#But he spent like centuries MURDERING AND RECREATING HIM AGAIN AND AGAIN

[icefire149]

The destiel vs huntlow poll is so funny since I'm an avid shipper of both. It's massive brain worms vs massive brain worms. I need my fellow spn fans to understand its a fun match up.

[voxaholic]

More Details About Heaven

Decide to compile a bit of misc worldbuilding info and relevant character information for The Heaven Ending of @randomly--accessed--memories

Heaven as Vox Enters It:

Over the century Vox spent with Velvette, Heaven has undergone a lot of changes and is now a much more authentic and less corrupt place. It’s as perfect as a place can get while still allowing both winners and heaven-born to have free will.

Ex-sinners are more or less fully integrated into Heaven society. There are still people that aren’t exactly comfortable with the fact that ex-sinners are here but they’re in the minority and most of them have semi-reasonable concerns.

There have been efforts to address the genuine safety concerns people may have about letting sinners into Heaven. Family of ex-sinners are immediately notified upon their relative’s ascension, so they can either meet up at the intake center or make arrangements to ensure that they never run into said relative. 

If the sinner one wants to avoid isn’t a relative, the winner can send in a request that said sinner be kept away from them in the event they do ascend.

Alcohol and certain other recreational substances still exist in Heaven but they are free of the risks/negative physiological impact that are associated with such substances on Earth and Hell. There’s a bit of a stigma around indulging in such among heaven-born specifically because bringing such substances to Heaven was a controversial decision born of winner’s desire that the seraphim reluctantly gave into.

A slim majority of ex-sinners manage to fully integrate into Heaven’s society, but there are a not insignificant amount who have more trouble.

As a result, pocket communities of ex-sinners who feel more comfortable interacting with other ex-sinners have popped up all over Heaven. In these communities going by your sinner name is almost expected as in much of Heaven an ex-sinner is expected to start going by their “real” name again, which can be hard for some to adjust to.

The small bar Vox frequents is one of those communities. Vox gets a lot of weird looks at first by choosing to go by “Vaughn” which is obviously his real name, but people quickly get used to it.

He frequents the bar for like a few years before he actually manages to become fully integrated into the small friend group his failed hookup adopted him into.

Three ex-sinners make up that group.

Sinner Name: Pyrite 

Real Name: August Murphy

Gender: Male

Age of Death: 23

How’d They Die: Murder

Why Was He In Hell?: He grew up wealthy and generally threw his money around and paid his way out of many sticky situations. He was more passively awful than anything, just someone who coasted through life taking advantage of the privilege he’d been born into.

A vaguely reptilian, dragon-like winner with golden scales and bright green eyes. Pyrite’s a one-night-stand turned casual drinking buddy. He’s charming, extroverted, and prone to oversharing. He’s just pushy enough to get past Vox’s initial refusal to ever acknowledge any of his one-night-stands outside of their one night together and reaches the status of casual acquaintance probably as fast as it’s possible to with Vox.

Comes off as kind of ditzy but is a lot smarter than he lets on. He was in college for pre-law when he died and was doing unfairly well for someone who spent most of his freetime partying and sleeping around. Ascended pretty soon after Valentino’s death, so he’s been in Heaven awhile. He’s one of the first to suspect Vox’s true identity but doesn’t really care aside from being curious about how exactly he ended up in Heaven. 

He’s the main driver of Vox’s integration into the friend group. They have a decent amount in common and Pyrite’s good at reading people and to him— Vox seemed lost and lonely. He also felt bad about accidentally triggering him during their ill-fated attempted hookup.

Sinner Name: Birdie 

Real Name: Robin Carmichael 

Gender: Male

Age of Death: 35

How’d They Die: Suicide by hanging

Why Was He In Hell?: His estranged abusive father showed up at his door one day begging for forgiveness and he beat him to death with his bare hands.

A mild-mannered and self-efacing bluebird winner. Birdie also started as a one-night-stand. He ended up staying in Vox’s orbit because he was friends with Pyrite, so when Pyrite started trying to befriend Vox, Birdie was sort of along for the ride.

He had an extremely troubled childhood and young adulthood (which he’s pretty tight lipped about) but with the help of a man who would become a father figure to him was able to turn his life around and was on track to probably getting into Heaven until the day his father showed up on his doorstep.

He was a third grade teacher while alive and has kept a lot of the mannerisms that come with that. He’s the type of selfless that’s born from severely low self-esteem and generally allows himself to be walked all over. He’s got a surprisingly wry and pretty dark sense of humor that he occasionally lets slip when people least expect it. 

He’s the one who starts organizing get-togethers outside of the bar. It’s very “elementary school field trip energy” but it’s good for everyone to hang out in places that aren’t bars.

Sinner Name: Stratus

Real Name: Lacey Anne Mullen

Gender: Female

Age of Death: 41

How’d They Die?: Skydiving accident

Why Was She In Hell?: Child abandonment, infidelity, being a pathological kkm liar, and a consistent pattern of running away from any and all responsibility

A human-like winner with hair like clouds. They change shape and color according to her mood. She’s a tall and curvy woman with medium toned skin and a penchant for bright colors and eccentric outfits.

She’s the one Vox takes the longest to warm up to because for the longest time, he’s convinced she’s fucking with him. She still lies, a lot, but mostly about harmless things that don’t negatively impact anyone but to Vox it felt too similar to how Alastor would sometimes purposefully feed him false information just to mess with him. Eventually he realizes that it’s not something she’s doing out of malice.

Eventually they’re able to bond over the extremely awkward process of reconnecting with your adult children in Heaven when you were a shitty parent (or not there at all in her case.)

She also feels like she hasn’t changed enough to really deserve Heaven. She went through all the motions but it never really felt like she became any better internally.

[heliads]

So, Before You Go Chapter One: First Call to Arms

Hellas is gone; so too is your life as a cartographer. You and the Darkling must quell Alina Starkov’s attempt at an uprising in order to protect the Grisha of Ravka. However, your gods are not as dead as they seem, and that which you have taken for granted will soon prove to be quite unpredictable indeed.

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Once, a very long time ago, a girl named Psyche wielded beauty as her power. Envious, the gods foretold that she would be exiled with a monster as her husband. Psyche feared the monster, but soon she realized that he was not the demon others claimed. Still, as he only visited at night when the shadows hid him from her, she was tormented by the idea that he truly was horrific. One night, Psyche spied upon his face as he lay sleeping. She broke his trust, and they were separated until Psyche could prove that she did love him, and wanted no shelter but him until the end.

You wake slowly, painfully, aware of what could have been a dream slipping away from you. For several minutes, you cannot entirely tell if you are still asleep or awake. The air is warm, a breeze blows lazy circles of air across your face. Tell me, child, when was the last time you felt enough peace to trust it was not an illusion?

Someone shifts by your side, and one glimpse of your lover’s face is all you need to know that this is no dream. For all your nightmare’s best attempts, they cannot perfectly replicate his image. Perhaps it is because he is not of their kind, the man you love, but a monster of his own creation. Your people and your spells can only do so much. They cannot fully recreate something of the Small Science, something like him. You would know. Absence made you try.

Aleksander opens his eyes slowly, dark pupils scanning the room until they land on you. Every time he wakes, you can see him start to tense until he sees you again. That is what you get for running so many times, you suppose, it makes him too knowledgeable of how easy it is to lose you.

You were never able to stay away forever, though. The longest the two of you were apart was centuries, and although those cut like a poisoned blade, they ended. You made your way to the Little Palace under the guise of Y/N Stassov, First Army cartographer and good friend of Alina Starkov, and from there on out, you were under his watch again.

In all honesty, some part of you had known from the moment your paths crossed the second time that you would not be able to leave him again without revealing yourself. Sure, your face had changed since you were the Hecari he knew in the past, but he was Aleksander and you were Y/N and you would never allow anything to part you for long. He had made mistakes, and you had tricked yourself into thinking that anyone with as many centuries under your belts as either of you could be perfectly blameless, but you were still the same couple you had always been.

In the end, the result is plain. You showed your hand and the two of you reconciled. Sure, part of that may have had to do with Alina Starkov attempting to murder you whereas Aleksander saved your life, but sometimes love needs a slight bit of motivation to pick up the pace.

The two of you are on much more solid footing now, though. If anything, you will always be united in your wrath, your protective spirit. Aleksander watches out for his Grisha, his people, and you mourn your Hellenids, your kin who have already slipped beneath the sands of time. There is no one like the two of you, and there never will be. Alina can try, but she is young, foolish, full of hopes that have yet to die. Only you and Aleksander understand how time dulls any blade. Only you and Aleksander will ever be able to complete each other.

That does not stop this whole situation from feeling somewhat impossible. You spent centuries running from him, after all, and suddenly waking up in the morning to find him sleeping next to you feels unusual. Good, but unusual. It’s what you’ve secretly been missing since the very moment you left him, but still something you never thought you would experience again.

This change in your day-to-day life could explain why you woke up so disoriented, but in truth, you fear that it might be more than that. It has been getting more difficult to tell what is real and what is fiction. Reality blends into myth into memory. What happens here and now is only a slim shade of an idea when compared to the vastness of past experience, both yours and that of your people, the Hellenids.

You had assumed that the whispering of your ghosts would trickle off into ash and nothingness when the Shadow Fold engulfed you whole, but no. If anything, it just made it worse. You were hesitating on the banks of the River Styx, so close to crossing over into the Underworld, and then Aleksander pulled you back from death and kept you there. You cannot tread that closely to your end without bringing a little part of it back with you.

You are not the only changed one. Aleksander, too, is not the same man as he was when he set out on that sandskiff. As you look at him now, you watch the early light of dawn play on the dark slices in his face, the scars from his time in the Shadow Fold after Alina Starkov abandoned both of you to die.

It had taken every ounce of your combined abilities to make it out, but both of you are changed forever now. You cannot go a moment of your day without hearing the whispering of your ancestors increased tenfold. Aleksander used merzost and is haunted by shadowy demons of his own creation.

You both had dark, deep wounds when you emerged from the Unsea, but when yours disappeared after your natural healing had run its course, Aleksander’s injuries stayed the same. You can sense how they hurt him constantly, even as he tries to hide the full extent of it from you in an attempt to maintain strength. You know him well enough to both guess that he would try to put on a brave face, and can read his body language enough to recognize the stiff movements for what they hide.

His physical appearance matters not to you. He is still yours, the man you loved centuries ago and the one you do now. If the shadows that usually billow inside of him have now decided to carve out a more visible place for themselves, so be it. You only wish that he would not have to suffer so in the process.

That is why the two of you have been scouring the Ravkan countryside in search of Grisha. The practitioners of the Small Science have been left in upheaval after the ill-fated attempt to take back control from the Lantsov king. There are few things in life you despise more than a failing, useless, greedy monarch, and not a day goes by in which you regret that the otkazat’sya fool was not already dead.

He does, however, provide you with a good opportunity to build your ranks again as the elder Lantsov son cracks down on Grisha. You and Aleksander launch venture after venture to save Heartrenders and Healers, Summoners and Durasts and everyone you can find. They’re all terribly grateful to not be dead, which only gives you more allies in this fight.

Of course this will end in a fight, how could it not? You have seen plots like this play out before. Every story runs the same course, even if the players themselves do not realize it until the end. To build a war, you must have soldiers who will die for you. Aleksander will sacrifice himself to save you, but he is one man. You want hundreds.

Until then, you have moments like this, slow glimpses of what could be a far more peaceful future if this all plays out the way you wish it. For now, you are alone with the man you love, and for this brief instance, there is nothing in this world that can bring you down.

Aleksander leans up slowly, carefully, disguising his slow hiss of pain with a question directed to you. “Did you sleep well?”

The question isn’t just a pleasant nothingness. You’ve been having nightmares as of late, snippets of what could either be memories or prophecy. If this keeps up, your mind will start to shatter. You can only hope that you’ll be able to stop that before it happens. Madness and witches do not well mix.

You sigh. “As well as could be expected. I’m still on edge from yesterday.”

Yesterday had almost gone quite badly. A group of two dozen or so Grisha had been chained in a long line and forced into the Shadow Fold at gunpoint by cowardly First Army soldiers. By the time you and Aleksander had gotten wind of what had happened, the volcra had arrived at the scene as well. 

You had fought them off, but such close proximity to the beasts had made you uneasy. Everything reminds you of what it had been like in the Shadow Fold when Alina’s light had left the two of you, how the darkness had come swooping in and left you bloody.

Aleksander had called for you to leave them, but you had insisted on saving who you could. You were jittery for the rest of the day, he could tell, but you had sworn you were fine. Perhaps he can see through you a little too well just like you with him.

Aleksander arches a brow now, likely thinking along the same lines. “So will you listen to me next time, my love? Will you let them go when it hurts you, or at least try not to disguise it from me?”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” you say as innocently as you can, “I will stop disguising my torments from you when you stop trying to pretend that those scars don’t hurt as much as they do.”

Aleksander smiles even as a fresh bout of pain turns the expression into a wince. “You drive a difficult bargain.”

“I’m known for being difficult,” you grin.

“Perhaps,” he admits, “but I like that best about you.”

It is easy, on mornings like this, to pretend that all might be well, that the two of you are not fighting a war that could be lost over something as simple as one Sun Summoner somewhere you cannot find. You have no idea if Alina Starkov has even survived, but if she did, you hope that for all the peace you wish to find with Aleksander, she will have none of it with Mal.

You and Aleksander leave your temporary shelter some time later that morning, leaving no trace that you’d been there except shadows in the corners of the rooms that fester slightly more than before. You’d heard rumors that the First Army outpost here was planning on making an example of some more Grisha near the boundary of the Shadow Fold, so that is where the two of you will be stopping first.

As dusk settles upon the area, you and Aleksander arrive upon the scene, lingering back so as not to draw unwanted attention. The two of you are technically still believed to be dead, although you doubt any smattering of soldiers could actually do so much as harm a hair on your heads. You keep your hoods up anyway. It would not do to be revealed now, not before your plan can fully come to fruition.

You narrow your eyes, straining to pick out the details in the dark night. The soldiers have put Grisha in cages, their hands bound so as to not use their abilities. The sight makes your stomach turn. Those blessed with magic should not have to die just because others are jealous of their power.

As your gaze roves from face to face, you see only weariness, fear, desolation. Aleksander had built a marvel of a world at the Little Palace, a place where all the Grisha could practice their gifts in safety. Alina claims she wants to make a better world for the Grisha, but look what she’s done. She ruined the best thing Ravkan Grisha had at peace.

You’ve almost finished scouring the captive Grisha when you notice one particular face stand out amongst the rest. It’s one you recognize, actually. It’s one you’ve been hoping to find for a while, both you and Aleksander.

You suck in a breath. “That’s– That’s Genya.”

Aleksander’s eyes harden. “It is.”

One stray glance his way and you already can guess at what he’s thinking. “We need to get her. Even if it costs us the rest. Genya can find David for us.”

Aleksander inclines his head once. “And David can fix me.”

You make a tsking sound in the back of your throat. “Men fix toys, not gods.”

He looks amused at that. “We are not gods, Y/N.”

“No,” you decide, “but we are the closest anyone will ever get to seeing them.”

Aleksander laughs, evidently pleased. “I missed your ferocity, my little soldier.”

You look at him askance. “You made me a member of your personal guard within two days of meeting me again, even before you knew it was me. I don’t know why you’re acting like this is the first time you’ve seen my ferocity in a while.”

You can just see the shadow of his smile under his hood. “And yet I still didn’t see enough of it. You left, as you might recall.”

“Yes,” you admit in a whisper, “but I came back.”

He takes your hand, interlacing your fingers with his. “I know. You always do.”

It is a statement spoken in complete calm, no trace of malice or accusation. In your eyes, it is the final proof that he has forgiven you, just as you have in turn forgiven him. Like calls to like. The two of you were never meant to be separate for long. 

Aleksander turns his gaze towards the captive Grisha once more. The First Army soldiers are watching the Shadow Fold rumble ever closer, and you can feel the terror of the Grisha prick upon your skin like needles.

“Shall we deliver them from harm, then? Shall we take back what is ours?” He asks.

You nod once. This is it, then. From this point forward, there is no going back. Everything in the past was temporary, a step in the right direction without making enough of a scene to commit to your cause. When you save these Grisha, you’ll have enough to start making real changes, to find the people you truly need and hunt down those who have betrayed you. The war will be reborn.

.Aleksander raises his arms in time with yours. Shadow monsters of merzost stalk out of the Shadow Fold, sending the First Army fleeing. Those that run are only met with spells of your creation, which pierce through their hearts like daggers. In her cage, Genya Safin fearfully raises her head, expression changing from immediate terror to slow, dense horror. She knows what the dying soldiers do not:  this is only the beginning.

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[itsclydebitches]

Two questions about Sandman, from a comic-only reader: (1) Does the show keep the little visual/audial joke of the background conversations in Dream and Hob’s first and last arranged meetings being identical? (2) Have you seen the fan-made short film version of 24 Hours? It can be found through the Sandman Wikipedia page.

If they recreated that I missed it. Though their initial scene has many of these lines spoken almost word-for-word across the inn, their reunion just has the soundtrack and the general murmur of people nearby. It definitely makes for an emotional ending to the episode, but I do like the idea of, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

For anyone wondering:

"--Third poll tax in three years. What else could we have done?" / "Thatcher's bloody poll tax. There's going to be a revolution if they try to push it through..."

"All I'm saying is when Ball and Tyler were killed, the spirit of the working man died with them." / "I see the labour movement died with the minor's strike..."

"Penny ale and cold bacon. Penny ale and cold bacon. I would have good hot meat and French wine." / "...make more on the Dole than they would from an honest day's work..."

"--War, plague, and two bloody popes, fighting like weasels in heat. The end of the world is soon, you mark me." / "...of course AIDS isn't God's way of punishing people, Darren. Don't be a pillock / "...All the signs are there, in the Bible. It'll be the end of the world very soon..."

"...murder, nor rape, we need a return to law and to order. The king should act against these bandits." / "...No respect for law and order..."

"...up her dress, and she says, 'Are you hunting for rabbits again, friar?'"/ "...up her dress, and she says, 'Are you hunting for rabbits again, vicar?'"

They tweaked the timeline too so that "The Sound of Her Wings" could take place in one half of the episode and Morpheus reuniting with Hob in the second half (most of which is taken up by their flashbacks). If I've got my comic dates correct, they last met in 1889 (the fight), then Morpheus is captured in 1916, and he escapes 1988, giving him a year to recuperate before meeting with Hob as scheduled because, you know, being captured and the consequences of that have gone a long way towards helping him admit to this friendship. That's why Hob just says, "I wasn't sure you'd be coming." In the adaptation though, Morpheus misses their meeting due to his imprisonment because in this version he's been confined for "over a century" and Hob commiserates with a bartender about how he was an idiot last time they met and probably ruined things. The bartender informs him that the pub is being torn down to make space for apartments and, in 2022 after spending the day with Death, Morpheus returns there to find the place in shambles. Some spray paint points him to The New Inn though and there he finds Hob whose line has been changed to, "You're late."

Though the adaptation is definitely more wishy-washy in terms of dates, this version is waaaay better for ship potential imo. Because 1. Delicious angst in which Hob thinks he's been given proof that their friendship is over and 2. He apparently spent fucking YEARS just sitting around this place hoping that Morpheus would show up?? I mean, TV logic aside, how much time does he have to spend there for Morpheus to find him on the one day he wandered in? Hob never gave up hope, God bless 🥺 Seriously though, some of my favorite Hob/Morpheus fics (and by that I mean like 3 of the 25 that exist lol) run with the idea of Morpheus missing their meeting due to his capture and Hob setting out to try and find him, convinced that something must have happened, rather than that he's actually been ditched. Now we've got a version of Sandman where Hob might have looked for him without anything in the canon directly contradicting that, which is just, [chef's kiss].

Anyway, I haven't seen the fanmade film, but I intend to now! I fell out of Sandman for a long stretch and when news of the adaptation reignited my interest, I found that a ton of stuff had been published since I last picked the series up. I'm also hoping to get hold of the current Corinthian run and the two Dreaming volumes that are out sooner rather than later.

[sketching-shark]

I like Macaque as a character because im a sucker for edgy bastards but sometimes i feel like the fandom does 90% of the lifting and forgets whats canon and whats fanon.

And the LMK crew feels like they wanted to do the classic sonic-shadow rivality without realizing what made the rivalty/shadow a good character

aaaaaaa yeah @hoshihime98 edgy basturds can be neat! And in all honesty I feel like Macaque's character could go in some really cool directions but as is I really wish there was more acknowledgment of Journey to the West in people's fandom stuff with the lego show version of the Six Eared Macaque because it makes his whole deal extremely funny in a pathetic & tragic way. Like dude it seems that you've spent centuries ruining your life & trying to ruin the lives of everyone even slightly connected to Sun Wukong because the monkey you tried to murder-replace doesn't want to be your friend.

Also I don't know that much about speedy hedgehog lore so I feel I can't comment too much on what defines the Sonic-Shadow Rivalry or say that much about what makes Shadow a good character...so correct me if I'm wrong, but Shadow's whole thing is that he starts off with a hatred of humanity and a massive sense of violent pride in himself as "The Ultimate Life Form," but then he starts interacting with the world he once only sneered at and recalling memories of a human who literally gave up everything to save his life, and from then on he's still standoffish & prideful but does become willing and even happy to live in the world of what he once considered "lesser" beings, yes?

But tbh if that's the case I feel like that's almost the exact opposite of Macaque's whole deal. As I've said before, the thing that makes Macaque potentially so interesting and tragic in a pretty scary way is that his entire existence--which in JTTW is about the monkey king having to confront the the worst aspects of himself and overcome them--isn't really about him, but only ever about Sun Wukong. Heck, even in the 90% of the lifting for this character that you mention that often gives him super angsty backstories to explain his atrocious behavior a lot of the ones I've encountered don't really seem to be interested in him a unique individual, but mainly about what his relationship to the monkey king was like & how it shaped him & what it could be in this au or the other. In other words, even now and even in fandom he's basically not an independent entity, but only ever a monkey who's very identity is fundamentally tied to the monkey king. And this is for me the potentially most frightening and fascinating thing about the Six Eared Macaque; that in so completely tying his identity to that of Sun Wukong's--especially with the JTTW background of him literally fighting to BE Sun Wukong--he was left with functionally no independent identity of his own. So tbh even if the monkie crew wanted to recreate a Sonic & Shadow rivalry I personally feel like what we have is the somewhat humorously tragic case of a violently obsessed Macaque & a Sun Wukong who doesn't really care unless the shadow simian is deliberately going after people the monkey king loves.

As such, I am once again asking the fandom & the crew to acknowledge & work with this more unique relationship rather than drive their dynamic more into ye olde cliche of "wah you were my friend but then you weren't & now I'm going to be horrifically awful to everyone you care about until a bigger bad comes along & beats me up so that the plot can decide we have an excuse to instantly reconcile & so I can immediately become part of team good guy & we can be fwiends :3"

[therenlover]

How The Evans (+ Quicksilver) Would React To Yoplait’s New Gushers Yogurt

a/n: I don’t honestly know how I came up with this. I guess I just really liked the yogurt I bought (I have big Gilear Faeth vibes rn) and decided I wanted to share it with all the Evans and you guys. I hope you enjoy and, like, maybe go buy some if you’re intrigued.

Warnings: Mild language, very small non-graphic mention of murder, recreational drug usage (Tate is a stoner, sue me)

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Tate Langdon

Because he died as a teen in the early 90′s, Tate would be a big fan of the types of crazy, super processed and flashy snacks that came out of that era.

Tate pretty much lived on 3D Doritos and Crystal Pepsi before his death. He still misses Dunkaroos.

He also has the biggest appetite of any ghost in the house because when he smokes he gets phantom munchies, so he sneaks into the kitchen and steals snacks to fulfill his cravings.

His first encounter with gushers yogurt would be on a snack run for the two of you while you were both zooted to high hell. 

He would return almost entirely snackless, fully fixated on the little yellow cup in his hand. 

“What the hell is this?” “Uh, yogurt?” “No, it’s not just yogurt, it’s weird!”

You’d finally look up from your place on the bed to find Tate in the doorway, red eyed, giving the yogurt cup a thousand yard stare.

Tate would be extremely confused because as far as he knew gushers were filled fruit snacks and definitely did NOT belong inside yogurt.

“Does it have gushers in it or something? Because that sounds awful,” “Kind of? It’s like... well, it would be easier to show you than to explain it. Did you bring a spoon?”

Of course he hadn’t.

When he did return with a spoon the two of you shared it.

Unsurprisingly, Tate didn’t hate it. It was a little weird, but overall it reminded him of the rare good times he had when he was still alive and the house hadn’t fully sunk it’s claws into him yet.

His favorite flavor is green apple. It just matches his vibe. 

Kit Walker

Kit is a man with pretty old fashioned values. He’s the kind of person who believes that he should be able to provide for his family so you don’t have to work. He also thinks it’s important for you to spend time with the kids because he’s gone at work so much.

This whole situation combined with the fact that money was a little tight led to you taking Thomas and Julia with you whenever you had to run errands and they weren’t at school.

One such time you were grocery shopping. That’s when they found the gushers yogurt.

 Kids have an eye for sweet things. Any food labelled like a dessert will make them go crazy, even if it’s just a flavored yogurt. 

In the end you bought a few. They were cheap enough that they didn’t make a huge difference to your budget and they were perfect to go in the kids lunches. 

Only the next morning did you realize that when you got the kids their yogurts you forgot to get Kit his own plain ones to put in his lunch. You mulled over your options and, in the end, decided to give Kit one of the gushers ones in his lunch pail for work. it’s just flavored yogurt, what could go wrong?

A lot, apparently.

At around lunch time you got a call from Kit at the shop.

“Mrs. Walka’, I believe I might have picked up the wrong lunch today,”

You’d immediately ask him what was wrong before remembering the yogurt.

“Nope, that’s yours Kit,” “Sweetheart, you’re killing me,” “Did I forget a spoon?”

Kit would explain, after some laughter, that the guys at the auto shop were giving him shit about the ‘kids yogurt’ in his lunch.

If you tried to apologize he’d stop you. It was all the same to him, he just wanted to make sure he hadn’t taken one of the kid’s lunches accidentally.

You’d laugh about it later as a bright spot in what ended up to be a long and tedious day for the both of you.

Besides that one occasion Kit wouldn’t eat gushers yogurt often, but sometimes if he was home during breakfast he’d have a cup of it with his cereal or toast.

He’s a fan of the classics, so his favorite flavor is tropical punch.

Kyle Spencer

Before his death, Kyle wouldn’t have any strong feelings towards gushers yogurt besides liking that it was a cheap snack that went on sale a lot.

As a broke college student with a calcium deficiency, he would appreciate it for what it was, a sweet means to an end.

After his death, though, it would be a different story.

Franken-Kyle had to re-learn all of his basic life skills from the ground up after the accident, which meant chewing food and not choking weren’t things he knew how to do automatically

In the time while he still couldn’t eat by himself, you fed him a lot of yogurt.

Most of the time it was cheaper and more pleasant that the baby food or health puree alternatives. It also was a food he had eaten pretty regularly when he was alive, so you thought it might make him happy to have some sense of normalcy in his new world.

He enjoyed the gushers yogurt particularly for a few reasons.

For one, it had fun colors! The bright reds, blues, and greens were entertaining and more mentally stimulating than the normal neutral colors of his food. It was also sweet, kind of like a dessert instead of a meal.

The big selling point, though, was the popping bubbles inside.

For a while after his death all Kyle ate were smooth semi-liquid foods he couldn’t possibly choke on while he re-learned how to feed himself. Gushers yogurt, though, had little popping bubbles that added texture while also not being large enough to choke on.

It was a win-win for both of you.

Even once Kyle had regained his ability to chew and eat normally, he still liked to have gushers yogurt with his breakfast.

“Bu...bbles,” “Huh?” “I want....bubbles” “Oh! You want the yogurt with the bubbles, Ky? I’ll get it in a second,” 

He wouldn’t have the words to express it, but the real reason Kyle likes gushers yogurt and continues to eat it is that it reminds him of you and the time you spent together while you taught him how to live again. 

His favorite is blue raspberry by a large margin. He enjoys tropical punch too, but he dislikes green apple.

Jimmy Darling

Jimmy has very few opinions when it comes to food. To him, eating is just something he has to do to keep himself alive and performing, so he doesn’t put much thought into what and when he eats, even at the diner.

When you first met him, he was barely eating one good meal a day just because he was so busy. 

So, one of the things you started to do when you and Jimmy got closer was bring him little snacks throughout the day he could eat quickly to keep him going.

They weren’t huge things, just an apple here and a sandwich there, but Jimmy really appreciated you putting in the effort to search him out and keep him healthy.

 The gushers yogurt would be introduced, once again, because it’s super inexpensive. 

You were out shopping for Jimmy’s snacks when you found it on sale, 20 for $10. It was a great deal, and Jimmy’s diet was severely lacking in calcium, so you bought a bunch of different flavors and brought one to him as a trial-run the next day after a performance.

“Hey dollface, you got something for me?” “I just might,” 

Only after he swept you up into a crushing hug would you be able to offer him the yogurt, which he’d take gratefully and eat in less than a minute. 

You took this as a good sign, and ended up buying some for Jimmy whenever it was on sale.

He asked you about why you bought them once and you genuinely couldn’t give him an answer. You just thought they were an easy snack and found they were on sale a lot more often than other things were.

Jimmy doesn’t have a favorite flavor, but if you asked him he’d just respond with whatever your favorite was.

James Patrick March

James Patrick March doesn’t usually have strong feelings about trivial things. As a serial killer and a ghost, small strange details of life in the 21st century just aren’t important enough for him to care about. Even modern foods with all of their artificial dyes and preservatives don’t tend to bother him. Well, all except one...

He fully believes that gushers yogurt is the worst, most evil thing that man has ever created in history, including himself.

It is entirely irrational how much he hates it.

The weirdest part is that he doesn’t mind how it tastes, he just has a random grudge against it by principle.

The first time he saw it was after Liz picked some up for you while she was out getting some groceries for the hotel.

James had come into the habit of asking you to make him grocery lists so the hotel had foods you enjoyed ever since the hoover stew incident. This time you had asked for something sweet you could eat as a snack between meals. Liz ended up picking out the gushers yogurts along with a few other little snacks

When you ran down to the kitchen to help Liz and Iris put the groceries away you grabbed a cup and ended up taking it upstairs so you could eat something while you were reading in bed.

It just so happens that James was finishing up with some office work and walked into your room right as you ate a spoonful of the bright blue yogurt. 

He was, to say the very least, concerned. 

Why was it that color? Food is not supposed to be that color???? And what were those little lumps?

While he fussed over your health, you held out your spoon and offered him a bite. He was skeptical at first, and his fears were only confirmed when he accepted the bite.

His delicate 1920′s tastebuds couldn’t take it.

“Darling, how do you eat that slop?” “James, it’s just yogurt!” “That is not yogurt, it’s an affront to the universe,”

Never one to back down in the face of James, you asked Liz to keep buying them every time she went out for groceries

Things were quiet until, a few months later, you found James standing over a recent kill eating a gushers yogurt.

“Darling, this isn’t what it looks like,” “I think it’s exactly what it looks like,” “There wasn’t anything else in the fridge,” “James, you’re dead. You don’t have to eat,” “...drat,”

James is adamant that he doesn’t have a favorite flavor because he hates it.... but its actually tropical punch.

Rory Monahan 

Rory normally wouldn’t feel any which way about gushers yogurt.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a goof and has nothing against eating fun little dessert yogurt, there’s just no reason for him or you to buy and eat it.

But if he got a brand deal with Yoplait to advertise it?

Count him in.

You’re eating gushers yogurt with every meal while he vlogs.

Breakfast? Yup. Lunch? Yup. Dinner? Yup.

Oh, you’re getting a snack? Well the only snack Rory bought when he ran out to the store is gushers yogurt. 

It’s all over his social media.

He ends up becoming the face of Yoplait and does quite a few primetime commercials, which surprisingly help out with his career. Think what Shaq is the The General Auto Insurance. 

“Now with new popping bubbles that gush with roarin’ fruity flavor,” “pffffft!” “What! It’s paying our bills!” 

Despite being surrounded by gushers yogurt, Rory wouldn’t actually have a favorite flavor. Once you eat that much yogurt it all tastes exactly the same.

Kai Anderson

Kai... well Kai is a tough one, as usual.

He’s not someone who likes to be perceived as weak, and what’s weaker than a man who’s seen eating flavored yogurt made for kids?

Well, a lot of things, but Kai’s toxic masculinity doesn’t let him see that.

In his eyes, gushers yogurt is simply not befitting of the divine ruler.

If you were close enough to him to offer some in a private moment, he’d probably find some way to use it in a weird, extended metaphor about the world in the hopes of manipulating you.

“In this world there’s people like me, like this yogurt, and people like you, fragile bubbles waiting to burst and spread your issues to the people who can still be saved. People like me cushion-” “Oh shut up and eat your yogurt, Kai,” 

Kai doesn’t have a favorite flavor, but kind of like James he’s only being pretentious. Who knew divine rulers are above picking favorite flavors?

Peter Maximoff

Peter would be the most on-board of anybody on the gushers yogurt trend. Like, even more on board than Kyle. 

This man uses a loooot of energy while he’s running around, so he needs super sugary foods like twinkies to be around for his inevitable snackfests at random hours of the day.

He also loves junk food. At one point you started wondering whether the X-gene prevented Peter from getting cavities, because he eats more sugar than anybody else you know. 

You like to go shopping with Peter because it keeps him from stealing (well, keeps him from stealing as much, but that’s beside the point) and even though he acts like a literal child whenever you make him come with you, he appreciates slowing down and spending time doing something you like.

Usually he gets bored easily in the “healthy food” aisles at the grocery store, meaning anything that isn’t the soda, chips, or snack aisles, but during a random trip to the store he suddenly rushed off out of your sight while you were in the dairy aisle picking up cottage cheese.

When he came back a second later, his arms were full of yogurt.

“Peter, what are you doing?” “Have you seen these? Look at the flavors! They have starburst, and key lime pie, and gushers with popping beads!!!! Popping! Beads!”

You would try to insist that he didn’t need to buy that much yogurt, especially because he hadn’t tried it before and didn’t know if he’d like it, but Peter would give you his world famous puppy dog eyes and you’d give in. 

From then on he’d have gushers yogurt (and starburst yogurt, to be honest) in his mini-fridge most of the time.

You didn’t mind. Technically it was healthier than his twinkie addiction, so as long as your speedster was getting calcium in his diet you weren’t about to complain.

He probably has stronger bones than Wolverine with all the yogurt he eats.

His favorite flavor is green apple, but he’d say it’s blue raspberry to go with his aesthetic. 

[elbiotipo]

alright. rant to me about your ocs biotipo. we're listening

In the 21st century, Humanity reached the heavens and read from the Book of Life. They understood the secret language of Nature and its power.

It was a time when everything seemed possible, a time of new bodies and new spirits, no chains binding us to Earth, no limits to our minds. Fantastic birds and frogs sang the praises of a new era, great citytrees grew to worship the skies, humanity embraced her sister species in the dance of civilization. It was the Golden Age of Biopunk, an era of miracles.

Miracles they were. Daring Biopunks cured insidous diseases, fed the hungry of the world, restored ecosystems, created art, explored the limits of the body and the soul, enlightened new intelligences...

And made terrible weapons.

A myopic world war for resources and ideology became the worst crime of all history.

The Ecocide.

With blasphemous bioweapons, in their hate for each other, Humanity tried to murder her Mother.

But She survived.

After fighting back the plagues of the Ecocide, the nations of the world swore in 2123 by the Treaty of Conakry to never again repeat those mistakes. The Alliance for the Salvation of the Biosphere recreated the United Nations from the ground up, and the world was rebuilt slowly.

Twenty years later, people still fear the power that brought this disaster to Earth. The splendid artworks, the daring ideologies, the amazing discoveries of the Biopunks were now excesses, signs of man’s arrogance, that should not be touched again.

And yet the seeds remain there, buried.

...

Marcos wanted to be an astronaut, to see the Mother World from above, to bring life to other worlds. A dream once possible, true, now shattered as the world itself. He still believed on it, like a prophet believes in destiny. And so he focused all his energy in the reality of today; the old greenhouse, the ancient motorbike, the tree club, the endless finals before him. But he never stopped looking at the stars.

Marina was born in the tropical breeze, in the north of Brazil where the celestial cord of the space elevator kisses the equatorial sea. She was raised between piles of books that led her from one place to the other, in a dozen different languages. She ended at the end of the world, in a cold yet warm city, finding herself in hundreds of stories.

Florencia carried the flowers of a hundred gardens on her hair. She moved from place to place as a kid, seeing a country, an entire world devastated by the folly of the previous generation. She couldn’t heal it all, but she could care, she do little things here and there, she could learn about it, she could carry pieces of it with herself. She could care.

Ariel spent long times in front of monitors, the scent of soldering tin in his clothes. He always said that there was little else in life but enjoying it as best as one could, and nothing else mattered. In trying to justify that simple idea, he thought of many, many more, and his friends added more and more in. And so, every time he said nothing mattered, he believed it less and less.

Melanie was raised in the old times. Not only because she lived in a antiquities store, but because she believed that the world not only could, but should change. It was not enough to inherit a broken planet, it was not enough to repair it, it should be remade in a fair place for everyone. She never relented, she took pride on believing it, everything she did, was for that and that alone.

Pancho wasn’t content on just listening to the people of the land from beneath the waves. He would not only explore their ideas from books. He took foot upon the land, to debate with them face to face, to ask them how and why and why again. In the process, he found not only endless debate, but friends. Strange friends, that thought and lived differently, but friends neverthless.

The language of life that once brought people together, put these friends together too. In an old tree growing over a furious city, once a proud bioclub that won the passion of the world over, now an old relic by dreamers of past times.

They weren’t destined or chosen, just regular people that dreamed a little more than usual. The kind of people who change history.

This is their story.

[princeescaluswords]

The Difference Between Wanting and Doing

There’s a line by a commentator in this post that I can’t get out of my head.  @poseyslegtattoo​  points out one of the truths of the show: everyone from Stiles, to Derek, to Peter, to Chris Argent, to Deucalion, to Jennifer stated with fervent belief that it was part of Scott’s new nature to be a killer, and Scott’s reply is “But then I didn’t.”   It’s part of his heroism -- his refusal to allow instinct, anger, and/or expediency to lead him to believe that what he wants and feels is more important than someone else’s life. 

But that’s not the line that bothers me.  It’s this one: “And then I failed to kill the person I meant to kill to become human again.”  

You see what this is right?   The commentator is saying that Scott had the desire to be human again, which I think is natural when you’re told that you have been given instincts to kill indiscriminately on the full moon; that you’re a danger to your friends, family, and loved ones; that there’s a century old family that wants to kill you on principle, and that you’re being stalked by a murderous alpha who insists that you commit murder in order to complete your forced adoption.   We can all agree that this is a reasonable response, right?  Then he was convinced (by Derek) that the only chance to become human again is to kill the one who bit you.  What that commentator draws from this is “See, Scott is just like everyone else!  He wanted to kill!”

We know that.  No one has ever claimed that Scott was a virgin birth born without sin.  He could get angry; he could be selfish.   He could want to kill Peter for ruining his life, but in the end, with every emotional and rational reason to do it, he didn’t.  That’s the point.

And then there’s the word ‘fail.’  I would ask the commentator to indicate where Scott went into a battle with Peter with the sole intent to kill him.   It certainly wasn’t when he confronted Peter with Derek in the burnt-out Hale House in Code Breaker.   He was there to protect Allison, who Peter had just stated his intention to murder.  And afterwards, when Peter was immobilized and burnt, Scott did not immediately think “Now’s my chance to kill Peter!”  He focused on his relationship with Allison.  How is that failing?

The commentator wants to propose that desiring a person’s death is the same as causing a person’s death.  It’s not, and Sheriff Stilinski agrees with me.  As I put sarcastically in another post, if wanting someone to die is equal to actually killing them, then Stiles whacked half the cast.  What’s the goal in saying that he failed?  It’s a subtle counter the idea that Scott was better than others because he had the power, the opportunity, and the emotional need to kill for his own advantage, and he didn’t.

But Derek did.

That sequence in Code Breaker (1x12) was deliberately shot.  Peter was lying on the ground, burned and immobile.  Derek walks slowly and deliberately over to Peter’s body, standing over him.  It’s not self defense anymore.  It’s not out of a need to stop Peter’s rampage.  Peter has been stopped.  Derek has plenty of time to find a way to neutralize Peter without killing him.  Scott sees this and begs Derek, but Scott doesn’t run over and try to kill him first or prevent Derek from killing him first.   Peter looks up and says “You’ve already decided.”  This isn’t a hysterical, spur of the moment, oh-my-god-it’s-gonna-kill-me execution.  It’s murder. 

Scott had plenty of reasons, emotional and practical, to kill Peter.  Derek had plenty of reasons, emotional and practical, to kill Peter.  Scott didn’t.  He didn’t even try.   Derek did.  Derek Hale is a murderer.

In Master Plan (2x12), when the situation was recreated with sinister irony, the outcome is different.  Scott, once again, had plenty of reasons, emotional and practical, to kill Derek.  Jackson’s claws were to Allison’s throat at Gerard’s command.  The last ten minutes had proven that the assembled werewolf and hunters couldn’t stop Jackson.  If he refused, Gerard would have Jackson kill all of them and then have Jackson force Derek to bite him.  Derek had spent that season recruiting teenagers into the pack, trying to kill Scott’s friends, hurting and lying to Scott.  Minutes before, Derek had lied to Scott about having a way to cure Jackson, turning to murder Jackson one more time.  “We’re past that.”   All Scott had to do was reach down, rip Derek’s throat out and say “I’m the alpha now,” Bite Gerard who then goo fountains, and then wait for Lydia and Stiles to arrive to stop Jackson.  

But Scott didn’t.  

It’s why they try to make Scott believing Derek about the cure coming from killing the one who bit you makes Scott as bad as Peter.  That’s why they claim that the mountain ash was an attempt to kill Gerard and failed rather than recognize that the mountain ash was a means to prevent Gerard from becoming a werewolf and succeeded.   It’s why they minimize all the bullshit that Scott went through in Seasons 1 and 2 -- being transformed, being mentally violated, being hunted and chased, being shot, being nearly run over by an SUV, being run over by an SUV, being poisoned while your murderer gloats above you, being forced to experience the girl you love and your own mother rejecting you as a monster, to being assaulted by the alpha to make Derek’s evil point that ‘It is about power.’ Scott has every reason, emotional and practical, not to save Derek, to take the power that Derek misused, to end Gerard’s threat, but he didn’t.  Scott McCall is not a murderer.  

The production didn’t do this to scorn Derek.  They didn’t hate Derek.  But Derek was a foil to Scott, a way to show why Scott was the hero-protagonist and on his way to becoming a True Alpha.  In a way, I would have thought it was a little overdone, but here we are, eight years later, and people are still arguing that Scott was just as morally deficient as Derek and Peter and Deucalion, even after the entire show made the point again and again and again that Scott wasn’t.   I can’t imagine why they can’t like Derek and realize the flaws that the show gave him served a narrative purpose.  Actually, I can imagine why.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[myownsuperintendent]

2019 Fic Masterpost

Here’s an updated masterpost of my fic, divided into my usual fairly arbitrary categories (plus a new one, crossover).  I didn’t write a ton this year, but those fics are in bold.

AU (Canon Divergent):

“Always Something New”–On William’s prom night, Scully tells Mulder a story from her own.  Rated T.

“Better Late Than Never”– Mulder is plotting a surprise for Scully.  Rated G.  Set in Season 8.  (Birthday gift for @xv12.)

“A Day Out”– Scully, Mulder, and Emily spend a day at the beach.  Rated G.  Very fluffy.

“Family”–Along with their three children, Mulder and Scully celebrate Scully’s sixtieth birthday.  Post-series AU.  Rated G.  112% fluff.

“In My Dreams”– She knows it’s not going to go anywhere–but Monica can’t help having feelings for Dana Scully.  Rated G.  Set during Seasons 8 and 9 and post-IWTB.  Largely canon compliant but ignores Season 10.

“Marry Me”--Mulder and Scully decide to get married.  Season 8 AU. Rated T.

“Nightmare”– Mulder tries to console Emily, who is worried about the incipient arrival of her new sibling. AU, set in the Season Eight era.   Rated G.

“No Secrets”– After he’s returned from his abduction, Mulder and Scully have a talk about their relationship.  Rated G.  Set in Season 8.

“Support System”–It’s Dana’s decision, but Monica wants to at least give her the space to make it.  Rated G.  Set in Season 9.

“A Tale of Two Nosebleeds”– Even family life can sometimes lead to accidents. Set in a universe in which all three of Scully’s kids lived.  Rated G.  Fluff, but warning for blood.

“Tell Me”--In prison, Mulder wants to hear about William.  AU in which Scully did not give up William, set during "The Truth." Rated G.

“Time and Again”– 1973 and 2010–two boys look out for their younger sisters.  Rated G.

“Stomach Flu”--Emily brings home the stomach flu from kindergarten.  Soon Scully catches it too--or does she? Rated G.

“Visions and Voyages”– When danger threatens, the Mulder-Scully family goes on the run together. AU set in the Season 9 era.  Rated G.

“You Know Your Mama Was Born To Die”– After the invasion, a woman and her son try to make their way in Washington, D.C.  Rated T.

…

Crossover:

“Take Me To Your Leader” (part two here)--It's 2037, and Leslie Knope has just been sworn in as President of the United States, only to find her inaugural address followed by an alien invasion.  For help, she and Ben call on two experts--retired FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully--and the four team up to defeat the alien threat. Parks and Recreation crossover. Rated T.

...

Episode Specific:

“Across the Country”– During “Anasazi,” Scully drives across the country with an unconscious Mulder in the back seat.  Rated G.

“In the Open”–After the events of “Small Potatoes,” Mulder and Scully reflect.  Rated G.

“It’s the Job”– During “4-D,” Reyes and Scully discuss being a woman in the FBI.  Rated T.  References to sexual violence.

“Wild Romance”–It’ll be sixty years next week, but she still remembers that strange night in 1939.  Rated G.  Set (sixty years) post-“Triangle.”

…

Humorous:

“Fugue for Fish”–Mulder’s fish become enamored with Scully’s tattoo.  Rated G.  Crack pairing.

“Lipstick on Your Collar”– The FBI has many cases to solve.  One of the biggest mysteries is the status of the relationship between Agents Mulder and Scully–and like in any case, it’s important to have evidence before jumping to conclusions.  Rated G.  

“Nose Implants Just Have That Richer Feel”–Some aliens are perfectly content using neck implants, but some are nostalgic for the past.  Rated G.

“Yes, Dana, There is a Santa Claus”– Mulder believes in a lot of strange things–but when he suggests that Santa Claus is the culprit for a series of strange murders, Scully doesn’t know what to think.  The case, along with the stresses of the season and her unconfessed feelings for her partner, makes for a very complicated Christmas.  Rated T.  Casefile.

…

Part of a Series:

1960s AU: “How to Expand Your Mind”– In 1966, college student Dana Scully makes a new acquaintance–Fox Mulder–in the process of tracking down her sister among New York’s hippie scene.  Rated T.   “While She Was Somewhere Being Free”–More than anything, Samantha doesn’t want to be trapped again.  Rated T. “I Can’t Go Back There Anymore”– When Diana Fowley returns to New York’s hippie scene after selling out and moving away, Melissa Scully is happy to have her best friend back. But the complications Diana brings into the burgeoning relationship between Melissa’s sister Dana and Fox Mulder force Melissa to examine her own feelings for Diana.  Rated T. “Summers of Love”– During the summers of 1966, 1967, and 1968, Mulder and Scully, spending time apart, communicate and build their relationship by letter. Rated M. “The First Few Friends I Had”–Diana arrives in New York, ready to live a new life.  Set prior to the other fics in the series.  Rated T. “Old and New”--When Monica meets John Doggett, she wants to know him better, even though he's different from most of her friends.  Their relationship, however, brings many complications. Rated G. “Reunions”--After summers spent apart, Mulder and Scully reunite. Rated M. “Five Times Someone Walked in on Starchild and Byers (and One Time They Walked in on Someone Else”--Byers and Susanne have a fraught but passionate relationship, as their friends witness at first hand. Rated M.

A Different Place series (“Herrenvolk” AU): “A Different Place”– Herrenvolk AU. When Mulder successfully brings one of the Samantha clones back from the farm with him, she must learn to adapt to a different life.  Rated G. “No-Fail Chicken Soup”– Samantha just wants to help Scully, but it’s not as easy as she hopes.  Rated G.  Cancer arc. “Real Ghosts”– Samantha doesn’t care for Halloween, but she finds that it has its attractions. Set in 2000.  Rated G. “Five Times Samantha Was Different (And One Time It Didn’t Matter)”--Even as she adapts to a new life, there’s a lot that’s strange to Samantha. Rated G.

See the USA series (post-season 9 AU): “See the USA”– Life as a family on the run brings some joys and some challenges for Mulder, Scully, and William.  Rated T. “Here Now”–On their third night on the run, Mulder spends some time with his son.  Set prior to “See the USA.”  Rated G.

Signs Series (Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language AU): “Signs”–On Martha’s Vineyard in the nineteenth century, deafness is common.  But for the Mulder family, interaction with the world on the mainland poses new challenges.  Rated G. “Communications”– In this installment, after a broken arm lands him in the hospital, Mulder meets a nurse who knows sign language and perhaps can help him on his quest to find his sister.  Rated G.

Welcome series (based on Season 11 Emily casting rumors): “Welcome”– In Wyoming, they spend the first morning with Emily.  Rated G. “Conversations”–Emily tries to come to terms with the presence of Scully and Mulder in her life.  Rated G. “At the House”– Some months after the events of “Conversations,” Mulder, Scully, Emily, and William return to the unremarkable house and continue to build their relationships.  Rated G. “Moving”– With the help of Mulder and Scully, William moves into his dorm room.  Rated G. “Next Year”--In the year following their reunion as a family, Mulder, Scully, Emily, and William navigate their relationships. Rated T.

…

Post Season Eleven:

“Baby Books”–Scully has a baby book for each of her children.  Set from seasons 5 to post season 11.  Rated G.

“Camping Trip”--Scully takes her daughter on a Girl Scout camping trip. Rated G.

“Looking Forward”–Scully tries to cope with her feelings as she and Mulder prepare for the new baby.  Rated T.

“Renewal”– After Scully has a difficult birth with her third child, Jackson comes back to the Unremarkable House to help care for his sister.  Rated G.   Warning for childbirth complications.

“Return”–On a walk with their daughter, Mulder and Scully meet their son.  Rated G.

“Snow Globe”– After their daughter is born, Mulder and Scully receive an unexpected gift. Post-season 11.  Rated G.

“Two Evenings”–Mulder and Scully’s grown daughter spends one evening with her brother and another with her parents.  Rated G.

…

Set Within Canon:

“Dirty Talk”–Mulder loves the way Scully talks.  Rated T.

“Eligible”– Charlie tries to help his sister out during her break-up. Set between IWTB and the revival.  Rated T.

“Five Times Scully Talked To William (And One Time They Talked To Each Other)”–There were moments when she was able to talk to her son.  Rated G.  Set in Seasons 8 and 9 and post-Season 10.

“Mappable Territory”–When Scully travels, she thinks of her father.  Rated G.

“Missed You”--Mulder and Scully are happy to be together again.  Set in late season 11. Rated M.

“Now I‘m Sane (But I Would Rather Be Gaga)”– Scully wants to get back out there after the breakup, but it’s not that easy.  Rated G.  Scully/other with past MSR.

“Slow”--Mulder and Scully decide to take their reunion slow, but that doesn’t last too long. Rated M.

“Take Two”–Along with Mulder, Scully takes a second vacation to Maine.  Set post-IWTB, pre-revival.  Rated T.

“Three Scully Children Who Went Incommunicado (And One Who Didn’t)”–It’s not that they don’t care about their family.  But there were reasons they had to get away.  Rated T.

…

Smutty:

“After All These Years”– Mulder and Scully have been together for a long time now, but sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Rated M.  Set mid-Season 10.

“Dining Etiquette”–Is it ever okay to eat in bed?  Rated M.  

“If At First You Don’t Succeed”– After long anticipation, Mulder and Scully’s first time together doesn’t go exactly as planned.  As they work a case together, they find this getting in the way of their relationship and must figure out how to navigate this new stage.  Rated M.  Set during “Syzygy.”

“Just Be”– After “Paper Clip,” Mulder and Scully try to make a moment away from grief.  Rated M.

“Massachusetts After Midnight”– After an irritating case, Mulder and Scully make the best of their night. The post-“Teso dos Bichos” smut you’ve always wanted.  The Massachusetts entry in the “A Map of Us” challenge.  Rated M.

“Refuge”– When they’re in bed together, they can put her illness out of their minds–at least for a little while.  Rated M.  Cancer arc.

“Six Ways to Warm Up a Cold Basement”– It’s February, and the heat in the X Files office is broken.  Mulder and Scully try to find ways to deal with the problem.  Rated M.  My first fic in the fandom!

“You’re the Only One I Trust (To Slap My Ass)”– Sharing one’s sexual desires with a partner can take a lot of trust. Fortunately, Mulder and Scully have plenty of that. Rated E.

[rhosyn-du]

Title: A Wonderful Institution Artist: @bidnezz​ Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings Word Count: ~53k Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, discrimination against Downworlders, reference to rape, Clave-typical homophobia, implied character death, minor character death Summary: Magnus doesn’t have time for this bullshit. Warlocks are disappearing in New York City—five people in less than three months—and Magnus is determined to find them and protect the rest of his people from whatever took them. He doesn’t have time for politics, and he certainly doesn’t have time for whatever nonsense the Clave is proposing about marrying a Shadowhunter to a Downworlder as part of the new Accords. He doesn’t really have time for a pretty Shadowhunter who’s surprisingly kind to warlock children, either, but, well, he’s always been good at multitasking.

Alec always knew he couldn’t have what he wanted, but he’s spent the nearly four years since the newly-appointed Consul recalled his parents to Idris without explanation making the best of what he can have. When life suddenly offers up almost everything Alec actually wants on a silver platter, he can’t quite bring himself to trust it, especially when it comes with a million caveats and a side of impending disaster. But he knows how to handle disasters, even if the return of the Circle on top of Clave secrets that could destroy the Accords is way beyond the disasters he’s used to fielding. Hope, on the other hand? He doesn’t know what to do with that.

This fic was created for the @malecdiscordserver​​ Mini Bang 2020.

Chapter Seven

It took longer than Magnus would have liked to convince Ragnor to talk to the Shadowhunters. In the end, he had to point out that Ragnor would get to meet Alec (and then presumably tease Magnus mercilessly for the fact that he was still engaged) before he agreed. Still, the several trips Magnus had taken to London to cajole his friend were a great distraction from the wedding planning he and Alec had been trying to do via text, since they were both too busy with other things to meet in person.

One of those other things, in Magnus’s case, being tracking the missing warlocks. With Clary’s vision about the Circle having Dorothea, Magnus had begun to wonder if perhaps the Circle were responsible for the other warlock disappearances, as well. It was hard to know if the MO for Dot’s disappearance were the same, since it was unclear where she’d been taken, exactly, and the Circle had an obvious and clear reason for taking her when they didn’t for the other missing warlocks.

Just like with the other missing warlocks, Magnus could no longer feel Dot’s magic. Which meant that either his friend was dead, or the Circle had found some way of blocking her magic. It was a possibility Magnus had considered with the other missing warlocks, since no bodies had been found, but given that the Circle was involved, it was entirely possible that there were no bodies because those who committed the murders were keeping body parts as trophies. It wouldn’t have been the first time Magnus had seen it happen.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Ragnor complained as they stepped out of a portal in front of the New York Institute. “Do you know how long it’s been since I last set foot in a Shadowhunter Institute? Decades at least. Maybe a century. And now I’m mixed up in Shadowhunter business again, and it’s all because I let you talk me into it.”

“You’re mixed up in Shadowhunter business again because you agreed to brew a potion for Jocelyn Fairchild,” Magnus pointed out. “That was going to come back to bite you in the ass someday with or without my help.”

“I suppose,” Ragnor said with a philosophical shrug. “But she did offer to pay me a great deal of money, and the specifics she wanted for the potion were quite interesting, not something just any warlock could pull off.”

“Ah, so she appealed to your vanity,” Magnus said. “No wonder you couldn’t turn down the job.”

“You’re one to talk about vanity,” Ragnor said. “Do you remember that time in Sicily when—”

“Yes,” Magnus cut him off. “Far more clearly than I want to. Thank you for the reminder. I do not need a play-by-play.”

The one downside to having friends who had known you as long as Ragnor had was that they tended to remember your most embarrassing moments, not to mention bring them up with alarming frequency.

Alexander and Isabelle met the two of them in the entry of the Institute. Magnus hadn’t seen Alec in person since they’d summoned the memory demon, and he was troubled to see that Alec looked even more tired now than he had after the summoning. Magnus wondered if he’d managed to get a single full night of sleep since then.

“Alexander, Isabelle,” Magnus said, “I’d like you to meet my dear friend Ragnor Fell.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Alec said, holding out a hand.

Ragnor shook it, saying, “Indeed. Magnus has told me a great deal about you.”

“You make that sound so ominous,” Izzy said, offering her own hand. “Maybe you and I can swap stories sometime. I can tell you embarrassing things about my brother and you can tell me embarrassing things about Magnus, and we can use them for leverage later.”

Ragnor beamed. “That is quite an offer. You and I should talk.” He leaned toward Magnus and said in a stage whisper, “I think I might get along with this one.”

“Thank you for coming,” Alec said, interrupting Ragnor and Izzy’s plotting. “Clary’s with Jace in the ops center. Still no leads on the Cup or on ways to track Jocelyn, but you said you might have something?”

“I believe so,” Ragnor said, following Alec and Izzy toward the ops center. “The potion I made for Jocelyn is intended to put someone in magically-induced stasis until the spell is removed. I suggested I also make a potion to counteract the one she requested, so she could reverse the effects herself if necessary, but she told me that it was safer not to have something like that on hand and that she or Dorothea would contact me if they ever needed to reverse the effects of the potion.”

“So, you know how to wake my mom up?” asked Clary, who had caught the end of Ragnor’s explanation.

“If Jocelyn is under the effects of the potion I created for her, then yes,” Ragnor said. “Although I never made the counter-potion, as per Jocelyn’s request, I did figure out how it could be done so that I would be able to create it if she ever had the need.”

“That’s great,” Jace said, “but we still need to find Jocelyn and rescue her before we can wake her up.”

“We might be able to help with that, too,” Magnus said.

“Every potion has a magical signature,” Ragnor explained. “A combination of the ingredients used in the potion and the magic provided by the warlock who created it. Most of the time, this isn’t terribly useful, since few potions are truly unique and those of us with enough skill in potion making to actually track a potion's signature tend to brew a great many of them.”

“But the potion Ragnor made for Jocelyn is unique,” Magnus chimed in. “Not only has he never made it before or since, but he developed the formula himself.”

“Which means,” Ragnor said, “that I should be able to track any person who has drunk the potion.”

“We already tried tracking,” Jace said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t work. Wherever the Circle is holding Jocelyn, she’s not trackable.”

“Ah, but this isn’t tracking in the technical sense,” Ragnor said. “When you track, you follow the energy signature of the person you’re tracking. In this case, it’s more of finding the resonance of my own energy signature within another person. You can’t block someone from finding the resonance of their own magic the same way you can block someone from tracking another person’s energy.”

Jace stared at him. “I literally have no idea what you just said.”

“But you’re saying you can find my mother,” Clary said. “Right?”

“With time and some effort, yes,” Ragnor said, “as long as she remains under the potion’s influence.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Clary demanded. “In my vision, they were trying to wake Mom. If they succeed, then we’ll lose our best chance of finding her.”

“What we’re waiting for, Biscuit, is to have an actual plan,” Magnus explained gently. “Finding Jocelyn in this way will take a lot of energy, and as a result, it isn’t something that can be repeated quickly. If the Circle isn't keeping Jocelyn in one place—and they’d be stupid to with as many people as are trying to find the Cup—then we don’t want to try to pinpoint Jocelyn’s location until we have a plan for rescuing her.”

“If rescuing her is even our top priority,” Alec said. “We need to find the Mortal Cup before the Circle does. Jocelyn is one way to do that and keeping the Circle from torturing the information out of her is important, but it would be even better if we could find the Cup ourselves.”

“How can you say that?” Clary demanded, turning on Alec. “We can’t just leave my mother with those people. Who knows what they’ll do to her? And if she knows the location of your Cup, then rescuing her is our best chance of finding it.”

“I don’t think Alexander is suggesting we leave Jocelyn in the Circle’s hands,” Magnus said. “Just that a rescue is dangerous, and if we fail, we might only make things worse, so we should pursue other avenues of finding the Cup at the same time we work on finding a way to rescue your mother.”

“Exactly,” Alec said.

“Biscuit,” Magnus continued, “can you tell me more about this vision you had of your mother? If we can recreate the circumstances, it might give us the information we need to plan a rescue.”

“There wasn’t much,” Clary said. “Just Mom, asleep and surrounded by a sort of greenish glow. Dot was there, but she didn’t look right. Something about her face was off, but it’s all fuzzy, like a dream. And then there was the man. He was standing over my mom, talking to her, but I can’t remember what he was saying. Or maybe I couldn't hear? And then, he turned to look straight at me. I think he knew I was watching.” She shrugged helplessly. “And then I woke up.”

“What can you tell us about the man?” Ragnor asked. “He could be important.”

Magnus looked at him. “You think he could be Valentine?” It was something he’d wondered since Clary had first mentioned a man in her vision, given Jocelyn’s fear that her husband was still alive.

“I think it’s a distinct possibility,” Ragnor said. “Given what we know about Jocelyn’s disappearance and Clarissa’s parentage.”

“I don’t remember much,” Clary admitted. “I didn’t even see his face until right at the end, just the back of his head. He’s taller than Dot, I remember that.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Alec interjected.

Magnus gave him a sharp look. “Biscuit, do you have any idea what triggered the vision?”

Clary chewed her lip, looking nervous.

“It’s all right,” Jace told her. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together.”

“I think it might have to do with my necklace,” Clary said finally. “When Mom gave it to me, she told me that if I needed her, I should hold it and think of her, and when I woke up from the dream, I’m pretty sure I was holding it.”

“You were,” Izzy told her. “It caught my attention, which is why I didn’t manage to move out of the way before you smacked into me.”

“Right,” Clary said, with a nervous smile. “Did I ever apologize for that?”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Izzy said, waving her off. “You can’t help what you do when you’re asleep, and anyway, I should have been paying better attention.”

“Biscuit, may I see your necklace?” Magnus asked.

Clary nodded, pulling the cord over her head and handing it to him.

Magnus could feel the pulse of the deep purple crystal in his hand, a very familiar sort of magic.

“This is a portal shard,” he announced. “These are rare, and this one doesn’t feel...right, exactly. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think it was from another world, but I can’t imagine where Jocelyn would have gotten her hands on such a thing.”

“Another world?” Clary asked, startled.

“There are many worlds, Biscuit,” Magnus answered distractedly, still wrapped up in examining the portal shard. “Some similar to ours, some quite different. It’s possible for some to travel between them.”

“Travel between the worlds is usually a seelie thing,” Izzy explained. “I don’t know much about it—they’re very secretive—but I’ve overheard some things.”

“It’s possible,” Magnus said slowly, “that if Jocelyn holds another shard of the same portal, the two can act as a sort of viewing portal between Clary and Jocelyn.”

“So I really did see my mother,” Clary said.

“Hold on,” Jace said. “If there are two of these things, and it goes both ways, does that mean that Valentine could be using the other shard to spy on Clary?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Magnus said. “But this shard is tied to Clary. I can’t use it on my own, for example. I expect the other shard is similarly tied to Jocelyn.”

“But a powerful enough warlock might be able to change that,” Ragnor said, “and we know that Valentine has Dorothea.”

Magnus shook his head. “Dot couldn’t do it. There are very few warlocks who could, alone. It would require both immense power and a comprehensive working knowledge of portals.”

“So, you’re saying that you’re the only one who could do it,” Ragnor said, grinning. “What was that you were saying earlier about vanity?”

“I did not ask for commentary,” Magnus said, scowling at his friend. He turned back to the Shadowhunters. “I think it might be best if I held onto this for the time being. I can keep it from being used to spy on us, and Clary and I can work together to do some reconnaissance of Jocelyn’s whereabouts using the portal shard.”

“What if Mom wakes up and needs to get a hold of me?” Clary asked. “Shouldn’t I have the portal shard then?”

“If Jocelyn wakes up while she’s still in the Circle’s custody, we don’t want her contacting you,” Alec said bluntly. “If that happens, the Circle is going to be using everything in their power to get Jocelyn to reveal the location of the Cup, and that includes you. It’s too risky.”

He turned to Magnus. “Are you sure it’s safe for you to keep it?”

Magnus gave him a soft smile. “I appreciate the concern, Alexander, but I won’t be in any danger. I intend to keep this highly warded when we aren’t using it.”

“As long as you’re sure it’s safe,” Alec said. “We could keep it here at the Institute, in a locked vault where there wouldn’t be anything for the Circle to spy on even if they did figure out a way to use it.”

“I appreciate the offer, but it’s entirely unnecessary. And I’d like to take a closer look at the portal shard before Clary starts actively working with it, anyway. The better we know how it works, the better our chances of using it to find the information we need.”

“All right,” Alec agreed. “In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for the Mortal Cup.” He looked at Clary. “If you remember anything at all—”

“I’ll tell you immediately,” Clary finished in a manner that made it clear they’d had this exchange many times already.

“While Magnus is working with the shard, I’ll start gathering the things I need to track Jocelyn’s potion,” Ragnor said. “As well as the ingredients for the counter-potion, as I assume we’ll want to wake her once we’ve rescued her.”

“We can do that together,” Magnus said quickly, ignoring Ragnor’s look of surprise. “If we were able to figure out you were the one who made the potion for Jocelyn, then Valentine could, as well, especially if Dorothea knew.” He ignored the stab of pain at the thought of Dot being tortured at the hands of the Circle, and continued, “You could be a target.”

“I’ve managed to keep myself alive this long, old friend,” Ragnor said dismissively. “I don’t think you need to worry about me.”

Need to or not, Magnus did. With warlocks missing and the Circle taking Dot, it was hard not to be protective of his friends.

“Have you found out anything else about the other missing warlocks?” Izzy asked, following his train of thought.

Magnus shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve shared what little I found with Alexander, and he’s returned the favor, but even between the two of us, there’s just been very little to find.”

“I want to take another look at the Clave files on the missing warlocks,” Alec said. “This time with Dot included. If the other warlocks were taken by the Circle, maybe we’ll find a common thread by including her that we missed before.”

“That’s a good thought,” Magnus said. “I’m hoping that perhaps if Clary can use the portal shard to see Jocelyn’s surroundings, she might be able to find out if the Circle is keeping any of the other missing warlocks there. I know it’s a long shot, but she saw Dot before, so there’s a chance the Circle is keeping warlocks close by, whatever they might be using them for.”

“And if the Circle is keeping the other missing warlocks in the same location they’re keeping Jocelyn and Dot,” Ragnor said, “we might be able to include them in our rescue plan. Depending on how Valentine has them restrained.”

Magnus nodded. “That was my thought, too. If we’re very lucky, we might be able to rescue more than just Jocelyn and Dot.”

“All right,” Alec said, “we’ve all got our assignments. Izzy, I’ll meet you in my office in a few minutes to go over those warlock files. Jace, can you take Clary through some more training with a blade? Her defense is still shaky, and if we’re mounting a rescue, it needs to be solid.”

“You got it,” Jace said, holding out a hand for Clary. She took it and followed him out of the ops center.

“Magnus,” Alec said, softer now. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He glanced at Ragnor. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Fell.”

“Not at all, Mr. Lightwood,” Ragnor said, eyes dancing with amusement at the formality. “I actually haven’t had much chance to visit the New York Institute, and I was hoping to get a better look at some of the architecture. I can meet you outside when you’re done,” he told Magnus. 

“I won’t be long,” Magnus promised. He managed to refrain from telling Ragnor to be careful, but just barely. Obviously, the man wasn’t going to be abducted right outside an Institute full of Shadowhunters, well within range of their security cameras. Just from where he was standing, Magnus could see half the perimeter of the Institute on the screens that lined the room.

Magnus let Alec pull him into an empty corridor just off the ops room. It wasn’t entirely private, but it wasn’t exactly public either.

“I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing,” Alec told him. “You look tired.”

Magnus chuckled. “Exactly what every man wants to hear from his intended. No,” he held up a hand as Alec opened his mouth, presumably to apologize, “I’m joking, Alexander. I am tired. Between the Circle and trying to track down missing warlocks, not to mention wedding planning, I haven’t had much time to myself lately.”

Alec watched him cautiously. “Well, I apologize for my part in that, for what it’s worth. If there’s anything I can do—”

“If you think you look less tired than I feel, you clearly haven’t stopped to look in a mirror lately,” Magnus told him.

“Oh, so it’s okay for you to comment on my looks, but not for me to comment on yours?” Alec teased.

“You may feel free to comment on my looks as often as you like, providing you limit yourself to compliments.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Alec said drily. “At least you won’t have to worry about the wedding in a few days,” he added hesitantly.

“I suppose I won’t,” Magnus agreed with forced lightness. “I don’t suppose you’ve reconsidered your position on the matter?”

“I’ve reconsidered it a hundred times,” Alec admitted, sagging against the nearest wall, “but I keep coming to the same decision.” He caught Magnus’s eyes, held them in that way only he could. “But I don’t want to force you into anything. If you don’t want to marry me, then just say so.”

Magnus sighed. “You make it sound so easy. Like that wouldn’t cause a million other problems.” He smiled then, despite himself. “I suppose that means we’re getting married in two days.”

Alec relaxed then, for the first time since Magnus had arrived at the Institute. “I suppose we are. At least we’ll have each other to lean on if arguments during the rehearsal tomorrow get too heated.”

“Don’t remind me,” Magnus said. “I genuinely can’t think of anything worse than the prospect of spending an afternoon with a bunch of Clave and Downworld leaders arguing over my wedding.”

“Tell me about it,” Alec agreed. “But, really, you’re all right?” he asked, returning to the original topic of conversation.

“I’m fine, Alexander,” Magnus assured him, and it was almost true. Just knowing that Alec worried about him helped ease some of his stress. “I promise I’ll get some rest after the wedding. And after we find the Mortal Cup and rescue Dorothea and Jocelyn Fairchild,” he added. “And find the other missing warlocks and defeat the Circle.”

“So, you’re not planning to sleep this year, is what you’re saying,” Alec said with a chuckle.

“It feels like that,” Magnus agreed.

Magnus found Ragnor examining the series of flying buttresses on the east side of the Institute.

“Is there something special about these particular buttresses?” Magnus asked. “Or is this just your weird obsession with the things again.”

“They’re slightly uneven on this side,” Ragnor said. “They shouldn’t be, especially since this is a new world building and so can’t be more than a couple centuries old. Sloppy, really.”

“I’m sure the Clave would be happy to receive your critique on their building,” Magnus said drily.

“Just because you’re feeling tetchy doesn’t mean you need to belittle my hobbies,” Ragnor told him. “You’ve been brooding all day. Tell me what’s wrong. Is this about Dorothea?”

“That’s part of it,” Magnus admitted. “And just, everything.” He looked up, trying to find the unevenness in the flying buttresses, but couldn’t. He clearly didn’t have the kind of eye for architecture Ragnor did.

“I’m getting married,” Magnus said finally.

“Oh, are you?” Ragnor asked in mock surprise. “I hadn’t heard.”

“No, I mean I’m actually getting married,” Magnus said. “To Alexander. In two days.”

“There’s still time to get out of it,” Ragnor told him. “I know you. You’ve gotten yourself out of more dire situations with far less time to spare.”

“But I’m not going to,” Magnus said. “Not this time.”

“Ah,” Ragnor said, and really, that summed it up quite nicely didn’t it?

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Magnus admitted. “With any of this. I’m used to being at my best in the middle of a disaster, and here I find myself in the middle of multiple disasters piled on top of each other, and I feel completely off my game.”

Ragnor made a thoughtful noise, then said, “Well I can think of one solution to that.”

“What’s that?” Magnus asked warily.

“Obviously, what you need is a party,” Ragnor said, as though it were a silly thing for Magnus to even ask. “They always cheer you up.”

Magnus frowned. “I’m not sure this is the best time for—”

“No,” Ragnor interrupted. “No arguments. I’m throwing you a bachelor party, and that’s the end of it.”

“A bachelor party? Ragnor, I’m getting married in two days."”

“Then I’ll have to plan quickly,” Ragnor said. “Since I don’t have time to find another venue, we’ll have to use Pandemonium. And I can get Cat to help me send out invitations. She’s so much better at remembering who might currently hate you than I am.”

“I’m really not sure a bachelor party is the best idea,” Magnus said, unconvinced.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not planning it then,” Ragnor told him. “Now, come on. I’ve got too much to do to waste time staring at buttresses all day.”

“That,” Alec said, dropping into the softest chair in his office, “was an actual nightmare.” 

“I don’t know,” Magnus said leaning against the closest bookshelf, “at least we managed to keep that seelie knight from coming to blows with your mother over the symbology of flower arrangements.” 

Alec looked up at him. He suspected Magnus chose leaning over sitting because the leather pants he was wearing were too tight for sitting to be comfortable. Not that Alec had spent the entirety of their wedding rehearsal trying not to stare or anything.

“Considering how I feel about my mother right now, I’m not sure that goes into the plus column,” Alec said. 

“I’m pretty sure having a fight break out at your wedding rehearsal is some sort of terrible omen,” Magnus told him. “It seems like it should be an omen.” 

“If we really want to talk about luck,” Alec said, “I think the biggest win here is that I didn’t hit anyone.” 

Magnus laughed, head tilted back in a way that emphasized the open neckline of his shirt and the several necklaces that drew attention to his well-defined chest. Now that they weren’t surrounded by dignitaries and his entire family, Alec decided it was okay for him to stare just a little. 

“You can see why I had my reservations about a marriage as a means of solidifying the Accords now, though,” Magnus said. “What with the fact that we had to prevent at least three murders just at the rehearsal.” 

“That I can understand,” Alec said. “Obviously, not all the dignitaries are going to get along. That’s why the Clave and the Downworld took time to select their representatives so carefully, to avoid that kind of thing between the two people actually getting married. I spent hours talking to Consul Penhallow and the rest of the Council before they chose me. I’m sure you must have gone through a similar vetting process.” He allowed himself a small smile. “And they came up with the two of us, which tells me the selection process was pretty good. I never imagined I’d get matched with someone I get along with as well as I do with you.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” Magnus said, staring at something on the bookshelf, although what he could find interesting in a shelf full of books on the history of the Clave’s legal system, Alec couldn’t imagine.

“I have to admit, when I first heard about this idea, I certainly never imagined that I would be marrying someone like you.” 

“What did you imagine?” Alec couldn’t help asking. He’d wondered before, of course, but he’d never been brave enough to ask. 

“An unmitigated disaster involving people who were not me,” Magnus said with an exhausted smile. “I guess that just goes to show that my imagination can’t be trusted to predict the future.” 

“You’re not alone in that,” Alec agreed. Which was a shame, because his imagination was giving him some very lovely ideas about Magnus’s leather-clad thighs just at the moment.

It took Alec a few seconds to realize that Magnus had said something, and he’d missed it entirely. “Sorry, what? My mind was wandering.” 

“I can’t blame you after the afternoon we’ve both just had,” Magnus said, but there was a certain sharpness in his smile that made Alec wonder if Magnus suspected exactly where his mind had wandered. 

“I was just asking what you had imagined,” Magnus said. “You told me a bit about why you volunteered to be a part of this marriage and you did mention that I wasn’t what you expected, but I’m curious about how exactly I defy your expectations.” 

“I imagined a stranger,” Alec told him, deciding honesty was the best way to go. If this marriage was going to work, if there were any possibility that there could be more between the two of them than politics and the beginnings of friendship they already had, then he had to be as honest as possible. “And someone who believed that this union could be a genuine bridge of peace between the Clave and the Downworld. I imagined someone who had as little chance of marrying for love as I did. Someone who wouldn’t care if I could never love her.” 

“That’s...quite sad, actually,” Magnus said. “I can understand giving up on love. Obviously, since I did for so long. But to assume you were always destined for a loveless marriage is just... I don’t know.” He smiled wanly. “But perhaps that’s why I’ve never been married, despite living as long as I have.” 

“What, never?” Alec asked, surprised. 

Magnus shook his head. “Don’t sound so shocked. I know what the Clave thinks of me, but I’m not the sort of man who just gets married on a whim.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” Alec said. “It’s just, I haven’t known you long, but I’ve seen you with your friends and with orphan children you barely know and... You have so much love to give, Magnus. I’m just surprised that you’ve never found someone to share your life with.” 

“Wait until you know me a little longer, Alexander,” Magnus said, and there was no mistaking the hint of bitterness and hurt under his smile. Alec wanted to find the people who put it there and punch every single one of them in the face. “I’m sure the reason why will become clear to you.”

Alec shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“But weren't we just discussing how none of this has gone the way you imagined?” Magnus countered.

“Yeah, but that's different,” Alec said. “You aren't at all what I imagined because you're more than I could have hoped for in every way.” He felt ridiculous even saying it out loud. Magnus had to know that already.

“Here I was thinking the same thing about you,” Magnus said. This smile, though small, was entirely genuine, and Alec didn't know what to do with it.

“Things will be different after tomorrow,” Magnus said.

“Some will,” Alec agreed. “But we'll still have all of the same problems to face that we do today. Well, minus the wedding planning, but I'm sure there will be disputes between Shadowhunters and Downworlders that will replace them.”

“Do you really think people will come to us with disputes?” Magnus asked in surprise.

“You don't?” Alec said. “I mean, they're supposed to already, with you being High Warlock and me as Head of the Institute. This is the kind of thing that should be falling on our plates already.”

“But it doesn't, for the most part,” Magnus pointed out. “And there's a reason for that. Downworlders don't trust Shadowhunters, and vice versa. Our marriage isn't going to change that.”

“Not immediately, no,” Alec agreed, “but we can work toward building that trust. Now that I'm officially Head of the Institute, I can even be more open about it. I have so many ideas— But those are problems for after the wedding.”

“I look forward to hearing them,” Magnus said. “But you're right. Let's just focus on getting through the wedding for now.”

Alec rose to set the stack of papers he'd be holding from the rehearsal on the desk. “This is all so surreal,” he said. “It's hard to believe that a day from now, we’ll be married.”

“Not just for us, either,” Magnus said. “I'm pretty sure half the Downworlders planning to attend are doing so just because they'd never believe I married a Shadowhunter unless they saw it with their own eyes.”

Alec grinned at him, leaning back against the desk. “I think it's probably the same for a lot of the Clave. And I think a few are coming just so they can be properly offended.”

“Now that gives me something to really look forward to,” Magnus said. “Offending uptight Shadowhunters is practically a hobby. Do you think they’re more offended that you're marrying a man or a warlock? I want to make sure I cause the maximum amount of offense with my existence.”

“I'm sure there are plenty of people who will be offended by both,” Alec assured him. He shook his head. “I can't believe the first time I ever kiss another man, it's going to be in front of half the Clave.”

Magnus went very still in that way that Alec was coming to realize meant he was genuinely surprised.

“But,” Magnus said slowly, “you've kissed women before.” It wasn't a question, although it really should have been.

“I've never had much interest in kissing women,” Alec told him. It was the closest he'd ever gotten to saying the words out loud, even if Izzy had guessed years ago.

“Alexander,” Magnus’s face was serious as he stepped away from the bookcase and into Alec's personal space, “we don't have to do this. There's still time to call off the wedding. I'm willing to take the blame. I can make up an excuse the Spiral Council will believe, and I'm sure the Clave would be more than happy to blame me. You don't have to do this.”

Alec felt like his insides were folding in on themselves. He'd known Magnus had reservations about their marriage. Magnus had been open about it from the beginning. But he'd never thought this was what would make Magnus decide to back out.

“My inexperience bothers you that much?” Alec managed to force out through the tightness that threatened to close his throat entirely. He realized in that moment just how invested he’d let himself become. In this marriage. In Magnus. Because right now he didn't care what any of this meant for the Accords or the future of the Shadow World. He only cared that Magnus didn't want him.

“It bothers me that you're willing to give up so much for the sake of the Clave,” Magnus said. “Alexander, look at me.”

When Alec didn't move, Magnus cupped Alec's jaw in his palm and tilted his face up to meet his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Alec said, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice, “that I'm not what you expected when you agreed to this marriage. I should've told you sooner, but I didn't think—”

“You are exactly what I expected,” Magnus told him fiercely, “and everything I wanted when I volunteered.” And Alec didn't know how that could possibly be true, but there was no mistaking the absolute sincerity in Magnus's eyes.

“But you deserve better than to give away your first kiss as part of some political spectacle,” Magnus continued. “You’re so ready to give yourself away, for the Clave, for your ideals, for your family. But, Alexander, you deserve to keep some things for yourself.”

It was so close to what Izzy had said to him, but now, with Magnus's hand on his cheek and standing at close in those sinful leather pants, Alec could finally admit what he wanted for himself.

“Okay,” Alec breathed.

“Okay?”

Alec nodded, then leaned forward. He moved slowly, giving Magnus plenty of time to move away if he wanted to, and he saw the instant Magnus realized his intention, Magnus's eyes fluttering closed and lips parting.

Alec let his own eyes fall shut, one hand coming to rest on Magnus's waist as their lips brushed softly. It should have been awkward. Alec was acting entirely on instinct, and he was pretty sure kissing required actual skill, but Magnus's mouth moved against his own in perfect rhythm, like they'd done this a thousand times.

After a few seconds, Alec allowed himself to get bolder, deepening the kiss and flicking his tongue out to trace Magnus's lower lip. Magnus made a noise of approval, and Alec pulled him closer, reveling in the hard planes of Magnus's body against his, the heat of Magnus's skin through the silk beneath his thumb, the curve of Magnus's leather-clad hip beneath his fingers.

It wasn't until Alec realized he'd backed Magnus up against his desk and was about ten seconds from begging to find out if it was possible to remove those leather pants with his teeth that he broke the kiss. They stared at each other for a long moment, both breathing heavily, Alec’s hand curled into the silk of Magnus's shirt, Magnus's fingers tangled in Alec's hair.

“If you kiss me like that tomorrow,” Magnus said breathlessly, “I think we can offend a number of people.”

Alec shook his head. “That’s not for other people.”

Magnus grinned, disentangling his fingers from Alec’s hair and trailing them down his shoulder. “Well, I’m sure we can find another way to properly offend them.”

“I have faith in us,” Alec said with mock solemnity, causing Magnus to chuckle.

“As much as I hate to go,” Magnus said, moving back a step, “Ragnor will kill me if I miss my own bachelor party, and I’m already running late due to the necessity of not killing anyone during the rehearsal. Will you walk me out?”

Alec nodded. “A bachelor party?” he asked as they moved toward the front of the Institute. He supposed that would explain the leather pants. “Aren’t those more of a mundane thing?”

“Parties,” Magnus told him, “are a Downworlder thing. Surely you must have read that in all of those Clave files.”

“Sure,” Alec said, “but I’ve learned those aren’t always trustworthy when it comes to Downworlders. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he added with mock sincerity, “but the Clave has a few prejudices when it comes to Downworlders.”

“That’s certainly news to me,” Magnus said.

Although he didn’t need to, Alec followed Magnus outside. He didn’t feel quite right saying goodbye with guards standing around listening.

“Have fun at your party,” he said, not quite sure what else to say, or where they even stood after that kiss.

“Oh, I intend to,” Magnus told him. Then he paused, giving Alec a considering look. “Would you like to join me?”

“At your bachelor party? Aren’t those traditionally supposed to be spent away from the person you’re marrying?”

Magnus smiled at him fondly. “I don’t think anything about our marriage could really be called traditional, do you?”

“I guess not.”

Magnus held out a hand. “What do you say?”

Alec stared at the offered hand a long moment. He should stay and make sure everything was ready for the wedding tomorrow, finish going over those patrol reports he hadn’t gotten to before the rehearsal, maybe even do some patrolling himself to clear his mind.

But.

With a shy smile, he took Magnus’s hand. The Institute would be fine without him for a few hours.

[cromwxll]

                          “NEVER TRUST A PRETTY SMILE LACED WITH POISON.”

⌠ 𝑮𝑨𝑽𝑰𝑵 𝑳𝑬𝑨𝑻𝑯𝑬𝑹𝑾𝑶𝑶𝑫, 𝟐𝟏, 𝑪𝑰𝑺𝑴𝑨𝑳𝑬, 𝑯𝑬/𝑯𝑰𝑴 ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, 𝑹𝑯𝒀𝑺 𝑪𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑾𝑬𝑳𝑳! according to their records, they’re a 𝑭𝑰𝑹𝑺𝑻 year, specializing in 𝑳𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑼𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑺, 𝑪𝑼𝑳𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑬, & 𝑨𝑺𝑺𝑰𝑴𝑰𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵 + 𝑻𝑯𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑻 𝑬𝑳𝑰𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵; and they 𝑫𝑰𝑫 go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( 𝑨𝑳𝑬𝑿𝑨𝑵𝑫𝑬𝑹 𝑴𝑪𝑸𝑼𝑬𝑬𝑵 𝑬𝑵𝑮𝑹𝑨𝑽𝑬𝑫 𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺, 𝑫𝑰𝑨𝑴𝑶𝑵𝑫 𝑪𝑼𝑭𝑭𝑳𝑰𝑵𝑲𝑺 𝑶𝑵 𝑭𝑰𝑵𝑬 𝑻𝑨𝑰𝑳𝑶𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮, and 𝑺𝑰𝑳𝑽𝑬𝑹-𝑻𝑶𝑵𝑮𝑼𝑬𝑫 𝑳𝑰𝑬𝑺  ). when it’s the 𝑺𝑪𝑶𝑹𝑷𝑰𝑶’s birthday on 𝟏𝟎/𝟑𝟎/𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟖, they always request their 𝑻𝑶𝑵𝑲𝑶𝑻𝑺𝑼 𝑹𝑨𝑴𝑬𝑵 from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. 

* / CHARACTER INFLUENCES: LOGAN ECHOLLS ( Veronica Mars ) + GINA LINETTI ( Brooklyn 99 ) + BLAIR WALDORF ( Gossip Girl ) + VARYS “THE  SPIDER” ( Game of Thrones ) + OLIVIA POPE ( Scandal ) + LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR ( Lucifer ) + NUCKY THOMPSON ( Boardwalk Empire )

* / VINE REFERENCES: x x x

* / PERSONAL ANTHEM: BEEF FLOMIX - Flo Milli

Hi all, I’m Bri and this is my mess of a child RHYS. Feel free to like this post or hmu on discord if you want to plot :)

TW: Abuse, depressive thoughts, substance abuse, sex. Read with caution.

* / GENERAL INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Rhysand Salvatore Cromwell.

KNOWN AS: Rhys.

AGE: Twenty-one.

DATE OF BIRTH: October 30, 1998.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Manhattan, New York.

GENDER: Cisgender male.

PRONOUNS: He/him.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual.

RELIGION: Agnostic.

* / PHYSICAL & MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

HEIGHT: 5'11 ( the last inch escapes him ).

WEIGHT: 168 lbs.

HAIR COLOUR: Black.

EYE COLOUR: Black.

TATTOOS: Gavin’s tattoos.

PIERCINGS: None ( you can see ).

BODY TYPE: Athletic.

PHYSICAL HEALTH: Peak.

NOTABLE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Signature smirk, dark eyes, curly hair.

FACE CLAIM: Gavin Leatherwood.

VOICE CLAIM: Gavin Leatherwood’s speaking voice.

CLOSET / STYLE: Chuck Bass.

ILLNESSES / CONDITIONS: Dyslexic ( kept secret ).

ADDICTIONS: Making people cry.

VICES: Wrath, pride.

* / BACKGROUND, OCCUPATION & EDUCATION

BIRTHPLACE: Manhattan, New York.

RAISED: UES Manhattan, New York.

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Gallagher Academy.

SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, German, learning Japanese.

EDUCATION LEVEL: HS diploma from spy academy.

FINANCIAL STATUS: Upper class / Wealthy.

* / FAMILIAL BACKGROUND

FATHER: Salvatore Cromwell.

MOTHER: Natalia Cromwell ( née ? ).

SIBLINGS: None.

BIRTH ORDER: Only child.

RELATIONSHIP WITH FAMILY: Tense/Estranged.

PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS: Francis Cromwell + Constance Cromwell ( née Delgado ).

MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS: n/a.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None/Rose Park ( deceased ).

* / PERSONALITY

POSITIVE: Intelligent, charming, loyal, and dedicated.

NEGATIVE: Impulsive, cynical, arrogant, and wrathful.

ZODIAC: Scorpio.

MBTI TYPE: ENTJ.

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin

AESTHETIC: Bubble baths, whiskey-filled crystal tumblers, penthouse parties, hate fucking until dawn, scarred knuckles, YSL cologne, secret hiding spots, guilt-ridden hues, broken promises, sly smirks with hidden intentions, uncontrollable impulsion, designer scarves, wrathful masochism, rolling blunts in town cars, full passports, lost boy syndrome, knives on tongues, hallowed out chest.

* / BIO: There was no option for Rhys on the night of his birth, he was destined for GREATNESS. Born to Salvatore Cromwell, a high ranking official in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA, and his wife Natalia on a chilly October night ─ the night before Halloween as a matter of fact ─ both saw his arrival as the best thing to happen to their seemingly perfect family. In a sense. And so he had to be the best.

He went to the best schools, only associated with the best families, the best parties and clothes and girlfriends, they were only the best of the best. Growing up, he didn’t recognize the pressure put on him was insurmountable. The lifestyle he lived didn’t expose him to those who had other options and chose their own path. He grew up with kids whose lives were planned out the second they were born. Just like him. Rhys assumed they were all the same. All their mothers were knocking back martinis with the egg white omelet they had for breakfast every morning, didn’t they? And when their dad came home after months of being away and says he was passed up for promotion again, he grabbed their arm so tight that sometimes it felt like it was gonna snap, right? His mother’s tears were normal. Getting hit with a belt any time he scored lower than expected on tests were normal. So why didn’t it feel normal?

Rhys’ home life was the one element he couldn’t control. But his social life he could. At school, he was a legend. With a family name like Cromwell, notorious to have spawned politicians and businessmen and entrepreneurs over the past couple of centuries, all great in their own right, Rhys was known. And he liked it. He had the perfect life at the spy school his father enrolled him in. With a group of friends as close-knit as they could be in a world driven by infamy and lies and a girlfriend he loved more than life itself, Rhys couldn’t imagine anything better. Until it wasn’t.

Rhys loved his girlfriend Rose Park. He knew he did because he treated her the way his father should’ve treated his mother. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, no relationship was, but they always found their way back to one another. For Rhys, she was a shining beacon of light and love and hope that one day, life would be better. That was until he found polaroids of Rose kissing their mutual best friend, Josephine. He was stunned. For a week he avoided her and their friends like the plague. What he felt wasn’t anger or rage, he didn’t turn spiteful, he was just...heartbroken. In the end, all he wanted was Rose’s happiness. While he hoped this was a need for sexual exploration, he knew that if Rose wanted to be with someone else that he would still support her. Because he loved her. And living a life with her in it as his friend was better than one without her at all. He was going to tell her this.

Until she was murdered.

Her death happening because her personal bodyguard, Josephine’s father, left her unprotected to tend to Jo’s sickness, sent him into a spiraling downfall. When his mother left a few weeks later, it only added to his growing pain. Nothing made sense. Not how his mother could just leave, no note, no anything. Not how his father barely flinched when he noticed all of her stuff gone. Not how the world seemed to keep on spinning even though Rose was gone. And especially, not how Josephine got to keep on with her life like nothing had changed. The pain he felt only escalated day by day, echoed on by the empty townhouse he returned to every day and the quiet dinners spent with housekeepers while his dad was away. He needed an outlet. And a target along with it.

His senior year, Rhys directed the anger he felt on the girl who took everything from him. Every spiteful word thrown at her, the influence he inspired on the rest of the student body to do the same, it all helped the throbbing ache that constantly permeated his body. When school was over for the day, he turned to recreational forms of comfort that went beyond his usual party favors. How he was able to graduate top of the class is still something that escapes him to this day. But his father knew of his antics and decided that his son would not go to college and only drown further in his sorrows.

In the CIA it’s called “The Lakehouse”. A remote hideout meant to kick into shape covert specialists by training them in all things brutality. Rhys was only there for two years, off the record, where he excelled in weapons and hand-to-hand combat while his pain was to be used as a driving force. There, his father finally sculpted him into the “perfect” son he always wanted: ruthless, cunning, heartless. It was here that Rhys realized that his father never cared about a family, but rather a legacy. Rhys was his breathing legacy, and he’d continue to be so once enrolled at Gallagher.

Waiting for admittance to Gallagher over the summer left him curious. His skills were now more finely honed, so he actively began to seek out his mother’s whereabouts. He quickly realized that it would be difficult, as the name he knew her by was not real. Her social security, passport, ID, even family photos, were all fake. Part of him wasn’t shocked, as marrying someone who was a complete fraud just for appearance's sake sounds like some his father would do, but in the end, it only left him with more questions. Who was she? Where did she go? Why did she leave?

Rhys hopes to find these answers now that he’s attending one of the top spy universities in the world. Surely, they’ll be able to help him find answers. Otherwise, he’ll take them for himself if he has to. On the plus side, if things ever turn out worse than he imagined and the pain returns tenfold, at least he has little Josephine here with him to keep him company. Two years later, she’s just as small, just as fragile. And Rhys always did enjoy breaking things.

* / PERSONALITY: He’s the stereotypical pretty boy with a side of trauma. Cocky. Sweet talker. Renowned partier. Excels in everything he puts his mind to, for what he’d like to think is for himself, but deep down it’s for the recognition and approval from his father. Though his father tried to mold him into something unfeeling, like a brutal machine, it’s just not in his nature. Rhys feels. A lot. That’s why he’s still hurting over the death of a girl he loved over three years ago. Maybe it’s because it was the only healthy relationship he had in his life, and one of the only events he’s held no control over. A stickler for how he likes things, he’s very particular about who he interacts with. At Gallagher, he will be no different. He’s the best, and he needs to be surrounded by only the best.

* / WANTED RELATIONSHIPS: His bros, competition at the school, someone he trusts enough to tell about locating his mom ( only it won’t be immediate but a relationship that builds up to it ), and the usual ( party friends, lovers, etc...)

[180abroad]

Days 154-157: Vienna (The Habsburg Hustle)

For centuries, Vienna was the de facto capital of Europe. From here, the Habsburg dynasty pulled the strings of the most powerful kingdoms and empires on the continent--when it wasn’t ruling them directly.

So it’s fitting that much of our time in this city was spent in the Hofburg, a sprawling complex of palaces, treasuries, and art galleries that once housed the Habsburgs and continues to house much of their wealth.

And their wealth is really all that seems to remain of the Habsburgs.

I remember a bit about the Habsburg empires from my high-school AP European History class, and a bit more from our time in Spain and Eastern Europe earlier in our trip. But it is a long and complex dynasty, not a simple monarchical line like the kings and queens of England or France. Like I said before, the Habsburgs were string-pullers and kingmakers. They eventually took direct control over most of Europe, but as a complex empire of countless intertwined kingdoms, duchies, and principalities.

Jessica and I went into the Hofburg hoping to gain a clearer understanding and greater appreciation for how the Habsburgs came into their power and expanded it over the centuries. We did get a little of that, but mainly what we got was an in-your-face display of just how obscenely wealthy the Habsburgs became by the end of their reign in 1918. Seriously, I didn’t think that anything could top the gilded grandeur of the Vatican, but this blows it away.

Our visit started humbly enough with Sunday mass at the historic Augustinian church. Originally part of an Augustinian abbey, it was later incorporated into the Hofburg and converted into the imperial chapel.

I feel a bit sacrilegious saying this, but as a tourist, Sunday mass at the Augustinian church is a great way to kill three birds with one stone. You get to see the Imperial chapel, witness a traditional Catholic mass in one of the great historical bastions of Catholicism, and you basically get a free Mozart concert from the church’s choir and orchestra.

And we definitely weren’t the only people to think so. This was easily the most crowded church service we attended during the entire trip.

On our visit, they performed Mozart’s  “Missa Brevis in G Major.” It was Mozart’s first full mass, written when he was twelve years old.

Beyond its historical significance, the church itself is fairly plain. The right side of the church is built up against the side of the imperial apartments, and instead of stained glass windows, the windows to the right of the choir connect to the apartments themselves--so the Habsburgs could attend mass without leaving their parlor.

There is a room in the church filled with the ashes chamber filled with urns containing the cremated hearts of dozens of Habsburg rulers. We didn’t get to see it, however, since it was on the other side of a chapel being used for a service.

Next, we toured the imperial apartments themselves. And of course, decorating the entrance were statues of our old friends Hercules and his club.

Outside the grand entrance is an exposed section of Roman ruins. Like virtually all European dynasties, the Habsburgs were obsessed with linking their rule to the heritage of the Roman Empire.

The apartments are divided into three exhibits: the imperial silver collection, an exhibit on the mysterious and misunderstood Empress Sisi, and the apartments themselves.

Going in, I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing the silverware exhibit and would have been more than happy to skip through it. Jessica wanted to see it, however, and it ended up being absolutely spectacular.

The collection was much more than just silverware. It started with room full of decorative baking pans and dessert molds, then moved onto increasingly extraordinary tableware and centerpieces.

This is where we really got our first taste of Habsburg opulence. But only a taste.

Room after room were filled with silver, gilt, and ceramic services representing centuries of evolving tastes and diplomatic relations. Each service involved a monumental level of craftsmanship and material expense. Some sets were so valuable that they were literally used as bargaining chips between countries looking to end or avoid a war.

It just went on and on and on. Not only were the pieces nearly countless, each one was a masterpiece of artistry and craftsmanship.

And as massive as the current collection is, it only represents a fraction of the original collection, much of which was sold or melted down for bullion during the Napoleonic wars.

Next up was the Sisi Museum. Sisi--or rather Empress Elisabeth of Austria--was the wife of Emperor Franz Josef from 1854 until her assassination in 1898. Sisi now holds a mythical reputation for her beauty and innocence, but this exhibit explains the darker truth.

It starts with her childhood in Bavaria as the daughter of a duke. She enjoyed a relatively informal, carefree childhood until she was arranged to marry Emperor Franz Josef at the age of 15. An introvert with a hatred of confinement, everything about palace life was abhorrent to her. Descending into melancholy, she increasingly shut herself away from palace life to read, write poetry, and ride horses. She was a famously skilled and daring rider.

As she aged, Sisi became increasingly obsessed with maintaining her famed beauty. She adopted intense dieting and exercise regimens, exotic cosmetic treatments, and wore extremely tight corsets. For almost all of her life, the 5′8″ Sisi maintained a weight of 100 pounds and a 20 inch waist.

(There's a statue of Sisi at the beginning of the museum, and Jessica and I both noticed that her face looked quite a bit like Jessica's mom (and my aunt) Donna. For whatever reason, however, the resemblance doesn't really carry into the photographs and paintings of Sisi.)

At the age of 58, things took a turn for the worse for Sisi when her only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, died in an apparent murder-suicide pact with his mistress. Not only did this devastate Sisi and her marriage with Franz Josef, it destabilized the Habsburg line of succession and accelerated the deterioration of the empire that lead to the outbreak of World War I.

(That night, Jessica and I happened to watch The Illusionist, which our host had on DVD. We knew that it took place in Vienna, but we had no idea that it’s plot revolves around a fictionalized version of Rudolf’s murder-suicide. The longer this trip goes on, the more ridiculous the coincidences we run into become.)

From then on, Sisi retreated from social life entirely and took to wearing only black. In her writings, she fantasized about wearing a veil so that she would never have to be seen by anyone again. When she was discussed publicly at all, it was with disapproval of her absenteeism and her cold treatment of her husband, who was an extraordinarily popular emperor.

Finally, her story came to an end when she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist in Geneva. He had traveled to the city to assassinate someone else, but he changed his plans at the last minute and killed Sisi instead.

It was only after her death that Sisi became a publicly revered figure. Emperor Franz Josef’s intense grief inspired memorials to Sisi across the country, and as savvy businessmen realized the profit to be made in selling Sisi-related trinkets, her reputation grew to mythic proportions. Ironically, the gift shop at the end of the tour is filled with just those sorts of trinkets that feed into the blind reverence that the museum was made to illuminate.

The end of the Sisi exhibit leads right on into the rooms where Franz Josef worked, slept, and saw visitors--furnished just as they were in his time.

We learned how Franz Josef was an extraordinarily dedicated ruler--working every day from before dawn until after dark. He made it a point that any citizen of the empire, no matter how lowly, could request an audience with him. On average, he would have a hundred such meetings every morning.

When he wasn’t meeting with his nobles and citizenry, Franz Josef was doing paperwork. He was interested in every facet of his empire, and he read every document he signed. While many leaders throughout history suffered for their disinterest in the minutiae of ruling, Franz Josef fell too far in the other direction.

His bedroom, though palatial in build, was austerely furnished. He slept in a small iron bed and used a small, plain washbasin. The only real ornamentation was a kneeler that Franz Josef used for prayer. Like all good Habsburgs, Franz Josef was a devout Catholic.

Franz Josef was also a devoted husband and father. Pictures of Sisi and their children were some of the few embellishments that occupied his otherwise austere desk.

Next to Franz Josef’s rooms were Sisi’s rooms, which even the emperor himself could only enter after ringing a bell for permission. Unlike Franz Josef’s rooms, Sisi’s were large and lavishly furnished.

Next to her bedroom, we saw Sisi's dressing and exercise room--where most of her time at the apartments was spent. Her ankle-length hair required three hours of brushing every day, and she used the time to read classics and study foreign languages. When she wasn’t reading, writing, or riding, Sisi would exercise in this room using a ladder, pull-up bar, and set of parallel rings.

Recreational exercise wasn’t really a thing at this point in history--especially among royalty--so this only added to Sisi’s borderline-scandalous reputation for eccentricity.

Unlike Franz Josef’s study, which was filled with pictures of Sisi and their children, Sisi’s exercise room was filled with pictures of her childhood home and family in Bavaria. It seems clear that the balance of affection between them was painfully uneven.

Another particularly interesting pair of rooms were painted from floor to ceiling to look like a tropical paradise, complete with vines, fruits, and colorful birds. They’re called the Bergl Rooms, after the artist who painted them.

Outside, walked around the epically scaled palace, seeing gardens and monuments, including a particularly impressive one dedicated to Mozart.

We also saw the Sacher Café and Hotel, home of the world-famous Sachertorte (a crumbly chocolate cake with apricot filling and dark chocolate icing) and a rabbit-crested wiener shack where we would enjoy some delicious food in the next few days.

The next day, we visited the Hofburg Treasury and the Imperial Museum of Fine Arts.

Back at the Hofburg complex, we made our way to a side courtyard--which could have been the central square of a major palace in its own right--then through an ornate red portal into a smaller but still sizeable courtyard that lead to the treasury.

The treasury tells a bit more of the history of the Habsburg dynasty, but mainly with regard to the coronations of various Habsburg rulers. Room after room are filled with their crowns, robes, orbs, scepters, and other regalia.

And Treasury isn’t just a fanciful name. When you enter, you can see the original iron door that lead into it in earlier centuries.

We did learn why the Habsburgs were so intent on holding onto Prague and the rest of Bohemia. According to the medieval rules of the Holy Roman Empire, emperors were elected by a council of nine individuals--three arch-bishops and six prince-electors.

Like the Medicis in Florence, the Habsburgs didn’t hold any official authority over the election of rulers, so they had to rely on politics, manipulation, and sheer wealth to exert their will.

But one of the six prince-electors was the king of Bohemia--the Habsburgs’ next-door neighbor. So when the Habsburgs incorporated Bohemia into their territories, they gained an official seat at the table. And from then on, all but one of the elected Holy Roman Emperors were Habsburgs.

The Habsburgs were also deeply religious, and the treasury includes a numbingly large display of altarpieces, reliquaries, and other religious art. Nearly all of it is made of gold, ivory, jade, amber or amber and encrusted with gemstones.

Even the whips they used to scourge themselves for penance were luxurious.

And because the Habsburgs made sure to marry into the royal families of any kingdoms they didn’t directly control, their collection includes artifacts from all across Europe and even from the Americas.

For example, Napoleon’s second wife was a Habsburg, and the treasury includes a number of Napoleonic artifacts, such as a ridiculously fancy crib used by their son Prince Napoleon II.

The treasury also holds a staggering collection of gemstones and jewelry, including gilded flower vases, a giant aquamarine, and a wall full of opal necklaces, earrings, and hairpins.

There's even a lidded cosmetics box carved out of a massive 1.3 pound emerald.

Near the end of the treasury, we saw some of the Habsburgs' most precious relics: the spear that pierced Jesus's side on the cross, a forearm-sized fragment of the cross, and gem-encrusted saber that belonged to Charlemagne--the man who united the lands that would later become the Holy Roman Empire.

None of it's real, of course, but that's beside the point.

After the treasury, we left the Hofburg to get some lunch at the nearby sausage stand. Along the way, though, we ran into a group of horses that were being moved from the Royal Stables. You have to pay extra to visit the stables, but we got to see them for free right on the street.

The sausages were fantastic. It may not look like much, but this pairing of simple bread and meat, anointed with a squirt of curry ketchup, is a true culinary and cultural masterpiece.

Anyway, after that brief diversion, we headed over to the Museum of Art History (officially known as the Kunsthistorisches Museum) just across the street from the Hofburg. If the treasury had upped the ante from the silver collection, this museum changed the game entirely.

Many of the world's great museums started as royal palaces or noble estates, but this museum was purpose-built by Emperor Franz Josef I as a palace for his family’s vast collection of art. And its grandeur could rival the palace of any king or emperor.

The top floor holds the museum’s painting collection while the ground floor houses statues and other artifacts. We started with the ground floor.

As Jessica put it, we’d never felt so pathetically poor in all of our lives. Not even at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or in Versailles. Not even close.

This is a golden centerpiece for holding salt and pepper.

This is a basin made of solid lapis lazuli--a stone so precious that a few grams ground into pigment might be worth more than all of a Renaissance artist’s other supplies combined.

This is part of a set of gold and mother-of-pearl cups that constituted a measurable percentage of the empire’s wealth when they were made.

See this lovely painted chest? Look closer.

Those aren’t paintings--they’re mosaics crafted from painstakingly selected precious stones.

This is a gilded automaton shaped like a boat. It propels itself on hidden wheels, the drummer drums, the horn-blowers raise and lower their horns, and the cannons actually fire in small puffs of black-powder. It was made in the 1500s.

This is a room filled with similar automata, which were made as entertaining symbols of the empire’s technological dominance.

Again and again, we saw all these artifacts that--if there had been only one or two of each--would have constituted a delightfully enchanting collection. But practically piled up as they were, they somehow became less impressive and more offensive.

Early on in the museum, Jessica and I started to joke about how we hated the Habsburgs. But by the end of this exhibit, the feeling had started to become genuine.

At least as we walked through the extravagances of St. Peter’s Basilica or Versailles, we could tell that they were built for a purpose--to stand as a physical embodiment of an ideal or edifice. Sure, they represent a fabulously unfair distribution of wealth between the commoners and the elite, but at least they stood for something. Walking through them felt like walking through history.

Walking through the Habsburg collection felt like walking through the discarded toys of privileged rich children. All those gilded and bejeweled knickknacks seemed to represent nothing more than obscene wealth mixed with insecurity and boredom. They feel made to amuse and impress an audience once or twice, then put away forever. Until they were put on display in the twilight years of the empire, I doubt many of them had even been enjoyed or appreciated by anyone in ages.

Much more enjoyable was the museum’s collection of Egyptian artifacts, which included sarcophagi, etched tablets, and even surviving pieces of an Egyptian book of the dead.

And the painting collection on the upper floor was also suitably impressive, but we were too tired and overwhelmed at that point to give it the appreciation it no-doubt deserved. We did get to see some extremely famous paintings, however, including Pieter Bruegel's Tower of Babel and a dramatic landscape by Peter Paul Rubens.

The next day, we made our last Hofburg stop at the New Palace Collections, which include the imperial armory and (tragically closed for renovation) musical instrument collection.

But first, we breakfasted at Café Central--a gorgeous 19th-century café where some of the most famous and infamous intellectuals of the time sipped coffee and discussed their theories. Sigmund Freud and Leon Trotsky were regulars, as was a young aspiring artist named Adolf Hitler.

Jessica and I both had kaffee verkehrt--basically Austrian latte macchiatos. They were excellent, and we found the waiters to be perfectly hospitable despite their reputation for grumpiness. Their odd combination of cheerful smiles and shamelessly blunt comments felt charmingly Austrian.

We also had scrambled eggs and ham served in a cast-iron pan, and they may have been the best eggs we'd ever had in our lives. Feeling indulgent, we ended our breakfast with a slice of sachertorte, which was delicious but also a bit dry--as is tradition, apparently.

Even with one of the two exhibits we wanted to see closed--and despite the building being unusually hot inside--our visit to the New Palace Collections was well worth it. The armory takes up nearly the entire top floor of the museum and holds a massive collection of arms and armor--both practical and ceremonial.

And best of all, we could take all the pictures we wanted.

There was hardly any other visitors in the armory besides us. The floors creaked loudly wherever we went, and extremely sensitive motion detectors kept going off whenever I got close to take pictures--summoning each time a docent who had perfected the look of "I'm not mad, just disappointed."

There was a collection of foreign arms and armor that the Habsburgs collected during their reign, and a small case of especially wicked-looking gear.

And Jessica found a collection of early modern emoji helmets

As we wandered on our own, taking pictures and admiring the armor, I was able to catch a glimpse into the closed musical instrument collection, which was closed off in a corner of the floor.

Last but not least, we found a collection of spectacularly decorative firearms tucked away in a corner of the central atrium.

From what we gather, they look better than they ever actually worked.

One level down, we peeked into a collection of artifacts celebrating world cultures--particularly those affected by European colonialism. We were pleasantly surprised by the size and tasteful presentation of the collections, and we ended up walking around the entire thing.

There are pieces from across the world, including the Americas, Africa, Arabia, Australia, the Pacific islands, and even Japan and China.

And our native Bay Area, apparently.

For the most part, the collection seems to do a good job of contextualizing the collection in a non-Eurocentric way. It does tend to gloss over the harsher elements of how Europeans affected these cultures for the worse, but I think that can be excused in the name of focusing on the cultures themselves.

Besides the Warriors cap, the highlight of the collection was a delightfully creep Hawaiian war mask made of feathers, seashells, and dog teeth.

And we got to see some musical instruments, after all.

Overall, the imperial complex in Vienna is suitably impressive--one of very few sites we’ve seen that truly lived up to their reputation in that regard--but I have to say that it mostly rang hollow for us. The more serious museums are impressive, but they feel relegated to the fringe--filling out rooms that only the most curious travelers peek into.

To us, the main exhibits of the Hofburg amounted to little more than a puffed-up ostentation of wealth and a rose-tinted reflection on the twilight years of a dusty empire that had long-since outlived its era.

At this point, you might think that we left with a poor impression of Vienna, but that's absolutely incorrect. We loved Vienna--it’s architecture, it’s wealth of art and culture, it’s refreshingly relaxed pace of life. It’s like being in Paris but without all the traffic.

And the coffee. I may still not have a well-developed taste for the stuff myself, but after making our first honest-to-goodness brewed coffee in months, Jessica was practically enraptured.

Along with Venice, Austria was one of the first cities in Europe to adopt coffee from the Middle East, and they have been refining it ever since. The drinks menus at the cafes we’ve visited here have all had a minimum of two pages dedicated just to different varieties of coffee.

At the Hofburg palace café, Jessica had enjoyed a melange--basically an Austrian cappuccino. I had a hot chocolate, which was easily one of the best I’ve ever had. It was somehow rich and mild at the same time. Nothing like the thick drinking chocolate that we had with churros in Madrid, this chocolate was light and milky in body yet possessing an intense flavor that seemed to fill my mouth with the smallest sip.

We got plenty of chances to admire the impressive Vienna State Opera house, which is right between the Hofburg and the metro stop, but we never actually went inside (except for two misguided minutes trying to browse the wildly overcrowded gift shop).

We also saw the even more impressive St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and that time we did go inside.

The patterned roof reminded us of the Burgundian roof tiles we saw in Beaune and Colmar. Which might make sense given that Burgundy used to be a Habsburg domain.

We also took the opportunity to exchange our Polish and Czech currency for Euros at a miserable rate from a nearby money-changer.

On our last day, we stayed in and planned most of the rest of our trip. It was surreal to think that there was only a month and a day left before we would be flying home.

Not to let a day go by without some form of drama, we forgot that it was Assumption Day, which is an actual holiday here in still-very-Catholic Austria. When we went out in the afternoon to go grocery shopping for dinner, everything in walking distance was closed.

So, naturally, we partook in the time-honored heathen tradition of going out for Chinese food.

Next Post: Salzburg & Berchtesgaden 

Last Post: To Vienna

[skeletorific]

Hello, may I request a fluff imagine/headcanon? How would UT and UF Sans (who I imagine are space nerds) react to finding out that their s/o (who they've recently started dating) works at a planetarium/observatory complex when the s/o takes them on a date there? They also tell them the reason they kept their work a secret is because they didn't want to appear like a huge nerd in front of the cool skele. Oh, and the skele can come by anytime as long as the s/o worns their boss beforehand

UT!Sans: Okay, it will be a MIRACLE if he doesn’t already know. Sans spends a lot of time at the planetarium. Given that monsters went Underground centuries ago their understanding of astronomy is way, waaay behind the times. He’s done his best with the sci-fi novels and occasional textbooks that fall into the dump, but it's very piecemeal and sometimes hard to tell what’s real and what’s just a sci-fi trope. After he and Papyrus get settled he spends a lot of time wandering and figuring out what he can. He’s relieved the moon landing was real (or was it…no its real).

He’s seen you a couple times but just assumed you were a regular like him (the dress code is basically just formal wear for you). You were pretty cute, and he ended up striking up a conversation after you’d ended up responding to his bad joke (”that solar system exhibit’s so nice I wanna put a ring on it”) with one of your own (”yeah, must’ve taken a long time to planet”). 

You’d talked for a while and he’d walked away for your number. Normally Sans isn’t the type to move fast but clearly, there was some kind of gravity at work here (heh) so it wasn’t long before you’d had a first date. Then a second.

Third date planning went something like this:

Sans: what do u think, brave enough to try Paps spaghetti again tonight?

You: as appealing as that sounds, I’ve got work late tonight :’(

Sans: nooo

You: yeah…

Sans: eh, it's okay. can always try for another night

A pause. And an idea struck you.

You: u know what? Meet me at the planetarium at 10 with some food.

Sans: ok?

Sans: u don’t have time to get to my house but have time to get to a closed planetarium in the middle of nowhere?

Sans: that sounded sarcastic tbh i’m sorry

You: you’re good xD. and trust me. it's a surprise ;)

Sans oooh~

He showed up at ten on the dot, not late for once and holding McDonald's. He looked around for you on the front steps when the locked doors opened and you were on the other side, trying to stifle an excited grin. “hey”

“uh, hey. How did you….” he smacked his forehead. “I’m an idiot. you work here?

”yeah. I mean, to be fair to you, I’m upper management, so I don’t wear the uniform.” You held the door open for him and he walked inside.

“still, might’ve picked up on it. how come you acted all mysterious about it?”

“I dunno.” You led him down the dimly lit hallway, shrugging. “its kind of nerdy, I guess? not like the glamourous nerdy, like NASA or something. Like, low budget never enough funding nerdy.”

“hey, what part of this made you think I wasn’t into nerdy?” He gestured to himself.

“I don’t know, it's dumb. and I’m hungry” You made a grab for the food and he pulled it out of your reach.

“hmm, I dunno..” His perpetual grin widened and he waved the bag tauntingly. “don’t know if secret keepers deserve food…”

You grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in for a brief kiss. He flushed bright blue and you took advantage of this to snatch the bag out of his hand and stuff some fries in your face.

“heh, you play dirty, kid”

“always”

“so what did you want me to see?”

“Same reason I had to stay late” You rolled up the bag to save the rest for later. “we’re opening a new special exhibit, and well…got special permission from my boss to give a special tour.”

“…..you didn’t”

“I did” You grinned

“you didn’t”

“come on” you grabbed his hand and pulled him along

It was a small theatre with about twenty seats in it. You led him to the front row and then dug around in your bag, pulling out two pairs of 3D glasses and handing one to him. “its this recreation of a satellite’s path. Goes out pretty far and the effects are fan-fucking-tastic” You sat down next to him

He wrapped an arm around your shoulder. “hey i think i’m in love with you, is that normal?”

You stuffed some fries in his mouth, smiling. “just don’t spill food, the janitor will murder me.”

You sat there in content silence for the full thirty minutes, listening to the narration as it took you on a tour of the galaxy. You’d seen the video a lot of times at this point and spent most of it watching him.

He looked like a kid at a theme park. It was honestly kind of adorable. Sans didn’t show open excitement often, but he was so lost in the film and the visuals that he wasn’t at all self-conscious about his facial expressions. His smile was wider than you’d ever seen it and he kept squeezing your shoulder whenever something particularly cool came on screen.

You settled against him. Enjoying the silence and the warmth, and the moment between you.

UF!Sans: “what is this uniform even for?”

“stop going through my clothes, ya creep,” you said, snatching the blue polo out of his hands and pulling it on.

“up until about five seconds ago you were naked but it's noticing the clothes that make me creepy” Red sat up and stretched, pulling back the blankets on the bed.

“no one ever said I made sense” You pulled on some dark slacks too, turning to the mirror leaning against the corner and trying to get your hair into something approaching decent shape. 

Red sidled up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist, pressing toothy kisses along the crook of your neck. “sure you gotta go?”

“yeah, got work.” You smiled, humming softly at the attention.

“could call in sick…” His hands crept lower, towards your hips. “stay a little longer…”

You flushed and gently pulled his hands off.“ my boss would actually kill me.”

“trust me, your boss ain’t seen nothin like me yet” He grinned.

“hey, be nice to my boss, I actually like this job” You adjusted your shirt.

“like it so much you won’t even tell me what it is.”

“is it important that you know?” You pull on some shoes

“nah, just a weird thing for me to not know.” He rolled his neck, groaning softly.

“I’ll tell you someday” You pulled on a jacket and grabbed your keys.

“unless I find out first” He smirked sharply.

“that threat would be a lot more credible if you were wearing pants right now instead of just boxers”

“that a challenge?”

“take it how you will. I gotta go”

“hey” You turned your head to face him and he caught you in a slow, soft kiss. “have a good day”

You smiled. “yeah. you too.” And with that, you were out the door.

You’d been seeing Red for a couple months now. What the battle-hardened, rugged, smooth-talking skeleton saw in you you’d probably never know, but all that mattered right now was that his jokes made you laugh (even the bad ones) and his kisses left you weak at the knees. You’d be an idiot to give that up.

Which….is probably why you hadn’t told him about your job. Like, you hadn’t been actively hiding it or lying to him or anything. But you’d skirted questions and tried to avoid talking about anything that happened at work. Red was a badass. And you were slowly realizing that he was probably a genius too, based on what little he told you of his life Underground. And there was something kind of embarrassing about telling a person like that that your place of work was a planetarium gift shop.

As if you needed more reasons to feel inadequate next to him. You knew you were being kind of stupid about the whole thing, and you kept meaning to tell him. But every time you’d get so nervous about what he might say or think that you couldn’t make yourself.

Which was a shame, because you really did like your job. Sure, some of the customers could get a little annoying, and the pay wasn’t super great. But there were definite perks. Watching little kids chatter excitedly about planets and comets and asteroids to their parents/teachers. Getting to wander around the exhibits on your breaks and after work. Even the occasional chance to talk to guest speakers in between lectures. You were fascinated by space and space-related stuff. No interest in becoming an astronaut or even an astronomist but you loved the opportunity to learn in a more casual setting.

Still, by the end of your shift, you were ready to get home and clean up for your date. You and Red were planning on going to a movie.

One problem. You couldn’t find your keys.You dug around in your pockets, the break room, even the space behind the counter in case they fell out, but nothing. You searched for nearly forty-five minutes, making a general nuisance of yourself to the person who came to swap you out.

Your phone buzzed.

Red: where are you?

You: sorry, still at work, can’t find my keys. be home soon

Red: want a lift?

You: you don’t know where I am.

Long pause.

You: Sans-

Before you could send it you heard a familiar, amused voice behind you. “really should know better than to leave your location on, doll~”

You yelped, nearly dropping your phone as you whirled around. “Red-!”

“so, where are we-’ His voice dropped off and his eyes went wide as he took in his surroundings. 

Your face slowly grew redder. “I…..I know its nerdy and I swear I was gonna tell you eventually but…” Your voice died off as you realized he was chuckling. “….what’s so funny?”

“stars, doll.” He hooked his fingers under your chin and pecked you on the lips, eyes lidded. ‘if I believed in soulmates i’d say you’re getting pretty damn close to one.”

“….you’re into space?” Your cheeks felt like they might catch on fire but your heart leaped in your chest. 

“uh…” His turn to look slightly awkward. He rubbed the back of his head. “yeah, honestly. one of those interests I keep on the down low, but…yeah.”

“…do you want a tour-”

“yes”

The movie fell by the wayside (you found your keys in your car later on). You walked, handing hand through the planetarium, and got to watch as your gruff and tough boyfriend turned into a hyperactive twelve-year-old over all of it.

Comforting to know deep down, he was just as big a nerd as you are.

[poorquentyn]

Considering Spielberg is your (second?) favorite director, do you have any kind of ranking of his filmography? (If so, I hope you give Empire of the Sun the high marks it deserves. It's the quintessential Spielberg film! A boy's own adventure story that gets eaten alive by a war drama!)

*rubs hands together*

Ok, so, only ones where he was in the director’s chair; none of even those producer’s credits where you can feel his indelible stamp on the final product, so no Goonies, Gremlins, Poltergeist, or Back to the Future. Even then, I’m leaving out a lot, so honorable mention to Lincoln, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me if You Can, War of the Worlds, The Color Purple, Bridge of Spies, the two worthwhile Indy sequels…

10. Jurassic Park

Start with the gaze upon himself: Jurassic Park as a $63 million self-portrait released on the exact tipping point of his career. John Hammond and Steven Spielberg’s miracles are one and the same: one brings dinosaurs back, the other convinces us they’re real. One uses DNA, the other uses CGI. When the characters stare in wonder, they’re meant to mirror our own at the imagery; when Jeff Goldblum mutters “that crazy son of a bitch actually did it,” he’s speaking for an entire industry once again forced to up its game by a Spielberg Miracle.

Our protagonist, however, is shitty with computers, so Alan Grant terrifies a child the old fashioned Jaws way: with a prop (a raptor claw) and his imagination. Hammond whisks him away from that to a world where one can press a button and make yourself appear on screen, mirroring how Spielberg has done the same with Hammond as his craft has evolved from malfunctioning sharks to CG velociraptors. The heart of the film comes when this giddy wonder in the possibilities of “we have the technology” is soured and our author avatar is left disillusioned and afraid, eating ice cream in a room full of merch he’ll never sell (but Spielberg will), telling Laura Dern about how he started off with a flea circus. That, right there, is a metaphor for moviemaking, and specifically Spielberg’s brand of it: pulling invisible strings to make us think that impossible things are real, to make belief believable.

Above all, Jurassic Park is afraid for the kids. Another perfect metaphor for the meta-tastic whole comes when the T-Rex crashes down through the car roof, only glass separating him from devouring the children; their hands are desperately keeping the monster behind the rectangular transparent plane, on the screen, even as Spielberg/Hammond’s tech is so real it threatens to burst right through. “He left us!” one kid wails about the character representing the studio weasels. “But that’s not what I’m gonna do,” Alan Grant whispers, half in shadow, blue eyes ablaze with a promise he didn’t know he was going to make. He can’t keep it. There are monsters in the kitchen. Spielberg’s next movie, released only a handful of months later, is Schindler’s List.

9. Duel

Such a seam scratches the tape; rewind, start again. Where did this begin? On TV, in the backseat of a car, backing out of the garage. Duel is the world’s most accomplished demo reel, cinema stripped down to its bare minimum to let the director’s preposterous surplus of talent shine through. It’s about a man (named Mann, both appropriate and touchingly pretentious) who pisses off a truck driver we never see, who then chases our protagonist with lethal intent, and that’s it.

And that’s all Spielberg needs. What follows is the future, a steel-shod gauntlet of precise camera angles and insidious sound design that builds the bridge between the B-movie and the blockbuster. By the end you feel spent but sated, as if every possible creative drop has been wrung out of the slim scenario. It’s nothing more nor less than the finest Roadrunner & Coyote episode imaginable, to the extent that George Miller was clearly reaching back to it for inspiration again and again in Fury Road. Indeed, while Duel is set in the modern day, Spielberg needs no trickery to make the antagonistic truck look positively apocalyptic.

It’s such a vivid example of the medium’s unique possibilities that you have to stop to remember that it was made for TV. And then you stop to think that he was only 24, same age Welles was when he made Citizen Kane. Lofty comparison, I know, but Duel proves it’s not what your movie is about, but how it’s about it that counts. Spielberg made it look easy, and so everyone followed. The road goes ever on and on…

8. Munich

…until it doesn’t. No exit.

Munich is the culmination of Spielberg’s Blue Period, his great here-comes-another-bloody-century trepidation, punctured by Stanley Kubrick’s death and 9/11. The former gave birth to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and the movies about closing doorways and agonized faces that followed. The latter palpably haunted Spielberg’s projects in its wake: even Minority Report, a script written years earlier and adapted from a decades-old story, was uncannily timely in its portrait of overreaching security and law enforcement built to placate (and control) a population reeling from loss. Then came the director’s outright Twin Towers Trilogy: The Terminal, War of the Worlds, and Munich, addressing the event from different angles and through different filters. Of course, the intriguing and emotional setup in The Terminal’s opening minutes, framing post-9/11 bureaucracy as fluid chaos eating away at the state from within, quickly gives way to disappointing inanity. And while I maintain that War of the Worlds is absolutely perfect as an on-the-ground recreation of 9/11 as an alien attack for the first 50-60%, things go downhill fast once Tim Robbins shuffles onscreen.

Munich is the one that actually has the courage of its convictions, in large part because it’s about the director and protagonist alike breaking down in tears and admitting they don’t know what to believe anymore. Every set piece unfolds with a quiet chill and ends with you contemplating mortality. It’s a deliberately non-thrilling thriller. The ideology dissolves, not in neat bromides but in the day-to-day realities of ending human beings. Revenge fills you with fire, hot and bright, and then turns sour in your mouth. Narrative strands cross and recross, and the film’s inciting event, murder before the world’s watching eyes, sinks into that abyss known as Context.

By the end, you don’t even know what you’re fighting for anymore but your family, and you’re haunted by the knowledge that your kids will be fighting the same damn fight. The last thing to be corrupted, then, is the dinner table. Our protagonist begs to break bread with his handler, and the final word of the Blue Period is “no.” The camera tilts over to the Twin Towers, their loss contextualized as just another curl of a horrorshow helix, and the exorcism is complete. The anger and grief has largely vanished from Spielberg’s work since, as he’s settled into a comfortable John Ford mode. He left his questions here, unanswered.

7. Minority Report

If A.I. was Spielberg’s 2001, a millennia-spanning epitaph for humanity and a glimpse of what we leave behind, Minority Report (following the Kubrick trajectory) would be his Clockwork Orange, stepping down from the stars to gaze with cold horror on the things we do to one another with power. In the future, three young seers see crimes before they happen, enabling the state to lock people away for crimes they haven’t committed in the name of wiping out crime for good. Indeed, this fleet fluid fever dream makes explicit visual reference to Clockwork’s Ludovico scene (see above). In Spielberg’s memory machine, though, the image of an eye forcibly kept open by metal claws takes on a meaning beyond social and political analysis, though those are certainly still in there. It’s something more spiritual: Minority Report is about divine sight in a postmodern age.

Our protagonist’s rival went to seminary, his own men tell him they’re more priests than cops, but Tom Cruise’s John Anderton can’t bring himself to recognize the Spielberg Miracle at work here. The larger moral revelation of the “precogs,” the framing of their ability to see crimes before they happen as a techno-noir version of Biblical prophecy, is lost on Anderton because it can’t bring his son back. For him, that the future is known points to the futility of human existence. If there’s no free will, if we’re all doomed to perpetually fall in a fallen world, what’s the point?

And then one of the precogs asks him: “Do you see?” So begins the murder mystery that will see him accused of a future murder, that of the man who ostensibly killed his son. Anderton chooses mercy, only for the man to grab and pull the trigger because it’s all a setup to prevent Anderton from learning the truth about the precogs: they, too, are children stolen from their parents, all our characters trapped in a Möbius strip of loss they can only watch unfold, again and again, as if on the film’s countless screens. The images have been manipulated to hide the truth, the divine vision sullied by contact with the greedy exploitative systems of the Blue Period. But our detective finds the truth, and an existential triumph in making the right choice even if he can’t change the outcome. I’ve always taken the happy ending, a startling glimpse of green after a movie of blues and grays that look etched in stone, as just another vision. Closure is there, your family is there, in the future, in the past, just out of reach, smiling back at you. It hurts to look, but even as your eyes are torn out and replaced, you can’t look away.

6. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Well now, see, this one’s a tad criticism-proof by design, being as it is smelted and shaped to get under your defenses. “Disarming” seems like a strange choice of defining adjective for this most white-knuckled of action/adventure movies, but for all the staggering moviemaking skill on display, Raiders is ultimately a puppy shoving its nose under your hand. Given the slightest opportunity, it will make you love it. Fun is its religion, so deeply felt and communicated is the generous desire to entertain, rooted in the pulp serials that first lit the fire in its makers’ bellies to create.

And that fire again burns hot and bright, which is Raiders’ other secret magic trick: underneath all the cleverness, the jokes within jokes and setpieces spilling into ever more elaborate ones, the sense that every single moment was designed to make the rest of the genre look paltry and stingy by comparison, what happens at the end is nothing less than the very specifically Old Testament God stepping in to fry Nazis’ faces off. It’s the Ghostbusters trick of grounding helium-high hijinks in metaphysical forces that are not in any way kidding around. Our action hero, at the climax of the movie, is simply the one who (in an inverse of Minority Report) is smart enough to look away. So many Spielberg movies boil down to a shaft of divine light, and sometimes the light burns.

Then came the bizarre, hallucinogenic Temple of Doom and the sturdy, winning Last Crusade and that fourth one we don’t talk about, but they’re all in some way reactions to the nigh-flawless original. All you can do is go back, wearing the leather deep, Indy ageless, his eyes blazing shut against the light.

5. Empire of the Sun

Equally criticism-proof, but for the exact opposite reasons. This is the one no one can quite explain. Spielberg isn’t telling; he might not have any more idea than the rest of us. It shares certain themes with the rest of his work, especially regarding how children process the collapse and change of their world, but the similarities are strictly on paper. It feels different. I don’t what it…is. What it’s for. What it means. These sound like bad things, but they’re not. Empire of the Sun is utterly arresting, every bit as much as those canonized Spielberg classics of which anyone can explain the appeal. It’s just that it unfolds like a dream, and I’m left grasping after it in the same way. It might be one of the more accurate adaptations put to film in only that it feels so much more novelistic in its thrust and tone than most.

What can be pinned down is a series of images and sounds about the fall and occupation of Shanghai by Japan in WWII, told from the perspective of the naive sheltered son of a British emissary. Our hero is played by Christian Bale, in what might be my favorite child performance. To the extent that Empire of the Sun is about anything beyond the experience of watching it, it’s about his breakdown, and that’s what grounds the dreamlike style: we’re watching a bubble burst. Death and decay unfold out of the corner of his eye, like a memory he can’t quite bear to fully recall. His childhood vanishes when he shrieks surrender at anyone who will listen, trusting the rules to snap back into place and the world to make sense again, only for the collapse to continue unabated.

It’s made out of smoke and corners and quiet sadnesses. It’s runny, like an egg. I dream about it sometimes. You should watch it if you haven’t.

4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

*harrumphs, wipes eyes* so um uh my name is Emmett, you see, and it begins with a….an ends with a….shut up.

That’s the point, though, of the movie: identification so strong that it almost kills you. E.T. is love, that’s all. All of it is here, from pure warm glow to heart stopping loss, swept up in imagery and sound that seem to positively hum with rich rueful feeling. Much has been made of how much of the movie is shot from a child’s POV, but everything about the movie operates on kid-logic. ET himself, for example: botanist or pet? Both. The connection he forges with Elliott swirls all such categories together. Elliott needs this, is yearning for love so badly, and even when it hurts, he’s more alive than he was before, with Dad gone.

But what makes E.T. different from, say, Star Wars and Harry Potter is that our hero only gets a taste of this other world, his fingertips brushing against magic as he passes it in the night. The gold-and-purple-brushed cinematography and the ecstatic, eternally swelling score sweep the profound and mundane together as one, bike rides and trick-or-treating and a psychic connection with an alien, yet the narrative eventually teases them apart like a sad parent forced to tell their kid that the dog is dead, and what “dead” means. ET returns to life, the definitive Spielberg Miracle…and then he leaves. Elliott will go home to his melancholy, frustrating life. School is still hard. His emotions still confuse him. Dad is still gone. The final shot of his face is not one of wonder, but maturation. It’s the moment Elliott grows up, and it’s the very definition of bittersweet.

What do you do, when you’ve loved and lost? You go home, you play with your toys, you send letters into Weird Things and Such SF Monthly, you make movies in your backyard, and you watch the skies….

….until they come back.

All of them.

3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I smiled just typing the words. I whispered them to myself, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This movie is a lil shining red ball dancing in my eyes; it is glee given form, a rainbow-colored pony ridden by a Willy Wonka-suited Care Bear on twenty tabs of LSD. The last half-hour, all glowing light and warm noise, earns the cliche: it makes you feel like a kid again, in the best possible way. After a movie’s buildup of wonder and terror, the sight and sound of a colossal lit-up mothership cheerfully BWAMMing out a melody is so cathartic that it’s impossible to sit still.

As with Raiders, though, it’s worth digging into the movie’s layers to understand where that light is coming from, and what it costs you to look at it. Close Encounters is a movie about communication, of course, from the alien lights to the translator forever accompanying Francois Truffaut (a filmmaker who knows a thing or two about capturing kid-logic on screen). It’s a movie about the fragility of family life in the face of the unknown, hence that devastating scene around the dinner table: something’s wrong with Dad, a subject near and dear to the director’s heart.

But above all else, it’s a religious movie, the religious movie. It’s about rushing upwards, and leaving all else behind. Roy Neary sees a divine light in the sky, and can’t reconcile it with the life he was living. He obsessively recreates his vision in idols, chases it across the country, driving his wife and children away in favor of his fellow prophets: here are my mother and my brothers. And the sting in that gorgeous symphonic ending’s tail is that it’s so good that Roy sheds this mortal coil to join them in the heavens. Spielberg has said that if he made it now, he wouldn’t have let  Roy get on that ship. And when you look at E.T. or the movies he made from Schindler forward, it’s clear why: in joining the interstellar flock, the man-child left his family to the wolves. By the time Roy/Eliot came home, his skin had sagged, his hair had gone white, and his children were waiting for him with eyes that cut.

And what do their movies look like?

2. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

The ultimate deconstructed fairytale; a honeyvelvetacid-glazed gaze into a heart-shaped abyss; Kubrick a darkwinged angel looming over ET’s crib, brushing a final tear away from his metallic eye…

So does Steven Spielberg, our flesh and blood Peter Pan, grow old and tell the children he lied. The monster is inside the house, inside your head, and inside the stories. At the core is a child’s innocent love for his mother…programmed in him, by her, a debt she cannot and will not repay. “His love is real, but he is not.” Pinocchio but for robots, A.I. takes its sci-fi trappings as a launching pad for a guiding philosophical question: “if a robot could genuinely love a human, what responsibility would that person hold towards that mecha in return?” The boardroom exec who poses that question pauses, almost bashful to ask the next one in a room full of people who treat the abuse of robots like a joke or a PowerPoint presentation, and then proceeds: “it’s a moral question, isn’t it?”

It is indeed, and for David’s adoptive family, the answer is none. He is abandoned, and chases his Blue Fairy and his happy ending across the apocalypse. As his fellow robots are torn apart to the cheers of the crowd in front of him, as his entire environment upends his hardwired fairytale logic into a sleazy neon-and-smoke nightmare, as his companion Gigolo Joe warns him presciently that “they made us too smart, too quick, and too many…they hate us because they know that when they’re gone, all that will be left is us,” David keeps looking for the Blue Fairy to turn him into a real boy so Mommy will love him again. He has no choice. His brain literally will not let him do otherwise. There is no will to power here, no core he can call upon to upend his puppet masters’ plan and prove himself Human After All. All he has is love, and they’ve used it to enslave him: at journey’s end, he finds his maker, who reveals that everything post-abandonment was staged to test if his love held. It did, and as such that love is now a corporate-approved field-tested quality-assured Feature that can be passed onto the hungry customer. This is not a Hero’s Journey, because you are not a person. You are a thing, and this is a product launch. David sees a dozen faces like his, stretched on a rack and ready. There is a row of boxes. They have David’s silhouette on them. All of a sudden, one starts to rattle and shake…

In the face of this existential horror (“my brain is falling out”) David promptly chooses suicide, whispering “Mommy” as he jumps from the statue he saw in his first moments. Down in the void, he finds the Blue Fairy and prays to her for millennia, but she cannot answer his eternal plea. She is a statue. An image, nothing more. She crumbles into a thousand pieces in his arms. He finds his mother, too. She is a fake, a digital mirage. Future robots create a simulacrum of her, as David himself was a simulacrum to replace her comatose son, designed in the image of his creator’s dead son…and of course, he cannot tell the difference. He gets his happy ending, on the surface. Underneath, what’s actually happening is that he’s an orphan who will never grow up being shown a movie and told everything is going to be all right. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts…

…but it doesn’t matter how much he wants it, that is not his mother and his mother never loved him. We know these things even if he doesn’t. He claps because he believes in fairies, forever, eyes and smile frozen, waiting for them to appear, any second now. This is Spielberg showing you a brain on Spielberg. David followed Story over the waterfall’s edge, and now has only time’s vasty deep into which to shout “I love you” and convince himself the echoes are his make-believe savior and his long-dead mom. There is only the water that swallowed up Manhattan, and then the world, and him with it…

Wait.

There’s something in the water.

1. Jaws

To borrow from Alien, the closest thing it has to a peer: Jaws’ structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. You could just call it the perfect movie and walk away, except that if you try the floor tilts up beneath you and down you go into the mouth, the most abyssal maw in imagination’s history, and those black eyes roll over to white and you beg for more.

Run down the pedestals at the Movie Museum: Citizen Kane wants you to breathe in a life. Rashomon wants you to question how storytelling works and what Truth actually is, or if it exists at all. Jaws wants to eat you. Not the characters, you. That’s what Spielberg figured out how to do, and the entire industry reshaped itself around copying him: tonal immersion so absolute that he could make the audience feel anything he wanted, on a dime. Hitchcock played your spine like the devil on a fiddle; Spielberg is a rainbow-wigged mad scientist strapping you on a rocket to the sun. He created his own genre, and it’s the one that still dominates the medium in every corner of the globe. With a shark. A shark that, as a prop, did not fucking work.

Details? How do you pull one strand out of a web like this one? I can only say “perfect” so many times, but I mean it. Shot for shot, line by line, beat by beat. Every domino falls. The calm moments and the funny ones and the frantic blood-soaked ones, everything is earned. As with Raiders, the highest compliment I can pay is that other movies taste like shit for a month afterwards. When I hear the word “craftsmanship” I do not think of cars or cabinets, I think of Jaws. It feels hewn.

The numbers came later. The myth, the legend, the pale imitations, the bad sequels, the ripple effects, all secondary. What Jaws is, is sensation. It cannot have been made, surely, it hatched. It was never launched. It will never fall. Smile, you son of a–

[radientwings]

Of Wistful Dreams (Feysand)

In which Rhys dreams of his mother and sister and Feyre decides to do something about it. Angst with a healthy coating of fluff.

She saw them sometimes in his dreams, when the unbreakable bond between them wasn’t quite so easy to block. Feyre always knew that Rhys’ mother and sister must have been beautiful, but nothing in her imagination could have compared to what she saw in his mind. Where his father always seemed to be shrouded in menacing shadow (so different from Azriel’s, Feyre noted), the women of his family always seemed to bring light and laughter. In the best of Rhys’ dreams, his mother wore a wide, wicked grin so like his own that Feyre sometimes had to do a double take. His sister’s smile, on the other hand, was a much softer thing, but still no less bright. She followed devotedly after her brother, half-running until a younger Rhys would swoop down and lift her onto his shoulders. Their mother was never far behind, laughing with them both, the sound as clear to Feyre as if she had been there herself.

The dreams were wistful, wishful things that Feyre felt honored to share. But she also saw how they haunted her mate in his waking hours. He had grieved for his blood family for many years… but he also had never had the chance to truly heal from their deaths, their murders. How could he have? He was known as the most powerful High Lord in history, but too often did his subjects, did the entirety of Prythian, forget that there was a soul as fragile as any other hiding underneath all that power.

And then there were the nights where the dreams became twisted, the light turning red as blood began to fill both Rhys’ and Feyre’s visions. The bodies of his mother, of his little sister, were almost unrecognizable by the time Rhys had found them, torn apart, matching midnight hair utterly soaked with the sheer amount of blood spilled. 

Often, it was the last thing Rhys saw before he woke, pulling Feyre out of sleep with him.

Once, after a particularly grueling night, when Feyre had Rhys wrapped tightly in her arms – a vain attempt to protect him from the dreams that would do him harm – he had admitted to her that he was terrified that one day that image of their wrecked bodies would be the only thing he would remember of them both. That all those beautiful images, all those memories that kept them alive in his mind, would fade with time, leaving only blood and death and loneliness. 

Feyre hadn’t been able to find anything to say in response back then. The only thing she’d been able to do was hold him tighter and run her fingers through his midnight hair.

After weeks more of the dreams and nightmares both, however, an idea popped into her head in the form of a painting. Feyre knew what Rhys’ mother and sister looked like so well that she almost forgotten that there were no more physical reminders left of them – Rhys’ father had gone on a rampage at the loss of his mate, destroying all of her and their daughter’s possessions. Including what few images existed of them.

That very night, she began to put her plan in motion, wandering into the Rainbow to get what she needed. She spent the next few days gathering supplies, taking her time. Of all her past projects, none mattered so much as this one; she needed the perfect colors, she needed to do this right. 

Finally, she started. The process was painstakingly slow as she strived for perfection, but Feyre still found herself getting lost in the painting, in the vision of these women she wished she’d had the chance to meet.

The hardest part of the whole thing was keeping it from Rhys of course. Normally, he was such a big part of her art, always encouraging her, always ready to listen to her ramble on about it. But this time she would keep it secret.

“So what are you working on, my beautiful, wonderfully talented mate?” Rhys asked her, two weeks into her project. He rested warm hands on her waist, pressing his face into the bare skin of her neck. Thank the Cauldron Feyre had quick reflexes; she just barely managed to cover the painting in the darkness she’d received from him, blocking it completely from his view. An ironic twist of fate, that.

“You know flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere this time,” Feyre replied dryly. “You’ll find out soon enough. Patience.” 

Rhys nipped at her neck, sending very specific images through their bond. “Or perhaps I can convince you into giving up your little secret?”

“Scoundrel,” Feyre scoffed, even as she leaned back into his solid warmth.

His voice was a pleased rumble. “Always.” 

Needless to say she hadn’t got much more work done that day. But she also managed to keep the project from him a little longer, so she considered it a win regardless. (Though Rhys also won that round in a way, considering how much he enjoyed his convincing.)

And now… Now it was finally finished. And she could finally show him what had so occupied her time this past month. Feyre thought she should be happier about it, but she was only nervous, the feeling curdling in her stomach. For all that Rhys loved her paintings, she’d never done something like this for him before. What if the painting only made the grief worse for him? What if it became nothing more than another painful reminder?

It was too late to change course now, however. Not with Rhys already waiting by her side, staring at the cloth covered canvas in front of them. Feyre briefly considered leaving it covered up, but then Rhys put an encouraging hand on her elbow, his eyes gleaming at her knowingly. And so Feyre used her newfound courage to quickly pull the cloth away, before the temptation to run could not longer be pushed aside.

The revealed painting was met with nothing but all encompassing silence. The mating bond, normally so open between them, remained suspiciously cut off.

Feyre wondered what Rhys was thinking as he stared so intently at her latest creation. She knew what he was seeing – or hoped he was seeing. The painting depicted two utterly stunning women, standing hand-in-hand. The older and more striking of the two had her gorgeous, membranous wings spread out wide, a wild grin pulling at her lips, midnight hair spilling around her shoulders in glorious waves. Hazel eyes sparkled with mirth and love as she peered out of the painting, as if she was greeting a loved one finally coming home. By her side, her daughter looked gentler in comparison, standing perhaps half a head shorter than her mother despite being fully grown. Her own midnight hair had been meticulously braided – no doubt by her older brother – violet and pink and white flowers carefully woven in. She was meticulously dressed, but there was an undeniable hint of mischievousness in her purple-hued eyes. The hand that wasn’t intertwined with her mother’s was held out in front of her, reaching out – an invitation for the viewer to join them. The painting seemed to be backlit as well, as if the two women had just walked inside from a sunny day, giving the whole thing a bright and yet ethereal feel. Or so Feyre hoped.

Eventually, she dared to glance up at Rhys, finding an expression of pained wonder on his face. He looked infinitely sad… and yet there was a quality of peace about him as well, as if it healed something in him, to have this reminder of what he’d lost so long ago. Feyre felt her heart crack at the sight and couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to him, tangling their hands together until they almost mirrored the painting in front of them.

“I know you’re afraid you’ll forget about them one day, forget what they look like,” Feyre finally said, breaking the heavy silence. Her stomach still curdled with her nerves and she fiddled with the cloth of her dress as she looked at her mate. “I thought perhaps this might help.” 

Rhys said nothing for a long moment, though his fingers tightened around hers. He lifted his free hand to the painting, first tracing the strong curve of his mother’s wings and then trailing his thumb down the length of his sister’s braid.

“They were so beautiful,” he whispered, the bond once again opening between them until he was showering her with image after image of the family he lost.

Feyre leaned into his side. “They were. They didn’t deserve their ending”

“No, they didn’t.” The grief that came with those simple words was immense and ancient.

Feyre ached for Rhys, ached for his pain. She regretted the painting for a brief moment (had she only caused him more pain?), but Rhys could not tear his eyes from it. He stared at it almost hungrily, memorizing each stroke, each color, each detail until Feyre was sure he could recreate the picture perfectly in his mind. The peace that she had sensed before seemed to settle once more, blanketing over his pain, giving him the kind of comfort he’d craved for centuries. And Feyre knew, without a doubt, that she’d done the right thing.

I didn’t want your last image of them to be of their broken bodies, she whispered in his mind as he continued to stare at her work.

Rhys swallowed roughly, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. He lifted his head up to the sky first, overcome with emotion, before he finally turned his gaze to Feyre, the depth of it pinning her in place.

“You are a wonder, Feyre darling,” he told her, quietly serious. 

“I knew that already,” she said with a teasing little smile, before allowing it to fade into something gentler. She touched the edge of his jaw. “But so are you, Rhys. And they would think so too. They would proud of what you accomplished here, but most of all of you are. Of that I have no doubt.” 

Rhys turned fully to her then, leaning his forehead against hers, his eyes still shining with emotion even as he looked at their linked hands. “Thank you,” he said. 

“You’re welcome,” Feyre replied, really meaning it. 

Rhys smiled at her, a small smile that reminded her not of his mother but rather of the little sister that had loved him so. Feyre smiled back at him with all the love in her, before rising to the tips of her toes and softly kissing the edge of his mouth. Her mate buried his head in her shoulder and crushed her to him, his arms steel bands around her waist. But Feyre hardly noticed as she ran soothing fingers through his hair, holding him just as tight. 

“I think we should find them a place of honor, don’t you?” Rhys said as he finally pulled away from her embrace, minutes or hours later.

“I know just the place.”

They hung the painting in the sitting room, where it could be bathed in the light of the garden beyond. It was lovely, peaceful spot that so many of their friends – their new family – passed by on their visits to the town house.

And underneath it, they later added a tiny silver placard, with only two words engraved in Rhys’ elegant script. 

Never forgotten.

[sevendeadlyseans]

10 (or 11) Movies Released Last Year That I Really Liked, 2016 Edition

Before I get to my “official” Top 10, one title has been excluded for consideration due to conflict of interest, but would otherwise top my list.  

Darling

Mickey Keating’s 3rd feature (produced by the fabulous Jenn Wexler, a.k.a. my girlfriend) is, of course, my favorite film of the year. I’ve seen it three times in theaters—twice in 2015 on the festival circuit, and again last April on opening night—and still keep finding new, subtle things about it to love.

The story: a young woman is paid to housesit a glorious old building while its eccentric owner is away. Is the house haunted? Is she unhinged? Maybe both? Star Lauren Ashley Carter—rightly recognized as “the Audrey Hepburn of indie horror” by The Austin Chronicle, is in almost every frame of the film and is never short of mesmerizing, whether answering the telephone, putting on make-up or getting her hands dirty by...well, let’s not give away the fun. 

The black and white cinematography is gorgeous, the score crawls under your skin and the editing is legit terrifying. Watch with the lights out.

And now back to our official, less personally biased top 10, in order...

Moonlight

Without question, the most accomplished, most moving film of 2016. 

James Joyce once noted, “In the particular is the universal.” Moonlight is atop my list in no small part because it’s so breathtaking in its particular intimacies. 

Moonlight is like Boyhood on a budget: it drops us into three important periods in the life of a boy who becomes a teen who becomes a man—at first bullied and confused, increasingly neglected by his crack-addicted mother and influenced by a kind-hearted, drug-dealing surrogate father. We see him harden, over time, under the pressure of a world with no use for softness, and then, perhaps, reconnecting with a lost bit of himself, at long last.  

Writing that synopsis, it strikes me how easily such a story could have tipped into cliché and melodrama. Perhaps because writer/director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney are both from the Liberty City projects themselves. their knowledge—coupled with a great cast, an impeccable soundtrack, a deft use of color and Jenkins’ masterful control of tone—l gives Moonlight specificity, and that makes it universal.

Jackie

Tone is a theme for the first three films on my 2016 list—four if you count Darling, and you most definitely should. Pablo Larrain’s Jackie puts us inside the experience of First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, in a way I never thought I could experience:

Your husband was just murdered; his blood is on your dress. Your life is cracked, and even if you put the pieces back together, nothing will ever be the same. Oh, and he’s the president—was the president—so your country is broken, too. History has its eye on you, so while the crushing weight of grief bears down, try to look good for the cameras. It’s only his legacy at stake.

It seems ludicrous to say that Oscar-nominated Natalie Portman is underrated, but somehow she is—and I adored her in Black Swan. In Jackie, she’s working at another level. Open and wounded when no one but us can see, calculating and brittle and angry before an eager reporter. I am excited to see Portman does next.

Special mention to Mica Levi’s score, her second feature after 2013′s Under the Skin. Can’t wait to hear what she does next, too. 

The Witch

Someone had the terrible idea to market The Witch as “the year’s scariest movie.” It’s not, nor is it trying to be. It is, however, among the most unsettling films of this year or any other. (Again: tone.)  

The story: it’s 17th century New England. William, his wife Katherine, and their five children have been kicked out of the settlement being too religious (it seems, or perhaps just too self-righteous) and must find a way to survive on their own on the fringes of the deep, dark wood. 

Before you have time to wonder if the titular witch might be metaphoric, she shows up and does something unspeakable to William and Katherine’s newborn son. Things go downhill from there, exacerbated by both outside, malevolent forces and unacknowledged tensions within the family unit.

The Witch looks gorgeous, as well it should. First-time director Robert Eggers made his bones as a production and costume designer, and reportedly built an actual, mostly working 17th century farm for the film. Even the dialogue itself was built out of scraps of things people wrote and said back then. You can feel the authenticity, which makes the family’s isolation feel that much more acute and dangerous. 

O.J.: Made in America

Bob Dylan never asked “How many minutes does a film have to be, before we can call it TV?” but the answer, my friend, is probably not much more than the 467 minute runtime of Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America. (For comparison, that’s almost 3 hours longer than a full season of HBO’s Veep.)

It doesn’t help that it was produced by ESPN, or that it aired on that cable network less than a month after it’s Oscar-qualifying theatrical run. And yet...it was my favorite documentary in a year of many great docs (more on that later), so if wants to call itself a movie, I’ll roll with it.

2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the murders. The revived attention around the so-called “trial of the century” led to two great works of art, Edelman’s doc and FX’s American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson. (One can only wonder how our present political moment will be filtered through the culture of 2018).

Rather than produce O.J. overload, the two projects complement one another—the dramatic series taking us inside the lives and hearts of key figures on both legal teams, while the doc simultaneously expands the scope and deepens the focus—showing us more about who O.J. was before, during and after, and what America was and still is, especially but not only in Los Angeles, but also in Ferguson, on Staten Island, everywhere. If it takes Edelman 8 hours to set up all details to knock us down with his larger point, well, that’s 8 hours well spent. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrB3rOcrJxg&list

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth was one of my favorite movies of 2010. He’s back on the list with a film that’s just as strange but far more accessible. 

I love absurdism, deadpan humor, magical realism and dystopian fantasy, but I can’t recall a film that manages the trick of juggling all three at once as The Lobster does—with an honest-to-goodness love story right there in the middle.

I’ll skip the premise—if you don’t know it, watch the trailer. 

The cast is great, and Colin Farrell is a revelation, topping my previous Farrell favorite, the criminally under seen In Bruges. Lanthimos packs the film with small details that make the surreal world of The Lobster believable. The first shot packs an entire story of love, betrayal and murder (which is never revisited) into a single, long take. And its final, wrenching moments will stay with me forever. 

Film critic Britt Hayes got to the heart of the filmmaker’s uncanny alchemy when she noted “Lanthimos doesn’t heighten reality to an absurd degree; he heightens the absurdity of our existing reality.” Or put another way, he doesn’t add absurdity, he just turns the heat up on reality and our own absurdity bubbles to the surface.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTNZmOJxuAc

Hail, Caesar!

There’s this other movie that’s sort of a throwback to old Hollywood, with some singing and dancing in it. That movie’s fine, but don’t hold your breath, it didn’t make my list. For my money, the real love letter to Hollywood—and why the movie industry matters—came from the Coen Brothers. 

Now, it wouldn’t be a Coens movie if that tender heart weren’t covered under many layers of arch cynicism, stylized reference bordering on “acting” “in” “quotation” “marks” and the occasional silliness. But you don’t have to peel much of it away to see the real love they have for not just the magic of movies but also the joy in so many abandoned film genres that once ruled the box office—be they Gene Kelly musicals, Gene Autry oaters or C.B. DeMille bible epics, to name but a few recreated here. 

For me, Hail, Caesar! sits perfectly between the sour cynicism of the Hollywood in Woody Allen’s misanthropic Cafe Society and the false romanticism of the ambition-for-ambition’s sake “dreamers" of La La Land who prize the warmth of the spotlight over any real human affection. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NYpz_j3e38

13th

Ava DuVernay’s 13th is a civics lesson for a country in dire need of one. With a controlled but searing ferocity, the documentary lays out the case that the 13th amendment allowed the continuation of a system of oppression and control not all that from slavery: the criminal justice system. If you haven’t read your Constitution lately, here’s a refresher on the 13th, the amendment that ostensibly ended slavery:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

This one, terrible clause not just perpetuated slavery under another name but incentivized an expansion of the definition of criminality, in order to profit from the subjugation of mostly brown and black bodies, which has led to an explosion in America’s incarcerated population. In effect, through laws designed to maintain segregation, blackness itself has been criminalized.

With Jim Crow, redlining, lynching (terrorism by another name) and the like, the 13th has led to a more unequal society—and, indirectly, to leaders who lie and stoke racial, as well as religions and ethnic, divisions in order to maintain the ever-growing class divide from which they profit. 

This poor summation doesn’t do justice to the full weight of the case DuVernay and her experts make, or how well they make it. 13th should be required viewing by everyone, but most of all by those who hold the power to make and enforce the law.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk

The Love Witch

Let’s start with the obvious: Anna Biller’s The Love Witch is a gorgeous film. Turn the sound off, re-order the scenes at random and you still can’t take your eyes off what looks like a lost Technicolor American Giallo from 1972. Biller not only wrote, edited and directed the film but also handled production design, art direction, set decoration and costuming, almost single-handedly crafting one of the best looking films of 2016. 

Beneath that dazzling frosting is a rich, feminist layer cake. Elaine is a witch specializing in sex magic, who believes her path to happiness lies in finding the right man, seducing him and pleasing him in every way. On paper, she’s a patriarchy’s dream come true. But when these lustful men inevitably fall short—as they all must, as patriarchy itself is built on a lie—she gets rid of them, permanently. Poor, unfulfilled Elaine. 

The Love Witch is Biller’s own magic trick, casting its spell over us with its color, its throwback ‘70s sexploitation vibe and its razor-sharp message we don’t notice until the blade has slid, quietly, between our ribs and stabbed us in the heart. Metaphorically.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXjDEDYlu7c

I, Daniel Blake

Daniel Blake has spent a lifetime working with his hands, supporting a modest but pleasant life for himself and his late wife. After a heart attack, his doctors tell him he’s not fit to return to work—yet with a simple questionnaire (and absent any input from his doctors), the government’s welfare bureau deems him too fit to qualify for disability. 

He can apply for unemployment benefits, but only if he’s actively seeking work—work which, according to his doctors, he can’t accept. Caught in a catch-22, he must appeal to an unreachable “decision-maker” for relief—provided he can find a way, without income or assistance, to get by while he waits. Then Daniel meets a single mother in stuck in a similar situation and does his best to help her struggling family, even as his own situation grows worse.

Ken Loach’s drama won the Palm D’Or at Cannes but has received not much notice since then, at least outside the UK, perhaps because of the specific criticism of the British welfare bureaucracy at the heart of the story. But you don’t need much imagination to see how things can be as bad or worse for the many Daniel Blakes of this country.

Loach has been making socially conscious films about the struggles of the working and lower classes for longer than I’ve been alive. As with Jenkins and Moonlight, it’s clear Loach knows this world, these people and their struggles, and knows how to tell their particular stories in a simple yet powerful, moving and universal way.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4KbJLpu7yo

The Handmaiden

Apologies if you’re getting whiplash. I went from a highly stylized Love Witch to a pared-down I, Daniel Blake. Now I’m going to swing back the other way with Park Chan-Wook’s sensual, sensuous The Handmaiden. 

As has been the case in years prior, the 10th (really, 11th) and final spot on my list could have gone to a number of worthy films, and almost did—I began writing up another film here before realizing there’s no way I could round out 2016 without giving The Handmaiden its due.  (Sorry, Elle!)

The story of The Handmaiden is...too complex to go into here, frankly. There’s a con man and his female accomplice. There’s a rich heiress and her controlling uncle. Some of them are Japanese occupiers; others native Koreans. Oh, ands there’s a library of dirty, dirty books. 

Cons are conned, crosses are doubled, no one is quite who they pretend to be and everyone is up to something. In the end, something real is found and, through it, freedom is won.

The Handmaiden is a thriller as elegant as it is perverse. Every change in perspective brings new meaning to all that’s come before. Every twist revealed is a delight. Park Chan-Wook is at the top of his game.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Z5jfjxdvQ

Honorable Mentions & More 

Wait, don’t get up. There’s more! 

First, let’s start with honorable mentions that you already know are great: 

Paul Verhoeven’s psychological thriller Elle, which features Isabelle Huppert in one of my favorite performances of the year, or maybe ever.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which goes on my list of essential smart science fiction, along with Gattaca, Ex Machina, Primer and Under the Skin, to name a few.

Sing Street, one of the most joyful films of the year. A misfit ‘80s Irish teen starts a band so he can cast the girl he likes in their highly creative music videos. From John Carney, the filmmaker behind the equally charming Once.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s mad look at fashion, envy and unchecked ambition (kind of the anti-La La Land?), The Neon Demon.  

Next, films that might have been off your radar but are well worth seeking out:

Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control, a very-near-future sci-fi film about augmented reality, and the augmented lives we all want to pretend we’re living (at least on Instagram). A must-see for all my friends in media, marketing or technology. 

Elizabeth Wood’s directorial debut, White Girl, in which a New York City undergrad moves to Queens, dates her local corner drug dealer and learns first hand the limits of her privilege in both their lives.

Taika Waititi’s The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a reluctant buddy comedy/coming-of-age film that’s way more fun than it has any right to be.

Todd Solondz’s Weiner-Dog, a dark, dark comedy stringing together four tales of unhappy people, all of whom at one point own the same sad canine. Or, for you hard-core cineastes: Au Hasard Dachshund.

American Honey, Andrea Arnold’s sprawling tale of wayward youth living for the moment across a vast swath of America, high and low.

The animated documentaries Tower, which looks back on America’s first campus mass shooting in a surprisingly moving way, and Nuts!, which is the rare doc with an unreliable narrator, which fits the unreliable (Trump-like) conman at the center of its story. 

Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto, which I was fortunate enough to experience as a multi-screen installation at the Park Avenue Armory but has been adapted (rather successfully, it seems) as a traditional film. Either way, Cate Blanchett takes on a dozen different guises in a sequence of stunning short films, the text of each comprised of bits of famous manifestos, from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to Jim Jarmusch’s Golden Rules of Filmmaking. 

And last, because the horror genre in near and dear to my heart, here’s #4-#10 on my year’s best horror list. (The top 3 being Darling, The Witch and The Love Witch.)

The Invitation

Green Room

Demon

Under the Shadow

Train to Busan

10 Cloverfield Lane

Southbound

Honorable mention: the “Happy Father’s Day” segment of Holidays

Past years: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008