#I gave her a whole backstory and everything that I may yell about later

[teaableu]

Catalina’s fun to draw

[scott-mccall-the-hot-girl]

theodore raeken: missing persons

( okay so i kinda had an idea ,, and then went through the whole teen wolf timeline to see if it would work ,, so here it is !!

theo’s backstory !! it started off way more messy headcannon format & then it got kinda a real story vibe ,, def thinking about making it an ao3 one shot eventually )

-

TW: very sad & hurt my feelings

don't imagine:

eight year old theo raeken...

who sleeps at his best friend scott mccall's house almost every single night, stiles is almost always there too.

theo and his friends where they all watch movies together until ungodly hours of the morning. stiles loved star wars, theo will never forget that. they had gone as luke, han and chewy for halloween that previous year. melissa went as leia. scott has always been more of a indiana jones fan himself. theo would watch either, anywhere where harrison ford was theo didn't mind being.

in this little trio, who were all raised in the mccall house, where they were given eveything they needed. sometimes when theo thought about her, when he needed to remember the good things in life. he never quite knew how she managed. expecially with scott's dad who floated in and out of the picture.

yet, it always was melissa who gave scott extra lunches to take to school because theo and his sister, who were often forgotten by their parents usually were left to fend for themselves and a fourteen year old girl rarely had the funds or mind to give a growing boy a nutritious lunch. these packed lunches always with the crust off because that's the way theo liked it. melissa always remembered.

theo had three favorite places: scott's bedroom, the corner next to his bed where theo's blow up mattress was. the bridge in which tara and he crossed everyday on their way back to raekens from school. his final place was actually beacon hills elementary.

theo always liked school. theo was good at school. he didn't realize this until mellisa had pointed out an exceptional report card. he didn't think it was much of anything to be proud of.

he liked recognizing big words from english class and novels that would help him when his mom watched jeopardy. she would watch the show every night. sitting in a daze in the raekens dark living room. not paying much mine to the eight year old, until he started blurting out the answers to her favorite show. she beamed at him. he loved his mother's smile, she had the same dimples as tara.

so yeah, when a seventeen year old theo raeken spent months filing the names of anyone ever involved in the mccall pack, current members, deceased and ones that just fell out of beacon hills. he remebered some names.

theo raeken grew up in beacon hills, and beacon hill wasn't to big of a town.

theo rembered issac lahey a quiet boy who had been in his thrid grade class, jackson whittemore who was a grade older than them and everyone knew him because he was was offered a spot on the middle school lacross team, he knew erica reyes who he rembered for her epilepsy and it made him hate himself a little less for being the king of the heart condition, he even remebered names like derek hale- who was in the same grade as tara. theo even rembered the name malia tate as she was small girl who did go to beacon hills elementary, who was always startled and always walked a bit faster than everyone else through the halls. or even lydia martin, a girl stiles had a crush on. she talked to theo a lot, lydia used to call him teddy, he didn't know when it started but he let her do it purely to spite the fact that lydia gave theo a nickname and never bothered to acknowledge stiles.

theo rembered all of them, i mean for years of his life all he had to rely on was his memory to make sure it was real.

though during the line memories turned bitter and he was left with the sour taste of resentment.

so it was weird to think despite it all, that year was one of theo's best. he never felt like he belonged. sure he had scott and stiles before but gaining friendship & being labeled as an "inseparable trio" by the sheriff station deputies, whenever they rang havoc through their office made theo's mouth crack a toothy grin. he felt like he had a family.

that was until the air started getting colder in beacon hills. theo started hearing the voices. though, even so much later in life he never could quite pin point how it started, like his brain couldn't truly decipher what was going on. some of it felt like dream, though the dreams and the thoughts. sometimes they didn't feel like his own and made him so scared he would leave the day feeling nauseous.

though this all came in spurts. his birthday was that november, and that was magical. he spent the weekend with stiles and scott, theo's mom actually made the point to bring the three of them bowling. the boys pitched in on buying theo a big millennium falcon lego set because he was always doing things with his hands, something he picked up not being so most athletic of the bunch. they also got him big poster of han solo just to spite him. he blushed and yelled at them for stupid gifts but they knew by the smile on his face he loved them.

he loved so much because despite the fact that they were poking fun at him ever so lightly, they were good natured and they held thought. they really thought about theo enough to know what he liked. he never had that before.

so the voices started getting louder again around christmas time. it was weird for theo, the happiest time of the year filled him with such excessive dread. it didn't feel right. theo's life changed that month.

then one day scott and stiles get sit down because something tragic happened. tara raeken is dead. the details are fuzzy and they don't really understand how, seeing as these boys are just in fourth grade. they are horrified, it's one of the only other times they've experienced death besides with stiles mom. though claudia stilinksi was sick, sometimes sick people die. learning about tara left a bad taste in their mouth. she was young.

they try and call, bike past is his house. they don't hear from him. they go to her funeral, scott and stiles, high on anxiety attached to their parents just trying to sneak a peak of where their best friends may be. he's gone, that's the conclusion they come to, he's gone. they don't know how it could have happened, they just know that he isn't there. why wouldn't he be there?

they try and talk to the raekens but haunted by their daughters death, they paid less attention to theo than before. they barley give them a straight answer, melissa explains what grief can do to a family and not to blame them but is equally suspicious.

just take a minute to think, while scott and stiles are scared and searching for their best friend, theo raeken, barley nine years old is given a heart transplant. alone in a dark and cold sewer hidden deep under beacon hills, horrified and a failure, that's what the dread doctors tell him. a boy who keeps quiet, does what needs to be done and has to survive. doing absolutely everything he can to be kept around, the second he heals (which theo recognizes is abnormally fast) the doctors are straight out of beacon hills.

the doctors eventually find his parents too, who leave beacon hills, he doesn't exactly know what happened to them. he doesn't everything he can not to think about the possibilities. he hopes he has a chance, survival instincts flourish but the ideal of living isn't quite the same as surviving.

one day, the doctors inform him he has absolutely nothing to go back to, he figured this he just be didn't think they would actually tell him. they never told him much.

they are far away from beacon hills- much farther than he assumed. he has no sister, and his parents are gone.

he is alone, and he is finding out that now, he has one more secret to hide. the poor boy has claw and fangs and often thinks about using them to rip himself apart, i mean he deserves it right? he just watched his sister die, to go down with the last living part of her, his own heart.

while theo is expecting his fate, stiles and scott and stuck in months of confusion. missing posters of the boys face are strung up everywhere they can reach, once his parents are gone. they know they need to do everything they can.

mellisa feels like she's been punched in the gut, so she helps her boys. she calls every hospital in the county, and then she starts reaching out to some of the bigger hospitals in the state. spreading word of a missing nine year old like wildfire. she spends nights after her shift arguing with noah stilinksi, he has been looking to. he tries to bargain logic with her.

"yeah it's strange he never said goodbye, he wasnt at the funeral- it's weird, yes, but his parents left too. their daughter just died melissa. maybe they didn't want to stay."

melissa knows, yeah that makes sense. theo had to of just moved with the raekens but something about it doesn't feel like it makes sense.

he would have said goodbye to her. she knows it.

other people in beacon hills were actually thinking the same thing, something wasn’t quite making sense.

those other people being some who can sense unrest in supernatural frequencies. a family who makes it their business to monitor the supernatural. the hales.

though, talia hales supernatural concerns didn't often revolve around fourteen year old girls who drown, shes curious. the girl, was in dereks grade. the mother in her falters but it doesn't get strange until the police reports reveal the fact that the girls heart was gone, she was found. gaping chest wound, lying in the river.

so she starts to suspect somethings wrong. she's seen the raekens case, something about it doesn't make sense. sure, the death of a teenage girl is overwhelmingly tragic but there isn't much to investigate. though talk of the raekens is getting loud, she comes to find out this is because of the raekens youngest, who was nowhere to be seen days before the funeral.

she knows the hunters are back in beacon hills. so wonders if the two correlate. so she starts asking questions.

talia, with her daughter in tow see two boys standing outside the sheriffs station, stopping people when they walk in to show they a poster. it's theo raekens missing poster, though there isn't much official about it. it seems like the sheriffs department couldn't issue anything official, so as she walks up to the boys seemed to have made dozens of copies themselves. there information seems formal enough.

she catches their anxiety heighten as talia hands the poster over to laura who stands behind her.

the taller one raises a brow, "have you seen him anywhere miss?"

she smiles, "miss hale- you can call me talia though. this is my daughter laura. we haven't seen your friend but we'd like to help..."

the taller boy nods, "well, i'm scott. that's stiles. how could you help?"

talia hale lies easily, "i've heard about what happened to the raekens and it sparked my concern. i have a friend, local sheriffs station who is awfully good with the police dogs. if you have anything that your friend owned i might be able to call i'm a favor."

a few days later, stiles had found her in the same spot as last time with a small black sweater. she smiled and told him she would do her best to help these two boys. not sure if her intrest in the case was supernatural based or because she didn't want these boys, who smelled like anxiety and exhaustion to fall down the hole of loss themselves. she wasn't sure where investigating theo’s disappearance themselves would leave them, she didn't want them getting caught up in the supernatural spiderweb of beacon hills.

though, talia hale looses scent and momentum on the case. literally and metaphorically. she finds herself near some suspicious tunnels, leading right under beacon hills but scent falls short. she's frustrated, and the time since his disappearance is lengthening but her families needs become increasingly concerning.

she's listens, she likes to know what's going on. so when she hears her sixteen year old whispering a bit more with her kid brother she raises suspicion. she doesn't trust peter like she used to, not after getting involved with the desert wolf.

paige dies months after that, dereks heartbroken and talia is trying to put together pieces of a story that turned her babies eyes blue. to young. beacon hills doesn't quite understand how another student is dead, with no previous medical history. this, the death of paige she knows is supernatural.

kate argent moves to town and in months, the hale house is burned to the ground. inside, theo raekens black sweater. tucked away in a room, where news clippings and missing posters caught fire the fastest.

so with no surprise, another tragedy is unleashed and it's the talk of the town. memory of theo starts to fade, like most things do in beacon hills. it's not anybodies fault but it still stings. though, theo million miles away hasn't felt much of anything latley.

it's been a little over a year. he hasn't cried in the past three months. he won't let himself. nobody is going to find him. he isn't going to het out. so he puts up his walls, as many as he can. he just has to stay alive a little bit longer. make something worth taras sacrifice. they had started to kill off more of the chimeras, more of their science experiments. he can't get killed, he can't do that to tara.

theo was always a fast learner. theo always liked school. theo was good at school. this wasnt exactly the same as math class at beacon hills elementary but he was picking up skills quickly. theo didn't quite recognize himself after that year. he wasn't that same boy, and that had to suite him just fine. he never had much of a choice in this. he just chose to try and keep her heart beating for as long as he could.

so theo raeken adjusted, he had to.

[prorevenge]

My boss was abusive and didn't care about staff so I cost him his store and his contracts

This story will include no real names and a location will not be given. I am obligated to inform you I wrote this on mobile and have no idea how long this will be.

Backstory: I was an idiot growing up and ended up in a rehabilitation program for people under 18 to avoid jail time and eventually got given a place at a large charity agency that sources workers for anything from retail to gardening. The person directly in control of my position at said charity was one of those "I'm too nice for anyone to notice me doing wrong" people and he put me, someone who literally couldn't (and still can't years later) talk to a stranger without panicking, into a job in retail speaking to upwards of 35+ customers a day. May not sound like a lot but I struggled to make it through a day without going into the back room and crying.

Story: So, I get assigned to work in a (unsure of the right word here but, privately owned?) retail place that sells "upcycled" furniture. I had previously worked at the site actually doing the upcycling and knew this stuff was a scam, barely had a thing changed and the people doing the work spent most of the day drinking coffee and smoking while playing games on their phone.

The boss of this site (Kevin) showed just what kind of person he was from day 1 by threatening to fire me for telling him I can't handle strangers and shouting in my face. God I wish he had fired me. This never got better and over the months of working there and I eventually started started recording it all without his knowledge. Among the things he did is this list:

Shouting at staff for not putting toilet paper on the holder (there was a pile of it on the back of the toilet)

Calling the person in charge of my placement and reporting me for "lack of workplace enthusiasm" in front of me while I was having a panic attack

Telling a 70+ year old woman who I worked with that she needs to "grow up and handle confrontation like a man" after having 2 large men shout and swear at her for refusing to sell an already sold item to them

Throwing his phone (told by another employee) after I called in sick for a day due to crippling stomach pains brought on by Crohns

After being told at 11am that I won't make it to my shift (due to being in hospital), proceeded to call me at 3am the next morning and yell at me (he seemed VERY drunk) demanding I have a doctor prove I was in the hospital because I didnt give 2 weeks notice

And back to the story. All of this was recorded in the space of only 3 weeks and I gave it all to my placement manager who proceeded to organise a meeting between himself, Kevin and me to try and put things right. During this meeting however, instead of calmly talking about the issue and what can be done to solve it, all the evidence was shown to Kevin who then yelled at me for recording him then throwing a full on tantrum that I would dare question his style of management while I sat there scared as hell and my placement manager just did nothing.

Back we go to work with a final warning strike issued to me for gross misconduct and told that I should do as stated in my contract and anything else that is asked of me or I would be fired. I do everything I can to follow my contract and anything else asked of me including cleaning a f**king toilet and see a broken window above it. Thats when I finally get a plan together.

The revenge: The plan I came up with meant I had to stay in everyones good books, deal with a-hole customers, go to work even in crippling pain and dose up on meds to control my panicking but in exchange my belief was I could get Kevin replaced or atleast get myself removed from the situation.

I should have clarified earlier, being fired from any site ALSO gets you taken off the charities payroll.

I started informing Kevin of every little safety violation the site managed to break from broken windows in the female toilets, loose light fixtures and broken locks on doors all the way up to a giant glass panel going across the front of the shop that was barely hanging in by a few bits of rubber and could easily kill a small child or less than strong adult if it were to fall out. I emailed him and texted him about each one individually and brought it up to other staff in hopes they would do the same, while also making sure to take photos of each of these issues so I could use them again later.

Another month and a half of working there and at this point I felt I may have a little too many minor details saved up but decided its best to go overkill than underkill and sent a huge email to the UK HSE (health and safety executive) detailing every risk and danger with photos attached to show what the place was doing wrong and requesting an inspection. Of course they obligued.

1 week later I get a phone call from Kevin. He tells me how the shop is closing down, how a safety inspection was carried out and how it had been failed so badly that he lost his contract with the charity and that nobody would be able to use the building for weeks while everything gets brought back up to code, but he couldn't run the place anymore due to money issues while it was closed because he had no savings for this. I never heard from him again.

A year later: After this happened I moved on and began working from home doing image editing for quick cash and around a year later I get a call from the placement manager who hadnt heard from me the whole time and I got asked in the coldest, most passive aggressive tone "why didnt you tell me the store closed?" turns out they had been apparently paying me £300 a DAY for a job I didnt have, hours I didnt work and this was all apparently being reported on the charities income as someone elses account. They got me confused with another person and reporting their hard work on my files and it took them a year to notice because of how badly they handled everything.

Another obligatory note: Rslash, if you are reading this; On behalf of every single subscriber, MORE PUPPY BLOOPERS PLEASE!

*: clearing the confusion- they had my name on another persons paperwork and though they paid the right person, they were using my name

(source) story by (/u/The-UK-Is-Mine)

[psychedellic-phase]

Fifteen (pt 2)

tw: none, fluffy

wc: 2337

Part one!

Spencer almost ran every red light and stop sign on his drive home. He didn’t even put the radio on. The only music was the sound of his ragged breath and skyrocketing heart beat. It hadn’t sunk in for him yet that you were really, truly, gone. You had only called it quits a few weeks ago, and work was okay. Good even. Hotch was nice enough to split you guys up a lot, sending you with JJ or Derek and Spencer with the newest member, Alex Blake. In the few small interactions you had, the two of you were better than you had been during the last few months of your relationship. It was just like the old days, before everything went sour. He guessed that was just you faking how much pain you were really in, and he was right. He cursed himself for not noticing that either. 

He sat on his couch and opened up the box again to find envelope 1: 

“Okay, Hey Spence. I’ll try not to be so long winded, but bear with me throughout this. I want you to really understand what happened between us. 

These are going to go chronologically, so the story starts before we even started dating. The story starts the day I realized I loved you. November 17, 2010. So please take out: 

1. Welcome Interstate Managers- Fountains of Wayne. 

Please direct your attention to track 3. Stacy’s Mom. This may be my favorite memento from us. It’s so innocent. We were so innocent then, but not anymore.”

He took the disk out and ran his hands over the case. It had never been opened and still had the plastic film on it. He flipped it over and read the track list to find #3, ‘Stacy’s Mom’. He immediately knew where this was going. The memory hit him like a sack of bricks, knocking the air out of him and making it hard to breathe. 

“This also may be one of my favorites because it’s so not you. No one would think that Stacy’s Mom of all songs would be so important to us. But it is, because it was the beginning. 

We had just gotten back from that weird, awful case in LA. The one where the taxi driver had the weird smell thing and would remove skin from the victim’s feet? And Emily was being suspicious? Yeah, we had just gotten back from that one and Derek and I had each given you $50 to finish the paperwork for us. We were joking around and arguing about basketball of all things. I don’t have an eidetic memory but I remember that day so clearly. 

“Is this really the hill you want to die on Derek Morgan?” I said. 

“Yes, Y/N, Michael Jordan will always be the best basketball player of all time,” Derek said back.

“I’m just saying Lebron or Kobe could definitely pass him at some point! Especially now that Lebron’s on the Heat. Him, Wade, and Bosh are going to kill it.” 

“Why do you know so much about basketball Y/N?”

You weren’t paying attention to us. You were doing the work we should have been doing. You always were the good one, Spence. When Em or D  or I would go off the rails, you always kept it together. I admire you for that. I had a crush on you at the time. It wasn’t full blown yet, but it was enough to make me flustered and blushing any time I was near you. 

I told Derek that I was a pretty big basketball fan because my brother had drilled it all into me when I was a kid. He scoffed and told me I didn’t seem like the sporty type. 

“Well not everyone can kick down a door in one move like you, but I’m pretty athletic!” I argued. 

“Athletic? C’mon Y/L/N, Hotch keeps you and Reid at the stations for a reason. You’re not a bad shot but your specialty is interrogation.”

I faked offense, being dramatic as usual. But, really I was a little hurt and D could tell. You had finished the paperwork then, and handed both of us files. 

“Do you think I’m athletic?” I asked you. 

You smiled shyly, “I mean, you’re not the most athletic but you’re not bad.”

“See?” Derek said, and I shoved him playfully. 

“I’m not exactly athletic either,” You said, and you did the tongue thing that you don’t even know you do. The one where you poke it out of one side of your mouth. It makes me a little weak in the knees. 

“I was bad at everything at the Academy Y/N.”

“Yeah? Like what?” I asked, “You’re good at everything.” Derek laughed, but I meant it. You are good at everything.

“Marksmanship, physical training, obstacle course, Hogan's Alley, you know, pretty much everything that wasn't technically book related. They ultimately had to make exceptions to allow me into the field.” You admitted, getting a sheepish smile on your face.”

Spencer stopped reading then, and wiped his eyes. He had allowed a few tears to fall as he read. He remembered this day so fondly. You guys have always been friends; the whole team is a family. But you always stuck more around Emily and Derek when you could. You worked with Spencer well, it wasn’t that you didn’t like him. In hindsight, you avoided him because of your crush on him. The thought made a smile creep up on his face. It was a watery smile, but still a smile. At that time in his life he was so insecure and unsure of himself but you always made him feel validated. When he would go on his rambling tangents about weird facts you always smiled and nodded when the others tuned him out. He needed that then, and, honestly, still needs it now. 

All of you, especially Spencer, were still reeling from the loss of JJ to the state department. It was a constant reminder of how quickly everything could fall apart. So, he needed good memories, good days. Days like November 17. A few of his tears smeared the ink and mixed with your dried tear stains. He sighed, how did he get here, only being close to you through mixed tears? He shook the thoughts away and kept reading. 

“This is a long one, sorry Spence, but the backstory is important I think. So anyways, we handed in the paperwork you did for us and we all went down to the parking garage together. Derek got in his car and left, probably to meet some girl of the week. Emily was gone, she was still being weird, which we all learned about later. Rossi? Hotch? Garcia? Who knows where they were. All that mattered was you and me, laughing about how not athletic we are as we made our way to our cars that we parked next to each other every day. I don’t even remember how we started the parking thing, but if I got there and I saw your car I made sure to be next to it. And you did the same. Somehow it made me feel safe. And of course, that day your car wouldn’t start. So I graciously tried to help you jump it, but still nothing. You reeled off the facts of how jumping a car works, but alas that did not get your crappy sedan to start. The two of us trying to fix a car is about as ridiculous as it gets. After our third jump attempt we gave up and I said I’d drive you home and we would get Derek to help us fix it tomorrow. You agreed and got in the passenger seat. There was crap everywhere, there always was. You always hated that. 

“How do you have like eight outfits just in the car?” You asked, tossing a dress into the back seat. 

“I have to always be prepared,” I said back, stifling a laugh. 

“Oh? And what does this prepare you for?” You asked me, holding up a tank that would barely cover my chest. 

I grabbed it from you and blushed. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to say. 

“I’m kidding Y/N,” You said and we both laughed. It felt so right. So comfortable. 

You had on a very Spencer Reid outfit that day. Purple dress shirt, dark blue cardigan, purple and blue tie. You’re striking. Derek doesn’t lie when he calls you ‘Pretty boy’.

But anyways, before I fall back in love with you just by descriptions—“

He had to put the paper down then. It hurt. Every word hurt. You’d fallen out of love with him? You said the last rule was he had to remember that you loved him. You did love him, you just weren’t in love with him anymore. There is very big difference. He thought he may throw up again but he took a few deep breaths, the same way you taught him to when he’d get overwhelmed, and kept going. 

“We were sitting there and I started driving and I turned the radio up. You made that face, you always do when I put on top hits. 

“Sorry I don’t have a lot of Beethoven,” I joked at a red light. You looked over at me, and we made eye contact, which caused my breath to catch in my throat. 

“It’s alright,” You cleared your throat, “I know every word to every song I’ve ever heard, so I can follow along.”

“Okay, what’s this one?” I challenged, turning up the radio. 

“Rolling in the Deep, Adele” 

We played that game for a while. You guessing songs and me laughing. You got every single one right. 

“Oh! I need to turn this one up! I love this song!” I said. It was the very beginning of Stacy’s Mom. 

“Sing with me, Genius.”

You rolled your eyes, “I’m not singing! I-I can’t sing!”

“Too late, it’s starting.”

“As long as you promise to sing with me.”

We had our first pinky promise then. Your pinky was so long and large, mine so tiny. 

“Did your mom get back from her business trip?” I started and you added the “business trip” in the background. 

“Is she there or is she tryna give me the sli-i-i-i-ip? Give me the slip?”

You took over then, I think the line resonated with you, “You know, I'm not the little boy that I used to be. I'm all grown up now baby, can't you see?”

Then we took the chorus and the rest of the song together, jamming out like teenagers. My heart swelled. You singing, so relaxed with me, just made me so happy. You were comfortable with me. And your singing voice is pretty good too Spen, maybe if you hadn’t been groomed for the FBI you would’ve made a good singer. 

“I know it might be wrong but I'm in love with Stacy's mom.”

We finished the song together, practically yelling, and when we looked up we both realized I missed the exit for your place. I made a u-turn and dropped you off, vehemently apologizing for messing up. Directions were always your thing, not mine. You smiled and said thank you, and even pulled me in for a hug. When we came out of the hug, we made eye contact. The steamy kind like in movies before the two main characters make out. I almost leaned in to kiss you, but I pulled back and left. You waved to me from the door.  

The whole ride home I was freaking out. My heart was going insane. That’s the day I fell in love with you, Spencer Reid. I was teetering on the edge already, but sitting in my car with you, scream-singing Stacy’s Mom, that’s when I fell into the water. So put the CD in a player, turn it on, and listen to Stacy’s Mom. Every time I hear that song I will think of you, sometimes I even play it on purpose just to remember that day. To remember how complete I felt. Remember the electricity and tension. Remember how that’s the day you fell in love with me too. When the 3 minutes and 18 seconds of the song are done, go to envelope 2.” 

Spencer put the paper down and shakily tore off the plastic. You were right, that was when he told you he fell in love with you, but really he had been in love with you a long time before then. He had fallen for you almost immediately after you joined the unit, but he didn’t say anything. He told you he fell in love with you the same moment you fell in love with him because that would be perfect. And you deserve perfect. 

Spencer remembers a different day as the one when he fell in love with you. It was the first day you were introduced to everyone and Rossi raved about all your skills to the team. You dressed to impress that day, and impress you had. Not just your beauty, but your brain. That’s what he really fell in love with first. But that was almost five years ago. When his hair was too long and shaggy; a homeless poet was what he liked to call himself. 

When the song ended, he started it over. 

“She’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long,” Was another line he yelled extra loud, but you hadn’t written about it. He belted that one out because that was how he felt about you. How he still feels about you. He suddenly felt so claustrophobic, ripping off his tie and opening the top few buttons of his shirt. He paced around the room, the song still playing in the background. ‘How did this happen?’ He asked himself again. He lived it with you and still didn’t know quite how this happened. Knowing the answer was hidden in those pages, he got himself together enough to open up envelope 2.

PART 3!

[jcmorrigan]

001 - Tales of Zestiria?

Favorite character: It's a tough call between Maltran and Symonne, and Lunarre is trailing right behind both. I tend to call them the "Heldalf Squad," but make no mistake, Heldalf himself isn't part of it. I just like his swagalicious minions. The dry and sarcastic political manipulator, the sadistic and wordy theater nerd, and the flamboyant cannibal who hates everything. Yes. LOVE. But I have to give a shout to my boy Dezel on the hero side! Angsty/stoic characters are very hit-or-miss with me, but Dezel is the flavor I love - obvious soft spots and quirks, and slowly he builds from being antisocial to showing how big his heart is. When he stops the woman from leaping off the Guinevere tower...that's one of my favorite scenes in the entire game, because you can see when the switch flips, when he realizes that he CANNOT stay aloof any longer when there's a stranger's life on the line. He's still a grump about it but a compassionate grump.

Least Favorite character: Heldalf. His backstory is really clever, and I like the curse on him. But he himself just feels like Ganondorf but more boring. I kinda hate that he's so vanilla when his three lieutenants are in my arsenal of pet villains from the vastness of fiction. Also shout-out to Chancellor BART in the opening Ladylake act, because I distinctly remember liveblogging this to a friend, and I played Zestiria *after* Berseria (I'd loved Berseria and that's why I eventually sought out Zestiria) so here I am just comparing up the corrupt church in Ladylake to the Abbey's suave rogues gallery like "Yeah no BART has nothing on Lady Teresa Linares." Thankfully BART was never seen again.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): DezeRose, SorMik, Symonne x Coco Atarashi (The World Ends With You), Alisha Diphda x Sergei Strelka, and...I swear you have to bear with me here...Zaveid x Anna (Frozen). I also kinda wanna note a couple ships I'm on the fence about for my other favies - those being Maltran x Ebony Maw (Marvel Cinematic Universe or Marvel Ultimate Alliance) and Lunarre x Arkham (Devil May Cry).

Character I find most attractive: Dezel. It is a scientific fact that guys with pointy teeth are just hotter.

Character I would marry: Maybe Dezel, maybe Sergei. I wouldn't want to take them from those I see as their wifeys, but at the same time, they are husband goals, both of them.

Character I would be best friends with: Catch me clinging to Maltran's train and she drags me along annoyedly as I yell "PLEEEEAAASE LET ME HANG OUT WITH YOU GUYS" and Lunarre is losing it laughing while Symonne rolls her eyes

a random thought: So I toyed around with basically every accessory I picked up, and I decided to put the sideburns on Rose because fuck gender roles. Well then I just got used to seeing her with facial hair in every cutscene where her 3D model was used, and now I headcanon that she does get it. Maybe nonclassical CAH intersex? Like, I don't necessarily see her as trans (but I support everyone who hc's her as such) but moreso "a cis woman, but I grow this stupid damn facial hair like a dude and I don't get why." And this is why you shouldn't let me play with customizable accessories on RPG characters because I can and will abuse my privilege to headcanon.

An unpopular opinion: That this is actually a very good game. Listen, I think I get it - the initial marketing promised something far different. And that's disappointing. But coming back to it several years after its release, after the release of its PREQUEL, when I never had that hype building up...it actually exceeded my expectations. I held off from it for a while because I thought Eizen's fate would make me too sad, but that didn't end up the case at all. I actually had just come off playing a more recently-released triple-A game that was hyped up for years, and I completed it to my satisfaction in 20 hours. $80 for 20 hours. Zestiria gave me my money's worth in comparison; it took me about 60, and I loved just how MUCH story it had to offer me. I honestly like Rose better than Alisha anyway (Rose was one of the biggest aspects that interested me about playing it in the first place). I've also seen complaints that the characters weren't well-developed enough? Which I just kinda take to mean "They didn't angst enough." Listen. There are PLENTY of games out there if you want angst and sad stories. I don't really like sad stories in my games. I like adventures where the party is a goofy foundfam that jokes around with each other and helps each other work through shitty situations, and that's EXACTLY what I got. (And Berseria really worked on me too because it kinda started at the bottom of the angst barrel, then worked its way up through "The edgy and tortured protag has gained a party of idiots and oh noooooo she's learning friendship and happiness.") Dezel's death is one of the few game deaths that just made me SATISFIED to watch instead of depressed because of the closure he got and the themes tied into his final moments and sacrifice. I loved going on this adventure, I loved the idiots who I went on it with, and I loved seeing what Glenwood had to offer me in world design the further I explored.

my canon OTP: There's not much for canon romance in this game, come to think of it. Just subtext and some flirting. So I'm blanking on if there actually were any canon couples at all.

Non-canon OTP: DezeRose! Which maybe can be considered almost-canon based on the amount of subtext, but still. It's adorable. (And it's the exact same dynamic as EiRoku except M/F and a thousand years later. I need these four to double date...the dual-wielding goofs with their edgy, grumpy Reapers...)

most badass character: Rose! Not only able to wield the Shepherd's Armatization powers, but also to be a dang good assassin on her own, able to hold her own against Heldalf before she even had her eyes opened to seraphim! Though a shout-out goes to Edna because her armatization was my favorite to play with. There's something just satisfying about bashing the enemy in front of you with a pair of GIANT FISTS

pairing I am not a fan of: RoseAli. To be honest, it was at one point something I kinda enjoyed as a third-tier ship for Rose (Dezel first, then Lailah in second). But then...Alisha's Story. I didn't actually purchase it, thank goodness, just watched it on YouTube, and it was the most grating addition that anyone could've made to this game. First of all, I can sum up the issues with Alisha's Story by reminding everyone that it canonized a secret entrance to Camlann that was much easier to get to and wasn't protected by Muse's sacrifice. But the real thing that hurt to watch was how far down they had to knock Rose and Alisha's friendship to get them to rebuild from scratch. Rose claiming she was never Alisha's friend because she's grieving Sorey? The two of them getting into a PHYSICAL FISTFIGHT over it? Nope nope nope. That's not my Rose. Even less my Rose is that whole scene where she...you know...pounces on Alisha to dress her in the silly noblewoman's dress, and it's framed like...let's just say it's really uncomfortable to watch if you don't know the punchline is just a silly outfit. Even though Alisha's Story isn't canon in my head, it still really killed any buzz I had for RoseAli. I will also say I'm not a big fan of Eizavie - first of all, EiRoku or bust in this house, and second, I have a little bit of a hard time seeing Zaveid as mlm due to how much he goes on and on about The Ladies(TM). (Though I could see Eizen as having a tiny crush on him, though. Just like "Oh no he's hot but he's connected to Aifread's disappearance help")

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Mostly just in Alisha's Story. I was mad about the aforementioned Rose stuff, but also...like...they undid Lunarre's original cathartic death, they did so to team him back up with Symonne and then do a whole fakeout that they had Maltran with them too, but Maltran is just an illusion and immediately after this, Lunarre and Symonne just decide "Yeah, we're not gonna work together anymore, have a nice life." Why does Maltran need to stay dead if LUNARRE somehow survived EXPLODING? And just...look to next question for more clarification:

favourite friendship: I just want to imagine that Maltran, Lunarre, and Symonne were weird evil friends. The kind who'd take artistic selfies and caption them "Murder and mayhem with my besties!". Maybe they even had a sibling dynamic. They were all pretty dang jaded, so I like to think they sat around sometimes talking about the things in this world that did them wrong. The reasons they were drawn to Heldalf. Heldalf himself wouldn't have cared, he would've kicked them around like disposable tools, but the three of them were too entrenched in his dogma to see it. Maybe if they met up again after he was off the board...then they'd sing a different tune. Realize they're all three better than this, and now they're gonna do things THEIR way, because remember when they made a three-point attack on Glenwood and Sorey was barely able to keep up with them wrecking Lastonbell AND Pendrago AND Glaivend? Remember when Lunarre and Symonne had each other's backs the night Dezel died? Now they can do what they want on their terms! And I just - I have many MANY feelings about these three.

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: Okay silly self-insert time but the thing is, Archibald Snatcher (The Boxtrolls) and Roman Torchwick (RWBY) are my two favorite parental f/o's (and also my OTP to end all OTPs), and I have this thing about how they'd be PERFECT crime dads to Symonne in particular because she's like a little, more theatrical Neopolitan. So there's a universe in my head where Symonne is basically already my little sister, and I look out for her - well, okay, she's a seraph with powerful Artes and I am a powerless mortal so really she looks out for me because "I suppose SOMEONE has to make sure you don't die" and I am grateful to her for it.

[amandaklwrites]

Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy

Rating: 10/10

Movie Review: 

Where do I even begin. THIS MOVIE, THIS FRANCHISE, IS ONE OF THE BEST TO ME. I LOVE THIS MOVIE WITH ALL MY HEART. (Can you hear me screaming from so far away?) 

This movie formulated so much of my life. I know that may sound silly, but in my life, it’s true. I didn’t see the film when it first came out (I was like 7-8, it would’ve been too much for me), but later, when I was about 12, after a split decision to watch it one late evening. 

And I remember being so sucked in that I think I wasn’t even aware of my own breathing or thoughts. 

I was in love with Elizabeth immediately (I should’ve known I was into women back then, but I figured it out a while later), and Will Turner was a breath of fresh air and made my heart melt. I can say that Gilbert Blythe and Will Turner are the men I want in my life, so they’ve created a bar for when I meet men. If they aren’t anywhere close to them, then meh. Jack Sparrow made me laugh, and made me think.... okay, maybe pirates aren’t so bad. 

Then, here comes Barbossa. Good lord, isn’t he a good villain? Menacing, freaky, destructive, but somehow, sarcastic? Though he’s a villain, I noticed how desperate he was. How much he just wanted to live and eat and breathe again. It showed an interesting take on piracy-- men like Barbossa want to live forever, don’t they? To be immortal? Well, Barbossa got it. But he doesn’t want it. He realizes the twistedness of it, and he wants to live again. That’s why I feel myself crying when he finally gets shot and he whispers, “I feel... cold.” Cause though he doesn’t want to die, his words were “I feel.” Those are important to him. With that death, he feels for the last time. To me, it felt like I hear relief in his voice. It has finally ended, this curse that has terrorized him. 

I just rewatched this movie last night, and I found something interesting. 

Guys, listen to Jack Sparrow and Barbossa talk. THEY ARE INTELLIGENT MEN. They bring up philosophy, they use words that even I don’t know. These aren’t “idiot” pirates, men who were poor and escaped into freedom on the seas. Though, especially in Jack’s case, they act and talk like pirates, sometimes, they slip into a language that makes me consider their backstories. Who were these men? Why are they so smart, but out here as brutal killers and pillagers? What made them like this? 

(Raises brows). There’s more to their stories, and my only complaint about this movie is that we aren’t told any of it. 

Oh well. We’re on a wild affair of adventure and pirating and stolen women and curses. Everything about this story is absolute magic and perfection. The conversations aren’t lacking, there is so much great humor (appropriately placed, as well), there’s a darkness that shows that pirates aren’t as glorified as we want to make them, and these are real, breathing characters. 

We watch Elizabeth Swann brave this horrible world, learning how to trick even the tricksters, using her wit and bravery and intelligence to outwit them all and stay alive. Elizabeth Swann is probably my main fictional hero, because yes, she is a beautiful woman, but her beauty is never used in that sense. The pirates don’t take her or use her because of her beauty. It’s more complicated than that. I think Barbossa recognizes her wits and intelligence, and hopefully, admire her for it. She’s uses everything but her beauty to her advantage. And she comes out the one with the most growth. Keira Knightly show us a strong, powerful woman without powers or control in her world, but my god, she takes the world by storm, pulling on the corset straps to become one of the best warriors-- she does become the queen after all! (Also, did you know Keira Knightly was only 17 in this movie??? Like, come on!) 

We see Will Turner turn from a quiet, complacent man to someone yelling at men higher than him in station because he wants to save the woman he loves. We see him deal with the fact that he comes from pirates, learns that not everyone is who they say they are, and that may be okay. That not everyone is perfect, and sometimes, you can’t follow everyone else. Will Turner joins the pirates to do the right thing. He recognizes that the system of his own world isn’t right, and that’s why he saves Jack Sparrow in the end. Because he knows what is right and wrong now. Orlando Bloom brought a gentleness to a man living in a world where brutality was the answer-- but for him, everything was chosen because of love. 

And then there’s Jack Sparrow. The wonderful character we all love. Johnny Depp swept onto the screen as this character by stepping into port right off a sinking boat. As soon as he did so, I knew I was going to love this character (I actually managed to practice so much that I could talk exactly like Jack, accent and all, for quite a long time, if I wanted). He gave us a character we love because he's honest about who he is, and I think that’s why the other characters love him too. Though he can be a little shit and switch sides for whoever will help him the most, everyone knows that’s just how he is. He doesn't hide his flaws and faults, and that’s what makes him so intriguing in the franchise. He’s just Jack Sparrow. He’s out for himself (though he does do some things for love, in the end). We got a morally gray pirate who just wants to survive and have all the treasure, and isn’t into murder and gore like Barbossa. He just wants to have some damn fun. 

All the other characters brought so much to the table as well. Norrington represented the colonial world who immediately saw PIRATE and thought HORRIBLE. But I think he learned so much by the end, especially by giving Jack “a day’s head start.” I think Norrington questioned his own world by witnessing what Will had done to save Elizabeth, and it made him question himself. That was why, at first, he was so desperate to prove himself. Because he was questioning himself the whole time. (And can we just talk about how he is actually a good man?? At the end, he realized Elizabeth loved Will and he WALKED AWAY! He didn’t fight, he didn’t argue, he didn’t use his station over Will. He just hoped Will loved her well enough. Like, how cool is that??? Good men in this movie!)

The sets and filming locations were so beautiful and added another level the movie. I can feel the Caribbean through the screen, and I love how I can feel the ocean through this. I love watching the ocean, and I feel the same sensation in this movie. It brings it all more to life. This movie does a great job of sucking you into a movie of pirates and the sea. And the tone is so dark, but it gives it so much meaning, and you feel like you are Elizabeth, surviving in this world that we don’t quite know or understand, but we’re learning. 

I grew up with the ocean. I spent half of my life along the water, day, night, for hours on end. I know what it’s like to jump into the ocean and swim and float there, I know what it’s like to be on a small boat in the ocean heading toward Canada, and walking around the boat with my grandpa and not getting seasick. The sea is in my blood in ways I can’t ever quite understand, and this movie speaks to me on that level and more. 

Overall, this movie is a fun adventure, with sword fights and stranded islands, and curses. On the surface, it’s a love story, a rescuing of a woman who can handle herself just as well as being saved. But, deep down below the depths of those waters, it’s more than that. It’s about a pair of young people, especially a young woman, learning the truth of the world, seeing the other side of life, and realizing that maybe their old life isn’t exactly what they first believed. They discover who they are, while discovering the truth of everything they had believed in, and changing for the better. They join the chaotic life of the pirates to find who they are, deep down inside, together. 

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. 

[five-wow]

I have a little crisis going on. My friend saw me checking in on tumblr on my phone a week or so ago and asked me what I was looking at. I told her about H 5-0 and McDanno. She likes gay ships and started watching.When she was finished with season one and had watched the conclusion of the season final she asked me why Danny ditched Rachel in favor of Steve. I told her because he loves him – duh! But I guess she just doesn't feel the vibes for that ship. (1/2)

She told me while she got why maybe Steve would fall for Danny she didn’t understood how Danny could develop feelings for Steve, didn’t even get how they’ve become friends with all the arguing. I know I can’t convince her and I don’t want to.But when I was home again, it got me thinking… and to my sheer horror I nearly came up with nothing (okay, he payed for the dolphin swimming and helped finding Meka’s murderer, was there for the memorial service) but otherwise? (2/2)            

Dear god, I don’t know myself why Danny would fall for Steve. I haven’t watched season 1 in a while. Could you please remember me? Sorry for the Long three part ask. (3/3)             

OKAY SO. Tragically, I haven’t watched season 1 in a while either, because I still haven’t gotten around to that rewatch I keep saying I should probably do, BUT. HOWEVER. YET.

It might be a bit of a mess, but I’m always ready to ramble about why Danny might fall for Steve. This ended up as nearly 2k words, so I’ll put it under a cut:

I think that a crucial first thing to understand is that when Danny yells, it does not necessarily mean he’s genuinely angry. I definitely get how if you do interpret it that way, the entire show could just kind of look like Danny doesn’t even like Steve very much, let alone loves him. Yelling CAN mean he’s angry, and of course it often DOES mean that, but just as often (or perhaps even more) it overwhelmingly means that he cares. Loudly. Right in your face. (There’s a later episode, 3.15, in which Steve does something heroic but stupid and Danny yells at him afterwards and Steve goes, kind of gleefully, “You were worried about me” and Danny says “Worried? No, no, I was worried about my car” but it’s VERY obvious that he’s lying, like, to the point where that’s the whole joke here. There are probably other instances that prove the yelling-Danny-does-not-mean-a-Danny-who-doesn’t-like-you, but this is my favorite because it’s extremely, blindingly obvious, and the narrative actively wants us to see it that way.)

To jump right in with the deep stuff: Steve offered Danny a job and gave him a family and a place in Hawaii and a purpose and the feeling of being useful, and he did it at a time when Danny was living a pretty miserable existence where even after six months he was still being hazed by the other Detectives for being the haole who wears a tie. Danny tells Tani in one of the very early season 8 episodes that Steve has a way of coming into people’s lives at just the right time, and that he did that for everyone on the team, including Danny. Obviously if you’re watching season 1 you can’t know what’s being said in season 8, but it’s just confirmation of stuff that’s definitely there on screen in season 1, too.

Steve is good at his job. Really, really good, and even if his methods are crazy, he ends up helping people. Danny can be shocked at the means and still appreciate the end at he same time.

Steve’s surprisingly smart, too. A bit of a dork sometimes - Steve with that teacup in 1.10? “I like tea.” NERD. (He’s also absolutely saying that to rile Danny up, and essentially that just means he enjoys arguing with Danny which is SO PERFECT for Danny, who can’t stop it even if he tries. More about that later.)

Steve makes Danny laugh. It may sometimes be a laugh borne out of shock, perhaps even anger, but there’s definitely laughter. (Steve also goes along with Danny’s silly banter and smiles about it - Danny’s “you miss me, don’t you?” when Steve is being a super secret spy on the museum ship in 1.07 and Steve’s “yeah, yeah” and “but you don’t swim” are a wonderful example.)

But then, on top of all of that, Steve is also kind. Of course there’s the hotel room with dolphin swimming he gives Danny as an apology after Danny makes it clear that he thinks he deserves one (which, by the way, still make me scream a little, because everything after that one moment ALWAYS portrays Steve as extremely unwilling to spend a lot of money on anything, even gifts, AND because yes, it’s a way to apologize, but it’s also something that immediately shows Steve gets Danny, because it’s not just for Danny, it’s for Grace! it’s for Danny to have fun with Grace), but he also makes a call to the Governor when Danny has issues with Rachel over visitation rights for Grace, and he does it behind Danny’s back. He comes to Meka’s funeral, not because he needs to grieve, but because Danny is grieving. When Grace and Rachel get car-jacked and Danny has to leave suddenly in the middle of a case, Steve’s immediate response is to tell him to call if he needs anything and then look completely thrown for a moment after Danny leaves. tl;dr: Steve CARES, and Danny, a man who is definitely not stupid, knows this. I mean, it’s not like he has to look far to see it anyway - he experiences it, over and over and over again. (And Steve’s there like this for the whole team, not just Danny, but in season 1 it’s definitely mostly Danny, because after Steve he just has the most problems, poor guy.)

(Side note, that episode I mentioned in which Grace and Rachel get car-jacked and Danny rushes to them? 1.16? Later on, Steve is going full camouflage ninja in the forest on his own and then his phone starts buzzing and he sees it’s Danny and the first thing he does after picking up is ask “are Grace and Rachel okay?” and when Danny then asks about the case he goes “don’t worry about that” to calm Danny down, and they end up having a lengthy conversation about Danny’s problem while Steve is panting trying to hold a log in the air for some very important SEAL reason, but he doesn’t complain a single time or even mention that he’s kind of busy. Danny needs him, so he’s available.)

And I mean, obviously, there’s these: “Maybe you’re not as alone around here as you think, Danno.” “I know you.” “I picked you, didn’t I?”

If I can just circle back around to something we’ve sort of covered: Danny yells a lot. He has a temper. He gets angry. He doesn’t get along super well with most people, and then along comes Steve, who initially INFURIATES Danny to the point where Danny ends up hitting him after they meet, but instead of getting angry back or holding a grudge, Steve is impressed and takes it in stride and still wants Danny to work with him because he sees Danny’s talents, and he doesn’t let himself be intimidated by the attitude. He lets Danny rant and get angry and he argues back but also calms Danny down when needed, and everything we’re shown indicates that he enjoys that dynamic. Essentially, Steve is the ideal partner for Danny, and Steve is also lonely and he’s loyal to a fault and they have a similar sense of humor and their banter flows ridiculously smoothly right from day one and their personalities just click and Steve keeps inviting Danny over for beer and letting him walk into his kitchen unannounced and dragging him into Steve’s classic car for its first test drive, so what do you know? Steve’s also a really great best friend.

Danny says Steve is terrible with kids and then Steve is actually GREAT with Grace. Like, when Danny gets hit with the sarin gas and Steve picks Grace up from school because he knows she’ll be getting out soon and there will be nobody waiting for her? That’s something that you can bet means the world to Danny, because Grace is his world. ALSO, Steve goes to get Grace and deliver her to the hospital personally, even though it’s a ridiculously busy day with two cases to work at once, one of which might lead them to Wo Fat, the killer of Steve’s father, which is Steve’s Huge Tragic Backstory and the thing he’ll usually drop anything else for. Except Grace! (Obviously, if he knew when Grace would need to be picked up and hadn’t done anything about it, that would have been a huge dick move, so you could say he had no choice, but that still means that 1) he knows when and where to pick Grace up in the first place, which shows he cares enough to pay attention to something that he couldn’t have known would ever be relevant until that moment, and 2) he could have sent Chin or Kono or Jenna or Duke or Kamekona or random HPD officers, and he did not do that. He went there in person. He went to get Grace.)

Which leads us neatly here: Steve, a guy with virtually no family left except for one very estranged sister (and an aunt we don’t know about yet and a mother who’s actually still alive, but those can’t really be counted at the end of season 1), is a HUGE FAMILY MAN. What’s Danny’s whole reason for uprooting his life and being miserable five days a week but still feeling it’s totally worth it for those other two days? LOVE OF FAMILY. Danny definitely, 100% can appreciate that quality in other people, and Steve has it, he just had nowhere to direct it for the longest time.

In the same vein, Danny is a True Dad. He sees Steve, this lonely guy who just lost his dad, and in the fandom it’s generally acknowledged that Steve saw Danny and went “yes, this one, I’m keeping this one”, but for all of Danny’s complaining, he also adopted Steve on the spot.Steve needs a Danny so he doesn’t get himself killed (the very first episode immediately hammers this point home really hard), and there’s no way Danny isn’t aware of that on some level.

Also just. Yes, Steve does a lot of things Danny tells him he shouldn’t do. Yes, Steve is an idiot sometimes. But he also listens to the things Danny yells at him, and when it really matters to Danny, he changes his behavior. There’s that apology hotel room, for one, but there’s also that bit in the episode about Meka, Danny’s former partner, where Steve is not entirely convinced that Meka wasn’t a dirty cop even though Danny keeps insisting he can’t have been because he was a good guy, and Danny gets so mad Steve doesn’t believe him that he walks off (“If my word is not good enough for you, then I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he says), so a while later Steve goes after him and he keeps asking questions until he understands what Danny means - you know your partner, you trust your partner, the way Danny trusts Meka is the way Steve trusts Danny and that’s why Danny’s behavior makes sense - and from that point on, he fully has Danny’s back in this crusade to clear Meka’s name, even though there it’s not like there’s suddenly more hard evidence to support it.

So why would Danny ditch Rachel to go chase after Steve? Well, because he knows at that point, no one else might do it, and at least not the unrelenting way Danny will. Because Steve doesn’t have many people and deserves to have someone stick up for him. Because there is zero doubt Steve would do the same thing for him.Because Danny knows that in that moment, Steve needs him more than Rachel does. Because he has to make a choice and he’s inevitably going to regret not being there for one of these people, but apparently, to Danny, getting to Steve is more urgent. Because he’s putting Steve’s needs before his own. Because they’re partners and they’re family and they’re friends and that really, really means something. Because it’s Steve, and he means something.

[nancydrew65]

SKAM Austin Season 2 Episode 9 Thoughts

So, I thought this was the last episode, but then a clip was released today. I’m guessing there will be ten total episodes in this season. Like I said before, Daniel is officially canceled in my book, so if you don’t want to hear me ranting about what an asshole he is... maybe don’t read this.

Home

Grace had to drive out to Clay’s school just to talk to him. God, can she get a break?

Clay is trying to laugh things off, but Grace is serious AF.

And then that asshole calls Grace a slut. He is such a horrible human being. Why does Daniel believe him over Grace? I will never understand this storyline. He knows his brother is psycho, why would he believe anything he says?

Grace “apologizes” to Clay and he says: “It is a scary time to be a guy, you know?” I thought that was an especially good line to put in to SKAM Austin. Men in the United States say that all the time now that #MeToo is a thing. Heck, even our president says it. It is disgusting. I mean, you think it is scary to be a guy and be accused of sexual harassment? How about being a woman and experiencing sexual harassment. That is a hell of a lot scarier.

Then Grace goes off on him, exposing him for the terrible person he is. She is such a badass in this scene. I missed this beautiful, strong woman.

Clay rushes to assure Grace that he didn’t do anything to her, but it is hard to believe him. Grace just threatened to report him to the police. I am willing to bet he would lie to her, just to get her off his case.

But I have to say, my favorite part of the clip is when Grace walked away and Megan was waiting for her on the curb to drive her home. This brings up a small issue I have with Austin. It is not even really an issue, but something I would have liked to see. I wish we could have seen Megan and Grace’s relationship more this season. Last season, we didn’t really get much and we didn’t this season either. I think it is a problem with the remakes in general. The Eva character kind of gets sidelined in Noora’s season. The remake that portrays these girls’ friendship the best is SKAM NL in my opinion. I love seeing scenes of Isa and Liv together because they are just so close.

That being said, I adored this scene. I think it may be my favorite iteration of the confrontation scene yet.

Ready to Talk

Grace texts Daniel about everything, explaining that she might never know what happened, how terrifying the whole ordeal was, that she might have been drugged. Daniel starts texting back, but never sends anything.

This is the point of no return for me. Let me tell you a story. When I first watched SKAM Season 2, I didn’t find anything too inherently wrong with it. At this point in time, I wasn’t aware of the whole social media and text aspect of the series, so I was just watching the full episodes without any of the context of the instagram posts or text messages posted. Sure, I definitely felt uncomfortable about some parts of the storyline, like William constantly pressuring Noora to go out with him or come to his parties. Even when the scene came out where William confronted Noora about the Niko situation, despite how awfully he treated her, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, “Well, he doesn’t know the whole story. Who knows what Niko told him and Noora really didn’t get a chance to explain herself.” I finished off the season with this mindset. It was only later that I learned about the text messages posted online. I learned that Noora had explained what happened to William, telling him that she had most probably been sexually assaulted. This is where the character of William lost any sympathy I might have had for him. Going back to SKAM Austin, Daniel disregards his girlfriend’s feelings when he has full knowledge that she might have been drugged and sexually assaulted. He treats her like shit after this, not texting her or talking to her. Nothing he does can ever redeem him in my eyes. Grace deserves better.

God is a Woman

The girls are all chilling, getting ready to go to Prom later. Kelsey waltzes in, looking gorgeous in her pale blue prom dress. She talks about she used to feel that she had to be skinny to be successful, but now she realizes otherwise. She pulls out a water bottle that is filled with alcohol.

Megan refuses a drink when Kelsey offers, saying she wants to take a break from drinking - and from Marlon.

Kelsey whole heartedly agrees, stating that they don’t need boys to validate them. This is one of the most flawed parts of Season 2 for me. Kelsey and Megan realize that they don’t need boys to have self-worth (which is such a great message for teenage girls), but Grace (the lead of this season) experiences the opposite of that. She is strong and confident without a man in the first season and the beginning of this season, but by the end she needs Daniel to be happy. There is so much disconnect between the two messages this season is trying to put forward.

Jo complains about her boy trouble with the guy she’s been talking to online and the girls assure her she doesn’t need him.

#Prom

OK, well this Prom is a hell of a lot nicer than the one my school offered. We actually had Prom on the exact same night, so…

Pen-Joe comes up to Jo and Grace, asking Jo for a dance. Like the boss lady that she is, Jo replies “I already have a boyfriend” in Spanish. That is right, Pen-Joe. You lost your chance with the beautiful woman that is Josefina Valencia.

Back inside the dance, Abby announces Daniel as Prom King, but apparently he didn’t show up. This reminds me of yet another awful thing Daniel did to Grace. He said they were going to Prom together, but then he never shows up. Dude.

Zoya wins Prom Queen!!!!! I wasn’t sure if we were going to get this scene, but we did and I am so damn happy for her. She deserves it.

Grace asks Pen-Joe where Daniel is, but he just says that “family stuff”. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Out on the dance floor, Kelsey is dancing with a nice-looking dude, Zoya and Megan are dancing together, and Jo accepts Pen-Joe’s offer for a dance. You better make him apologize for the rude way he treated you, girl.

Aw, Grace posts a selfie of herself looking happy, but you can tell it is all a facade. She goes to join Megan and Zoya.

Welcome to My Life

It is the middle of the night and Grace gets a message on instagram from xxtrinity2121 about Clay.

A conversation ensues between the two girls. Apparently this mystery instagram girl is their version of Mari, telling Grace nothing happened between her and Clay. Obviously, this news is a great relief to Grace.

They also talk about how stressed they both are, with xxtrinity2121 confessing that she is very depressed and sometimes thinks about killing herself. Since this clip was posted, a chat was posted on SKAM Austin’s website between Grace and this girl which leads me to believe she has a more important role than just being the Mari stand-in. I have heard a lot of theories of who she is. A lot of people think she is Tyler, who is either trying to fool Grace or he was actually the person in bed with her and Clay. I don’t think the latter option is true because it looked like a girl in the bed to me when I re-watched that clip. Another interesting idea is that she is the Austin version of Even. I mean her username xxtrinity2121 has the number 21:21 in it. I really like this theory and hope it is true. That would be so interesting.

Usually Never Wrong

Zoya and Grace are walking down the hall, when Zoya pulls Abby over. She apologizes for not believing Abby about what a bad guy Hunter is. Abby tells her no problem and says she is really happy how everyone came together to support Zoya as Prom Queen, how it would have been racist if Zoya hadn’t won. Now, I don’t think Abby was trying to be mean. I genuinely think she was trying to be nice, but obviously it really hurt Zoya. She walks away. God, I feel so bad for Zoya. She deserved to win Prom Queen on her own merit, not because people think it would be racist for her not to. I think this is really gearing up to her season and I really hope she gets to have one.

Grace spots Daniel in the quad and rushes up to him, asking where he’s been. He says he’s been to see Clay. No elaboration. Then he tells her he’s going to New York for the summer. Well, I guess it’s not as bad as moving to London permanently like William was planning on doing.

Grace says she wants to talk and Daniel says “I’m done talking. It’s too much.” Too much? For you? Grace could have been sexually assaulted and this asshole has the nerve to claim it’s too much for him?God, I hate Daniel.

Grace runs after him, yelling her most iconic line yet. “Daniel, stop being a little bitch.” She tells him off. She says that a lot of stuff happened and it sucked. For her. I’m really glad they gave her that line. Because it is so damn true. Then she starts talking about how no one has loved her like Daniel has, blah, blah, blah. I wish we’d gotten more of Grace’s parents backstory because that would have given better context to this scene.

Daniel still gets in the car and drives away. As Grace is crying at the curb, we see him run back to her and they embrace.

She says she can explain everything, and he says she doesn’t need to. A lot of people were overjoyed at this line, but…. She already explained everything in the text she sent him and he ignored her and treated her like shit afterward when he finally saw her. This line makes no sense to me.

Whatever, I know a lot of people were happy they finally got together, but I can never fully forgive Daniel.

General Thoughts

This was a weird week because we got a bunch of clips on Saturday and then on one Monday and nothing else the entire week. I do think there were a lot of good parts of the clips, aside from Daniel drama. Also, the clip where Grace and Clay talk might be my favorite clip this season or for SKAM Austin in general. I think they executed it beautifully. See you next week for the last episode of this season!

[bl00d-cherry]

(Warning: If you are sensitive to the topic of school shootings or just guns, violence and gore this may just not be the one for you.)

————————————————————

CHAPTER 1.

These last two day have been... I really don't know how to put it, but 'strange' is the first thing that comes to mind. I've never been the superstitious type, but with each new problem that arises, I feel myself sinking further into the utter absurdity of my situation. So, after being a long-time lurker on this sub, I'm looking to you guys for help.

Some backstory- my name's Hiro, and I'm in tenth grade at some shitty, run-down high school near my house. My town has never really been one to have a lot of crime save for the gas station robbery here and there, but the kids are mean. And when I say mean, I mean that I've come home with black eyes I needed to hide more times than I care to admit. It's no biggie, though- I started bulking up last year for lacrosse and no-one seems to mess with me much anymore. That seemed to be the case with everyone transitioning from middle to high school, which was a pleasant surprise to all the teachers who preached anti-bullying but never did anything to rectify the problems. I guess they were happy that they didn't have to do the work involved with catching bullies anymore (as if they did it at all). Well, I wish I could say that it was a decent transition for everyone, but I'd be lying.

There's this kid I have some history with. Not bad history, per se, but enough so that I could know and recognize him on the street. Hell, we were in the same 5th-grade class. I liked the kid, I really did- he had dark humor that I found funny and he knew how to sit in a comfortable silence. I wish we could've become better friends; maybe this whole thing could've been avoided. Anyway, I'll call this kid K, for the sake of privacy, or if there's ever a case. Not that there would be.

Some backstory- in middle school, K was the silent, broody type. Y'know, like the emo kid who makes world war II jokes every four seconds and browses Reddit and, at that time, iFunny. Listened to either death metal or X, no in-between. It would be unfair of me to not include that, in those years, I was pretty much the same- I had developed mental health issues and didn't know how to deal with it, so my brain went, "oh, no woke time," and I started making those stupid Bart Simpson edits with the vaporwave over them, you know the ones. But K was on a whole different level. Like I'm talking straight up Boku no Pico at lunch, drawing very bad vent art just to cross out the eyes, stuff like that.To a degree, it was amusing to me. I found him fascinating, and even through my "girls only backstab " faze, I can detach myself enough to look at him through the lense of a man looking through the glass at the monkey exhibit at the zoo- just observing.

Except, this monkey literally got beaten to a pulp every other day.

It had gotten to the point where the kids around him were desensitized to it. Maybe it was because of his naturally standoffish nature, but nobody ever helped him. The few times I tried to report what was happening, the teachers told me they'd look into it and nothing ever happened. I even went to the principal when it got especially bad, and he just brushed it off as "boys will be boys". Yeah, like literally psychologically traumatizing a boy for three-plus years of his life can constitute as boys just being boys. I remember the first time he tried to commit suicide. Apparently he'd been planning it for months and brought a rope to school with him on the excuse that it was for a project. When I saw him leave with his backpack for the bathroom, I got a bad feeling and asked if I could go too. I was the one to talk this kid down from hanging himself on a railing right outside the school's bathroom. And, sadly, I can't say it was my last time doing so. He tried three more times throughout his middle school career, and I tried to tell people, I tried to let people know, but nothing came of it. It was as if nobody cared for him in the slightest- maybe that's why he did what he did.

I digress, though- highschool only got worse for him. I remember on the first day of school after summer break, he gave me a grin in the hall. This was odd- he looked better. Happy, even. I found out later that he'd gone to therapy throughout the summer, had been working out, and taking antidepressants, but none of those proved to work in the long run, in my opinion. But I remember later, seeing that same depressed, dejected expression plastered on his face later on after having curdled milk poured into his backpack and his hoodie. I had tried to go over and help him clean it, but he gave me a weak smile and told me not to worry about it.

Every time something happened, I could see him reverting further and further into the boy he used to be, until yesterday, on October 28th, 2019. That's where the backstory ends and the real shit I've been going through begins.

That morning, he'd texted me that we didn't have school that day. I had been confused, seeing as he hadn't texted me in over a year- he preferred to talk face to face or, rather, not at all- and asked my mom, who was a teacher at the elementary school down the road. She told me that yes, there was a school, and that I was going. Damn. I texted back, word for word, "lmao nah there's school and we've got that test in Wayne's class, remember"

He left me on read. Even more confused than before, I decided to brush it off and get ready.

That was probably the gravest mistake I'd ever made.

These next parts are somewhat graphic, and though I won't be showing pictures (I don't think even I would be able to handle them) I would definitely skip if you're blood-shy or something like that. Because this is a count-for-count recollection of the worst day of my fucking life.

He wasn't in Wayne's first period. I was confused at first, seeing as I'd told him that school was being held today and that he had to be there for the test, but figured he just didn't want to come and stayed home to study for an extra day. I sat down and resigned myself to my fate of flunking this test, but I never got that far. Halfway through the Pledge of Allegiance, the office lady with the most boring voice imaginable stopped talking with a small gasp. We heard the rustling of movement in the background, and then concealed 'pop'. There was a cry of pain (or fear, or both) and then another three 'pop's, then a thump, ragged, gurgling breathing coming in through the loudspeaker.

We, the overtired, overworked, and pessimistic high school students that we were, chuckled at what we thought was just a stupid joke designed to scare us. It was October, after all. But after a few more moments and a few more pops and a few more screams that just had to be fake, we heard the faintest, last-breath tinged voice of the woman over the loudspeaker one last time.

"Ac-ctive sho-ooter... code... hhh... red... 911..."

My teacher stopped flipping through the textbook and looked up at the loudspeaker as if the woman were laying right in front of us, heaving her last breaths in such utter pain and agony and still finding it in herself to warn the rest of the school.To say that pandemonium broke out would be an understatement. Mr. Wayne quickly turned off the lights and shoved us all into the corner of the room. We sat there, huddled, while people texted their parents goodbye. I was no different. The texts from that day are gone now, but to surmise it, it went:

To Parental Unit #1 (that's my mom) and Parental Unit #2 (my dad)

Me: there's an active shooter in the building

Me: I don't know if ill make it out alive

Parental Unit #1: What??

Me: i love you

Parental Unit #1: Call me now, Hiro

Me: I can't

Parental Unit #1: This isn't funny, Hiro.

Parental Unit #1: Hiro, respond now.

Me: i'm not joking

Me: I need to turn off my phone i hear shots from down the hall

Parental Unit #1: Don't get off the phone.

Me: i love you mom

Me: dad i love you

Parental Unit #1: Hiro

Parental Unit #1: Hiro, text back right now

Parental Unit #1: Are you okay?

Parental Unit #1: I love you.

My dad didn't talk. I think he was at work or something and didn't have time to look at the messages, but I wondered if he watched the live broadcast of the thing. I put my phone in my hoodie the minute I heard a pop from outside our door, and I closed my eyes as if it would make it all go away. Girls were crying beside me and the other guys in my class were freaking out, low-key. But the moment I heard the door to the classroom beside us being kicked in and the screams of students cut off by gunshots, an eerie calm washed over me and I stood up, pushing the desks to blockade the door. A couple of other guys and Mr. Wayne caught on and helped me out, retreating back to our spot when we finished.

The bootfalls thumped nearer to our door with each slow, agonizing second. The door handle shook as the shooter tried to use the conventional way of getting in, but after that proved fruitless, he started trying to kick his way in, like he did the last room. A girl a couple of feet away from me sobbed about how she didn't want to die and one of them peed her pants. A guy retched in the corner and a couple of kids had their phones out, recording. I thought to do the same, for evidence, and pulled out my phone.

After a couple seconds of kicking, I heard a frustrated yell outside of the door. It sounded so familiar, and then the gun clacked against the window, the eye through the scope aiming directly next to me, and the trigger was pulled. The bullet flew past me, skimming my ear and lodging in the forehead of a guy Chris, I think his name was, blood pooling around his girlfriend's legs. I remember looking through the door's window as the scope came down off the guy's face and meeting K's eyes. Everything was so numb- I couldn't even feel the blood in my ear. His expression darkened when he saw me and he took one more shot- one that would hit the girl who'd peed her pants in the arm- and ran to the next classroom.

I was frozen. I didn't know how to move. And yet, my camera stayed in place, having caught every single moment of the boy's death in his girlfriend's arms, of this girl's agony having gotten shot in the arm, and all of my utter fear the moment I saw K.

Later, as we were being led outside by the SWAT teams, I took a look around, peering into the classrooms out of sheer morbid curiosity. I regretted looking- it was an absolute massacre. Teachers, students, dead in a place where they should be safe, less than a year after Stoneman Douglas, which was just twenty minutes away. My parents stood outside, holding each other and looking desperately, tearfully, for me, their son, to come out- dead or alive. Seeing that look of pure relief on their faces the moment they saw me- me, both mine and the boy's blood all over my clothes, my hands bruised and scratched from moving the desks, my eyes wild and scared- made me want to cry. But I just can't- nothing would come out.

After, I got asked questions by the cops. What do you recall? I gave them my video. Do you have any injuries? Pointed to my ear and they got it patched up easily. Did you know the shooter? Yes. Who were they? K.

That night was spent mostly at the police station, but my parents got me out of there in time for them to take me home and make me dinner. I couldn't eat it- the metallic smell of blood and urine and sweat and primal fear still lingered in my nose and on my skin and in my mind, so I told them that I wasn't hungry and that I needed to shower.The news said that there were 32 casualties. 32 kids, teachers, killed. They'd detained K and had him in custody. He would be awaiting trial for a little while at least.After eating a meager dinner of half a piece of fish and water, I said I wanted to go to bed at around 11:00. Seeing as I was the one to stay up as late as I humanly could, my parents were concerned (well, more concerned than they already were) but put it up to the shock. I went to bed with tears in my eyes and fell into a fitful sleep, plagued with dreams of death.

The next morning is where things get... odd. Well, odder. The next morning, my alarm went off as usual. I went to silence it, as there definitely wouldn't be school today with everything that had happened and rolled over, but my mom came in.

Mom: Hiro, you're gonna be late for school, get up.

I looked up at her with confusion. I wondered why she was making me get up, and wondered for a moment if everything was just a bad dream. But then I brushed my hand across my ear and winced, looking down at my raw palms. Nope, definitely not a dream.Not wanting to look weird, though, I got up and got dressed as normal. I couldn't shake the feeling, though, that I just couldn't be at school. I couldn't be there- the blood that stained the walls, the corpses had to still be here- it was a crime scene, for Pete's sake. But, even so, my mom drove me to school and dropped me off, kissing me on the cheek like everything was normal. I walked slowly into Wayne's classroom, looking around fearfully. Kids were sat down working on whatever was on the board, and it looked like a full house of students save for one. The guy who'd been killed yesterday, Chris, wasn't there. It's not like he had an empty seat, but more so that he didn't have a seat at all. I saw K sitting in his usual desk right next to me and he looked up, his eyes full of knowing. I hoped he didn't know I knew too.

Mr. Wayne: What are you doing, Mr. Hamada? Sit down.

I hesitantly did so and made a point to shift away from K as humanly possible.

The girl who'd gotten shot in the arm yesterday now looked good as new, smiling at me with a faint blush covering her cheeks. "I can't believe you actually bombed the test that badly," she giggled, a hand coming over to cover her mouth. I chuckled along with her for a moment, confused and afraid.

Me: Do you happen to know where Chris is?

She got confused by this. Her: Chris? Beurganthol?

Me: No, the one in our class.

Her: Uh, we don't have a Chris in our class. You must be thinking of something else, sorry.

This caught me off guard. I looked over at his former girlfriend and she was talking with her friends, even flirting with one of the guys in her group, without a care in the world. What in the hell was actually going on here?The classroom fell into a sea of low murmurs and I decided to block it all out, trying to reset my brain for a moment by listening to music. I felt a hand on my shoulder and flinched. Hard. I looked up and K pulled back when he saw the fear in my eyes.

His own eyes narrowed and he peered at me analytically.

K: You know, don't you?

[stroni-bomb]

To Murder A Family

You hadn't meant for it to happen, you hadn't meant to disobey this badly. Your pack was right about you, one day your own rebellion would really be the end of them all.

OC Mingcheng's Backstory - Fairy!Jaehyun's Mate.

-Stroni-

⁎ *⁎°؂✶

You begrudgingly followed your mother and father, Alpha and Luna of your pack. They were on the move again to find a new home, only leaving intervals as small as one hour for everyone to rest before trekking off once again.

"Cheer up, you look like a skunk just sprayed your clean coat. Though that's your normal face nowadays it seems," Tao, your older brother and next in line to be Alpha, cackled beside you in pack link.

You snapped your jaw rather aggressively yet somewhat playful at him. "Shut it, I've got no patience for your games."

Tao grumbled beside you, deciding to pick up the pace and walk alongside your parents. Good riddens, you glared at him from behind, he was always trying to play favourite, not just with your parents either but with the whole pack that followed diligently behind your family. Suck ups, the lot of you- was what you wanted to say in your connected minds, but instead carried on walking, each paw getting more and more sore with each step.

⁎ *⁎°؂✶

"We are stopping here," your mother announced, her yellow eyes turned to face the pack whom had stopped dead in their tracks. "Your Alpha and my son have gone to survey the area. Feel free to shift, we may be staying here for a while."

Everyone seemed to sigh in unison, the instant cracking of bones filling the air. It didn't seem awkward anymore, seeing the whole pack naked. It had happened in so many occasions you were sure you'd be able to identify everyone simply by looking at their belly buttons.

As everyone stretched out their human form you decided to stay as a wolf and have a look around.

"Y/N!" Your mother barked after you, her too in her human form. Your tail instantly sagged, so much for exploring. "Where are you going? Ladies should-"

"Stay and look elegant so the pack feel reassured blah blah blah I get it," you snapped, slumping down onto the floor deciding your pelt was in need of a clean.

"That's not how a lady should cleanse herself," She scolded once again, a disgusted look plastered on her face. Not being able to think of a good comeback in time you simply stuck your tongue out, lifting your top lip as if to pull a silly face in wolf form.

"You're so childish! There's just no talking to you anymore!" She yelled, storming off towards the family of the Betas, second in command.

Laughing to yourself you watched her leave as she vented, presumably about you. "You shouldn't wind your mother up like that daughter," a deep voice said behind you, it was your father who, thankfully, was in wolf form.

"She started it; a lady should do this, a lady should do that, how about a lady does whatever the hell she wants?" Your father gently shook his head then walked towards the trees, signalling for you to follow suite.

You gladly got up, knowing you was in for a more educational lecture, one that didn't end with telling you what to do or how to live your life. Your father was the best in terms that he didn't judge you, he didn't have crazy expectations and he actually treated you ...like a daughter.

For a while he hadn't said anything, allowing you to follow close by his side, something your mother would never allow you to do.

"Y/N," he addressed you with your name, something you weren't used to as 'daughter', 'wife' and 'son' were how he always called his family by. "sometimes I worry for you, maybe I shouldn't. But the way you live, how you do things, do you think they're beneficial to the pack?"

You stood frozen in place. Your heart seemingly stopped beating and your tail immediately drooped between your legs. This didn't sound like father, this sounded like mother, literally anything but father.

"I know I'm not one to tell you what to do but, some things you know you have to, right? To save yourself, to save the lives of your family and the pack-"

"What exactly are you on about? You see me as a threat?" You couldn't help but interrupt, his words sending you over the edge. He suddenly stopped also, looking back at you sympathetically then turning to look at something in front of him. Reluctantly you moved forward, seeing the most beautiful lake you had possibly ever seen in your lifetime.

"It's not that your a threat Y/N. You just have tendencies to disobey even the most important of rules," he paused, looking somewhat thoughtful as his perked ears moved in the wind. "This lake, although beautiful, is cursed. I can smell it, nothing but bad news. Just- don't drink from it okay? That's all."

How could something so pretty be such a threat? You called it as bullshit, assuming it was another of the stupid tests your mother would put your father under to see if you'd do as you're told in an extreme situation. You weren't stupid. You'd already decided to give the lake a visit later to have a sip but in the mean time you gave your father a sure 'yes alpha' before racing him back to the others.

As the last wer finally fell asleep you silently tracked out the path you had walked earlier, following the fading scents until reaching the glistening water. It didn't have a particular scent that screamed 'this lake is cursed'. Even if there was, had your father really thought you were stupid enough to drink from a random lake? The fact that he thought you did only made you want to drink from it more, so here you are.

Without hesitation you lowered your front legs to make it easier for your tongue to reach the water. As soon as your tongue touched the cool liquid your wolf seemed to scream out to you, shouting at you to shift as soon as possible.

"Shut up wolf," you scowled, knowing it was only psychological. "Don't listen to what my dad has to sa-" it hit you all at once though. The feeling of skin stretching, bones growing ten times the size they should be, all whilst you were still a wolf. The pain was excruciating, nothing like you had ever felt before. The scariest thing was, you had no control over yourself anymore. As the floor got further and further away you cried out for everything to just stop but you couldn't. When it eventually halted you were no longer the slightly larger than average wolf, instead you were a beast, one so tall and bulky you could barely recognise your own pelt that covered its body.

A sudden burst of anger had shot through you; flashbacks of everytime you had been ridiculed as a child, disregarded by your parents and even your brother, it surged through you like a toxic drug. Until eventually, you had come to the conclusion of...who ever said you couldn't choose your family? Choose your pack? They didn't create the rules, no no you did, and it was time for a change... your new rule? Well it was simple:

If they've hurt you...kill them.

"And that's what I did," you finished your story to Jaehyun, who laid silently in bed next to you, playing with your hair and grasping your hand whenever your voice had broken.

"You weren't you in that moment," he soothed, finally deeming it appropriate to change your mood to a calmer one. It would've been wrong to have done it before, you wanted to tell him about your past in detail, emotions and everything. "Plus, you still have Tao."

You sighed, not sure if it was relief or frustration. Turning to face Jaehyun you cautiously wrapped your arms around him, taking in his scent as you shuffled closer to his body, snuggling your face into his collarbone. It was unlike you to initiate skinship, usually leaving it to Jaehyun whenever he felt like you weren't going to bite his head off. Dealing with your numerous mood swings was something you really had to commemorate to him, his patience really was immaculate.

His light chuckle gently blew the top of your hair as his arms found their way around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer to his chest. He placed a soft kiss to the top of your head, hugging you even tighter, it was amazing to him to have you here, you've been through a lot and after everything to still want to be by his side, it made him more than ecstatic.

"Hyunie...do you like Hyunie?" Acting cute wasn't really something you were known for either, at all, but in rare instances where you were both tired and seemingly under Jaehyun's 'spell' you couldn't help it.

"Hyunie?" He paused to think, not about the name of course, just about how adorable you were being. "I love it."

"Just like I love you," you didn't even have to think as the words just naturally slipped out of your mouth. You had never openly said 'I love you' before, Jaehyun had countless times but for you love was more if an expression of actions rather than words. This time though it was necessary.

"Y-you what?" He asked shocked, not believing that he'd heard you correctly.

"You know what I said doofus don't make me repeat myself," there's the Y/N that he was familiar with.

"I love you so much too Y/N," he cuddled you even tighter, resting his head on top of yours.

"Hyunie!" You pouted, looking up at him, his lips just a small gap from yours. "Why must you always one up me? You love hog."

He smirked as his eyes fell upon your lips, "love hog, huh?"

You lightly shook your head as your eyes seemed to naturally find their way to his lips as well. "You're unbelievable Jung Jaehyun."

"As are you Y/L/N Y/N, just more so."

"Again with the one upping?" Teasingly you bit the corner of your lip, snaking your arms from around his torso to loosely hanging across his shoulders and hooking around his neck. "Just kiss me already, we both know that's what you want."

He didn't hesitate, almost immediately closing the gap between the two of you and locking his lips in perfect unison with yours. It was passionate to say the least, he'd gently pull at the hem of your pyjama bottoms and you'd run your fingers through his hair, occasionally tugging at it lightly every now and then.

It wasn't unusual for you to end up pinned underneath Jaehyun's body as his hair flopped down, some strands sticking to his forehead where a few beads of sweat would roll down. Both of you naked, feeling nothing but love and acceptance radiating from each other, strong feelings showing clearly for the other. You were sure, no, you were absolutely certain that what you had with Jaehyun, that's what is commonly known as... forever.

[helenhuntingdon]

@ Anon who asked about Eifion backstory! 

I was like where did you hear of Eifion being problematic??? Then I realised it may have been from me......

So yeah I can try to breakdown everything I remember but it’s been 10-11 years so I couldn’t go through everything, or remember everything! And remember, I am an unreliable narrator!!!

But basically:

>He arrived in 2007 as Cadno’s rogueish bad boy boyfriend then was a regular from 2008? Basically early sl was them settling down on the farm (living with previous/joint owners Eileen and her ex Denzil, and their teen daughter Sioned, which will be relevant later~) You can see some of that here but without subtitles! But basically, dead cow alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYi6B6nelcU&t=4899s And then Eifion was depressed like I said~ They also had their first son! Cadno had had a miscarriage previously to that.

>Tbh you could read what I already wrote lol https://archiveofourown.org/works/15213248/chapters/35283857

>THEN Eifion fully lost his mind and so did the writers and he had an affair with Sioned, Cadno’s younger cousin. (I think she was about 20 then, 5 years ago?) It was creepy and happened in the same house and Cadno and was the lowest low point!!! Then Cadno found out she was pregnant with their second son after she found out about the affair - Eifion didn’t get to see their second son for like a month after he was born! 

>At some point Cadno left with the baby and got close to Gwyneth, main bisexual of the village lol. They ACTUALLY had a bit of a thing, snogged at the least! (Eifion wasn’t best pleased.) But Cadno decided she had to leave the village entirely and did for a bit (with the baby, who was then kidnapped by Iolo’s brother Macs, hm.) 

>Eifion got with Angela, blond nurse who ended up being Sioned’s sister (she was put up for adoption) and they were boring and selfish together lol. Eifion w/ Angela fought w/ Cadno, Angela wanted to do glamping??? on the farm, Cadno wanted Eifion to get a vasectomy so neither of them would have more children (Angela was pissed) but while Cadno got sterilized, Eifion chickened out of getting the vasectomy lol (Angela was still pissed!) They moved in together off the farm, with Angela’s daughter, and Eifion was a traffic warden so not the most likeable still yet lol. (Also Eifion pretending he was hurt lol? for money from Dai. Was found out when Angela threw a rugby ball at him in the pub lol.)

>Then Angela decided she wasn’t getting enough attention from him and decided she had a brain aneurysm! She’d been fainting and Eifion was worried about her symptoms but she was diagnosed w/ anaemia and then felt like Eifion wasn’t worried enough about her any more! So was like no actually I have a brain aneurysm I COULD DIE. Eifion proposed to her but she was worried it was just bc she was dying (which she wasn’t and it was) but he proposed again and I think they got married in Las Vegas????? (Bc not wanting someone to die = love) She got money from the village as well so she was pretty hated when it came out, as was Eifion but he insisted he’d also been lied to (and he had been!) Eifion left her and then she left. 

>Angela’s daughter Courtney, now Eifion’s step-daughter, stayed with Eifion and they’d gotten close! They bonded over Angela having lied to them both basically. (Fave interaction between them: Eifion: You know what I did when I thought your mother was sick? I gave people more tickets - even when they didn’t deserve them. Courtney: Eifion that’s terrible!) Eifion bought her her first car and it was covered in flower pattern it was so cute! Then she crashed the car into Tylo’s wedding and died RIP! See Tylo’s wedding for that and Eifion yelling her name at the end! 

>So there was some mourning period there, he saw her body at the hospital with Eileen (being her grandmother). It was discovered that Courtney had been pregnant and her bio dad and other people who hated Eifion decided he must’ve got her pregnant (DJ, Cadno’s boyfriend and Gaynor, the school headmistress, who Eifion dated for a short time disastruously - tho I think that was a comedy thing bc the Eifion and Gaynor actors are married irl!) but obviously he hadn’t yikes! She had a (teen!) boyfriend and hadn’t told her dad but still Eifion was banned from her funeral :( (In the end, they made up and everyone knew who the baby’s father really would’ve been.) Angela returned for a bit as well and she and Eifion decided to get a divorce bc their whole relationship had been a mistake and he should’ve stayed with Cadno! 

>(I kind of headcanon that at this point when Eifion was living alone then, in the house where he had lived with Angela and Courtney RIP, he could’ve been sleeping with men! This was like a couple of years ago~) 

>But Eifion was back at the farm when Cadno had an accident (her farmy boyfriend reversed a tractor over her, ow!) and he took care of her but kind of drove off her boyfriend as well (he was going to propose to her but imo if he couldn’t handle taking care of Cadno and her 2 sons after her accident, that’s his problem). Eifion and Cadno actually had a good friendship for a little bit, while maturely being parents to their sons - he was slightly scheming to get back on the farm tho lol. Cadno’s boyfriend did come back and propose and she eventually accepted and kicked Eifion back out - but when they were getting married, Eifion told her that they belonged together~ And Cadno didn’t marry him but told Eifion to fuck off afterwards bc she’d just not been ready to get married! But after a little bit they finally got back together, at the start of 2017, bc they’d both changed ~apparently~ and Cadno believed Eifion had done well on his own, been a good step father and was a good father now (redemption??? hmm)

>Next significant storyline I guess was Eifion and Tyler fighting? At the time was because Eifion’s younger (second???) cousin Mathew had had an affair with Tyler’s sister Dani but in hindsight was it bc of gay tension??? Hmm. Or can be retconned that way lol. You can watch that in the Tylo sl as well and lbr do I have a playlist of all/most of Eifion scenes that are on yt? yes. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKakjRzUXEOfdR-daGxBLk871-VY4ypvG

>That led into someone overhearing Cadno and Eifion discussing that she helped her ex’s mother die (he was basically saying he admired her for what she’d done, after having said less nice things) and she got arrested, leading to legal fees, leading to that meat plot I badly described earlier lol http://helenhuntingdon.tumblr.com/post/176350294204/what-exactly-did-eifion-do-that-led-to-him-and

>He then scarpered for 3 weeks in Swansea (where he maybe??? met Alun???) then since returning has just been adjusting to his new life living above a shop lol? I’ve giffed some scenes from then and may gif some more so just see here lol (and I would also watch scenes from Tylo’s sl with Alun and Iolo for Alun talking about his relationship with ‘John’ if you haven’t!) https://helenhuntingdon.tumblr.com/tagged/eifion+rowlands 

In conclusion lol, 

This may not be all accurate and obviously can’t include EVERYTHING that’s ever happened to his character and in his storyline but

he was more of a bad boy than a villain originally and never fully became a villain! His early depression sl I still remember bc it was a good sl! Has maybe been sneaky, selfish most of all, made terrible life choices, takes the easy way out, etc. but from his srsly lowest point of having an affair with Sioned, he’s gotten steadily less terrible lol, was kind of just a ridiculous character for a few years but was a better person from his relationship with Courtney, became a better father, changed when he was with Angela perhaps and to get back with Cadno (taking care of her!) and while he’s been with Cadno he’s been better than he was before! 

BUT he still is having an affair and lied to Alun AND Cadno so ofc he’s problematic lol! But he’s a more sympathetic (problematic asshole) than he was and this kind of makes his character more consistent than he had been for a while? In a retconny way but it makes sense to me looking at his whole sl, his previous issues, his inconsistencies as a person! 

Will Eifion EVER make good life choices????? We will wait and see ;; 

[violetsystems]

#personal

There’s a point where you are pushing a boulder uphill where you actually think you’re pushing it over the top.  You look up.  You look down.  There’s this exact even point between joy and dread where you don’t know which way it will go.  Seeing as how it’s an exact middle point you expect it to pass.  Like this whole process goes on for a year and you emerge mentally “over it.”  You expect something to change outside of your skill at rolling the boulder.  You say to yourself that you can keep doing this all day like some juiced up eighties American action hero.  And then you look up and down again to observe your process.  It’s still limbo.  You might even become strong enough to maintain this mirage of an ascent while doing other things.  Watching a movie or a television show.  Play a game on your phone.  But the boulder is always there.  The positioning is different these days.  It feels like I keep pushing the boulder and the hill keeps stretching.  Like there’s a bulldozer dumping other people’s shit onto the incline.  Which makes it seem I’m climbing up a relentless garbage pile of other people’s baggage, perceptions, and detritus.  This is essentially true particularly in the city I live in.  Which mind you living in a city is much closer to the edge than where I came from.  I lived in the suburbs for half my life.  It felt like the bottom.  An Irish and Italian Catholic suburb plagued by hard drugs and abuse.  I eventually found a job in the city through my friends at the time.  And later I eventually found a place to live.  And I have lived in this city long enough to know there isn’t really something wrong with me.  The incline is easy enough but sinking in other people’s shit seems to be the norm.  Around here whether it’s Chicago or America, people like to disarm you by making your priorities seem selfish.  We’re all in this together after all.  In times of crisis, we pull together and help our own.  Which is a reminder that for about a year I’ve been isolated taking care of my own.  I spent about as much time per day trying to engage people on LinkedIn without any real success.  It is place where I feel I’m successful at showing the professional side of me.  Sort of like Tumblr is a place I feel like I’m successful showing the human and empathic side of me.  Which one feels like the boulder?  After all the years I’ve spent writing to the void here, I’ve seen a connection.  Expecting too much is what shatters hopes and dreams.  But I have spent a really long time expecting the very least and being given less.  In a twisted turn of fate, I have a lot more financially than I may have in my previous life.  To have to label it previous is a sure sign I stopped pushing that boulder a long time ago.  I was forced to.  Left with a realization that the world is bigger than this and yet I can’t seem to escape it.  I played a game of magic yesterday online.  Sometimes lately the player names are a little too telling.  I had just built a Tiamat deck so I tested it out in Standard Ranked.  The username popped up as “Escapeurf8yt.”  I quit Hearthstone for less.  The last two games I played in that Blizzard game were so sus that the player names were meant to trigger me.  That last match was against a player named “Imcomingforyou.”   Nerds aren’t the most delicate when they have their chance to wield power.  I won the Tiamat game without even having to play Tiamat.  But it left me with a similar feeling.  Why do I try to be part of things that don’t have any real modicum of respect for other people’s feelings and identity?  

That example could be chalked up as being a little too sensitive I guess.  Every time I walk around the neighborhood lately it’s like I have to tiptoe around people’s feelings.  I’ve gotten mad at my situation more times than I can count the last year.  Anybody would.  I lost all my ground.  I lost everything and yet gained something in the process.  People whispered behind my back and watched.  Looking for clues to pin the blame on my downfall on me.  And yet for all the new things I tried and did to survive, I’m still pushing the same generic boulder to most people.  I’m not even good enough to be recognized as a writer by the broad public.  I’m some sneaky individual that everyone feels it’s their duty to check up on at the expense of my civil rights and general mood.  The gaslighting is at the very center.  That nobody wants to address the elephant in the room.  They can’t really.  And maybe it’s for the best.  Because the way I see everything from the inside out is troubling.  Nothing has returned to normal.  People’s privilege has been laid bare and somehow everyone is looking for the scapegoat to deflect the blame.  I’m sick of it.  Everybody being so nosy and confrontational with nothing to offer expect a bad attitude and a jokey stare.  This is why I no longer go out for anything other than groceries.  Why I decide to have things delivered instead of having to participate in a clown show parade of well intended bullshit.  Why everybody speaks for me when no one has spoken a kind word to me at all.  Everybody expects me to reach out and fix the trust they broke with me.  And it gets sadder and sadder that people don’t understand that I’m pretty much a boarded up house at this point.  Living in a little shack enclosed by people’s expectations and barriers.  Time just keeps passing.  People do keep reading.  But here is where I feel people have the most context at how horrible I feel after all of this.  Some of it is for the best.  The community people ask for in the real world without deserving it is non existent or coerced.  I know this because I’ve been welcome down here in the bowels of the internet.  You don’t expect the community here to cross the line.  Even when it does, it is a more delicate and slow process how you let people into your life.  In the real world, it’s abrasive, clumsy and inconsiderate.  And I dance around it all just the same.  But there’s a point when it just becomes macabre.  People out there might say they know me.  But I’m the one out here alone constantly.  I have a full year to prove it.  More than that to be honest.  I just gave up on trying to figure out everything that happened before that.  I’ve lost my own history in that regard.  I will never reboot my dj career.  I will never be accepted as a writer.  I will never be good enough to be called an artist.  I remember this intense discussion I had with an ex during a break up.  We were living together at the time.  We had been together for about a decade at that point.  We lived in the eastern side of this neighborhood at the time.  It was designated by the developer as an artist’s neighborhood.  My girlfriend at the time was a photographer.  I was mostly her assistant.  I paid most of the rent.  We were at a crossroads.  She cheated on me in front of my face in front of our house.  Even after telling her to go, she wouldn’t leave.  She told me to my face that I didn’t belong there because I wasn’t an artist.  I also gave up my car in that breakup.  I’m realizing just recently the reason I never renewed my driver’s license was because I knew I would never afford a car again after I lost that one.  Which is a great thing to remember when State officials yell at you asking why you haven’t renewed it.

The world says it gives a fuck.  It doesn’t show it.  It doesn’t act.  If it did we would never be in this situation.  I know this because I was born to survive.  I have pushed many boulders up many hills.  So much so that I’m grey and over the hill.  And apparently completely fucking meaningless to most people.  Only good enough to speak through T-shirts and guerilla marketing.  There’s a level beyond that I know.  There are people that actually care but the situation is impossible at best.  I’m supposed to see this and accept this out of love, care and attention.  And for a few people I barely know, I do.  The person I care about the most probably knows this too.  But I don’t know anything.  It’s blind faith.  Which is saying a lot for spending two paragraphs saying I have faith in nothing around me.  I don’t,  That’s the curse.  Seeing it how it really is.  Knowing you’ve spent half your life pushing up a boulder for other people that wasn’t worth the slough.  I gained some muscle mass.  Some context to my backstory.  But my life is dead in the fucking water aside from having actual net income.  Kanye and Trump are cash poor.  This is just a fact.  I’m not.  And yet nothing has changed.  There’s no end in sight to where I need to be a year later.  Just the same disrespectful shit.  How I’m supposed to sacrifice my humanity for some rich people’s game with my emotions.  The world uses you, eats you up and spits you out.  If you are lucky to survive this you’d be me.  Has anyone out there really thought about how I feel after all of this?  How dark it must be to know the real truth and keep pushing that boulder just the same?  How tiring and exhausting it feels to be able to write it so delicately but still be so fucking misunderstood just the same?  Is my life just to be joked about backstage as some quirky subplot to steal ideas from?  You cannot be me after all of this.  I will remind you on my very last breath.  And every day that passes is a reminder that you’ve tried.  People have tried to say they know me.  People have tried to say they speak for me.  Understand my pain.  And yet I’m never good enough to acknowledge.  I’m invisible and supposedly this is my thing.  In that case it is.  From this day forward.  Let’s not beat around the fucking bush.  I got here on my own.  I bled, I cried, I screamed and I retreated into the inevitable.  How does anyone expect me to feel if I’m supposed to accept what I accept and know what I know.  I don’t really know.  I feel awful.  I feel broken.  And I feel like everyone who cares about me knows this by now.  And the stakes are higher than my personal feelings about it all.  But my words are meant for people who read them to understand me better for the love of it.  Not to get a jump on me.  Not to subvert me.  Not to teach me a lesson or use me as a stereotype.  Not to be a punching bag or scapegoat for communities who would rather burn me at the stake than hear what I have to say.  In that you will forever fail.  I love the culture that swirls down here.  I love how hardcore it is without pinging the radar for the vultures and the marketing teams.  And yet we have this power that still goes ignored.  Gets laughed at.  Joked about.  Talked over because people are vapid, bored and only succeed by watching other’s fail.  I dropped that boulder a long time ago.  It apparently has not smashed the opposition yet.  It is a long way down as it’s been a long way up.  Tough at the top for sure.  But there’s only room enough up here for two.  And that seat is taken.  <3 Tim

[preciouspixie]

Because I've been wanting to share this for a while, meet my A Series of Unfortunate Events OC, Marianne! I've had her for a long time, since I reread the books about a year ago and I've touched her up after watching the Netflix series and rediscovering my love for ASOUE~ (*Note: Her information is mostly based off the NETFLIX version, since I believe it to be a reboot and not an adaption.*) (***This contains the more basic facts about her, other posts later will reveal her backstory as well as quirks, likes, and dislikes!***) (This contains many spoilers for both the books and Netflix series!!! Please read them yourself before you even think about reading this or else you'll spoil the fun!!)   (info under cut)

- Name - Marianne L. (Last Name Unknown) - Age - Suspected to be somewhere in her late twenties to early thirties - Gender - Female - Occupation - (Formerly) Gypsy/Fortune Teller (Formerly) A member of Count Olaf's troupe (Currently) Unknown; Suspected to be a gardner - Volunteer? - Since she joined that caravan when she was fifteen. - Fire-fighting or Arsonist? -

(Formerly) Fire-fighting

(Formerly) Arsonist

(Currently) Chef Salad - Residence - (Formerly) A caravan; later a traveling cart (Formerly) Often wherever Count Olaf and his troupe were (Currently) Whereabouts unknown - Family - Mother - Marigold K. (Last Name Unknown) [Former Last Name: Sparrow] - Deceased due to fire Father - Alexander J. (Last Name Unknown) - Deceased due to fire Brother (Younger by a year) - Andrew M. (Last Name Unknown) - Status is Unknown - Olaf's Troupe + Olaf -

Hook-Handed Man/Fernald 

Marianne recognized Fernald the moment he stepped into her traveling cart with Count Olaf. He may have hand hooks instead of hands, and a few more scars, but there was no denying he was the st Fepson of Captain Widdershins himself. She didn't know if he recognized her. She was wary of him, she had no idea how much he had changed since he had went to the other side of the schism. After Olaf forced her to join his troupe, this forced her to spend time with him. Her nerves were eased as he was actually nicer than she had imagined, along with being rather silly. He taught her Fernald's Folly, along with several other card games he had memorized, so they could pass the time between kidnappings and such.

She spent a great deal of time with him over the duration of her time as a troupe member, all the way to the octopus submarine, until they became the last two surving original members of the Count's troupe. It is unknown whether over this time period the two developed feelings for one another, though it's very easy to say that they most likely did. Pale-Faced Women/Angelica and Elizabeth 

Being the only other female in the troupe, Marianne quickly became friends with the two. She adored their makeup and, with certain disguises, often asked them to help her dress. They talked regularly, and she could tell the difference between the two well very soon. She opened up to them first, around the time of The Carnivous Carnival, about her.. concerns about VFD along with Olaf. This was the first time she actually tried to get a member of the troupe to leave and, after Orlando's death in the hospital, she didn't want anyone else meeting the same fate, considering she cared a great deal about all of them. In the Slippery Slope, she grew proud of them when they were kind to Sunny, even if it was just little sentences. She was quick to tell them how happy she was. When they finally left, and while watching them go away into the mysteries of fate, she found that she was crying of happiness. The sisters were out. She wished them the best of luck. The Bald Man/Ivan

He was the one Marianne was the most worried about. He didn't talk much and certainly didn't seem nice. But, after some great perseuding by Fernald and the sisters, she did begin to talk to him. He spoke kindly to her, much to her surprise, and she soon found herself considering him as a great friend. He listened to her as she raved of her past, of her caravan, and of everything she missed and, in turn, she listened as he spoke of things he liked. Oddly enough, he seemed to love flowers of all sorts, he had even wished to be a florist before joining Olaf's troupe. He became almost like her bodyguard. Often times, he would actually pick her up and place her somewhere else in the room, considering she was very light, just so she'd be away from the danger. After the Carnivous Carnival, Marianne almost had a breakdown on the spot. Two friends, new and old, dead so fast? It took Esme threatening to hit her into the lion pit herself for her to finally get up from the ground and start helping. The Person of Indetermined Gender/Orlando 

Orlando was probably the one that Marianne was scared of the least. After speaking with them, she grew to enjoy their spacy personality and blunt, yet truthful, statements. They became such good friends that they could communicate silently if needed, as all good friends can. She often gave them the food she didn't it and helped them decide what clothes to wear. During the Wide Window, whilst she was disguised as a mime, they were the only ones that could fully understand her wild, flailing gestures that screamed, "Josephine's house fell off the freaking cliff!!!" After their death in the Hostile Hospital, she silently cried on the car ride, trying to hide it from Olaf and Esme so they wouldn't yell at her. She secretly hoped that maybe, just possibly, that they were alive. Fiona Widdershins 

Marianne smiled when she saw Fernald's younger sister and immediately stepped forwards and hugged her as a greeting. She considered her as a younger sister almost upon first meeting, just because of all Fernald had told her of his sister. Hugo, Collete, and Kevin

After thinking about it for a while, Marianne just decided not to interact with them. It wasn't that they didn't seem like nice people, it was just that they obviously would give any secrets she had to Olaf if it meant being considered a good henchperson. *(Warning: The next two paragraphs contains mentions of violence and slight abuse, please do not read if such things are sensitive subjects to you!!)* Esme Gigi Genevieve Squalor, the City's Sixth Most Important Financial Advisor

Marianne can say without guilt that she hates Esme with all her heart and soul. Esme clearly felt the same way about her. Every single day when she could, she would insult her for just about anything, from a hair being out of place to her shirts being different shades of red. Marianne was unsure whether this was because of jealously or just because she wanted someone to torture. It got to the point where Esme would force her to wear hideous, 'out' clothing, cut out parts of her hair, and tell her not to bathe just to get some laughs. The Grim Grotto was where it became its very worse, considering darling little Carmelita Spats wanted in on it as well.

Count Olaf

Marianne doesn't hate Olaf. She fears him. From the very beginning, he wouldn't let her out of his sight, wouldn't leave her by herself. When drunk, and when sober, he would constantly threaten to slap her, or even hit her with a wine bottle, if she even slightly heistated to do as he said. It was easy to see such abuse on her, the Baudelaires and the troupe would see her often with a black eye, or see several bruises on her arms, even a cut across her cheek. She became a robot around him, always doing as he asked with an emotionless face, always mumbling 'Yes, sir' as she did so. It was hard to do, but at least after The Austere Academy he stopped. The Baudelaires/Quagmires

Marianne loved the Baudelaires from the moment she saw them. She wanted to hug them and tell them everything was okay, wished to reach out to them and tell them of the secret organization their parents were too late to tell them of. But she couldn't. She knew she couldn't, not with Olaf breathing down her neck. So, instead, she limited herself to small, subtle gestures. Kind smiles and affectionate, motherly touches on the shoulders. Gentle and nice words. Stories of her past, of her caravan when she could. Kisses on the top of their heads when the boss' back was turned. In The Grim Grotto, she broke down in tears as she hugged them all (which was difficult, considering Sunny was in a diver's helmet) and apologized for her many mistakes of not helping them, telling them how proud she was and how proud their parents would be, telling them that she loved them very much and hoped they would be safe. Marianne was aware of the Quagmire Fire and of the Fortune they had. However, she had never seen Isadora and Duncan until they were trapped in Olaf's secret tower room. When it was her turn to watch them, she told them stories, recited all the poems she could remember, and comforted them the best she could. Beyond that, Olaf didn't allow her to speak to them much. She wasn't even aware Quigley was alive until she met him as well (during The Penultimate Peril) thought their time spent together was much shorter. - Disguises - (She can't talk for most disguises because Olaf doesn't want her to say any secrets to anyone.) The Reptile Room - Nurse Mary; Was originally supposed to be Lucafont, but she fell asleep and Orlando had to step in instead, though she was later a 'mute nurse-in-training.' The Wide Window - Annie the Mime; She just wanted to be a mime, that's literally it. Plus she made a bet that she could go the whole job without talking once. The Miserable Mill - May; Fore(wo)man-in-training, has a 'hoarse throat' and can't speak. The Ersatz Elevator - Ann; A cleaning lady who currently does nothing because cleaning ladies are 'out.' One of the few disguises where she's allowed to speak. The Hostile Hospital - Nurse Mary once again; For rather obvious reasons.

[missjugheadjones]

I Don’t Celebrate Birthdays

Word Count: 2872

    A\N: here's a requested fic, and I did it in first person because someone suggested that I write a fic in it. I hope you all enjoy! Much love!

MasterList

    "Did you really think you could keep secrets from me, Y/N?" Veronica asked, startling me as I was getting my history text book from my locker.

    "I don't know what you mean." I called over my shoulder, digging through my backpack for a pencil, I was always losing those damn things.

    "Don't play stupid with me, Jughead told me already." she said, my heart skipping a beat at the mention of Jugheads name. Other than that, I was a little tired of her guessing game and I rolled my eyes, thankfully she didn't see.

    "I still don't know what you're talking about, Ronnie, you're going to have to be a little more specific." I said, closing my locker and turning around to face her.

    "You're birthday is this Saturday! (y/b/d) is your birthday right?" she excitedly asked, and I gulped, reluctantly nodding my head.

    "Yes, but please don't say anything to anyone else, especially not Cheryl, I really don't want anything big and special for my birthday. I'd rather pretend it wasn't happening." I said, walking down the hallway with Veronica by my side, looking curiously at me.

    "Why don't you want to celebrate?" she asked, and I sighed, the subject made me kind of sad, but I trusted Veronica with my hardships and feelings.

    "I've never really celebrated my birthday. Back home, my parents didn't care much about them, it was such an unimportant event in my household that when I was little, I barely could even remember when my birthday was. It wasn't until school when I really started to remember, only because my teachers would wish me a happy day." I admit, my heart sinking a little. Veronica looked at me apologetically, putting a hand on my shoulder.

    "I'm so sorry, wait so you've never had a birthday party?" She asked, and I chuckled sadly.

    "Nope, to me, my birthday is just another day. Nothing too special about it, or about me." I said, finally reaching my history class. Veronica gave me a hug, and I gladly accepted, she was my best friend of course. "Enjoy your off period." I said, and she smiled.

    "Have fun in history." she said, backing up slowly, and I could see a hint of mischief on her face, and I could tell the cogs in her head were turning. She was up to something, but instead of questioning her further, I went inside the classroom, taking my seat, I'd ask her later.

•••

    "I want to throw Y/N a surprise birthday party." Veronica announced as she walked into the student lounge where the rest of the gang were chilling. Y/N was the only one in the gang who didn't have 4th period off. Cheryl quickly stood from her seat, smiling wide.

    "I want to help!" She exclaimed and Veronica nodded her head excitedly.

    "Wait, its Y/Ns birthday?" Kevin asked, the question peaking Josie, Archie, Betty, and Reggies interest too, they weren't aware of her birthday either.

    "Yes, and I don't think she'd like that very much." Jughead said, closing his laptop and looking up at the raven-haired girl from his seat on the couch. "She doesn't have all that great of a backstory with birthdays-"

    "Yeah yeah, mommy and daddy didn't celebrate them with her, she didn't know her own birthday for the first few years of life, I heard the story." Veronica interrupted, and Jughead rolled his eyes, not too happy she had exposed Y/Ns birthday sob story for the whole lounge to hear.

    "That's awful." Archie said, sitting up on the couch.

    "Yeah, her parents sound like dicks." Reggie added, and everyone nodded their heads.

    "Very much so, which is why I want her to celebrate her birthday with people who actually care. Throw her a party that will make her like her birthday again, Y/N deserves to be celebrated!" she said.

    "Birthdays aren't just about getting older, they're celebrating you being put on this earth, it's like celebrating her existence, and showing her we all love her by doing just that will totes make her happy!" Cheryl said, quickly pulling out her phone.

    "Anyone who's willing to help plan it will definitely be appreciated, i want to make this the best day of her life." Veronica said, smiling to the kids around her who were nodding.

    "Count me in." Betty said, and Archie grabbed her hand.

    "Me as well." he added.

    "What the hell, I love to plan a good party, and Y/N is one of my closest friends so..." Kevin said, shrugging his shoulders and smiling.

    "I want to help, and the Pussycats and I would totally love to play for her!" Josie replied excitedly.

    "I'll get my teammates to bring some booze, make it a real party!" Reggie said, pulling out his phone to text his friends, Veronica smiled, looking towards Jughead.

    "Juggie, are you in?" She asked, and Jughead ran his hand through his hair. Sure he wanted to do something special like this for you, but he was scared you wouldn't react nicely to it. A surprise party is a big thing, a small get together would be much better.

    "Yeah come on, maybe you'll find the perfect time to tell her how much you love her." Reggie said teasingly, and the whole crew agreed, causing Jughead to blush slightly. Little did they know they had actually hit a nerve, everyone suspected his feelings for the y/h/c girl, but it was never confirmed.

    "Yeah whatever, count me in I guess." He muttered, opening his laptop again.

    "Alright, then its settled, operation 'Surprise Birthday Bash' is underway." Veronica said, jumping excitedly.

•••

    "Why exactly do I have to dress nicely if we're just going to Pops?" I asked Polly who had come over to my house, out of the blue may I add, and asked if I wanted to join her at the diner.

    "I-I don't want to be the only one in a dress." Polly said, trying her best to make an excuse. "I'm already going to stand out as a pregnant young lady, it would be greatly appreciated if I wasn't the only one in a dress"

    "Because people are definitely going to care." I said, rummaging through my closet for a dress. I pulled out a black dress that fell to mid thigh, and had a cut-out on the chest with fairly short sleeves. It was casual but with a hint of elegance to it, it was my favourite.

    "Yes, definitely that one!" Polly said excitedly, turning around so I could change into it. I pulled it over my body, smoothing the garment out against myself and Polly smiled brightly at me. "Beautiful as always! You ready?"

    "Yup, let go!" I said excitedly because damn I was hungry. I got into the car with Polly, and she climbed into the front seat, turning on the music and driving off. After a few minutes of driving, she suddenly pulled over to the side of the road, rummaging through her purse.

    "Oh damn it." she muttered under her breathe, and I just watched, very confused as to what was going on. "I forgot my phone at home, we'll have to go get it. My parents are out of town and they call every few hours to make sure everything is alright." she said, starting the car again and racing down the street.

    "Oh okay, do you want me to run inside and get it for you? I can't imagine how hard it must be to climb in and out of cars with a stomach that size." I offered, and Polly laughed, one hand going down to her very pregnant belly.

    "You're a sweetheart, I'm so glad you moved here and became friends with my sister and I!" she said, and I smiled, Polly was so kind, I swear I loved her just as much as her sister. My heart fluttered at the thought of love, the next person coming to mind was Jughead. I loved him of course, but in a different way as everyone else.

    "My phone is on the kitchen counter,  but I don't know if the door is unlocked... hmm. How about I just come in with you, I could use a glass of water before we get on the road again." Polly said, getting out of the car and I followed, walking with her to the front of the house. I got to the door first though, and I tried it, seeing it was unlocked I swung it open and tried to look through the darkness. Polly was right behind me, and together we looked for the light switch. Before I could find it though, they turned on, and I saw a ton of people jump out from behind furniture.

    "Surprise!" the crowd yelled, scaring me half to death, to which everyone thought was funny because they started laughing.

    "I-I-I don't know what to say... is this all for me?" I stuttered, taken aback by all the people who actually cared enough to celebrate my birthday with me.

    "Of course silly, who else would it be for?" Cheryl said, walking from the crowd, giving me a hug.

    "I don't know." I half laughed, looking around at everyone.

    "Well, are we just going to stand here or are we going to get our party on?" Veronica asked, and everyone cheered.

    "What do you want to drink, birthday girl?" Reggie asked, dragging me along to the kitchen and I shrugged.

    "Hmm, how about a Rum and Dr. Pepper?" I suggested, and Reggie looked at me surprised. "What, you did bring alcohol right, I mean why else would you be here?" I teasingly asked, and Reggie rolled his eyes.

    "I'm here because it's your birthday and you're one of my favourite people, and of course I brought alcohol. I was just surprised that's what you wanted to start with, I've never taken you as much of a drinker." He said, and I nodded, slightly agreeing.

    "Me either." Jughead said behind me, making my heart stop and I must have blushed because Reggie looked at me knowingly.

    "Make that two rums and Dr. Peppers, please?" I asked, and Reggie nodded.

    "You got it, birthday girl." I smiled at him and turned around to face Jughead, admiring his wild beanie-less raven-hair and his bright smile.

    "Happy birthday, Y/N." he said sweetly. "I hope you're enjoying yourself."

    "Thank you Juggie, and yeah, I'm having fun so far, although it's a little big, a small get together would have been nicer, half these people don't know who I am." I said, and Jughead nodded. Reggie handed us our drinks, breaking my gaze from the boy in front of me.

    "Then you should change that, make them know who you are." he said, winking and backing away.

    "Alrighty Reggie, I'll try that." I said, Jughead and I chuckling to ourselves.

    "You know, I told them that a small get together would be better, but no one ever listens to me." he said, and I laughed and pretended to be offended.

    "Hey, I listen to you all the time, what do you mean?" I defensively said, and he nodded his head, taking a sip of his drink.

    "Oof, that's strong." he said, shaking his head slightly, and I laughed. "Well anyways Y/N, speaking of listening, do you mind hearing me out on something real quick?" he asked somewhat nervously, and I nod my head.

    "Of course Beanie, what's up?" He smiled slightly at the use of my nickname towards him, and it made my heart beat a little faster. I took a drink of my Rum and Dr. Pepper, also shuddering slightly at how strong it was.

    "Listen, it's totally okay if you don't feel the same," he started, and my eyes widen a bit, I mean this couldn't be happening could it? I'm imagining this, I'm day dreaming. "But I've been feeling some kind of way ever since you've moved here a year ago, and I haven't been able to shake it... I guess what I'm trying to say is I think I'm in love with you." he said, and my smile grew larger.

    "Oh, Juggie I love you too." I said, and his face lit up.

    "Wait, you do?" he asked unsurely, and I nodded, putting my drink on the counter next to me.

    "Of course, how could I not? You've been here for me since day one of me being in Riverdale, you've stuck by my side and made me laugh, and you always know how to cheer me up when I'm sad. It seems it was destiny for me to fall for my sardonic, beanie wearing, sarcastic, handsome best friend." I said, and Jughead leaned down, smiling at me. He got close to my face, closing his eyes to which I did the same.

    "It seems it was destiny for me to fall for the new, sassy, sarcastic, sometimes very bitchy, beautiful girl who would also happen to be my best friend." he whispered before pressing his lips to mine. We that there for what felt like forever, not that I was complaining, and I swore everything in my life was leading up to this very moment, I felt as if I found my missing puzzle piece.

    "Betty, Archie, Veronica, you all owe me $20!" Cheryl yelled, causing both me and Jug to jump and see her looking happily at us. "Finally, you two are together! I was honestly about to rig a game of spin the bottle orseven minutes in heaven to get you two to admit your feelings and makeout or something, but it doesn't seem to look like I need to anymore!" I blushed and Cheryl walked over to us. "I wish you two years of happiness," she started, and then faced only Jughead. "And just so you know, if you hurt her, don't expect to get her back after you two break up, if it doesn't work out, I want my turn with the beautiful Y/N." she said, turning to me and winking. She exited the room, and I heard as Betty, Archie and Veronica excitedly talked over what Cheryl just witnessed, and then we heard Reggie join in.

    "Well, that was unexpected." I said, and Juggie laughed, agreeing with me.

    "Yes it was, but don't worry, I don't plan on giving you up any time soon." he said, and I blushed, leaning in to peck him on the lips.

    "Best birthday present ever, finding out the love of my life actually loves me back." I mumble, and Jughead cleared his throat.

    "Actually, I got you something else for your birthday. You know, other than my love." He joked, and I looked at him adoringly.

    "You didn't have to do that, Jug!" I said, but he waved it off and took a small box out of his back pocket, handing it to me. I looked at him and then the box, opening it up slowly. Inside was a charm bracelet with a crown, cheeseburger, snake, book, and a heart with his initials on one side and mine on the other. He took a boyish chain necklace out of his shirt, and I saw the same heart charm that was on my bracelet also adored his necklace, and I smiled, coming close to tears.

    "I wasn't going to get us friendship bracelets, because honestly Reggie just stopped teasing me recently, and I don't feel like having him come back to it, but I thought you'd appreciate a bracelet." he said somewhat shyly, and I giggled, taking it out of the box and putting it on.

    "It's beautiful Jughead, thank you." I said, and he nodded his head, wrapping his arm around me waist.

    "Shall we go party, birthday girl?" He asked.

    "I thought you hated parties." I said, and he rolled his eyes playfully.

    "Pshh, I'll make an exception if it means I get to dance with the prettiest girl here." He said, pulling me to the living room, but not before I grabbed my drink. This definitely was the best birthday ever, my best friends were here, they weren't playing shitty music, and I finally had the one I loved so much to myself. As we walked into the living room, everyone went silent, and Betty, Polly, Veronica and Cheryl all stood holding a large cake with 16 candles on it, and Josie, Melody, and Valarie started playing 'Happy Birthday.' I smiled big, and everyone in the room started singing to me.

Happy Birthday To You!

Happy Birthday To You!

Happy Birthday Dear Y/N!

Happy Birthday To You!

    Everyone in the room started to cheer, and all the sudden, started by Archie, Reggie, and the football team, everyone started chanting 'make a wish! Make a wish!' I looked around the room, and my heart was overcome with love.

    "I don't have any, everything I've ever wanted is right here in this room." I said, and the room erupted in 'awes' and claps. I blew out the candles, and everyone cheered. Who needed my blood family, I have my real family right here.

Tag list: @do-not-call-me-sunshine @gelattoes @xbobaaa @katshrev @farmfreshcoldsprouts @sgarrett49 @always-chocolate @nadya0128 @vegaslodgeprimary @rainbows-and-glitter-bitch@lost-in-wonderland-x @aezthetically @mrs-jughead-jones  @nafa1604  @moonlight53  @mydelightfulcollectiontyphoon @bookloveaffair @twolittlehunters @reallyshortartist

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

pls expand on your ridiculous experiences during one semester at a fake college

okay I got a few asks about this so let me see what I can remember right now. These might not all be in chronological order

- At orientation, they were talking about the reservation near campus and all these pretty sites and this kid in the back of the auditorium goes “So uhh…heard this place might be built over a Native American burial ground?”

- The speaker: “…Let’s not think about that, okay?”

- The freshman were on campus alone for like a week and a half (other than the RA’s) before the other students and I just. The parties. Were out of control. An ambulance was called basically every night.

- I walked into the bathroom the first night there to find a girl literally dying because someone slipped something in her drink and she was having a Very Bad Reaction

- Sting- you know, the singer- ‘s son lived in my residence hall. This boy almost accidentally killed me on three separate occasions (while I was just trying to do my laundry)

- I told my family about this at Thanksgiving. Everyone in the room advised me to seduce him

- I ate breakfast in the dining hall exactly once. I got scrambled eggs. I noticed no one had brought out ketchup with the condiments and politely asked about it. I received glares from at least ten different people. Apparently people there don’t believe in ketchup on eggs.

- There were these two boys in my English class known as “The Lumbard Guys”. They didn’t live in my residence hall, but they would come over almost every night, start a party, and destroy part of the basement.

- At orientation this one kid got mad and set his shoe on fire to prove a point

- Also at orientation like??? My roommate disappeared???? And I never saw her again???

- Listen like…this campus just looked like the perfect setting for a horror film, but none of the people from the area got that. They all thought I was crazy until some comic from Comedy Central did a stand up act and said “Why the hell is this campus so creepy? I feel like I’m gonna leave here with someone else wearing my face!”. I felt way too validated.

- ALL OF MY CLASSES WERE SO FAKE

- My “math” class was actually a disguised home ec. course???? All we had were word problems that were incredibly detailed recipes or instructions on how to fix things. The teacher, who I swear to GOD was actually my Mr-Rogers-Wannabe guidance counselor from high school in disguise, spent more time trying to come up with names and backstories for the models in the text book than actually trying to teach

- I had to take a class called “first year seminar” because neither of my parents went to college. It was supposed to be teaching you about how the school works and stuff but SUPRISE BITCH WE’RE JUST GONNA YELL ABOUT RACISM AND PRIVELGE FOR AN HOUR.

- Literally that’s all we did. Just the whole class bonding over all these struggles we had gone through and getting fired up. Like, it was great, but I also ended up knowing very little about campus and school stuff bc that was the class that was supposed to be teaching me lmao

- My Psych teacher was fucking hysterical for the first few classes but then he just. Vanished. I had to drop the class

- My Fine Arts teacher just. Couldn’t stick to a teaching plan. Her entire wardrobe was scarves. She was very passionate about African masks. She had a flapper haircut. She spoke quietly, but with a marvelously forced tone of voice that I’m certain was her trying to sound impressive and hide a Boston accent. She didn’t seem to understand the year was 2014. She took us into the city to go to the Art Museum and we lost her in there, never to be seen again

- I’m not even kidding

- My “writing” teacher was my absolute fav omfg. She was this long grey haired hippie lady who worked as a nurse for the Grateful Dead and was still stuck there. She may or may not have hooked up with my uncle. I was her favorite student because one day I came in wearing a “HAIR” shirt. She wanted to take the class to England for the sole purpose of going on a Beatles tour

- But like…she did not teach a writing class omfg. She taught a social justice class. All we did was have informed debates about The Issues and listen to music and occasionally watch the Breakfast Club. Every time there was a big paper due on the syllabus, she’d just sit on her desk and go “I mean, I don’t have to cover anything, right? You guys know how to write!” Like I genuinely don’t think she knew what class she was teaching

- There was a boy who sat next to me in that class. He was deaf in one ear and used that as an excuse when he got caught blatantly not paying attention. It worked every time. But I was right next to him. I saw him playing Yu-Gi-Oh on some website on his phone under the table. One time we started talking about model cars and he pre-cummed.

- There was a boy who roamed the campus in a long black trench coat and a weird hat. I never saw his body and started to suspect he might not have one, just the theory of one. He took interest in me because I was the only person in class who ever got his Doctor Who jokes. He’d come up to me at dinner and blast quiz me on various nerd culture before running off and disappearing into the shadows. Just as I was starting to grudgingly accept I was probably going to have to eventually hook up with him for the greater good, I apparently offended him by saying I like Picard more than Kirk. He didn’t stick around to listen to my reasoning. Whenever I saw him after that he would loudly start talking about how great his girlfriend was. Everyone knew he was lying. I wonder if Kirk ever sucked his theoretical dick as well as I would have.

- I gave a football player a shout out on Yik Yak. He really appreciated it, and gave me some fries laced with weed as a thanks. That was such A Night ™ , I watched the Lorax and left the dimension.

- Every time we had dances, this creepy guy named Horace would find me and use my obvious discomfort to make me dance with him. He’d hold my wrists and shove his crotch on mine while vaguely swaying to the beat. I had to escape to the bathroom every few minutes. Finally the security just banned him from the events altogether. I can still see his face clearly in my mind.

- One night, I walked into the bathroom to find a perfect, untouched pizza laying on the floor…but not in a box. Someone literally just took it out of the box and laid it down. I’m still fuming.

- One time I was in the mostly empty library when I smelled something. I walked down the rows of shelves before rounding the corner, and found the President of the college hidden there, sitting on the floor, smoking, a bottle of vodka in his hands. We held eye contact for a solid minute. He slowly shook his head at me. I said “Sir, your house is like…literally across the street.” He shook his head more vigorously. I left the library.

- One night, I heard screaming. I looked out the window to find a girl in a giraffe costume scaling my building. People were throwing water bottles at her. I was concerned. I didn’t know who to talk to for answers.

- I was in line trying to pay for dinner. One of the lunch ladies climbed on top of the ice cream machine and refused to come down. Her friend came over and they started recreating the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Very few people acknowledged it.

- Someone jacked up the soda dispenser so it was only dispensing beer. None of the staff cared enough to fix it.

- I caught my RA in the middle of a drug deal so she gave me a coupon for free ice cream

- Also side note: The soft served ice cream machine on campus was actually a frozen yogurt machine. I had no problem with that, but like, advertise correctly, you know? Nobody else seemed to understand my confusion. Nobody else seemed to understand that froyo and ice cream are two different things. What the hell.

- There were just…so many moths all over the campus. A terrifying amount. When it started getting colder I was like, finally, I won’t be attacked by moths anymore! Only for even more moths to appear. I asked a local about it. “Oh, those are the winter moths!” What the fuck are winter moths? What the fuck, Massachusetts? My friend back home grew convinced that Mothman was in the area. I was inclined to believe her. Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can see are moths everywhere, waiting for the moment to strike.

-  I’ve encountered deer many times in my life. I know how they act around people. But the deer on this campus were just weird. They’d run out at people all the time. One almost shoved me into traffic.

- My roommate gave my phone number out to literally anyone she found who mentioned they liked to read or liked Doctor Who. She was concerned I had no friends. No one ever called.

- I met a small Greek girl in my Fine Arts class. Our first day of talking, she made me climb a mountain with her so she could get to tutoring, even though I had no reason to be in that building. Her roommates kept mysteriously disappearing. She was late to everything. She’d call me randomly to get food at 1 in the morning. She kept somehow breaking phones and tvs and other electronics. When I asked her how they kept breaking, she waved it off with “Oh, I have OCD. You wouldn’t understand”. I have OCD, and I still don’t understand. One time she invited me out with her friends from high school. I waited outside her building for two hours, while the other friends waited in the parking lot for two hours, because we didn’t know how to find each other. She eventually came outside at 10:30 pm. We went to Friendly’s. She made us stop at her house so she could grab something. We pulled up a long, winding driveway and stopped in a parking lot. At the end of the parking lot were stone stairs that lead up to a mansion on a hill. She ran inside and the rest of us stayed in the car, listening to High School Musical and talking about Supernatural. When she came out 40 minutes later we decided to try and prank her. It went wrong. We almost ran over her friend’s sister with the car. They invited me to a pumpkin patch. When I started complaining about my roommate, she asked me to move in with her. I thought about the other three girls who had seemingly gone missing. I politely declined. Six months after I left the school, I received a text from her asking for notes for an exam, and radio silence after that. I can’t find her on facebook. I fear she might have gone missing too.

- One night, as I was standing outside huddled in the cold, a boy came up and offered me a cigarette to help me stay warm. I turned it down, but he stood around talking to me for a few minutes afterwards. I felt absolutely no awkwardness at all. He was a musician from Colorado. He sang a bit of one of his songs. He was dropping out of school to go to California the next week. He told me I had beautiful eyes, but his were the most alive eyes I’ve ever seen so I couldn’t believe the compliment. We talked for about ten minutes and I fell a little bit in love. He had to rush off to a club meeting, but he told me he’d rather keep talking. He gave me the sweetest smile before he left. I didn’t get his last name or number and I never saw him again.

- There was a dance on Halloween. I couldn’t think of a sufficiently slutty yet classy costume, so I just went as Osgood from Doctor Who. When I got there there was a huge crowd, but people quickly grew bored and started leaving. There ended up being six people left (myself included). We stayed because we could see the upset faces of everyone who had planned the event, but actually had one of the most fun nights of my life. We- myself, the girl from across the hall, Trench Coat Boy, his tiny friend who never spoke, and a boy and girl I didn’t know who seemed to be professional dancers- danced nonstop for almost three hours. The strobe lights and poppy music solidified an unspoken bond. I had never and to this day haven’t felt as free as I did that night. The tiny quiet boy’s smile could have lit up a city. It’s etched into my mind. We all left the dance talking about the surreal feeling in the air, as if something had shifted. None of us ever mentioned the dance again. It’s still one of my fondest memories.

- For a solid month, there was someone in a gorilla costume running around campus.

- There was a rash of sexual assaults on campus. A gang of boys kept jumping girls in the woods. The only thing the school board did was give out free rape whistles at lunch one day. I missed that day, making me one of the only students on campus without a whistle. Later that night when I ordered pizza, the delivery guy tried to start up a conversation with me about all the assaults. He blamed the girls. I took back my tip.

- Sometimes the showers just…filled up with black sludge. No one knew why.

- The girls in the room next to me were very bizarre. They always shot me odd looks and whispered to each other constantly. I couldn’t figure out if they were sleeping together or not. They never washed their hands when we were in the bathroom.

- The doors to each dorm were thick and heavy and required effort to push them open. My roommate and I made sure to lock ours every night, and would triple check it. It swung open by itself almost every night. The channels on the tv would change with the remote equidistance away from us. Sometimes I heard humming in the showers when I was the only one in there.

- My roommate…deserves a whole separate post dedicated to her, honestly.

- She would call her mother and have her do her homework for her. She blasted music constantly, and it was either country or hard rap, nothing in between. She sexiled me constantly. I once walked in on anal. She’d meet guys on Tinder, fall in love with them after a couple of days, and then bring them into the school and into our room like it was no big deal. One of them made it clear he was a budding serial killer. She was in a new drama every week. One time someone called her a dilf on Yik Yak. She was firmly convinced her cousin was blonde because her aunt dyed her hair when she was pregnant. She tried her hardest to get me laid by a football player. She was the loudest drunk I’ve ever encountered. Honestly there’s just too much about her for this omfg

- John Zaffis, the famous paranormal researcher, came to the school on my birthday. I went because I’m a loser who’s been watching shows with him since I was a kid, and I was having a bad day so I decided it could be a treat. I sat in the front row. He held an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with me the entire presentation. He was impressed with my questions. He lamented about the fact he’s always cut out of movies or replaced by priests that look like him. He apparently came to the school every year around Halloween to do a ghost tour around the campus for the students. A girl allegedly killed herself in my floor’s bathroom. He apparently always got a lot of activity around the campus. Everyone in the freshman class started wondering if the rumors about the Native American burial ground were true.

- One time in “writing” class the teacher gave us a number and then whatever song came up as that when we put our music on shuffle we had to play for the class. I ended up with “Touch Me” from Spring Awakening. Midway through the song, the teacher from another class came to complain that they could hear everything. My teacher tried to defend that all music has an important message. “Molly, dear, tell her the message in this song!” I looked around the room and at the other teacher. “It’s about sex,” I said quietly. She stormed out of the room while the class started laughing.

- There was this girl that just had the natural ability to make anything boring. I feel bad saying that, because she’s such a sweet girl, and she’s smart, and she’s gorgeous, and she’s talented, but just…every time she says anything, it’s boring. I’m still friends with her on facebook, the talent transcends to writing as well. You could be having a fun, lively conversation and she could say something completely relevant to the point and yet it would still just be boring. It’s a baffling talent, I still don’t understand how she does it.

- There was a boy who’d come into my room. He lusted over my s’mores poptarts. He kept trying to hit the high notes in Broadway songs. He didn’t understand my sense of humor at all, so we both were constantly worried we were offending each other. He cried about Selena Gomez a lot.

- The dining hall only offered horrendous food. I had pasta almost every night because it was the only thing remotely edible. If you wanted good food, you had to go to Late Night, which was between like 10:30 and 1 I think??? They set it up specifically for stoners and people leaving parties. I was frequently the only sober person there. Except for the moths.

- The chief at the pasta place found out I like theater and got like…weirdly passionate about it. He kept telling me about different theater groups in the area and wanted to know if I was in the school musical. He asked me every time I went up for food.

- There was a disproportionate amount of large black birds to trees. It wasn’t hard to figure out why we so rarely saw smaller animals

- When I told my advisor I was thinking about leaving (mostly for financial reasons but also the fake classes were preventing me from getting an education I wanted, you know?), this little old man looked around his office as if checking for people listening in, then put his hand on top of mine, leaned in close, and whispered “Oh, you sweet little girl. Run as fast as you can.”

There’s definitely more but listen. This school was weird and fake and vaguely surreal and off-kilter. I am fully afraid that one day, years from now, I’m going to be driving through the back roads and pass the place where the campus should be, only I won’t find anything there at all, and won’t be able to find any trace of it ever existing. I won’t be able to find any record of it. I won’t be able to find a record of any of the people. Every time I think about this place I just get a weird feeling, like I somehow managed to escape the Twilight Zone but left a part of me behind in the process. Be careful when applying to college, kids.

[nickireadstfc]

The Foxhole Court, Chapter 14 – Ohana Means Family (And Family Means No One Gets Left Behind Or Murd– Oh).

In which we are treated to part 2 of Fun Suspicious Club Times, Andreil has Important Moments™, Nicky has thoughts on family, and I have all the feels. Guest starring: Murder!

Sounds good? Then it’s time for Nicki to read – and finish – The Foxhole Court.

This is it, you guys. We’ve reached the last chapter of The Foxhole Court – or, as I like to call it by now, The Exposition Court. Lots of things have been shown, explained and introduced, and while that has been very fun and all, not much has actually happened. Now, however, exposition is done, and with this chapter I can practically smell the plot lingering just around the corner.

Let’s finish this, shall we?

We’re kicking things off with yet another #iconic Andreil bit:

           “Oh, he made it,” Andrew said. “That’s interesting.”

           He pressed two fingers to Neil’s throat, checking his pulse. When Neil tried to bat him away, Andrew caught his wrist with his free hand. His smile was small and fierce as he leaned forward into Neil’s space.

           “Remember this feeling. This is the moment you stop being the rabbit.”

GOOD SHIT.

If I had a euro for every time I saw this quote on a pastel/b&w grunge edit I’d have enough money to buy those two a honeymoon vacation.

Honorary mention, because I feel like this is a detail that usually gets left out of those edits:

           Neil was too startled to answer (…).

I love me some Neil ‘Andrew Is Not Being Horrible To Me, What Is This Feeling, Send Help’ Josten.

           Movement two doors down gave Neil a reason to look away from Andrew again. Five strangers were knocking on his suite door. She stepped out to greet them, slapping back and high-fiving as he moved into their ranks. Allison wasn’t far behind them. She pressed against Seth’s back and slid her hands down his sides to his pants. Neil watched as she systematically dug through all of his pockets.

She’s searching him for drugs, that much I got when reading it first. I didn’t think much of it then.

Oh boy. I’ll regret not thinking about this detail in 9 pages’ time.

           “Renee should be back with drinks any second. She said she’ll get something non-alcoholic for the two of you.”

           “Oh, what a waste,” Andrew said. “I’m buying Neil’s drinks tonight.”

           It took them a couple second to catch on. When they did, Dan lurched out of the doorway with a hard, “You’re joking.”

Oh, yeah, by the way, did I forget to mention that? They’re fucking going back to Columbia for yet another night of Suspicious And Problematic Debauchery.

WHY. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING. DID YOU NOT LEARN FROM LAST TIME.

Thankfully, Dan and Matt share my concerns:

           “He is not going out with you again. He’ll probably wind up dead this time.”

           “Jesus, Dan,” Nicky said. “When you say things like that it makes me think you don’t trust us.”

           “No one trusts you,” Matt said.

Oh shit, Tall Billie Joe, where did you get your sass from?? I like.

In response to that, Andrew speaks German to Neil, which a) Neil is Totally Not On Board With, and b) triggers yet another Andreil Moment™ because this chapter is just dishing those out left and right.

           Andrew was daring him to cross a line, to give up a little more of the lie that was Neil Josten. It went against everything Neil knew to give in, but he’d chose his path. He’d chosen Andrew. He buried his fear as deep as he could and answered in German.

Lasst mich hier zum Sterben, bitte.

We don’t have much time to ponder on the feels, though, as everyone’s favourite comic relief swoops in again, providing us with one of my favourite exchanges of this chapter:

           “Oh shit,” Nicky said, switching languages in a heartbeat. “Since when do you speak German? Andrew, you knew about this? Why didn’t you tell us?”

           “Boring,” Andrew said. “Figure things out for yourself once in a while.”

Bhahahaha. Andrew has zero time for anyone’s shit and I am loving it.

           Nicky waggled a hand at Aaron. “Quick. Have we said anything totally incriminating these past few months?”

           “Aside from your endless inappropriate comments about what you’d like to do to him, I don’t think so. Looks like you’ve managed to completely embarrass yourself in both languages.”

Ahahapfpfhfggdhfhdf ME. Seriously, print that last sentence on the coffin my akward bilingual ass will one day be buried in.

           Aaron looked at Neil. “When were you going to tell us?”

           “I wasn’t,” Neil said. “After everything I’ve put up with from you this year I figured I didn’t owe you any favours.”

Sassmaster Josten strikes again. <3 Also, he’s got a point.

The others are, understandably, a bit stunned at that exchange. And they didn’t even get the whole sass fest that went down. Pity.

           Matt was the first to get his tongue back, but the best he came up with was, “I thought you spoke French. That was French this morning, right? At Kathy’s?”

Precious Cinnamon Roll Discovers That Some People May Speak More Than Two Languages, Too Good For This World, Too Pure.

They leave, they drive to Columbia, bla bla bla.

As the monster squad (feat. Neil) arrives in their favourite ice cream-and-drugs joint, Neil is once again presented with his mortal enemy: New clothes.

           “This is new,” Neil said.

           “It’d be tacky to let your wear the same thing twice, wouldn’t it?” Nicky asked.

Uhm, no, it fucking wouldn’t? If an outfit’s cute I’ll wear it more than once, thank you very fucking much. And from what I’ve gathered, Neil’s outfit from last time was on point.

What kind of capitalist elitist bullshit is this, Hemmick.

           “How to say this?” Nicky thought it over for a second, then gave up on tact. “You could obviously use the money more than he could right now. Let Andrew give you things if he wants to. He’s not normally the gifting type, so it’s kind of fun.”

Just………… Andrew……… who never gives gifts………. buying his boyfriend clothes…….. t w i c e………… I’m fine :’)))))

           “I have my own money,” Neil said. “I don’t need handouts.”

           “Really?” Nicky asked, sending Neil’s clothes a meaningful look.

           Neil stared at him. He knew Andrew hadn’t told the others about his fluency in German, but he hadn’t realized Andrew kept quiet about his money, too. (…) But Andrew had found Neil’s money before their truce in Wymack’s living room. He hadn’t had a reason to protect Neil then, so why had he stayed quiet?

LISTEN……….. I’M…………. FINE…………. :’))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

I thought we were going to be done here. Clothes handed out, banter shared, fun times, now let Neil change and get on with your dumb drug night.

I was wrong.

Nicky and Neil settle down for some Real Talk that makes up for like, so many things that the monsters fucked up in the past.

            “You do know what you’re doing out with us tonight, right? Andrew squeezed some sort of explanation in to his usual crazy nonsense?”

           “Sort of,” Neil said. “He said he’d have answers for me later.”

           “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Nicky looked pained. “This means Andrew is keeping you, same as he kept Kevin. It means you’re part of the family now.”

ASGKLKGJDGNLNFGFFFHFHGG.

FAMILY.

I AM YELLING. I CANNOT STOP YELLING. HOW IS THIS HAPPENING.

This is huge, you guys. From all we’re told later, this is not a word Andrew throws around easily.

FAMILY.

Leave me here to DIE.

           Nicky made air quotes with his fingers. As soon as he spoke Neil knew whose words he was echoing, but Neil doubted Andrew sounded so tired when he first said it: “Being related doesn’t make us family.

(…) I know why Andrew feels that way, and I understand why he and Aaron can’t stand each other, but I’m not willing to give up on them yet. I want to fix this and show them they’re wrong.”

Shit, dude. That’s... unexpectedly serious and deep coming from you?

You know something’s important when even the comic relief is serious about it.

           “Family means something different with us because it has to. It’s not about blood. It’s not even about who we like. It’s about who Andrew is willing to protect.”

Give me the Minyard-Hemmick’s backstory, and give it to me now.

           Neil’s stomach twisted with another chilly what-if. “And he’s including me because of this morning?”

           “Partly,” Nicky said. “But partly because you’re the reason Kevin’s going to stay on our team. Andrew’s got Kevin’s back, but you’ve got Kevin’s attention.”

Meaning Kevin is stuck in a beautiful Andrew and Neil sandwich. <3

Also “a chilly what-if” is such a great expression, what the fuck, 10/10.

Before this Real Talk can end, Nicky has one last thing to say, which is specifically something I am very happy about:

           “Look, I know we screwed up last time. Please believe me when I say Andrew was just looking out for the rest of us. He didn’t want to take any chances. But things are different now. You’re one of us, which means we’ll never push you further than you’re willing to go. Okay?”

You go, Nicky, for realizing you fucked up and wanting to put things right between you and Neil.

But also, you go, Neil, for not immediately accepting his excuse, because shit, that crap was still not okay and you gotta apologize a bit more than that.

Plus, it would be kind of nice to have someone other than Nicky come apologize some time – lookin’ @ you, Twinyards and Big Deal Day.

Also, consent only matters with people you like, is that what you’re telling me? Deep sigh.

Ah, remember how I was “fine :’)))))” earlier?

           Neil pulled out his contacts and flicked them into the trash. When he looked up at the mirror, bright blue eyes stared back. Neil couldn’t be himself, but maybe he could be the Neil he’d given Andrew in Wymack’s living room.

:’)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) fine.

They leave Sweetie’s and they go to the club, where I experience some heavy déjà-vu, and not the funny kind – more the ‘Oh hey this is the place where you got date-drugged, date-kiss-raped and date-interrogated, haha fun times amirite’ kind.

There is one bit of interesting information that stuck out to me in the midst of Andrew and Neil’s usual ‘Hey welcome to the club, hey fucker did you know that drugs are bad’ dialogue:

            “We got into dust for Aaron’s sake. He needed something safe to get on when he was coming off everything his mother gave him.”

His mother gave him drugs?? The hell?? These could be either actual drugs – like, cocaine and shit – or we could be going down the old ‘medication you’re not taking voluntarily is bad for you’ trip and she’s given him antidepressants or something similar.

I’m not loving either option, although – if the latter thing is true – it would be interesting to find out whether Aaron has the same mental health problems as Andrew does, with them being identical twins and all.

Did you have enough Andreil Moments™ today?

           “Here’s some honesty,” Neil said. “I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you.”

           “It’s mutual,” Andrew said.

Honestly, when will they stop being the literal embodiment of the enemies to lovers trope.

Time for the indisputably most #iconic bit of this entire chapter:

           A group of people shouldered their way up to the bar counter at Neil’s back, pushing him into Andrew. Andrew didn’t budge beneath his weight. He was something solid to lean against, something violent and fierce and unmoving. Neil couldn’t remember what it felt like to have someone hold him up. It was terrifying and liberating all at once. His life was out of his control now; he was giving it to Andrew and hoping Andrew would keep it safe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH

Neil, bby, if this is your way of showing how much you don’t like and don’t trust him, you’re doing a pretty, pretty shit job of it.

Sadly, the gay comes to an end and they return to the rest, who are enjoying one of their favourite pastimes: Getting the fuck wasted.

And just as I was beginning to wonder whether that was going to be it or whether the book was going to go out with a bang, and if so what exactly that bang would entail and when it was finally gonna appear – this shit happens.

           “What do you want?” Andrew asked, and listened as Wymack explained it all over again. “Overdosed like how?”

           “Again?” Nicky said incredulously. “That stupid bastard.”

           “Never again,” Andrew said over his shoulder. “He’s dead.”

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

           “Seth.” Andrew hung up and tapped the phone against his thigh. “Someone found him face-down in the bathroom at Bacchus where he drowned in his own puke. It’s exactly how I warned him he was going to clock out, not that he ever listened to me.”

Are you SHITTING me.

I like to joke about murder and death and shit, but this is ACTUAL DEATH happening, and WITHIN THE FIRST BOOK.

WHAT THE SHIT.

           Neil looked at him, surprised at how hard Nicky and Aaron were taking it. He wondered if he was supposed to feel something besides shock, but a mental health check came back clean. He’d grown up around death. It was nothing to him now but ice in his veins and a reminder to keep moving. Seth should have been an exception, since Neil had been living with him for months, but Neil had never liked him.

Stone Cold Bitch Neil Jostens strikes again. <3

And his BF isn’t much better, either:

           “What about the line-up?” Kevin asked.

           Nicky winced. “Kevin, the man is dead. Like, permanently.”

           “It’s not a major loss,” Kevin said.

WHY IS THIS SUCH A KEVIN MOVE. A dude dies and all you can think about is the impact on Exy.

Although, having thought about it for a bit, I have to say: I’m not super sad Seth is dead, either. I view his death as an important plot element (as it triggers future events and is important to demonstrate the cruelty of the Moriyamas) and I feel sad because characters I like will feel sad, but nothing more.

I didn’t like him when he was alive, and I’m not going to start pretending to like him now. I think it’s hypocritical to pretend to mourn the death of a person you disliked just because it is socially expected of you to be sad.

This does not invalidate the pain felt by others who mourn this person, of course. But I myself will not pretend to be sad if I am not, I feel like it would dishonour their memory if I would.

(Do come talk to me about this in my ask box if you’ve got something to add or if you disagree. I think this is an interesting subject and I’d love to hear different opinions.)

           “Is that why you drink?” Neil asked. “You don’t want to feel?”

           Andrew turned to face him. Neil wasn’t expecting it and almost ran into him. Andrew dugs his fingertip into the hollow of Neil’s throat in warning. This close Neil could smell the alcohol and cigarettes on him. It made him think of his mother burning to ashes on the beach.

I’m sorry, I know it’s supposed to be all dramatic and angsty here, but I can never take the phrase “X reminded them of their mother” seriously, or any variations of it. Even when it’s fitting, it just sounds so pretentious.

           He reached out without thinking and took Andrew’s cigarette away. For some reason Andrew let him keep it.

           “I don’t feel for anyone or anything,” Andrew said. “Don’t forget that.”

           “So Kevin’s just a hobby for you?”

I would like to point out here that Andrew immediately changes subjects after that, after Neil confronted him with the possibility that he could maybe, maybe feel something more than absolute indifference to Kevin. I’m just……….. putting that out there.

           “If [Seth] didn’t have his pills on him, how did he overdose?”

           “Not by choice,” Andrew said. “My theory says Riko won this round.”

WHAT. Are you telling me this is not only actual death happening, but ACTUAL MURDER??????

           Neil stared at him. “You don’t really think Riko did this.”

           “I think the timing’s too convenient for it to be an accident,” Andrew said. “Riko broke Kevin’s hand for being better. He crossed districts because Kevin picked up a racquet and got back on the court. What do you think he’s willing to do to you for calling him useless on national TV?”

Y E L L I N G.

WHAT THE SHITS.

Oh boy. Oh boy. This is shaping up to be a great next book. Did I complain about there being little plot so far? Well, shit. HERE’S YA FECKIN PLOT.

Fancy a dash of Feelings™ before we leave this show?

           Andrew hooked his fingers in the collar of Neil’s shirt and tugged just enough for Neil to feel it. “I know what I’m doing. I knew what I was agreeing to when I took Kevin’s side. I knew what it could cost us and how far I’d have to go. Understand? You aren’t going anywhere. You’re staying here.”

:’))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) andrewiloveyoupleaseneverleavepleaseprotectus

           Neil looked down at the key in his hand. “Home,” he whispered, needing to hear it aloud. It was a foreign concept to him, an impossible dream. It was frightening and wonderful all at once, and it set his heart racing so fast he thought it’d drum out of his chest. “Welcome home, Neil.”

………………………………………………. I’m dead.

Goodbye, The Foxhole Court.

Hello, The Raven King.

((Side note: But Nicki, What’s Happening Now??

I’ll be reading the other two books as well, obviously. As if I could stop now.

I won’t continue straight this Sunday, instead I’ll be doing something else, a bit of an experiment: I’m doing a review of the whole first book, hopefully with a bit more thought and depth than what I’ve rambled so far. Think of it as both an interlude and a summary. If I like it (and you do as well), I’ll do one of those after every book.

I’ll skip the Wednesday upload to take a bit of a breather and I will continue reading The Raven King the Sunday after that, that’s the 30th of April. More sportsball! More feels! More murder! Yay!

Also, I won’t rename this blog. I know TFC is just the first book and the whole thing is called All For The Game, so it should be ‘nickireadsaftg’, but I also don’t give a shit. I’ve gotten used to this now and y’all will just have to suck it up and deal with it. I put a lil note in my bio saying what book I’m on, that should be enough.

Lastly: Thank you all for sticking with me so far. Your endless messages, comments and funny tags mean the world to me, and you all are the reason my motivation stuck around till this point. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’ll see you Sunday. Lots of love.))