, “okay John is gonna make his choice, and if he chooses to stay i try dating him instead of you, Callie”???  That’s... no that can’t be it.  Roxy’s NEVER acted THIS oblivious before.  What’s she playing at?

GAMZEE: mY fUcKiN *gUy*. :o) JOHN: ... GAMZEE: My DuDe AnD mY nInJa AlIkE. GAMZEE: mY *hOrN* dOoOoG. JOHN: ... GAMZEE: mY hOrN tO tHa MoThErFuCkIn DoG. ;o) JOHN: waiter! help!

I’m imagining Gamzee now as a sweaty and homeless, unkempt Guy Fieri.

Yeah, this doesn’t look like it’ll be fun.

==>

...Swifer Eggmop.  ¬_¬”

There’s a third member of their social group who definitely hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that his power and influence should be meted out responsibly either. Neither of them speak his name, however. For some reason, it feels like a shadow passing over the sun. A brief spike of pain flickers through Rose’s head, a bolt that strikes between her eyes and splinters out. There is color and light behind it. A vision that tears through the material reality in front of her and gives her a brief glimpse into a parallel reality where things are very different.

Yeah, fuck Dirk.

...Pff. Yeah, Rose WOULD mimic the record-scratch gesture.

Don’t invoke “never seeing Vriska again” like that, you’re really tempting fate.

Heh, Rose is finding some Light in the darkness, wanting to do something that’s meaningful on an expressive level with this Vriskgrub business.

Hm... why is my stomach a little less uneasy?

I sure hope it stays that way.

==>

KARKAT: OH MY GOD, ARE THE MECHANICAL GLUTES ON THAT BILLBOARD ACTUALLY PADDED WITH PLUSH TO MAKE THEM MORE LIFELIKE?

Heck Yes

...Yes, touch the butt, Karkat.

Jade, pouting a bit, glides in between them and uses her Space powers to teleport Dave’s phone out from the center of his traumatized palm and into the pocket of her sweater.

Hm!  So she still has teleportation abilities over a limited range even without her Green Sun boost, that’s nice.  :D

After all, where would these two pitiful beta boys be without her?

Oh my fucking god stop being Dirk, Jade.  And never use that narrative language again, even in your head.  Heck, even if Dirk’s the one WRITING this still, don’t even think CLOSE enough to think those words.

...yeah this sounds like an Active player class taking things slightly too far.

Thank you, Karkat, for drawing the consent-line in the sand.  Looks like Jade’s backing off a little.

--hold on, wait, Dave kissed him? He did, so why is-- let me read back up--

Dave doesn’t answer. She answers for him by leaning down and planting a dry, affectionate kiss on Karkat’s cheek.

Okay I misread this line earlier.  Jade kissed Karkat when neither of them were looking and is BLAMING Dave.  Hmm.

Alright, Dave ollies outie.  Karkat tumbles down some hillstairs.

Jade could probably catch him. Actually, she could easily do it, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of favor you should do in a fledgling kismesissitude.

Thaaaat’s a little presumptuous??

JADE: well i guess im eating grub spaghetti alone JADE: *again*!!!

:C

I’d be sadder if you didn’t bring it down hard upon yourself but

:C

==>

Yeah, John, better clear up this Callie business because it’s muddy as heck why Roxy would just drop everything to try things out with you.

Ah, we’re bringing up the gender identity thing on this side too, hm?

More serious talk, this is good, reading reading...

The glasses clink together clumsily, and water gets all over the complimentary breadsticks.

Oh no.  This had better not be Olive Garden.

ROXY: no one else has ever made me feel like this

--not Calliope???

What the heck is even going on.

Dave’s coming for some bro help it looks like.

==>

It’s hilarious how much Dave is freaking out about this, and how completely in-character it is.

JOHN: holy fucking shit. JOHN: there’s a gay snooze button? DAVE: yeah man theres a gay snooze button JOHN: wow.

I love these two’s conversations

......wait, Dave’s been holding off on kissing Karkat because of what he thinks JADE might think???? D:

JOHN: i almost managed to forget that she was trying to fuck you and karkat.

Pfffffffff  :D

Yep.  I love it being put so bluntly.

Reading on... yeah, for some reason I also always figured that the end result of a nice three-way relationship between those three people would be Jade and Dave essentially both just glomming onto Karkat more than each other?  Hm.

JOHN: i mean... it doesn’t sound... JOHN: *canon*?

...I hope you’re just talking about his coin flip explanation and not DaveKatJade.  >:(

John wonders when talking to Dirk has fixed anything for anyone.

Nod nod.

She grins up at John with shimmering, adoring eyes. They’re reflecting every star in the sky, all for him.

Seriously, what the hell.  Is Roxy hypnotized?  Putting on an act?  A voidy act??

I’m not doubting that Roxy COULD feel that way about John, I’m doubting the suddenness and the way Calliope is being deliberately ignored in the situation, which is so goddamn obvious that JOHN is uncomfortable about it.  There’s something seriously strange going on.

It itches at the back of his head, the idea that he might have just fucked up Dave’s entire life.

D:

Alright next post after a bit of breakfast.

[crazybnhatheorist]

Finding the UA traitor - Part 4 | Spying isn't manly

Wow, I haven't been in here for a while. Yeah, yeah, I'm week late, I know, but I had some shit going on. But I progressed! We have pictures and italics now.

Anyway, hello in 4th part already! Hope you'll like it. Though this (and next) pick isn't as suprising, I wanted to throw in my two cents.

Because Kirishima Eijirou may be hiding something.

Warnings: a few paragraphs contain manga spoilers, but as always, I marked them

Still water run deep

As always, let's look closer at... yeah, you guessed it, summer camp!

I'll get over with small things first. They doesn't prove anything on their own, but surely don't work for Kirishima's sake either and can be considered as foreshadowing... or something.

We're sure he had his cell phone with him. Was one of the not showed boys during the night. In the morning was the most exhausted of all students.

More serious stuff now. As we know, Kirishima failed his practice exam in some... very stupid way. I'd even say it was worth Kaminari. Like... Kirishima isn't THAT stupid guy, is he? Maybe he thought that by failing he won't be allowed to go to the camp. Remember his reaction to Aizawa announcing that he lied?

WhenI saw it for the first time I was like omg he so shook. Then I thought that maybe he's disgusted by his sensei's behavior, because it's not manly. Or maybe he just weirdly smiles. But on the next panel, we actually see that he's the only one not catched mid-smiling. And his arms' position doesn't suit the whatever-emotion-he-showed-second-ago (shock, disgust, terror)

On to the hideout raid arc

What to say? Just as before Yaoyorozu and Aoyama, Kirishima falls in for category 2. It's his Bakugou, after all!

And I must say he's lucky, too - LoV was teleported away before rescue squad jumped in, and even if AFO saw him, he ended up locked in prison.

But there's one important thing that happened before that. When the squad found fake factory and he used his night goggles, he was genuinly terrified when he saw noumus. Based on this, I think it's likely that he would work for AFO rather than Tomura - all of LoV members are similiar with them. While orders from All for One rather wouldn't be received direct from him, but there would be some kind of, you know, middleman.

Back to the night goggles... Maybe we don't know much about Kirishima family's wealthness, but I don't think he's another rich kid, either. A teenager like him can't afford something so expensive. Also, he avoided talking about where did he get them from and looked guilty when Bakugou gave him back some money. We know that AFO willingly sponsors Shigaraki's actions. So why not buy some stupid goggles for his spy, if he can afford freaking experiments on humans?

His motivation or juicy steak of manga spoilers (like really, you may want to skip it)

First, small thing to talk about is Kirishima's reaction to a student that gave up being a hero mentioned by Nejire. But let's look at this a little closer - from writer's pov.

Yeah, Nejire is very talkative and we know that, but I don't think that Horikoshi made her say that only to show how noisy she can be. I bet it was otherwise - he used it as a tool to foreshadow an important detail. And that is Kirishima's reaction, of course. We didn't get a direct response from his origin story though, so he left it to our interpretation or left a clue for something else.

For the first time, I thought that it reminded him of one of his worse moments and that maybe at some point he wanted to give up himself. On the other hand, the most common opinion is that maybe he knew that particular student and if it's true, then it's suspiscious - if it wasn't someone 'bad', then why would the author hide it?

From his origins we know that he secretly has many moments of self doubting. We also know the reason why. You see, Kirishima is the type of a guy that has his own values and sticks to them. If he have became a spy, someone from his family must would have made him to.

Sounds ridiculous, right? But it would make some sense. Eijirou's idol, for example, is... retro. If his parents were villains, it would make sense that he would choose an old hero, as them wouldn't be fond about new ones. Seeing his parents reactions, he'd found himself a figure that nobody remembers about. Or else - do you remember how unomfortable he was while talking about his idol to Midnight, when creating hero names? Yes, it makes sense, but let's be even more ambitious - he feels like that, because he tells it in front of whole class, after hiding it from his parents his whole life. It's not like him to be shameful about a figure he took his main values from.

And you may ask, what about that time when he sympathised with a villain? If think of that blades guy as a tool of showing who Kirishima is really. Not only his origins, but the empathy. It will make perfect sense if at some point he spills the bills, as he no longer want to be part of monstrous LoV actions, especially after kidnapping his best friend.

So in the end, if this theory is true, my best boy made much bigger self-progress than anybody thought.

Pros and cons (nomore spoilers!)

Pros

Reasonable motives

His reaction to going to the forest camp

His reaction to Bakugou being kidnapped

Some small things (the student that gave up, his idol and how he talks about him, his problems with himself, fight with the blades villain) may be foreshadowing

The impact it would made on both characters and readers

Cons

He already is a well developed character, so why add anything more to him?

Majority of evidence can be debunked, as half of it have multiple meanings

I don't have a specific opinion on it, to be honest. I hate a concept of this, as Kirishima is my favourite character in the show, while my masochistic writer side wants to see it happen so freaking bad. Just a great made plot twist, you know?

But what are yours opinions guys? I wanna hear them, so don't be afraid to text me! Hope you liked it.

See ya, pumpkins!

[pip-personalispolitical]

𝖙𝖍𝖊  𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖙  𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖊𝖓

The last female characters in the show have essentially been reduced to three houses; Stark, Baratheon, Targaryen. These houses hold considerable power by themselves, coupled with their remaining matriarchs (because let’s face it, Jon isn’t running anything other than away from his feelings) they’re a pretty formidable bunch.

Disregarding the pitting of powerful women against each other in a totalitarian struggle for the throne in the vein of oh so trendy, female power, this week’s episode was rife with misguided notions of women, power and madness. Patriarchal tropes clung to the once fierce and pragmatic women, altogether terrifying and brilliant, and reduced them to poor plot twists and insanity.

It was predictable, and awful, highly entertaining and I hated it. I hated it because this has a massive audience that has huge influence on Western society, it should be commented on, especially when the fanbase is so intelligent and loyal and when it’s such a huge part of our soecity (Sorry, it is.) 

𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔡𝔬𝔳𝔢

I’m gonna get right into it. Full fledged, partially feminist but mostly just pissed off review of this episode and continuing storyline for The Mother of Dragons. 

Sansa and Ayra are the only two female leads left unscathed by bouts of madness. They remain in the show, they are quiet and astute, or emotionally void and impossibly silent. Above all else the crucial performance of their femininity is intact, they are well-mannered and unobtrusive and that is seemingly why they are still there. Some of their power steams from utilizing the tropes of femininity to ensure they have stability and respect and maintain the little power they have.

Sansa is not only playing the Game of Thrones but the tiresome Game of Patriarchy. Seemingly internalising her struggles and extending gratitude to traumatic abuse as a means of betterment seems, at the least, in poor taste and at most, horrifically ignorant and damaging. The implications are that because of what a man did to her, she is a better person for it. I think she is better, and not “still a little bird”, only because of what the show keeps telling us is that she’s smart now, not showing us. You might even go so far as to say that Sansa is only granted trust and smarts because she learnt it from a male peer.

Sansa Stark has swallowed internalised misogyny down with her favoured lemon cakes; yes, she has learnt how to manipulate those around her and use her strengths to gain favour, all whilst being very pretty and very quiet. Except when it allows heror her family more access to power. You all know what I’m talking about - snitches get stitches, little dove. All the while claiming The Dragon Queen is an untrustworthy threat (Jon asked you to keep how many secrets? One? The same one your Father kept for...how many years? Oh. Yeah. In the words of Sandor Cleagane, fuck off.)

Thus, leading me - a rabid feminist and Targaryen loyalist - to believe that unless you play by the rules in Westeros, whatever you want is unattainable and you are unworthy and frankly, too damn emotional. The only way for these characters to survive is to shut up and play along.

And let’s keep in mind that all of these characters are white, the people of colour on the show can be the sweetest, most benevolent characters in the universe and they still get decapitated. Characters who aren’t “nice” or “good” and are people of colour are portrayed as savages, emotionless killing robots that are above all dispensable and grateful to their white saviour. Someone who spoke about this more eloquently and in depth is Raine (SP – my apologise I can only guess at it based on phonetics), who wrote into the Pod-Cast: A Cast of Kings (S8E5, 7 minutes in.)  

Dany simply doesn’t play by these rules.

Being a Targaryen at heart, I wondered what it was that Dany was doing so differently to be considered such a threat, or a borderline mad queen, chasing after the impossible affections of the inhabitants of Westeros. Dany plays by Targaryen rules, she plays with fire and blood. Their trump card of entitlement (a hereditary bloodline that has mostly held male monarchs) that condemns her as power-hungry but serves male claimants as entitled.

Her overt assertions and unfiltered desire to reclaim this birth right, as many before her have, is suddenly chased by the idea of being deserving, a prerequisite that eludes the patriarchal figures in her family. This leads me to think it’s not what she’s asking for that is so unconceivable, but howshe’s asking for it that is so outrageous. Apparently, even Khaleesi can face issues of likeability[i].

𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔬𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔞 𝔠𝔬𝔦𝔫

These rejections of arguably patriarchal rules and the strong emotions of a woman are tediously wrapped up with notions of madness and hysteria, and prove disappointing for one of the most well written female characters in fantasy.

While we have to take into account the budget and time of the show, it feels breathless. The otherwise thoughtful and complex plotlines have been twisted to deliver shocking twists with little substance.

Dany’s previous actions in the show haven’t led to the web of whispers surrounding her, there is no reason for people to expect her to act like a mad queen up until this very last moment. To deny these people were doing so and lying to her face about it would be further gaslighting, so Tryion, in my book, did the right thing. Dany’s decisions have constantly been ridiculed, along with her sanity and emotional state.

In a defence of her actions, she has fought endlessly, scraped her way to the throne, sacrificed her time, her armies and her children to find herself left alone at the last moment? (Who can relate?) Her powerful allies have fallen, and those that claimed they would serve her do very little of what she asks. Seriously. Jon, you just couldn’t shut the fuck up for a second?! Starks and their honour, SMH. It is maddening.

Aside from it making no narrative sense (she has always avoided bloodshed and taken warnings about the mad king, her father, to heart) it just sucks seeing two of the best women reduced to Motherless tropes. Because Seven Hells, what is a woman if she is not reproducing? Insane!

As if the coin had been tossed and landed face down - Dany loses it within a split second. Hats off to Emilia Clarke because she sold it and the storm of emotions that ran across her face in milliseconds. This black and white contrast seems unfitting for a character that has faced each loss, personal and political, with tenacity, she has learnt from each of these losses. D&D have taken a survivor that has been gaslit, abused, groomed and baited and “made her mad with ambition.”

Additionally, it lends to the idea that women’s emotions are incomprehensible and irrational. We are told that in expressing anger we are inhibiting the ability to be heard - hello tone policing. This bout of madness is signalling her downfall, her failure to comply with a more docile femininity. Any woman with too much power will not be able to handle it and if she can she is mad and must be stopped. Period.

They failed to give her the credit she so deserved as she tried (and arguably failed) to grasp the politics of war. Worst of all, the scene played out so poorly that the audience had to be told this was her moment of “choosing violence,” like Cersei. The only way this was credible was thanks to Emilia’s performance and explanation in behind the scenes footage.

She explains how hurt Dany is, how angry and alone she is, and these feelings have culminated at a time she has gotten exactly what she wanted, and realised it’s not what she thought it would be. With liminal time, Dany grieves. Her grief is sorrow turned anger, anger turned dragon fire, dragon fire turned ash. It looks different to any other characters on the show and she has allowed it to kill her. And when you put it like that, it’s fucking traumatic.

It’s not like it’s nothing that pushes her over the edge, but in diagnosing Dany with madness, her agency is stripped from her. Dismissing her actions by saying it’s in her blood is implying it’s inevitable despite the great character growth and progress she has made. While the books clearly hint at this, the show does not...well, not successfully. It’s feasible and I’m not at all against the idea of her going mad, but the connotations of it seem reductive.

Daenerys could have been the most beautiful mad queen we’ve seen since Maleficent, reigning her vengeance on us with fire and blood, but D&D wrote off her brilliance with 30 minutes of relentless slaughter. Her power has always been something to fear, she plays the game she need not play to gain favour and credibility as a leader, and when playing by their rules fails her and she doesn’t feel like playing anymore (as it’s gotten her nowhere – does this remind you of anything? Patriarchy? Internalising misogyny?) she’s crazy.

The most irritating aspect of this all is that it has been written to further the narrative of do-gooder MoodiBoi of Westeros, Jon Snow. To add insult to injury, her sacrifices are motive for madness while Jon’s make him a martyr; an unwilling hero bound by the same strain of honour that has gotten both him and his uncle killed. Like, I’m bored?

𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔬𝔩𝔣 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔯𝔞𝔤𝔬𝔫

It’s undeniable, Ayra is a badass. She killed the fucking Night King. But for some reason, Daenerys isn’t granted the same nuance she is. Ayra is unforgiving and gritty, she is cloaked in darkness and weaponry and this darkness is welcomed. While Dany’s darkness is terrifying - perhaps simply due to the scale of devastation she is capable of - whereas Ayra’s is welcomed and accepted. Maybe it’s just too easy for Dany to sit the throne with dragons and is considered unfair? Like, I dunno, any white-het-cis man trying to attain a position of power and control.

Perhaps it is because Ayra’s power is overtly masculine, her power is demonstrated solely in her physical skills and capabilities, whereas Dany’s overt power is dragon fire, and flows, sometimes in reverse, between decision making, politics, emotions, bloodlines and betrayals. This is a character arc, it isn’t a clean narrative and that is why it’s so compelling. (Sidenote: let’s not disregard the ability to raise, bond with and fly fatherfucking dragons.)

Ayra undergoes numerous inescapable traumas, all early in life, but so does our darling Dany. The only difference is Dany strays from physical demonstrations of power. Her focus is not individualised, it’s pinpointed to political hotspots.

No, not all female characters have to express their power and emotions in the same way, nor should all female characters be powerful, but in a show with dragons, is it so far-fetched to have more than one successful female ruler?

𝔄𝔷𝔬𝔯-𝔞𝔥𝔟𝔶𝔢 

It seems as though the show has room for only one type of ‘empowered’ woman: the power hungry one. Whether she uses cunning, childless violence or fire and blood, they all seek power. Enough to hold what they consider their claim, two of them have already paid with their lives for their loud and unrelenting anger, the third is most likely going to sit the throne, quietly, thankful for the years of gaslighting and abuse. Looking at you, Sansa Snarky.

The only praise I can sing is that this is actually a testament to her power and great restraint, it has taken 8 seasons of abuse, disbelief, dehumanising, control and betrayal for her to reach this point and use this force that she could have used moons ago. Which, judging by everyone’s shitty ideas and plans, she should have done anyway.

While Daenerys Stormborn isn’t perfect (er, hello white saviour/messiah complex) she is compelling and pivotal in the series. This woman isn’t inherently good or bad. The character is made of grey, shifting uncertainties and wavering moral, struck by tragedy and bloodlines - she is simply made of magic - Dany is, after all, the Mother of Dragons, and she deserved better.  

𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔰

1] Likeability: I define Likeability as a set of performances that are highly gendered, and ensure the maintenance of the feminine by condemning behaviours exerted by non-males; typically being loud, having a sexuality (lol seriously) opinionated, successful and ambitious. I believe likeability sits on the axis of heteronormativity and femininity; or rather within the heterosexual matrix. They rely on each other for their respective maintenance. The highly feminine woman is more respected and well liked. It is a social currency women have to pay in order to attain certain things, such as respect or power. 

2] https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/its-time-embrace-feminisms-anger

3] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/09/how-pop-culture-tells-women-to-shut-up/502187/

4] A Cast of Kings: Available on all streaming sites. S8EP5 Review. 

[zungcreates]

Me and the Fragrant Harbour

2018 was one of the most pivotal years of my life. I started writing another chapter of my life's non fictional saga, entwined with romantic poetry and mildly dramatic plot twists that appeared on rare occasions. I moved to Hong Kong, one of my favourite cities of all time. It’s a bold statement, considering I have only seen a micro-fraction of this world’s entirety.

Hong Kong is a lot of things – thrilling, entitled, enriching, careless, vigorous, impatient... but mundane is not one of them. We have developed a complicated, yet fulfilling relationship that leaves me sleepless at times but always curious. The truth is, it is capable of making me fall in love with it over and over again. It’s the way the high rise buildings silently greet you with an imaginary nod every morning; it’s the almost instant accessibility to an oasis of unexplored greenery and suspicious tiny creatures up in the hills that are supposedly harmless (mind you, it is still a nice getaway from geckos, the fearful and totally uninvited home visitors that I will probably never come to peaceful terms with); it’s the liberating anonymity that allows you the freedom to be whatever you want to be, because nobody cares. You get amused by the different names of the streets where you may get scolded by the elderly for assuming they don't know any English. Summers make you crave dipping into the ocean while winters leave you confused, as you just can't decide whether you're cold or hot; the fact that you can see a wide range of outfits from shorts and tank tops (mostly modelled by expats) to chunky padded jackets with a fancy scarf (proudly worn by locals) isn't helping either. But I can make up my mind about it all at four in the morning while walking back home on my own without drifting into paranoia or fear. It's revolutionary for such a scaredy-cat as I am.

Hong Kong has some downsides, too. Long gone are the days of complete silence and solitude. Construction has become the orchestra playing in the background with determination and minimal subtlety. And if I were to choose one track that would become my theme song while living here (especially applicable during the summer), it would be Travis’ Why Does It Always Rain On Me. It is not only the weather contributing to this – it's all the liquids dripping from the infamous air conditioners with whose content I’d rather stay unfamiliar. My patience is being constantly challenged while walking on the streets – it seems that people have simply lost their notion of walking in a straight line. I am learning to zig-zag through the obstacles that life brings me, figuratively and quite literally. My physical body has been challenging me in return for my decision to drag it all across the globe to live in a completely new environment, different from my usual habitat till then in every aspect possible. It has rewarded me with an intolerance to mangoes which is a tear jerker as it’s always been my number one fruit. While still coping and dealing with all kinds of issues, I’m certain that they would surface no matter where I would end up because, thankfully, humans have such a knack for finding new problems.

I love this city for many reasons that people who decide to come for a year and find themselves still here twenty-five years later do. On better days I embrace the humidity, the odd habit of putting sausages into rice dishes, and people’s obsession with constantly chasing after something. On weaker days I have potato crisps for dinner, complain about the ridiculousness of queuing for milk teas, and avoid my conscience by watering it down with an unappetising beer with the folks on the rooftop. The creeping pollution is forgiven, for Hong Kong's night sky often sparkles with clearly evident stars and airplanes.

I am still the same, yet somehow also different, compared to myself around this time a year ago. I have learned a lot about myself through being completely open, curious and loving, accepting loss, and taking big leaps of faith.

A year ago, it took me three hours to finish a drink. Today I have managed to reduce it to two hours.

A year ago, I loved, I lost love, and I learned to cope with the intensity and charms of such a journey. It shows to what extent one's willing to go for somebody that one cares about. Today I know that the way you love says more about you than its recipient. So I tell myself, pick wisely, but love unconditionally and with grace. Always keep your heart open – it will lead you to the best journeys of your life.

A year ago, I was full of hopes and enthusiasm. Today it’s closely shadowed by sarcasm and audaciousness, but the enthusiasm will always stay deeply ingrained in me.

I didn’t eat cheese or mushrooms a year ago. Today I still don’t eat cheese or mushrooms.

A year ago, I found the most attractive traits to be sensitivity, intelligence, chivalry and – shallow me – dimples. Today I place a high value on reliability, respectfulness, sense of humour and confidence (dimples are just a bonus).

A year ago, I started feeling that I am finally figuring everything out and slowly getting my sh*t together. Today I’m still ‘togethering’ it all and realising that it will be a matter of a lifetime.

A year ago, I dreamed of living in Hong Kong, one day. Today I’m writing this, sitting in my tiny flat with a view of Hong Kong's harbour on one side, and its green mountains on the other.

Leaving my comfort zone to immerse myself in unexplored waters has certainly helped me to grow and expand my horizons. I found an even deeper connection to my family, and I can't put a price on the friendships that have grown tighter in spite of the distance – as well as newly found friendships that contribute to my current, as Kundera says, Unbearable Lightness of Being.

So here's to taking more leaps of faith.

[glitchinthesystemspiderbyte]

[39] Glitch in the System - Keep Your Enemies Closer (Crossroads pt. 2)

Crossroads part 2. Check out Part One here! Shout out to @illegalanger for opinions on river pollution.

By E.

A tenuous arrangement happens. _

It didn’t take Satya long to return, although Sombra would have sworn it was an eternity. When the Architech approached the bars of the cell, she was holding a bag.

“Here,” she said, shoving it through the bars and dropping it to the ground. Sombra walked up cautiously, picking it up and looking inside.

“What’s this?” she asked, extracting an unfamiliar, thin bread. It was mottled brown and she found it very suspicious.

“Chapati,” Satya replied, offering little more by way of explanation. “You implied you were hungry.”

“Not wrong,” Sombra shrugged, throwing caution to the wind and placing the bread between her teeth. Poisoning her would be stupid if they wanted anything at all from her. Besides - all signs indicated that the Architech was as ridiculously humanitarian as she professed herself to be, and Sombra didn’t think that murdering a prisoner was in her M.O.

Satya watched her eat, avoiding eye contact, but decidedly observing. It almost looked as though she were waiting on a verdict regarding the food.

“Not awful,” Sombra said, thinking that the bland bread could have used a little spice. Who just ate tortillas, anyway? “You make it yourself?”

“No,” Satya said, looking offended at the suggestion. Sombra wondered if she’d worn the same expression when Akande had informed her she’d be coming here in the first place. Cooking and paperwork, both beneath their stations.

Maybe they could be friends, after all.

Shoving the final bit of chapati into her mouth, she chewed it slowly, watching the Architech and wondering what she was thinking. There were so many questions, and Sombra was of the distinct opinion that she would be wise to choose which ones she asked carefully.

“So,” she said, wiping her hands off on her leggings. “What brought you back? The age old killer of cats?”

“We have work to do here,” she replied, stoic and focused. The yes to Sombra’s second question was unspoken, but easily apparent in her expression.

“Why are you here, anyway?” Sombra followed up, letting Satya extrapolate regarding her curiosity on her own. “This is a Talon base.”

“It is a Vishkar stronghold,” Satya corrected her, “containing important Vishkar documents.”

Sombra frowned, considering Satya’s words. The castle, by all appearances, had been abandoned long ago. Sombra wasn’t under the impression, based on her cursory perusal of the place that any newcomers had arrived for anything other than tours or upkeep. Which meant that, if the Vishkar were here for documents, then it was the same documents Sombra had been sent to locate and destroy.

“Yeah?” she asked, tilting her head curiously. “Just found out about its existence, did you?”

“...yes.”

“Strangely dire timeline for something that’s been languishing for years, don’t you think?” she added, wheels turning so fast that she nearly forgot about her predicament.

Satya’s look was all the answer she needed. “What are you implying?”

“Hijo de la chingada genio, Akande,” she cursed to herself, half laughing as the pieces of the puzzle she’d been locked up for came tumbling together. “You planned this meet.”

“What are you talking about?” Satya asked, looking decidedly less confident than she had a moment before.

“Nothing, amiga, just working out some details in the old brainpan.” Of course: this wasn’t a penance mission - Akande knew Sanjay and Satya would be there for the same reason she was. He knew they’d cross paths. Furthermore, he knew that Sombra would have found the very information Sanjay was there to destroy. The only real questions that remained were whether Akande had intended that the information be kept from the Vishkar or dispersed to them.

Doomfist knew how Sombra worked. He knew what she’d find, he knew she’d be placed in a position of bargaining, and he knew - he had to have known, or at least bet on - her using what she’d found as a bartering chip. It would absolve him of responsibility in the matter while still sowing a little seed of nuance into the garden if chaos he was carefully cultivating. The only thing she couldn’t be sure of was whether Akande had intended that Sombra’s dispersal of this information to one of the Vishkar’s top agents was intended to sow doubt within their ranks, or depose Sanjay. That motive remained a mystery, but Sombra’d be damned if she wasn’t impressed by the rest of it.

“Just give me your hand. I’ll transfer the data you want. It’s not like I can hack you into opening the door for me.” She laughed, sticking one hand daintily through the bars. “Although that might be an upgrade to consider.”

Satya stood there, staring at her outstretched hand. Sombra sighed, wiggling her fingers to beckon for her. “I’d say I don’t have all day but I guess that’s up to you, yeah?”

Pursing her lips into a frustrated line, she reached out and touched her fingers to Sombra’s. Smiling widely, Sombra dropped her firewall and let the files fly.

Unlike her, Satya had to pull up her own external screen to view the data she had sent her. It hadn’t been much - some tidbits of info that didn’t contain important Talon secrets alongside that single, damning photograph.

It didn’t take her long to review. A single click, a few swipes, and she had all the information she needed to send her world crashing down about her ears. Sombra watched her closely, and to her credit, Satya kept her expression mostly neutral.

Mostly.

“Sanjay will want to speak with you,” she said, her screen shrinking away as she returned the small, portable hard light generator to a clip on her belt.

“You know where to find me,” Sombra shrugged. “Hey,” she said as Satya turned to leave. The Architech paused, not turning around, but inclining her head to the side to hear what the hacker had to say.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry they’re fucking with you.” Sombra wasn’t sure where that pang of empathy came from. If she had to guess, it was born of respect: even in her hubris, she had to admit that Satya Vaswani was a genius. An idealistic chump, sure, but a really smart one.

Satya grunted a soft acknowledgement of Sombra’s words and stepped into the teleporter. Sombra breathed a sigh of relief, ready for some alone time with her data until the next plot twist hit her.

Ten minutes later, two armed guards stepped out in the Architech’s place.

“Oh come on,” Sombra growled, watching the novice guards lean against the wall. “I can’t do anything. Why do I need babysitters?”

One guard, idly eating jerky, looked at the other. “She’s got a point,” he said, and for a moment Sombra thought they might actually leave her in peace. Then his face broke into a patronizing grin. “What’s she gonna do - hack the metal bars?” The guards had a good chuckle at Sombra’s expense, and she crossed her arms to turn away from them, booting up her screen. At least she still had her tech, even if there was no way to really make it work for her.

She fell asleep to the sound of rats gnawing at the walls of the cell beside her and the sound of her own stomach, only temporarily appeased by the bread. A glimmer of fear accompanied her as she drifted off, and she wondered if she might not be in more trouble than she had originally thought.

The same guards that had been there when she’d fallen asleep were there in the morning, arguing among themselves over some dice game they were playing in the dirt a few feet from her cell. Sighing, and in lieu of a proper breakfast, she casually tapped into the frequency of the larger guard’s communication device, throwing interference at it until it erupted in a pitch so high she could hear it across the hall. The guard shouted, grabbing his ear piece and tossing it to the ground.

“What happened?” his companion asked, watching his tantrum with confusion.

“Static. Shit,” he replied, and Sombra chuckled audibly from her cell.

“You -” he said, and he made it two steps toward her cell when the crack of a shot rang out. Sombra saw his shocked expression before he fell to the ground before her. A moment later his companion followed suit, their deaths in such quick succession that neither had had the chance to vocalize an alarm.

And out of the darkness behind them stepped Widowmaker.

“Holy shit,” Sombra said, her voice halfway between a sob and a laugh. “How did you find me?”

Widowmaker stepped over the slain men and up to the bars, glancing down the hallways to make certain they were alone. “I got your message,” she said, securing the gun along her back. She moved slowly, like liquid, and Sombra could tell that it was in part because she was still recovering. A fresh wave of guilt flooded through her, effectively nullifying the adrenaline of witnessing the sniper’s masterful entrance.

“I wasn’t sure Gabriel would send anyone. I...wasn’t sure…” she shook her head. “You came for me?” she asked, shocked, fingers curled tightly around the bars of her cell.

Widowmaker didn’t speak for a long time, looking away. Her golden eyes stared at nothing, but Sombra noticed the slow creep of a smile tugging at her lips.

“You said you would not lie to me again,” she said, shrugging. “I saw no reason not to believe you.”

Sombra pressed her face against the bars of her cell, relieved on a myriad of levels. “Please get me out of here so I can kiss you.”

Widowmaker chuckled, leaning over to pat down one of the slain guards until she found the ancient, heavy key ring with a variety of thick iron keys hanging from it.

“Well,” she said, resigned to trial and error. Stepping up to the cell, she tried one after the other until finally, with the sweet clank of rusted metal grating against the lock, the door swung open.

Sombra shot out with an alacrity of someone escaping a burning building, stepping immediately into the spider’s arms. Grabbing a fistful of her suit, she stood on her toes and pressed her head against Widow’s forehead, self-consciousness and guilt holding her back like a lead weight.

Widowmaker had no such compunctions, however, placing her hand against the line of Sombra’s jaw and pressing her lips against the softness of her own.

“I am glad to see you,” Widow said, smiling against the hacker’s cheek.

“Not as glad as I am to see you,” Sombra replied, laughing. “Let’s get out of here.”

The teleporter glowed in the darkness beside them, an ominous blue portal to somewhere else threatening to release a slew of combatants at any moment.

“What about this?” Widow asked, the length of her body still pressed against Sombra’s. At that point, Sombra was almost ready to throw caution entirely to the wind and suggest an intimate encounter with the office desk in the next room, but for once in her life chose caution over thrill.

“I’ll handle it.” Extracting herself from Widow’s grip, she frowned at the teleporter. “Give me one second,” Sombra said, walking over to it.

“Sombra -” Widowmaker cautioned, but the hacker didn’t try to step into it, kneeling before the glowing base and placing a hand against it. The portal shimmered a light purple, flickering for just a moment before the swirling colors leading to an unknown location changed direction. Overlaying the swirling light, Sombra’s skull blinked mockingly.

“What did you do?” Widow asked, tilting her head in her usual expression of curious suspicion.

“I changed the destination,” Sombra answered, shrugging, and unable to keep the mischief from her voice.

“To where?” Sombra smiled impishly, offering a helpless shrug

“Sombra.”

“The banks of the Thames.”

Widowmaker gave her a look.

“What?” Sombra laughed, stepping away from the portal now that her work had been done. “It was either that or the Cliffs of Moher, but somehow soggy Vishkar covered in dead fish and pollution were funnier to me than dead ones.” She slipped her hand into Widow’s, twining her fingers between the sniper’s.

“You would not be you without the pettiness,” Widowmaker mused, but there was no malice to her tone. In fact, it almost sounded warm. “Is this yours?” she added, holding out Sombra’s gun, wry smile on her face.

“My baby,” the hacker nearly sobbed, clutching it to her chest. “All I need is Oso and my family is complete.” She paused. “And something to eat. I am starving.”

“I secured a room at a boarding house in the village,” Widowmaker said. “They will have food, certainly. Our plane will be here to pick us up in the morning.”

“By ‘secured us a room’ you mean…” Sombra asked, raising an eyebrow.

Widowmaker offered her a poignant stare.

“Okay, fine,” Sombra gave in, putting up her hands. “I won’t ask.” She paused. “You took a plane?” she asked, staring at her incredulously.

“Of course I did,” she said, frowning in confusion. “How else would I get here?”

“You know what?” Sombra said, shaking her head. “Nevermind. Let’s go.” Reaching for the spider’s hand, they left the castle together.

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic. Table of contents located here.

[setepenre-set]

Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue (chapter 9)

Megamind/Roxanne

T for language, rating increase in later chapters

Roxanne desperately needs a date to her step-sister’s wedding. Since her fake boyfriend has decided to ditch her, she ends up seeking Megamind’s help.

AO3  |  FFN | chapter 8

Megamind is late the next day, which gives Roxanne more than enough time to dither over whether or not she’s chosen the best outfit for this shopping excursion.

Which is ridiculous.

It’s just Megamind! This isn’t a real date! It doesn’t matter what she wears!

“You look nice,” Megamind says, as soon as Roxanne lets him in, and Roxanne’s heart gives a stupid triumphant flip, but then he adds, “I’m supposed to say that, right?”

She forces a laugh.

Supposed to say that.

She knew she shouldn’t have bothered wearing her most flattering jeans and her cute black flats and the sky blue shirt that she’s always felt brings out her eyes.

Supposed to say that. He would have said it no matter what she was wearing; it’s not like he means it.

(god, she really needs to get back to dating if she’s letting this weird attraction to Megamind mess with her head this much.)

“Yeah, that’s—feel free to say that any time,” she says. “And you look—”

She takes a closer look at Megamind’s clothes. He’s wearing the Michael Niebieski face again, and he’s dressed in a pair of jeans and a dark blue electrician’s shirt with the collar popped up.

(Roxanne pointedly ignores the rush of affection she feels at seeing that popped collar.)

The name Michael is embroidered on the front pocket of the shirt in white.

“—you look like an electrician,” she finishes.

“Hm? Oh! Yes,” Megamind says, “that’s why I’m late, actually; sorry about that. Your, ah, doorman has been having some difficulties with the lobby wiring. Apparently he’s been calling the management about it for weeks; when I walked in, he assumed that the building owner had finally called someone to deal with it.”

Roxanne raises her eyebrows even.

“And you didn’t correct this assumption?” she says.

Megamind shifts uncomfortably.

“I mean—he seemed—really relieved to see me,” he says.

“Oh my god,” Roxanne says, realization dawning—so that’s why he agreed to this fake-dating plan so easily!— “Oh my god, Megamind, you’re a fucking soft touch!”

“Wh—no! I’m—no I’m not!” Megamind looks hunted.

“Did you even charge him?”

“Of course I couldn’t charge him!” Megamind says, gesturing, “The management didn’t actually call me; he could get into trouble if he gave me any—”

Megamind winces and then rubs a hand over his face, then hides his face in his palm with a groan.

Roxanne laughs and Megamind looks at her through his fingers, hand still on his face.

“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you, Miss Ritchi?” he says.

She laughs again.

“Soft touch,” she says, giving him a teasing smile. She shakes her head in affectionate incredulity. “Only you would think of being nice as something to live down, Megamind. And it’s Roxanne, remember?”

“Roxanne,” Megamind says, letting his hand fall and straightening his spine. “Yes. Roxanne.”

He still looks uncertain and uncomfortable, though, so Roxanne takes pity on him and changes the subject.

“Are those clothes real?” she asks, pointing.

“What? Oh—no,” Megamind says, looking down at his outfit. “That’s the disguise watch.”

“Really?” Roxanne reaches out and touches the embroidery on his chest. “That’s fascinating; I can feel the texture and everything.”

“Like I said,” Megamind says. “Hard light hologram. It mimics the physical sensation of the disguise. The Michael Niebieski disguise includes his electrician’s uniform.”

“When you showed me it yesterday, though, you were still in your normal clothes,” Roxanne says.

“Yes, the disguise watch has different layers!” Megamind says, reaching for the dial of the watch and twisting it. “See? Clothes—” suddenly he’s dressed in black leather again, although Roxanne notices that he left off the spikes and the cape and the gloves, “—body—” he turns the dial again and he’s himself again, blue and large-headed, “—there’s a voice-change layer, too, but I don’t use that with this disguise, usually, although I suppose that I could if you want me to—”

“No, I like your voice,” Roxanne says, before she can tell herself to choose her words more carefully.

Megamind blinks at her, as though he’s not sure how to process that statement.

“You can turn the layers off and on individually, in any order?” Roxanne asks.

“—um, yes! Yes, you can,” Megamind says, jumping slightly and twisting the dial of the watch again.

His body seems to flicker and blur for a second, and then he’s dressed in the electrician’s uniform again, although this time he’s still wearing his real face.

“God, that is so cool,” Roxanne murmurs, moving around him to look at the hologram from different angles.

Megamind looks sharply over his shoulder at her, an expression of shocked pleasure on his face.

The words Niebeski Electric are printed across the back of his shirt. Roxanne reaches out to trace over the letters with her fingertips, then frowns, a thought teasing at the back of her mind.

Niebeski…why does that sound vaguely familiar?

“Why Niebieski?” she asks, tapping the name.

“Metrocity has a sizeable Polish population,” Megamind says, “and niebieski is the Polish word for—”

“—blue,” Roxanne says. “It’s the Polish word for blue; I knew it sounded familiar!”

Megamind grins at her over his shoulder.

“It can also mean celestial,” he says, “which I thought was also enjoyable as a double meaning, although that particular connotation is mostly archaic, unless you’re using it in a religious sense, rather than an astronomy-sense.”

Roxanne laughs, coming around to face him again.

“Oh my god, you complete and utter nerd!” she says.

Megamind bites his lip, still grinning, his eyes sparkling.

“I like wordplay,” he says, “that’s how I pick out most of the names for my false identities, really, they’re almost always puns or plays on the different meanings of words that—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, and Roxanne remembers last night, and the way he’d said that he hadn’t meant to tell her his true reasons for fighting Metro Man. Of course—of course he didn’t mean to tell her about the logic behind his fake name choices, either.

“It’s okay,” Roxanne says, “I’m not going to tell anyone, Megamind.”

He looks at her warily and doesn’t answer.

“Really,” she says. “I’m—I want you to know that anything you tell me, anything that happens, with this, with what we’re doing together, I’m not going to use it against you, okay? I mean—that would be a really shitty thing to do, in the first place, since you’re doing this as a favor to me, and— And there wouldn’t be any reason for me to want to, Megamind; I told you, I know what you’ve done for the city, with managing all of the crime. Why would I want to make that harder for you?”

Megamind glances away, eyes avoiding hers.

“I told you, it’s not a favor,” he mutters.

“—yeah, okay, regardless,” Roxanne says. (why is he so insistent about the not-a-favor thing?) “I’m not going to use anything that happens with this to screw things up for you, all right?”

Megamind looks at her again, his expression uncertain.

“What about—what about Metro Man?” he asks.

Roxanne makes an involuntary face.

“What about him?”

“I—I mean, during evil plots,” Megamind says, gesturing, “you always—the things you find out, if they’re useful to him, if you can use them to—help defeat me, you tell him…”

“I’m not going to do that with any of this.”

Megamind frowns.

“I promise, Megamind,” Roxanne says, “I swear. This—the wedding thing is separate, completely separate from all of the—supervillain-and-damsel stuff. I’m not going to use any of this against you. Even during evil plots. I promise. Honestly—” Roxanne cuts herself off with a sigh and rubs a hand over her face.

“…what?” Megamind asks in a tentative voice.

“Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to go back to the usual routine, anyway, with the snarky comments and helping Wayne win,” Roxanne says. “I mean now that I know why you’re doing it, I’m just going to feel—”

“We can go back to the usual routine!” Megamind says, looking panicked, “You can! We can! It won’t be—you—”

He flinches back, shoulders curving in slightly, looking as though something awful has just occurred to him.

“What?” Roxanne asks.

“I—I should, shouldn’t I?” he says, eyes fixed on the floor. “I should stop. Stop—I always thought—that being Metro Man’s girlfriend must be worth all of the kidnappings to you, so even though you hated them, you weren’t entirely miserable or anything, but if you haven’t even really been dating him, then there aren’t actually any perks for you and I should—”

“No!” Roxanne says, understanding where he’s going with this.

Megamind’s head jerks up, his eyes surprised.

“I don’t want you to stop kidnapping me,” she says quickly.

Megamind’s entire body twitches at that, and yeah, that’s not really a thing Roxanne ever expected to hear herself say, either, but—

“I mean—I get it, now, why you feel like you need to do the supervillain thing,” Roxanne says, feeling her face going hot but trying to explain because this is important. “And I would prefer that you didn’t feel like you have to. But—but if you’re going to do it, then I want to be there, Megamind.”

Megamind stares at her as though he thinks she may have lost her mind.

“But—why?” he asks.

“Because—you’re the most exciting thing that happens in Metro City,” Roxanne says.

“—oh,” Megamind says, “I—yes, I suppose a supervillain is—”

“No,” Roxanne says, “no, it’s not because you’re—you would be the most exciting thing no matter what you were doing, Megamind, I told you, you could do anything. The stuff you make is—if you were an engineer instead of a supervillain, I would still be reporting on your inventions. I just—wouldn’t be tied up while I was doing it.”

Megamind stares at her, eyes wide.

“But—but you think my inventions are stupid!” he says, “You think they’re ridiculous; you say so all the time!”

“I think what you choose to do with them is stupid!” Roxanne says, gesturing, and then grimaces, running a hand through her hair, “Or—I did, anyway, before I understood why you—” She makes a noise of frustration.

Megamind is still staring at her.

“May I kiss you?” he asks.

Roxanne blinks at him, caught off guard.

“Uh—wh—?”

“I was going to ask, before, but then we got off-topic,” Megamind says, his eyes fixed intently on her face. “After talking about the protocol for compliments. I—I thought—the kiss—it wasn’t very good last time, I know, but—I’m sure that practice—”

The kiss wasn’t very good last time.

That comment registers like a blow to Roxanne’s chest; it’s all she can do not to physically reel backwards from it.

The kiss wasn’t very good last time.

“Sure,” Roxanne says, smiling carelessly even though she wants to curl up into a ball of misery and mortification. “Practice is—yeah. Of course.”

The kiss wasn’t very good last time.

(oh god, she took it too far and disgusted him, didn’t she? or maybe he just finds her so completely unappealing that—)

“There are lots of different ways to kiss, though!” she says quickly, and hopes she doesn’t sound as desperate as she feels.

Megamind, who had taken half a step towards her, stops.

“Different ways?” he asks.

“Yeah, like, um—” Roxanne puts one hand on his chest and gives him a peck on the lips, “—quick casual kiss,” she says. “That’s—usually more what it’s like, if you’re—kissing in public, you know? Or there’s—” she kisses his cheekbone, “—a kiss on the cheek. Or a kiss—” she moves her hand to his shoulder and goes up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his temple, “—here.”

Megamind makes a startled noise when she kisses his temple, a sweet, half-smothered sort of gasp that Roxanne immediately decides she wants to hear over and over again.

She catches his face in her hands and tips his head down, going up on her toes a little more so that she can press a kiss to his forehead.

He gasps again, a little louder this time.

“Here,” Roxanne whispers. She rocks back onto her heels and kisses the tip of his nose. “Or here.”

She kisses his chin, then tips his head a little to the side so that she can press a kiss to the sharp corner of his jaw.

“—here,” Roxanne murmurs, and kisses the pink-tipped curve of his ear.

“—or here,” she whispers, lips pressed to his ear, then tilts his head a little more so that she can kiss his neck.

His pulse is racing; she can feel it beneath her lips, and Roxanne immediately lets go of him and steps back, her conscience scolding her.

Megamind isn’t used to being touched; he told her that, when they were sitting on her couch together, when she reached for his watch and he flinched away from her. She’s probably overwhelming him and making him feel panicked.

“Anyway, you get the idea, right?” she says, tone as brisk and businesslike as she can make it.

There is a beat of silence between them.

“—the—I—yes,” Megamind says, and then he swallows. Roxanne has to force herself to look away from the movement of his throat. “I—I understand the—um—general. concept. Do you—want me to—?”

He gestures vaguely at her face; Roxanne forces herself to keep her expression unchanged.

“Yeah, you can give it a try now if you want,” she says.

Megamind swallows again and steps forward. He kisses her on the cheek, fast and light, barely a kiss at all. He leans back and looks at her, an expression of nervous inquiry on his face.

“Good,” Roxanne says softly.

A look of relief crosses his face. He leans forward quickly and kisses the tip of her nose. When he glances at her face again this time, he’s still so close that the effect is somewhat comical. Roxanne smiles at him and tips her chin up, nudging his nose with hers.

The move seems to catch Megamind off guard; he gives a squeak of surprise and tries to look down at his own nose.

Roxanne laughs quietly.

“Good,” she says, grinning up at him.

He glances at her face again, and he must be able to read in her expression that she means it, because he smiles back at her and kisses her nose again, then bumps their noses together the way that she did.

Megamind leans back to look at her again, both of them smiling, and then his gaze flicks to her mouth and his smile melts away.

He catches his lower lip between his teeth—Roxanne is pretty sure the movement is unconscious and completely innocent, but it still makes her want to bite his lip herself.

His eyes flick up again, meeting hers, and he takes a sharp breath, lets it out shakily.

He reaches up to touch her face; Roxanne is expecting him to cup her cheek in his hand and then lean in to kiss her—

—but instead he brushes her hair over her forehead and tucks it behind her ear.

The movement is careful and gentle, and that, coupled with the way he gives her another uncertain look, as though he’s asking wordlessly if it was all right, does something strange to Roxanne’s heart, makes it beat faster, makes it almost hurt.

“Good,” she whispers.

He looks relieved, and then he bends forward and kisses her on the forehead.

When he pulls back this time to look at her face, Roxanne can’t seem to form words, but she nods at him slightly.

His hand is still on her face from when he brushed her hair back, his fingertips resting light against her cheekbone. He slides them down now, over the curve of her jaw. The touch is still light, but Roxanne’s entire being feels completely focused on the slow, whisper-glide of his fingertips over her skin.

Megamind’s thumb brushes over her lower lip and his eyes drop again to her mouth and that seems, somehow, more intimate than an actual kiss would be from anyone else.

He tips her face up, his thumb sliding lightly from her lip to touch her chin. Roxanne’s eyes flutter shut as he bends forward.

Her lips are parted already in anticipation of the kiss, but when it comes, he doesn’t touch his lips to hers as she expects. He kisses her skin just beneath the right side of her mouth—

—her beauty mark, Roxanne realizes; he’s kissing her beauty mark.

The touch of his lips there, like that—it goes through her in a rush of heat, dry paper touched by a match; suddenly she’s on fire.

She turns her head and catches his mouth with her own, too overwhelmed to do more than brush her lips against his and hope desperately that he understands what she wants.

Maybe he does understand, because he does kiss her at last.

It’s nowhere near as hard and fast and deep as Roxanne wants, though.

Instead, the kiss is slow and light and almost unbearably gentle, his lips moving over hers in something like a caress—her lower lip, her top lip, the corners of her mouth, as if he can’t bear to leave any part of her lips unkissed.

He grazes the tip of his tongue over the curve of her lower lip and Roxanne can’t help gasping, and gasping again when his tongue flicks against hers.

The fingertips of his right hand are still beneath her chin; he reaches up with his left hand and touches the corner of her jaw, then slides that hand down, his thumb brushing over her pulse point and his fingertips slipping just barely into her hair.

He deepens the kiss slightly, his tongue stroking over hers, slow and gentle and almost—almost reverent.

Roxanne’s never been kissed like this before, never felt like this before. She didn’t even know a kiss could feel like this. It’s like being worshipped.

When Megamind ends the kiss and gently pulls away, it takes her several seconds to remember to open her eyes.

She does, though, opening her eyes to see Megamind, still standing so close, one of his hands on her face and the other in her hair.

“Was that okay?” he asks in a low voice.

For a long moment, Roxanne’s thoughts are far too scattered to coalesce into anything like words. Megamind pulls his hands away from her and steps back, looking nervous again.

“I mean,” he says, with a quick, fluttering gesture of one hand, “I know I need more practice, and I’m sure I can do better—”

(holy hell if he gets any better, Roxanne might actually die the next time he kisses her)

“That was—” Roxanne’s voice comes out rougher than she’d like; she stops to clear her throat. “That—ah—are you—sure you’ve never kissed anyone before?”

Megamind’s eyebrows draw together slightly.

“No, just—just you, yesterday,” he says.

Roxanne swallows. Jesus. He barely even touched her, just his fingertips on her face and in her hair and his mouth against hers, and her entire body feels absolutely alight.

“You,” Roxanne says, “you are a very quick study.”

Megamind’s body relaxes visibly with relief.

“Really?” he says. “So that was okay?”

“That was—” Roxanne takes a shaky breath and runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

Megamind’s face lights up and it is entirely unfair the way he looks even more attractive when he smiles.

Roxanne wants to yank out her own hair in frustration with herself. Why? Why did she have to decide to be attracted to Megamind at the worst possible moment?

“Well,” she says, and gestures at the door, “shall we?”

“Ah! Of course,” Megamind says, stepping aside to allow her to open the door.

Roxanne locks the door behind herself and the two of them start down the hall together towards the elevator.

“Miss—ah—Roxanne?” Megamind says.

Roxanne glances over at him.

“Yes?”

“Can—can we practice holding hands?” he asks.

Roxanne swallows and feels heat rise to her face. Wordlessly, she holds out her hand.

Megamind takes it, lacing their fingers together, and Roxanne feels the touch like an electric shock.

They hold hands as they walk down the hall and it’s not until they actually step into the elevator that Roxanne realizes they both forgot to turn Megamind’s disguise back on.

“Watch! Watch watch watch!” Roxanne hisses urgently, smacking his shoulder.

Megamind’s eyes fly wide and he scrambles to turn the dial of the disguise watch.

Michael Niebieski’s face flickers into visibility, brown skin over blue, and even in the midst of her relief at the potential disaster averted just in time, Roxanne still feels a pang of regret when Megamind’s real face disappears.

She half collapses back against the wall, more in dismay than in relief, and closes her eyes.

Immediately, the memory of that kiss hits her.

(god, if he kisses like that, imagine what he’s like in bed.)

(oh god)

(oh god stop imagining it! stop imagining it!)

She opens her eyes, cheeks burning, and forces herself to stare straight ahead, at the elevator buttons, but she feels all to aware of Megamind standing right next to her and—

A touch at her hand, light and uncertain, and Roxanne spreads her fingers automatically, without even thinking, so that Megamind can take her hand again.

Dear god what has she gotten herself into.

...to be continued.

Thank you all so much for continuing to be interested in this story!

I know it was a long time between updates; I got really blocked for some reason--blocked about writing in general, and then blocked with this story, specifically, for a while, too. (extremely not fun)

Finally being able to continue it was such a relief!

So! I hope you all enjoyed the long-awaited, much-belated, FINALLY UPDATED new chapter!

[knightknightfriendo]

Merry Christmas to @nighttyger! I’m your Rhythm Thief Secret Santa, and I hope you like what I wrote for you!

The first time Raphael met Charlie, Private Eye and never a constable, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to think of him. It was hard to be intimidated by someone shorter than himself that wielded a soccer ball as if it was an ultimate weapon, really.

The ball came flying out of nowhere, and it was pure instinct that kept Raphael from receiving a nasty hit to the face. As it was, the flip was probably unnecessary, but if he was going to dodge an unexpected projectile then he was going to do it with style. At first he suspected a game of sorts being played by someone nearby, but a quick scan of the area revealed no players.

“Was that on purpose?” He murmured, finally spotting a figure moving out from behind the tree. The boy that had appeared was shorter than Raphael- well, Phantom R at the moment- with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a confident walk that drove him right up to Raphael.

“You’ve got guts, Phantom R!” Were the first words out of his mouth, accusing tone so similar to that of the constables, and Raphael couldn’t interject with the witty remark he would’ve liked before the boy picked up the soccer ball and began to speak again.

“Trespassing in Constabulary HQ? I will apprehend you now, and prove my worth in the process.”

They were a solid few feet away from each other, and while the boy’s words amused him, he knew better than to underestimate an opponent. As logical as that sounded, however, he could hardly help throwing on something of a smirk.

“What’re you talking about? You don’t look like a constable to me.” And he really didn’t- the constables had their hats and blue uniforms, and this boy was dressed more stylishly, with a matching brown hat and coat- not to mention that Raphael was fairly sure constables had to be older than this. Granted, the boy didn’t seem far from Raphael’s age, but one didn’t exactly need to be a certain age to be a thief and dancer.

This seemed to be exactly the right thing to say for all the wrong reasons, because the boy scoffed and looked like Raphael had just told him the earth was flatter than a pancake.

“I would never be a constable!” And just a moment after, his expression was serious once more. “I am Charlie, Private eye. So, you come quietly, or do you require a penalty kick to the head?” The boy’s words- Charlie, Raphael would remember- were sharper now, and while he should have found it intimidating, Charlie’s words felt like a challenge. Phantom R’s eyes narrowed, and his response was deliberately delayed, gaze rising to meet Charlie’s eyes. Fondue only added to his effect, growling at the boy as if prepared for a fight.

“Is neither an option?”

Charlie’s response was almost as delayed, but with the full confidence from earlier.

“No! So I will choose for you!”

Charlie immediately rushed at him, soccer ball in on hand ready to be thrown, and Raphael found himself flipping through the air to avoid being tackled to the ground. His current rival reacted quickly though, and with seemingly no hesitance spun on his heel and flung the ball at Phantom R’s still flying form. Raphael couldn’t mask his surprise at his opponent’s  and it took instinct once more to twist his form out of the soccer ball’s way. That was when he grinned- this was going to be fun!

                        0                                           0                                           0                   

         The second time Raphael met Charlie, Private eye and always prepared, he did so with the knowledge that Charlie was Vergier’s son, and that bit of news couldn’t have made the second encounter more interesting if it tried. Then again, the next conversation also included a hang glider. It was all sorts of interesting already.

He’d just successfully acquired the Queen’s Pendant and escaped the constables through the roof of the Paris Opera house this time around. Gazing at the city below, he’d already begun a trademark grin- at least a little celebration of success was in order, wasn’t it?- when he heard a shout from above. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? He was already on the roof-

“I’ve been waiting for you, Phantom R!”

No- Raphael knew that voice! Both he and Fondue looked up, and he could hardly contain his surprise at the sight- high above and closing in fast on a hang glider was Charlie, who he now knew to be Charlie Vergier, son of the Inspector! The new news of his lineage might’ve been more of a shock upon seeing the boy again if it hadn’t been for the hang glider, really. The two hardly looked alike.

When Charlie jumped and flipped his way onto the ground, though, Phantom R pushed down any surprise or shock in favor of wit. That had seemed to work well so far, and he could hardly help a little sarcasm here and there. Still, Charlie won first words once more.

“With all the constables below,  I thought you might head for fresh air.”

His usual menacing look was in place, even with such an incredible view around them? Raphael could only feel slight pity, there. Some people just needed to stop and smell the roses once in a while, take a break! Those were just as important as catching famous art thieves. Actually, why dedicate so much time to catching art thieves if one didn’t stop to appreciate the art they were trying to save?

“And you had a hang glider ready? Are you always so well prepared?”

After the slightest pause, Phantom R just had to add a little more icing to the cake.

“On second thought, maybe you’re just obsessed with catching me, like your dad.”

The words had exactly the desired effect, with Charlie’s face taking on that same fiery expression from before, when Raphael had compared him to a constable.

“You leave my father out of this!”

But Raphael barely gave Charlie a chance to reply again, simply giving him another grin and tilt of his hat before speaking once more. I hate writers block

“Like to fly solo, eh? Too bad, because you’ll need an army to catch me!”

Charlie glowered at him, seemingly irritated by his arrogance. Was it really arrogance if it had already been proven often enough by the constabulary was the question, here. He was sure Fondue would agree.

“You won’t be talking so tough when you’re behind bars, mate.”

And with that, the battle begun once more.

                        0                                           0                                           0          

The third time Charlotte Vergier saw Phantom R, escape artist extraordinaire, was in a significantly more tame location and with significantly less robbery involved, though she almost spilled her tea. That would’ve been a disaster- she was wearing one of her few dresses, and she really did need those for off days and school days.

She’d had a terrible day already, actually. Failing to apprehend Phantom R the day before, at the Paris Opera, was already a blow to her pride. She’d been perfectly prepared, and he bested her yet again- and saved her right after, to boot! His arrogance would be his downfall someday, she was certain! After that, a fight with her father, and a half-day of storming through the streets of Paris until she reached the cafe.

Charlotte was about to take a sip from her tea, finally feeling relaxed, when a boy that seemed oddly familiar walked up to her table. He walked with an irritatingly recognizable confidence that, for some reason, did not remind her of anyone in particular. His face was partially hidden by a blue hat with a red stripe- again, familiar- and when he spoke it was familiar as well.

“Bonjour, Charlie. Is this seat taken?”

Charlie finally took that sip of tea, eyes still scanning him to figure out where she knew him from. It wasn’t until she focused on his face that she recognized him, and the shock threw her from her chair, knocking it back when she yelled.

“You! Y-Y-You’re Phantom R!”

Phantom R seemed delighted for just a moment by her revelation, before casually taking a seat as if nothing had happened. People had begun to stare, which prompted his ever present grin- she hated that thing!  One day he would be captured, and that pompous expression would disappear faster than he could say that line he always shouted to his dog- cheese it, Fondue, wasn’t it?

“Now, now- we wouldn’t want to disturb the other customers.”

Unfortunately, he had a point, and with a scowl she put down her tea to fix her chair. He spoke as she did so, chattering away like he had all the time in the world.

“I’m just as surprised as you are! I never thought that you’d look so good in a dress!”

Just like him to comment on the unimportant details. Charlotte nearly scoffed when she finally sat down.

“So, the truth’s out. This is how I look when I go to school.” With that, she gave him a piercing look.

“What do you want?”

Phantom R tilted his hat once more- why he felt the need to do so, she had no idea. It was as irritating as the rest of what he did.

“I’ve come to ask for your help.

                        0                                           0                                           0     

The fourth time Charlie Vergier saw Phantom R, she wished she could punch his lights out and be done with this entire mess. How an art thief had gotten himself involved in a plot involving resurrection and magic violins, she hadn’t the slightest of ideas. But still, she could grudgingly admit that currently, he was doing the right thing. Saving the blonde girl, Marie, and stopping whatever these… undead soldiers were doing was crucial to keeping Paris safe, and if she could help her father realize that he didn’t have to shoulder that burden alone while she was at it, then Charlie would tolerate the red-headed menace for now.

Charlie’s role in this plan was fairly simple- act as a distraction on her hang glider and activate the trick in the fake dragon crown remotely so Phantom R could get Marie out of the Eiffel tower and away from Napoleon. Which she was still trying to wrap her head around. Honestly, what was that Phantom even thinking?

The plan was going perfectly, too- Napoleon had fallen for the thief’s desperate act, demanding the crown be given before Marie was handed back to him. The moment the smoke screen went up, Charlie soared in- dressed as that dancing pest, so as to cause confusion, and exactly as planned, the undead emperor and his legion of clawed knights was looking up at her and lost sight of the real Phantom R. She continued to distract from above as R took down the knights below until he got to Marie, dragging her out of their hold and towards the planned exit point.

Of course, that was when things went wrong. The moment Charlie was out of sight- and by extension, unable to see what was happening- she heard a gunshot.

Making the u-turn in the air from where she was really was no easy task, and figuring out what angle she had to dive in at to get the Phantom out of whatever mess he’d landed in was something that she wished didn’t take her so much time. Along the way, she also discarded the Phony R suit- it would only get in the way if she kept it on.

And Charlie arrived just in time to grab his hand and pull him up into the air, away from the new man with the weirdly purple hair who had a gun pointed at his head, where R had stood ready to protect Marie anyways-

Ugh, that insufferably noble Phantom R was going to be the death of her.

[mst3kproject]

Warning from Space

Has a good movie ever had a title that ended in 'From Space'?  Killers from Space, Phantom from Space, Invaders from Space... I'm having a hard time thinking of one.  If such a movie exists, Warning from Space certainly isn't it.  It was made by Daiei, the same company that would give us the Gamera franchise, and is easily as bizarre as anything Gamera himself would later have to offer.  Unfortunately, it's also as boring and confusing as anything in Invasion of the Neptune Men, which is sad, because it's got some of the most ridiculous-looking aliens I've ever seen.

A bunch of cosplayers who left their Staryu costumes until the last minute... sorry, excuse me, I mean a group of starfish-like aliens have decided that the Earthlings Must Be Stopped.  They try to make contact with us, but they're so hilarious nobody can stop la... I mean, so terrifying nobody will stick around to hear their message. This calls for desperate measures, so alien Number Two assumes human form in order to meet with Professor Komura, a well-known astronomer and the person the aliens have chosen as their liason. Unfortunately, the human form she chooses happens to be that of a famous dancer!  Hijinks ensue, with a great deal of dawdling around before we finally get to the damned point – and then a great deal more dawdling after.

Man, you should see those aliens.  They're the only reason to watch the movie, and the only thing in it that'll make you smile rather than yawn or roll your eyes.  The aliens are people in giant cloth starfish suits stretched over wooden frames, with a big light-up eye in the middle.  When they want to walk, which is not often, they rock from one completely stiff leg to another.  They have no appendages that might manipulate machinery.  They don't even have any depth perception!  The humans who see them pop out of the waters of Tokyo Bay immediately scream and flee, which I can only chalk up to the fact that it was 1956 and they couldn't yet reach for a Pokeball.

When we do eventually get around to why these ludicrous things decided to pay us a visit, it turns out to be because Planet R, a rogue world from another galaxy, is about to crash into the Earth.  This will unfortunately make life impossible on the aliens' home of Paira, too, so they want us to use our entire stockpile of nuclear weapons to change R's orbit so it'll pass through the solar system without causing any harm.  In a Godzilla movie this would all be a ruse, leaving the Earth defenseless so the Pairans can take over, but sadly this isn't a Godzilla movie, so instead the second half of the movie turns on whether the scientists can convince the World Congress to get their thumbs out of their asses.  Why didn't Number Two just go to the WC in the first place?

Why didn't the aliens just do this other thing? is the main question that comes out of watching Warning from Space. Nothing they do makes any sense.  The first forty-five minutes of the movie is spent making the audience fear an impending invasion or at least a The Day the Earth Stood Still sort of scenario where the aliens think they've got to destroy us for the good of everybody else.  Then we get the 'twist', and just like in This Island Earth, it makes everything we've seen up until now seem ridiculous.  If the Pairans wanted to contact scientists, why did they spend so much time bubbling ominously up out of lakes to scare random drunks and fishermen?  If nukes are what they need, why go to Japan of all places?

If Number Two is supposed to talk to Professor Komura about the impending disaster, why does she pretend to have amnesia instead of just doing so?  This might make some sense if she were a spy, trying to blend into human society without having to know everything about it... but if she's here to deliver a message, it seems like she's just wasting time while the clock ticks down to doomsday.  If she took human form in order to avoid scaring people, why does she go out of her way to scare them by doing things like walking through walls right in front of them?  It seems like she wanted them to conclude for themselves that she was an alien, because they wouldn't believe her if she told them.  Why couldn't she just prove it by demonstrating her powers in a less frightening way?

And the biggest question, why did the aliens bother with us at all? They're so far advanced beyond us that they've had a satellite watching Earth for four thousand years!  Number Two explains that they've eschewed war, so they have no nuclear missiles of their own, yet after all of Earth's attempts fail they manage to build one pretty darn quick.  Supposedly they need Dr. Matsuda's formula for the super-explosive, but Number Two recognized that formula when she saw it in his notes earlier.  The Pairans clearly know it, even if they've never used it, so why do they have to get it from us? Seems to me they could have saved the day without ever having to say two words to us.

The movie seems like it's probably trying to say something about war or tampering in God's domain or something, but I have no idea what it is.  One would expect that Japan, out of all the countries in the world, would fly the No Nukes flag high and proud, but Warning from Space honestly seems to be trying to tell us that massive stockpiles of superweapons are necessary in case of emergencies!  The people of Paira supposedly have no weapons, nor even the know-how to make them, so they have to go to their barbaric next door neighbours for help fending off an unexpected threat.  All the nukes on Earth were not enough to put off the approach of Planet R, so we needed Dr. Matsuda's super-explosive.  If we were a peaceful and enlightened race like the Pairans, both planets would have been screwed.  If this is an anti-nuke movie, it actually manages to be even worse at it than Superman IV: the Quest for Peace, and that is frankly mind-boggling.

Rather than our violence, the human propensity that comes nearest to being our downfall in Warning from Space is our greed.  At the moment when his formula is needed, Dr. Matsuda isn't around to provide it because he's been kidnapped by mobsters who want to sell the super-explosive to the highest bidder!  He refuses to tell them, and ends up being abandoned in a ruined building tied to a chair, where the movie tells us he is stranded for a month. How did he survive?  Maybe what we're supposed to glean from all this is that superweapons are a good thing as long as they're in the right hands.  But whose hands are those?  Who owns the nukes is not delved into in this movie, and it seems the World Congress has the power to commandeer them from all the nuclear-armed countries on Earth.  There's no mention of anybody refusing to comply with the WC's decision... although I guess the impending end of mankind would be a pretty compelling argument.

My biggest complaint about Warning From Space, however, is the amount of time it simply wastes.  It's almost ninety minutes long and very little of that actually seems to have anything happening in it.  We see astronomers peering through telescopes, trying to figure out what mysterious object is orbiting the Earth, but they never seem to learn anything helpful.  We see Pairans scaring the bejeezus out of people, but nothing comes of that either.  We meet the dancer whose body Number Two copied, but she serves no plot purpose whatsoever.  Number Two arrives on Earth and then hangs around doing nothing for several days before finally delivering her message.  As Planet R approaches, everybody sits in fallout shelters complaining about the heat and more nothing happens until finally the Pairan Cavalry arrives and the movie's over.

This is doubly disappointing because the first few minutes, which introduce us to the ridiculous five-pointed aliens, make it look like this is going to be a really goofy and fun alien invasion movie.  Then, however, we meet the human characters and slowly realize that this is actually supposed to be serious science fiction about serious people trying to prevent a serious problem. That could be a perfectly good movie but it doesn't seem to jibe with the silliness of the aliens and their jump-out-and-say-boo approach to saying hello.  When the movie tries for suspense, it just wastes more of our time, and it never bothers to try for action.  Not only is it worse at being anti-nuke than Superman IV, it's worse at being an asteroid impact movie than Armageddon, which goes past mind-boggling and becomes fucking tragic.

The end of the movie is really kind of depressing, too.  As Planet R approached, the Earth heated up to the point where birds and dogs were dropping dead in the street and all the humans had to retreat underground.  Once R is destroyed, everybody comes out again, and this is presented as a happy ending.  How is that happy?  Earth is a scorched world where only burrowing animals appear to have survived! And the Pairans?  They just go home, having gotten what they needed from us.  They only cared about us in the first place because the debris from the destroyed Earth would have hit their planet in turn. Now that's not going to happen, they just leave us to starve.  Aliens are dicks.