#and when i try to read a structured book on characters AGAIN my brain fights it to just get through a few pages

[divinekangaroo]

I've been reluctant to start my second-and-a-half PB re-watch (Half of S1, all S5 and all S6 would be 3 times, and the rest would be the second time) because of the velvet goldmine effect:

Which was:

So, I see Velvet Goldmine when I'm 15 years old and 9 months and it absolutely changes my brain. So many things click into place. One of those moments. And it's not like the hints and edges and burrs weren't there, but it Did Something. Pivotal. I cradled it to me repeatedly, over and over. Look at this, I think, look at what it's existence means for me: it means, it means, it just means something; it exists and therefore I can, too. But given my locale, I never had any ability to talk to anyone, engage with anyone about it, I had to cradle All That to myself quietly in the dark.

Then I watch it again when I'm....mid 20s? and I think: this movie is about nothing. It's about nothing. It's about ennui. It's meaningless. It has all the substance of fairy floss. It's rubbish. My visceral reaction to it's ennui and nihilism and whimsical flights of fancy were huge; my disgust for it was as desperate and meaningful as my original reaction, and I ranted about this movie's hollow heart for a long, long time.

And then I watch it again when I'm somewhere in my 30s and went: meh. Forgettable. Dunno what either fuss was about.

I suppose I just don't want that to happen to PB yet?

(I mean, the other barrier to starting again is that S1 repulsed me multiple times. I switched my brain off off at the fight with the Lees the first time around, the stupid pretentious Cool of it all, I thought (ahahaha) that I knew exactly what this show was and was trying to be at that point, only to realise, eh, I was wrong: what a bait and switch; but I also don't want to lose the delight of realising, on that 2nd full and proper re-watch, the interesting nature of the trope, narrative and character deconstruction playing out.)

<<The alternative effect is what I call the WOT-Spoilers effect. So I read Wheel of Time as and when it all comes out; I'm relatively young when it starts and moderately adult when it finishes. I enjoy it but on a surface level. I enjoy it's scope and the ability for something of such a large scope and depth to enable me to shut out reality. I never really engage with it and it doesn't resonate. It was...fodder. But then, in my late 30s, I come across the podcast WOT-Spoilers. These guys *LOVE* these books, but on a deeply respectful level for the structural art and craft in them. Listening to them talk about every single chapter gives me far more pleasure than attempting to re-read WOT at all. The ego-less engagement with the source material makes me marvel. The level of respect I develop for these books enters a very different realm. But I will, and I know this deeply, never re-read these books again.>>

[tailoroffates]

How to beat writer's block

Here are 9 tips to get yourself out of a nasty writer’s block (y'know, other than the obvious ADHD issues that I also struggle with).

Causes

Fear – This usually revolves around publicizing your work, being rejected by publishers, or the general criticism you can receive from your peers. Being nervous or afraid of these things is absolutely normal, but it becomes a serious issue when it prevents you from sharing your work. There are always going to be trolls, just remember when they come out the taunt you that they’re just jealous because you have potential and they’re stuck living under their toll bridges. Leave them there and pay them no mind.

Self-criticism – I’m guilty of this one so I’ll be as fair as I can without being a hypocrite about it. We are our own worst critics. It only gets harder to view ourselves as professional or avoid that nasty old imposter syndrome when we compare our own work to that of other successful authors. Stop that! Keep writing and honing your skills and one day it might be okay to compare in this way, but until then this process is just being unfair to yourself. These authors have been writing for years and practice so consistently that they’ve earned that best-seller title. You’ll get there, just try to stay out of your own head until then.

Perfectionism – This one is a little harder to get out of because we always want to do good and put our best work forward, however, this can often lead to us overthinking the structure of a single sentence and cause so much time to be wasted just trying to make it perfect. Here’s the thing though, nothing is perfect, and here’s why… No matter how well you do your work will be perceived differently by your readers individually. Everyone is different and you can’t please them all, so do your best to make sure you are happy with it and you’ll likely have others who enjoy it as well.

Pressure – This is mainly due to deadlines. Whether they’re set by teachers, publishers, heck even if they’re set by you. This one isn’t so easy to overcome as the closer you get to that deadline the more the anxieties start to set in.

Tips

Now that we’ve covered the causes, here are the 9 ways to creep your brain out of your writer's block.

Re-read – One method that helps me out of my (book-related) writer’s block is to go back a chapter or so and re-read some of my older materials. More times than not, this gets the gears going again and places my thought process back into the mindset I was in when writing it.

Take a break – Sometimes you sit there writing for so long that your brain starts to lag and your blood flow slows down, stopping you from refreshing your thought process. A good way to fix this is to take a small break and do something else. Get up, stretch, get some water, and maybe even go for a walk (I know, I know. The “walk” thought made you cringe, but it can really help). If those things sound too effortful, just switch to a different creative subject like trying a writing prompt or writing a little poem. Either way, sometimes the brain is just looking for some inspiration, and staring at the same page for hours isn’t gonna cut it.

Tunes – Every once in a while I’ll have myself a nasty struggle with trying to set a scene. I find that a cheeky way to help this issue is to make a playlist of songs that put me in the mindset of the scene I’m trying to build. For example, when I’m trying to write something sad or traumatic that happened to a character I’ll play some sorrowful tunes to get the right ambiance. The same goes for fighting scenes. I’ll play many upbeat and catchy songs to try and get a good idea of that half-cocked adrenaline feel so I can write the fighters reacting to one another effectively.

Quiet time – Sometimes too much noise or too many distractions can cut into your writing time, making your mind as blank as the page you’re sitting in front of. If so, maybe try and go somewhere quiet and avoid external distractions so you can write in peace.

Perfectionism – Yes, you read that right. We circled right back into perfectionism, but hear me out. If you’re sitting there on that same sentence because you can’t decide the best way to structure it just make a note of where you are and keep writing past it. You’ll have time to fix that when you re-read or edit your work. Wracking your brain about it now is just slowing your progression.

Outline – One thing I find incredibly helpful is to outline or write an overview of your plot line, subplots, and where you want it to end up. I know, everyone wants to be a pantser, but not everyone can do this effectively without wasting years of their time stuck on the same chapter or even worse yet, leaving so many plot holes that even an acrobat would trip over them. I spent 3 years trying to write my book and when I finally gave in and wrote up an outline I had it done in 24 weeks. Don’t be a me.

Happy habit – Another cheeky tip I used to help myself out was to create a productive habit out of writing. The rule was 1500 words a day, and eventually, it started to get easier and easier for me to get the words out of my brain and onto the page. Your word count does not need to be this high, just set a comfortable goal and get to it!

Read something – No, not your own stuff. Read something else that you find interesting. More times than not this can inspire your gears to start spinning so you can get back to writing your own works.

Play – Alright, so at this point you might have just been working for too long. Stop that! A big old work binge can be great from time to time but just remember, all work and no play made Johnny a dull boy. Don’t be Johnny! Go have some fun and get that tension out so you can be your best you! <3 Hopefully, this helps those of you out there who like me, spend way too much time just wishing the brain would shut up and write things.

[showrunnerihardlyknowher]

Do you have any general tips about writing g/t whump, or g/t or whump in general. I'm thinking about writing g/t or whump or a combination of the two. And your like my go to author when it comes to reading g/t or whump (your shit is really good, if you ever wrote a book and published it, I would be amongst the first to purchase it, I like your writing/content that much lol). So do you have any tips or tidbits for any wannabe writer that your willing to share?

Also I completely understand if this isn't an ask you want to answer, I realize im asking alot out of a stranger for free. So no hard feelings if this post is ignored.

Thank you for taking time to read my ask nonetheless though.

This is such a sweet ask you're so sweet to me ily and if I ever become a published author you may have all my books for free

I think writing anything definitely depends on what style you like, such as mine is very "internal thoughts" and "descriptive action". Settings, physical descriptions, plot set ups -- I'm much more vague about those (which can be a downfall) because I like to focus more on what the current action is versus what lead to that moment.

So my advice, based on my own style, is that mental feelings are just as important as physical feelings when it comes to describing. Your tiny character just got smacked against the wall by a feral giant: tell me how much it hurt, tell me what hurts the most, tell me how focused or unfocused they are, tell me how close they were to cracking their head open on something a few inches away.

Now tell me if your tiny has the stamina to run, tell me if they've given up the fight and are accepting their fate, tell me what they're envisioning said fate to be, tell me if they're scared or angry, tell me what their last thoughts might be before they're cut off by whatever the feral giant does next.

In my opinion, it's much better to write from one character's perspective for a fic (unless you have noted breaks in between paragraphs to switch POVs or if you switch POVs every chapter). It gives the reader time to attach themselves to a single focal character and really get to know them via these internal thoughts and musings. It makes the character much more relatable in the sense that we can sympathize with their reasoning, or at least understand it on a deeper level compared to another character. It also leaves that air of mystery that we, just like the character we're being projected through, only know what we're being told/shown.

And again, descriptions are the shit my guy. Not saying you need to go on a monologue about what color your character's eyes are, but describing your actions and reactions against a duller background helps create more vivid imagery for what's going on in that very second. Your character gets punched in the gut: they're winded, they can't suck in any air between their teeth, they can taste burning bile in their throat, their train of thought slams on its breaks, their stomach feels like it's been split in half, they crumple to the ground in a fetal position, they don't even have the breath to moan in pain.

Also, when it comes to g/t whump specifically, I like to throw in the reminders of how large their size difference is pretty frequently. Remind your readers just how easily it would be to snap a tiny's leg like a toothpick when you have them dangling upside down from your fingers. Remind them how suffocating a giant's presence can feel both literally and figuratively when they're trapped under a hand that engulfs them like a weighed blanket.

Last piece of advice, if there's a writing style you like or a fic you adore or an author you want to emulate - try to figure out which parts you like and why, and then copy it lmao. Not plagiarize their whole story, obviously, but if you see vocabulary or sentence structures you like that's being used, store that shit in your brain to use for later homie. I love run on sentences being used to portray anxiety because your thoughts are going a mile a minute. I love scenes ending with an italicized onomatopoeia because it's the last thing someone hears. That's shit I read from fanfics that I still use in my stories.

I hope this helped some (if any)!!

[eliza1911o1]

Rant about Heroes of Olympus because as a sequel series to Percy Jackson it pains me pt. 1

So I just reread the PJO (one of my all time favorite series) and HoO series and I’m just struck by how unfulfilled I feel after finally finishing BoO for the first time…

I didn’t read it when I was younger because it came out just as I got really busy in school and was growing out of my “reading phase” and before I knew I had ADHD/attention struggles

I know I’m older and they’re aimed at young audiences and a bit outdated in general now but the original Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is still amazing. No contest. It may have plot holes, it may be lacking in some areas like representation, but everything has flaws and all of those are just so easy to get over with such heartwarming characters and carefully crafted quests. Not to mention the high stakes and actually pretty realistic struggles??? I’m probably biased, but I just really love them and am not above fighting others if they put it down

But even after realizing both series are kids books, the plot valleys (not just pothole level inconsistencies), OOC moments, anticlimactic ending, general lack of dynamic characters and lasting themes, and lacking world building all prove HoO to be underwhelming compared to PJO. Like it’s not bad, but it’s not close to perfect either. It’s even hard to argue how most of the events and characters in HoO add and further the stories of PJO, let alone why to consider all of it as sacred canon. Especially by the end of BoO, the lackluster vibe overall was really disheartening

They aren’t bad books. I just don’t think they lived up to the heart of PJO. I didn’t feel like I was reading more about characters I love or learning about great new characters and settings or invested in why this battle against Gaia will be the greatest of all time. Instead, I my brain was caught trying to convince myself why all of that was true and I was blatantly put off by some of the story directions, which made me feel incredibly sad

Again, it’s a fun read. Not considering any sort of literary analysis or strong personal opinion and taking into account the intended audience, it meets expectations. I just feel like the original series did so much more than be average and I’m just grasping at straws here because HoO had potential to do the same

Anyway, here are some of my strongest complaints with brief explanation and in no particular order:

- where were the old characters??? Grover?? WHERE WAS GROVER??????

- Percy was very underplayed in BoO for no reason; even if you consider his time in Tartarus, he was very weak compared to SoN and it wasn’t really explained, which felt lazy. They should’ve let him rest if he wasn’t up to fighting

- mental health issues were brought up but skirted by (Nico’s coming out was awful, Percy’s suicidal thoughts weren’t really addressed seriously (that’s a whole nother post), Hazel’s literally having died once)

- Too. Much. Romance. Why did everyone need to be a couple?????

- same structure as PJO, but without any reinvention (TLT and TLH had almost the same beginning)

- povs past SoN had weird distribution; I don’t think it made sense HoH had all seven povs but the final book, BoO, didn’t

- what made Jason, Piper, and Leo more special than any of the other seven? The explanation that they began everything felt lazy and discredited Frank and Hazel….

- Reyna and Nico and even Coach Hedge held a lot of importance in the plot and it felt weird since they weren’t even part of the seven. Distribution of responsibility and the idea of seven great heroes saving stuff (even if it was ironic) was downplayed

- the seven never really felt like a team or had a moment where it seemed like all of them were vital to make things work. The splitting up into smaller groups all the time definitely worsened this

- why was New Rome a whole mini country when CHB is a literal camp… the world building was quite slapdash and felt unreastic

- no developed Roman side characters really; wish Dakota, Lou Ellen, and others had more importance and interest

- Percy came back to NYC (to CHB) and no one said anything? No Sally-Percy reunion? No Grover-Percy reunion? No campers cheering for Percy to be back?

- last minute Solangelo; they should’ve had some sort of interest to sudden love/slow burn/opposites attract relationship with proper time to develop

- issue of Greeks vs. Roman felt sort of weak and their sudden cohesion at the end felt too forced (how is one statue gonna fix eeeeeeverything)

- final battle was awful. No words. Giants easily killed, Greeks and Romans united in a minute, Gaia contained in a little storm immediately after waking and killed like no biggie

- minimal lasting damage or deaths (Leo’s death…. Don’t even get me started)

- BoO and later books ruined Leo’s character and made him seem selfish, unaware, and rude

- Annabeth and Percy being captured immediately by the giant princess in BoO; you think they escaped Tartarus for the ending to be THAT

- Frank’s whole situation; firewood and the whole idea of life being fragile felt pretty useless by the end when nothing could touch him

- weak usage of prophecy — I feel like the oracle being dead at the end was a sign for everyone to live without forced guidance, which was a big deal in PJO, but the point wasn’t really made and it felt like he just didn’t want to come up with more. Also, it felt like lines were added randomly to the prophecy of seven but we never hear everything together??? The prophecy felt cheap and forced with how everything played out

- no issues with Percy and Annabeth going to New Rome for college, but they’d be that quick to abandon their home in NYC? I get the trauma associated with it, but there was nothing that made it seem right for them to think the trauma was enough to leave everything… lowkey wanted Annabeth to go to Columbia or Barnard or NYU and be fixing up CHB to house adults or have a veteran demigod network

- cutting off character development and interactions. A lot of the characters were used to further others (Jason furthering Nico’s in BoO) or never even talked to each other (Percy and Piper). There wasn’t much growth in the last couple books even though it was very clear in the beginning ones (Frank is an obvious example) and more importantly, there was a supreme lack of resolution in their stories. Especially Percy and Annabeth, who went to hell and back, we never feel like they suffered for a reason or needed to be the ones to suffer or the suffering changed them for better or worse or any other real indication I should accept the ending

- no backlash on the gods. At all. Percy, like many others throughout PJO and HoO, is struggling to respect the gods, let alone continue being used by them. And in HoO, the gods are USELESS. They do literally n.o.t.h.i.n.g. They have one fight scene and when we have Jason’s equivalent to the asking for childcare scene of TLO, Zeus responds and his backbone breaks. The only consequence was Apollo being demoted but that honestly felt like a marketing scheme knowing ToA

- lots more but I’ll stop myself here

(Btw I did not read it because of the show lol though I am glad I did so I’m ready for it)

[teddy06writes]

PLEEAASE 😭😭 I'm begging you for some hurt/comfort resolution for the last karlnapity x reader and sleepy bois brothers!! I just want them all to be happyyy. If the 3 lives was implemented, or if reader came back like ghostbur and the hurt is raw for the loved ones, the fallout and fixing, the love and regret i- (I loved the fic, your karlnapity are my favorite!! keep up the awesome work!! <3)

sapnap x karl x quackity x reader + sleepy boys x silbing!reader

trigger warnings: mention character death (it’s you, your the dead one) yelling, swearing,

requested by the anon above, another anon: “ngl after reading that angst fic I can picture y/n ( even tho I know y/n came back with knowing who the boys were ) coming back kinda like ghostbur knowing the boys voices but can't exactly place their names and who they are to them or something like that ?? idk my brain went think of more angst after that fic - also sorry this is just me rambling. love your work btw !!” 

as well as @tobiostfu @theprocrastinatingshipper @pastelvixenbeauty  and probably some more folks I might have missed

premise: this is a part two to the other angst thing from the other day, so I recommend you read that for context, this is a resolve (ish) to that 

(y/n/n)- your nickname

“blep”- talking

‘blep’ thinking

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

You had drifted the lands of the SMP, and L’Manburg for sometime trying to remember what had happened, and why everyone was always yelling.

You’d try to talk to Karl, after Alex and Nick had left, but he just ignored you.

Now you were perched on the top of the stage, looking out ‘why are the walls gone?’, and then looking down, confused, at the strange, cage like structure built at the center.

You heard a sigh, and turned to see Eret looking up at the cage as well, you hopped down off the stage and concentrated, “Eret?”

They jumped, looking around, “What the hell?”

You screwed your eyes shut ‘please see me please see me please-’

“(y/n)?”

You opened your eyes to see Eret looking at you in shock, “Eret! I’m so glad to see you! Everyone’s been ignoring me lately, and acting like I’m not here, and I don’t get it.”

“(y/n)?” His voice was shaking.

“Yeah, Eret. It’s me!” You giggled, “What’s going on here? Did I miss the festival?”

“(Y/n).”

You looked at her confused, “Yeah. W- whats-”

“(y/n/n)?” A teary voice behind you called.

You grinned turning around, running to hug him, “Karl! I missed you! Why did you keep ignoring me?”

He began to cry as you sailed through him, “(y/n/n).”

“Karl? Karl love why are you crying? Eret what’s going on?”

Karl all but fell to his knee’s burring his head in his hands, muffling his sobs, “(y/n/n)!”

You sat beside him, continually trying to wrap your arms around him, but instead they just past through, over, and over, and over and over again, “Wh- why can’t I- what’s- what- Eret whats?”

Tears similar to Karl’s began to roll down your cheeks, as you looked down at your hands, only now noticing how gray your skin looked, “What’s going on?”

“(y/n),” You could tell Eret was fighting to keep their voice from shaking, “Do you not remember?”

“Remember what? What’s going on?”

Karl sobbed louder, and Eret shook her head, “(y/n), I- theres a path, through the woods, behind- up behind the hill. I- I need you to go up there, as far as it goes, alright?”

You nodded, “Why?”

“Just go. I’m going to take Karl back home. Maybe- maybe don’t come back to his house for a while.”

Eret gently helped Karl up, and led him away, his sobs still echoing in your head.

‘what the hell is going on here?’

Slowly you drifted up towards the hill Eret had spoken of, ‘hey, pogtopia is this way! maybe I’ll go see Wil an’ Tommy an’ Techno! They’ll know what’s going on.’

You continued to drift up the path, humming quietly and wondering what Eret had sent you to look at, and why Karl had been crying.

You looked up and around at all the trees, trying to remember them. It was in bits and pieces, Tommy yelling about about freedom, Wilbur saying how proud Phil would be.

You remembered the forests burning, ‘who had done that?’, hiding in the woods after- after something- tnt, blow- after L’manburg had been blown up.

You stopped moving, looking down confused at the stone you had come across, it as large, flat and upright, and you looked at the words confused.

‘(Y/n) brave beyond words, hero of L’manburg’ there were various flowers scattered around, a sword stuck out of the ground, a flower chain wrapped around it’s hilt, there was a uniform jacket, one you vaguely recognized as your own and a bandana, also tied to the hilt of the sword.

Someone dropped something, a sword, “(y/n)?”

“Techno! I missed you! Everyone down in L’manburg is being wierd and when I finally got Karl to stop ignoring me he just started crying, and there’s this weird thing up on the stage and the walls are gone, and Eret told me to come up here, and why is my name on this headstone?”

“(y/n/n) I’m sorry,” Your brother fell to his knees, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean too! They made me!”

“What are you talkin about Tech?”

“How are you back here? I’m sorry! This is my fault I did this to you!”

You were surprised to see your brother crying, “What’s wrong Techno?”

“You don’t remember?”

“(Y/n)?” Another voice asked.

You turned, looking at Wilbur, “Wilbur what’s going on? No one’s answering me again, and I’m scared that they can’t see me again! And I’m really confused and I made Karl cry and I don’t get it!”

“(y/n) your dead, you died, you- how are you?” Wilbur stuttered.

“Wha- wh- d- dead? What do you mean?” You watched as Wilbur carefully placed himself between you and a still crying Techno.

“You died, a few days ago. (y/n/n).”

You sank to the ground, fading away so that your brothers wouldn’t see.

~~ “So you don’t remember anything?” The man with the rams horns asked.

You shook your head, “Not everything. Just a lot of things. Wilby says I’m dead, which I guess makes sense now.”

You’d continue drifting around L’manburg, for a while, trying to figure out what had happened on your own, and ended up sitting dejectedly outside the white house, you could remember making it with Tubbo.

“Well I’m Shlatt.” He shuffled around in his desk, looking for something.

“Shlatt?” You paused, trying to remember him, pretending not to notice to see the fear that flashed in his eyes, “Your.. you were here before L’manburg right?”

“Yeah, uh, here.” He pulled out a book and quill, “Uh, write down what you remember, that might help.”

You looked at him quizzically, “I can’t touch things, uh- or manipulate objects in the normal world with out using huge amounts of energy.”

He frowned and quickly picked up the pen, “You dictate then.”

You hummed, “Well, things I remember....”

~~

Alex woke with a start, sitting up from where he was hunched over his desk, blinking at the harsh afternoon light that was drifting through his office window.

He still hadn’t been back to the house since the fight after the execution, and had been forcing himself into work to mask the grief.

“So is there anything else? It doesn’t seem like you remember much.” Shlatt’s voice was muffled by the wall.

“Well it’s a bit foggy towards the end, and the beginning Ooo! I remember Alex and Nicky and Karl too! I could never forget them!”

Alex froze at the familiar giggle.

“Yeah, you never used to shut up about your boyfriends.” Shlatt chuckled.

Alex was running down the hall and slamming the door to the presidents office open before he could register he was moving, “Shlatt am I going insane or...”

He trailed off as your floating grayish form turned to him, “Alex! I couldn’t find you! And I didn’t know what was going on and everyone was ignoring me then I saw Wil and Techno and they told me I was dead. and then I found Shlatt! And he’s helping me write down what I remember! Have you met Shlatt? He’s nice!”

“Shlatt what the fuck is this?” He spoke through you as if you weren’t even there.

“Your partner. Apparently no one around has been helping them sort things out,” The president stood up and moved around his desk, “Ghosts tend to forget things of there past lives, and no one was helping them, so I am.”

“Did you tell them what happened? Why there fuckin- floating around instead of being here with us?” Alex spat.

Shlatt sighed, “Quackity listen this is a delicate thing. Right now it’s be better to help them remember than just tell them. So go find your stupid boyfriends and tell them the situation!”

“I cant Shlatt, we broke up. They don’t want to see me.”

“Is that what you were yelling about?” You asked quietly.

Alex looked at you, shocked, “You heard that?”

“Yeah. You and Nick made Karl cry. And then I couldn’t do anything about it,” you looked down at the floor, “w- is it my fault y- we’re broken up now?”

Alex remained silent so you continued, “I’m trying to remember what I did. And how I died. But if I did something stupid, or something to hurt you, I’m sorry.”

You were crying again, and Shlatt glared at Alex, which somehow surprised you, “This is why is trying to fucking handle this. Leave. Tell the others or not I don’t care, they’ll find out eventually.”

“Wh- Shlatt they- How-”

“I said get out,” Shlatt said firmly, “At least let me try to fix things I’ve fucked up.”

Alex shook his head before turning and heading out of the office, only ducking into his own long enough to grab something before stalking out of the building.

Shlatt turned back to you, already starting to pick the pen back up, “So what else do you remember about.. uh, your last few days. What do you remember right before the end?”

“Did they really break up because of me? If I did something I should go apologized.”

“Hey, hey, no, it ain’t your fault. I’ll go yell at them later. Tell me more about what you remember about the festival.”

~~ “Why the fuck are we here Shlatt?” Tommy half yelled.

Tommy, Technoblade, Wilbur, Alex, Nick and Karl were all gathered in front of Shlatt in the holy land.

“So, some of you may know, some of you may not, (Y/n) is back,” He looked over all the faces, Karl already looking like he was about to cry, and Nick frozen in shock, “For the past week or so they’ve been wandering and apparently none of you have been doing anything to help them.”

“Ghosts don’t remember much from there past lives, so good job on all of you that knew, you left your partner or sibling lost and confused,” He dropped the book you’d written together on the table, “I did my best, they remember everything that's written down here. I couldn’t tell them much about what they forgot, because it’s not my place.

“If you guys want, I can keep talking to them, and doing my best, but incase you haven’t noticed I’m also the fucking president. I can’t spend all my time helping educate a ghost. They disappeared yesterday, after saying something about Karl and how they saw you fools yelling, so, this is in your court now.”

Shlatt turned a walked away, heading back towards Manburg.

With shaking hands Tommy took the book, reading aloud,

“Things I remember: Home, fire, Phil finding me, Wilbur never having seen a child before, Techno swearing he’d protect me, fire, Tommy trying to spar with me before he could walk right, Techno teaching me to fight, finding the SMP lands, L’manburg, fighting for independence, fire,

“the forests burning, seeing Nick for the first time, Babysitting Fundy, winning independence, Eret leaving, fire, destruction, L’manburg thriving, the sun, Tubbo and his bees, more people coming to the country, meeting Karl, finding Alex, when we got our act together and finally all started dating.

“Wil threatening Nick and nick not being scared, Techno threatening all of them and making them terrified. Pogtopia, the cavern The festival, the dunk tank, Techno almost crying, my boys, fire.”

He looked up at his brothers, “You knew they were back?”

“I was in shock,” Techno was staring at his boots, clearing his throat uncomfortably, “Y’know I swore I’d protect ‘em, but- I- I killed ‘em.”

Nick grabbed the book from Tommy, “We have to find them.”

~~

“Fundy can you turn the page for me please?”

The fox nodded, “Course (y/n).”

Most of the shock had worn off, and now he was mostly just happy to see you again, even going and finding an old photobook Wilbur had given him a while ago.

“Oh I remember this!” You pointed to a photo, it was taken a year after Phil had found you, “There was a big fire across the field, and while they were taking care of it I got scared and ran away, Techno found me in a tree.”

Fundy laughed, “3 year old you got in a tree by yourself?”

“Yeah, furball, I was in a tree when Philza found me too.” You chuckled.

“Hey Fundy, have you...” Niki burst in the door, tailing off as she saw you.

You waved “Hey Niki.”

“Uhh, Your brothers, and your partners are looking for you.”

You frowned, “Are they still my partners if I’m dead?”

Niki gave you a sad look, “Come on. Sapnap hasn’t seen you and he’s worried.”

“They all fought because of me, I’d rather stay here,” You looked out the door warily, “I don’t want to make things worse than they already are.”

“They need you (y/n), you brought them together.”

You drifted around Fundy and towards the door, “Making things worse isn’t something I want to do.”

You went through the door, past the group of people, making your form fade as much as possible so as not to be noticed, from there you wandered down to the docks, sitting on the edge to look over the channel.

“Phil sent a letter, said he’s devastated your gone, but overjoyed your still here.”

You looked up at Techno, “How’d you know I’d be down here?”  

“You always liked the water,” He chuckled, “Specially if there was a fire goin on somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to make things worse, if your here to take me back there.”

“I’m here to apologize. I know you don’t remember, but in case you do, I’m sorry, I had to do it.”

You laughed, “Your my big brother Tech, I doubt I’d be mad at you if I remembered.”

He smiled sadly, sitting down next to you, “Why do you think you’ll make things worse?”

You sighed, “Well when I first came back, I thought everyone was ignoring me. And when I found L’manburg again Karl and Nick and Alex were fighting about something I did, and then when Eret finally saw me Karl started crying, and then when I found you and Wilby you started crying and I just- I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Techno looked at you, “If anything it’s our fault. All of this.”

“Techno, can we talk to (y/n)?”

You froze at Nick’s voice, but your brother was already moving, and Your partners were taking his place.

“(y/n/n), we’re sorry-”

“Stop,” You cut Alex off, “Whatever’s happening stop. You can’t apologize to me for shit I did that I can’t remember.”

“(y/n/n), we aren’t apologizing for that, that's not even your fault. We’re apologizing for fighting as soon as you were gone.” Nick said.

“Please come back with us. Don’t disappear,” Karl’s voice was barley a whisper, “We can help you remember.”

You bit your lip, sobbing, “I don’t want to make things hard on you guys. I didn’t even want to come back like this! Before I woke up again, it was just darkness, and it was horrible. but somehow staying there for eternity seems better than this.”

All three sets of arms passed through you, all of your boyfriends forgetting they couldn’t hold you, only making you cry harder.

~~

“I want to be resurrected.”

It had been a week and a half since the day at the docks. You hadn’t gone back with them, though you had continued hanging around Manburg, talking mainly to Shlatt, and by now you just wanted to go back to the normal you remembered.

“Resurrected?” Dream looked at you curiously.

“Yeah. I want to go back. If I can’t stay dead the normal way and I’m stuck here then I want it to be normal. I want to hug my boyfriends, and ruffle my little brothers hair!”

The man behind the mask merely cocked his head, “So why did you come to me?”

“You’re essentially a god in these lands. I figured you might know someone or someway for me to be resurrected,” The mask shifted and you could almost here the plan formulating in his mind, “And if it ends up failing I don’t want it to hurt anyone else.”

The man sighed, “It would be a very complicated process. It’s been what, three weeks since you died, what ever was left of your body is going to be- less than in good condition.”

“What was left?” You questioned.

“Oh, (y/n), didn’t they tell you?”  Had the mask been gone you would have seen the gleam of wickedness in his eyes, “You went off with a bang.”

~~

“You’re planning what?” Shlatt yelled, incredulous.

You’d told Shlatt about the plan for resurrections, seeing as he was one of the only one who really still talked to you, “I have to do it Shlatt! I can’t stay like this! I want things to be normal! I want-” Your voice grew small, “I want to take back what you took from me.”

Fear flashed in the horned mans eyes, “He told you.”

“Even you wouldn’t,” You said dejectedly, “I thought you were my friend.”

“I- I was your friend, At some points at least.”

He watched as you floated away, “I suppose we’ll see once I’m back.”

As soon as you were gone Shlatt was hurrying out of his office, “Quackity! Quackity, some shit is about to hit the fan! You better call the idiots in Pogtopia!”

It didn’t take long for him to assemble your brothers and partners, frantically telling them the situation, “Dream is up to something with this people! He obviously is doing some manipulation shit!”

“Why do you even care Shlatt?” Tommy asked, “Your the bitch who killed them, so why should you care if they come back?”

“Sorry that the one time I’m willing to look past shit you don’t trust me?” He groaned, pulling a bottle from his coat and taking a swig, “Sorry that I’m trying to help.”

“How would he even turn this against us?” Nick asked, “Resurrections isn’t something he can do, he’d put Bad in charge of that, and we all know that Bad wouldn’t corrupt someone.”

“It’s possible that they won’t remember anything, at all, and people who’ve forgotten are the easiest to manipulate.” Shlatt sighed.

“We have to help them.” Karl decided.

~~

Darkness, darkness, darkness.

You had finally found your way back to that dark abyss, though now it was filled with strange chanting.

It felt like you were bein dragged across the length of the universe, losing everything of your being along the way.

‘stop! stop stop stop! I want- I want to remember’ you begged the darkness.

The hell you found yourself in seemed to stretch, continuing for infinity, the darkness, called you, begging you to stay, to give up the last of your essence to it.

The chanting grew louder as you tried to scream, the sound lodged in a throat that no longer existed.

All at once you became nothing, and then you felt the weight of a thousand suns crushing you back down into a body.

~~ Your eyes flicked open, to a blinding white world.

“It worked! There awake!” You heard Bad yell.

You started to smile as you heard Alex yell, “Get the fuck away from them Dream, you can’t manipulate anyone else!”

You sat up, starting to look around, but still, you saw nothing but light, “Alex? Wh- It- why can’t I see?”

“They remember!”  you heard Karl rejoice.

“Why can’t I see?” You asked again, raising your hands to your eyes.

“(y/n) what do you mean?” Nick asked.

“I can’t see.” You said desperately, reaching out you felt your boyfriends wrapping there arms around you.

“I think I know how to fix it!” Bad yelled triumphantly.

Everything went black again.

~~

This time, your trip through hell was not as bad, though you seemed not to notice as your existence and identify was striped away again.

~~ Your eyes flicked open, the feeling returned to your body, and slowly you sat up, looking around at the odd group of people gathered around you, “Who are you?”

As soon as the world came out of your mouth a mousy haired man in a colorful sweater burst into tears, the man with the beanie next to him quickly pulling him into a hug.

“I- Who are you?”

“Do you not remember?”  

You shook your head, “Remember what?”

you turned to the pink haired man, “I know you don’t I? I swear- I- I know I know you. Why don’t I remember you?”

A demonic looking man quickly closed a book, “You guys should clear out. a third party might be better for this.”

~~ The man- Bad, had explained basics of things to you, who everyone who’d been in the room before, and the said that you would have to stay at his house in the Badlands for a few days.

The next day was better.

‘holy shit it worked!’ you thought, looking down at your arms, ‘I’m back’

Quietly you got out of the bed, rushing through the room and towards the stairs of Bad and Skeppy’s house, “Guys! Guys it worked! I’m alive again!��

You turned another corner to see you brothers, looking at you shocked, “(y/n)? You remember?”

You grinned, quickly pulling your brother into a hug, “It wasn’t your fault Techno! You didn’t mean to it’s okay!”

“(y/n/n)?”

You turned again, “Karl! Nicky! Alex!”

The next thing you knew you were in a pile on the ground, your boyfriends all hugging you tightly.

~~

They brought you home soon after, and from there you had good days and bad days.

There were days where you remembered it all, days where you found yourself lost and confused in an unknown house, and days where you could on recognize certain things around you.

Still, you were back with Nick and Karl and Alex, and you would make it through, together.

[twst-campos13]

ah hello!! i'm literally so excited to see a blog for enby and male readers sodjfoijf,,could i maybe request a scenario where male reader is a staff member (idk?? like a librarian?? a nurse??? do they need nurses over there???) and is crushing on crewel but is too scared to confess because he's both Too Dense to pick up any signs of potential reciprocation and also just isn't sure if crewel likes men??? maybe. maybe with a happy ending though because i am a fool,, thank you very much!!

One hopelessly cheesy scenario coming up!! Thank you for requesting! I hope you don’t mind I made reader a librarian who may or may not be a bit of a romantic because i listened to a particular playlist while writing this- (commentary in notes!)

Warnings: none! Tags: male!reader, fluff!

A simple man such as you live a simple life. As simple as life can be in Night Raven College, that is. A prestigious school that holds a student body that can barely tolerate each other. It would be typical for a librarian to be the observer than the observed, but hey, if it means getting out of trivial matters of the school and enjoying the show in your personal bubble, then you have no complaints.

This attitude of yours did come to have its own consequences. You were seen as timid by most students as you were quite closed-off, taking it as a reason to poke fun at you sometimes. You proved them wrong when they step out of line with their fun. Most of the time you choose to ignore them. However, you lived up to your introverted nature, especially when it comes to him.

Tall, dark, and handsome. Approachable but also not at the same time. Sharply dressed and sharp attitude. This man that visits the library ever so often had become your daily motivation to keep on working at this school despite the wage that Crowley gives you.

Divus Crewel, feared and admired by staff and students—also known as the man who stole your heart.

You feel so small compared to him. That would not be so farfetched. He is a remarkable man, and what about you? You are just a librarian at this school. You are like mere dust to him.

Yet, despite this, you continued yearning for him no matter how ridiculous it seems. Perhaps you have fallen too deep in romantic fiction that you make hopeless wishes. You are known to be excellent in reading people but for some reason, you find it hard to read Divus. His perfect posture whenever he would scan the Applied Sciences aisle showed that he is focused on his reading. However, it is his expression you find hard to decipher. He looks dashing as ever, of course, but his thin lips and neutral gaze makes it hard for you to know what he is thinking.

If your life is a novel it would be so easy to know what runs in his mind. What he feels for you. Maybe he could even know what you feel for him. In a story, what makes characters likable is knowing what their emotions, their feelings, their ambitions, and their dreams are, for they are already laid out in ink on pages. Implicit or explicit information, simple or complex structure of personality, it does not matter. You would easily know about them for they are just sentences away from understanding.

And in romance novels…oh, how dreamy they are. How easy they make it seem to fall in love, to confess, and to achieve a happy ending. However, as a librarian, you know the reality of your situation. Your relationship with Crewel is a professional. Strictly, if you were to add an adjective. Is it really strictly professional? Your right brain points out the moments in your life where you interacted with him. At faculty meetings, reunions, at the library…moments like those just feel surreal you almost believed that you made those up on your own. Probably because you initiated each of those interactions yourself.

The only time, where Crewel would come to you himself, are rare. One time he came to the library and checked out a book to read in his spare time. His voice distracted you. It was like cherry wine. Sweet, smooth, enough to make your throat dry and your cheeks flushed. Oh, you could listen to him talk for hours in that tone of his, and he could even make you do anything he pleases.

You greet each other good morning or good afternoon when you pass by each other, and he would smile a teasing one at you as if you two shared a secret with each other. Well, technically you did, for one time you bought him coffee under the pouring rain, and he repaid you for your kindness. Soon enough your coffee exchange became a routine for both of you. It was sweeter than the cream in his coffee. It was more refreshing than the rainy day you shared with each other.

His gaze. His posture. His voice. His smile. Despite those small interactions with each other you are still troubled by what he thinks of you. A friend? A colleague? A special someone? Why is this so hard? Why was it so easy to fall in love? And when things could not get worse for you, your left brain argued that he might not be interested to mingle with a man.

Well, you could find out for yourself, but that would be creepy. Your workspace is in the library! You could not just leave when you please just so you can observe him. You could not use the staff files to your advantage—that is being a borderline stalker. Whatever Crewel’s orientation is, is his to keep and his to disclose to you. Oh, but still. If this were a novel, you could easily analyze the situations that give off evidence of him liking men. Or liking someone like you.

If that were the case you would not have a hard time trying to decipher his words, his gaze, his tone, and his actions towards you. If that were the case…if that were the case…then…well, there’s no then. Divus Crewel is not a fictional character to analyze. He is your coworker, your colleague.

It is hard to know what he thinks of you, at all. You really wished that you could…but the thought of knowing what he thinks to scare you, as well.

Rejection is not that far from reality. Who are you compared to him again? A nobody. A simple, ‘timid’, librarian that enjoys reading romantic and fiction novels and inserts himself in scenarios he makes up for himself just so he can…find the happiness he wishes to have.

But Divus is your happiness. Became your source of happiness. Ironic how he colors the muted floor of the library with his monochromatic appearance. Maybe it is better that you keep your feelings to yourself. You avoid the risk of rejection and humiliation as well as ruining whatever it is your current relationship with Crewel is.

You barely registered the visitor in front of your desk until a familiar red leathery gloved hand rested atop of yours. The contact of the leather sent a spark of electricity through you that you snapped your head up to meet alluring silvery blue eyes. There is only one person in this college that owns those distinct, beautiful, silvery blue eyes.

Divus.

“Have I interrupted your moment of peace, sir?” He asked in that cherry wine voice of his. It made your throat dry up and your face warm. “N-No—no!” You squeaked, shaking your head to brush off the embarrassment. Quickly, you fixed your composure and appeared presentable. As presentable as you could be under his stare that is. You just hope that he found some amusement in your haste. “D-Div—Mr. Crewel, what can I do for you?” You smiled as you speak in a professional tone. The edge of his lips curled into a familiar smirk and still you could not determine what was running through his mind at the moment.  

“I came to return the book I borrowed last week,” he said, placing down the novel on your desk. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen. Right, he borrowed that last week. It is not your place to judge whatever it is he desires to read. “Of course,” you nodded, “did you enjoy reading it?” You started on a small talk as you take out your logbook for the check-ins and outs of books. “Somewhat,” Crewel shrugged, “I had my eyes set on another book I would like to borrow.”

“Oh? What is it? I’ll go get it for you.” You stood up after sliding the logbook back to its drawer. Crewel did not leave from where he was standing. His eyes were simply on you. You had to hide your nervousness under his gaze. “I had my eyes on it ever since that rainy day, when you offered me shelter in the library until the rain passes,” he mused. “General fiction, I believe, was the genre.”

“If that’s the case then you better tell me the title,” you joked, taking a stool to the genre’s aisle. “Are you certain you can find it?” Crewel coolly challenged. You almost laughed but did not fight the smile on your lips. “Mr. Crewel, I spend most of my time in this library. I know every book and I still have the Dewey Decimal system memorized…” You kept your eyes distracted by scanning the spines of the books on the shelves. You are aware that he is still looking at you that is why you refused to look back at him. You are not sure what will happen if you look back at him while conversing.  

“If that is the case—” why does he suddenly sound a bit close? “—may you find ‘How to Ask your Dense Colleague Out to Dinner?’”

What a lengthy title. It sounds very basic and almost like a rule book than a novel. Well, that is General Fiction for you. Though you are quite unsure if such a book exists in the library. “Hm…” you hummed, a finger on your chin, as your eyes scanned the shelves. “I don’t think I have that here…Crowley pays me enough to support my rent and meals, but not enough to buy new books. Plus, the students…”

You heard him chuckle beside you and fought the urge to turn to him. “I believe I was not frank enough. Ah, well, I will put all subtleties aside, then…”

His warm breath tickling your skin was what made you finally turn to him. The proximity of your noses startled you that you nearly stumbled out of your stool if it were not for Divus’ hand grabbing yours to pull you to him. You gasped, shocked, as you landed close to his chest. His other hand supported your waist, and your eyes widened his silvery blues. You can feel your heart hammering against his. Your legs feel like putty when he gave you that teasing smirk. Your name—your first name—sounds surreal from his lips. Your entire world was a confusing mix of vertigo and bright lights.

“Will you go to dinner with me?”

You stared. You stammered. You are flabbergasted and flustered. You were unsure how to react to such a forward question that your brain completely shut down. But you cannot embarrass yourself—you must not. Not when…not when…not when…!

Oh, he will he stop saying your name with such sentiment?

“Is your silence a rejection or a consideration?” He rose a brow and your face flushed even more. “No! I mean yes—I mean—no, it isn’t a rejection—”

“Then you have been anticipating this?”

“Divus!”

He laughed. He laughed at your state. He laughed at your awkwardness. But most importantly his laugh sounds so pleasant. Like he was teasing you and you liked him teasing. You grew shy, averting your gaze from his and fidgeting with your fingers. “I mean…I mean…why?”

Crewel stopped laughing and looked at you. “Why what?”

“Why…me? Out of all people?” You asked as fear and denial keep you from grasping the fact that this is all real and not another scenario you made up during rainy days. Crewel’s face remained passive. Neutral. It was eating at your heart and you just wish what is going through his mind.

“Is it not obvious, puppy?” He raised a brow at you. The hand holding your wrist now tilted your chin in his direction. “It is not by fate or destiny, but a mere law that dictates the gravitational pull of similar atoms that is programmed by the need to chemically bind together.”

You suddenly felt stumped. “W—What?”

“I like you, puppy,” Crewel clarified, adoring the way your confusion turned to pure surprise, “and I would like to have dinner with you. Perhaps another, if the first went well.”

You need some time to process this. Your head felt so light you might pass out in his arms. Actually, you would not mind that in the slightest. His coat is just so soft it feels like heaven. A proper response of agreement failed to come to your mind so instead, you asked him again, “And what if the first does not end well?”

Crewel smiled at you. “Then we shall try again with the next dinner. Mind you, puppy, as a man of science, I am not afraid of failure if trying means more chances of perfecting my goal.”

“And what’s that goal?” You asked and physically stopped yourself from combusting when he leaned closer to you that your noses touch and you smell his cologne, and his bold scent.

“The goal to become yours.”

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

please. i can’t do this alone.

Titans 3.01

thoughts! thoughts! thoughts! some red hot thoughts!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. one episode in, and this season already looks set to give me everything i want. its abandonment of plot and storytelling conventions as it goes from one point to the next at breakneck speed; its cheerful bastardisation of iconic storylines from the comics; the ‘as-you-know-bob’ clunky exposition on one end and extremely restrained, subtle explorations of complex character dynamics on the other; endless shots of neon bleeding into black and blue corridors, shadows and silhouettes; my delight in seeing it celebrate and deconstruct the dark nolan-y batman aesthetic at the same time; my bafflement that it’s so fucking goddamn obsessed with the batfam when it’s supposed to be about the TITANS; kory just... saving every overburdened, clunky scene that she’s in by her sparkling charisma. just... *chef’s kiss*. muah. my show is back, in all its glory.

MY SHOW IS BACK, Y’ALL!

1.5. i mean... this show is so artful and weird and not afraid to go absolutely bonkers in exploring its characters’ psyche, but can just about barely stage a passable comic book fight when every tom dick and harry and their new streaming services can deliver ones that are far more exciting. i love this show with every atom of my body.

(there’s something to be said about rooting for the underdog as well. a pleasure in finding something to love about what other people dismiss. but! enough navel gazing! i have fictional characters’ navels to look at! metaphorically! and maybe literally!)

2. i expected jason’s death to come about pretty early in the season as soon as i heard rumours that red hood was showing up, but for it to happen in the first five minutes of the first episode... that’s a record. 

(well. “happen.” still don’t know what exactly went down there.)

2.25. GOD. jason is such a tortured and tragic character in this show, used and passed around by people with alleged good intentions, never really fitting in anywhere. he’s veritably bleeding vulnerability and the need to belong, the need to be known, and yet the tragedy is that his death proves that nobody in his life knew anything about him at all; that they only saw the flimsy walls he put up to protect his soft core, and thought that that was all there was. that they say they loved him, but blame him for his own death. 

dick is flabbergasted that jason can read, though we know from last season, from what jason revealed to rose, that he has a love for plays and music. barbara is quick to dismiss his actions as ‘impulsive’. bruce has no idea that his supposed son was building his own little chemistry lab right under his nose, and beyond that, no idea that jason needed structure, stability and validation beyond being left alone in a huge house with a treasure trove of dangerous weapons. kory thought his decision to fight the joker was from not learning and growing when the guy tried to kill himself last season and nobody apart from dick even tried to talk to him about it! did you consider that he might still be suicidal? especially after the titans admitted to having “given up” on him because he was just “too hard”?

2.5. the one thing that’s been consistent across all three seasons (so far) of the show is the unreliable narrator trope. there’s a reason why the characters’ dismissals of jason’s actions as impulsive is so repetitive; why jason’s death is a mystery dick feels compelled to solve. it’s a flailing attempt to know his brother much too late--but with red hood, maybe he gets a second chance, just like he got one with the titans. this is what jason’s arc has been building up to. this is ‘death in the family’ but more fucked up in some ways. it didn’t linger on the death because the death wasn’t the point. the joker isn’t the point. everything that came before it is.

this way it will also make perfect sense that the red hood’s main enemy becomes the titans rather than batman.

2.75. goodness knows what’s going on with jason’s little chemistry project. at first i thought he was immunising himself to joker gas or something, but maybe it’s what passes for lazarus pit juice in this universe? 

anyway, it’s pretty impressive that jason learnt all of that from a college chemistry textbook. STOP BRINGING UP THAT HE READ SOMETHING, DICK--

2.8. i’m glad that dick doesn’t immediately sink into self-loathing and guilt and tries to investigate jason’s death while also acknowledging how he failed him. it’s like he actually learned something from the last two years! 

anyway. more about dick later. 

3. oh how i love titans!bruce. a lot of characters had a lot of Opinions on his reaction to jason’s death in this episode, but again, i ask you to consider that they’re unreliable narrators, and this universe’s bruce is a product of how it shaped him. bruce wayne has become a phantom to himself--an artifice borne out of vigorous discipline and crushing self-denial. 

bruce has been batman for a very long time, and without a robin for much longer. (dick must be... in his early thirties? so he was robin for about, say, 10-12 years according to the timeline of the show. that still makes bruce pretty old when he took on his first robin.) things have... calcified (possibly parts of his brain). the personal cost and the collateral from the mission he’s taken up for most of his life is too much to countenance; it has to be a war, and war requires sacrifice. 

on some level bruce knows that’s a lie. he’s so goddamned alone. what’s he going to do? sit down and cry? who’s going to listen to him now? oh, is he going to just stop being batman? who’s going to stop gotham from consuming herself then? he’ll just have to forge ahead, do better next time, maybe he’ll be firmer with them, or kinder with them, or notice more things, or train them harder, or spend more time--

3.25. don’t get me wrong: titans!bruce is an asshole and a half. his roster of potential robins was honestly bone-chilling. the fact that there’s a twisted root of compassion makes it more disturbing. 

3.5. alfred’s dead! it must’ve been pretty recent, because i could’ve sworn that dick tried to call alfred in the very first episode of season 1, or at least considered calling him... 

what a devastating double-blow for bruce then, losing his father-figure and his, uh.... son-figure so close together.

4. i don’t know about barbara yet. i mean, i like her, but she had so much clunky expository dialogue to deliver this episode, and for an episode that was named after her, she only showed up halfway through it. but i like the weight of history behind her interactions with both bruce and dick and her compassion to bruce before he cruelly crossed a line. i also like the implication that she and dick have been in touch recently, and that she didn’t immediately try to guilt-trip dick about some perceived abandonment. it’d be too repetitive.

4.5. there’s also a sense that she ran interference for dick a lot whenever there was something Too Big and Emotional for him to confront directly, and i like and appreciate that character beat.

5. dick, my man! it really does feel like a substantial length of time has passed between the end of s2 and the beginning of s3... kory’s got a new costume, they’ve become celebrities in SF, working missions together, and dick’s actually smiling! genuinely enjoying his work and having fun with it for possibly the first time in the entire series! it’s really a far cry from the fractured, dysfunctional mess that they were at the end of the last season.

i just hope this doesn’t mean that they’ve magically reached a resolution off-screen to all of their fucked-upness from last season, and that the repercussions--for gar in particular--are actually addressed on screen. 

5.25. i mentioned this briefly above, but it really is so refreshing that dick doesn’t wallow in guilt and self-loathing after jason’s death; he acknowledges his and the titans’ failure, is able to admit to barbara honestly that he’s not doing great, and is actively trying to reach out to bruce to make sure he’s ok, is trying to investigate what made jason seek out the joker on his own, and is probably the only person not immediately buying that it was jason’s recklessness that got him killed. i love that dick is finally beginning to trust his instincts or just employ them at all after years of guilt and paranoia and self-loathing. we love some positive character growth!

5.5. another thing i love? the bruce-dick interactions on this show. every scene they’re in together is so fraught with tension, both of them holding themselves back, their emotions on a whipcord-tight leash. dick wants to reach out to bruce, is even somewhat familiar with this brand of denial in the wake of grief, but wants barbara to make the first move because he genuinely does not know how to get bruce to open up. his instincts are right, and wonderful, and genuine, but his expression has been smothered by years of trauma, emotional and physical self-discipline, and what i suspect is poorly treated mental illness. 

it takes a lot for him to finally explode at bruce at the end of the episode--in a way he hasn’t done even when his only opinion of bruce was ‘fuck him’--and it’s all the more startling for how subdued he’s been through the episode, how much he’s been holding back his emotions for bruce’s sake. love it.

5.75. it sort of hurts my heart to see the flying graysons poster in jason’s room. there are a few implications:

a) jason settled into dick’s old room despite living in a giant mansion with dozens of other rooms he could’ve used

b) he didn’t take down dick’s poster--not when he moved in and was idolising him, not when he moved out of the titans and was sort of hating him. i wonder if the reminder of what dick was before robin--that he was forged out of unspeakable tragedy--gave jason the connection to dick that he so desperately wanted in real life

c) dick moved right back into the room and slept on the bed that was now jason’s. grief can be so quiet and piecemeal sometimes.

6. i spy the beginnings of actual arcs for both gar and kory! i just hope that with the move to gotham their stories don’t fall to the wayside...

6.5. i’ve known tim drake for less than ten minutes but if anything were to happen to him i’d kill everybody 

7. this review has gone on for too long and i am tiRED. however, before i leave: i miss some of the dedication-to-aesthetic that titans season 1 used to have. remember how the first few episodes didn’t really feel like a superhero show but something out of gothic horror? there was something gorgeous and raw about that, about open landscapes and the road and creepy buildings looming up at the end of it. moving to titans tower in s2 really ruined a lot of that for me, given its ripped-from-architectural-digest aesthetic, all smooth and clean and artificial. 

i hope that we really explore gotham’s hellscape in interesting and innovative ways instead of camping out in the batcave all the time and indulging in the show’s unending love for long corridors, neon backlights and silhouettes.

8.....

9.  wait, fuck, HOW CAN I FORGET ABOUT HOT PSYCHIATRIST GUY (TM)??? NONE of you prepared me for his return! NONE OF YOU! i gasped! i got up and did a happy dance! 

listen, titans writers, if you’ve had a peek at my titans s3 wishlist, please go ahead and give the other items on the list a go too, thankyouverymuch.

[dylawa]

So @allmightluver​ made this FANTASTIC analysis into All Might’s character [Here] and how the current Manga arc (chapters ~300-305) really shows how he’s going through it, and, if you have the time to read it, I by all means am begging you to go read and reblog that post instead. But, for my own small-brained sake, I asked for their permission to create an abbreviated version of their post (which is still “long,” but it’s not a whole fanfic’s length long. It’s brilliant as it is! I am just weak).

This literally is just a rephrased edition of a much larger, more in-depth piece; it’s the equivalent of reading a book’s synopsis over the book itself, so GO. READ IT.

But, to those that are still here, this is a Thing about All Might. Again, all of this is just rephrased from @allmightluver​‘s [original post]; I kept most of the original context; maybe I’ll do a follow-up reblog with my own thoughts.

From as early as Toshinori’s childhood, to as late as his young teenage years, literally all he ever wanted was to be a hero people could see and know, “Everything is going to turn out okay, no matter how bad the situation is.” Many other heroes of the time, and even into current day BNHA, generally had other reasons for pursuing the line of work, but not him. There was no yearning for fame, lust for money, or a power trip, or anything like that. The only thing he wanted out of being a hero, was to get people to smile. To feel safe.

It’s not common for a 14 year old to come to this conclusion, so it’s pretty safe to assume Toshinori didn’t have the best childhood, whether that’s in his own personal life, or he really just had no filter between his home life, and the world of heroes and villains. Being Quirkless probably played a huge factor in all of that.

But then, what about Izuku? He was Quirkless, right? Here’s the thing: He had All Might to look up to. Toshinori? Nobody. Yes, Izuku had some of the same roadblocks, but All Might inspired him to keep going. There isn’t much to imply that Toshinori had a similar relationship to Nana when they first crossed paths, and hero culture was less of a fashion show than it is currently.

Nana was only able to mentor Toshinori for a few short years before she was brutally murdered, right in front of him, and after that, all he had was Gran Torino, who wasn’t exactly benevolent teacher material-- vicious enough that, even as an older man, Toshinori had severe reservations about speaking with him again; but back then, he was one of the only people that knew the pain he went through in losing Nana, not to mention knowledge of One for All itself. And even then, Torino instructed him to leave the country, once again leaving Toshinori all alone to figure out things for himself until he could confidently return to Japan.

And when he did come back, he had his work cut out for him; there was a lot of work to be done to get society as “surface-level gleaming” as it was under All Might’s thumb, and we see some of that in Vigilantes; staying up for days on end to save people, stop villains, and repair structural damage. He even falls asleep mid-jump at one point, because that’s all the time for rest he can squeeze in. But, by this point, the power of One For All has lead the public, and even other heroes to believe, that All Might has it under control; he doesn’t need help, or at least, nothing more than what they’re already giving. And sure, Endeavor did his part, but that was for him; he just wanted to surpass All Might, not help him.

Now, after his gruesome injury, Toshinori no longer has that ability to save people like he used to. He spent years doing nothing but serving the world, fighting an unseen force that nearly tore him in half, to the point that that evil force should have died, and, even after all of that, thinking he had won, that it was over, Nighteye still promised his untimely demise, before abandoning him for continuing to push himself as his organs threatened to fall out of his body. But, even if AFO was “gone,” there was still a whole other world of villains to deal with; the worst threat was gone, but that didn’t mean the world was safe.

And the only person who could maintain that peace, was All Might. Now, he was under pressure of a ticking clock. So, he kept going.

Which, of course, turned him into what we saw in the beginning of the manga/anime. He has a whole slew of physical issues that are only exacerbated by his lack of self care in favor of pushing himself as hard as he can to keep up his hero work, and because of that, he’s completely ruined his health outside of the All Might persona. The man is practically rotting from the inside out, and, though at first no one knows it’s All Might, people on the street look at this ghastly figure, and they know it. And he knows they know it. Could you imagine the stress he swallows down, knowing, one day, they will find out the truth?

And, let’s not forget how, once Nighteye left, Toshinori was left alone with his paperwork. Eventually, Tsukauchi took over, but that was only because Toshinori let it slip in a moment of deep stress just who he was. But, in the timespan between, it was all up to Toshinori to handle those things, on top of his hero work, and the bare-minimum of whatever he was doing to keep himself alive.

This part, I’m just quoting from @allmightluver​‘s post verbatim:

“People blame him for not preparing society for his retirement, that he failed in passing on the torch so to speak, but in reality he did everything possible to keep society from falling for 40 years, doing all within his power just to keep things afloat. He is only one person. One human being, he can’t do everything despite trying to. Society failed All Might.”

Some people in fandom say he sucks as a teacher, but first of all, do you remember who he had as a teacher? I’d say he’s leaps and bounds above Torino. Not to mention, he’s never been a teacher before, and he never planned to pass on OFA again. And just because someone’s a bad teacher (which, he could be worse), doesn’t mean they’re not smart: he’s got a 6/6 intelligence score. Which definitely doesn’t help when Izuku does something to hurt himself with his Quirk that he gave to him. He could very well think it’s his own fault.

And we haven’t even touched up on Dave yet! This man literally staged a hostage situation so he could get his hands on banned technology to try to extend All Might’s time, and hurt so many people in the process. There’s another friend gone.

And then, All For One comes back. A man Toshinori swore he killed. And then he has to fight him in front of the world, having his weakness exposed, and then being told this villain is grooming Nana’s grandson-- someone Toshinori failed to save, didn’t even know needed saving, because he didn’t know the kid existed. And he doesn’t get time to process that; he has to pretend he’s fine, even while he’s shown in this failing human form to the world, to stop AFO once more at great personal cost.

And then, OFA leaves him.

And then he has to deal the the ordeal of being human while Bakugo blames himself for it, while Nighteye dies and confesses he’s happy after all these years to see him on his last words, while watching Endeavor struggle with one Nomu on live television, while watching Bakugo almost take over the burden of carrying OFA, and, despite all of these horrible things occurring... he still confesses to his acquaintance, Aizawa, that he’s “decided to live.” Like it’s another burden to take on. How can this man not be horribly suffering deep down inside? We don’t see the extent of it, because he trained for so long to keep it buried deep down, and it’s harder as Toshinori than it was as All Might, but he’s still got severe trauma and chronic physical conditions that will last the rest of his life. And, yes, people made him promise to live, but only he “decided” he would do so.

And then, he does research into the OFA holders, and finds a gruesome secret. He could have sealed Izuku’s fate to an early grave, not just because of the nature of hero work, but because OFA users have what seems to be a natural predisposition to die early (due to those who previously had quirks being given OFA having their lifespan shortened because of it; Toshinori doesn’t know the full truth yet).

And pretty much right after he finds out that information, the world implodes on itself. Villains win a critical fight, and run amok. People are dying. Heroes are quitting. They blame him. The heroes that do remain can barely handle the load. Some even die. AFO escapes prison, Izuku is in critical condition-- everything he worked for for forty years, disintegrates overnight. Everything he did to himself in pursuit of a peaceful society meant nothing. And, he can feel his vestige within One For All, which isn’t a good sign.

Time is running out.

And he may not even die happy.

“People don’t credit All Might enough for everything he’s done. Most don’t realize the sacrifices he’s made. His character is so unbelievably profound and deep, it’s more than just the “I am here!” people focus on. He’s a deeply troubled, layered, complex character. And I can’t find fault within him.”

[red-sector-rivendell]

media reccs? 👀 since apparently you are a man of good taste?

Wow thank you 😏 I have a masterlist of movies that have changed me I often recommend to people, I'll just copy and paste here with quick synopses lol, it's kinda long. I'm not super great at writing synopses tho so bear with me

Dead Poets Society (1989)

One of my favorite movies of all time and a total classic. It's about a group of boys at a strict boarding school who are inspired by their new English teacher (played by Robin Williams) to think for themselves and chase their dreams. This movie literally changed my life lol

Quadrophenia (1979)

This movie is based off of the story behind the concept album by The Who of the same name. It follow the life of a young man named Jimmy who is in a gang called the Mods. Theres this huge gang war between them and the Rockers (I think that's their name, it's been a while since i watched it) and Jimmy questions his beliefs about coming-of-age and his values in life throughout the film

Cabaret (1972)

Based off of the Broadway musical of the same name, this movie is about a British man who moves to Germany during the beginning of the rise of Nazis. He meets a woman who basically turns his world upside down, and it follows their love affair and sexuality and anti-semitism, and it's hilarious and heart wrenching and a beautiful movie

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

This is a super trippy romance film. Basically in the universe of this movie, theres a technology that is developed that can delete memories of an entire person from your mind while you are in a dream-like state, and the main character of this movie (played by Jim Carrey) decides to undergo the procedure after a bad breakup. Its soooo good I highly recommend this movie

It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

This is an animated film about a man named Bill who is going through brain cancer. Its told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator essentially communicating everything Bill sees, hears, and experiences. This is the movie that got me into film and it is still a complete masterpiece and one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen

The Dirties (2013)

Loved this one a lot back in high school, it's been a while since I watched it. This is a film made in Canada about a high schooler named Matt Johnson and his friend Owen who decide to make a short film for their class about them killing the gang at their school that bullies them, and things take a dark turn. It's a hilarious movie and hits pretty close to home for me in a lot of ways haha

Logan's Run (1976)

Great movie, pretty cheesy though so be warned. This is based off a book with the same name, and it takes place in the future where most of humanity is wiped out except for a small society that lives under a domed structure. No one is allowed to leave the dome, and to control overpopulation, no one is allowed to live past the age of 30. It's really bizarre but I love this movie

Donnie Darko (2001)

Pretty sure this was Jake Gyllenhaal's first big hit when he was super young (I think he was like 19 in this movie but I'm not sure) basically about this kid, Donnie Darko, who is somewhat schizophrenic and has a habit of sleepwalking. After one particular incident he has a near-death experience and starts seeing a man in a bunny costume everywhere who makes him do weird stuff. Another pretty trippy movie with a crazy ending

American Psycho (2000)

Honestly I'm sure a few on this list you've probably seen (most likely this one included) but I didnt wanna leave any out because they're all so good. If you haven't seen this, it's about a Wall Street executive named Patrick Bateman who is a materialistic phony by day and a serial killer by night. I tried to read the book but the inner dialogue was really hard to get through lmao. Awesome movie though huge recommend.

Clockwork Orange (1971)

Yet another trippy one. And fuck it's been a long time since I've seen it so I might get some stuff wrong here. But it's basically about this serial rapist guy who hangs out with this group of goons and they all like to go beat up homeless people and shit, but the main character gets captured and has to go through reformation therapy to make him a better person. It's an extremely bizarre movie but soooo good and kind of hilarious lol

Creep (2014)

Of course this is on my list haha. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a horror movie about this freelance film guy who answers an ad on craigslist to help a man with cancer film a movie for his unborn son. And shit gets weird real fast. One of my favorite horror movies ever, I wouldnt say it's super scary but it's fun as fuck

Hereditary (2018)

If I'm being honest, I don't like a lot of big movies made in super recent years and especially not horror movies (mostly because they're all cheap cash grabs with no substance) but this one is an exception for me. Hereditary is fucking masterful in my opinion, legitimately creepy as hell and well-produced and well written. To put the plot as vaguely as possible without spoiling anything, it's about a family (mostly the mother) who go through some crazy fucked up shit. That's literally all I can say without giving anything away. Super good flick, big recommend

Gattaca (1997)

This list isn't in any particular order, and I love all these movies to death, but if I had to rank them this would probably be on the lower end. It's not a bad movie, it's still great but it's just not as life-changing as the other ones lmao. This takes place in the future where genetic modifications have progressed to a point where you can modify your unborn child's DNA to have the perfect baby. This has led to, essentially racial bias against those who never had that procedure when they were born. The main character was not one of these "special" children, but he wants an extremely prestigious job which requires that of the employee. Through the film, he is trying to fake his identity and fool the company into thinking he is one of these perfect people. Still a great film

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Johnny Depp, man, he is something else. I LOVE this movie. Based off a true story and a book written by the man who lived it, Hunter S. Thompson, this follows the adventure of the writer and his attorney as they go on a drugged-out, psychedelic romp through Las Vegas with the original intention being to cover a story on a motorcycle race, but things go off the rails as they both terrorize the entire city in a way. Just a fun ride the whole way, a great movie

The Truman Show (1998)

God I'm realizing this list is long as fuck. Don't watch all of these movies, it might take you a lifetime lmao. Anyway, this is a classic Jim Carrey movie and another one you've probably seen. But again, if you haven't, this movie is about a man whose entire life has been fabricated and shot for television without him knowing. Super great, super moving, fantastic film 10 outta 10 I gotta wrap this shit up

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

A lesser known Keanu Reeves movie, but fuck I wish more people have seen this. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's based off a book which is just as amazing. This movie takes place in the near future, where facial recognition technology has progressed wayyy too far, and drugs have gotten to the point of no return. The plot follows a detective who is undercover in a junkie house trying to figure out who is the top of the drug dealing totem pole, but ends up wrapped in the junkie lifestyle a little too deeply. Seriously, I recommend this movie to everyone who asks, it's so damn good

Fight Club (1999)

Another popular one. If you havent seen it, it's based off a book by Chuck Palahniuk following the story of a man (the main character actually doesnt have a name lol) who meets a guy named Tyler Durden who changes his entire perspective on how the world works. They start an underground boxing club together to help themselves and other men blow off steam and get away from the capitalist consumer-centric lifestyle they are forced into. Big twist at the end, great movie five stars on yelp

Harold and Maude (1971)

This is a weird one. Gotta say. It's about a guy in his 20s who meets an old woman at a funeral and falls in love with her. Sounds pretty ok at face value but theres a lot of really strange subplots and a huuuuge twist at the end (one of the subplots being the guy compulsively fakes his suicide to get his mother's attention) big recommend

Polyester (1981)

This one I cant even explain u just have to watch it its fucking bizarre

Fargo (1996)

Ok lightning round on the synopses, this movie is about a man who wants to commit fraud by hiring guys to kidnap his wife so her father can pay them ransom and instead the husband gets the money but everything goes wrong it's really good

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Another modern movie I actually like, last time I watched this I was on shrooms and it was crazy but it's about this hotel right on the border of california and (Nevada I think?) And all these weird people are staying at it and there are twists at every turn and chris hemsworth is a cult leader in it its great

Memento (2000)

GREAT MOVIE GOD PLEASE WATCH THIS ONE it's about a man who develops short term memory loss after witnessing the rape and murder of his wife AND WHEN I SAY THERE ARE TWISTS LIKE EVERY TEN MINUTES I MEAN IT. The film is chronologically backwards, in that the first scene takes place at the end of the story and works back from there in increments of like 5 minutes. Basically each scene is a segment of time that this guy remembers before his memory loss kicks in and he forgets and FUCK it's so good please god watch it

Almost Famous (2000)

This is another one that would probably be low on my ranking but still a great and fun movie, it's about this kid that wants to write articles about rock stars for the rolling stone (based off a true story btw) and he ends up running away to go ride on a tour bus with some band and gets into all types of shenanigans and its great and sad

Parasite (2019)

Another modern movie I love, fuck this is getting too long lmao. Poor family wants to make money and they hatch a scheme to pretend to be bougie and work for this rich family but shit gets weird and everything goes wrong and it's so good (also literally the only film ever that made me speechless afterwards)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pretty much lives up to the hype, I totally forgot the plot but it's pretty damn good I remember that lmao

The Warriors (1979)

Fun movie, theres a bunch of teen gangs in New York and the leader of all of em is like "hey we should rally all the gangs together and fuck up the cops so we can rule this city" but then he gets shot by someone in the crowd and the gang The Warriors gets blamed so the whole movie is them running from all the other gangs so they can get back to home base and it's just an all around fun time movie

12 Monkeys (1995)

THIS MOVJE IS CRAZY it takes place in the future where a virus has almost completely wiped humans off the face of the earth so these scientists send this guy back in time to figure out where it came from so they can stop it from ever happening but obviously everything goes wrong and yadda yadda yadda it's amazing

Waking Life (2001)

Gonna preface this by saying this film is definitely not for entertainment, it's kind of an arthouse-type flick. It's the type of movie you have to think really really hard about to watch. The basic plot is the main character is stuck inside his own lucid dream, and is walking around listening to all these characters in his dream talk to him about, idk like the meaning of life and consciousness and shit. It's really good if you're in the mood for that type of thing.

Okay I'm finally done, you probably didnt expect this but I've been meaning to put my movie recommendations on this blog anyway haha. I deleted some just cause it was getting wayyyy too long. If u want a shorter list I can just give u like a top 5 in DMs but there u go have at it, every movie on that list is a banger I swear

[ncisladaily]

Renée Felice Smith was only six years old when she knew that she wanted to be an actress and storyteller, but people tried to dissuade her from her chosen career path, telling her it was an impossible goal. Luckily, Smith’s parents weren’t among the naysayers, and today she’s living her dream, starring as Intelligence Analyst Nell Jones on NCIS: Los Angeles (Sundays, 9 p.m., CBS) and co-authoring her first children’s book Hugo and the Impossible Thing with her creative partner Chris Gabriel.

So, when her French Bulldog Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor, Smith once again ignored the doubters and found the best vet possible to give Hugo a shot at life rather than listen to those who told her it was “just truly impossible.”

“We just knew we had to try for our little guy, and we’re so glad we did because he was with us for another two beautiful years, just grinning, growling and running around the yard like the wild man that he always was,” Smith tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. “So, we’re so glad we fought for him and advocated for him.”

When Hugo finally passed, Smith and Gabriel knew they had to tell his story to inspire others to conquer the seemingly impossible things in their life. So they wrote a story about a little dog named Hugo, who succeeded where others didn’t even try as a result of his bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence.

“The love is still here, and it needed someplace to go, so now we have the book and Hugo’s message that now we get to share with the world, which I’m just so grateful that it’s become real,” Smith adds.

Related: NCIS: Los Angeles‘ Daniela Ruah Speculates About Whether Kensi and Deeks Will Survive the Obstacles Ahead

This Sunday night, Smith will be back with some teamwork of her own when NCIS: Los Angeles returns with a new episode dealing with technology, which is something that Nell excels at. In the “Imposter Syndrome” episode, NCIS obtains a hard drive containing a realistic deep fake video of a deceased terrorist and must retrieve the dangerous technology behind it. However, when the team’s comms are hijacked during their mission, they find that one of their own has been a victim of its potential.

And, spoiler alert, Smith says that in the May 23 Season 12 finale, Nell will finally be reunited with Hetty (Linda Hunt)! But how that will play out remains to be seen.

“Linda was essentially sidelined by the pandemic, but, very exciting, I do share a scene with her in our season finale and it’s one of the most memorable scenes of my time on NCIS: LA, so I’m very grateful to have her back as my scene partner,” Smith says.

For more of what Smith had to say about her real-life Hugo and Hugo and the Impossible Thing, as well as more NCIS: Los Angeles scoop, read on.

With your background, a movie seems a more natural project than a book about Hugo. How did it turn into a book?

Chris, my other half, and I are lovers of all types of books. We grew up with children’s books and some of the most impactful stories and lessons we feel that we’ve learned in our lives we learned in the pages of those books, so we really wanted to create this modern classic, a book that kids, or quite frankly, anyone nowadays could really benefit from.

Especially right now, we’re all dealing with our own version of the impossible thing, and we’re trying to find our way to the other side. What better way to inspire you and yours to go out and conquer whatever your impossible thing is than through a storybook following this spirited French Bulldog through the forest, kind of this yellow brick road, Wizard of Oz structure? He meets up with his forest friends and they end up helping him through the impossible thing. It’s really a story about bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence. We wanted to encourage that in our readers, both young and young at heart.

Tell us about Hugo and his battle with his brain tumor.

Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor and we were truly beside ourselves. It was an out-of-body experience. He was a feisty, curious, wild man who was quite literally sidelined by this potentially terminal disease, and we just knew that we didn’t want to give up on him, and he wasn’t giving up on himself. Every step of the way, we would say out loud, “Hugo, just let us know, buddy, do you want to keep going?” And he met us with this enthusiasm for the process every step of the way. And that is truly why we kept going.

Did Hugo instill in you the belief that the impossible might be possible? Or did you already have that?

That’s interesting. I think the process really showed us that if you ask the questions, oftentimes the people who ask the questions are the people who find the answers, and this process really reiterated that. He inspired us to advocate for him, because animals are helpless on their own, but we could do something about it. We could ask the questions; we could be his voice. I’m just so thankful that he was always this bright light that had this insatiable curiosity for life. He definitely imbued that in me, and I know he imbued that in Chris. He did inspire us to help him conquer his impossible thing. If he didn’t have the fight in him, if he wasn’t such a spirited dog, I don’t know if that would’ve happened, but he was singular in a way. I reference him as my canine son, because he was. He was my baby.

On NCIS: Los Angeles, Nell is torn these days. She feels Hetty tricked her into taking the job when she said she didn’t want it, but she has the support of her team and also Kilbride. So how do you think she’s feeling these days?

She really is at a crossroads in her life. I think a lot of young women find themselves at this point, where they are very good at their job, but is it the job that they always saw themselves in? Is it the job they saw their future selves thriving in? I think for Nell, she’s really questioning whether she wants this to be her story, and in the process, she’s really finding her voice this season. There’s a scene with Sam Hanna, LL Cool J‘s character, that recently aired, where she spells out her frustrations in her position as de facto operations manager and how she’s struggling to keep the plates spinning. And she tells him that he needs to get on her team. It was a really stern moment for Nell.

I don’t think we’ve really ever seen that. Actually, LL Cool J and I were talking about what a different flavor this scene is bringing to the show because Nell usually is quick with a quip, but she doesn’t often drop the hammer in this way. And this season, we really do get to see Nell drop this hammer, stand in her power, and let people know that she needs help and she’s questioning this process.

I think that’s the side of being the operations manager that we didn’t really get to see very much with Hetty because she had everything under control. So, it’s kind of fun and new to see the person, who may be greener in the position, find her way in this new position of leadership.

How much has COVID affected what we’re seeing this season? Is that why we don’t see more of Linda Hunt, to keep her safe? And I noticed there are fewer people in scenes, especially in ops.

You’re absolutely right. Our show did an incredible job managing the crisis that was the pandemic and continues to be the pandemic. We are tested five days a week. Our crew was incredible in keeping everyone safe. The was goal to keep everyone safe, and we were, in turn, able to create 18 episodes of television, which is incredible.

You were just picked up for your 13th season, so it isn’t over yet, but when you look back, what will you take away from it?

Oh, my goodness. We’re a family, you know, but it’s been a mini-film school for me as well. My time at NCIS: LA has been educational. I just pinch myself how lucky I am that I was able to quite frankly lock onto a job like this for so long. In our industry, stability as an actor is not something you often experience. So, to have this group of people who I’ve grown to love and really consider extensions of my family, I’m just so grateful for the time. I feel like I’ve been a student. I feel like I went to school all over again for 10 years.

With Linda being this master in her craft, I can’t even quantify what I learned from her and most of it happens when we’re waiting to do our scene. It’s in those moments that I hear the stories from her childhood and the stories from early in her career, just these nuggets of wisdom that I have now in my little carpet bag.

From your work outside NCIS: LA, it seems as if maybe long-term, you’re more interested in being behind the camera and writing, producing, directing.

It’s interesting, often as actors, we’re part of someone else’s story, we’re carrying out someone else’s vision, but I’ve always been a storyteller. As a kid, I would essentially write my own little plays and perform them in the yard and direct my friends and family, my sister, namely, in those plays. And for as long as I remember, I’ve always wanted to tell stories. So, yeah, that is where I see myself heading in the future.

You’ve said that you knew at age six that this is what you want to do. And you were lucky that your parents supported you.

Oh, 100 percent. I wouldn’t be standing here today if they hadn’t instilled confidence in me and in my creativity. They really created an environment that fostered out-of-the-box thinking, and I’m so grateful for that.

Which takes us full circle back to the impossible just might be possible.

It’s so true. If you’re curious enough and brave enough and you have the support, obviously, of your community, I think that’s the missing piece in a lot of these puzzles. It’s really the support because you can’t get there alone. No one can. The one-woman show does not exist. It’s an ensemble; it’s a production.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What do you think the Animorphs would be like playing D&D? Not "the Animorphs in a D&D world", but the Animorphs actually sitting down and having a campaign of D&D. Like the classes/races they'd pick, their play styles, wacky shenanigans (because we all know it would happen).

[Credit to Cates for 100% of the character builds, and most of the lore, in this AU.  In case you were wondering, I’m the Jake-style “never read the manual” chaotic-dumbass bard of our campaign; she’s the Marco-style “uses the rules exactly as much or little as needed” DM.]

It was decided almost right away that one on the team had any alignment.  As DM, Marco attempted to start there, only to have Ax begin questioning whether the manual’s explanations of “good” and “evil” truly captured human ethics on a grand scale.  Tobias claimed that Ax was looking at it all wrong, that the moralities were only default behavior types within the game, and that within this particular context morality didn’t matter.  Cassie got very concerned about the idea of context-dependent morality, Rachel declared that the book was stupid and short-sighted for claiming that destroying things was always bad, Jake quietly asked for the fourth or fifth time if this game was actually a good idea…

“Fine!” Marco announced.  “You’re all amoral characters.  Happy?”

“‘Amoral’ implies that we’re immoral, doesn’t it?” Cassie asked.  “Or that we exist outside the spectrum of moralities?”

“Just…”  Marco rolled his eyes.  “Everyone leave that spot on your character sheet blank, okay?  If it ever comes up, we’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

“Yes,” Ax said, “although you never did answer my question about the implied ethical structure of this universe.”

After that, character creation went fairly smoothly.  Kind of.

“Why does Dennis need a backstory, again?” Jake asked, looking down at his sheet.

“Dennis?” Marco said.  “Dennis?  

“You already said I wasn’t allowed to use ‘Dylan’ or ‘Brad’, so…’”

“C’mon man, this is D’nD.  There are no Dennises in medieval fantasy epics.”

“Fine.”  Jake crossed out and rewrote the name at the top of his character sheet.  “Why does Keith need a backstory?”

“To explain his motivation.”

“You just said that the whole time we’re going to be chased around by orcs and whatnot.  Isn’t not dying enough motivation?”

“You really don’t understand this game, do you?” Rachel said.

“I really don’t understand this game,” Jake agreed.

“My character’s a dragonborn rogue named Joan, and she’s the greatest gymnast of all time.”  Rachel added a Dexterity marker to her sheet with a flourish.

“I thought I was a dragonborn,” Jake said.  “Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, we can have as many dragonborns as you all want.”  Marco shrugged.  “We just can’t have multiple bards.  And since you called dibs on that class, and Rachel wants to be a rogue, we’re fine.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jake said.  “I just want to help out the team.  Or, uh, Keith does?”

“Great.”

“So that’s my backstory, right?  Being a bard?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, at the same time Marco said, “No!”

In the end, Marco declared that if neither Rachel nor Jake could come up with a proper backstory, he was making their characters cousins.  Tobias, who had a better flair for the romantic, declared that said cousins were from an internationally feared family of highwaymen.

“So does that get us any extra skills, coming from a family of pirates?” Rachel asked.

“Maybe it’d explain how good your character is at gymnastics,” Jake said.  “Because of riggings and all.”

“Highwaymen.”  Marco looked up from where he was trying to salvage Keith’s stats from the hopeless tangle of Jake’s incorrect math.  “Tobias said you guys are highwaymen, not pirates.”

“What are pirates but highwaymen of the sea?” Tobias asked, tilting his head in thought.

“Just put us down as jewel thieves.”  Rachel made a note on her own sheet.  “Jewel thieves of diverse methodology.  Wherever jewels can be found, there we are with threats of violence to take them away.”

“By the way, why is Ax now a tiefling?” Tobias asked Marco.

“I told Marco I have no preference for my class and race,” Ax said.  “And the word is most pleasant, tea-fling.  Ffflllling.”

“They’re blue and have tails.”  Marco smirked at Tobias.  “It’s perfect!”

Rachel and Jake might’ve been vague on the idea of backstory, but Ax was quite definite.

“I am Eldrias the tiefling, fffflllling, paladin.  She was raised by cows,” he announced.

“Don’t you mean raised by wolves?” Jake said.  “Isn’t that a thing, raised by wolves?”

“Uh-huh,” Marco said, “since your land-pirates make perfect sense.”

“Wolves are beautiful animals, but they pale in comparison to cows,” Ax said.  “Among other things, wolves’ meat is not so succulent and does not pair nearly as well with french fries.”

“Okay then,” Jake said, “raised by cows.  Got it.”

Becoming a barbarian was Cassie’s idea.  She spun through the manual in a rapid burst of pages, brushing gentle fingertips over the beautifully rendered illustrations, and then pressed it shut.  “Barbarian,” she said.  “That’s the one that can protect the team the best, right?  So I’ll be a barbarian.”

Marco laughed.  “All right then.  Barbarian it is.  Anything else in mind, for this barbarian of yours?”

Cassie tapped a finger against her lower lip, fluttering through the first several pages of the manual once again.  “I could make my character a big, tall guy, right?”

“Sure.”

“But I want pointy ears.”  She grinned at the rest of the table, somewhat sheepish.

“Half-elf barbarian, then?”

“Half-elf barbarian.”  Cassie looked down at the sheet in front of her.  “He can be named Reisgalan Von Schwartzel of the Morsgalath Half-Elves, Lord of the Plains and Wielder of…”  She glanced around.  “What’s that thing with the spiky ball on a stick?”

“Mace,” Rachel provided.

“Mace is that spray you use on bears and muggers,” Jake said.

“And it’s also a spiky ball on a stick.”  Marco glanced at Cassie’s sheet.  “You have a backstory for Reisgalan Von Whatshisface?”

“Hmmmm.  Can I be widowed and have a tragically dead prince I must avenge?”

“Is it me?”  Jake smiled hopefully.

“What?”  Cassie frowned at him.  “No.  That’d be horrible.”  She looked over at Marco.  “Uh, can my character be a guy and also have a dead husband?  Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, sure,” Marco said.  “I’m the ruler of this universe, so I say it’s fine.  And Tobias is the designated rules lawyer, so he’ll probably have some reason that it’s not.”

“I am not rules-lawyering!”

Marco looked at Ax’s character sheet, and then pointedly back up at Tobias.  “Ax, how did you end up as not just a paladin, but a paladin that’s even more overpowered than the standard build?”

“Paladins are allowed.”  Tobias shrugged.  “It’s right there in the manual.”

“Ax, how you have splint armor?” Marco demanded.

“Paladins can wear Heavy armor,” Tobias sing-songed.

Marco growled.

Ax squinted at his character sheet. “Tobias says when I get to Level Three, I will take the Oath of Vengeance and take a Vow of Enmity. I will know the spells Thunderous Smite, Command, and Detect Magic.”

Marco’s face was turning an interesting shade of red.

“Oh, and Eldrias the paladin is taking Great Weapon as her Fighting Style.”  Tobias wasn’t bothering to hide his smirk.  “It’s all perfectly legal.”

Ax frowned at Marco.  “Banging your head against the table with that level of force may have an adverse effect on your brain’s ability to function.” 

“I’m not rules-lawyering for selfish gain,” Tobias said loftily, looking over Marco’s prone form.  “And besides, Ax is new at this.  He needs all the help he can get.”

“You find yourselves in a magical land.”  Marco made a wild gesture in the air.  It was probably meant to look dramatic and mysterious.  “A land known as Falicornia.”

“Marco sucks at naming things,” Rachel whispered loudly.

“Rachel sucks at listening,” Marco whispered more loudly.

“You were saying?” Jake asked.

“This magical land is under threat from the dread god Cthulu!  You must stop him through using the Philosopher’s Stone, which is powerful but cannot be used except by those who do not wish to use it.  It contains many powerful temptations for the bearer.  You must journey across the land, facing many dangers, to bring it to the only magical mirror that can destroy it before Cthulu has the chance to rise from that mirror and take over the world.”

Cassie raised her hand.

“Yes?” Marco said.

“Why does Cthulu want to take over the world?” she asked.  “Does he need it for something?”

Marco sighed.  “He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu.  Any other questions?”

“First question: did you steal more of this plot from The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter?” Rachel said immediately.  “Second question—”  She turned to Ax.  “Have we showed you those movies?”

“He’s reading the books first,” Tobias said.

“I’m reading the books first,” Ax agreed.

“You were saying about Cthulu,” Jake said to Marco.

“Yes.  He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu,” Marco glared at Rachel.  “Just because.“

“Actually,” Tobias said, “the original version of Cthulu was kind of like the Silver Surfer of Norse Mythology, and his motivation—”

“He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu.”  Marco took a deep breath.  “Anyway.  Moving on.”

“Okay, you’re here.”  Marco pointed to the G.I. Joe figure sitting in the middle of their somewhat crudely drawn map.  “The goblins are…”  One after another, he set four white pawns from his mom’s chess set around the G.I. Joe that represented Jake, forming a half-circle that separated him from Ax’s Smurf, Cassie’s My Little Pony miniature, and Tobias’s Precious Moments angel figurine.  “Rachel is, uh…”  He set the teddy bear pencil topper several inches back, between two goblin-pawns.  “There.  So.”  Marco looked up at Jake.  “You’re under attack.  You’re up first in initiative order.  What’re you going to do?”

Jake frowned, surveying the scene in front of him.  “I have magic, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, so I’ll use magic to turn myself into a bird, and then—”

“Yeah, no.”

“Then I’ll turn my teammates into birds, and they can—”

“You cannot turn yourself into a bird, you cannot turn anyone else into a bird, no one is turning into a bird or any other animal at any point in this game.”  Marco glanced over at Tobias.  “No offense.”

“Oh, I totally agree,” Tobias said.  “A Level One bard performing an animal shapes transmutation?  Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Anyway.”  Marco pointed at Jake’s G.I. Joe figurine.  “Assuming we’re sticking to handheld weapons, what else do you want to do?”

“I… shoot the goblin?” Jake suggested.  “With my…”  He flipped over his character sheet, squinting at his own handwriting.  “With my board-sword.”

“Pretty sure you meant ‘broadsword,’” Rachel said.  “Okay, Jake killed the goblin, now what?”

Cassie peered over Jake’s shoulder.  “It could just be a sword made out of boards, you don’t know.”

“Jake only has thirteen out of sixty odds of killing the goblin on one go,” Marco said.

Tobias flipped open his own manual to the entry on goblins.  “Where are you getting these numbers from?”

Marco selected two dice from the pile, handing them both to Jake.  “Oh, I just figure that if the goblin’s got an armor class of seven and five HP, then Jake’s got a thirteen-in-twenty chance of scoring a hit and then a two-in-six chance of it being deadly, given his hit dice.  So if you reduce twenty-six over one-twenty down it’s thirteen in sixty.  Like, point-two-one-seven out of one.  Simple math.”  He gestured at Jake.  “Roll those.”

“You and I have very different definitions of the word ‘simple.’”  Jake looked up.  “Uh, ten and the other one says four?”

“You grievously injured but did not kill the goblin,” Marco said graciously.  “Now it’s the turn for this leftmost goblin, who is going to run and stick a sword through Rachel…” He rolled, and winced.  “That’s fifteen to hit, and two damage?”

“What’s that mean for my little rogue?”  Rachel waved her pencil topper at him.

“You got stabbed,” Marco said.

“Uh-huh.”  Rachel picked up her pen and sheet.  “Where?”

Marco shrugged.  “The leg, let’s say.  Uh, upper thigh?”

“Mm-hmm.”  She wrote that down.

“Okay, then.”  Marco glanced at his sheet.  “Next in initiative order is—”

“I cast psionic blast as a Level One spell, which would cause additional damage to fiends or the undead.  Are they undead goblins?” Tobias asked.

Marco rolled his eyes.  “Nope.”

“Then they each suffer three points of damage and do not have the opportunity to make saving throws for the next minute and a half,” Tobias said.  “That’s my first spell slot today.”

“Okay.”  Marco tipped over one of the goblin pawns.  “That one’s dead.  Cassie?”

“That one’s threatening Ax?”  She pointed at the pawn within the same square as the Smurf figurine.

“Yep.”

She nodded.  “Then I smash its head in with my mace.”  She rolled.  “Eight to hit, eight damage?”

“Oh yeah, you just annihilated that one.”

“Good, good, so now can I mace the one that attacked Rachel?”

“Cool your jets.”  Marco held up both hands.  “You don’t get to do multiple hulk-smashes in one round until several levels up from here.”

Cassie wilted a little.  “Okay.  But I want to run over next to that one to be ready to mace it soon.”

“All right, center goblin is going to try and swing his big old greatsword at Cassie as an attack of opportunity…” Marco rolled.  “And that’s a miss.  Rachel, you’re up.”

“I’m unconscious,” Rachel said.

Marco gave her a blank look.  “No you’re not.”

“Yes she is,” Ax said.  “You just allowed that goblin— gob-blin? Goo-blin? —to stab her.”

“I did not allow— The dice—”  Marco took a deep breath.  “Rachel, you only took two points of damage.  Go ahead and make a turn.”

“Okay, you clearly said…” Rachel glanced at her own notes.  “That the goblin stuck its sword through my upper thigh.  And apparently these are pretty big swords.  No way in hell that misses the artery, not if I’m only about human-sized at the time.  You also said that the goblin has its sword back, which means it pulled the sword out, which means that by now I have definitely lost enough blood to be unconscious.  It’s just basic logic.”

Marco opened his mouth halfway.  “That’s not how damage functions in this game,” he said at last.

“No, she’s right,” Jake said.  “She wouldn’t necessarily be dead from blood loss by now, but on the super-narrow chance she’s still conscious, she’s not going to have the, like, grip strength to be shooting people with arrows or anything.  That’s just how getting stabbed works.”

“Actually…” Tobias looked up from where he was sorting his flash cards of wizard spells.  “In combat time, each turn is six seconds.  So it hasn’t been five minutes of game-time.  It’s been less than three seconds.”

“So this goblin managed to stick its sword all the way through me, pull it loose, and then get back into position to make a different attack in less than a second?” Rachel said.  “And I don’t need to take a second or two to react to having been stabbed?”

“Yes!” Tobias said.

“This game is not closely aligned with the timing and functions of real combat,” Ax pointed out.

Marco let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a shriek.  “No shit, Sherlock!  Can we please just play by the rules?”

“I’m just saying it’s not realistic,” Rachel muttered.  “You get run through the leg with a sword, you bleed to death.  That’s how it goes.”

“Would you please shoot someone already?” Marco said.

“If you insist.”

At Level Two, Tobias’s gnome wizard joined the School of Divination for exactly one game.  “He’s rules-lawyering things that haven’t even happened yet,” Marco cried, throwing out his hands like this was the greatest injustice ever visited upon humanity.   At which point Tobias decided that discretion was the better part of valor and switched to the School of Evocation.  Marco’s eye stopped twitching.

“No, no, no.”  Marco leaned over to look at Jake’s roll.  “You add your charisma modifier to your attack roll, and then your strength modifier to your damage roll.”

“So he adds twelve to his roll?”  Cassie looked at her own sheet.  “I add seventeen to my roll?”

“Modifier.  Not the whole stat.  Mod-if-i-er.”  Marco groaned loudly.  “Is Tobias the only one who even tried to read the manual?”

“C’mon, man.”  Jake shrugged, grinning.  “When have you ever known me to do the assigned reading?”

“I have Tobias here to summarize the manual for me,” Rachel pointed out.  “Why bother?”

“I did attempt to read the manual.  Man.  Well.  It was not the most boring human book ever written, but it was very repetitive.”  Ax glanced around at all of them.  “Not to say that all human books are bad, even if they are all repetitive,” he added quickly.  “Take the books of Harry Potter, which are acceptable in addition to being repetitive.”

“‘Acceptable’?”  Tobias shook his head.  “‘Repetitive’?  You, sir, are wounding my entire species — one of my species — Just don’t diss the Potter.”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ professor,” Ax intoned.

Laughing, Tobias leaned over to bump their shoulders together.  “I take it back.  I love you, Ax-man.  Never change.”

“Anyway,” Cassie said, “we elected Tobias party leader, so he’s the only one who really needs to know how to play, right?”

“‘Elected’ is a pretty strong word for it.  The way I remember it, I was like…”  Marco put on a deeper voice, “‘Who wants to be party leader?’ and Jake yelled ‘NOT IT’ so loud that he probably startled pigeons in the next county over.  And then Tobias was the first one to recover from the shock long enough to volunteer.”

“I didn’t yell it, I said it,” Jake mumbled.  “Said it enthusiastically.”

“And you’re wrong.  We did nose-goes.”  Rachel tapped her own nose to demonstrate.  “Tobias lost.”

Ax’s eyes widened.  “So you and Cassie covering your noses was a primitive selection procedure in the manner of duck-duck-goose?  I thought we were all simply being polite by hiding our hideous human orifices from one another.”

“Anyway,” Tobias said, “as party leader, I’m declaring that we can whine about noses — and bipedalism — at a later time.  For now, let’s play.”

“Ah, yes.”  Ax looked down at the dice, and then back up at Marco.  “Who was attacking whom, again?”

Marco stared around the board, and then back at the dice.  “Like I remember that now!”

It was a small miracle that they all kept showing up after that first week.  Tobias and Marco were the only ones with both the skill and the enthusiasm to be any good at the game.  Cassie and Rachel lacked the necessary motivation: Cassie tended to get lost in long conversations with NPCs and never advanced the plot at all, whereas Rachel was likely to start climbing the walls with impatience after half an hour of sitting still.  Ax and Jake were both reasonably enthusiastic but terrible: Jake paid no attention at all to the math, and Ax paid too much.  They had one set of dice between the six of them, if one was generous and called rolling a d6 twice the same as rolling a d12.  (It wasn’t, but Marco’s and Ax’s attempts to explain this always made everyone else’s eyes glaze over.)

Seriously, though, Marco knew perfectly well why they kept showing up.  And it had nothing to do with everyone getting on board with Tobias’s super-geeky idea.  They’d tried Dungeons and Dragons, and they hadn’t actually started liking it.

It had nothing to do with the storyline.  Or the dice.  Or the characters.  They weren’t here for swords or goblins.  They didn’t drop everything to spend four hours a week in each other’s company because they liked the game.

Duh.

Of course, even their love for each other could be tested, at times, by their sheer incompetence as players.

“We’re still in the undercave?” Jake groaned, looking at the game board.  “We’ve been down here for like six weeks!”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re stuck.”  Rachel glared around the table.  “Because we keep trying to fight the ooze monster and then almost dying.  Because we suck at this game.”

“Still say there should’ve been illithids,” Tobias muttered.  “We’re in the cave of the illithids, but instead we’ve got apocalyptic ooze where there isn’t supposed to be any.  That’s why we’re stuck.”

Marco sighed into his hands.  “For the last time, man, we’re not having any stupid mind flayers in this game.  There is a way out, I promise you, if you guys would just stop and figure it out.”

“I stab the ooze?” Cassie suggested.

“You take fourteen acid damage and permanently blunt your sword.”  Marco didn’t bother to look up.  “Just like last time.”

“Ugh.”  Cassie wrote down her new HP.  “At least I ruled out repeated stabbing as a way out?”

“Okay, okay.”  Jake stared at the game board, yet again failing to take the this map not to scale memo.  “We can figure this out.  Is it a cave kind of like those caves under Leeran?”

Marco lifted his head, tossing his hair out of his face.  “I got schlooped back to Earth before you guys got to see those, remember?”

“They were very beautiful,” Ax said, “and also full of toxic eels.  So perhaps Prince Jake’s comparison is apt.”

“The real toxic eel is the friends we made along the way.”  Rachel tilted her chair back, picking at her manicure.  “Think we should just call it a day?”

“No, no, Jake’s right.”  Cassie stared at the board.  “I believe in us.”

“It was kinda cool in the Leeran caves, so sorry you missed it,” Jake said to Marco.  “I was dead and missed the Battle of Trafalgar, though, so it all balances out?”

“The Battle of Trafalgar was not cool at all.”  Marco rolled his eyes.  “It was a battle.  It was gross and loud and bloody.  Is no one going to try anything else?”

“I pull out my rope and my flint, I set the rope on fire, we all die of smoke inhalation,” Rachel drawled.  “There, I got us out of the cave.”

“And into the afterlife,” Ax said solemnly.  “If, indeed, this game has an afterlife.  It was designed by humans, so I assume… Soom.  That it must.”

“Look, if we could just fight the mind flayer instead,” Tobias said, “there are clear strategies in place for how to fend off psychic attacks, and even if a few of us end up as mind-witnesses we could still use a handful of different spells—”  He swung his copy of the manual around to face Marco, pointing to a spot low on the open page.  “If you’ll just look at what the book says…”

Marco slammed the book shut, hard.

Tobias had to yank his hand back to avoid smashed fingers.  “Watch it!” he snapped.

“Guys,” Jake said.  “Let’s—”

“Rule.  Zero.”  Marco flattened a hand on top of the closed book.  “I’m the DM here, and I get to say that there are no mind flayers and definitely no mind witnesses, because I say so.  I’m the Ellimist of this little universe, and you don’t get a counter-argument.”

Rachel snorted loudly.  “Bad comparison.  Tobias argues with the real Ellimist all the time.”

“Only when he’s doing something stupid.”  Tobias was looking at Marco, not at her.  “Or breaking the rules of his own game.”

“Tobias…”  Jake inhaled slowly, massaging the bridge of his nose.  “It’s just a game, okay?  Marco… We are kinda stuck, dude, no offense.  Couldn’t we at least try to fight whatever it is Tobias wants, see if that gets us out of here?”

Marco pushed to his feet, face flushed.  “I’m running this game, because you people decided I should.  And I don’t give a fuck how much Bird-Boy complains, this game is not going to involve anyone getting psychically mind-controlled.  It will not feature alien tadpoles that crawl inside people’s brains and take over their bodies.”  He swept a hand across the board.  “There will be no illithids, there will be no brain golems, there will be no controllers—”

Marco snapped his mouth shut.

There was a long silence.  Tobias stared at the floor.

“Mind-witnesses,” Marco said at last.  “I meant mind-witnesses.”

THUNK.

Figurines and dice scattered everywhere.  The play-dough lump of ooze flattened underneath the second game board Cassie had just dropped on top of the first.

“Anyway,” she said, giving everyone an embarrassed smile.  “How about we switch to Monopoly for a while?”

“I call being the little dog piece,” Rachel said, pulling the box open.

“I’m sorry,” Tobias whispered to Marco, as Ax began clattering through the pieces and asking Jake questions.  “I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah.”  Marco pulled the bank toward him and counting out notes.  “Same here, man.  Uh, y’know.  Sorry I…”

“We’re cool.  We’re cool?”

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

“Does this highly successful roll mean I have first chance to stab Income Tax with my—”  Ax squinted at his game piece “—car?  So I’ll be attempting to inflict damage on Income Tax by running it over?”

“Many have tried that strategy,” Rachel intoned.  “None have succeeded so far.”

“You know that your beloved manual lists exactly the same stats for hawks, eagles, and owls, right?” Marco asked, grinning evilly.

“What?  No.”  Tobias frantically flipped toward the back of the book.

“Anyway, is he right?” Cassie asked as Tobias searched.  “Are we all supposed to be dead right now?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Marco said.  “Yes, the explosion would have done a lot of damage to all of you—”

“Thanks, Jake,” Rachel snarked.

Jake sighed loudly.  “How was I supposed to know you had to throw the hand grenade after you pulled the pin?”

“You mean the part where Ax and Tobias were both yelling ‘toss it, toss it,’ and you were like ‘no, I’m gonna do an investigation check first’?” she said.  “And then we all died?”

“Actually, I believe Cassie was raging at the time when the ceiling fell on us all,” Ax said.  “Therefore, her damage would be halved.”

“Hell yeah!”  Cassie laughed.  “So it’s just…”  She peered at Marco’s roll and winced.  “Everyone else… in the entire party… who automatically failed a death check.  Right, Tobias?”

“No,” Marco said loudly, “because Jake cast Teleportation Circle and got you all out of there before the ceiling fell.”

“But Tobias believes that that would be allowing too many actions on a single turn.  Uurn.  Earn,” Ax said.  “And that Jake wouldn’t have time to set up the circle even if he did have a bonus action left.”

“For fuck’s sake, do you want to end on a total party kill?” Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled sweetly.  “It’s not a TPK if Cassie’s still alive.”

Marco rolled his eyes.  “Oh, in that case—”

“Oh my god, you’re right!”  Tobias sounded outraged.

“Am I dead?”  Rachel pouted.  “Just when this stupid game was starting to grow on me.”

“No, not that.”  Tobias stabbed a finger on the page.  “It says right here.  ‘For hawk, see: eagle.’  It fucking classifies hawks as a fucking subspecies of eagle!”

“What were you just saying about us following the manual at the expense of our lives?” Marco said smugly.

Tobias stared in betrayed horror at the page for another second.  And then he tossed the entire book clear over his shoulder and out of the room.  It clattered loudly in the hall.

“So as I was saying, Jake cast Teleportation Circle,” Marco said.  “And teleported you all out of there.”

“So we’re… not dead?” Cassie asked.

“Given the nature of teleportation, perhaps we are both dead and not, existing in the gap between states,” Ax said.  “Like when our consciousness was trapped in z-space, and yet our matter remained on Earth.  Or we exist in multiple universes at once, some in which we have died and some in which we yet live.”

“Yeah, cool, Schrödinger’s party,” Rachel said.  “Blah, blah.  Anyway, I’m gonna punch Jake in the arm for being a dumbass.  In-game and out-of-game.”

“Good luck with that.”  Marco cackled his evil DM cackle.  “The only universe I care about is the one where the whole lot of you give me an initiative roll.  Because I didn’t say Jake teleported you to a safe location, just a different one.”

[shadaofallthings]

Harrow is thoroughly haunted (also very mentally unhealthy due to her parents/culture’s practices)

There are a couple points to this theory crafting I have, but the basic statement is as such: Harrow is haunted by more than one revenant, at the very least The Sleeper and AL/The Corpse but likely way more, potentially including every one of the 200 ghosts Harrow’s parents killed to make her. I’d also like to note that this theory will discuss mental health a main subject of its theorizing. Having mental health issues or possessing certain traits that society deems mentally unhealthy is not a mark against your own character, or a reason to try and be normal by society’s standards. This theory will also discuss potential physiological causes for mental health issues. If you are sensitive to such discussions, this is probably not the theory for you to be reading on a bad day for your own mental health.   The first thing this theory hinged on is Ortus’ ability to contribute to the summoning of Matthias Nonias through, as Abigail says without the narrative challenging her, passion alone. This establishes that while most works of passion and people’s attempts to connect with their departed loved may not be enough to create a link, a notably obsessive work of passion and focus, one worked on for years, can have effects on The River, and Revenants summoned from it. Pretty simple, all you gotta accept for this one is that people with certain obsessions or fixations, the kinds that keep them thinking about someone for years, can help summon ghosts. The second thing this is hinged on is that when you summon/forge a bond through the method that Ortus did, you shape how the ghost will be summoned into reality. This is most easily demonstrated by Matthias Nonias commenting, multiple times, on the fact its strange that he is speaking in meter, that his behaviors in his duel with The Sleeper were not the normal ones of a trained, legendary fighter, and that as people took on/professed the belief in that work of epic poetry fanfiction was legit and could summon Matthias he actually managed to be summoned to the reality bubble they were in and impose specifically that fanfic’s rules on both Matthias and The Sleeper.  Third, this theory is hinged on the actions and mental state of Harrow the First/Ninth, and the actions/culture/beliefs of people surrounding her. First off, I would like to establish that Harrow has been exposed to conditions that would cause her to be likely to develop symptoms that are on the schizo-spectrum of disorders (schizophrenia, schizotypal, etc etc). The first of such conditions is actually the most important from a biology perspective: Harrow’s immediate family has a practice for keeping their secrets. When they wish to discuss the family business they draw a bath of cold saltwater, get in it, and do it from there. It is explicitly described as “freezing” in both Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Harrow herself. Repeat hypothermia is a physiological trigger that can cause a person to develop schizospectrum disorders, and I would argue that her parents exposed her to repeat hypothermia, and Harrow would confirm these baths have been going on since she learned to keep secrets (likely around 5-7). Second, we have contributing factors to this mental state, most notably is the Incense that is described in Gideon as being used by The Ninth House in their worship. If, and this is a big if given how little we know specifics, this incense was Frankincense or uses similar molecular structures (possible given the influence of Christianity over the Dademperor’s Cult), we would know that Harrow all her life has been exposed to a mild hallucinogen (and also antidepressant, but that effect of frankincense isn’t relevant), which while unless overexposed significantly (to the point it would cause some lung damage if done repeatedly) she would’t have hallucinations NORMALLY, we have already discussed why Harrow’s brain chemistry wouldn’t be normal and this could have an affect overall on the development of her mental health. We also know from Harrow’ behavior and information about her parents that she herself gives that she has been instilled with a rather potent guilt complex over the 200 dead who were sacrificed to make her (One of her prayers included “and let me be buried in 200 graves” ffs). More miscellaneous stuff to include in contributing factors to Harrow being predisposed towards guilt and hallucinations and fixations as well includes Harrow being around the dead and dying for her entire life, being a Necromancer, both bad ventilation due to the infrastructure of the Ninth House as well as exposure to a nerve agent that canonically throws your brain into destructive overdrive, and discovering The Corpse in The Locked Tomb (this last one being notable as having happened around the beginning of puberty or during giving her a reason that her death fixation might become what is in cannon called Corpse Lust). She’s a kid, basically, in a hormonal shitstorm of growing up: she doesn’t know how to stop her head from doing fuckshit to itself). In addition to her fixation on The Corpse however is the sheer amount of time she spent worrying about it, lusting after it, being comforted by hallucinations of it, and otherwise spending a large amount of her mental effort thinking about The Corpse one way or another. Now, lets braid these threads into a rope. We know that passion and obsession can make a legitimate metaphysical link to a revenant, allowing them to find their way back into Shallower waters or even the world through objects and ideas (such as an epic poem fanfic, and potentially people, but DEFINITELY prayers [poems and phrases repeated that cause certain patterns of thoughts) given the nature of what we’ve seen). We know that Harrow has spent a large amount of her life giving worship, strong emotion and most importantly obsession towards The Corpse/AL. Also, we know from Harrow the Ninth in direct statements by some spirit focused allies that Revenants can use any connection they have to the world to get back into it, even if that’s in a limited capacity. For good measure, we also know that Harrow’s been giving this treatment to a more nebulous idea of All The People Who Died To Allow Her To Be Born/A Necromancer, and we also know that she has more connections spiritually which likely support that 200 people as well. As such, my claim is this: Harrow is both mentally affected in a way similar to what she thinks is her stated insanity in that she does experience hallucinations, moments of paranoia and panic over very little/nothing, and so on (worth noting is that Harrow would be exceptionally well adapted for coping with this. These changes are physical almost purely, as Gideon while inside Harrow’s head and getting a show of her perceptions either can not tell that Harrow didn’t have a corpse under her bed, or didn’t know that a potentially fugue state ridden Harrow moved a corpse there (its very unclear what actually went down in that scene and there’s a lot potentially going down but Gideon experiences life as Harrow does and that is what’s important). On the metaphysical side of things though, Harrow is Haunted by at least 2 ghosts, likely many more. She wouldn’t know because she is bad at Spirit magic, and potentially could be having her ghosts give her an aversion toward learning it, but it is commented on by more than one capable spirit necromancer (Dademperor and Abigail). She has to be haunted by The Sleeper, as the plot literally revolves around that being a thing, but she also shows more signs of a haunting. Harrow loses one of the hallucinations that always has been present with her in times of stress when she leaves her physical body behind during the Resurrection Beast fight, but the same hallucination is also present when Gideon rides her body into The River, potentially being a saving factor for Harrow’s original body, the body that would actually have the connection to The Corpse. In addition, Harrow when she emerges from The River had a connection that she followed back to her home in the form of the tomb, and where her obsession previously slept, a body that could never have been moved by anyone but her, the Dademperor or the revenant herself. In addition, the Corpse gives her advice on things she could have never known about more than once, and generally tries to do things that Harrow would find helpful or supportive (even if that would be creepy to her, like “bringing her tea” during a conversation with someone). As such, we can say without a shadow of a doubt that Harrow is haunted by two people, The Sleeper who is latching onto her thoughts through magics, likely, and The Corpse/AL who is entering our reality primarily through Harrow’s thoughts as she figures out how to be a person again and is exposed to more things that would give her connections (note how she becomes more coherent and proactive after Dademperor reminisces about her, her only other strong connection to the world beyond Harrow and her corpse). We can also infer that after so much time thinking about all the people who died for her in terms of guilt and their lost lives that she might also have the revenants of a few angry children/teens/young adults holding on.  TLDR: Harrow’s got a ghost “girlfriend” (wildly unhealthy for her) that possesses Harrow’s hallucinations of her, is haunted by The Sleeper for the course of at least Harrow(the book) and is potentially haunted by the revenants of every person who died to make her birth/magic possible.

[thornescratch]

💖🖊✨

What do you like most about your own writing?

I already talked about dialogue. I think (though it feels weird to say) that I’m decent with humor? Like, it makes me laugh, but I’m unfairly biased in my own favor. And for not actually being a bro, I think I do okay with portraying bros, in hockey or otherwise.

I do put a lot of thought into sensory descriptions, especially if I’m trying to lean “show don’t tell.” This is more successful in some of my writing than in other pieces.

Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

...I’m genuinely not sure how to answer this. I’m gonna go with ‘affectionate’ (because my angst always has to have a happy ending), ‘silly’, (because I fucking love writing about wacky hijinks), and ‘intricate’ (because sentence structure is a fascinating thing to me, and I like messing about with it, even though this is sometimes to my writing’s detriment.)

Post a snippet from a current WIP.

I've been adding to the sequel to "whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year" for a while, even though a decent chunk of the characters involved aren't with the Caps anymore. Hopefully I finish it before end of 2021. Beneath the cut-- sorry for anyone on mobile!

The phone is ringing. It's fuck o'clock in the morning, or maybe half past fuck knows when, and the phone is ringing. Alex blindly flails his arm in several directions and encounters Nicky, the headboard, the bedside table, the tissue box on his bedside table, Nicky again, a book about the history of coffee that Nicky is reading and passive-aggressively leaving on Ovi's side of the bed more times than can be a coincidence, Alex's (fortunately empty) tea mug that he's been passive-aggressively leaving on top of the book about coffee that Nicky is passive-aggressively leaving on his side of the bed, Nicky again, and then by pure accidental luck, his actual phone.

His fumbling makes the screen light up, and Alex automatically screws his eyes shut in response to the painful brightness. He puts the phone up against the side of his face and says, "Privyegmph?" or something close to it, and then he grunts in pain when Nicky rolls over and kicks him in the process in a way that is not at all accidental.

He doesn't hear anything at first, just breathing. Then there's another rustling sound that he can't quite identify in his sleep-muddled state, and then the breathing gets louder and the noises change to something slightly more familiar but still hovering beyond the edge of his recognition. Alex lies there in sleepy confusion and listens as the breathing gets heavier and more raggedy, broken up by little grunting noises every now and again. And then—

"Holts," someone very clearly and very definitely whimpers into the phone. Alex's eyes fly open and he sits up in bed so fast that he gives himself a charley-horse and loses his phone in the process, flailing and trying to both recover it from the sheets and also punch the muscle in the back of his thigh into submission. He gropes for it with one hand (and finds Nicky one more time, so the groping's successful on more than one front), and kneads his leg with the other, and by the time he has his phone back, he's more awake than not. Squinting, he manages to open his eyes enough to look at the phone's screen and figure out who's calling him, though really, he probably should have known.

Somewhere deep in Alex's subconscious, a counter that reads We Have Been Stupid Baby Teammate Dumbass-Incident Free for 23 Days! shivers, freezes, and then flips over to zero.

Alex swings both legs over the side of the bed and stumbles his way to the bathroom, phone in hand and half-blind. He doesn't bother to turn the lights on, just closes the door. Sitting down heavily on the toilet seat, he looks at his phone again, and then lifts it up. The panting and noises are still going on.

Alex sighs, and hopes he'll at least get free Starbucks out of this again.

"Burky, it's me, not Holts. You dial wrong number again," he says into the phone, and yawns.

There is sudden silence, and then a strangled noise that Alex interprets as the collateral damage from Burky's brain and dick fighting it out for ownership of the majority of his body's blood flow. He can practically hear all of Burky's systems locking up, blue-screening, and then rebooting.

"Ovi?" Burky finally says through the phone.

"Yeah, hi," Alex says and yawns again. "Sorry. You lose boner?"

"Uh," Burky says, which either means he has and he doesn't know how to say that without insulting Alex directly, or he hasn't and he's awkwardly trying to not tell Alex about it, and either way, Alex probably doesn't want to know. "Er. Eh."

"Sorry," Alex repeats, and then frowns. "No. Fuck. Not sorry. You wake me up with sex call for someone else, you apologize to me."

[bronanlynch]

bi-ish weekly update

time sure passes huh. meant to do one last week but I wrote like 5000 words on Wednesday instead, and I’m not really sure what happened yesterday but maybe Thursday is my new day for these

listening: two for the price of one this week since I’m excited about both of them. first of all, obviously, is the Sangfielle theme by Jack de Quidt because it’s time for a new season of Friends at the Table. I love their description of this season’s music

the other thing I’ve been listening to is the new album from one of my fave bands, You’re Welcome from A Day to Remember. this is by far not the most musically interesting or complex song on the album but it is about, as far as I can tell, a bad breakup with a vampire and I love it for that just on principle, but also it’s fun! a fun pop punk-esque bop about breaking up with a vampire!

reading: since last time when I talked about many romance novels I was reading, I mostly just read more romance novels because sometimes that is all the brain can handle. shout out to KJ Charles for writing a historical romance with a nonbinary main characters, you really do love to see it. I appreciate that she puts trans characters in her books, and I hope that someday she writes one with a trans man as a main character, because that truly would be a book targeted directly at me.

I’ve also been reading the Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator series by Alexis Hall (author of Affair of the Mysterious Letter, a weird fantasy queer Sherlock Holmes retelling that absolutely fucking slaps, highly recommend).

this is his author bio from the Kate Kane books, which really just sets the tone and also. what a fucking life goal

anyway. series starts with Iron & Velvet which is currently on sale, which is why I bought it, and it also fucking slaps. I’m like halfway through the last book right now but they have all been good and fun. Kate is like. archetypal disaster p.i. but done in an interesting way (i.e. the narrative actually addresses the depression and the alcoholism in a way that I personally really appreciated), and also pretty much every woman in the ~supernatural community she encounters is an ex or someone she will flirt/hook up with at some point, which is an accurate representation of every irl queer space I’ve ever been part of. she dates a vampire for a while. hot morally questionable vampire lady. the vampire power structure names positions after tarot cards it’s very fun and sexy and tailored specifically toward my interests. also she lives in the same part of London as my ex-girlfriend so it’s. fun to recognize place names and be like. oh I went there on a date once huh

watching: started watching Turn A Gundam because a twitter friend recommended it as being fun and also very different then any other Gundam series and they were right on both counts. the premise of it is ‘what if a bunch of people went to live on the moon and some people stayed on earth, the moon people got real into super advanced technology and the earth people are larping the 19th century, and now the moon people want to come back’ so there’s a fun mix of visual styles. would love to see serious analytical writing on this show by someone more versed in discussing indigeneity/colonialism than me though because there are things that I’m a little bit hmmm at but I don’t know enough to be able to explain why or know if that’s the right response to have

don’t know what’s up with the dude on the left’s sunglasses but my friend has promised me the fashion choices only get weirder

I know about the ‘wow cool robots’ meme but some of the mech designs are very cool and visually distinct both from each other and from the standard blocky humanoid shape that lots of mechs are, so that’s fun to see. and they’re all different sizes too, which for me at least makes it easier to get a sense of the scale of the conflict/threat. when they’re all the same size it’s easy for me to forget they’re like 40 feet tall but when some of them are 40 feet and some of them are like 10 feet it’s a lot easier to be like. oh. oh shit. these are big and destructive and scary as hell

there are mini versions of this big mech that are like. the size of one of its feet

also there’s some fun stuff about how the way society relates to a mech and what a mech is used for can change over time, which is part of what is maybe inspiring me to get back into trying to write games, because between Turn A and the fic I was writing about Integrity Friendsatthetable I was like. hey what if a hack of The Ground Itself by Everest Pipkin, a game about a place changing over time, except instead of a place it’s a mech

playing: finished Knife of Dunwall finally! please clap! I was kinda half-expecting not to keep to low chaos in the last mission because there are so many overseers but I did it! I did do a bunch of accidentally getting into fights, killing a bunch of people, and then reloading an earlier save so I could go back and not kill those people but it’s fine. anyway. fun game, fun level once I got the hang of it, and I do feel like I accomplished something a lil bit difficult so that’s a nice feeling. definitely harder than the main game. also, very sad about Billie and gay for Delilah. she shows up just to threaten you and then disappears again, and I think that’s pretty hot of her. also love the narrative parallels of having the choice to spare Billie and then the game ending with Corvo about to decide whether to spare Daud or not. I just think that’s neat

making: made some Thai green curry last week from this recipe, which was tasty and not too hard to make, but has just enough specialty ingredients to make it a lil bit too expensive to make too often. our grocery store only ever has lemongrass when we’re looking for things that look kinda like lemongrass but aren’t, and didn’t have any when we need it so we just used extra lemongrass paste and lime juice for the lemongrass, and for the kaffir lime leaves, which we were also supposed to substitute with lemongrass but. it’s fine it was still tasty

writing: a lot somehow, although it’s been over two weeks since last time I did one of these so I guess that makes sense. I wrote a couple of things for 15 Days of Friends at the Table, including Broun, Milli, and Thisbe cottagecore roommates, Clem and Gucci bickering/flirting, and an extended dream sequence that makes me very sad about Integrity (I’m very proud of the last one, I know it has a very small target audience because Sokrates/Integrity is very much a rarepair in an already small fandom, there are 6 works in the tag, 4 of them are by me, 2 of them are by the same other person, and one of those is a gift for me so. it’s mostly just me, but I think I wrote something pretty good)

also meant to write more for Persona 5 Girls Week, although so far I’ve only written one thing, a quick fluff fic which for once requires very little knowledge of the source material. meant to write something for today’s prompt but instead I had two job interviews and then cooked dinner for my household so that probably will not happen and I will probably watch more Gundam instead

[brawltogethernow]

So the problem starts, the problem starts when Kaine agrees to go to a bake sale.

This little old lady put her hand on his face, see? What are little old ladies doing putting their hands on his face? Doesn’t she know he could snap her neck with a finger twitch?

“You are a good Catholic boy,” she says. “I know one when I see one,” she interrupts when he opens his mouth to protest, though he wasn’t yet decided which descriptor to zero in on first. “You are always at confession.”

Kaine may, possibly, have been using confession as a kind of no-papers-required stand-in for therapy. Or maybe a no-blood-shed-Aracely-isn’t-glaring-at-me stand-in for hurting himself.

He has enough brain cells not to say this. Barely.

“Thank you,” he says instead, and tries to pull away.

She leans with him. Her hands remain on his face.

“But I never see you anywhere else!” she says. “You must come to the bake sale. It’s on Friday.”

“Okay,” says Kaine’s mouth entirely without his input. He was born with an inbuilt structural weakness against little old battle axes. He attributes this to the ghost echoes of Peter Parker’s idyllic childhood.

-

“So what are we making?” demands Aracely as soon as he returns to the presidential suite. “Lemon bars? People on TV make lemon bars. What is a lemon bar?”

Sometimes, Kaine is more glad than anything that she's always eavesdropping on the inside of his head. Often, he’d cut off a limb, hell, all his limbs, to keep her out. He'd grow a bunch of spider legs again and then cut those off. He’s not sure exactly where this falls between the two extremes. But definitely closer to the negative side.

“Oh,” she says as if he answered, tipping her head. She’s turned around on the couch and sat up on her knees and braced her arms on the back of it to see him better. “You don’t know either. That’s okay, we can Google it.”

-

So they burn the kitchenette a little bit.

"We can rebuild it," says Arcacely. "We have the technology."

He definitely leaves her in front of the TV too much. But what's the alternative, bringing her with him more?

"Yes, it is," says Aracely like he spoke out loud. "And that is but one more reason why you should do that."

"Hell no," says Kaine, and books it out of the suite fast enough that he can pretend he didn't hear her shout, "Swear jar!"

-

He finds the maid who most often handles their rooms. He hands her a stack of hundreds for her trouble, then gives her a couple more because he can tell the exchange has scared her. He tells her the hotel can bill him the damages. And then he asks her how to get to the hotel kitchen.

Aracely appears, out of breath, as he finishes bribing his way into use of a stove. Her ability to do this is one reason among many why he doesn't own a cellphone.

"You could have just asked them," she chirps, methodically going through the room and opening, examining, and then closing every drawer. It's empty right now, so there's no one to stop her. "I think they would have just let us use the kitchen. The people here like you."

"No, they don't," corrects Kaine. "And who cares? It's not like we need to save money." He can just go hit more human traffickers if he runs low. And since he spends a lot of his time doing this even when he's not running low, he is in absolutely no danger of running low. He's pretty sure he could buy a yacht, or a politician.

"Success!" proclaims Aracely, and when Kaine turns around she's holding a clear plastic tub of brown powder over her head. There's a piece of paper laminated to the side with text printed on it that might be a recipe. "Brownie mix!"

-

"That is not food," declares Aracely of their creation. "No one is going to buy that."

Kaine leans over to examine it. It's kind of...grainy.

"Brownie sand," says Aracely. "Could we start a new trend?"

Kaine sighs. They should have known trying to quarter the banquet-sized serving on the tub was a bad idea. They have clearly miscalculated on some ephemeral measurement level. They've angered the baking gods.

"Are there baking gods?" inquires Aracely.

"Why don't you ask the Catholics," says Kaine, and tugs her away to tip the cleaning staff again.

-

“This is good too,” says Aracely, presiding over the storebought tubs of those weird shitty grocery store cookies that are mostly icing that they brought instead.

“I don’t even know how I got here,” says Kaine. “What are we doing here?”

His nose twitches. He’s not sure if one of them still smells like burnt lemons or if he’s just imagining it. He does know that he’s avoiding anything lemony for a long time.

-

The woman who got him into this sidles up to them shortly after they set up, looking very pleased to see him there.

"Always good to see fresh faces," she says, and winks at him.

She continues to talk in a way that stays steadily one step to the left of him feeling like he has a firm grasp on the conversation. Possibly that's because he's overthinking things and doubting whether he's correctly interpreting a single word she's saying. What even is "the congregation", in this context?

He looks at Aracely.

She shrugs.

Is it a list. Do you have to complete a set of tasks to qualify. Are there membership cards?

Aracely shrugs a little more beffudledly. Her reeducation via television and following a vigilante around active crime scenes must not have taught her about this.

-

The bake sale is to raise money to fix the air conditioner. This means that the building is the same temperature inside as it is outside. The best description he can come up with for the response the people in the room are having to the sweltering temperature is "cheerfully miserable".

Other than that it's...weird. Festival-ish? It kind of plucks the strings of memories that don't belong to him of May Parker presiding over neighborhood events with an endlessly gentle iron fist, but it also doesn't. He also kind of feels like he is impersonating someone who is actually supposed to be here. But that's nothing new.

There is a big confused snarl in Kaine's chest made mostly of other people's experiences that he can't even begin to interpret if he pings himself about the concept of "God". He thought that might be a problem if he just walked in here and...socialized.

It is not. No one is asking him about God.

"What do you think about the setup this time?" a woman with a thin mouth and long, spindly fingers demands. Her lipstick is the same shade as Annabelle's hair and her turtleneck suggests a total lack of concern for the wet Houston heat that Kaine finds honestly terrifying.

"The--?" he starts to answer.

"It's definitely for the best they didn't decide to hold it in the basement again," she continues, saving him from answering her not-really-a-question. "I mean, why? The lobby has all these lovely windows."

She gestures. Kaine nods along, his adrenaline spiking more than it ever has for any interaction with a werewolf or a most dangerous game type with a knife.

Thus follows a brief interaction where Kaine hums or nods when appropriate, and in return learns that she's very invested in the greater accessibility of the lobby, she plays piano on a volunteer basis for the church, and she knows he's "one of Marie's injections of fresh blood" but doesn't seem interested on calling him out for not belonging here.

"Do come to the community breakfast tomorrow," she finishes, buys two cookies, and leaves.

The emotional aftermath is akin to having weathered a near-death experience.

-

Aracely has found an older couple to speak Spanish with and is chirping away at the same blistering clip typical of her English, but with a more fluid cadence that betrays it's at least one of her native languages. The in-his-head thing doesn't really go both ways, so he has no idea what they're talking about. Probably something he'd regret knowing. What if she is asking them about baking gods.

A guy in a priest...collar...thing...who Kaine hopes desperately is not the one he sometimes monopolizes, or, failing that, does not recognize him, has sprouted up to make polite conversation.

"Not a bad turnout today, eh?" he says.

"Good thing they moved it back into the lobby," tries Kaine.

The priest beams at him like he's repeated the secret code.

"So true," he says.

Kaine is totally mastering churches. This is great. He bets if it were Peter in his place he would have started a fight by now.

-

"I think that went well," says Aracely after they've retreated to the suite and she's curled back up on the couch with a bowl of...something. She stabs the contents of the bowl with a spoon. "We should definitely do that again. Socializing with your community is almost as important as scaring away all its drug lords!"

"They're not my community," says Kaine. Not just the Catholic church a few blocks away from the hotel, which he still thinks he prefers from inside an anonymous guilt box. Houston is not Kaine's community. He does not have, does not get to have, a community. (Aracely rolls her eyes in an incredibly teenagery way, projecting exasperation either at his answer or his train of thought.) "What are you eating?"

She salutes him with her spoon. "Brownie sand! It's very edible!"

"Ichh," says Kaine.

"It's good for you!" Aracely declares. She looks dubiously down at her bowl, and corrects, "It's not actively bad for you!"

"No more chocolate," says Kaine. "No more lemons. No."

"But maybe some more bake sales?"

"...Maybe."

"Yes!"

==

On AO3 (where the title and summary can be considered a bonus gag). Last year the GG Discord was talking about how the Marvel wiki categorizes characters by religious affiliation, which led to questioning why Kaine Parker was listed as Catholic. I reported back several months later after I read Scarlet Spider that it was because he started going to confession after being thrown through a church wall, which prompted gelpenss to pitch the mental image of Kaine showing up to one of the less cinematic things people do in churches.

[missroserose]

return of the return of the wednesday reading meme?

So it turns out that trying to read when I’m on a writing bender is...actually fairly hard?  It’s almost like working on a story between six and fourteen hours a day doesn’t leave me much time for...well, much of anything.  But that fic is done, and holiday stuff is pretty much finished, so here we go again!  We’ll see how long I last this time.

What I’ve just finished reading

Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan.  I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately, in part because it’s something I’ve been aiming to have more of in my work, so this was a fascinating read in part because it didn’t follow a traditional structure at all.  Or, really, you could almost argue that it’s the reverse of a traditional structure—where in a Hero’s Journey-style story you have the inciting incident that sends the main character out into the world to be forever changed, here you have a victimized teenage girl responding to further trauma by literally withdrawing into her safe, comfortable fantasy world and staying there for decades while she raises her two daughters.  I appreciated that the story largely treated this choice with empathy; while she’s upbraided by one character later on for her selfishness in not allowing her daughters to experience the real world until they’re grown, most of the others are thoroughly understanding—and the price she pays ends up being a quiet and personal one rather than the Epic Potentially World-Ending Catastrophe that most Western storytelling would demand.  There’s a lot to chew over in this story, about the effects of trauma, and culture, and how to make existing as a disempowered person bearable. 

If I had one complaint about it it’d probably be that the story treats the “real” world’s brutally patriarchal culture as an inevitability, something that can’t be fought directly, but only undermined covertly, through magic and other hidden means.  I guess I have just enough of my mother’s crusader tendencies to want to say “forget that, we can do better”...but power dynamics are forever a tricky thing to alter, and from the perspective of the main characters, there’s really not that much they can do; it’s something of a triumph even to learn to exist within it.

(Thanks again to @introvertia for sending me this, it’s given me lots to think about!)

What I’m currently reading

Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir.  I’m almost through the audiobook, and hoo boy have I been enjoying it.  The author and the narrator both are doing a bang-up job in helping my brain keep the large ensemble cast straight—every character has a distinct personality and voice, and the ways they bounce off each other are eminently believable.  Gideon, with her irreverent attitude and occasional brilliance, and Harrowhawk, with her continual brilliance and equivalent insufferability, continue to be one of my favorite fictional pairings; even once they start to trust each other somewhat, their chemistry is just phenomenal. The worldbuliding I’m a little fuzzier on, but the characters are so propulsive that I’ve been more than willing to just go with it.  And given that they’re basically acolytes of a mysterious and claustrophobic religious order that requires absolute faith from its adherents, to a degree it works that the origins are mysterious, even if I occasionally find myself wondering about practicalities like “okay, so, who exactly maintains the shuttles?  And the atmosphere processors?  And grows the food?  And who’re they fighting in this mysterious war that’s only occasionally mentioned...?“  I’ll be interested to see if she expands on that in the further books.

What I plan to read next

To be honest, I have no idea.  I may well just pick up something from one of the piles of books around my house—God knows I have enough of them, haha.

Fanfiction Spotlight

This week I want to point out Solus, Soulless, Solace by Blake (@newleafover on tumblr).  I’ve often thought that the soulless version of Sam we meet in Season 6 of Supernatural is one of those opportunities practically tailor-made for fanfic—the direction they took him in the show worked fine, but there’s just so much potential for exploration there, especially with Sam’s internality.  What does the world look like, to a human being without a soul?  How does his inability to feel emotion change how he relates to his loved ones, and especially to the one person his life revolves around?  And without the ability to love, what is it that keeps him so tied to Dean?

Blake uses the opportunity to present an unrelentingly crystalline portrait of trauma-induced functional depression, where habit and careful consideration carries you through most of the motions of your life but you’re acutely aware that your usual breadth and depth of emotional experience is just—gone.  Further, they write it in second person, unusual for a non-reader-insert fic but powerful in that it strips away that layer of insulation.  And damn if it isn’t 100% effective.  I happened to come across it after a week that had involved more than a little emotional heavy lifting; reading it was like going outside during a sunny eighteen-degree day when all my muscles were sore.  It felt therapeutic, if only in the sense of “oh, right, this is why I’m doing all this painful internal work, so I don’t end up here again.”