#and it's also gross towards teens and kids are they not allowed to be humans? again they can't get this surgery because THEY'RE UNDER 18\

[commanderogerss]

sims team: here’s an update, you get top surgery scars, binders, and a lightswitch!

a patreon content creator’s post that’s in my emails: here’s a link to a subreddit where 99.99% of users aren’t actually detransitioners, the subreddit is deeply transphobic. i also use words like mutilation, which is a dog whistle, and how we shouldn’t give children ideas to have top surgery even though legally, they can’t!

[izzyspussy]

so doylistly mickey gets visibly cleaner each season (in the first half of the show at least) because he develops from a villain to a romantic lead and "nobody" wants a dirty boyfriend. Just one more reason among many that even straight romance is better written by gays and/or perverts; when we're scared of our attraction to the earthly human body we make our art about it scary instead of just powerwashing all the gross matter off of it (unless of course the inhuman lack of gross matter is a theme being engaged with, i.e. robot/angel fucki- listen, the point is we're not wimps out here doing a "there is no flesh in ba sing se" routine 24/7. cough. anyway...)

but watsonian...ly. there are a lot of really fucking stupid bullshit signs and standards that homophobic straighties use as an excuse to be homophobic toward someone they want to bully. many claim that little homophobia is a totally different beast to big homophobia, and the signs the former 'dars are Real vs the irrational signs the latter 'dars, but in fact the absolutely farcical ones are all the exact same idea as the little ones just exaggerated once or twice*.

for example. little homophobia posits that a man who is "too" preoccupied with his appearance must be gay. if he wears makeup or shaves his legs, of course, but also if he wears too many non-neutral, bright, or "girl" colors (that aren't his sports team's colors), if his pants are too fitted, if he has "feminine" piercings, if he has an elaborate skin care routine.

at one exaggeration, midsize homophobia, we add on if he works out for vanity, if he diets for vanity, if he styles his hair, if uses face wash instead of regular soap, if he wears cologne outside of formal settings, if his pants... fit, if he wears too many different or bright colors at all.

one more exaggeration and it's if he openly or just obviously cares about his appearance. if he does more than rinse his face at all, if he uses shampoo that isn't the cheapest 5-in-1 available, if he has a haircut other than men's number whatever, if he takes good care of his clothing, if he has a beard but it's too neatly trimmed. if he washes his asshole.

and finally we get to he's gay if he puts any thought into his appearance at all. if he wears an outfit instead of whatever random articles of clothing are practical, if he wears deodorant, if he's bothered by being dirty, if he brushes his teeth every day. lapses on these things are allowed but only to impress a sexual partner - as long as she's not "a sure thing".

so. watsonianly. mickey is almost always visibly dirty in season one- well for more than one reason. hygienic dysfunction is one of the most common symptoms of depression and anxiety especially in kids and teens, it's one of the easiest to spot signs of neglect. he's also frequently visibly beaten, and getting beaten gets you dirty in addition to getting you hurt + it hurts to get soap and water in open cuts or to have temperature or pressure changes on bruises that bad. and this doesn't really have any textual support but it doesn't have any textual contradiction as far as i remember either, but a common form of abuse (and torture) is to restrict access to hygiene.

and. in addition to all that. terry is obviously BIG homophobic. so. none of his boys, but ESPECIALLY mickey since he actually IS gay, can be "too" clean. and they are all often visibly unclean, but mickey is noticeably dirtier the dirtiest white boy in america. because he is denying himself cleanliness consciously and on purpose as part of maintaining his closet.

and then! he gets progressively cleaner because a) okay fine i guess nobody wants a consistently unwashed stinky uti risk boyfriend, we just all like it when he comes home from work or recreation with sweat and materials on him. or when he just woke up and he's sweaty and unkempt from sleep. or when he works out and his skin is glistening with sweat. or at the end of the day when his cologne and/or deodorant are wearing off and we can smell his body underneath. or when he plays with an animal or a child or his boys and he gets some on him. or whe- okay, okay, all either mild or temporary, i KNOW okay, FINE. so mickey starts washing up more because he wants to be desirable to ian and to be comfortable and enjoyable to be physically close to for progressively longer periods of time.

and b) mickey's progress with ian is not just in building more intimacy, but also for mickey... just in being comfortable. in being free. the longer he's with ian, the more mickey can let himself forgo the more painful aspects of performing straightness. the less he wishes he was straight, because now being gay has benefits that he cares about, that he wants, and in fact there are reasons that - if it was a choice, for him - he might choose to still be gay.

then in late two and in season three, he's usually clean but visibly dirty again when he gets stressed about outing and/or in scenes where he WILL become stressed about outing. (if only i could believe Those writers would ever have bothered to do something like this intentionally lol. although... i didn't pay enough attention to have an opinion on the costumers; perhaps they took it upon themselves.)

and finally in season four, he's a full blown romantic hero coming out is now inevitable for him, so in reverse of visible dirt foreshadowing/indicating going back or further in now being consistently well groomed - with a somewhat individualized haircut and everything! - foreshadows that he is on his way out/helps telegraph how poorly he fits in his closet now. he stands out from all the other milkoviches except mandy and sveta. he starts forgetting the rules ("you use another man's soap?"). he wears outfits that make him more desirable to the audience fit his body and show he has preferences - the dressed-up look he wore to go get ian, the blue and green madras button down he wore to the uptown gay house party, the blue & white striped and pastel blue & red ringer tanks both making a comeback from their respective first kiss and sleepover scenes in season 3, etc.

and then in season 5 (or at least what i could stand to watch of it) he. well. he looks exactly like his brand of Gay. after coming out, he's doing that "find out who you are and then do it on purpose" thing. clean skin and hair, clothes fit and are clean and coordinated, color palette is more consistent, vibrant, and flattering - and includes "girl" colors now!, etc.

anyway. as always idk how to end the post. but that's today's take. "dirtiest white boy in america" is an aspect of mickey's straightsona.

*i'm aware the standards of homophobia differ across class, this post addresses only the relevant iteration(s)

[problematicfactive]

hey, thank you for being an accepting and educational blog! it's nice to see no judgment here. also, i've seen some stories - a lot even, from many systems not just anons in this blog - about systemmates being repressive or even abusive towards their problematic factives, or even to factives in general. Mods Silhouette and December wrote that essay about in-system abuse that are targeted towards fact-folks - i want to add to that essay as well, so, do you (or any followers) want to contribute something to it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. thank you, and absolutely no pressure! ^_^

-mod espresso

Hi! First of all, thank you! I'm glad that hosting the blog I do can help people in any way.

I'll start by saying this: If any of my followers see this and are wanting to input their two cents, you're welcome anon ask me. If you ping fact-anonymous in your ask, they will get the notification when I have posted it! We all know this is a judgement free zone and you're more than welcome to give your input if you'd like. You are in no means forced to. As for my own story, it is something that I've spoken on here and there

I believe that the mods with you all are aware of who I am. You're welcome to use my name if you need to, but if you do, I ask that you don't tag me directly. You can also not use my name, tag me, use "Anxiety" in place of a name and allude to who I am if that's what you feel is needed. Either way, here's my story. I formed right before my boyfriend's source came out. It was causing a lot of hype around the person I'm based on and as part of the hype, people were watching other versions of the story. Mine included. Part of the reason I formed so quick is because of my actor. He was the first- and maybe only- celebrity crush of the core. He's the reason the core wanted to be an actor, the reason why a lot of the system strives even to this day to be the best actor we could be. My actor is a huge part of the reason we are who we are. In a way, I was kind of already seeded in the system from the beginning. In my source I'm not a rampant murderer. I'm no psycho killer, I don't cause harm. I dissolve roadkill... it was already dead.. In my source, I'm an awkward teenager. Some kid with bad posture who puts himself in bad situations just to get a laugh from his peers. When the core had a crush on m actor, he was this,, amazing musician, this-- almost godlike creature. Now, that very same man was just some awkward teen. Some quiet guy who somehow, was still able to represent everything the system (everything the core originally) hated about ourself

I was already seeded in our mind, ever since the beginning. I didn't chose to be someone that makes people upset at the thought of my name. For some reason or another, our mind decided the right form for me to take to do my job was this one. And it fucking sucked. Like I said, when I formed, people were already obsessing over the guy I was sourced from. It was disturbing and gross, and having an introject of this guy was the prime way to get you fakeclaimed. The host couldn't handle what he knew was going to come with having me, so it took that out on me.

I wasn't allowed to be myself, for a period of time, that honestly blanks in my mind, but I know was at least 6 months, I was degraded. I was less than human to the others in the system. I wasn't allowed my name. I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone or to front. These things the system did to try to force me to separate from my source only made me into something that needs his source even more. I will always pride now in my name because it really is something I've had to fight for. It took ages for me to even be allowed to front while being monitored. I couldn't do anything.

I've said before that I'm 17. Before that 6 month period, I described my age as "Mentally 19, trapped in a 17 year old state of being." The shit I endured made me regress. I'm stuck at 17 now. Small things like that where I'll never be the same as I was before that.

Its hard for me to say I was abused. I couple of my followers have talked to Toby and depth's a great guy. He's one of my best friends. But he abused me. I'll never be the same thanks to it. I know that wasnt the most detailed or the best. It really is hard for me to remember all that went down. All of the things that changed within me. What I know for sure is that my identity. My name and my face became two of the most important things to me. things that, due to the attempt to force me to separate, I'll never be able to let go of.

[baka-monarch]

Dirt Crawlers

Look @darkeninganon , I beat you to writing the slug thing!!!! :)

(brain just randomly started thinking of story and I just decided to write it now before I lost motivation/inspiration)

Part 2->

TRIGGER WARNINGS: BUGS, FEAR, MENTION OF DEATH, FEELING SMALL, VERY GROSS DISCRETION

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

Tommy watched Dream as he pushed the door to their hole in the ground open The younger Dirt Crawler was practically bouncing with excitement. Today was the day, finally Dream was taking him out on his first hunting trip. It was the perfect day for hunting as well, since it hadn't rained for weeks and was so bright and sunny out (as Tommy could tell from the blinding light coming through their burrow door) that there was no way it would rain; so there was no risk of them drowning in a puddle or getting dragged down to suffocate in mud. It was also the afternoon by now, judging by where the sun was, which meant almost no birds out hunting at all. Yeah, now would be the perfect time to get some food.

"You remember all the rules I told you, right?" Tommy was startled out of his thoughts by his older brother's voice.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I know I know!" The teen rolled his eyes. The rules had been drilled into him ever since he was a kid, ever since their parents were still around.

"Okay, so remember that we're only hunting aphids- no attacking ants, ladybugs, termites-"

"Mantises,"-He cut off Dream's words-"slugs- yeah yeah, I know boss man! We don't fight anything that isn't an aphid!!" Tommy climbed out of the burrow with that in mind. He already knows what happens if a Dirt Crawler tries to fight anything other than an aphid, he's been told the horror stories thousands of times. Ants will swarm you if you hurt one, ladybugs can headbutt trample and eat you, termites can take a limb off with one bite, and mantises- of Prime Tommy really does NOT want to think about fucking mantises.

"I'm just making sure-" Dream added as he climbed out to stand next to Tommy, kicking their burrow door closed behind himself. "I know how adventurous you can get at times and I don't want to risk anything." The elder puts a hand on Tommy's shoulder and looks into his baby brother's eyes seriously. The world is a dangerous place for someone only half an inch tall, and he wants to make sure his baby brother is safe.

"Stop worrying so much- I'm not gonna leave your side big man." Tommy smirks into their serious gaze and gives his brother a comforting pay on the shoulder, making them sigh with relief.

"Good- because I don't know what I'd do without your annoying voice." Dream jokes with a slightly forced chuckle and ruffles the teen's curly blond hair. Tommy only groans in annoyance and pushes his hand away, which only makes Dream let out another fond chuckle. "C'mon, we don't have all afternoon!" The elder doesn't give Tommy any time to fix their hair as he grabs their hand and pulls them off into the towering grass blades.

It's a few hours later when the two brothers find themselves watching from being blades of grass as several aphids hop around on the dirt, having called off of the grass after the two tiny people had shaken their plant homes with the help of a light breeze. Dream pulls out a small sword and turns to Tommy to make sure he's holding his own sword correctly. Once the eldest is sure the time is perfect, he gives a signal with his hand and both split- Dream running in from the right and Tommy from the left, both catching the tiny bugs off guard and using that to their advantage to slice off the heads of several before they can jump out of reach.

"You did it!" Dream smiles up at Tommy who himself is smiling proudly. They were running low on food, and now with Tommy's help, they're both sure to have more than enough aphids to last them for a week or more at least. "This should be good- you, did good Toms." The green clad Dirt Crawler walks over to his brother and ruffles their hair, and this time Tommy does not complain. "Now help me bag them up-"

"Yes sir!" Tommy gives a small thumbs up and starts to fill his sprig woven bag with the dead aphids as Dream does the same. It's all fine until one of the aphid bodies gets up and starts to limp away- Tommy missed it's head. "I'll get it!" He calls over to his brother, who gives a nod of acknowledgement before Tommy chases after the aphid, knowing he can easily catch and kill it since it can't jump.

Tommy doesn't notice anything suspicious as he approaches the injured aphid. He doesn't look around at his surroundings as he gets out his sword. He doesn't look up as he stabs the bug and finally kills it. He does however scream after looking up to see where the droplet of slime had come from on his sword after landing the killing blow.

Dream snaps his head up to attention, his eyes wide with fear for his Tommy as he looks to where they'd run off to- and he almost screams as well. "IT'S A SLUG!!!!" He's quick to run over and grab Tommy's arm and start to drag the petrified teen away before they can be eaten.

Tommy doesn't hesitate to follow Dream once he snaps out of his state of fear. As they run Tommy tries not to think about the humongous slimey being of pure squishy muscle, with four eyes that stared at him with nothing but hunger, and a large gaping mouth that was opening and closing, ready to eat it's lunch with the rows upon rows of tiny razor sharp teeth that could allow the disgusting giant to swallow him whole. Tommy shivers, yeah that's going to be haunting his nightmares- oh well at least slugs are slow, so he and Dream have plenty of time to run away…. Or so he thought, before suddenly his running is slowed significantly by something making him stick to the ground. The teen looks down, and sees he's stepped into a trail of familiar slime that has him now stuck where he stands.

"Dre- Dream!?" He yells to his older brother, who also finds himself slowed by the slime trail. Dream looks at his brother sadly, and grabs their arms before desperately trying to pull Tommy free as the slug approaches at a slow orgilating crawl towards them.

"Tommy- Tommy, look at me!" Dream said, keeping his voice firm, trying to give his baby brother something to focus on. "Don't look back- don't- d- don't look behind you. Just focus on me, we're going to get out of this." At least Tommy is close enough for Dream to pull them into a hug. He lets Tommy bury their face into his chest, letting them cry as he glares up at the omnivore that had successfully hunted them down on Tommy's first aphid gathering…

"I- I'm scared…" Tommy admits quietly, something they usually would never do, but Dream can understand in this situation: getting stuck while running from a slug is certain death for any and all Dirt Crawlers.

"I know… I know, but it's going to be okay, I promise…." Dream whispers softly and weaves his fingers into Tommy's soft golden curls, something that's always calmed them down, no matter how old. He hugs his small brother close, closing his eyes so he can savor one last moment with them…

BOOM-SQUELCH!!!

The sound is loud and disturbing to hear for the absolutely miniscule brothers, and they both open their eyes wide in surprise and fear of what happened. All that can run through Dream's head is that the slug must've been crushed by something, but what? A deer? A wolf maybe? Possibly even a skunk even if they aren't in this area? The only way to find out is to look up- and up- and up and up and up and-

"Fuck." Dream doesn't cuss often, but for this occasion it feels necessary.

"Wh- wha-" Tommy begins to ask but cuts off his own words as he feels all his breath leave him in fear, as he looks up too.

A giant. An actual giant. A person, thousands of times their size was standing right on top of where the slug had been only seconds before- and it seemed like they didn't even notice they'd crushed anything.

"Human…" Dream mutters quietly, remembering the word from a story their mom told him once before Tommy was born. Giants- humans- weren't supposed to be here. Dirt Crawlers almost never had to deal with humans… yet here one stood, having unintentionally saved the two brothers lives, and Dream realized in a moment how close they both were to that death dealing foot, and if the human hadn't seen the slug, then if they took another unfortunate step- "R- run- we need to run! Run!!" Dream shouts and starts to pull Tommy, and his brother quickly gets the message as they both pull themselves out of the slime to start running.

Dream doesn't let go of Tommy's hand the whole time as they both run as fast as they can, but it doesn't feel fast enough as every time Dream looks back the human looks just as close as they were before and- oh gods they were looking down at them. Dream pushes forward, trying to pull Tommy even faster with a feigned hope that maybe, just maybe they can at least get to the burrow in time and be safe until the human leaves-

Dream bounces back off of something hard and smooth, he can't see it but he can feel it. Tommy rushes forward to stand beside him and starts to bang on the invisible wall; it's a fruitless effort however as both know that anything used by humans is guaranteed to be too strong for either to break through. Only a few seconds later they feel gravity change and they're sliding down the wall, Dream grabs Tommy and hugs him, wanting to make sure that wherever they land his brother is safe more than anything. They eventually hit a bottom, made of another invisible wall- and as Dream looks up he meets two massive eyes, twice as big as himself, staring directly at him and his brother.

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

Mcyt g/t list:

@trashpumped @lorie-the-little-ghost @encaos @i-am-a-weeb @wyforyu-gaming @5unfl0writ3r @colorfulsiren @moonmwah @iwasgoingtohellanyways @echoslime @wilbur-simp @trouble-off-grid @lilsyxx @smogs-0 @hello-world-im-snow

[mischiefandspirits]

Doppelgänger (17/19)

Previously on Doppelgänger ~ Masterlist ~ Next time on Doppelgänger

Danny, Sam, and Tucker were just 14 when they took a look inside the portal Danny’s parents had built. From there, everything changed. They woke up with white hair, green skin, and powers they could learn to control. They were hybrids, halfas.

They were the hero Doppelgänger.

{Reign Storm, Part 3}

“It’s like shooting skeleton fish in a barrel,” Doppelgänger chuckled as they flew up to Valerie’s side, blasting one of the skeleton’s harrowing her as their own crowd rushed into the football stadium after them.

“They don’t put up much of a fight, but there’s a lot of them,” she argued. “You going to duplicate?”

“Already did. We've got our own crowds.”

“It’d be nice if you could make yourself a crowd in return.”

“Sorry, we’re still working on making more than three of us.”

“Hello, son.”

Doppelgänger gave a long, drawn-out groan as Plasmius flew up to the two despite still firing on the skeletons. The older ghost tried to speak when they’d finished, only for the ghost kid to start right back up.

“Are you quite done?” Plasmius asked over the groaning.

Valerie turned to fire at him, but he dodged to the side. He stopped with Doppelgänger between her and him.

The younger ghost stopped their groaning to say, “You know, a human shield only works if the shield’s both bigger than you and someone that the person you’re hiding from won’t shoot. We are neither of those.”

“You’re also not human,” Valerie pointed out.

“I think that’s debatable, but we’ll add it to the list,” they said and fired a blast at Plasmius.

“Calm down, son! I didn't come here to fight you! You have other things to worry about!”

“Okay, even if we were your kid -- which we aren’t because gross -- we’re nonbinary, so still not your son. So get lost. We have this under control!”

A blur of black barreled into them and rose up to reveal a knight in black armor atop a pegasus. The knight had Doppelgänger by the throat and pointed his sword at them. “You are the one who destroyed the King’s ring.”

“We’re not one, but we have destroyed a ring recently. Not sure if it was a king’s, though. Can we get a description?” Doppelgänger said before a swirl of comets wrapped around them and they disappeared.

Another swirl appeared behind the knight, leaving behind the ghost kid. They cheered and shot a blast that unseated the knight. “Yes, it worked. Still not as far as we’d meant to go, but we’ll take it.”

“If you would allow me to trai-” Plasmius started.

“Not interested. Now make yourself useful.” Doppelgänger pointed at the knight, who was pulling himself to his feet.

The knight’s eyes locked onto Valerie and narrowed. “You also carry the ring’s mark.”

She leveled her rifle at him, but a pair of blasts knocked him away before she could fire.

“Right on time,” Doppelgänger said as their two copies flew into the stadium. “Wait a second, is that the Fright Knight? Who? He’s the age-old spirit of Halloween.” The trio began to casually blast the knight back and forth across the field as they spoke together. “Legend has it that if his sword The Soul Shredder cuts through you, you get teleported to a dimension where you live out your worst fear. We read about him in the book we got for Halloween. Did the book have any way to defeat him? We think there was something about a pumpkin, but we can’t remember. We’ll go check.”

One of the ghost kids shot off, giving the knight a chance to finally dodge a blast. “Fools! All I wanted to do was retrieve those who destroyed the ring and return to Pariah's Keep, but now, you give me no choice.” He knelt and held up his sword, point down. “By the authority vested in me by my Lord and Liege…” The sword began to glow and he drove it into the ground, causing a wave of energy to roll outwards across the ground. “I claim this town now and forever under the banner of Lord Pariah, the King of All Ghosts!”

Energy shot up from the sword high into the air before rolling outwards to form a green dome across the city.

Both remaining Doppelgängers fired at the knight, but he ducked away. “The sword has sunk, your die now cast, The sword removed shall signal fast. Surrender your-”

He was cut off as a blast knocked him rolling across the ground.

“We hate rhymes. Did we find a pumpkin?”

The third Doppelgänger flew up with a smirk and pulled a fake jack-o'-lantern out of thin air.

“Found it in the boxes of old Halloween decorations like we said.”

They landed next to the sword and dropped the decoration at their feet.

“Gotta move fast. Cover us. Red, Plasmius, keep the skeleton’s back. We’ll handle tall, dark, and fashionable. Fashionable? Really? Yes, we love that aesthetic.”

Val nodded and pulled out her grenade launcher as the other two placed themselves between their third and the knight, but Plasmius’s attention was on the ghost kid.

“What are you planning?”

The ghost kid smirked and wrapped their hand around the sword’s grip.

“To cease the storm…”

“No,” the knight yelled, but the ghost kid’s copies kept him back.

“To end the fear…”

“Wait!” Plasmius yelled as the ghost kid began to draw the sword from the ground.

“The sword must sheathe…”

As soon as the blade left the ground, the energy feeding into the dome cut off and it began to crack. Instead of the sky being behind it, Valerie saw the endless green of the ghost zone.

“In pumpkin near!”

Doppelgänger sank the sword into the fake pumpkin and everything froze. Then the sky returned.

White and green light began to pour from the decoration as the dome shuddered then began to rise up and flow back into the sword in a reverse of how it had just formed.

“No, NO!” the knight shouted as a vortex formed above the sword and began to draw him in.

Valerie only had a second to feel victorious before the vortex began to pull at her as well. She lost her footing on her board, but the ghost kid flew in to help her. Two of them grabbed her and the last grabbed her board before they all flew to the bleachers and grabbed hold. Once she was sure she was safe, she looked over the field.

Plasmius had taken refuge on a goal post, but many of the skeletons were being sucked up. The knight was clawing at the ground, but soon lost his grip and disappeared into the swirling green. Once he was gone, the vortex slowed and dissipated while the pumpkin holding the sword -- now looking like an actual jack-o'-lantern, if purple with a green glow -- vanished in a flash.

“Well, that’s one down,” Doppelgänger said.

“You idiot! The sword was a signal!” Plasmius yelled, brushing himself off.

“Yeah, we heard. That’s why we got rid of it!”

“Not soon enough.”

The teens looked up to see a large ghost floating over them.

After a second, one of the ghost kids pointed at him.

“You know, we expected more from the King of All Ghosts. He’s just a guy. A tall guy, but still.”

Another nodded, looking disappointed.

“Yeah, what is this Odin wannabe nonsense? We thought we’d be facing some beautiful Lovecraftian horror. We feel ripped off.”

The third tilted their head.

“He’s not even that big. Like ten feet, maybe. The dragon made a more impressive sight, and she was literally just a fairytale princess. You’d think a king could do better.”

“Are you done ticking him off?” Valerie asked, watching Dark get angrier and angrier.

They shrugged. “We’re just saying. He doesn’t even have a crown.”

Then the one who’d tilted their head shot to the side, the one who’d nodded stepped in front of Valerie and raised a shield, and the one who’d pointed braced for impact as Dark sent a massive blast towards them.

The shield held, but the ghost kid was forced to a knee as they poured their strength into it and it shattered apart as soon as it wasn’t needed. Once it was down, Valerie could see that the one who’d taken the blast head-on had created a crater in the bleachers that they were pulling themself out of. Meanwhile, the one who’d avoided it was zipping around the field, keeping Dark’s attention. They fired upon the king while bobbing and weaving around the return fire.

It didn’t look like the attacks were doing much damage.

“That hurt,” they said as the one limped towards her and their kneeling copy turned to her. “You should get clear.”

“We should all fall back,” Plasmius said, appearing next to them.

“Even if we could, he’d destroy the town trying to chase us down. You can run if you want to,” they said then they shot towards the field.

One landed and held their hands out. Thick wires shot out of the ground and grabbed Dark’s legs, electrocuting him in the process. At the same time, the other ghost kid shot towards the fight. They engaged the king as the one that had been fighting him backed off. They reached to the side and plucked a pot holding a glowing spider-like plant out of nowhere. They chucked the plant at Dark’s head then re-engaged him as their copy pulled back to command the plant to wrap around the king’s eyes and neck.

“The boy has Chlorokinesis?” Plasmius said.

“You didn’t know that?” Valerie said, checking her rifle and calling her board to her.

“He’s never used it against me. He’s only even used the Technokinesis recently.”

“They’ve had both for as long as I’ve known them. They’ve tried to use it on me, but I’m usually too high for the plants and my gear’s protected against their control.”

“ENOUGH!”

The two looked up to see Dark snatch the plant-controlling ghost kid from the air and throw them. The other flying one tried to catch them, but they both ended up crashing to the ground. The third flew over to them as the king tore off the wires and burned away the plant.

“Our baby,” the ghost kid whined, one staring at the plant’s burning remains with fury.

“Surrender, children! You can't possibly win!”

“Surrender isn’t in our vocabulary. And we can’t possibly let you loose on our city.” The one that had been controlling the wires helped the one that had been thrown to their feet, letting them lean against them, as the other placed themself in front of the two. “Besides, we don't have to win. we just have to make sure that you lose.”

Dark scowled and shot a blast at them. The one in front summoned a shield, but it shattered almost immediately and the three took most of the blast.

Valerie leveled her rifle at Dark, but Plasmius yanked it away.

“Don’t be foolish, girl. He will kill you.”

“Like you care.

“Considering you’re my only help, I do. We need a plan.”

“Face it, children, it's over.”

Valerie turned back to the field to see Dark walking towards the trio as they slowly got up onto their knees.

“No,” they growled. “No!”

Shaking with pain, the trio looked up. 

Their goggles glowed with black energy and then three things happened at once.

The one on the left threw their head back and screamed. Black sonic waves tore through the field and slammed into the king.

The one in the middle doubled over, hands clawing at the ground as they keened. Thick black vines wove in and out of the ground in front of them until they could latch onto the king, wrapping around his arms and legs to tear deep gashes into his skin with their thorns.

The one on the right wrapped their arms around themselves and sobbed. Black tears flowed down their face and formed a void beneath them that stretched out underneath the king.

The vines held him still, the rings drained his power, and the void drew him in.

Dark thrashed against his bindings, but they held and he was soon consumed by the darkness.

The trio collapsed.

The field went silent, the vines shriveled into nothing, and the darkness faded.

Consciousness clearly fading, the trio latched hands and fell through the ground.

Oddly though, they didn’t seem to go intangible and Valerie swore she saw the faintest hint of a white-blue-purple light just before they completely disappeared.

Slowly, she turned to Plasmius to see him gaping at the now empty field. “Did you know they had that kind of power?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny stared out at the stars as Blobena nuzzled up against his cheek.

“My everything hurts,” Tucker croaked, the first sound any of them had made since Danny had dropped them into the Space Fold then promptly passed out. He’s not sure how long they’ve been in there now, but he’s been awake for at least an hour and he knew the others woke before him.

“Sh!” Sam moaned.

It was quiet for a few moments, then Sam asked, “Danny. Why are your blobs in here? More importantly, why is one trying to eat my hair?”

With a sigh, Danny turned to see Sam and the blob in question. “I think Blobson likes the taste of your shampoo. He did the same thing to me two weeks ago when you let me shower at your place after the fight with Garbage Manster.”

“Wait, you seriously named them all? And with blob puns?” Tucker said, pinwheeling slowly near Sam’s feet. “I thought that was just a joke you and Valerie were telling.”

“We had a lot of time in that cage, okay?”

“Danny, get this thing off my hair or I’m smashing it.”

The boy pouted, but reached over to scoop up the blob. He set him on his shoulder next to Bloberick.

“Now again, what are they doing here?”

“In my defense, I just meant to hide them in here for a second because my mom was coming down the stairs and I didn’t have time to get them all back through the portal. I’ve tried to get them to leave, but they won’t.”

“You keep my ghost plants in here!” she huffed, gesturing to the quartet of pots holding plants she’d gathered from the ghost zone.

“They don’t bother them, promise!”

“Speaking of which, how dare you throw Arachne at that jerk!”

“Our ecto-beams weren’t doing much! I thought the poison on her fronds would help!”

“We can get you a new one, Sam,” Tucker said. “It’s not like it was sentient like Audrey II.”

“We can get you a new phone, Tucker,” she shot back. “It’s not like it’s sentient like Audrey II.”

“She’s as good as!” Tucker gasped, pulling his phone out to clutch it to his chest. “Talk to me, baby.”

“Hello, Tuck-man. The time is 9:34 p.m.”

Danny snickered. “Tuck-man.”

“Shut it, Danny Blobton,” Tucker said, grabbing one of the blobs floating near him and tossing it at Danny.

If anything, the blob seemed to be pleased by the action, even as it squished against his forehead. It gave a singing buzz and nuzzled further against him.

“Great, now Blobnessa is never going to let go.”

“Dude, you’ve got issues.”

“Wait, did your phone say it was after nine at night?” Sam asked, turning to Tucker.

“Yeah, it said… Oh man, how long have we been gone for?”

“My parents are probably tearing the town apart looking for me,” Danny groaned.

“Not to mention your girlfriend. I’m sure my parents are already blaming you. Crud, I’m going to have to wear their stupid dresses for a week if they’re ever going to let me see you again,” Sam said, grabbing Danny’s arm and tugging him to her.

“I swear, if my parents try to take me on one of those tech-free relaxation getaways because of this, I’m moving into the fold. Blobs or not,” Tucker muttered, hooking his ankle around Sam’s.

Danny gently shooed and brushed all the blobs off himself then turned all three of them invisible and dropped them onto the football field.

Thankfully no one was around so they turned visible and climbed to their feet.

“We’re going to need alibis,” Sam said.

“Got cornered by some skeletons in an abandoned building?” Tucker offered. “Only came out when we were sure it was safe, but then didn’t recognize where we were and stumbled about until we found somewhere familiar.”

“Sounds good enough for me,” Danny yawned. “Can either of you transform?”

They shook their heads.

“Guess we’re walking.”

They only made it a block before the Fenton RV came roaring up and a hysterical Maddie Fenton tackled Danny to the ground.

[very-grownup]

THE YEAR IS 2020 AND I WATCHED NEON GENESIS EVANGELION FOR THE FIRST TIME, PART 3

Episode 11.

Self-governance is an illusion and humanity has replaced the decision-making process with some supercomputers because no one's read "I Have No Mouth and I Mist Scream".

The rest of Episode 11 and Episode 12 behind the cut.

So, there's this episode of Johnny Quest where a spaceship crash lands outside this military base and it leaves behind this black orb that in the night opens and it's a glowing red eye and super long spider legs extend and it shoots a laser out of its eye. The Angel in this episode reminds me of the giant space spider robot in that episode of Johnny Quest but it's like a rhomboid instead of an orb and it is covered in triangles and each triangle has an eye and later the eyes cry orange acid and that's upsetting but I love spider.

There's a power outage in this episode caused by I think the Angel just throwing a breaker and shutting everything down and absolutely no one was prepared for this eventuality. Like, everything is underground mostly and what emergency power there is gets diverted from the life support to the supercomputers which seems like the kind of decision EVIL SUPERCOMPUTERS WOULD MAKE but that's not even the important thing.

Shinji's been told by his teacher to talk to his dad because the kids are doing, like, their future goal planning guidance counselor stuff or whatever and parents need to be involved and the little scene of Shinji calling his father from a payphone is heartbreaking. Just awkward anxious stuttering mostly focused on Shinji's empty hand clenching and unclenching helplessly while his father interrupts him to tell him to spit it out already and tell him why he's broken what seems to be a no contact rule between them and it's so real. So futile. Shinji really tries to tell his father the message he's supposed to pass on only to get the brush-off again, the whole thing impatiently dismissed as unimportant and part of all the responsibilities for Shinji that have been delegated to Misato. Then we get the beginning of what is clearly Shinji's father telling his assistant not to forward Shinji's calls in the future before the power outage and the call disconnects. Shinji tries to talk to about this to Asuka and Rei. The disconnect has just enough uncertainty to it that Asuka is able to go 'sounds like a tech problem stop worrying so much and reading into it you wiener'. Shinji tries to lie to himself that Asuka's right even though this is just the latest bit of abusive negligence from his dad. It's sad, it's just so sad, it makes me so sad and there's no one to tell Shinji straight up that his dad sucks and is neglecting him and it's not cool and there's no excuse, not really.

There's stuff with the kids needing to get to NERV with the power out, Asuka trying to get into a power play with the others that they are completely disinterested in, a clearly anxious and adrift Shinji asking '... it's weird we're being attacked by things we call angels right?'

The kids get to the robots which have been prepared for them. Shinji sees his father working with the grunts to get the robots ready all analogue and hand-cranked or whatever and he's allowed to believe this is because his dad had faith the kids, including Shinji, would get there. Which is such a cruel lie to perpetuate about this man who was ready to drop a nuke on his son in the last episode, but Shinji takes it and actually gets into the robot with spirit because he's so desperate to believe that he's even on his father's radar, let alone important to him.

They have to chop a bunch of tubes with axes so the robots can punch and kick their way to the Angel and get acid-cried on and when the tubes are axed they gush really upsetting fluid and I hate it. But mostly I just keep thinking about Shinji's empty hand clutching at nothing while trying to get his father to hear him. This concludes my report on Episode 11 of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Episode 12.

In the year 2000, as we all remember, Antarctica got blown the fuck up by an energy giant appearing. Who survived this incident? Misato and I assume a single penguin. Misato was a child who was there with her father because no one knows what work-life balance is or where it's appropriate to bring children and to save her, her father put her in a metal coffin tube. TRAUMA.

Back in the present (I have now forgotten what year this is supposed to be taking place in), Misato has been promoted to major and Shinji's two friends, the horny boys who try to have an empathy, notice before Shinji and Asuka do (parental figures can never change). It turns out with her promotion and Shinji's shitty dad and that other old dude being away (in Antarctica where everything is blood and northern lights), Misato is the most senior person at NERV and I got a feeling so complicated. Because it's great that professionally Misato is getting recognition and authority, especially in the wake of Kaji existing, but ... Misato is a disaster and NERV is a disaster and being the top disaster dog of a disaster seems ... not great.

There's a bit that is both sweet and sad where Shinji's friends make them throw a little party to celebrate Misato's promotion and they are genuinely trying to do something nice for her even if it's partially propelled by horniness but also ... no peers? Honey. (Ritsuko and Kaji do show up so it's not just Misato and middle schoolers but Kaji is a negative to the adult count, the peer count, and the friend count so it's all null.)

The important thing in this episode is the connection and parallels between Shinji and Misato. Shinji realizes that although they're celebrating her promotion, Misato isn't happy. Misato admits this is kind of the case and Shinji is baffled. The promotion means that outside authority figures have recognized Misato's hard work and are validating it and why wouldn't that make Misato happy? Surely that's why people do things, to get external validation? Because it's why Shinji makes the decisions he makes. Validation and happiness are complicated, naturally, and it's saying that, but also implicit in the exchange is that Shinji has never received external validation. This is his holy grail. Once he has that surely everything will feel different.

When an Angel that looks like an orange boomerang or maybe a bop-it with an huge eyeball in the centre attacks and Misato's in charge, she uses her authority to make some wild and risky calls which boil down to 'throw all the teens in robots at it at once'.

The Angel drops orange globs of itself onto the earth below and each glob is like a little nuke that leaves a smoking crater behind but it's pretty cute, like someone put decarabia from SMT through a funhouse mirror. Not a fan of the orange globs, though.

Ritsuko confronts Misato in the bathroom about making bad decisions for the wrong reasons (as opposed to her usual bad decisions but for the right reason), suggesting that Misato just wants to get revenge on the Angels and destroy them which ... is what I thought NERV was for? It seems very double-standard and bullshit and I don't buy it as being something that makes Misato's decisions any better or worse than they would be otherwise. Ritsuko just seems to be covering her ass because Shinji's dad is away and only he gets to send teens into death.

Misato takes some time to explain to Shinji why she joined NERV and the complicated feelings she has not towards the Angels but to her father, who was a shitty father who was emotionally distant and neglectful and only seems to have managed to be a good dad once before promptly dying. Misato is still trying to figure out the intersection between anger and grief and how to feel about a man who does important work and to who she doubly owes her life but who was a shitty dad in a moment-by-moment sense. The guilt of still being angry, even after his death: Misato is still grappling with this and the echoes of shitty parenting, a cyclical thing that she is simultaneously enabling and attempting to divert by stepping into Shinji's life and it's no surprise something she's still grappling with flies over Shinji's head.

The kids get in the robots to fight the Angel all at once in Misato's reckless plan that works because ALL THE PLANS ARE THROWING TEENS IN ROBOTS AT GIANT MONSTERS. One of the kids tears the membrane off the giant eye and stabs it with a giant robot knife and it's gross. ALSO on defeat the Angel STILL BLOWS UP AND LEAVES A HUGE CRATER, SOMEHOW THIS IS SUCCESS?

Shinji's shitty dad calls in to validate and commend Misato's incredibly reckless decision because of course he doesn't have a problem with plans that might kill teens. He was ready to nuke his son an episode ago! Shinji's shitty dad then speaks to him directly, calls him by name, and basically tells him 'good work' and between this and his talks with Misato, Shinji learns the lesson that if he continues to do this thing he hates beyond all understanding, his father will see him. It's awful because Misato was trying to find words to explain how fleeting to nothingness external validation is when it doesn't align with your own desires and this didn't reach Shinji but also because what his father gives him is lip service. Empty words. Nothing. But they're still the most Shinji seems to have ever gotten from his father and so this nothing is everything. This concludes my report on Episode 12 of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Supplemental: with how poorly Misato explains things to Shinji, it feels like she's never spoken about her anger towards her father and her anger about her anger being complicated by his sacrifice and death. She has no real friends she feels safe opening up to.

[enigma-im]

The Only Exception

Rating: Teen Relationship: Male!Human X Female!Human Warning: Angst, confrontation of feelings, comfort, mild language

Word count: 2784

                The only exception by Paramore

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

Love will find a way

What a load of bullshit. Love isn't some living thing, a predestined feeling that will find you like some trained bloodhound. Love takes effort, if you want it you have to find it. Cant sit at home and expect the love of your life to show up… Yet here I am. excuse me if I'm a little pissed about being wrong. I'm standing here in my PJs looking up at the most glorious man I have ever seen, feeling my heart ready to burst. This crazy son of a bitch, I've tried avoiding him for weeks and here he is like some stranger in the night. It's impossible to think he is here like I was calling him like a siren. I cant imagine thoughts can summon someone. If that were the case I'm sure I would have had Bradley Cooper in my room when I was 18.

"May I help you," I glare at the man. Him being here is like the universe laughing at me. They watch me scream and deny my wants and feelings just to make me look directly at them. Fucking universe.

"I-," he looks around worried," I'm not sure." his shoulders drop as he sighs. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I refuse to believe that he came here because of some magical pull or trance. Just bury me 6ft under if that is the case.

"Well if you don’t know then…," I trail off as I shut the door. His hand bolts up and presses against the wood. I grind my teeth with the last test of my will. I will not be in some sappy romance novel. I don’t want it, I don’t need it.

God, why do those words taste so bitter?

"No," he pushes the door open wide," I had to see you." I groan and clench my eyes shut, fighting the fluttering in my stomach. "also I had to know," he nearly whispers. He gives that look that feels like drinking hot chocolate in a blizzard. I cannot even begin to dissect that one.

"Know what," I sneer. I'm reaching the end of my patience, having only so much fight left in me. I don’t need him, I don’t need his beautiful face or corny jokes. I definitely don’t need those late-night thoughts of him holding me close while whispering praises in my ear.

"I had to know," he swallows hard," I had to know that you felt it too, on the balcony. Did you feel this…connection?" I actually groaned this time. Pouting like the child I am I marched off into my house. I fist at my hair as I wince thinking on his words. How fucking dare he, it isn't even his fault!

I hear his heavy steps follow me to the living room," Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that spark, I know you wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you.". I fall onto the sofa, feeling drowned and suffocated. I even felt a knot in my throat, my eyes stinging. I will not cry, I don’t even know why I would but I won't. Too busy fighting back tears I startle when he sits next to me. He grabs my hands, removing them from my hair. " That night was wonderful, I never felt so natural with someone. I was so carefree with you, it felt right. We felt right," he cups my hands with his. I look up at his handsome face, wanting nothing more than hit him. I glance down at our hands, jerking mine out of his.

"No," I mumble as I stand," No! you need to leave." I step away from the couch, still fighting that empty feeling bursting from my words. It's soul-deep that I want him to stay, but I won't. I cant.

Please.

"Don’t do this. Don’t act like we don’t have something here," he nearly shouts. I grasp on to the little bit of anger I feel. The anger I can handle, anger is easy.

I turn to him," You march into my house unannounced and demand answers from me!". I stomp up to him, his glare fueling my already weak attempts of rage. "you wanna know what I felt," my eyes sting," Nothing."

The second the words leave my mouth I feel a tear trail down my cheek. Another following right after, then another. I try with a white-knuckled grip to hold on to my anger, but the lie is too bitter. I felt everything that night, it was like a fairy tale. Our conversation flowed naturally, never giving to any awkward pauses. Whenever we were silent it was still comforting, it felt right.

I stand strong despite my tears, watching him with a stubborn amount of distaste. He just watches me with pity. Not the kind that you give to someone lesser than you but the one you give to someone who is hurting themselves. That person who is doing something toxic to themselves but refusing to acknowledge it. I don’t like that look, I don’t like that I know I am being toxic. I just can't handle it, I can't love another person.

"Babe," he drops his shoulders. I wince at the tenderness of his tone.

I take a step back," don’t call me that."

He takes a step forward," Doll."

"No," I say louder. I walk backward, holding up a finger at him. He still gives me that 'I will cherish you always' look and it feels like being punched. "Stop that," I shout as I round the coffee table.

He continues following me," what's wrong?"

I circle the table so it's between us," Besides you not leaving, nothing." he tries to walk around to me but I circle with him, keeping on the opposite side. He walks around again but I step with him.

"I can't fix it if I don’t know what wrong," he says dejectedly. He looks almost pained, it's hard to fathom why. Don’t men love just leaving when a woman cries? Why won't he leave if this hurts him so?

"Then leave," I snort up some snot. I won't lie and say I wasn’t attempting to be gross. If he thinks I'm not this princess he made up in his mind then he will leave. He huffs with agitation, leaning down and grabbing the coffee table. Quickly he jerks it out of the way and stomps towards me.

"I will not leave until you give me an honest fucking answer," he snarls. Panic curls up against my spine as I walk backward. He continues charging forward like a man on a mission. My anger fades and replaces with honest fear. Not fear of him but fear of what he could make me do.

I startle when my back hits the wall, I nearly choke on my gasp. He corners me till his chest is against mine, his forearms braced on either side of my head. His hot breath strokes over my face. I can't look at him, I can barely even move. I flatten my hands to the wall and try to make some room between us. He just fills the space with himself, leaving no option but to see him, feel him.

"Babe," he starts surprisingly gentle," please." my breath falters, my eyes flutter like crazy. I don’t notice when I start shuddering, the fear engulfing me. I don’t like confrontation, especially when it's my feelings. My heart aches and I feel on the verge of a panic attack. I chew on my lip, trying to figure any way out of this. I slowly look from his chest to him, wincing at the open care in his eyes. In a last-ditch effort, I look directly at him.

"Please," I whimper. I blink a tear from my eye as I fist my hand against the wall, "please."

He closes his eyes and rests his forehead to mine," it's ok, I got you. Just tell me what's wrong." another tear rolls down my cheek, both hating and relishing the intimacy. Its been so long since I've felt it.

"Please," my lip trembles," I cant. I cant -"

"Shh, it's ok. Just breathe, everything is ok," he interrupts. He coos near my ear, nuzzling his head against mine. When he leans down to kiss a tear off my face I break. I bury my wet face to his neck, reaching up and fisting his shirt. I white knuckle his clothing, still trying pointlessly to fight. Tears run down my face like a stream, soaking into his collar.

"I can't," I hiccup," I can't do it again." his hands fall from the wall to cradle me against him. It feels like being stabbed, my heart clenching in a suffocating grip. I don’t just cry against him but weep. It's embarrassing, to say the least.

"Do what again," he whispers. His fingers card through my hair, trying his best to give a modicum of comfort. It has the opposite effect. His care makes me ache, his soothing cooing rips pieces from my heart. I can't do this again, I can't fall for someone. It’s a lousy trap, a cycle that always happens. It starts wonderful but it ends with someone dying on the inside.

"Please, I beg of you," I wrap my arms around him. I squeeze him tight despite my want for him to leave. The want vs the need battle in my head and limbs. I want him to go, but I need him to stay.

"Talk to me, I beg of you," he reroutes my words. His voice is pained like mine, it makes me sick.

"I can't fall in love again, I can't do it," I tremble," I refuse to do it again." it’s a losing battle. Feelings don’t give a damn about your desires. They demand to be felt, demand to be heard. My stubborn self will still fight them till the end. I will be defiant until my dying breath if I have to. It’s a stupid thing to think.

"Why," he squeezes me as tight as I hold him. I can't help but notice his smell. It's warm like his voice, playful like his personality, comforting like his hugs. I give myself just a second to enjoy it. I soak in the satisfying feeling of being held. I relish the quick kisses to my head. I inhale his intoxicating smell. Just for a second, that’s all I can take.

"I can't handle it, I won't allow you to hurt me," I realize how tight I'm clenching him. I shouldn’t be holding him. Realizing this I drop my arms and weasel them between us. I feel him stiffen, his fingers digging into my back. I try to push him away but he holds strong, staying as stubborn as me.

"No," he keeps me flushed to the wall," talk to me. I want you to give this a chance, we will talk this out like adults."

"No," I answer like a child. I push against him, beating the heel of my hand against his sternum. I even try kicking him, hitting his shin a few times. He grunts with a particularly good kick then use his legs to keep my detained.

"Stop it," he growls," you are acting like a tantrum-throwing child."

I continue pushing," then leave if I'm so insufferable."

"Doll, stop trying to push me away. I'm not leaving till we work this out," he nearly shouts. His rumbling in his chest vibrates against my hands. He has a nice voice, even when he is scolding me.

"Why are you trying so hard," I huff in frustration. Everyone I have ever met wouldn’t have put up with this. I'm not worth the effort he is using. I cannot imagine the few weeks we have known each other has fueled his attractions enough to want to fight for me. I won't allow it, his attempts are in vain.

He sighs," Because I think we have something here. I think I can make you happy and I know you can make me happy. I want to give us a try, last night was…breathtaking. I have never felt anything so tangible before. I've never wanted something more in my life." I stop breathing, finding it also hard to swallow. I don’t want to hear this. The thought from last night when I was alone in my bed resurfaces. I can imagine us settling for the night, him spooning me from behind. His hands-on my waist and hips. His lips pressing soft kisses to the back of my neck. He leans over and whispers soft praises in my ear. God, I want that so bad.

I lose my strength, falling limp against him. His fighting hold relaxes, his legs unblocking mine. I rest my forehead to his chest. I take in his soothing scent, just giving up. I want to fight but my emotions don’t care what I want.

"I just don’t want to be hurt again," I mumble," I can't handle another heartbreak. I'd rather be shot than feel that again." he settles his hand on the back of my neck. He tilts me so my cheek rests on his chest. He looks at me, looking over my puffy, tear-stained face. I probably look so defeated, so weak.

He surprises me by giving a shy smile," Why you so certain that I will hurt you?"

"How can I be certain you won't?"

His fingers comb through my hair," You can't, that’s why it isn't easy. If it was then how could you know if it was genuine?" I pout. It’s a good answer, I won't lie, but the risk is still too great.

"Doesn’t sound like a fair trade," I huff. My head begins the ache, my limbs feeling heavy and drained. I close my eyes just for a moment, not ignoring the benefit of not having to look at him. I hear his chuckle deep in his chest, feel my head bounce with his pecs.

"Depends on the love I guess, I know you will be worth the risk," he pets over my back. I sigh with his tenderness. His smell and strokes keep the headache tamed.

"You barely know me," I grumble.

"True," he grins," but the parts I do know of you have been wonderful. I'm anxious to get to know more." he waits for an answer but I can't bother to figure one out. I'm tired and greedy. His hold feels safe, his clothes soft, his voice soothing. I can allow myself just this before I send him away.

He sighs when he figures I'm not going to answer," Listen, I cant promise you that everything will work out. This is real life, not some fairy tale. Still, I can promise you honesty and openness. I can be the man you deserve until one of us decides that being just friends is better. Hell, I can be your friend first. We can take things slow and just hang out, no commitments. How does that sound? All I'm asking for is a chance."

I dissect his words like an obsessed idiot. I appreciate his candor, even if it sucks. I know fairy tales don’t exist but god do I wish they do. I want everlasting love to exists, to have a soulmate. It’s a silly, childish thing to want. Still, he is willing to go at my pace, even being friends with no romantic commitments. As great as it sounds I hate the thought of being with him but not being with him. My heart wants all or nothing, but my brain wants slow. Perhaps I can compromise then? A few dates, just getting to know each other. I adore the idea of calling him my boyfriend but the fear taints the image. Slow, I think I can do slow.

"I don’t want to be friends," I start. I feel his back stiffen under my hand, his breath catching in his throat. "But," I look up at him," I don’t want you to go."

He cocks a brow," then what is it that you want?"

I rub my cheek to his shirt," slow. I want slow, but I want to be exclusive."

"Slow," his lips quirk," I can do that. If that’s what you want then I'm happy to provide." I can't help but smile, a bit of warmth spreading over the cold fear. Yea, I can do slow. I'm not stupid enough to think it will be easy but I'm optimistic enough to think it will work.

Love hurts, but he might be the only exception.

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

Not a monster story, not from lack of trying. i was going to go with a deity but to be honest this story was for me to write out my feelings. Love and i have a complicated relationship. i try to fight it tooth and nail because its failed me often.

also lot of this stuff i wrote is something you have to experience to really get. like once i tried to ask my ex’s best friend if my ex ever loved me and i literally couldnt say it. feelings got stuck in my throat so instead of facing it i buried very deep. cause sometimes you would rather be shot than confess that you loved someone who didnt love you. feeling are hard, love is even harder.

[yourfuturenurse17]

Gender and Development Blog

I. Sexuality

A. Overview of the Adolescent/Teenage Sexual Reproductive Health in the Philippines

It is normal for many teens or adolescents in the Philippines nowadays to indulge in premarital sex and it is often the cause of such consequences that led to miserable life. As for our lesson on this topic, it is really saddening because the statistics shown in the PowerPoint presentation back in 2013 showed that premarital sex were common in young males and childbirth age is low for females and maternal mortality is also common. Also, only 79% are contraceptives which are alarming. Philippines right now becomes the home in Asia for having a lot of population and I find it very frustrating because many of the pregnant women are young, and you can really see that they are not ready to have a child in life. It is not just for the sake of the population, but HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are infecting people and the range of age is getting lower and lower.

B. Circles of Human Sexuality

1. Sensuality

·         Body Image – I am sort of insecure about my body image because of the fact that I’m skinny. People often think that I don’t really eat that much, but after all, I am trying my very best to be contented and confident about my own body no matter what they say.

·         Human Sexual Response Cycle – I don’t know what to say about this since I don’t have experience regarding sex, but the human sexual response cycle has 4 phases and is experienced by both men and women. Of course, it is a normal cycle that happens during sex.

·         Skin Hunger – I am also insecure about my own skin because back when I was a kid, I was bullied by my relatives because of how dark my skin was. I really wanted a pale skin back then. But now, I am contented of what God has given me.

·         Fantasy – fantasizing is good but sometimes it can be distracting. It also serves a specific purpose, whether it is about your goals or can be sexual.

2. Intimacy

·         Caring – It is someone who displays kindness and concern to others. I care about others especially to my loved ones.

·         Sharing – They said “sharing is caring”. I don’t know but there is a joy in my heart when I share some things that I have to others even if it’s small, as long as they are happy with it.

·         Loving/Taking – Love conquers all. Taking is also a form of love. When you love, you feel a pleasure that comes from it, with no sense of burden, but a pure joy. Take a chance in love; you should risk it all for love.

·         Risk Taking – Willing to take risky challenges in order to have a desired result. It’s either you will win or lose.

·         Vulnerability – Vulnerable is the key to intimacy helps us ask for what we want to avoid distancing ourselves from our partners and allows building a trust and opening our heart.

3. Sexual Identity

·         Bias – There are times where I am biased towards sexual identity of a person but now, I have learned to avoid it. Being bias about sexual identity still exists in many forms.

·         Gender Identity – So far, since when I was young kid, I know what my gender is.

·         Gender Role – Each gender has different roles, according to what they have learned and how society tells them to be. I am a female and there are roles and behaviors that I learned that is appropriate to my gender.

·         Sexual Orientation – Sexual orientation is important to become oriented of what individuals are attracted to. Me, personally, I am very oriented about what I am attracted to, and of course, it is my opposite sex. I am never attracted to my same sex.

4. Sexual Health and Reproduction

·         Factual Information – Gaining factual information is really important especially regarding sexual health and reproduction because there are myths that most people actually believed on it and should be debunked.

·         Feelings & Attitudes – Improving the awareness and practices related to sexual and reproductive health of adolescents and young people is required to improve health outcomes.

·         Intercourse – I don’t have an experience regarding this matter since it is not appropriate for my status and my age.

·         Physiology and Anatomy of Reproductive Organs – Both are significant for maintaining homeostatis for survival of the individual, and also maintaining reproduction.

·         Sexual Reproductive – It is a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being in all matter in the context of reproductive system.

5. Sexualization

·         Rape – It is a sexual assault that typically involves sexual intercourse or other types of sexual penetration committed without the consent of individual. Both men and women of any age can be raped.

·         Incest – It is really gross because you are having sex between family members. I hope this thing will be vanished.

·         Sexual Harassment – Any person, it can be women, men, and other genders can be a victim of sexual harassment.

·         Withholding Sex – There are several reasons why withholding sex are happening between couples. Based from what I have researched, this is common in women. Some reasons are maybe because they are traumatized or they might suffer from sexual dysfunction.

·         Seduction-Flirting - Flirting maybe easy to achieve for some people, but seducing is another level of attracting someone. These can cause to break some people lives if used in an unlawful manner.

II. My Feelings and Attitudes about Sexuality, Values Clarification, and my own Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression

A. Feelings and Attitudes about sexuality

- As defined, sexuality is about your sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions and behaviors towards other people. Since I am a girl, I do attract to opposite gender and I’m not attracted to the same one.

B. Values Clarification

In gender equality, I believe that men and women, even the homosexuals have equal rights and has the right to express one’s freedom.

C. My Own Sexual Orientation

Since I am a girl, I am attracted to the opposite gender. At my age, based on my experience, I am romantically in love with a guy. I admit, at my age this time, I am also curious of what having sex be like with the opposite gender.

D. Gender Identity

I was born a girl and yet to be a woman.

E. Gender Expression

Since I am a girl, I dressed like a girl. I wear fashion girl wear that fits to me and I would rather say, a dress that will make me look like a girl and identifies me a s a girl.

III. Safe Sex

FEMALE CONDOM

At a glance: facts about the female condom

If used correctly, female     condoms are 95% effective.

They protect against pregnancy     and sexually     transmitted infections (STIs).

A female condom needs to be     placed inside the vagina before there's any contact with the penis.

Always buy condoms that have     the CE mark or the BSI Kitemark on the packet. This means they have been     tested to high safety standards.

A female condom can get pushed     inside the vagina during sex, but it's easy to remove them yourself if     this happens.

Female condoms may not be     suitable for women who are not comfortable touching their genital area.

Female condoms should not be     reused. Open a new one each time you have sex.

How female condoms work

Female condoms are a barrier method of contraception worn inside the vagina. They prevent pregnancy by stopping sperm meeting an egg.

A female condom can be put into the vagina before sex, but make sure the penis does not come into contact with the vagina before the condom has been put in.

Semen can still come out of the penis even before a man has had an orgasm (fully ejaculated).

When used correctly, condoms are the only method of contraception that protects against both pregnancy and STIs.

How to use a female condom

Open the packet and remove the     female condom, taking care not to tear it. Do not open the packet with     your teeth.

Squeeze the smaller ring at the     closed end of the condom and put it into the vagina.

Make sure the large ring at the     open end of the condom covers the area around the opening of the vagina.

Make sure the penis goes in the     female condom, not between the condom and the side of the vagina.

After sex, remove the female     condom immediately by gently pulling it out. You can twist the large ring     to prevent semen leaking out.

Throw away the condom in a bin,     not the toilet.

Using lubricant

Female condoms come pre-lubricated to make them easier to use, but you may also like to use additional lube.

Check the packet to find out which lubricants are suitable.

Who can use female condoms?

Most people can safely use female condoms. You can also use them immediately after having a baby, miscarriage or abortion.

But they may not be suitable for women who do not feel comfortable touching their genital area.

Advantages and disadvantages of female condoms

Advantages:

Female condoms help to protect     both partners from STIs, including HIV.

When used correctly, they're a     reliable method of preventing pregnancy.

It's a form of contraception     you only need to use when you have sex.

There are no serious side     effects.

Disadvantages:

Some couples find that putting     in a condom interrupts sex. To get around this, insert it in advance or     try to make doing so a part of foreplay.

Female condoms are very strong,     but they may split or tear if not used properly.

They're not as widely available     as male condoms and can be more expensive.

Can anything make female condoms less effective?

Sperm can sometimes get into the vagina during sex, even when using a female condom.

This may happen if:

the penis touches the area     around the vagina before a female condom is put in

the female condom gets pushed     too far into the vagina

the penis accidentally enters     between the side of the vagina and the condom

the condom gets damaged by     sharp fingernails or jewelry.

If you think sperm has got into your vagina, you may need emergency contraception. You can use emergency contraception up to 5 days after unprotected sex.

You should also consider having an STI test. This can be done at a:

sexual health or genitourinary     (GUM) clinic

contraception clinic

young people's clinic

ANECDOTE

Single Guy's Lament: What Became Of The Female Condom?

July 27, 2012

By David C. Holzman Guest contributor

David C. Holzman writes from Lexington, Mass., on science, medicine, energy, environment, and cars. He is Journal Highlights editor for the American Society for Microbiology and won a Plain Language Award last year from the National Institutes of Health. This essay began as a response to a CommonHealth post on why people have unsafe sex, and turned into much more.

Caution genes run in my family. My parents put seat belts in the ’57 Chevy in 1960, eight years before they became mandatory. In July, 1975, I bought Bell bicycle helmet serial number 7022. My cycling ensemble also includes one of those lime green jerseys that’s visible from the International Space Station.

And I was asking sex partners about Sexually Transmitted Diseases beginning in the early 1980s, when herpes — not HIV — was the main subject of such conversations. This despite the fact that the first time I did, the woman refused to discuss it, saying I could go to bed with her when I was ready to trust her.

Now, in 2012, I still wouldn’t dream of leaving my seatbelt unbuckled, or biking without my helmet and jersey. I’ve never stopped asking new sex partners about STDs. But recent news reports have suggested that among the middle aged, rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising while condom use is falling, and I have to confess:

At 59, I’ve worn condoms probably fewer than five times since the millennium, despite having been single for six of those years, during which time I’ve averaged one or two new partners a year, and despite the admonitions of my wonderful primary care doctor. The reason is simple: in my 20s and 30s, sex with a condom felt like getting massaged over a shirt. Now it feels like a massage through a winter overcoat.

Get all the Mass. election information you need sent to your inbox before you cast your ballot. Sign up now.

I did don a condom last fall, when a new partner made a big deal of it. As a precaution, I took half a Viagra beforehand. (I don’t normally need the pharmaceutical pump; it was left over from earlier, when an antidepressant that I have long since discontinued had turned a Corvette into a Yugo.)

Despite my precaution, our effort to couple resulted in a deflationary event. I couldn’t feel a thing. Actually, I take that back. I did feel the condom squeezing me like a latex boa constrictor, then a softening like a leak in a bicycle tire. And then I felt lost. With that thing on, I would have needed a GPS to find my way in.

I'd like to note here that I take good care of my body. My diet is Michael Pollan-approved, my body mass index is 20, and I run more than 1,000 miles a year. But studies have shown that penile sensitivity declines steadily after the teens and 20s, so that by the 40s and 50s, men require more intense stimulation, says Culley C. Carson, III, Rhodes Distinguished Professor of Urology at the University of North Carolina. “And condoms add to the disability, if you will.”

I knew that there was an alternative — at least, there had been once. In 1993, I dated a woman who worked on reproductive issues at the National Institutes of Health. We initially used male condoms, but she soon introduced me to something called a female condom, which we used from then on. Then made of polyurethane, it fit inside the vagina, clinging snugly to the walls, held there by an inner and an outer ring. The sensation wasn’t quite as wonderful as using nothing, but for me, the sense of touch was like 20-20 vision rather than the somatosensory blurring that condoms induce. I marveled at the wonder of this device.

Nonetheless, for nearly the next two decades, I never even heard the phrase, “female condom,” nor did I read it, in the mainstream media or any health news outlet. It made few headlines at the major international AIDS conference this week.

Just prior to the date of the deflationary event, knowing that my hydraulics were not what they'd once been, I called a few drug stores to ask if they had female condoms. No one had heard of them.

New HIV diagnoses in people over 50 had doubled from 2000 to 2009.

Soon after, I began seeing news reports with titles like “Seniors’ sex lives are up — and so are STD cases,” and “Condom Use Lowest…Among Adults Over 40?”

In case you missed all that, there were two major sources. One was an editorial last winter in the Student British Medical Journal, written by Rachel von Simson, a medical student at King’s College London, and Ranjababu Kulasegaram, a consultant genitourinary physician at St. Thomas’ Hospital London. The two investigators found that in the UK, new HIV diagnoses in people over 50 had doubled from 2000 to 2009.

How much of that jump comes from unprotected sex? Not clear. They did not break it down by method of transmission, and von Simson says there are no data on condom use in older adults in the UK: “No one was interested in measuring rates until we already had a problem, making past comparison impossible, and still no one has got around to a large study.”

Data showing that condom use falls off with age comes from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, conducted by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. Condom use among men plummets from 79.1 percent of males ages 14-17, down to 13.7 percent of 45-60 year olds, and just 5.1 percent of men over 60.

But the drop-off in condom use with age does not necessarily point to rampant risk-taking among older Americans. “The most common reasons for lack of condom use," Michael Reece, co-director of the Indiana University’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion, wrote me in an email, are:

* in a monogamous relationship * trying to get pregnant * not worried about pregnancy (not planning to get pregnant but also not a big deal if it happens) * using other forms of contraception.”

Nonetheless, while the risk of most STDs is real for my peers, it is probably far smaller than the risk for younger Americans. In the United States, unlike the UK, the rate of new HIV infections was stable from 2006 through 2009 among all ages and populations except for young African-American men who have sex with men, says Nikki Mayes, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Additionally, I do want to remind you that rates [of STDs generally] continue to be disproportionate among youth,” says Mayes, noting that the rate of new chlamydia infections was two orders of magnitude lower among 45-54 year olds than among 20-24 year olds: 36 cases per 100,000 people in the older group compared to 2,270 cases in the younger group.

Why female condoms haven’t caught on is a mystery to me. Women seem to love them as much as I do.

To assess your own risk of unprotected sex, it is important to note that these demographics are broadly sliced, and individual risks vary. There are discrete populations where STDs are much higher than average, and others where they are lower. For example, the CDC estimates that new cases of HIV among American women range from 2.9 per 100,000 among non-Hispanic white women to 56 per 100,000 among African American women.

For perspective, the annual death rate from car accidents in the United States is 12.9 per 100,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (and lowest in Massachusetts among all states, at 5.6 per 100,000). In my subjective judgment, which is of course influenced by my own demographics, that risk is low. I can’t think of anyone I know, or have had any close connection with, who has died or been seriously injured in a car accident since the 1980s.

But that doesn’t compare directly to the risk of STDs. Since the risk of becoming infected with an STD is additive — you have to add up the risks of catching each of the different STDs — that risk can be much greater than that of death or serious injury by car crash. And the consequences of sexually transmitted infections vary greatly depending on the specific STD, from relatively inconsequential, to a world of trouble, to early death.

Anyway, why female condoms haven’t caught on is a mystery to me. Women seem to love them as much as I do. One user, 56-year-old Darence Wilson, who works at The Women’s Collective, a Washington, DC non-profit that provides HIV care management, prevention services, and policy and advocacy, calls it “the best thing since sliced bread.” (I am not making that up.) “I feel more like I’m not using anything,” she says, noting that in contrast, the male condom feels like the latex that it is.

All nine users who left reviews at a Walgreen’s pharmacy website — mostly women — gave the female condom five stars. “I really like them!” says MediaGal, from Waterbury, CT. “I put it in before dinner, and once in bed, my partner didn't even notice it.” (The female condom can be inserted eight hours before sex.)

“This product exceeded my expecations (sic),” says Deb, of Pontiac, MI. “It is great to be in control of my protection.”

Mary Brewster, program coordinator for the Pediatric AIDS Chicago Prevention Initiative, says that her favorite aspect of the female condom is that lovers can remain in an intimate embrace after male orgasm. The female condom holds itself in place with its rings, unlike the male condom, which has slipped off many a post-coital penis, releasing sperm for a potential rendezvous with the egg. With the female condom, “It isn’t like, oh, my goodness, we’re using a [male] condom, you better remove yourself immediately after,” says Brewster. “It leads to more intimacy.”

Another advantage, the manufacturer notes, is that the female condom covers most of the external genitalia, making transmission of various viruses much less likely than with a male condom, which leaves plenty of opportunity for contact between male and female reproductive epithelium. (Unlike most of your skin, the areas around the genitalia are not impervious to viruses.)

For those with latex allergies, there’s more good news: the modern female condom, the FC2, is made of nitrile. An additional perk: The female condom can be used for anal sex.

Brewster, who promotes the female condom to clients, says that inserting it does take some getting used to. “We always tell clients that within three tries, you have it,” she says, adding that that was true in her case.

[module align="left" width="half" type="pull-quote"]Every dollar spent on the the female condom program saved $20 in future health care costs.[/module]

At $38.95 for a 15-pack on Amazon, some consider the female condom expensive, certainly compared to male condoms that tend to run about 50 cents each. But in the bigger picture, it has proven cost-effective for preventing HIV infection, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Their study involved the “DC Females Condom Program,” in which half a million female condoms were distributed, along with education, to women in Washington DC neighborhoods with high rates of HIV. The Washington, DC Department of Public Health ran the program with support from various community groups. Every dollar spent on the program saved $20 in future health care costs, according to the study, which was just published this month in the journal AIDS and Behavior.

So why didn’t the female condom take off long ago? The polyurethane of the original female condom, which was not replaced until 2008, was harder than the male condom, says Brewster, and “they were kind of noisy, and got a bad rap.” (The noise was a faint crackling sound to which my brain quickly acclimated.)

Brewster also says that the word, “female” in the name of the condom turns off some men (not me!). Additionally, some women “don’t want to touch themselves down there,” she says, adding that it is taboo in some cultures. “In my work as a prevention counselor and HIV tester, I actually ran into this quite often, where women would be put off by the female condom because it required them to touch themselves.”

From my interactions with the Female Health Company, which makes the FC2, I suspect that marketing is not their forte and that they may be short-handed. I’ve phoned them on a handful of occasions, and I’ve usually had to leave a recorded message, which generally gets answered a couple of days later.

Mary Ann Leeper, senior strategic advisor and former president and COO of the Female Health Company, says that most of the interest, effort, and sales of female condoms has been abroad, in countries where big donors have taken an interest.

Meanwhile, the Female Health Company has had established FC2 marketing programs in New York, Houston, and San Francisco, where it is available through CVS stores, Walgreen’s and Planned Parenthood, and new programs are under way in another five jurisdictions. Boston, alas, is not among them. But female condoms can also be obtained on Amazon, for around $1.25 to $4 per unit, not including shipping.

If I were the Gates or the Clinton Foundation, I’d hire a really good public relations firm to get the word out. But I’m not, so I wrote this article.

REFLECTION

Based on the information about the use of female condom, at first, I was hesitant to believe that there is female condom as what I know, only male uses condom. But after reading some information about it, I realized that this kind of safe sex method is actually existing and is used worldwide.

APPLICATION TO OWN EXPERIENCE

Someday, if I have my own family, I may somehow think of using female condom as a means of safe sex protection.

IV. Supporting people with HIV/AIDS

Don't tell anyone about your friend's HIV. A health condition like HIV is personal, private health information. Tell your friend that you will not break his or her trust by telling others.

Be there to talk about your friend's HIV if he or she wants to. It's OK to ask questions about living with HIV. But if your friend doesn't want to talk about it, move on to another topic.

Do things together that can reduce stress. For example, go for a walk, hang out with friends, or just do something together that you both enjoy.

Be a good influence on your friend. Avoid activities that can have bad health effects like smoking (including e-cigarettes), alcohol, and drugs.

If your friend has to miss school because of an appointment or illness, offer to bring homework to him or her.

If people say mean things about your friend's HIV, try to help them understand the facts about HIV. They may be acting this way because they don't know what happens to someone with HIV or how it is spread. If things get too mean, ask a teacher or other adult for help.

V. Risk-Reduction Behavior

          To avoid drugs and sexual risk, you must:

          a. Stay away from bad influence friends

          b. Avoid drinking hard liquors

          c. never get involve with any drug-related activities

          d. Use contraceptives whenever having sex (e.g. condom)

e. Have a monthly check-up with your health care provider regarding sexual risk

To communicate assertively:

Assess your style. Do you voice your opinions or remain silent? Do you say yes to additional work even when your plate is full? Are you quick to judge or blame? Do people seem to dread or fear talking to you? Understand your style before you begin making changes.

Use 'I' statements. Using "I" statements lets others know what you're thinking or feeling without sounding accusatory. For instance, say, "I disagree," rather than, "You're wrong." If you have a request, say, "I     would like you to help with this" rather than, "You need to do     this." Keep your requests simple and specific.

Practice saying no. If you have a hard time turning down requests, try saying, "No, I can't do that now." Don't hesitate — be direct. If an explanation is appropriate, keep it brief.

Rehearse what you want to say. If it's challenging to say what you want or think, practice general scenarios you encounter. Say what you want to say out loud. It may help to write it out first, too, so you can practice from a script. Consider role-playing with a friend or colleague and ask for clear feedback.

Use body language. Communication isn't just verbal. Act confident even if you aren't feeling it. Keep an upright posture, but lean forward a bit. Make regular eye contact. Maintain a neutral or positive facial expression. Don't cross your arms or legs. Practice assertive body language in front of a mirror or with a friend or colleague.

Keep emotions in check. Conflict is hard for most people. Maybe you get angry or frustrated, or maybe you feel like crying. Although these feelings are normal, they can get in the way of resolving conflict. If you feel too emotional going into a situation, wait a bit if possible. Then work on remaining calm. Breathe slowly. Keep your voice even and firm.

Start small. At first, practice your new skills in situations that are low risk. For instance, try out your assertiveness on a partner or friend before     tackling a difficult situation at work. Evaluate yourself afterward and     tweak your approach as necessary.

[64-bitsims]

I might not be the best person to talk about this, but honestly why was the twilight series given so much hate? I was an avid reader in middle/high school-- after I finished mine and my moms books I asked her to buy me Twilight when it was relatively new. After the first book, I honestly begged my mom for the follow ups. It has been the only Saga I’ve gotten the books for immediately when they were released. When it first came out, I read Breaking Dawn 28 times alone.

Regardless of my own stats, seriously, why has it gotten so much shit? It really popularized the vampire/post-apocolyptic trend in the youth of my time; we saw many different supernatural stories getting on the wagon such as the Chosen series, the Night World series, Mortal Instruments, and then branching out to the post-apocolyptic series, The Hunger Games, or Divergent. (Not to just name drop those, those titles really built the prominent adolescent sci-fi books of the time I’m referring to.)

It wasn't until after these books that the post-apocolyptic and science fiction genre really got popular within young adult books. I really loved Remnants too, which came out right before Twilight (roughtly 2006/2007) if i remember correctly, but it didn't get as much traction as it should have/could have. The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare? It largely attributes it's greatness to Twilight breaking through the genres available at the time for teen authors, and the venture into that kind of fiction in general. Twilight broke many boundries between the young person and adult literature, making young adult literature a true staple. I get that it was made from a dream and that might be weird, but all of our imagination has to come from somewhere. Also this is incredibly well known, but Fifty Shades of Grey was based off a fanfic of the Twilight saga and its popular as hell.

Honestly, Twilight did so much to advance the young adult genre that we had to choose from. Until Twilight and its predecessors, all I had read in that kind of magical science fiction realm was The Magic Treehouse or Animorphs. If I wanted to read adult books, I read ADULT BOOKS. There was a level of YA Literature available, but there wasn’t a ton of science fiction until this series. Again, there was Remnants (a great series I highly recommend) and The Giver (another great series) for science fiction, but other than that, there was TTYL, TTFN and its sequeals, The Clique books, and other socially focused novels like that.

Yes, she made the vampires sparkle in the sunlight, but honestly? What was the big deal of that? We knew they couldn’t go into the sunlight in the first place, all Stephanie Meyer did was give us a different reason for it. Vampire lore in general could be edited and turned in any way, since its just that: lore. In her series, sparkling is a reason for them to have stood out without them being ugly and disgusting like previously thought or shown in vampire novels before Twilight.

Up until this point, vampires were know to be dark and mysterious and ugly-- Stephanie Meyer gave a different point of view. Up until her vision of vampires, they were less human, more openly supernatural, and more gross. At the end of the day, vampires are all mythological. This gives us the benefit of the doubt and the leeway to imagine them however we wanted. In her vision, they weren’t ugly-- they seemed like normal humans until the sunlight hit them. In Kristen/PC Cast’s Chosen series, vampires were normal until they were “Chosen” to be fledglings in high school. In the Night World series, the vampires were portrayed as mostly human rather than grotesque imaginative renditions of monsters. This general view of humanization gave the supernatural and science fiction YA genres a foot to stand on, as it made the characters more human and more relatable. Count Chocula and dark soda? A staple for anyone growing up in that time-frame.This all started and branched from Twilight.

How this relates to the Hunger Games/Divergence might be a reach, but hear me out here. Without the dive into science fiction via Twilight and the general popularity of the series, there was no hope for these post-apocolyptic YA series being popular. Without being able to connect to the science fiction genre through vampires or other supernatural entities, how was a story built for young adults able to be portrayed without knowing theres ~something~ going on under the surface of the mainstream ideals we had? The vampire lore and general science fiction gave a hint of mystery and let us remove all of our thoughts of what society was supposed to be like, which allowed the imagination to accept renditions of the post-apocalyptic society.

Adult post-apocalyptic societies were already being portrayed in adult media, such as I Am Robot, I Am Legend, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, which we all read in class. These books can also be shown to have helped push the focus towards these types of books for Young Adults during this time, since we were already mandated to read these types of stories via high school curriculum-- however, as far as my high school went, there were many disclaimers and availability to be taken out of class when reading these books (I’m not kidding; we even had them for To Kill A Mockingbird). This is what makes Twilight so special-- since they weren’t curriculum based, they were spread readily between friends, etc. and so these viewpoints of openness toward the supernatural or different societies were born.

Without the already tapped focus of young adult literature into that realm of thinking, a lot of these books would have been much less popular than they were, like what books such as Remnants faced; it was supposed to have a sequel but as far as I know, that never really took off either. Remnants is honestly one of the best science fiction young adult books I’ve ever read, but it was right before Twilight and the post-apocalyptic genre took off.

Although it was incredibly mainstream, Twilight brought a lot of the science fiction and post-apocalyptic genre books to light by becoming popular and highlighting an area of fiction that had previously never gotten much traction within the Young Adult spectrum of literature. Before this saga took the world by storm, there was really nothing in that specific genre that had become BIG. 

There is a reason Twilight became big-- whether it was the fact that there really wasn’t a ton of science fiction books in the realm of young adult literature vs the want for that type of book, or if it was just that specific niche to fill to get everything else off the ground for future young adult novels/series that we actually craved, the Twilight Saga really did a lot for young adult literature at the time, it doesn’t deserve a lot of the hate it’s gotten.

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Meat ch 1-8 [Epilogue 1]

I’m eating so you get one more of these before I try to salvage a bit of work from today.

We’ve read through the whole of the ‘Candy’ branch of the story. It went places! Spoilers for it below.

Somehow Jane turned into a fascist dictator, Karkat became a heroic resistance leader, a whole lot of ships were made and broken, Dirk killed himself but somehow it was fake (???), John went through multiple existential crises and a failed marriage, Jade destroyed Dave and Karkat’s relationship but ultimately got with Dave, Gamzee was brought back to perform a ‘redemption arc’ and was generally awful but ultimately ended up getting sexually assaulted and then murdered by Vriska, let’s not forget that the cast had three entire fucking babies and one of them ran into her own namesake... and Obama was there. And that’s not even covering all of it...

But that was all in a universe that was ‘inconsequential’; it was in a bubble disconnected from ‘canon’, spread out on the event horizon.

Now we wind the clock back, and consider what happens if John chooses on that day to go forth, recruit a group of other selves from elsewhere in Paradox Space, and fight Lord English, as ‘canon’ dictates he eventually must...

Chapter 1

This one is in second person, and features narrative prompts, which was also true of the first chapter of Candy.

This time, John eats the meat in a really gross way, manages to not puke everywhere, says awkward goodbyes, writes a bunch of letters, and fucks off back into Canon(TM).

Not a lot to say about that! P much what we expected. Wonder where he’s gonna end up?

Chapter 2

I pretty much expected them to dive straight into Canon, but no, in fact similar plots as the first one seem to be abrew. We meet Dave and Karkat - no Jade here, this time - as Dave breaks the news of Jane’s presidential bid.

So, Dave proposes, Karkat should run against her. Which was a possibility floated in the other story... it does feel rather like, at this point, whatever V said, I might have read them in the wrong order.

Dave brings up Obama as a reason he’d want to see a good president - Obama who, in Dave’s timeline, got killed by meteors before he could ‘fix the economy’. Which I guess makes his appearance in the other branch a little less of a non-sequitur, though still fucking weird don’t get me wrong!

DAVE: or maybe not... maybe there was like an escape hatch in the white house that led to his own secret presidential session of sburb

DAVE: what if hes just chillin there now

KARKAT: DAVE, I THINK WE’VE COVERED YOUR “OBAMA’S SECRET SESSION OF SBURB” THEORY WELL ENOUGH ALREADY.

So the Obama chapter was all payoff for a very long term brick joke? This is not the revelation I expected to be having in Meat.

Anyway, Dave basically explains how scary it is to have the human government in charge of troll reproduction, echoing Karkat’s words back at him. Apparently the way the whole weird eugenic system got put in place was that, before Kanaya arrived with the Mother Grub, the government reproduced trolls exclusively ectobiologically.

The other issue is... The Economy. We get a little note that, indeed, this is an alchemy-based post-scarcity economy:

DAVE: ok if shit goes sideways i guess we arent gonna see like raggedy turtles and pauper chess men standing in bread lines or anything

DAVE: thats just the nature of alchemy-based post-scarcity economies the depressions tend to be pretty mild

DAVE: but it will still be bad

DAVE: a healthy economy is fuckin IMPORTANT

DAVE: if for no other reason than it protects the societal context for what it means to be fucking rich, like us

So uh what do they spend money on... I guess there’s services, those can’t be alchemised (except for the fact that ludicrously advanced robotics exists?). someone actually has to work the alchemizer...

Anyway most of this chapter is... electoral strategy.

DAVE: consorts overwhelm the other kingdoms in sheer numbers but due to unscrupulous gerrymandering, all kinds of fucked up voter suppression policies and some electoral “counterbalancing” measures to account for their ridiculous population growth rate their voting power per capita is kind of pathetic

DAVE: also its hard to drive turnout

DAVE: this may come as a shock but legions of easily distracted low information amphibians primarily concerned with eating bugs and farming god damned mushrooms arent the most politically motivated demographic

The chapter ends with Dirk calling Dave... to... cut off his head. Yeah. That joke again.

OK, this sure is a direction. Welcome to Homestuck Electoralism Edition I guess. They probably won’t have quite as many kids?

Chapter 3

John apparently has a specific list of retcon interventions, apopros of Rose. The first is to appear on the battleship during the three year journey in the non-canon, pre-retcon timeline, open a fridge containing Aradia and Gamzee (god I’ve forgotten so much), and take the ring that Aradia is holding (which ring is that again?). Then, John decides to shove Gamzee back in the fridge.

> Do everyone a favor and put an end to his preposterous narrative relevance.

You wisely decide that this clown will lend nothing valuable to the narrative whatsoever if he is allowed to remain outside of your childhood refrigerator. You put both hands on his chest and shove him into the fridge where he belongs. He goes easily, issuing only a pair of weak honks in protest. You slam the fridge shut and resolve to never think about Gamzee Makara again.

So... we’re going with that, huh.

I’ve said enough about the Gamzee Issue already perhaps. But I guess I thought they were going to do more than to bring Gamzee back mostly to mock the idea of ‘redemption arcs’, and ‘punish’ him some more for being a bad character.

Chapter 4

John interrupts two other retcon-Johns, one trying to cancel out the other, a Dave, and a grimbark Jade during some of the shit that happened when Jade got mind controlled or whatever... it’s been a long time...

Dave���s the first recruit, along with Jade. John gives him a rather half-assed explanation about why, after several years of ‘boring adult lives’, they need to go and fight Lord English now.

Chapter 5

Back to the real story: Dave and Karkat’s electoral bid.

Dirk has apparently been... playing the heel in televised rap battles to Jake’s face so that Jake’s endorsement of Jane’s political candidacy would be more effective. Yeah.

Also he disagrees with Dave on fiscal policy. The cad.

He has a rather weird conversation of alternately discouraging and encouraging Dave and Karkat’s opposition. Then, to round out the chapter, V and Cephied deliver... an entire stanza of Jake’s rap. Oh boy.

At the end, Dirk... tranquilizes Jake (????????) to take another call from Rose.

This is the ‘real’, ‘canon’ storyline now? Oh Homestuck.

Chapter 6

John’s assembled a group of god tier kids in his back garden. The alpha and beta kids are present, but there are no trolls.

There’s a rather uncomfortable moment (for the reader, as well as John) when young Roxy hits on adult John.

You weren’t prepared to get passively hit on by the Definitely Not Legal version of a girl you used to have a crush on at the age she was when you first met her, only a few hours after you watched the Actually Legal version of her engage in passionate hand-holding with her possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend.

‘Legal’, really!

Anyway, John feels rather strained watching this rather rushed rehash of the reunion scenes from the original comic. He wonders about the ethics of all this...

You wonder. Do you see these teen versions of your friends as “real”? Are you treating them, at Rose’s behest, as simple puppets? Doing your part to insist they fill friend-shaped recesses in an essential plan to stabilize all else that can be considered important, a distinction no longer applying to them? Do you care at all about whatever fate it may be that you are sentencing these children to? Are you becoming as complicit in the fatalistic evils of Paradox Space as Lord English himself? Are you becoming a monster, John Egbert?

foooof i mean he’s not wrong! let’s call them the ‘child soldiers’ from here on out...

Chapter 7

Time to catch up with Rose. We finally learn what’s wrong with her: she’s ‘ascending’, taking on the full burden of the ‘ultimate self’.

The same is also happening to Dirk, but he is somehow more resilient to it. So that’s what Obama did to Dave, huh.

Also this puts the prompt ‘Dirk: Ascend’ before his suicide in a rather different light.

The pieces are thus falling into place: this is why Dirk was building a Rosebot. Quite possibly the Dirk and Rose who were flying away from Earth C in the Candy timeline actually entered it out of this timeline, which would explain how Dirk was alive.

Chapter 8

Time to see the full events of Caliborn’s ‘Masterpiece’.

This is all Caliborn dropping an extremely corny buildup:

CALIBORN: BUT NOW. THE TIME HAS COME.

CALIBORN: FOR EVERYONE TO SHUT UP ABOUT HOW GREAT MY MASTERPIECE WAS.

CALIBORN: AND THE TIME IS NOW AT HAND...

His laughter turns into a low, cracked gurgle. It spikes towards you in waves, distorts and pitches low. He is beyond pleased with himself, and with the line he is about to deliver.

CALIBORN: FOR YOU ALL TO *BECOME* MY MASTERPIECE!

We need more organs to give that the proper level of scare chord...

End of Epilogue 1

Well that explained at least some of the wild horseshit we experienced in Candy, I guess.

So somehow this is all according to keikaku, which is to say Dirk’s design - he fancies himself as an engineer, putting each piece in its proper place. Rose isn’t entirely in on it, but she will be. We still don’t know why Dirk’s doing this, why he needs Jane to be president, why he’s ultimately going to need a new SBurb session...

As for themes and stuff... this just felt like ‘setting the board’. Rather hastily, even though it’s a full eight chapters. Compared to the emotional heft of some of the stuff that happened in Candy, anyway... this is all plot.

[n-clair]

Aggressive Puns

Scarlet was invited to one of the more popular guys at her new school’s party. Sure. After all, maybe she could make some friends. Well, not exactly. At least 3 people were killed. Ha, chumps. Scarlet chuckled to herself. Participating in a summer camp who had a 7’1 man slaughter the counselors didn’t leave much else for the girl to be scared by. The brunette stood before Ghostface. As he ran at her, she kicked him in the stomach. Lesson one of fighting humans and looking good. Heels. Hurt. Scarlet stepped on his right arm. She had a smug grin on her face. Scarlet raised herself and stomped on his back, aiming for the spine. Before escaping, she gave her chaser the L and taunted him for extra salt in the broken bones, “Coming after me first was a..STUpid idea”

-

Marlin knew the Sawyer residence almost by heart. His friends obsessively watched them every Friday. Marlin put his hand on his chest and sighed. In a way, Marlin wished Stu or Randy were here. They would’ve been out of here in seconds. But then again Stu probably would have died in some ridiculous way. Marlin stood there for a quick second before sneaking around some more, tapping the walls for any holes. He spotted a hole just barely big enough for his figure to fit through in the foundation. Before he escaped, he shouted at the killer. Leatherface was it? Yeah. Leatherface. “BUB-BYE!” the teen yelled before crawling into the hole.

-

Alex was part of a dangerous family. He had to bucher sheep, cows, and people alike. He wasn’t going to go down to some big old angry maniac. He always had his eyes and ears open. The hairs on Alex stood up. His glassy eyes slowly turned behind him. Alex shivered and grabbed his arm. No one was there. At least, not at first glance. Alex kicked Michael Myers in the shin and ran away. He typed something into his phone. “Michael Myers? More like Michael BYE-ers!” said the Hatsune Miku voicebank, parroting what Alex had typed.

-

Virgil didn’t know why he was at a party in some hunky dory summer camp in New Jersey. He was far away from Haddonfield. Away from Michael. As he heard little bits and pieces of conversation he began to see flashes of celestial blue,green, plum purple, pink, and sunburst orange. He stopped dancing as a bright red flash rang through his head. A blood curtling scream. “Oh boy,” he murmured to himself. Virgil slightly rolled his eyes as the big bad undead walking hunk of meat cut through a partier. He unzipped his viola case and revealed his shortsword, Vier Jager. There probably was no point though. Virgil himself cut barely skin-breaking chops into people in his way. He smiled at Jason behind slashed bodies, “Scarlet was wrong about you. Jason Voorhees? More like Jason BOREhees.”

-

Avery was on a roadtrip with his brother. Some of Billy’s friends tagged along too..Unfortunately. Funny enough, they were passing through Springwood. They were like excited kids. After all, Nightmare on Elm Street was one of their favorite movies. “Do you think there’s a motel we could stay in?” one of the boys asked. Avery could barely hear “You’re crazy” and “Shut up Stu” as he grew tired. To stay awake, Avery counted all the birds he saw. 1 pigeon, 2 pigeon, 3 pigeon. Avery stopped counting. He drifted asleep. In Avery’s dream, he was in a hotel hallway. He saw a girl nodding towards what he made out to be Freddy. Some weird wavy-techno-hippy music played through the wall speakers. Avery looked behind him. He knew this movie. If he tried to run he would only get exhausted and have 4 knives through his chest. Instead of 4 knives, Avery was hit in the leg with a metal bat. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d die in my sleep,” he mumbled as he waited for his head to be smashed in.

-

Sona, also known as imp◎ssible, stood over the kneeling child. She chuckled at his joke. Such a young age to die. Then again, his brother 4 years older than him also was going to die. She pretended to feel bad. Sona bent slightly back and grimaced. Seconds later, she went back to her normal posture. Freddy taught her to be taunting and gross, but Sona prefered to be sadistically sweet. Sona had a genuine smile on her face as she slung her bat over her shoulder. Sona bent over the kid. She adjusted the lighting so her shadow would tower over him, “It’s ok. No one can here your screams from here. You’re allowed to cry right now.”

[askullinajar]

A Merry Little Christmas

Fic info:

This is set in the same universe as The Living Ghost and The Shattered Frame, so go read them or this won’t make sense.

Rating: Teen and up. Pairings: Lucy/Lockwood, Holly/Rani, Quill/OC, others if you squint. Word count: 9720. Ao3 link: here.

The gang all get together for Christmas Eve, 10 years on.

A Merry Little Christmas

“… its thin lips seemed to smile at me as we descended into the dark.”

I closed the book – the final instalment of my account of Lockwood & Co.’s greatest adventure – and was met with loud applause. The first chapter had been received well, it seemed, and I felt my chest fill with warmth and pride, overriding the sickly anxiety that was trying to creep up on me as I stood before the room full of people. Phone cameras flashed as admirers rushed to take my picture. I still marvelled at how far and fast technology had advanced since the Problem had begun to die down.

“Does anybody have any questions before we call it a night?” I announced into the microphone atop the lectern.

Hands immediately shot up.

“Are Marissa and Penelope really the same person?” a girl, who looked to be in her early twenties, asked, excitedly. “Did she reverse her age somehow?”

I smiled knowingly. “You’ll have to read the book to find out.”

She lowered her hand a little disappointedly. I picked on the next person.

“Did you ever find out what the fetch was?” a man asked.

“Ah,” I said. “Unfortunately, not; its Source was destroyed with all the others before we could investigate.”

A woman from the back shouted, “Did you ever let the skull out? Is he still around?”

I glanced back to where Skully was slouched in a chair, fidgeting with a Rubix Cube I’d given him to keep him occupied, though, to my dismay, he seemed almost done. I’d brought him with me because my manager (AKA Holly) had told me I might need a bodyguard, what with my increasing success as an author, and Skully was the most formidable person I knew, even if he didn’t look like much. But no one could know who he really was; we couldn’t have the general public getting ideas about bringing back the dead. I didn’t exactly want another Problem on our hands.

“I still see him from time to time,” I said, vaguely.

A girl of about twelve was sat beside her father in the front row, hopping in her seat and waving her hand in the air excitedly.

I gave her a smile. “Yes?”

“Did you and Lockwood ever get together?”

I flushed. “That’s – uh – not really relev–”

“Aw, look at you!”

Must to my dismay, Skully had finished the puzzle and had grown bored. So, of course, he was back to his favourite activity of annoying me.

“Married for five years and you still can’t think of him without blushing!”

I tried to shove him away from the microphone and failed. Damn his supernatural strength.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” Skully informed the girl who was practically shaking in her seat with delight. “I gave her away–”

“You also shoved the best man into the cake,” I grumbled.

“–Barnes officiated–”

“George couldn’t return that suit.”

“–the food was wonderful–”

“I didn’t have wedding cake at my own wedding.”

“Oh, when are you going to get over that?”

“When you pay for the damn cake!”

There was a cough from the audience and I realised we were squabbling like school-children in front of two hundred people. I may have cut my hair down to a pixie cut, and Skully may have grown his out a little and added tattoos and piercings and, recently, stubble, but I guess some things never change. Not even after ten years.

I cleared my throat. “Right, well, I think that’s enough questions for one day. I’m sure you all want to get back to your families. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!”

There was another round of applause, accompanied by some confused expressions, before the crowd began to gather their belongings and got up to leave.

Skully and I headed out the backdoor to avoid the soon-to-be crowded foyer of the Anthony Lockwood Gallery, past the exhibits of case files and ex-Sources, their glass cases now decked in tinsel and fairy lights.

“Wait in the car for me, I need to pee,” Skully requested.

“Thanks for sharing.”

“Not my fault you waffle on so much,” he said. “I mean, do we really need so much info on how ‘dazzling’ A.J.’s smile is? Or how pretty and perfect Holly is? Side-note: you definitely had a crush on her.”

I flushed. “Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Oh, shut up,” I told him. “Go and do your business, I’ll warm up the car.”

I switched on the heating and the radio once I got back to the car, flicking through the stations absently. Then I gave up and switched it off, leaning my forehead against the steering wheel.

Here, alone in the car with nothing but my own thoughts, I felt all the thick, sickening anxiety I’d bottled up during the event bubbling back up to the surface.

I reminded myself that the people in that room had been living and breathing, though their whispering among themselves as I read had gotten my heart racing, wary of Visitors, even after so many years. The din of their conversation as I’d first entered the room had been reminiscent of the hum of a Spirit Gate. But it didn’t make my head scream in pain. It wasn’t the same. That’s what I kept telling myself.

Outside, children bounced along in front of their parents, gushing about my stories and the place London had once been. They were lucky they never had to experience it. Lucky they were allowed to just be children. They could go to school, join clubs, make friends and visit each other’s houses like normal kids could. They didn’t have to worry that they might never see those friends again. That any day could be their last.

I watched as they flopped down in the snow to make snow-angels, or gleefully tossed snowballs at one another, giggling and squealing. It was beginning to get dark, but no one raced to get home. They didn’t need to; without the Orpheus Society continuously stirring up the Other Side, Visitors had started appearing less and less. They barely showed up at all now. Nothing to worry about. I’d had a hand in that.

I felt my breathing even out.

“Want me to drive?”

Skully had returned and had one arm leaning on the roof of the car as he peered at me through the open passenger door.

I scoffed. “Thanks, but I’d rather not die.”

“I can drive!” Skully protested.

“You drive a motorcycle. You cannot apply the same rules to a car.”

Skully huffed but slipped into the passenger seat. I don’t think he missed me hurriedly wiping my eyes on my sleeve. He was silent for a moment as I started the car, then, “I’m proud of you, you know.”

I glanced across at him. “What?”

“You heard,” he said, turning towards the window to avoid eye contact.

“Yeah, but can I get it in writing or something?”

“Shut up.”

I couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t show affection openly very often, so when he did it was always a special moment for me. I’d let it slide for now, though.

I gave his cheek a prod. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”

“The beard,” I clarified. “Why are you growing a beard?”

“Oh, you know,” he said, casually, “I figured, if I start now, I can have a Dumbledore-level beard by the time I’m eighty.”

“Couldn’t be bothered to shave?”

“Yep. Though now I’ve said the Dumbledore idea, I’m kinda digging it.”

I rolled my eyes and turned the radio back on, tuning in to some Michael Bublé, coz why not? It was Christmas, after all.

Truthfully, Skully’s new beard looked to me less like an ‘I couldn’t be bothered to shave this morning’ beard and more of an ‘I haven’t had the energy to get out of bed for three days, let alone shave’ beard, going off what my husband was like. I didn’t mention it, as he hated it when I did, but I did make a mental note to check how much of his meds he had left. I didn’t want a repeat of the incident a few years back when he’d forgotten to renew his prescription.

“You’re still staying over tonight, right?” I said.

“Are your sister and her gremlins still there?”

“Mary and her children?” I said. “Yes. And they want to meet you.”

“Wasn’t she at the wedding?”

“You’re thinking of my other sisters,” I told him. “Mary went into labour and couldn’t be there.”

Skully groaned. “Do I have to?”

“Christmas is for family,” I said. “The family you actually like, at least. Unless you’d rather stay in your flat alone?”

“I like my flat,” he protested. “It has a great vantage point for pouring custard on carol singers.”

“We have presents for you.”

He paused. “Okay, I guess I’ll come.”

I nodded. “And is Charlie coming for the party tonight?”

Charlie was Skully’s twenty-four-year-old flatmate, and the human embodiment of a ray of sunshine, if a little lax on the social skills. By all rights, Skully and Charlie should not have gotten along, and I didn’t know the full story of their friendship, though they’d apparently disliked each other when they’d first met in the forensics lab where they worked. Nowadays, though, they were practically inseparable. Something about it being ‘nice to have someone to hang around with when all your gross allosexual friends insist on doing couple things’.

Skully shrugged. “I’ll ask again when we get to my place.”

I pulled the car up outside his block of flats a few minutes later.

“Ah,” he said, patting his pockets as we stepped out onto the curb, “forgot my keys.”

“You are a mess of a person,” I told him, pressing the buzzer for his flat.

“Yeah, they ain’t gonna answer that,” he said. “But, no worries.” He whipped out his phone and shot a quick text to Charlie.

After a good two minutes of standing out in the cold waiting for a reply, he gave up and called them instead. The call ended abruptly as it was apparently rejected on the other end. Then a text came through: Why are you calling me?

“There we go,” said Skully, texting back a quick reply, and a few seconds later, the intercom buzzed to let us in.

Charlie was standing in the doorway when we got upstairs, donned in pastel green dungarees and miss-matched socks, the light from the hallway behind them making their bronze curls glow gold. They narrowed their sky-blue eyes at Skully. “I don’t like phone calls.”

“Made ya look at your phone, though,” he replied.

“Mean,” said Charlie as he slipped past them and down the hall to get ready to go. “Hello, Lucy.”

“Hi, Charlie,” I said, slipping into the flat and shutting the door behind me. The flat was a cluttered mess of overflowing bookshelves and video game boxes littering the floor, but at least there didn’t seem to be any dirty dishes lying around. “Coming to the party tonight?”

“Party,” Charlie repeated, wrinkling their nose.

“A small party,” I clarified. “Just close friends of mine. Mostly people you know.”

They hummed. “My brother’s picking me up at ten.”

“Working late?” I said.

“He’ll be done in the flower shop by now, but then he’s volunteering at the soup kitchen,” Charlie replied.

“Can you get him to pick you up from my house?” I said. “Don’t want to be here alone until then, do you?”

“I can look after myself,” Charlie said as if this was something they had to clarify a lot.

“I didn’t mean–”

“Don’t leave me alone with the couples!” Skully called before coming out of the bathroom, now cleanly shaven. “I’ll let you follow me around the whole time, or just hide in the library.”

Charlie just hummed again.

“And they have pets,” Skully finished.

“’kay, I’ll come,” said Charlie.

“Did you get your things?” I asked Skully. He swore and ran back down the hall.

I gave Charlie the address and they sent a text to their brother, before retrieving an already-packed backpack.

“Got everything?” I asked.

That was probably the wrong thing to say because Charlie immediately plonked down on the floor and began unpacking the bag to make sure.

Skully came back out of his room.

“Remember Anthony wants us all wearing Christmas jumpers?” I said.

He groaned loudly and turned back.

“I don’t have a Christmas jumper,” said Charlie.

“Borrow one of mine,” Skully called from his room. “A.J. keeps buying them for me.”

He came back into the hall, now wearing one of the least garish jumpers Lockwood had given him over the years, one with the words ‘Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho’ scrawled across it, and tugged a fleecy jumper decorated with robins over Charlie’s head, who squeaked in surprise.

“Soft,” they said, once their arms were through the overly long sleeves.

“Keys?” I asked Skully.

He ran back to his room.

On the floor, Charlie stared at their laptop for a good minute before putting it in their bag, as if trying to convince themself it would still be there even once the bag was closed.

“How do you two ever get anything done?” I remarked.

“Hyperfocus,” said Charlie, simply. I decided not to tell them it had been a rhetorical question.

Skully returned, this time with everything he actually needed. I flicked the lights off on our way out, then Charlie flicked them back on and off again, then again with their other hand, for symmetry, I guess. Skully let them lock the door, and then we were off.

The car journey to Portland Row was mostly filled with Skully and I belting out Mariah Carey and Slade while Charlie happily hummed along and swayed in time to the music in the back, staring out the window at all the beautiful displays of Christmas lights adorning the houses and shops we passed. We weren’t half bad if I do say so myself.

Portland Row was only a ten-minute drive from Skully’s flat, and the front door opened as we stepped out of the car.

“Dog!” Charlie half-shrieked as a golden blur shot down the garden path and nearly knocked me over.

“Calm down, Apollo. I’ve not been gone that long!” I laughed, giving him a scratch behind his floppy ears before he bounded over to Charlie and Skully to beg for tummy rubs.

“Auntie Lucy! Auntie Lucy!”

I looked up as my little niece, Sophie, hurtled towards me in a pretty pink princess dress that was mostly covered in flour.

“What’s gotten you so mucky?”  I said.

“We’ve been making gingerbread with mummy and uncle Tony!” she informed me, proudly.

“Ooh! I can’t wait to try it!” I gushed, picking her up and propping her on my hip to walk up to the house, where Lockwood was waiting in the doorway with my two-year-old nephew, Michael, sat on his shoulders, also in a princess dress. He did like to copy his sister a lot.

“Hello, my love,” Lockwood greeted, bending down a little to give me a peck on the lips, then a little further so I could kiss Michael on the forehead. “How’d the reading go?”

“Pretty well,” I replied. “Managed to keep Skully from interrupting for most of it.”

“Most of it?” Lockwood repeated with an amused smile. I rolled my eyes in reply.

“Down,” Michael said, patting Lockwood’s mop of hair. He complied and set him down on the carpet, and he promptly waddled down the hall and into the living room. I set Sophie down, too, so she could go after him.

Mary appeared from the kitchen a moment later, drying off her hands on her apron. “There you are, Luce. Keep an eye on the kids a sec, I wanna get changed before your party guests arrive.”

“Two are already here,” I said, nodding outside to where Charlie currently had their face buried in Apollo’s fur, and Skully was trying to drag them into the house. “Anthony’s uncle and his flatmate.”

Mary hopped over and stood on her tiptoes to peer over my shoulder.

“Oh my god, Luce! You didn’t tell me he was gorgeous!”

“Don’t you dare,” I told her, but she was already rushing upstairs to get changed.

“Remind me to keep her away from the mistletoe,” I muttered to Lockwood, who was snickering behind his hand.

Apollo bounded back into the house a moment later, followed by Skully who was carrying Charlie in front of him, his hands hooked under their elbows.

“Hi, Charlie,” said Lockwood, as Skully set them down and shut the front door. “Haven’t seen you since the Cambridge Cannibal case.”

“A cannibal?!” Sophie exclaimed, peering out of the open living room doorway.

“I still say he was a zombie,” said Charlie, clearly excited about the conversation topic. “He only ate the brains, see? He boiled them up in acetic acid, so they’d stay intact and–”

“Let’s not give the children nightmares,” I interrupted. Not that it was the most disturbing case my friends had worked on.

Since his Talent had faded and the Problem had decreased, Lockwood had gone through a bit of a crisis and had ended up achieving many feats before he finally decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He had opened up a fencing academy, which he had run himself while I had attended art school, before handing over the reins to Quill. Then we had travelled the world together, starting where his parents had left off. That had been fun while it lasted, but, after the incident, we were a little wary to leave London for too long. Maybe we would again, one day.

Now, Lockwood helped out with detective investigations from time to time, partnering up with Detective Inspector Rani Malik-Munro, under the supervision of Chief Constable Barnes, to solve gruesome murders, with the help of their friends in the forensics department.

The oven timer beeped in the kitchen and Lockwood rushed off to get the gingerbread out of the oven.

“Watch the kids,” I told Skully, following after him.

The ‘gingerbread’ that Lockwood set on the counter looked very… flat. And it had a strange smell, which was making me feel kind of queasy.

“So, how much input did you have with these?” I asked, peering over his shoulder at the demonic biscuits. “Just… out of curiosity.”

“I did most of it while Mary was handling the kids,” said Lockwood. “Do they really look that bad?”

Charlie approached and gave them a sniff. “You used salt instead of baking powder.”

“How would you even know that?” said Lockwood. “Besides, they’re basically the same thing, right?”

“And paprika instead of ginger.”

“Right,” I said. “How about we just let the kids decorate them and then never eat them ever?”

Lockwood made a pouty face.

“Aw, don’t sulk,” I said, ruffling his hair. “I’ll make them with you, next time.”

Skully came into the kitchen with a giggling child dangling upside down in each hand and Apollo at his heals. “A.J. ruin the cookies?”

“Jesus Christ, Jim. Put them down,” I scolded.

“Just keeping them out of trouble,” he said, setting them in a heap on the floor. They immediately scrambled to their feet and tried to run off, but Skully shut the kitchen door just in time. “When’s dinner? I’m starving.”

“When everyone’s actually here,” I told him. “I should probably start getting it ready.”

“Did you remember to eat today?” Lockwood asked him.

Skully seemed to think about it for a minute. “I had a can of coke this morning.”

Lockwood pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Hey!” Skully defended. “I’m probably still doing better than Charlie.”

“I had the chocolate from my advent calendar,” said Charlie. “That’s actually food.”

“Damn,” said Skully.

“Who thought it was a good idea for you two to live together?” said Lockwood.

“We just get distracted,” said Charlie.

“By video games?” I guessed.

“The universe’s greatest creation,” said Skully.

I heard the stairs creaking, signalling Mary’s return.

“Now remember,” I said in a hushed voice, so the children wouldn’t be able to overhear. “I haven’t told her about the whole Skully being brought back to life thing, so no one mention it. She’s terrible at keeping secrets.”

“Understood,” said Skully.

Mary entered the kitchen a moment later, looking very pretty with festive-red lipstick and her blonde hair elegantly curled.

“Sorry about running off,” she said. “Didn’t want to introduce myself covered in washing-up water.” She held a hand out to Charlie, who was closer. “I’m Mary!”

“Charlie,” said Charlie. “I don’t like shaking hands.”

“That’s fair enough,” said Mary, lowering her hand. “Do you have preferred pronouns, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Any,” said Charlie.

“I’ll stick with ‘them’, in that case.” Charlie smiled and nodded, and Mary turned to Skully. “And you must be… Jim? James?”

“Skully,” said Skully.

Mary twirled a finger through a golden ringlet. “Why do they call you that?”

“I was dead for a hundred and forty years.”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “Ha-ha! That’s just him trying to be funny!” I said as Mary gave me a confused look. “We call him that coz… uhh…” I looked towards Charlie and Lockwood for help.

“He works in a morgue,” Charlie supplied, which, while it made sense, was a little more morbid than I was hoping for.

“…Right,” said Mary.

“Why don’t you help me get dinner ready?” I said, changing the subject. “I’m sure this lot can handle the kids for a bit.”

“Oh, anything to get away from these little monsters,” Mary said, sticking her tongue out at the children, who giggled and ran off, dragging Lockwood and Skully with them, with Charlie and Apollo following behind.

Mary and I set about preparing a beef Wellington, chatting idly as we did so. It was almost as if we were back home again, preparing dinner with our other siblings while our mother sat watching TV.

“Anyone spending Christmas with mum this year?” I asked, casually.

“Not that I know of,” Mary replied. “Think she finally blew it when she exploded at Sam for coming out. And after all that tripe about wanting a son.”

“Maybe I should tell her I’m bi, just to add the icing on the cake,” I said.

Mary laughed. “Do it. She’d implode, it’d be hilarious. Ever gonna introduce her to these guys, by the way?”

I snorted. “Oh, hell no. Because, and I am not exaggerating when I say this, Skully would literally kill her. And Anthony would probably help.”

“You told them about her?”

“Of course I told them,” I said. “Anthony’s my husband. And Skully… well… he understands about that sort of thing.”

Mary nodded in understanding.

I popped the Wellington in the oven, and was just about to set the oven timer, when the doorbell rang, signalling the arrival of our first guests. I opened the door to find Holly and Rani, both looking stunning with Holly in a pine-green dress and Rani wearing a matching hijab. Rani and her family didn’t celebrate Christmas, but she still tagged along to parties and such with Holly. Mostly for the free food.

Lockwood appeared in the hallway after hearing us happily greet each other. He pouted at Holly. “You’re not wearing a Christmas jumper.”

“I’m not putting on one of those hideous things,” said Holly.

“This isn’t hideous!” Lockwood cried, gesturing to the demonic looking reindeer knitted into his jumper. Holly exchanged a look with me that clearly said ‘how do you put up with him?’

George and Flo were the next to arrive. George had not changed much at all over the years, though he and Skully got on a little better. He now worked at the local university, giving lectures on the science and history behind the Problem and Visitors, and putting his students to good use experimenting on Sources that still retained some psychic charge. He was the type of professor who turned up to lectures late, put memes in his presentations, and replied to carefully thought out, grammatically correct emails from students with ‘k’.

Flo, however, was much cleaner than her days spent as a relic-woman. Her long hair was still an unbrushed mess, and she still sported a lot of dirt beneath her nails, but that was a result of excavating historical artefacts rather than digging through river sludge. There wasn’t much money in being a relic-woman nowadays, anyway. And at least her new job was legal.

Quill showed up next, having come straight from a Fittes reunion party. He informed us that his old teammates were doing quite well for themselves; Bobby was well on his way to getting a PhD, and Kat was teaching kids at a nearby primary school.

Barnes and George’s mum showed up at the same time, quite by coincidence.

“You’re looking rather dashing today, Monty.”

“You’re looking quite lovely yourself, Martha.”

“I’m gonna throw up,” George mumbled, and Holly smacked him lightly on the arm.

We all crowded into the living room. Charlie, a little overwhelmed by all the people, sat themself in a corner beside the Christmas tree, and Apollo draped himself across their lap. Skully sat half in front of them, like a sort of shield, and the rest of us squeezed onto the chairs and sofas. Michael curled up into Mary’s side, having gone all shy in the presence of new people, and Sophie rushed about showing everyone all the drawings she had done that day before she finally settled down and crawled onto Skully’s lap. She had become rather taken with him.

“So, what’s everyone been up to?” Lockwood said, passing around tea and biscuits that he hadn’t made himself. I accepted the tea but declined the biscuits; I was still feeling a little queasy. “I feel like it’s been forever since we’ve all been together.”

“Why don’t you tell everyone about Lucas, Quill,” said Rani, slyly, sipping her tea.

Quill’s face and ears turned bright red, but he shrugged and sipped his tea, idly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ooh, who’s Lucas?” said Mary, eagerly. She was always one for gossip.

“Nobody,” said Quill.

“Just some super gorgeous guy who goes to all of his classes,” said Holly, grinning mischievously.

“Shut up,” said Quill, avoiding eye contact with all of us.

“Wait,” said Flo, pausing in the middle of piling sugar into her tea. “Dark hair? Tattoos? Looks kinda like he belongs in Asgard?”

“Sounds like him,” said Rani. “From all the very detailed descriptions Quill’s been giving us.”

“Shut up,” Quill said again.

“Do you know him?” George said eagerly, ignoring Quill.

“When I filled in for Quill the other week,” said Flo. “He was very disappointed when he saw me instead of him. No one else seemed to mind much.”

“He was?” said Quill, sitting up and seeming very much interested all of a sudden. “What did he say?”

Flo smirked. “Buy me some of that posh strawberry liquorice and I’ll tell you.”

“You are the worst,” said Quill.

“Just tell the boy how you feel, dear,” Mrs Cubbins advised. “Life’s too short to keep beating around the bush, take it from me. I wish I’d had more time with George’s father.”

“Or,” said Skully, “you could try giving him your dead relatives necklaces until he gets the hint.”

“Hey!” Lockwood protested. “That worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“It wasn’t exactly the most straight-forward way,” I reasoned. “I mean, the first time, you told me to shut my mouth and then ran off.”

“Smooth move, A.J.,” said Skully.

“I was nervous!” Lockwood cried.

I can’t remember what we talked about after that. Just life, I guess. George kept throwing in puns, and I kept whacking him with cushions. When you’ve known someone for a long time, when you get along really well, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been apart. We all had different lives to live, and it was hard to see each other sometimes, but it didn’t matter in the end. Because, when you know someone that well, you can pick up exactly where you left off. Conversation and laughter flows. There are no awkward silences, no feeling left out and insecure. You can tell all the terrible jokes you want and know someone will laugh because these are the people who understand you, who love you. I had missed them all more than they could know.

I had brought the hellish gingerbread in after people had started to arrive, so we ended up sitting around the coffee table, helping the children decorate them, though Charlie had wandered off at this point, maybe to find the cat.

Sophie proudly showed me the mess of white, green, and black icing she had made. “It’s the skull from your stories!”

“Wow!” I gushed. “It looks just like him! Is he your favourite?”

Sophie nodded happily.

“A wise choice,” said Skully. “Quite possibly the best character ever written.”

I elbowed him again.

Lockwood had Michael sat on his lap and was helping him decorate a gingerbread dinosaur. He was so kind and patient with him, and I got a strange warm feeling in my chest seeing them like that.

“Can we eat them yet?” said Sophie, once all the cookies were suitably drenched in icing.

“Ooh, I don’t know about that,” said Mary. “They’re so good, don’t you think Father Christmas will want them all for himself?”

“Will he be able to eat them all?” said Sophie, uncertainly.

“He’ll need the energy to fly around the whole world, won’t he?” said Lockwood.

“I guess so,” said Sophie, a little disappointedly.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “we’ll make a gingerbread house tomorrow to eat all for ourselves. How about that?”

Sophie seemed happy enough with that arrangement, which was good, as there was no way in hell I was about to let her eat those death cookies.

Charlie came back a while later while we were all in a heated discussion about High School Musical, aside from Barnes and Mrs Cubbins, who were entertaining the children. Don’t ask me how the conversation had turned to that because I have no idea.

Charlie stood sort of awkwardly to the side while we were arguing.

“That song was totally a euphemism! I mean, he was literally dancing the whole way through it!”

“But wasn’t Chad into Taylor?”

“Old news. He and Ryan literally swapped clothes. There is no heterosexual explanation for that!”

“Guys, shut up,” Skully interrupted, having noticed Charlie. “What’s up?”

“Well, there’s a lot of smoke pouring out of the kitchen.”

I leapt to my feet and ran to retrieve a very black beef Wellington from the oven while the others charged around the house, throwing open doors and windows to let the smoke out.

“I think you forgot to set the oven timer,” said Quill.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Is your smoke alarm broken?” said Barnes.

“Uhh,” I said. “I might have thrown that down the stairs at one point.”

Barnes gave me one of his disappointed looks. “You’re lucky the kitchen didn’t catch fire. And you could have said something sooner, Charlie.”

“People sometimes get angry when I interrupt,” they said, flapping their arms at there sides until Apollo bumped his head into their hand and Skully gave their shoulder a squeeze.

“Oh, don’t worry yourself, dear,” said Mrs Cubbins. “No harm done. I could whip something else up?”

“It’s fine mum,” said George. “We can just order pizza or something.”

We were all ravenous by the time the pizza arrived, but something about the smell finally set me off, and I had to rush upstairs to throw up in the toilet. Maybe I was coming down with something.

I headed back downstairs once I’d brushed my teeth and was feeling a little better, and realised Charlie had disappeared again, so I grabbed one of the least-offensive pizzas smell-wise, and headed back upstairs, where I found them sat on the bed in Skully’s (once Jessica’s) old room, with Apollo curled up next to them. They were rhythmically stroking a black cat that sat curled up on their lap, which was purring contentedly.

“You found Artemis, I see,” I said, placing the pizza box on the bedside table and climbing up onto the bed beside Apollo. “She doesn’t usually like strangers.”

“Understandable,” said Charlie, quietly.

“Bit much for you?” I said.

“Just needed a little break,” they said. “It’s loud down there. Apollo keeps trying to lie on me.”

“He’s trained to,” I said, petting the dog’s head. “When he senses someone’s sad or stressed. He’s a good boy, aren’t you Apollo?” His tail wagged happy in the Artemis’s face, and she gave me a cold stare.

“But that’s, like, my permanent state of being,” said Charlie.

I laughed at that. “That’ll be why he’s been following you around all day then.”

Charlie smiled and scratched Apollo’s chin. His leg pumped against the mattress and his tail wagged even more.

“Sorry about dinner,” said Charlie.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It was my fault for not setting the timer… and for chucking the smoke alarm down the stairs. Just, for future reference, the kitchen nearly catching fire is one of the things you’re allowed to interrupt for.”

“Ugh, so many rules,” said Charlie.

“You’ll get used to them one day,” I said.

“Getting there,” said Charlie. “Oh, I should probably say congratulations, shouldn’t I?”

I frowned. “For my new book?”

“No,” said Charlie, looking a little confused now. “That, too, but…” They made an uncertain gesture towards my stomach. “Do you… not know yet?”

I could suddenly hear the blood rushing in my ears. “Know what?”

Charlie clapped their hands over their face, hunched over, and let out a little whine. “Messed up.”

“Know what, Charlie?” I repeated, more urgently.

“I might be wrong!” they blurted, voice sounding a little panicky. “I just sort of… have a sense for those kinds of things.”

“What kind of things?”

They began fidgeting with a loose thread in the bed sheets. “Like, I knew Skully had some connection to Visitors, and I know someone probably died in this room… and I know when people are pregnant. It’ll be a girl, I think. She’ll be a little late.”

I stared at them.

“I might be wrong,” Charlie repeated. “Just… maybe take a test.”

“What’s the likelihood that you’re wrong?” I said.

“Statistically…” they said. “Zero. I never have been.”

I swallowed and leaned back against the bedpost, my mind racing. I’d have to take a test as soon as possible, just to be sure. And if it was positive? I had no idea what I’d do. Would I even make a good mother? My own had been abusive and neglectful, spending Christmas alone this year because her children had finally had enough of her. What if I ended up like that?

But then I thought of Mary. My wonderful sister, who’d had the same upbringing, and yet, was an amazing mum. Granted, she’d once called me sobbing because she’d spanked Sophie for being naughty and thought she was turning into our mother, but she’d learnt from that mistake. She never laid a hand on her kids again, and she always had time for them. Teaching them right from wrong, gushing proudly over their messy drawings, oohing and aahing when they babbled on to her in mostly gibberish.

She made sure to tell her kids she loved them every single day, something our own mother never did.

And she’d done it all on her own, never being one for long-term relationships. I had Anthony, my incredible husband, who was kind and patient with my niece and nephew, and they adored him in return. We’d been through so much together, and no matter what, I knew he’d always stay by my side. If I slipped up, he’d steer me back in the right direction. He’d be a wonderful father.

The bubble of fear that had risen in my chest didn’t disappear, but it was joined by a bubble of excitement, and I let out a breath of air I didn’t know I’d been holding. Everything would turn out okay. It always did.

Charlie was looking at me like I might explode any second, so I turned my head and smiled at them, and they visibly relaxed.

The door opened and Skully slipped in. “Oh! Hiding, too? Think I’ll join.” And he clambered onto the between me and Charlie, poking Apollo out of the way with his foot. The dog didn’t stay away long, though, and clambered up onto Skully’s lap as he slung his arms over mine and Charlie’s shoulders. I leaned into him, gratefully. After the internal crisis I’d just had, I needed a hug.

“Why are you hiding?” I asked him.

“Your sister keeps trying to ambush me with mistletoe.”

I snorted. “I’ll have a word with her later. For some reason, she thinks you’re attractive.”

“Who doesn’t?” he said. “I’m bloody beautiful. Always have been. It’s a fact of life.”

“I wish I had your level of self-confidence,” I said. “But even when you were a mouldy skull in a jar?”

“Especially then,” he affirmed. “Have you seen my bone structure? Don’t deny it, you wanted a piece.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said, shoving away from him. “I am terminating our friendship.”

“Nah, you’d miss me too much,” he said. I chose not to respond to that.

“I’m gonna give Apollo a walk before it gets too late,” I said, causing the dog to leap from the bed and hop excitedly around my legs. “Want anything from the shops?”

“Pudding,” said Charlie.

“You’ve not even had dinner yet,” said Skully, picking up the pizza box and shoving it in Charlie’s face. I rolled my eyes and left them to their bickering.

Thank goodness the Problem was over, or twenty-four-hour stores wouldn’t exist.

I strolled leisurely through the snowy park, grateful to be out in the fresh air away from the stench of the pizza. I was pretty sure it had been the smell of barbecue sauce that had made me nauseous.

I peered at the little cardboard box in my hands as Apollo ran around like a maniac, shovelling his face into the snow, trying to pick up fallen tree branches twice his size, barking at nothing. Two bands for pregnant, one for not. Seemed simple enough. I just had to pee on a little plastic stick, and five minutes later, my whole life could be changed forever. No biggie.

I feared for my friends’ relationships when I got home and heard abuse being shouted from the living room, but, as it turned out, they were just playing Mario Kart. Charlie, Skully, George, and Flo racing while the others watched.

“Did you just drop a banana in my face?!”

“Ooh, careful, Charlie! George just sent a leader bomb.”

“For the last time, Lockwood, it’s called a blue shell!”

“It’s a bomb that targets the leader.”

“It’s a shell that is blue!”

“CHARLIE, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

That last part had been because Charlie had driven off the side of the road so that the blue shell had targeted second place (AKA Skully) instead. Charlie just smirked as they were placed back on the track and drove smoothly across the finish line in first place.

“Jesus Christ, guys,” I said, alerting them to my presence. “I thought there was a murder going on. Where’s Mary and the kids?”

“She’s giving them a bath before bed,” said Holly.

“Care to join us, Luce?” said Quill. “We’re up next.”

“Maybe in a sec,” I said, letting Apollo off his lead so he could greet the others as if he hadn’t seen them in months. “Need to pee first.”

I had to use the bathroom in my old attic bedroom, seen as Mary and the kids were using the main one.

Five minutes seemed to last for an eternity.

I exited the bathroom and perched on my old bedroom windowsill to wait, where the skull’s jar had once sat. I had never imagined that ten years later he’d been hanging around with everyone downstairs, annoying them all with his comments that, once upon a time, only I had been able to hear.

I looked around the room. Over in that corner, Annie Ward’s ghost had once hovered over her fallen locket that I’d taken from her corpse, and it was where Lockwood and I had fought her off with an iron children’s mobile. I wondered if he still had that.

The bed, that was where Lockwood had left his mother’s necklace for me. The symbol of love and devotion that I still wore around my neck to this day. Now I was waiting to find out if I’d be having his child.

Oh, how times change.

How we’d grown.

The timer on my phone chimed to alert me that five minutes was up. I took a deep breath. I looked at the test.

Two bands.

“We need to put the milk and cookies out for Santa!” Sophie insisted, trying to prolong bedtime as long as possible. “And carrots for the reindeer!”

“Santa doesn’t like milk,” said Skully. “Santa likes beer.”

“I think Santa’s a little more partial to red wine, actually,” said Holly.

I shot them both an unimpressed look. “I don’t think Santa should be drinking and driving.”

“Alcohol’s gross anyway,” said Charlie. “Santa would probably prefer chocolate milk.”

“I’m pretty sure ‘Santa’ is lactose intolerant,” said Skully.

“Only a little,” said Charlie. “And it’s Christmas, so Santa’s allowed.”

“I think we should compromise and give Santa Bailey’s,” said George.

“With an extra drop of whiskey, perhaps,” his mother added.

“Ooh, Santa does like Bailey’s,” said Mary.

Sophie was looking very confused. My friends were all terrible people.

I ignored all of them and poured Santa a glass of coke, which I allowed Sophie to put on the mantelpiece.

“There,” said Mary. “Now bed. Michael’s already asleep coz he’s a good boy.”

“But mummyyy,” Sophie whined, “I wanna see Santa!”

“Santa won’t come if he knows you’re awake,” said Mary.

“Santa eats the children who stay awake,” said Skully. Sophie stared at him in horror.

“NO! No, he doesn’t!” I said.

“No, you’re right,” said Skully, thoughtfully. “I’m thinking of his brother.”

“No one eats children!” I said firmly. “He’s just trying to scare you, Sophie.”

Suddenly, there came the sounded of a loud bang from above. Outside, snow began to fall and the water vapour on the window crystallised into intricate patterns that spread across the glass.

“Uh oh,” said Skully, “looks like he’s here already. You better go to bed before he eats you.”

Sophie squealed and ran out of the room, clambering up the stairs to George’s old room where she and Michael would be sleeping. Mary gave me a confused look before going after her to tuck her in and make sure she wasn’t scarred for life.

I turned to Skully and crossed my arms, unimpressed. “You better not have broken anything.”

“Just knocked over a bookshelf, no biggie,” he said, shrugging.

“In the attic?” I said. “You remember you’re sleeping in there, right?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll sort it out before bed.”

Barnes and Mrs Cubbins went home shortly afterwards, saying they were too old to stay up as late as us ‘youths’, and the rest of us sat around playing games like scrabble and jenga and charades, like hard-core ‘youths’ do.

We decided that the forfeit for losing anything was to eat one of the cookies, which, aside from nearly breaking my teeth, tasted about as nice as I would imagine a cookie that had been shoved up Satan’s arsehole to taste like. To put it simply, they weren’t the best.

As it turned out, Skully and Charlie had both learned some sign language for the occasions when Charlie became non-verbal due to stress, something none of us knew until after they’d won every single game of charades. Cheats.

After that, we just ended up doing our own things. Mary gossiped away to Quill about people he’d never heard of, and he listened attentively, probably just glad to not be the only extra wheel. George and Flo battled each other on Mario Kart, while Holly and Rani spun each other around by the fire to Christmas tunes, all giggly.

“Care for a dance, Luce?” Lockwood asked me.

“Maybe later,” I told him. Skully had wandered off and had been gone a good half hour now. It always worried me when he did that.

I found him lying on the floor in the library. Thankfully, Charlie was with him, as were Apollo and Artemis. Artemis was lying beneath the Christmas tree, pawing at the ornaments, while Apollo had draped himself over Skully’s chest. Charlie had set up their laptop by Skully’s head, which was playing a Christmas film, and they were sat on his other side, doodling on his arm which rested on their lap.

The tip of the felt pen rose and fell over the single raised scar that marred Skully’s arm, as Charlie drew crude little stars and hearts and skulls in bright green ink.

“Alright down there?” I asked as I took a seat on the floor beside Charlie and watched them draw. It was strangely soothing.

“I don’t get why the Whos hate the Grinch,” said Skully, not taking his eyes off the computer screen. “He’s so relatable.”

“They’re probably just racist,” I replied.

“Probably.”

“Done,” said Charlie, putting the lid back on the felt pen.

Skully raised his arm in front of his face to inspect the doodles. “Disgusting,” he said. “Do the other arm.”

“I want a go,” I said, picking up the pen.

“No, you’ll just draw a penis or something,” Skully protested.

“That’s something you’d do,” I said. “I’m way more mature.”

As I drew, Charlie lay down on their stomach by the tree and waggled some tinsel in front of Artemis for her to try and catch. “Can we get a cat, Skull?”

“We can barely remember to feed ourselves,” said Skully.

“But cats scream at you when they’re hungry,” Charlie reasoned.

“True,” said Skully. “We can check the shelters in January for all the discarded Christmas present kitties.”

“That’s sad,” said Charlie, sounding genuinely very upset for the shelter cats. “Stop being depressing.”

I put the cap back on the pen. “Finished!”

Skully inspected my drawing. “Okay, what is that if not a penis?”

“It’s a work of art,” I said. “All those years of life-drawing at art school have lead me to this moment.”

“I’m starting to think I’m a bad influence on you,” Skully said, trying to wipe off the dick drawing before he gave up and just pulled his sleeves back down. At least he seemed a little more chipper now.

Charlie’s phone chimed. “My brother’s outside,” they informed me.

“Does he not like knocking?” I said.

“I texted him not to in case he woke the children,” Charlie replied, reaching for their laptop to put away.

I stood up and went to let Charlie’s brother in.

The man standing in the doorway was definitely not what I expected, to say the least.

“You’re Charlie’s brother,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head shyly. “Yeah, I guess we don’t look that much alike.”

That was an understatement. Where Charlie was short and slight, their brother was big and bulky. His biceps alone must have been about as thick as Charlie’s waist, and were heavily tattooed. Where Charlie’s eyes were sky blue, his were steely grey. Their hair was short and bronze and curly, his was long and black and tied back in a ponytail, with a beard to match.

He looked… kind of like he belonged in Asgard. And a voice behind me confirmed my suspicions.

“Lucas?”

“Quill?!” Lucas gasped, eyed widening in shock.

I heard the others scrambling in the living room before they appeared in the doorway, very unsubtly spying on the two men, who were now the centre of attention.

Quill looked down at the tacky, pom-pommed Christmas jumper that his grandma had knitted him, then back up to Lucas, a man who looked very much like an impossibly handsome Norse god, and swallowed, his face growing redder by the second. “Uhh… W-what are you doing here?”

“I–”

He was cut short by Charlie entering the hallway from the library, with their backpack slung over their shoulders and Skully at their heels. “Lucas!”

“Hey, kiddo! Long time, no see,” Lucas greeted, his face splitting into a huge grin as he yanked his sibling into a bone-crushing hug that pulled them off their feet.

“Eek! Nonono. This is why I don’t like hugs!” Charlie squealed, wiggling in his grasp until he dropped them, quite unceremoniously, on the floor and ruffled their hair, making the curls stick up at odd angles.

Quill’s eyes darted between Charlie and Lucas, then to Skully, who was leaning against the library doorway, grinning sadistically at Quill. I had a feeling he’d known exactly who Quill’s crush was ever since Rani had first mentioned him.

“I am not a child!” Charlie protested, batting Lucas’s hand away. “I am a grown adult!”

“Uh, no,” said Lucas. “If you’re an adult, that means I’m definitely an adult, and I’m just not ready to accept that reality yet.”

“You’ve been an adult for well over a decade now,” Charlie reminded him.

“Hush,” said Lucas. “Now, wait here while I talk to Quill for a sec.”

Charlie glanced back at Quill, who was standing very awkwardly in the middle of the hall, obviously very aware of everyone’s eyes on him.

“But mum and dad are expecting us by half-past,” they said. “We have to go.”

“You got everything?” said Lucas. That did it; Charlie immediately opened their backpack to check, giving Lucas a chance to slip into the kitchen with Quill.

Rani was eying the closed kitchen doorway, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Mary?” she said. “You still got that mistletoe?”

Mary caught her eye and grinned. “Say no more,” she said, retrieving the little plastic plant from her pocket and handing it to her giraffe of a brother-in-law to hang silently above the doorway.

“Quill is going to murder you,” I said in a hushed voice, trying to fight the smile attempting to make its way onto my lips.

When the kitchen door opened, and Quill saw what was dangling above him, he turned, if possible, even redder than he already had been. Lucas’s cheeks turned a little pink, too.

“Y-you don’t have to!” Quill spluttered. “It’s just my friends being idiots! They–”

He was cut short when Lucas pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “See ya New Year’s Eve, yeah?”

“Y-yeah,” Quill squeaked, looking like he was about to collapse any second.

Lucas walked down the hallway, picked up Charlies bag with one hand, and slung Charlie themself over his shoulder with the other.

“I wasn’t done!” Charlie protested, thrashing their legs about.

“I am one hundred percent sure you remembered everything,” said Lucas. “Hometime. Mum and dad are expecting us.”

I opened the door for them and Lucas stepped out into the snow and headed towards his car.

“Merry Christmas!” Lockwood called after them.

“Happy Holidays!” Lucas called back.

Skully flipped Charlie off in lieu of a goodbye, as is the way with close friends, and they returned the gesture before Lucas plonked them down onto the roof of his car and made a show of pretending to try and drive off while they were still there.

We watched the car drive away, with Charlie safely in the passenger seat, and as soon as I shut the door, everyone turned to Quill.

“What did he say? What did he say?” Holly squealed, almost hopping up and down with excitement.

“Did he ask you out?” Lockwood asked, grinning from ear to ear.

“Ooh, what’s that in your hand?” Rani crowed.

“Gimme, gimme!” Mary cried, lunging for the piece of paper which Quill quickly yanked away and held above his head. It wasn’t very effective, as Flo came up behind him and swiftly plucked it out of his grip.

“A number,” she said, smirking.

George took the paper as Quill tried to grab it back and pushed his glasses further up his nose to inspect it. “And a time and address,” he said. “Looks like Quill, here, has a date.”

“Shut up, all of you!” Quill seethed, face glowing as red as Rudolph’s nose. “It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything!”

“Of course it’s a big deal!” Holly cried. “Our little Quill’s growing up.”

“I am older than everyone here,” he reminded her.

“And yet, most of them are married, and you’re not,” said Skully.

Quill turned to glare at him. “You could have warned me, arsehole.”

“Hey,” said Skully, holding up his hands in defence. “I’m sure there are many guys your age called Lucas fitting the exact description Flo gave us. How was I supposed to know?”

“You absolute–”

“Hey,” Lockwood interrupted. “No harm done. You got his number!”

“I looked like a complete idiot in front of him,” Quill wailed, gesturing towards his jumper.

“I’m sure he found it endearing,” Holly reasoned.

“Oh, sure, that’s exactly what I wanted,” said Quill. “The guy appears out of nowhere looking like an actual god, but at least I look endearing.”

“So, you gonna call him?” Rani teased.

Quill plucked the paper out of George’s hands and pocketed it. “That’s none of your concern. Oh, by the way, I can’t come to your New Year’s Eve party, Luce. I have a date with a hot guy.”

“Traitor,” I said, but I was grinning at him.

My friends slowly dispersed after that, heading home to their own families before it got too late. Hugs were exchanged, Holly gave us all a kiss on the cheek, Skully even said goodbye to George fairly civilly before going to demolish the rest of the Bailey’s now that Charlie wasn’t there to tame him.

“Want some, Luce?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“What’s this?” said Mary. “My sister denying Bailey’s? Are you feeling quite alright?”

I just stuck my tongue out at her.

Mary was in bed by eleven, exhausted from all the socialising and handling the kids. Artemis and Apollo were curled up, fast asleep, on the sofa, and Skully was dropping off not long after; for all his big talk, alcohol only made him sleepy.

“Come on, you mess,” Lockwood told him, slinging Skully’s arm around his shoulders to take him up to bed.

While I waited for him to come back, I fiddled about with the radio, trying to find a good song.

‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas,’

“Oh, I love this song!” Lockwood said upon returning.

I smiled and held out a hand to him. “Come on. I owe you a dance.”

‘Let your heart be light,’

He grinned at me and made a show of a great, sweeping bow, before taking my hand and twirling me around.

‘From now on our troubles will be out of sight,’

I giggled and wound my arms around his shoulders as he tugged me in by my waist. Our noses brushed together as we swayed in a circle, and the lights on the Christmas tree twinkled gently.

‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas,’

On the mantelpiece, the clock struck midnight.

“Happy Christmas, Lucy.”

“Happy Christmas, Anthony.”

‘Make the yuletide gay,’

“How would you feel about having your present now?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Remember your mobile?” I said. “The one with the smiley giraffe?”

“What about it?”

“We might need to get that out again.”

He frowned at me. “What for?”

‘From now on, our troubles will be miles away,’

His dark eyes glittered as they reflected the lights on the tree. His fringe had fallen into his face when he’d bowed. I raised my hand and brushed it out of the way.

“Anthony,” I said. The right words were difficult to find, so I just went for it. “I’m pregnant.”

He stopped dancing. “You… you’re… what?”

He looked just like a deer caught in headlights. I let out a little breathy laugh. “Pregnant,” I repeated. “You’re gonna be a dad.”

He stared at me, like the words were taking a while to process. “I’m… gonna be a dad.” He laughed, short and breathless, a slight, surprised smile gracing his lips. “I’m gonna be a dad,” he repeated, more certainly. “You’re gonna be a mum.”

He kissed me then. And again and again. On the mouth, forehead, cheeks, nose. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and I couldn’t either.

“Oh, don’t start,” I said, wiping a thumb under his damp eyes and sniffling. “You’ll set me off.”

“I can’t help it,” he said. “We’re gonna be amazing, you and me. I love you so much, Lucy.”

“I love you, too, you big goon,” I told him.

We were back to swaying along to the music now, holding each other tight with huge smiles on our faces and teary eyes like two soppy, very in-love idiots.

‘Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more,’

I’d tell the others soon, of course. But maybe give it a few weeks. Have something just to ourselves for a little while.

‘Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow,’

They’d be so excited. My big happy family. Even Skully, though I knew he’d pretend not to be. Mary would probably blurt it out to the rest of the Carlyles as soon as I told her. I wondered how my mother would react.

‘Hang a shining star upon the highest bow,’

I tucked my head into Lockwood’s shoulder. Now wasn’t the time to start overthinking things. Now was the time to enjoy Christmas with my husband. Our last Christmas together without children of our own. Next year, the Carlyle-Lockwood household would be so much busier.

And I was so excited.

‘And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.’

The Incident

[wonderfulworldofwinchester]

Father Time Pt.4

Dean x Reader, Sam, Cas(mentioned) 

Request By Anon: hello~ can you do an update to father time? Like their daughter came back to their present again somehow as a 16 years old teen and she is a hunter? Meanwhile of thinking a way to get her back to her time they do a hunt together even tho Dean refused to let her join but she was too stubborn? Some protective!dean+reader and desperate Dean because he never wanted his kids live this life but their daughter says it was her decision and he and the reader are great parents, fluffy end pls? 😍

Word Count: 2122

Warnings: Language, Daddy!Dean, you know the drill, let me know if I need to add something. 

A/N: This is set about 1 year after the last part. 

Y/D/N= Your Daughter’s Name

              MASTERLIST      Series Masterpost    Ask Me Anything 

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3              Tag Lists 

Complicated. It’s a word hunters know all too well. That much is true on it’s own, but when you take two hunters who have not yet gotten together, and hand them a 4 year old daughter from the future, life is bound to get a little messy.

Hunts have become even more stressful. You guys no longer only have each other to worry about. She is constantly on your minds when you walk into even the simplest of hunts. Nothing is as easy, or as black and white as it once was. 

On nights like tonight, when neither of you could sleep, you often find yourselves talking about all the what ifs of the future. Not necessarily the bad ones, but also laughing and teasing about all the things that will be funny trying to learn how to deal with. Many nights you tease him about what he is going to do when she decides she is taking an interest in boys. To which he always replies ‘Remember, I have lots of guns and fake badges. Also, it wouldn’t be the first body I’ve made disappear.’ 

Tonight the conversation was a little weightier than usual, however. You confronted what you had both been avoiding for some time now. You were both hunters, and you knew the price you paid in this life. The thought of that precious little girl growing up in this life was enough to make you both want to hurl. She doesn’t deserve to be brought up like this.  Dean’s head is resting on your stomach, your hands mindlessly carding through the soft stands that are still slightly damp from his shower earlier. “Babe, what are we going to do?” 

Your brows furrow in confusion, “What are we going to do about what, honey?” 

He turns his head over to meet your gaze, “You know what I’m talking about. I know you had to have been thinking about it too. How do we get her out of this life? It’s damn near impossible to get out, and even if you do, are you ever really out?, you know?” He looks down, fiddling with a loose string on the pajama pants you’re sporting. 

Your heart breaks. He is so concerned, and every inch of him of crying out. He is so worried he won’t be able to do right by her, and get her out. Just as you open your mouth to say something, he starts speaking again. “I can’t lose her. I just can’t. We have to get her out. We have to get out. I won’t allow her to be raised in this life. I don’t want her to fall into the trap of it being a family business.”  You know nothing is going to console him at the moment, and that he just needs to let it all out, to you just sit there with him, letting him vent and get it out of his system, all the while your hands never stop running through his hair and over his back. 

The next morning begins as any other would. You wake up next to the man you love, spend a few moments just relaxing and enjoying the quiet moments with one another before the chaos of the day begins. Eventually, you make your way into the kitchen only to be startled by a young woman. Not able to stop yourself, you jump slightly and yelp. The bunker was the one place you are never expecting someone to just randomly appear.

Your response of course produces a holler from Dean, “Y/N!?” His quick footsteps pound down the hallway towards the kitchen. 

Sam chimes in before you can answer. “It’s okay. She’s not a monster or an intruder.” He hands you a much needed cup of coffee before making his way past you and towards the library.

You clear your throat, “Samuel Winchester, you did not bring a hookup back to the bunker.” 

The girl finally speaks up as she turns around, “Ew, gross.” 

As soon as her eyes meet yours, the mug you are holding crashes to the ground with a loud thud, shattering into a mess of hot coffee and ceramic bits all over the floor. “Holy Shit...” 

She chuckles lightly, and looks down towards her feet and back up towards you in a shy manor, “Hey, mom.” 

Dean heard the crash, and once again comes running towards the kitchen. “Y/N, baby , what happened?” Your face is so pale with shock, he knows something had to have happened. All you can do is gesture over towards where she is standing. 

“Hey, Dad.”

“Y/D/N...” 

The rest of the morning is spent in the library, Y/D/N explaining that she got a hold of this thing that allowed her to travel though time, and she was just curious what you guys were like before she came into the picture. 

“How do we know this is legit?” Dean asks, the pain of doubting her evident in his features.

“Come on, Dad. We both know that if I were some demon or shapeshifter that wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.” She offers a smirk that could perfectly mimic the one he gives when he’s being a little smartass. “If you really don’t believe me, here.” She put her foot up on the table, and lifts her pant leg, to retrieve a silver knife out of her boot. Next she walks over to a secret stash place you all had in the library, that hold all the essentials in case of emergencies, and grabs a bottle of holy water. You exchange a look with Dean that seems to say ‘how does she know that’s there?’ She nicks forearm with the silver blade, and dumps holy water on her hand. “See. One hundred percent human.” 

Dean’s head is still too busy reeling from the sound of her calling him dad to even register that she passed the usual tests. 

You look up at her smiling face, “Y/D/N, we are very much glad to know that you’re okay, but you know you shouldn’t be here. Who knows what could be messed up if you remain out of your time. Not to mention,-” You point your thumb over towards Dean, who is still trying to process it all, “Someone is probably pissed right now, so you should probably get back.” 

She looks down, fiddling with the ends of her long sleeves just as Dean had been doing with the strand on your pants last night, and twist the toe of her shoes back and forth, “About that....” 

Dean must have been more with it now, becuase he beat you to the punch. “Y/D/N.. What?” 

“I... I don’t know what happened, but it broke. I can’t get it to work.” 

“What do you mean it won’t work!?” 

“I’m kinda stuck here.” 

Dean walks back into the library and settles into a chair, with a frustrated sigh, rubbing his face as he spoke, “Well, Cas is MIA. I can’t get a hold of him, so there goes that option.”

You scoot closer to him, rubbing soothing circles across his shoulder, “We’ll find a way.” 

“You saw that she knew where that stuff was, she carries a knife, and she ‘found’ a trinket that allows for time travel. We obviously didn’t keep our promise to get her out.” The only thing you are able to offer is a weak smile. He’s right, something didn’t go as planned. 

Just then, she comes bounding into the library once more, stammering on about god knows what. Her mouth’s moving so fast you two had trouble keeping up. She all the sudden stops mid sentence as she sees a stack of files and printouts that are residing on the far end table of the library. “You found a case?” She squeals. 

“Uh no not really. I mean we did before, but we have bigger fish to fry right now.” Dean says, desperately trying to avert her attention. 

“Let’s work it. Come on. I mean we have no leads on how to get me back. Cas’ feathered ass has more important things to do apparently.”

Deans makes a face, “Language.” 

She just chuckles, “Really? Come on, Really? You, Language? You’re lucky my first words weren’t son of a bitch.” 

You can’t help the snicker that made it’s way past your lips, which earns you a glare from Dean. “What? She has a point, you know.” 

“Please Dad! Let me hunt with you guys once while you’re still young enough to keep up.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“What? You do know that I’m sixteen ,right? Put it together. Think how old you’ll be. Oh and that’s sixteen years starting two years from now, so really eighteen years from now.”

“Absolutely not!” 

“Ugh Dad. I can handle it. I’m not a child.” 

“I beg to differ. One, you are still a minor. Two, you are my child, which makes you my responsibility. I can’t risk losing you. I love you too much!” That last part slips out before he could stop it. 

She just smiles, and hugs him tight, “I love you too, Daddy.” Your heart practically melts to the floor right then, and there, and you both can’t help but to give in to her. It was a relatively easy hunt anyway. 

“Fine...” he grumbles. “But don’t come crying to me-” 

“Get over yourself already, Dad.”

During the hunt you found yourself backed into a corner, a demon trying to get to your daughter. Your gun was yanked from your hands, leaving you with only your body to call a weapon. Adrenaline. Some freak thing. Call it what ever you want. You go into complete mama bear mode. You put up a hell of a fight any other day, but with her in the line of fire, you could make even the biggest, baddest monster shake in his boots. You go to town, and just start wailing on the thing. You know it won’t do much to the demon, but it was all you can do at the moment. It buys enough time to for Dean to burst through the door, and douse it in holy water, and knife it with the demon blade. 

He quickly come over, wrapping you and Y/D/N in a bone crushing hug. “Thank god, you’re okay.” 

She grins, “Of course we’re okay. Mom’s a badass. Seriously, I can’t believe I would have had to miss that in my life.”

“What do you mean?” You ask. 

“You don’t hunt anymore, mom.” 

“Huh.” 

Cas finally appears, and prepares to help get Y/D/N back to her time once more. You say your goodbyes, and hug her one last time , before Dean asks if she will take a walk with him. 

Once outside he begins the speech he has rehearsed since the hunt. “Sweetheart, I never wanted this for you. I didn’t want you raised in this life. You deserve so much more. I can’t believe that I ever put you in that position. I am so sorry-”

“Dad, You didn’t do anything wrong. I chose this. You and mom are great parents. Yeah we have an interesting family, and you guys have job histories that you really couldn’t talk about for career day at school, but you know what? I wouldn’t trade a single day in this life, for a thousand in the so called perfect life, if it meant I didn’t have you guys as parents.”

Dean can’t stop the tears running down his face, “I love you so much.” 

“I know. I love you too, daddy.” She says resting her head against his chest. “Oh and by the way, you aren’t wasting your time on those letters. Please don’t stop writing them.” She leans back, pulls out her phone, and when she removes the case, a folded up piece of paper is revealed. she unfolds it and hands it to him. “It’s the first letter you ever wrote. I carry it with me as a little reminder.” 

You, Cas, and Sam join them outside. She walks up to give you one more hug, before taking Cas’ hand. “I’m ready now. Let’s go.” 

Later that night, you find yourself once again in that same position with Dean, this time in a much more lighthearted conversation. He smirks, “You know she gets the attitude from you.”

You try your best to be all fake offended, “Yeah well, she is as stubborn as her daddy, so I guess we’re even.” 

A few moments pass before he speaks again, “She’s going to be okay you know.... Well after I tear her a new one for running off to another time period, but you know what I mean. We did good.” 

“Yeah we did.” 

If you would like to be added to one of my tag lists, just ask :)  The Anything and Everything bunch:  @tillielynn16 @fandomaskedstuff @naruko88558855 @saltysamgirls@hillface89@unusualcorn@trilloku-blog @perpetualabsurdity @ria132love @emoryhemsworth@mogaruke@dramaqueenrolf @ghost–facers @herbologystudent252

Deano Bambinos: @straitsupernaturalmalefan@angelofchaos@kayladools@pandazombie69@brindz30@aubreystilinski@akshi8278

Father Time series specific Tag List: @awesomestperson22 

[1111ljk]

time lapse

“Sometimes I miss you the way someone drowning misses the air.

- Tim Seibles

Jeon Jungkook remembers his first love.

count  ➵ 2327 words

genre  ➵ fluff/angst

theme  ➵ first love, friendship, time

characters  ➵ jungkook/oc

PART: Chapter 1 - New

coming soon  ➵ chapter 2

links      [intro]

  If the word 'awkward' were a person, that person would be Jeon Jungkook. He sat there, biting his inner lower lip and fiddling with his fingers as he took short glances at the class that was bursting with excitement. He could hear a group at the front - he assumed they were boys - loudly yelling inner jokes at each other. They poked fun at some girls who only replied with sassy remarks and the rolling of their eyes. There were a couple of students who were quiet like him, but that was because they were too indulged in their books, scribbling what seemed like formulas into their notepads, most likely what they just learned in class earlier on. Jungkook looked around, seeing students leave the room in groups and some alone. He watched the class empty itself until it was just him basking in the sound of absolute silence, or so he thought.

    "Hi," he heard a voice to which he felt a light tap on his shoulder follow. He turned his head slightly to his left, finding himself face to face with a shy beauty. She had long straight brown hair that fell beautifully just past her shoulders and pink lips tinted by a sunset orange liquid.. She would be the living, breathing, walking, human summer... if summer felt cold and empty. Sort of. Jungkook thinks it's the way her lips were slightly turned downwards, or the way her jet black eyes showed no emotion, none, but that glint of interest in him. An ice princess, he concluded. The boy recognized her. She, too, was a new student, like him. "I'm Jihyun. Do you perhaps wanna...I mean... yeah... cause we're new students-"

   Jungkook blinked for a few milliseconds and awkwardly nodded, cutting the girl off midsentence. He couldn't hide the tinge of red that spread through his cheeks - a pretty girl was talking to him after all. On much normal days, Jungkook would have shied away and eagerly, yet politely, shake his head, preferring to suffer alone and in awkward silence so long as he didn't have to embarrass himself in front of the opposite sex, but was he really in any position to decline such a friendly offer? Perhaps, he should really start opening up more. After all, he was turning eighteen this year, he had to start being more confident. Plus, he really needed a friend around, not that he was sure they would be. He takes another look at Jihyun,a gleam of hope in her eyes. Perhaps, they could be.

   Timidly walking towards the cafeteria, the pair caught a couple of suspicious eyes and inaudible teasing remarks from their fellow classmates. He felt his cheeks grew red, much worse than before, and looked at Jihyun, seeing that her cheeks were a rosy red as well. They both realized and let out a chuckle to relieve the tension between them as they lined up for the food. After choosing their lunch from a variety of food - Jungkook could've eaten everything but he knew there was a limit to what he was allowed to take - both he and Jihyun sat at the nearest vacant table. He watched as she shyly settled in her seat, taking small bites of her kimchi and he wouldn't lie - he kinda adored it. Shy and feminine girls were Jungkook's sole weakness, and it didn't help that Jihyun was also absolutely attractive. But it wasn't long until he figured out that it was only a typical female's initial appearance.

   Jungkook was a nice person. He was so nice that the mere thought of hurting anyone's feelings scared him. He was far too innocent to commit such a sin. He rarely had friends, neither did he make any, so he never experienced the bickering culture of friendship. It was due to his inexperience with friendship that Jihyun opening up to him in that way was anything but flattering. He wasn't sure if it was just him or Jihyun was just being too rude for the first meeting, but Jungkook felt a little repelled when she called him 'stupid'. Of course, he wasn't that naive either. He knew that's how teens, people his age, tend to call each other nowadays, but he thought that's what they did when they were close enough. He concluded that it was just her character.

   "No, stupid, Zootopia's so entertaining!" she argued, her mouth half-full with rice and beef bulgogi. Jungkook felt a little uncomfortable at the sight, but he wasn't dumb enough to be a jerk and offend who could be his first friend at school.

   "But isn't that too childish? You're, like, seventeen!" he fought back, slightly grossed out by how full her mouth was - she was a mess. Jungkook was nearly eighteen, he had no interest in childish movies like Jihyun did. He was all in for realism.

   "No, I promise you, it's so cute," she laughed, shaking her head and taking a sip of her water. "We should watch it! It's showing in this one cinema for this weekend." 

    Jungkook debated with himself on whether or not he should go. Weekends are for sleep and for hobbies, a time away from school and stress. And by stress, that included having to deal with Jihyun's constant pestering and perhaps even a mouth half-full of popcorn as she spoke incomprehensibly. But then again, he had to make friends, and being picky with people was against his moral code. "Fine!"

    Just as he was about to take another bite of his rice, he felt someone slide gracefully to his right. He looked at Jihyun, who looked slightly taken aback by the sudden appearance of a person, then looked to his right. He recognized this girl: she was the class president. She was tall with a slender frame, her hair slightly wavy which fell to her waist, and lips shaped so well that lipstick companies would argue for her. If Jihyun was the sweet one-sided romance in summer, this girl was that beach party on the first day of vacation. Jungkook also took notice of her overall appearance, he would have thought she wasn't of the same nationality. She smiled sweetly at Jungkook, then putting her attention on Jihyun. Jungkook only curtly nodded, turning his attention back to his food, unfazed. 

  "I'm Ari," she smiled, picking at her food and taking small bites, the way Jihyun did at first. Her mannerism put Jungkook on alert mode - what if this was also a typical female initial appearance?

  "I'm Jihyun," the girl in front of him greeted her back, a smug grin on her face. "You're the class president, right?"

   Ari chuckled, nodding as her eyes turned into crescents. "Yes, I am, you are both new students, right?"

   "Yeah," Jihyun replied as she chewed the beef a bit more quietly this time, to Jungkook's surprise. Perhaps Jihyun did have manners. "You're very pretty! I thought you were a foreigner at first! Are you perhaps a model?"

   "Nah, but how fun would that be, huh?" the girl to his right giggled, making Jungkook look at her with his eyes. "I'd get money even without having to memorize formulas all day."

   "I'm Jungkook," the boy finally decided to speak up, forcing a sweet smile on his face. "Nice to meet you!"

   "Nice to meet you, too, Jungkook!" she smiled at him and Jungkook hated himself because his heart skipped a beat. His naive ass would never be experienced in dating, much less, girls. He decided it would be best to control himself. He should focus on his studies anyways. It's the last and most important year of high school after all.

   They talked for a little more, finishing their meals together and cleaning up together until the bell had rung. Jihyun's actual personality was revealed. She clearly wasn't as feminine as he thought her out to be, but she wasn't that bad. In fact, Jungkook had grown a little attached to the way she vulgarly joked around with him and even to Ari. He also found out that perhaps his ideal type had been wrong this whole time - Ari was nowhere near it yet she had somehow been stealing all of his attention. The amount of times he nearly stuttered, the amount of times his heart skipped a beat... Jungkook was also a mess. Then again, he could blame his inexperienced, no-girlfriend-since-birth, and girl-avoiding ass. But he had to change - he was in high school now after all.

          The trio walked back to class together, with Jungkook being in the middle of the two girls. He had to admit, it made him feel sort of macho - after all, both girls were very attractive. He figured out just how popular Ari was once he stepped in the classrooom. Half the male population in the room eyed him from head to toe, some raising an eyebrow, and some scoffing. He wasn't the least bit surprised with how tense the atmosphere had become - Ari was beautiful, after all. Now, he just wondered how he was going to deal with several green-eyed monsters on his first day of school.

      Ari proceeded to talk to her friends, bidding Jihyun and Jungkook goodbye, while the latter two settled in their seats, returning to the initial awkward silence. There was nothing to talk about anymore but Jungkook wished he could change that. He longed to have a friend, a proper one, one where there was no small talk but just pure comfort. He wanted a friend who could just smack the back of his head and he would do the same without having to bring up fists later on. Okay, perhaps, the second one wasn't applicable to Jihyun considering she was a girl. That would be unkind of him to do so. He wonders if she wanted it too, for a friendship to blossom between the both of them. From the corner of his eye, he could see Jihyun wanted the same as well. 

     "Hey, new kid," a voice from above him bellows as a shadow grows from the edge of his desk. Jungkook looks up to see one of his classmates, Jimin, as he reads on his name tag, smiling down at him. "Wanna hang with us later on?"

      Jungkook only blinked, slightly confused and taken aback by such a straightforward question. To Jimin's left was a taller guy with chocolate brown hair, messy yet somehow nicely styled, and a face that God probably worked so hard on. God also probably bragged about this one to the angels above. He was Taehyung and Jungkook could say he felt a little intimidated until Taehyung actually smiled. Somehow, it was comforting. On Jimin's other side was a girl who looked like she radiated beauty. Ari was beautiful, but no one could compare to this girl. She had that innocent beauty, just as Jihyun did, yet there was a hint of mystery in her. Maybe it was because of the contrast of her pale skin to her dark black hair and fuschia pink lips. Jungkook read her nametag, careful not to stare too long as the tag was pinned near a very dangerous place to look at. Ah, Yeoreum. He looked at all three of them, slightly becoming self-conscious as they stared at him, waiting for an answer.

     "I mean, why...n-not?" he answered, scolding himself mentally for accidentally bringing out his Busan accent. He had tried so hard to work on it all summer, to hide it, so he could fit in.

     "You can bring your friend too, uh," Taehyung looked behind Jungkook, squinting. "Jihyun...?"

     Jihyun smiled, nodding her head shyly, and Jungkook could only think of how surprising it will be for Taehyung and Jimin if they find out how she really was. "Well, alright, class is starting, talk to you two later I guess," Jimin grinned as he and Taehyung left to get back to their seats, leaving only Yeoreum behind.

    Yeoreum had her eyebrows furrowed together, arms crossed over her chest, and eyes squinting at Jungkook, as if she was trying to solve a crime case and Jungkook was the suspect. She bent over, hovering her face from Jungkook's right then to his left. If he thought he was conscious of his appearance before, he's even much more conscious of his face now that Yeoreum was looking at it up close. She stood up, back straight. "Busan, huh?"

    Her eyes flicked down to his nametag and Jungkook slightly turned his head towards Jihyun, who was just as confused as he was. He turned back to the other girl, her eyes widening by the second. 

    "J-Jeon Jungkook?" she stuttered, a slow yet genuine grin forming on her face. "It's me! Yeoreum!"

    Jungkook could only blink, her squeal immediately catching both Jimin and Taehyung's attention from the front. "I'm sorry?"

    "Park Yeoreum, 5th grade!" she continued, slapping him lightly on the arm as she giggled, to which he was still confused with. Not to mention, that hit stung. She then shook her head, still grinning ."Remember the ddukbokki afterschools? And your book that I never returned?"

    And that's when it hit him, It was the Park Yeoreum.

author’s note: sorry for the very long wait for this short update. i've recently just started writing again after so many failed attempts of getting back into writing - so i hope you can bear with me. i have had writer's block for around two years and i feel I've gone to a slump since then. right now, I have the ideas and I have the outline - i just don't know why i'm not so motivated to write anymore. anyways, enough about this stuff, hope you enjoyed this chapter! i will try my very best to upload the next one as soon as possible.

6.3.17

[magicalgirlmascot]

Heya I don't mean to sound passive aggressive in any way, but I was just wondering why is it that you dislike Super a lot? I mean you're allowed to like and dislike whatever you want, and I'm in no way trying to change your opinion. I'm just curious as to why you seem to have a burning hatred for it?

Nah you don’t sound passive aggressive ^^ if you were you wouldn’t have acknowledged that my opinion is a valid one, you’re cool

I’ve avoided going into too much detail to avoid The Discourse, but essentially it comes down to a few main points: ships I don’t like, characters I don’t care about, pacing, terrible one-note characterization, and the fans.

I know a lot of that sounds really petty but with all my Sweet Home Alabama discourse yesterday are any of you surprised

I’m going to put my more detailed reasoning under a cut because boy howdy it is long and I have some Things To Say

Ships I Don’t LikeOkay this, honestly, is incredibly petty, and it’s not even the pettiest thing on here. But I HATE Trunks/Mai. I hate it. It is the worst ship that’s had the word “canon” sneezed at it in all of DB history, and that’s coming from someone who firmly believes Yamcha/Bulma was unhealthy for both parties. One of my rules for accepting writing commissions and requests is that I will not accept ships with an “aged up” child character in a relationship with an adult. (Aged up children in relationships with other aged up children are a different story, as they’re at least at the same stage of development, but that’s an issue for another day.) Trunks/Mai has the opposite problem: it’s an “aged down” adult character in a relationship with a child. You can argue about Future Trunks’s age all you want, but that changes nothing about kid Trunks and Mai. She’s in her forties. He’s nine at most. How is this not the creepiest thing in the world what the fuck.

Even with Future Trunks and Future Mai, it still grosses me out because it’s the same thing. Assuming the Pilaf Gang did (somehow) wish to be young again in the Future timeline (which...I don’t see how they could have, that doesn’t make sense continuity-wise, but continuity has never been DB’s strong suit), that still makes her way older than him. And if they didn’t, well, that’s just worse. Also how is she still that young looking.

Honestly the only reason I can think of for Toei/Toriyama to bring that into existence was so people would stop shipping Trunks with Goten and Future Trunks with Gohan. Which. I get it, you don’t like it, they’re your characters, et cetera, but could you maybe not have done it in a somewhat less creepy way? Dude. What 40-something wants to be in a relationship with a kid? Even if said 40-something looks like a kid? It’s creepy and gross and I hate it more than any other canon ship.

Characters I Don’t Care AboutI’ve heard a lot of people refer to Super as The Goku and Vegeta Hour and...yeah. DB’s never been great at remembering their MILLIONS of side characters (humans especially once Z happened) and Super doesn’t take enough steps to change that imo. Don’t get me wrong--I like Goku, and I...tolerate Vegeta, but characters who were once considered major players are relegated to backseat viewers again, and nobody can keep up with Goku except Vegeta sometimes (when previously most of them could at least hold their own). I’ll admit, I like the looks of some of the new characters, there are some who seem like they have interesting characterizations (like Kale.....though I’ll be the first to admit I’m biased as hell towards buff women). But Zamasu/Goku Black or whatever just seemed like a couple of shitty Hot Topic teens. I went to high school with people like them and they were annoying.

There’s just too much of a focus on a few specific characters while other characters get the shaft, and the new characters and plot points they bring up just...aren’t interesting. I don’t give a shit about yet another “gotta get stronger” plot you guys. Ugh.

PacingOKAY I’LL ADMIT this is the pettiest thing on this list but like...I’ve never liked the DB anime’s pacing. Ever. Remember how I used to liveblog DBZ? I got like 10 episodes in and got fed up with how long it took to get anywhere. Stuff that took like...a couple chapters in the manga took five half-hour episodes to deal with. And you’d think they would’ve learned in 30 years, especially since they don’t have to base everything off the manga now, but no, the pacing is still awful. And it’s not just the whole “Namek takes half a season to explode” stuff (although that is really annoying, and knowing the real-world reason for it doesn’t make it less annoying), it’s that every shot lasts longer than it needs to. You could cut the running time in half just by trimming the shots slightly. It’s bad, and I’ve always stuck to the manga because of it. It’s not that I’m a Manga Purist(TM) or anything, I just...can’t watch the anime.

Terrible, One-Note CharacterizationYou all know who I mean when I say this, but it extends to more than just Yamcha.

Videl’s character was absolutely decimated in this show. 18′s the only female fighter we have left anymore because of it. I once saw an argument saying that Videl not fighting anymore makes sense because she was traumatized by being killed by Buu, which okay fine fair enough, but 1) nobody said she had to fight in life-or-deaths situations, AT LEAST LET HER BE SAIYAWOMAN AGAIN YOU COWARDS, and 2) that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of her firecracker personality and replace it with the sweet, docile housewife type. We saw it with Chi-Chi...sort of, we don’t need it with Videl, too. Once a female character gets married in DB, they stop fighting (except 18) and stop being important to the plot (except Bulma...sometimes (remember when Bulma was the main character? Pepperidge Farm remembers)). Three times is a pattern, Toriyama, I’m just saying.

Goku even gets hit with shades of this. He’s not an idiot, you guys, he can read a dang grocery list. Yes, he’s selfish and simple and bad at communicating and often doesn’t realise what he’s done wrong until it’s pointed out to him, but he’s also a fast learner, a really good tactician (like. look at some of his fights in DB and early Z, those are some Good Tactics), and not a complete asswipe. We don’t get to see those good traits much in Super. He had no reason to not tell people the stakes for the tournament to get them to join. None. There was no reason to lie. Yes, his biggest flaw is his inability to communicate with his friends and teammates (COUGHS LOUDLY AND LOOKS AT THE CELL ARC) but Jesus you guys, his friends would have helped him if he told them the real stakes too? He didn’t need to lie? There was no point? I’m so angry?

The worst of it though is Yamcha. For the love of fuck, you guys, Yamcha has more characterization than just “guy who sucks at everything and has a thing for Bulma.” Like that’s some Funi dub shit there, not original canon. What happened to when he said he’d given up fighting in the Buu arc? Where did that go? You could have done so much more with that concept rather than have him still be overconfident in his abilities and slamming him at every turn. Even when he does get to do stuff, it’s obvious that it’s just a setup to make him fail so Vegeta will look good by comparison. It’s awful. The writers have such an obvious hard-on for Vegeta and they keep cutting Yamcha down. Those bits where he’s waiting for Goku to ask him to the tournament even though we all know he won’t? They’re not funny, they’re just sad. Also, on that note, why is Roshi there? Yamcha surpassed Roshi years ago, Roshi himself says so! I get that he wasn’t in the RF movie because his voice actor was busy, but they couldn’t have given a better reason than just Tien leaving him behind because he didn’t think he could keep up? At least have him sick in bed with a fever and wanting to go anyway and being forced to stay behind by a worried Tien or something guys, geez. And his VA was obviously around for that arc of Super, so what the hell.

(Yes I was salty earlier about Yamcha still fighting and shit but if you’re going to drop the “Yamcha retiring from fighting” plot point then at least DO something with it you cowards)

FansOH GOD, THE FANS. Not to say that people who dislike Super are perfect or ideologically pure (I once knew a person who bragged about trolling/picking on Super fans...we do not talk), but the people who do like the show seem to spend an awful lot of time yelling at us and telling people they’re not real fans if they like GT more than Super or don’t like either or whatever.

And of course the VegeBullies are out in full force over it, too. VegeBul gets a lot of screentime, and when fans of other ships (GoChi primarily) say “hey we’d like more content” they get shut down or yelled at. They demand more content despite already having more than anyone else at this point. Shut the fuck up and let me enjoy the fact that Tien and Yamcha stood next to each other again in peace.

But that’s getting dangerously close to ship war territory and I try to stay out of that. (It’s hard, because I’m a salty, bitter person, but I try.) I’ll also say Not All VegeBuls(TM) even though I shouldn’t have to because if I don’t I’ll get at least 10 angry anons in my inbox flipping their shit.

You know what the really sad thing is? When Super was first announced, I was mega excited. And I really liked the first couple episodes! But they veered away from making it the Martial Arts Themed Slice of Life Comedy Hour we deserved, they retold the same story the movies already did instead of just making the movies canon and continuing from there (thereby drawing it out way too much), and they just...fucked it up in general. I can’t stand Super and while I don’t expect to sway anyone’s opinion with this, you did ask me why, and I hope now you can understand.