#but i know the theory with this stuff- i’ve grown up around it and volunteer for a mh charity and stuff

[motownfiction]

bachelor in paradise

Naturally, after the engagement, Sadie wants to drive home with Daniel; also naturally, Charlie doesn’t want to be a third wheel in the backseat.

“Really, though, I guess I would have been a seventh wheel,” he says to Sam, who immediately volunteered to drive him back to their house. “You know, if you count all the wheels on the car.”

Sam laughs a little too hard, exhausted from the heat of the day (on all levels, metaphorical and literal).

“Seven’s a good number, though,” Sam says. “I’ve always had a theory that it’s the most amount of people that an audience can pay attention to all at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look around. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Seven Samurai. The Magnificent Seven, which is the same as Seven Samurai, just with cowboys. Probably a fourth thing I can’t think of.”

Charlie laughs. That’s Sam. Around his early teens, he got tired of the rule of threes, so he decided to make lists of fours. Only he couldn’t always come up with a fourth thing. His brain was already onto something else. Charlie wishes his brain worked quickly like that. Wishes he were witty and smart like Sam. What he doesn’t realize is that he already is. What he doesn’t realize is that even as he grows older, he’ll never notice.

“Yeah, OK,” Charlie says. “I still think a seventh wheel is too many.”

“And I think a second wheel is sometimes too many,” Sam says. “If I had it my way, the only lawful vehicle would be a unicycle.”

“But you don’t know how to ride a unicycle. You barely know how to ride a bike.”

“Well, yeah, but I think it would look cool. I’d learn.”

Charlie laughs again. If only he could be more like Sam. Then maybe Carrie would still look at him with those wide, curious eyes. He always missed it when she looked at him lovingly before. Now, it’s like those stares aren’t even there.

What he doesn’t know is that Carrie still looks upon him with that same love.

He’s just grown accustomed to it.

Accustomed. A euphemism for blind.

Sam sighs and turns the radio to the easy listening station, one of his lesser known favorites. They’re playing the theme to Bachelor in Paradise, an old movie with Bob Hope, and he smiles with all his teeth.

“This is the stuff,” he says. “Charlie, you know Henry Mancini.”

“I’ve been playing ‘Moon River’ since I was six,” Charlie says. “You know I know Henry Mancini. He’s a good friend. Metaphorically speaking.”

“Yeah, I know. The guy could put together a theme. I mean, have you heard ‘Peter Gunn?’ Even before Art of Noise did their thing to it? It’s damn good.”

Charlie nods. Not much to say when Sam’s going on one of his tangents, and his eyes start to light up as brightly as they’ll go. There’s nothing in the world to compare to it. Nothing in the world that could compete with it. Sam doesn’t know it, but Charlie thinks he’s spent his whole life trying.

“This song’s kind of about us now, don’t you think?” Sam asks, gesturing to the radio.

“The song from Bachelor in Paradise?” Charlie asks. “Why?”

“Well, for all the reasons I said earlier, in the mall. Lucy and Will have been married for fifty-six years. Sadie and Daniel are getting married. That leaves you and me. And before I know it … it’s just gonna be me.”

Charlie feels himself blush, even though he’s not sure why.

“C’mon,” he says. “Do you really think I’m gonna marry Carrie?”

“Well, yeah,” Sam says, like it should be obvious. “I mean … you look at her like you want to. Maybe not soon or anything, but … someday. Eventually. Before you both croak.”

Charlie nods, feeling a little out of his own body. It’s not that he hasn’t thought about what it would be like to marry Carrie Sullivan. Not in the immediate sense of wanting to, of course. But in the sense of what it would feel like. Where they’d live, what they’d do, where they’d try to go on their vacations. He can see it all pretty clearly. He’s just not sure if he likes it.

Not yet.

“I dunno,” Charlie says sheepishly. “What about you?”

Sam snorts.

“What about me?”

“Don’t you want to get married?”

Sam shrugs and shakes his head, not giving Charlie (or himself) a clear answer.

“I’ve got enough on my plate to think about,” he says. “Going to work for Dad, collecting records, taking Elenore out for a Frosty when Lucy and Will are in late-night classes … I’ve got a full schedule, baby. I can’t be tied down. People need Sam, and they need him to be as single as a Wendy’s Single.”

Charlie smiles. Leave it to Sam to charm even his own brother into forgetting the rest of the conversation. The more Charlie thinks about it, the more he hears exactly what Sam is saying. He has a life, and that life is best spent alone. Listening to his music. Watching his TV. Uncompromised. Even if Carrie was in love with him, Sam would never fall in love with her. He wants to be alone.

“Besides,” Sam says, his voice a little shaky, “there are plenty of people out there I’d want to marry that I … couldn’t. Even if I tried.”

Charlie looks at Sam with a furrowed brow.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Sam sighs. For a smart guy, Charlie’s ignorance is, once again, staggering. In less than five seconds, he runs through a list of pros and cons to coming out to Charlie right here, in Sadie’s car. The light changes before he can finish the list, and he ends up almost forgetting.

But Charlie doesn’t forget. He lets the words play over in his head over and over for the rest of their drive home (and the rest of the evening). And he hears them differently than Sam ever could have dreamt. When Charlie replays Sam’s words, all he can hear is I’ll take Carrie away from you.

They’re the words that will shift the rest of the summer.

[existentialintrovert]

.

[ariendiel]

Do you have any headcanons for the og boys? I miss them smh

I miss them too! (assuming you mean the S2 boys, love them so much)

Something special about those dorks, and I’ve written some of my headcanons for them below for you ❤️

Bobby:

Adorably clumsy. This is basically canon, and he’s learned to use it to great effect when it comes to hit on girls. It also means he’s always got some sort of mystery bruise

His accent becomes thicker and he goes back to his punk-persona when drunk, definitely wanting to be in control of the party music and sing along to it (and everything can be a pretend mic if you want it to be)

Did really well in school, but never really worked that hard or cared about it at all, being too invested in his other passions and knowing going to Uni wasn’t for him - probably doesn’t even know his A-level results

Gary:

Big fan of routine, and goes to the pub after work every Friday. Also very much into football (soccer) and rugby

Thinks a Sunday roast is the best meal on earth, and you can’t convince him otherwise

Drinks his tea from a Star Wars mug he’s very proud of and has had for ages. Can generally talk Star Wars for ages, and will get into long discussions with Star Trek fans

Henrik:

Swears in English for fun/out of habit, swears in Swedish when he really means it

Big fan of Eurovision and takes it extremely seriously. Will get annoyed if people talk over the music and thinks costumes should be compulsory at Eurovision parties

Very environmentally conscious, but in such a genuine and sweet way. Careful to recycle and buy from local shops, and very much against consumer culture but doesn’t judge people for not being on “his level”

Ibrahim:

Spent some of the first money he made playing professional golf on a really expensive Violet Man costume, which he cherishes dearly (and will totally wear in bed if his girl is into it)

Ridiculously excited about superhero movies, but will also absolutely tear them apart if they don’t stick to canon at all. Also buys movie prop replicas from Marvel/DC films

Since he spends a lot of time in the US playing golf, he’s also become interested in American sports such as American football and basketball. Also enjoys going to Universal Studios

Lucas:

Enjoys sailing and his family owns a beautiful classic sailing yacht which he’ll take his girl on, he’s a patient sailing instructor as well, and finds it super romantic - calm seas, sunsets and champagne

Although he can, he doesn’t actually spend that much money on useless stuff. He prefers spending a little extra on unique experiences, and creating memories to treasure forever

Does volunteer work and donates to multiple charities, but he’s just not very loud about it - it just feels like the natural thing to do to him

Rocco:

Will make videos like this with his current ‘soulmate’, and think it’s genuinely cool and ~deep~

Anti-vax and thinks herbal tea can cure cancer etc., and also falls for all the conspiracy theories, I mean, he definitely believes in chemtrails

His family’s super sweet, slightly conservative, and supportive, helping him out financially and so on. He somewhat changes how he behaves around them, especially his mum who is very sensible and completely no-nonsense

Rocco isn’t his real name, rather, he chose it as his “spirit” name or something like that

Noah:

Secretly reads those super cheesy romance novels. He started reading them only so he could give the mums at the library some recommendations (they were totally hitting on him, but he had no clue), but now it’s a guilty pleasure

Knows most of his family's recipes by heart after having grown up helping with cooking. Nothing fancy, but so hearty and delicious, and feels like home

Sneaks monster munch into the library to eat behind his desk while reading on slow days

[moonlightserenadeeznutz]

Warlocks Are Attacking: Full muggle timeline.

(Hello internet, welllllcome to film theory!)

This is a detailed timeline of the headcanon I made about James Sirius Potter being in a band, specifically the tl during which the band pretended to be a lost 80s band in the muggle world, explained in this post (which I recommend reading first otherwise you may be quite confused).

This is honestly a super random thing I wrote when I was bored, but I ended up getting super invested in it so guess what, you guys are subjected to it as well now!

Written in the style of a YouTube video, I’ve heavily based the discography of Warlocks are Attacking on the band I Don’t Know How But They Found Me.

Enjoy!

~ On April 17th 2025, a piano cover of The Scientist by Coldplay was released on the YouTube channel JSHarkness04. A completely ordinary- if not low quality- video where the person behind the camera is neither seen nor heard.

More covers are uploaded over the coming months in the same style, and really the channel gains no special interest or notoriety. A few edit videos are uploaded, the usual crack stuff, and a few more covers.

On January 23rd 2026, a vlog is released showing the YouTuber moving into his new house. We finally hear and see the person behind the camera, a British dude around early twenties whose name is revealed to be Alex, and his girlfriend. Again, there’s nothing out of the ordinary in this video, and it’s only a few minutes long.

A few more piano covers are uploaded, as well as another edit video, and then...

This is where it starts.

On May 3rd 2026, a video is uploaded entitled “Warlocks are Attacking”. In it, Alex talks about how he was clearing out the attic of his new home when he came across some old cassette tapes. All the tapes had writing on them, all different, except for the phrase “Warlocks are Attacking”. Judging by the labels, it appeared to be the name of a band, while the rest of the writing could be taken as song titles: Bleed Magic, Do It All The Time, Nobody Likes the Opening Band, etc. Alex said he had listened to some of the tapes, and confirmed that they were songs correlating with the titles. Alex said he’d never heard of the songs before, nor could he find any trace of the band’s existence online, but that some of the tapes had been dated 1986.

This video didn’t really have a conclusion, but only two days after it was uploaded, another video- only a minute long- was uploaded entitled “New Channel”, where Alex explains that he would be setting up a new YouTube channel to showcase the songs he’d found on the tapes, and hopefully be able to find out who the band was.

On May 25th, two videos on Alex’s new channel, given the name “Warlocks are Attacking” were uploaded. The first one was 30 seconds long entitled “Introduction”, which was nothing more than a man’s voice introducing the band. It didn’t cause much suspicion, especially since the record label that the band was apparently signed to was called “None You Jerk”, obviously a fake label. So the introduction could most likely just be a joke made by the band and recorded.

The second video was a simple lyric video for the song “Nobody Likes the Opening Band”. And in the description he explained the story again of how he found the tapes, and asked if anyone knew the song, or the band.

More songs were uploaded, Choke, Bleed Magic, Absinthe etc. And soon the channel started to grow, both from people who genuinely enjoyed the music, and people who were intrigued as to whether or not this really was a lost 80s band, or whether the entire thing was fake.

Theories started circulating, and people started to try and find hidden messages. They started with the username of the original channel JSHarkness04 but search J Harkness, or even JS Harkness, and the only real result you get is Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who. So it seemed that the only thing that the username implied was that the YouTuber was perhaps a Doctor Who fan.

People searched for hidden meanings in the piano covers, the moving house vlog, even the random edits. But no one came up with anything. So eventually people started to give up and accepted the fact that the whole thing was real, and the songs really were from old cassette tapes found in some guy’s attic.

That being said, there were a select few people who just weren’t convinced. Mainly because of the fact that the songs were good. They weren’t experimental pieces from a band trying to find its sound. They had their sound. They knew what they were doing. So how come no one had ever heard of them? Did they really never play these songs to anyone? Not even for an underground gig?

Well, that’s the thing. There’s no saying they didn’t. If you heard a song forty years ago at some random gig, would you remember? And even so, a number of things could have happened that would have stopped the band from ever having their songs released. Maybe they broke up, maybe they couldn’t find anyone who wanted to pick up their songs, maybe they died was one theory someone had.

Point is, the quality and consistency of the songs was really the only evidence that this whole thing was fake, and even that evidence was sketchy.

But then, on November 7th 2026, an altogether different video was uploaded titled “Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd (cover by Warlocks are Attacking) (found footage!)”

In the description of this video, Alex claims that he found some video tapes in the attic that had been hidden away. A few had been recorded over, but he was able to find a few complete videos of the band.

In this video, we see three band members in what looks like a garage jamming out a cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb. And people went crazy. Not only did we finally see what the band members looked like, but we also found out their names. The video, which was dated 1983, had credits edited to the beginning, easily done in the 80s so there was no implication that it wasn’t legit.

Anyway, the credits show that the singer in the video is called Noah Mori, the keyboardist is called Lyra Thomas, and the drummer is called James Potter.

People took apart this video piece by piece, trying to find evidence of either the band being new, or some connection to the YouTuber. Maybe something in the garage was from a time after 1983, maybe the 70s Doctor Who poster in the corner had something to do with JSHarkness04. But all in all, once again, there really was nothing to suggest that it wasn’t real.

However, one thing that was noticed was that, when comparing the singing voice of Noah to the singing voice in the other songs released, they sound completely different.

So despite everything, no one could say for sure who the band members were. We didn’t know if the drummer and the keyboardist were the same, nor did we know who the new singer was. We didn’t even know if they had more than three band members by the time 1986 rolled around, or even if some of the original members had left. All we knew was that the singer had been switched, either with a new singer who wasn’t in the video, or with James Potter, since he was the only other guy in the video.

After the video was released, not much else happened, except the occasional release of another song, which were combed by theorisers looking for evidence that the songs couldn’t have been written and recorded in the 80s but once again came up short.

By this point, the band had grown a real cult following, increased even further when the songs were put on Spotify by Alex.

On March 18th 2027, another video was released, titled “Choke- Live Performance” and showed footage of an actual gig where the band was playing their song, filmed on an old camcorder by someone in the audience, completely unprofessionally as the camera would bob down every so often. Once again no evidence was found of it being faked. However, it did open new possibilities: the band had played gigs. Which means that someone must have seen them play. Not only that but it confirmed that the singer had been switched to James Potter, while the drummer was now Noah, and Lyra was still the keyboardist.

People went onto various sites trying to find anyone who may have been present at a gig in the 80s to see the band live, but no one came forward.

Well, a few people did. But the only evidence they could give was their word, so no one knew whether or not to believe them, which means no one could for definite write off the gig as being fake.

The next stir in the band’s fanbase came with a video simply entitled “???”, a one minute video, with the same voice as the introduction, talking about indoctrination:

Indoctrination program, designation "CVM51-D". Congratulations, you have been selected. You are special. Only the very best and brightest are considered for placement in our patented Temporal Arts program. We invite you to follow along, as we work together to decode and exploit the secrets of time and space for our benefit. Each volunteer pairing will be assigned a chaperone. Our white shadows will oversee your progress. Be sure that our company's interests maintain the highest priority throughout your journey. Please enjoy your experience, and remember: Time is on our side.

Predictably, people were very excited to analyse the text, and while it could still be taken as just a joke by the band, and therefore still no evidence of the band being new, it was an odd thing for the band to do if their songs were never released. A waste of time in a way, especially after already doing it once with the introduction. The voice also wasn’t familiar, though some say that it sounded a little like Noah when compared with the Pink Floyd cover, but putting on an American accent and edited to sound like something out of a PSA.

Another song was released entitled “Need You Here” and then came an actual music video. Or at least, an attempt at a music video.

It was for the song: “Nobody Likes the Opening Band” and in the video we see James singing on a stage, with Lyra playing the piano in a corner and Noah entering onto the stage to play the accompanying tambourine. It’s clearly a music video rather than footage from a show, considering the rather humorous moments that it involves, but executed with complete seriousness.

It also cuts out at the end and shows footage from some kids show which, according to Alex in the description, was called Bagpuss, and was aired in the UK from February 12th 1974 to May 7th of the same year, indicating that the music video had perhaps accidentally been taped over.

(Badly edited example I made of the end of the mv).

While the music video itself didn’t cause too much of a stir, the kids show at the end did, as people claimed that if the show had aired in 1974, and the band hadn’t established itself until at least 1983, how had they managed to accidentally tape over the video with the tv show? People thought it was deliberate, and therefore a sign that the band wasn’t real. Others claimed Alex had done it himself as a joke.

Looking back in the coming months, people saw this video as the start of the band slowly revealing itself to be not what it first seemed. But more evidence didn’t come for a while.

After the release of the song “Mad IQs”, another music video was released, and this one seemed much more professional, as if the band was really trying to make a proper video. It was still filmed in the 80s camcorder style, and it was still very simplistic, and possibly low-budget, again implying that this was a band doing everything themselves.

Released on the 23rd December 2027, the video was a cover of “Merry Christmas Everybody” and once again had the rather quirky vibe of the Opening Band video, where James is unsmilingly singing the song while Noah sits next to him... playing dead? And Lyra comes in halfway through and begins decorating the lifeless Noah with Christmas lights. So at least, if nothing, we know the band has a sense of humour.

An acoustic cover was released of Choke, then a few more songs. And then another music video which so far was the most professional out of all of the ones released. The song was called “Social Climb” and for the video, they actually had a set: a very fancy mansion. We don’t know whether they rented the mansion out, if they borrowed it from a friend, or if one of them even lived there, but by this point they had seemingly become determined to be a real band, which is why the whole idea of them having no recognition whatsoever was odd.

But it was the next video that caused much more of stir, and was the real proper beginning of the band revealing their true identity.

On the 12th September 2027, another cover video was released of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, though was much more in the same style as the Comfortably Numb cover, suggesting that this video was made quite soon after. It was still filmed in the same garage, though with a little more editing, and James was now the singer, and Noah the drummer.

Once again it had credits, but this time they were a little different:

Songwriter/drummer: N. H. Mori Keyboardist: L. A. Thomas  Singer/guitarist: J. S. Potter

Doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary, right? Well, that’s what most people thought too, but others were adamant that the initials were a sign, because if you notice, James Potter: J S Potter.

People were convinced that the initials JS were linked to the username JSHarkness04, and even brought up the 70s poster of Doctor Who seen in the first footage video as evidence that the username was something to do with James, and therefore showing that the entire thing was contrived.

Some people accepted this, but a lot of people were still sceptical. After all, it could easily just be a coincidence.

Another song was released, and then one more music video on November 16th.

This one was the most different- and the most professional of all the music videos on the channel, for the song “Do It All The Time”.

According to the description, it was sent to Alex by “an anonymous donor” saying that it had once been aired as an educational video in their school, around the year 1987/88.

And while the video could have been created in the 80s, it’s format is much more satirical than anything. The description could easily have said that it was another- and much better- attempt from the band at creating a music video, but instead the description gave an explanation that seemed... off. Not because the uploader had grown cocky, but because the band was finally making its transition from being surrounded in theory to being simply aesthetically satirical.

That being said, it still wasn’t concrete evidence.

There wasn’t another video until December 23rd. Another Christmas one, this time for a song called “Oh Noel” with James sitting alone in front of a decorated fireplace and singing.

Another subtle reference to the band’s identity was revealed with the lyric “I met you in December ’93”, obviously quite a few years after the band was supposedly around.

The next music video was for “Modern Day Cain”, and this is where the band’s identity properly moved away from the convincing 80s set up. The music video had a similar vibe to “Do It All The Time”, though the content was different. In this case, the video was mock footage from a TV show, which, according to the description was called ‘Superstar Showcase’, aired in 1989.

No such TV show ever existed, which was rather obvious by the footage, as once again it was very satirical.

So by now, only the most stubborn of fans were still convinced that the band was really from the 80s.

But no one was really disappointed. The band had executed their persona well. They had maintained the belief that they were a lost band for over two years, and revealed themselves so subtly that people hardly noticed.

The entire act was wrapped up on April 17th 2028, exactly three years after the first video was uploaded on JSHarkness04′s channel, with the release of a cover of “Debra” by Beck. A song released in 1999.

I should mention by this point that the channel JSHarkness04 had been uploading relatively consistently the entire time, most likely for the extra realism to the act. But once the act had been dropped, the channel went dormant.

Since then, the band has been releasing new songs here and there, and they still keep up the 80s persona, but now that they don’t have to be so careful, they’ve been able to have more freedom over what they post. An official music video for “Choke” was released, with the description:

“Pop Time Live was a short-lived music television program that aired briefly in Eastern Europe in the early 1980s. The show, and its producers, had hoped to capitalize on the then popular ‘Italo Disco’ movement, but audiences found its lack of authenticity objectionable. Labeled ‘NOT FOR BROADCAST,’ it is believed that this particular Warlocks performance never made it to air due to the band’s refusal to properly pantomime to their own song.”

Again, no such show existed. So now it was clear that the band was now a fully satirical 80s persona, and eventually they made live appearances, and even interviews, where people were finally able to find out exactly who they were, and that the band had actually been formed in 2021, and their plan to pretend to be an 80s band had first been made up by Noah who filmed one of their performances when they were first starting out (and James was still the drummer, Noah the lead singer) with the idea already in mind. And Alex was a friend of the group who had agreed to play along, but that the Warlocks’ YouTube channel wasn’t run by him, but by all three members of the group.

And as of now, that really covers the entire timeline of Warlocks are Attacking.

~ But heeey. That’s juust a theory. A film theory. Aaand cut.

[ohmrlove]

Hello! I’ve been asking a bunch of people to do this request because I want to see everyone’s different headcanons. How would the MLQC boys react to MC being a single mother? She never told them she has a 7yr son because they never thought to ask and we’ll call him Liam instead of “her son”. So they found out when Liam ran to her. MC is still young since Liam was born from unfortunate events like rape (she loves her son to death). How would the guys try to bond with Liam?

Trigger warning: ask centers around rape

🍷 Victor 🍷

He never would have imagined you were a single mother, let alone to a seven-year old. You were really good at hiding it!

It’s likely he overheard a snippet of a phone call when trying to approach you about work. A tiny little ‘love you mommy!’ on the phone during a break he didn’t know you were taking

Is kind of blown away you can strike the work-life balance and avoid being so consumed. Victor, himself, is bad at balancing intimate relationships outside of work so you mystify him

Gets super curious about this kid and slyly devises some work event that it’d be okay to bring them to

Realizes it’s a bad idea when he’s overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people--and kids--he has to greet, but likes that your kid was pretty quiet (shy) and sat at a table with you

He was playing with the big, fancy cloth napkins and Victor decided to fold one up in a semi-complicated design next to his

You introduce the two and it starts as Victor showing him how to fold napkins and teaching him about food

Casually drops Souvenir having a ‘Little Chefs day’ and encourages you to bring him

Victor can’t be the one running the class (obviously) so Mr. Mills does it and he helps grab all the stuff to make mac n’ cheese

Your son follows along, gets messy, and corrects Victor on how much cheese mac n’ cheese ACTUALLY needs. (“You want it to be really good! The best, like angels singing in your mouth, and that means lots of cheese!”)

Victor’s stomach hurts from all the cheese, but the whole thing was amusing

He’s suddenly ‘in the neighborhood’ a lot, and comes to sit with you and your son

When you have to collaborate with him on work, Victor insists you bring him so you don’t waste money on a babysitter. (”There’s two of us and one of him, it can’t be that hard.”)

Eventually learns the truth after the two of you have grown much closer and takes a deep, personal interest in making sure Liam never has that awful person for a father figure

“Just because” trips to places the three of you would like

Is basically your boyfriend/the dad figure but won’t own up to it unless super pissed off or being challenged in public. Will admit to it more when you’re married.

📢 Gavin 📢

Kind of dense about it. Had suspicions but no proof, and when he saw you two side by side, you picking him up to hug him, the similarities were PRETTY OBVIOUS

Birdcop felt kinda dumb

Becomes hyperfocused after that. When did this happen? A SEVEN YEAR OLD?! He never would’ve guessed!

Is worried the kid will be the total opposite of him--not super active, hates loud noises, etc--but is glad he can break the ice by showing him a cop car or his motorcycle

Answers all the typically excited job questions as best he can

Conveniently shows up at a school fitness day as a supervisor or some safety tie-in with the police department

Is happy to see him being nice to the other students and participates a little but mostly watches with you on the sidelines

Doesn’t ask you some of his questions since there’s other people nearby, but invites you two to ‘a little place’ he was going to afterwards

One dinner date turns into a few more, and Gavin is grasping at straws trying to invite you to stuff just to hang out. He’s got a soft spot for the kid and he sees his eyes light up and Gavin just can’t.

They turn into weekend buddies--fun at the park, movies, the whole nine yards!

He realizes this dynamic is getting pretty serious when your kid invites him to an award night at school. It’s just you two and Gavin is embarrassed but soooo proud! His heart is fluttering!

You tell him the truth about Liam’s conception and Gavin can only HOPE the guy is already dead. Boy is MAD. The news reported some wind issues for the next few hours, even into the next day.

Probably has a dark circle of people and MAKES SURE the guy doesn’t cause you any problems and stays FAR AWAY.

Focuses on being a good figure in Liam’s life.

The type to go ‘I know that kid’ and cheer him on at school functions. He’s got a distant older brother/aloof but warm personality so the transition to dad is going to be natural and hard to see.

🔬 Lucien 🔬

Probably figured it out before you ever told him. Considered that he’s a cousin/nephew or the kid happens to look somewhat like you (features can be common, etc.) but his gut says otherwise

Now that he thinks about it, he’s seen the kid off in the background when he dropped by your house sometimes. He just assumed you were babysitting a neighbor child.

When the two of you come to see him, holding hands, he knows. You’d run back to Lucien’s house and picked something up for him while he was stuck in a lecture.

Is too nosy for his own good--no matter how subtle--and offers to treat you for the errand. Whatever your kid wanted, he picked.

Lucien’s a people-watcher and found your kid’s table manners pretty interesting and he was pleased to note he wasn’t overly loud.

Their interests didn’t perfectly line up but Lucien’s absolutely voracious when it comes to learning and reading, so he had SOMETHING to say about Liam’s likes. Didn’t mind learning more from your excited, scatterbrained kid. It’s always funny to see people so passionate.

If he likes to sketch, Lucien could probably turn a sketch into a tiny robot or something. That puts him high on Liam’s list!

If he’s a more active/outdoor child, Lucien will invite the two of you along on a less-serious version of field research

Lucien can somehow always find the most interesting but less public city events, so it makes it fun and mysterious to tag along

Volunteers to babysit him when you’re super busy

They swap books and Lucien seems to have extra movie tickets lately

You guys drive to the Research Center to check on him one night when his experiment runs late and Lucien knows that this is a thing. You guys are a thing now. You’ve shown him that dedication and he’ll give it back two-fold (at least).

When he realizes no father figure’s coming in to make a fuss, Lucien has several theories. Finally inquires over a cup of tea, late at night when Liam’s asleep.

“Although certainly not ideal, Liam’s proof that good things can come out of a bad situation.”

He’s pretty vigilant about renewing any court-based paperwork that involves keeping the father away. Would probably kill him to really get him out of the picture, but has too many ideas and would rather not bother. The ultimate victory would be yours and Liam’s success, and he’ll invest in that instead.

🎤 Kiro 🎤

You and Liam were out buying groceries and running errands on your day off. Kiro was out (in disguise) trying to follow the diet his nutritionist set up...plus a few bag of chips

The two of you ran into each other at a booth giving away free samples. Kiro ABSOLUTELY can never turn down samples because they’re too small to matter and they’re usually junk food.

He says hello vaguely, as always, but when the kid says ‘Mommy, who’s that?’ Kiro absolutely loses it with disbelief and excitement

You rush him back to your house before he can blow his cover and the media gets the wrong idea

Kiro’s naturally a big kid at heart, and with his charming Evol, it won’t be hard for him to connect. Not that he’d use it.

If he gets too excited, it’ll happen accidentally.

He’s used to kids being excited to meet him so it’s a pretty easy introduction.

They talk superheroes, food, and all kinds of things!

If your kid’s not a big singer or dancer, Kiro’s more than happy to show him how to play the guitar or drums the next time you hang out. Kind of regrets that last one. But hey, he’s happy! That counts for something!

These two TOTALLY have a system where Liam brings him ‘contraband’ food when you visit and he HAS to take it because it would be rude to refuse a fan’s gift. Savin is not pleased.

Liam starts to understand that Kiro’s really busy or can’t go outside a lot/has to be private, so when the three of you hang out you usually bingewatch stuff or play video games. There’s always waaay too much takeout, but it’s delicious!

If you go to Kiro’s place, he probably installs a little fake sports hoop so they can play indoor games

Sometimes drops little coded messages in live vids (”And a special hello to my main man L!”) he loves it because it drives the internet absolutely nuts with trying to figure out who it is

He’ll casually arrange phone calls/voice messages from any of your son’s favorite TV characters/actors and make it seem like a ‘no biggie’ kind of thing. Kid super loves him then!

Not 100% what Kiro was aiming for--just trying to do something nice--but he’ll take it!

When he bothers to share any good news with Kiro, that’s when he knows he’s in the circle. You guys are close now.

When Kiro’s out supporting bands of designing a new stage line up, he likes your son’s input and will probably add a few of his favorite bands just so he has a reason to come.

It’s an unlikely family, but it’s a happy one. A happy one that is guarded to the teeth and Kiro has no qualms about bulldozing that disgusting excuse of a human in court.

May or may not put out a hit as Key. He’s a master hacker and could get rid of traces pretty easily 

[alarawriting]

Inktober #26: Dark

My name’s Mike London, and I hunt vampires, and that’s why I don’t love the darkness anymore.

Yeah, I know, I know. At this point you’re probably thinking “do we really have time to unpack all that?”, but the thing you’re getting hung up on is vampires, because vampires aren’t real. How could creatures who are technically dead survive only on blood, and if they were running around turning people into vampires every time they drank blood, why isn’t the world overrun with vampires? How could anyone function if they burst into flames when exposed to sunlight, why wouldn’t they show up on mirrors, does that mean they don’t show up on cameras, so on and so forth.

Okay, so most of the myths are wrong. You can see a vampire in a mirror… unless the vampire is positioned to see into your eyes, or their reflection. Vampires are stronger than humans but not by much – you know about that hysterical strength “mom lifts car off child” thing humans can do in extreme circumstances? They can do it all the time, because their bodies are constantly resetting to a perfect state based on what they were like at the moment of undeath, plus their self-image, with bodies that are perfectly healed except for anything that’s part of the self-image, like a scar that they’ve grown to identify with or a piercing. They’re faster than most humans, but they still have human muscles, so we’re talking Usain Bolt, not the Flash, or even a cheetah. They do burst into flames when exposed to strong ultraviolet light, a condition I can kind of sympathize with myself. And they aren’t created when a vampire drinks your blood, but when you drink a vampire’s, when your own blood levels are very low. As soon as a person has more vampiric blood than human blood in their system, boom, vampire.

They have only one really magical superpower, aside from the fact that they’re alive when they shouldn’t be, and it explains all the others that humans believe they have. If they can look into your eyes, and hold your gaze, they can control your mind. Make you think they’re invisible, make you think they just exploded into a hundred bats, make you compelled to do what they say.

It doesn’t work on me, because I’m an albino. And that’s why, despite the fact that all I ever wanted was to write programs, I am stuck hunting vampires as a side hustle. I’m still physically weaker and slower than they are, and while I see better in the dark than you do, I don’t see as well as they do. In light without UV components, such as standard indoor lighting, my vision’s more impaired than theirs, and a lot more than yours. But they can’t mesmerize me, and frankly, your average vampire has gotten so used to being able to mesmerize humans, it’s crippling for them to run into a human where it doesn’t work.

You probably haven’t got the vaguest idea why being an albino protects me. Maybe you have some notion that albinos have weird superpowers, since frankly in fiction we almost always do. You probably don’t know exactly how my disabilities work – in movies and TV, albinos never get to play albinos, it’s always white men in makeup.

Albinos have bad vision. Lack of pigment in the retina when we’re developing gives us vision problems that can’t be corrected with glasses. It’s like we have fewer pixels to see the world than you do, so everything’s going to be fuzzy no matter how strong the prescription lenses are. And a side effect of bad vision from birth is something called rhythmatic nystagmus, where our eyes go back and forth like an old DVD using pan-and-scan to show a movie on old-school near-square CRT televisions. (Old technology’s a hobby of mine.) I don’t have any conscious control or even awareness of it; I couldn’t stop my eyes from moving like that if I tried, short of closing them. My brain does post-processing on the moving image to make it look to me like my eyes aren’t moving, combining multiple snapshots from different angles into a single image. It means my ability to see a moving object is crap even if it’s close enough that I should be able to see it otherwise, but in theory it lets me see more detail than I would otherwise.

The thing is, there’s a reason the legends all have the vampires going “Look into my eyes”. They need to be able to make and sustain eye contact, the kind where you stare into each other’s eyes, and they can’t do that with eyes that are moving constantly. It’s not that I can’t see their eyes, because for me things don’t look like they’re going back and forth while my eyes move. It’s that they can’t look into mine.

I found this out the hard way last year. I was working at a big financial company, and I was behind schedule on the software I was building for them, and they had security rules that didn’t allow me to work from home. The boss used to say not to stay after hours, but I figured this was the kind of thing bosses say to make the company sound friendly and accommodating but is actually a control freak thing intended to benefit the morning people, which I have never been one of. I can’t drive – the state won’t give me a license, with my eyes – and I have chronic insomnia and equally chronic problems with waking up in the morning, making it impossible for me to rideshare with any of my co-workers. So I generally have an intermittently employed friend of mine who shares my apartment drive me places, and this means I’m usually late to work. If I can’t stay late and I can’t bring work home, I fall behind on my projects. Also, I do my best work late at night when there are no distractions. So I was in the habit of going to the bathroom with all of my stuff around 5:30 and then coming out at 6 after my boss had left. I could sit on the toilet with my laptop and continue to work, answering emails and setting Outlook to send them at 8 am in the morning the next day to make it look like I work normal hours, and then when I came out I could get back to the serious programming work, because my boss wasn’t a programmer and had no idea how to check the timestamps of my build check-ins.

It turned out it wasn’t corporate bullcrap after all. It was vampires. Vampires would come into the building to hold meetings on some kind of irregular schedule that meant something to them. I’d been working late for almost two weeks when they showed up, mesmerized my housemate and nearly ate both of us, and I had to kill a few of them with the combination of a steak knife from the kitchen and the cheap bamboo chopsticks I have a few hundred of in my drawer because I’m always getting Chinese takeout for lunch. See, you can’t actually stab a chopstick into a vampire’s heart – it’s too fragile – but stabbing with a regular knife only takes them out of commission for the two minutes or so it takes them to heal. But if you then stick a wooden chopstick in the wound, it prevents them from regenerating, and bamboo is apparently wood for vampire-killing purposes.

Also, I had a black light in my laptop bag, suitable for detecting whether my cats have peed on my laptop bag before I take it to work because they’ve done it so many times I’ve gotten desensitized to the smell of cat pee, and while I don’t like looking at UV light – my eyes have zero protection from it, so it’s painful – it’s a lot worse for vampires, whose skin will burn from very tiny amounts of UV exposure and can actually set on fire. And it’s just astonishing how often vampires will stand there trying to mesmerize you while you walk up to them and stab them in the heart, because they just can’t comprehend “human who cannot be mesmerized”.

And now that I know vampires exist and that I’m immune to their most powerful weapon… well, shit. I’m kind of stuck. I don’t actually know any other albinos, or anyone else with rhythmic nystagmus, and for normal people, wearing the kind of dark glasses that make it so the vampires can’t see your eyes will completely prevent you from seeing anything in the kind of darkness vampires like. I’m the only one I know who can do this. And they don’t kill humans constantly – they don’t need to – but they spread disease (they can’t get blood-borne illnesses but they can sure carry them) and they tend to pick on weaker humans to begin with, people who have less resistance to the bad effects of losing a lot of blood, because if chronically ill people seem sick and lethargic everyone assumes it’s their illness and not vampires attacking them. They’re like humanoid rats, in other words. If you had a well-behaved pet one who never harmed humans and only drank from volunteers, that one would be fine. But the rest of them are vermin.

Now, the best time to kill vampires is during the day, when they’re sleeping. Vampires know this. You are not going to find them when they’re sleeping, and if you did, you’d have to fight your way through their security guards, who are human, and do not know they’re protecting vampires, and really don’t deserve to have to deal with people trying to kill them. Also, being security guards, they are better at mayhem than I am; I’m an IT guy. So, lucky me, I have to go after them at night, when they have all the advantages except one: they expect to be able to mesmerize me, and they can’t.

Nighttime used to be my time. No bright sun glaring in my face and giving me a sunburn. Everyone around me having such poor vision from it being dark that my bad eyesight isn’t a disadvantage anymore, and when it’s dark enough, my eyesight gets better than theirs because my eyes collect every single photon that hits them, no filters. I’d walk around at night, or crank up my stereo and write code until 4 am.

But every time it’s dark, now, I know: they’re out there. They’re hunting. Feeding. And if I don’t track them down and get rid of them, people might die.

And that’s why I can’t love the darkness anymore.

[beraattelse]

See Me Chap 1

The shadow sitting at the corner of his eye hadn’t gone away, even as he forced himself to focus harder on the computer in front of him. He could feel his pulse in his ears. He looked up briefly from the keyboard to watch the professor writing notes on the board. His own pulse was too loud, drowning out whatever lesson was going on. He typed the jumble of letters, but he couldn’t quite make sense of what it said-- so long as he got it down, it didn’t matter. He swallowed hard, trying to keep up, but even the letters on his keyboard looked foreign. His lungs gasped in air unevenly, he couldn’t pay attention to so many things at once.

For a moment, he closed his eyes and stopped typing. His mind was on fire, but completely blank, he couldn’t form a full thought even if he wanted to. He took a deep breath, as deep as he could and refocused. As he exhaled, he could start to hear the discussion happening between the professor and another student.

“So you’ll be venturing into the Japanese Meiji-era economics that were strongly influenced by the German Historical school? Interesting. Why do you think this is relevant now?” The professor, who had previously been on a different tangent about the Nazi Labor market with a different student, now moved to the next student to individually vet each of their topics, he hadn’t thought of one yet.

He was next, and as he watched the student next to him squirm in an effort to answer the professor’s questions, he couldn’t help but feel his head begin to pound. His jaw tightened, teeth forced together, compounding the headache. His hands were sweating and his entire body felt like it was vibrating. He was cold and hot at the same time and his comprehension started to slip from him again.

“Psst, hey, En, you okay?” A hand touched his arm and he flinched back, searching to find the source of the hand.

“Fine.” He answered back tensely before he processed what had happened.

“You sure? You don’t look too good.” The voice asked, replacing the hand on his arm without hesitation.

“I’m fine.” He tried to not focus on the hand, even though a layer separated their skin from his, he could feel the itchiness and heat it was raising on his skin.

“Enya, it’s not going to be a big deal, I know you’ve been struggling a lot on your topic. They don’t expect us to have a really good idea right off the bat.” The hand attempted a reassuring squeeze but it felt like a bite to him.

He could feel sweat rolling down his neck and his breathing was ragged again. What should he say? What would get rid of them the fastest? How does he get them to stop touching him?

“You’re right. I should just relax. No big deal.” He inched away from the hand, and pretended to be taking notes on his computer again.

He felt a presence get closer to him, he could feel their breath on his neck, “Hey, if you want to talk it out after class, I’m free for an hour before my next class.”

The breath on his neck felt like bugs crawling on his skin, but he restrained himself from reaching for his neck. He moved away, tempted to leave immediately, in the middle of class.

“Enya. What’s your topic? Since you seem so inclined to talk during others’ discussion, I hope it is a worthwhile topic, and that you already know what you’re doing.” The professor called on him.

A pole shoved itself down his spine, making it rigid and hard for him to breathe again. He turned back to his computer to see if he had managed to take anything down of note, but he couldn’t read the page. He looked back at the professor, eyes wide. He opened his mouth to speak but he couldn’t make words come out yet.

“I’m waiting.” The professor stood at the board, ready to record his topic.

“I was... I was thinking.” He cleared his throat. “I have, I mean, there’s so much… I have a lot of… There were a few topics…” Words stumbled out of his mouth uncontrolled.

The professor blinked exaggeratedly, “Do you have a topic or were you just being rude because..?”

“There were a number, some things, I was trying to… I… I don’t not have a topic. I wanted, I was trying to narrow… You said to come with a few ideas. I was just thinking… I think I came with too many.” He finally coughed out, to which the professor sighed.

“Give me one then.” The professor, after pronouncing a thorough eye-roll, said.

He paused as the hand found its way to his back, rubbing it in a rhythmic pattern. His lungs forced another breath before he passed out. He wanted to rip his own skin off.

“Um… Like, maybe the Prison-Industrial Complex and the role of privatized prisons in exacerbating the problem?” He mumbled, unconsciously knitting his fingers together.

His professor looked back at him with an amount of skepticality, “And what is the problem, precisely?”

A lump formed in his throat, the answer bounced around inside his head, just out of reach, “Well… Um… Stuff’s happening… There’s a lot… It’s pretty complicated.”

With another sigh and eye-roll, the professor wrote the concept on the board, “I’m coming back to you. Have a solid answer. And maybe pay attention to what your classmates are saying.”

His head spun as the spotlight physically shifted to the guy next to him, the one who had been talking and touching him. He draped his arm around him, close.

“Mike, do you have a topic?” The professor asked, already fed up.

“Yeah, I was just going to apply economic theory to the resolution of nuclear treatise and disarmament.” He spoke crisply and without hesitation.

The professor looked back at him, then wrote the topic on the board, “I expect you to come up with an original paper with new ideas, not just a restatement of your poli. sci. thesis.”

“Of course, Brent. I’ve been thinking about this since last semester.” Mike answered back unprompted, giving his unwilling companion a squeeze.

The class continued, but it faded to the distance for him. His mouth felt dry, and still shaking, he wanted nothing more than to leave. The topic he had volunteered wasn’t the one he had been seriously considering, but it was the first one he could grab onto apparently.  He watched the others in the class stumble and stutter through their own proposals, but without any criticisms from the professor. The professor’s antipathy for him had only grown over the years, but this semester he was unprecedented in his overt censure. Mike’s arm still snaked around his shoulders, making it hard for him to breath, the sensation of crawling bugs turned to steel-wool scratching his skin. It was time for him to leave. He didn’t wait for dismissal, or for anyone else to respond, he quietly but briskly packed his things and left the claustrophobic classroom.

He had a feeling Mike would have followed, but he cared about his image too much to risk displeasing the professor. The class was far outside of his mind by the time he made it to the door to leave. He hadn’t realized that other classes had let out early, making the halls crowded and the commons area nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. His brain was still on fire, the area behind his eyes ached as if his eyes were going to pop out of his head. His back ached with the additional weight of his backpack, packed to the brim with textbooks, folders, and notebooks. He kept his eyes glued to the ground, knowing where he was going without looking up, a skill he had perfected over the course of his time here in college. It helped make him feel small or invisible if he didn’t have to see other’s faces, the rules of object permanence made logical sense, but didn’t apply.

Without much effort, he found himself outside, in the fall breeze rolling off the nearby lake. He breathed in for what felt like the first time in years. His ribcage fully expanded, and his headache got worse as blood rushed to his head. It was nice to be out of the academic building for the first time in hours. It was only the second day back from summer, but it he hadn’t gotten acclimatized to the immediate and intense stress. He wanted to dull the sharpness of his anxiety, but had no means to do so. A walk might have helped, but it increased the risk of seeing students that knew him. He knew he should eat, but he was worried about not having enough points for the rest of the week. All the people who used to have weed graduated or had dropped out, he hadn’t thought ahead. He had run out of cigarettes last week, and couldn’t afford more, not that he had the means to go get more even if he could afford it. He breathed in again, tempted to spend points on coffee, but that would only make things worse and the cost of coffee was almost as much as a sandwich. He couldn’t remember when he last ate, and his stomach hurt, but that was a later concern.

His phone vibrated, “heye, hope you’re okay.”

It was Mike. He didn’t respond. He knew he meant well, but perhaps it was that he never seemed to pick up signals, that bothered him most. It was a frustrating in-between.

“Hey, Enya! How was your summer? Busy?” A new voice called to him from down the sidewalk.

He didn’t want to acknowledge that he’d heard them, but he looked up from his phone, electing to not be rude.

“Hi Lexi, it was busy. How was yours?” He squinted against the sun, and brought his hand to his forehead to be able to see her.

Instead of verbally responding, her body collided with his in a bear hug. She squeezed him tightly, her heavy purse hitting his side. She jumped up and down still holding him, much more excited to see him than he was to see her.

“I missed you! How are you and the new roommate?” She finally peeled herself away to reveal that she had actually been dragging someone behind her.

“I’m fine. Haven’t met them yet. Who’s this?” He could feel that she was hurt by how curt he was, but she had known him long enough to not pry any farther.

“Oh! Bridget, my girlfriend. I got rid of Bryce as soon as I got home this past summer. It was hard, I had to go through all our wedding plans and cancel everything.” She waved her hand flippantly as if that somehow lessened the impact of the news.

His panic spiked, not knowing how to respond, “I’m really sorry to hear that, Lexi. I had no idea.”

She smiled brightly, “Don’t worry babe, I kept it on the downlow for the most part. I thought about posting everywhere how big of a goddamn cheater he was, but I figured he wasn’t worth any more energy. And anyway, Bridget is a thousand, a million times better in every way.”

Lexi clutched Bridget’s hand in both of hers and kissed her cheek without hesitation. Bridget was already flushed, but she looked down, shy.

“Don’t worry about Enya, she’s cool.” Lexi said as an aside to Bridget.

He looked at Lexi with meaning in his eyes and a will to shut her mouth.

“Enya used to be my roommate, you remember, right? The hero to my tragedy.” Lexi said dramatically, clenching a fist as if she was talking to poor Yorick.

He rolled his eyes at this, but elected to stick out a hand to shake Bridget’s hand. Bridget hesitantly shook his hand, confused as to the formality of his greeting. He was never sure what was appropriate when greeting someone, and anyway he didn’t like touching people or being touched but hands were bearable.

“Since when did you get so touchy? A hug and a handshake within five minutes! You must be with someone.” Lexi looked at him expectantly, waiting to hear all the juicy details.

He quickly dropped Bridget’s hand, “No. I’m not being touchy. I’m not with anyone, Lexi.”

He shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets, moodily. She always poked fun at him, but the whole relationship thing was a sensitive button to poke for him. Especially for her to bring it up in front of someone else, who was not in the know. Bridget, sensing an increased tension, gently tickled Lexi.

“Can we go get coffee before class?” Bridget asked sweetly, bringing her face close to Lexi’s as if she was going to kiss her.

“Of course baby, go on ahead, I’ll be right behind you.” Lexi said with just as much sugar in her voice, and pecked Bridget on the cheek.

Bridget waved a goodbye, then went into the building he had just come out of. Lexi watched her go before giving him a long stare, her entire countenance darkening.

“I thought you said you were moving out?” Lexi said after a moment.

He finally looked away, “I haven’t.”

Lexi reached her hand inside his hoodie pocket to grab one of his hands. She was never good with boundaries, ever since they had met. She sighed and looked at him sadly, clearly contemplating what to say.

“Then…At least you’re here. You have a bit more space here, right?” She snaked her other hand in his pocket, wrapping her fingers in his.

He brought himself to look at her again, “I mean, that’s pretty dependent on if my roommate knows.”

His skin felt clammy and gross, but this was the way she had decided communicate with him. She always had to hold hands when she was having a heart-to-heart, that was also her signal when she needed to talk about something important. She said that it made her feel better, more confident to be able to say what she needed to, because they were more connected. If she held hands with someone, they were in the inner circle. She squeezed his hands, searching for something in his eyes.

“You said you haven’t met him yet?” She asked, quietly, looking around.

“No.” He paused, debating on whether or not to cooperate and give her more information, “It said on the form that he would be moving in early, before me, but there’s nothing in the common that’s his, so I don’t know. I would check his dorm, but his door’s locked and I can’t open it with my key.”

Lexi nodded, but remained quiet, a prompt for further details in her world.

“I keep thinking I’m hearing something every once in awhile, but I used to do that with you too, even when you weren’t there. I don’t know what kind of information he got on me. He didn’t even send me an email to ask what I was bringing for the common or anything.” He said quickly and quietly, as if his roommate would materialize if he talked about him.

“What’s his name?” Lexi asked, she knew virtually everyone that lived on campus on account of being an RA for a time, and being in a number of clubs since she started going here.

“Sunyoung Moon.” He responded with some hesitancy.

Her face lit, “I don’t know him, but that name sounds exotic! Maybe he’s an exchange student and he’s shy?”

“Lexi, it’s not exotic, it’s Korean. Do we even get Korean students here? And just because it’s Korean, doesn’t mean he came from Korea.” He said despondently.

“Finn, it is now my mission to find your new roommate and make him as miserable as I used to make you. He is posthumously my new roommate too.” Lexi smiled widely, looking slightly absurd.

“Um, no. Lexi, please. He’s already got to deal with me.” Finn frowned, pleading in his eyes.

“Um, Lexi, yes. What better way to break the ice? You guys can bond over how much you hate me!” She laughed, clearly joking, taking her hands out of his pocket, the moment was over.

Finn looked at her with reluctance, she knew him better than anyone else on campus, but she still didn’t seem to know him that well.

“Who knows? Maybe you guys will even hook up?” She winked impishly, skipping away to reunite with her girlfriend.

[pirirps]

mythbusters starters: seasons 1 & 2

who are the mythbusters?

we’re what you’d call “experts”.

together, they have over 30 years of _____ experience.

we do this for a living.

i’m trying to locate a pig’s stomach.

_____’s SUPPOSED to be an expert.

that’s the shit!

the chevy impala is the ideal candidate for urban legend status.

so, the air force apparently called and turned us down on the jato rocket.

did they call us back again? just to deny permission? again? without being asked?

oh, fuck me.

[making gratuitous car crash sound effects]

oh, that’s the coolest toy ever.

we’ve got years of experience that keeps us safe.

i’m gonna have to have a grin-ectomy!

i mean, obviously it’s deflated, right?

[opens mouth to show a bunch of pop rocks going off]

what about mounting it in our skeleton over there?

oh, don’t make me say it!

once the belief is out there, you have to take some gargantuan steps to disprove it.

_____’s had two cans, he’s out of control! oh my god, he’s having another one! _____! _____, you can’t have those last two cans! oh my god, you’re an animal!

okay, i wouldn’t have called that he could drink all that soda and eat all those pop rocks at once.

i can’t answer the phone. i’m tying a pig’s stomach into a skeleton.

that’s what we call “a hell of a saturday night”.

another one bites the dust.

scotty, i need more power!!!

did you go to art school?

it has to be nice and fleshy and soft.

i come from the planet butthead.

that’s actually ____’s butt.

that’s probably the best shot you’ll ever see of your own butt.

it really looks great. i’m looking forward to spanking it.

think of all the twinkies that go into the actual production of this.

we’re doing in one night what most people spend their whole lives avoiding.

she’d have one big hickey.

a big butt hickey. that’s gonna be hard to explain.

we’re prepared to stake... uh... ____’s butt on it.

i’m trying to talk scientifically!

i was using my arms! if i didn’t have arms, i wouldn’t be able to free myself!

you were absolutely right.

agree with me.

i’ve only broken one bone in my body.

this would be cool if i could see.

our lawyer just isn’t cutting the mustard.

i won myself five bucks!

the coroner decided not to file an inquiry in this case because it was such a freak accident.

i love breaking things.

tub of body latex: $43. tub of gold pigment: $6. watching your friend get naked, covered in gold paint, and then jogging until they pass out: priceless.

this is the thing that made it all over the internet a few years ago.

we’re not gonna bring the pellet gun.

is this something that would be legal for us to do?

unfortunately, _____ wouldn’t let us shoot inside the building.

you need forty-two of those? good lord!

are you sure you wanna do the do?

i think it’s fine. of course-- it’s your neck, not mine.

we’re trying to recreate the mythical flight of ________.

_____ had a lot of help.

it’s been nice knowin’ ya!

cheers.

gimme a hug.

i think i’ll get a couple of tanks of helium and see what happens.

we’re gonna eat some bagels. we’re gonna eat some cake.

i think we have to drink a lot of water, ‘cause we’re gonna have to cough up about a half a dozen urine samples today.

we bought _____ over the web-- a bargain at $16.95 for ten!

i hope i don’t get pee shy.

i haven’t used drugs in weeks.

i think this is gonna cure me of my love for ____once and for all.

i think that’s a positive right there.

i just tested positive for opiates!

welcome to the club there, brotha!

so is it gonna be a girl or a boy, do you think?

i believe that’s what people do when they go out, uh, you know, uh, partying, or something.

you wanna make sure that you’re SHINY.

listen, you’re already naked and running on the treadmill covered in gold paint. there’s no such thing as shame anymore.

what’s the danger zone?

i could die if i’m not careful with this thing.

it feels like i’m being skinned!

______’s blood pressure fluctuations are obviously related to the latex.

tossing a ____ off the top of the empire state building is not as easy as it sounds.

is this-- is this excited ____? we’ve got a world first!

we’ve got a world first! it’s going out on television!

he’s totally [bleeping] [bleep]ing me.

wwwwwwwwwhoops!

[GLASS SHATTERING] whoops! haha! ha-- we should get out of here, that’s mercury vapor.

the fbi uses it to test weapons.

he wants to do his own narration.

i’ll do it. but you gotta do it too, or else you’re, like, a wuss.

okay. you go first.

OOOOOWW! agh! ... that didn’t actually hurt that much.

augh! you hit me in the same exact place!

it didn’t hurt that much before, but now it really hurts!

i always enjoy seeing ____ in pain.

go ahead. shoot me in the ass. come on, i can take it.

[on the verge of tears, clutching injured body part] i was prepared for the consequences.

any time we get to play with explosives and gunpowder and cool weapons and stuff like that, we’re happy campers.

there’s a significant chance that there will be an explosion.

[puppy voice] do you want the cookie?? is your cookie in here??? get the cookie!!!

what sort of foul play is this?!

i think it’s really quite obvious that i don’t tan, like, at all.

_____ wants to build the microwave oven from hell.

i’m gonna take all these microwaves apart and use them to build a super-powerful microwave gun that i can carry around and heat stuff up with.

fork in the microwave.

it’s like something out of star trek!

dude, you are the MAN!

in theory, this should heat up a cup of water four times faster than a regular microwave would.

[wraps entire body in tin foil]

i wouldn’t say _____’s an evil genius. i’m not sure he’s evil and i’m not sure he’s a genius.

my watch has stopped.

i’m looking for a human skull.

it’s his father’s.

this has to be easier than getting ahold of a skull. right?

it’s busted.

this pig’s gonna be one big bag a’ maggots.

____’s mustache is twitching.

usually, things don’t work this easy.

it’s the world’s most complicated lighter.

it’s my new secret escape hatch!

it’s taking him a while to do this. i think he’s having a little too much fun.

i’m excited. we’re gonna blow some stuff up and go home.

it’s kind of a lot. it’s kind of-- really a lot.

we can’t put gunpowder behind him and try to launch him, that’s just gonna blow him up.

cue the bomb.

will it work? that’s in the lap of the gunpowder gods.

if you catch him, i’ll give you a hundred dollars.

you wanna put some protection on, there?

he thinks he’s alright.

he survived! ___ survived!

one got away, and the other two have been quietly decomposing in a 1987 corvette for two months.

it just smells like standard death.

i see myself as a vegetarian for at least the next couple of weeks.

if my baby’s poo smelled like that, i would take it to a hospital immediately.

it won’t start, and it stinks of dead pig, but it’ll look good.

it’s alive!

science or quackery?

have we all been injected with mind-control chips?!

what happened to these men?

the authorities presumed they drowned.

the authorities presumed they drowned, but the myth says that they survived on a homemade raft.

people often cheer for the underdog.

officially, no one ever escaped and lived to tell.

i think i’ll fit. i’m not so sure about you.

let the break-out begin!

seems beer and fast food wasn’t on the menu at alcatraz.

i think i tweaked my back.

this is where it all happened.

it’s a lot of distance to cover in the middle of the night with all that equipment, i’ll tell you that.

it seems to simple an end.

he spent his life in and out of reform schools and prisons.

we’re escaping alcatraz at mach one!

wait-- was that a guard?

anything to say to the ducks back home?

well, i guess we’ll find a way of making it complicated, won’t we.

don’t let their looks deceive you. they’re actually quite deadly.

i asked for some volunteers this morning, and i came up with a couple.

that wasn’t so bad, was it? that wasn’t so bad.

don’t mess with me, duck. when i say quack, you’re gonna quack, right?

quack, damn you!

they just needed someone to talk to.

you ready to quack for science?

where were all those quacks when we needed ‘em?!

____, you wanna come over here and bend over?

we can do a little prison hazing ritual.

at this point, it looks like i’m not getting off the island. i’m gonna have to finish this life sentence.

dude, that’s a ____. i’m really impressed with these prison guys.

i give us a 60% chance of making it, a 20% chance of immediate catastrophic failure, and a 20% chance of slow descent into hell.

we’re gonna see if we can determine when, exactly, the government installs their mind-control chips.

you can proceed, but we’re watching you.

this is like a big, grown-up version of battleship! that’s cool!

[in a robotic monotone] i do not notice anything at all. i feel perfectly fine now.

it would seem that their technology is far more advanced than previously suspected!

you look funny.

just remember, kid-- if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make a GREAT story later on.

[clonerightsagenda]

So the tuesjade folks announced that today’s theme is hairdye, and although I mostly play spectator for this stuff (esp. since the prompts are more suited for art) I figured that was a sign from the heavens telling me to dust this thing off, even if she only thinks about dying her hair and so I won’t bother dropping it in the tag.

I promise this is the last time you’re going to get whacked by any ‘kat writes fic’ monstrosities for a while (besides, you know, the inescapable AU comic). I’m just cleaning out a bunch of stuff that’s been sitting around for ages.

The concept for this came from wondering if grimdark/grimbark mode left behind physical traces, which I could have taken in an angst direction, but I didn’t. A personal first? Incredible.

Sharing a bathroom with a crowded household is never easy, especially when some people take their time. Dirk is the worst – he once spent over an hour fixing his hair until Roxy pounded on the door and yelled “I gotta PISS, Strider!!” so loudly Jaspers tried to squeeze himself under your bed. Jade’s usually in and out – a quick hairbrushing makes up the bulk of her regimen – so when she shuts herself up in the bathroom for a while, you check on her.

There’s no lock on the door – everyone decided that was for the best – so you knock and then walk in when she doesn’t tell you not to. (You would even if she did, except then you might have hurried.)

“Hi, Rose,” she says, not looking away from the mirror. You’re still getting used to the way she knows who’s entered a room by their scent or the feel of how space bends around them. It’s the kind of power you would use to annoy or unsettle people, but she’s matter-of-fact about it. “I’m trying to check something out, but I can’t see well. Will you look at my hair for me?”

Jade’s hair hasn’t grown back yet from the haircut Jack started and you finished. With the weight of its length gone, it has sprung into a looser version of the curls Jane no longer relaxes. You walk up behind her, wondering if she wants you to say she needs a trim. But when you’re closer, looking down on the top of her head as she leans against the counter, you see it.

“I think the color’s going-” she starts, and you finish.

“Gray.”

Jade blows a breath out from puffed cheeks, clouding the mirror. “Is that bad?”

“It happened to me.”

She straightens up, almost clipping you in the chin. “Really?”

“Not all over, just here and there. It wore off eventually, although I think I have a bit left.” You catch some of your hair and roll the strands between your fingers, looking for a gleam of silver. “It wasn’t as visible as it is for you.”

Jade gingerly touches the top of her head, where some of her roots are growing in pale. “Because of what happened to you with the horrorterrors?”            You nod. “Channeling powers we weren’t prepared to on our own, I think, overstretching ourselves. It stayed even though I wasn’t in the same body anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane had some too.”

“Poor Jane.” Jade shakes her head. “At least I didn’t have a robot in my brain.”

“I wasn’t like either of you,” you say. “Nothing made me do anything wrong. But the power… they did give me that.” Everything seems so simple with power at your command. The distance between a problem and the solution is a straight line. You catch yourself that way still sometimes, your mind a straightedge, powering off in one direction as soon as you even think you’ve caught sight of your destination. When it had come time to rewrite the universe, you’d been tempted to make it your idea of perfect. The Light part of you wants to see reality labeled and pinned to a card, but it can’t live then. “You can get carried away.”

“Or get even.” Jade shrugs when you look at her. “That’s what it was for me. I’m not pretending it wasn’t.”

“The cliché is power corrupts. Do you think any of us would be able to resist the One Ring?”

Jade purses her lips. “In the story, the hobbits did best. Who’s shortest?”

“You think moral superiority lies within those closer to the ground?”

“Do you have a better theory?”

Someone knocks on the door, and both of you jump. “There’s more than one bathroom in the house, you know,” you call.

“This one’s closest,” John complains from the other side of the door. “Besides, I was checking to make sure everyone was still alive in there.”

Jade rolls her eyes. After six years, the two of them have finally learned to stop being so careful and talk to each other like normal siblings. Now, you think they enjoy their squabbles. “You’re too late. We’re dead.”

“Let me know if you need any help with that,” he says, and you hear him amble off.

“You could dye the gray parts,” you say, returning to the subject at hand – or at head. “Most of mine grew out in a few months. Or you could make it part of your “look”. Call it silver instead of gray – that sounds more Romantic, the kind with a capital R. Black and silver, night and starlight, that sort of thing.”

“Oh Rose,” she teases, “that’s almost poetic.”

“I try.”

“Have you ever thought about dying yours?” she asks. “It’s so light, it should take color well.”

“I thought about it a few times,” you admit, “but if I had my mother would’ve gotten me a junior beautician’s set before it dried. That’s what happened with the lipstick.” You’d worn black to shock her, but she’d taken it as an opportunity to try to bond and unloaded most of a Sephora counter on you, which you’d used to make a self-portrait entitled Masque of the Beauty Industry – Female Socialization into Self-Objectification. The juvenile games you played with your mother are embarrassing now. She’d been trying to make up for her excesses with more, and you responded to imagined slights by lashing out. You’d both acted like children, even if you thought you were so mature. “Do you think I’d look good with purple hair?”

Jade claps her hands together. “Let’s find out!”

 #

A packet of Kool-Aid later, you’re dripping whorls of purple into the bathtub. Jade examines her fingers, where the dye has left her dark skin looking corpse gray. “Gross hands and zebra hair,” she says with a laugh. “I can be the bride of Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” you correct, because it’s expected.

“All in all, I’d prefer to be the scientist.”

The dye has to sit overnight, so you seclude yourselves in Jade’s room. She guards the door from any unauthorized entry, shooing Kanaya away by telling her you’re preparing a surprise and whacking anyone who tries to phase through the wall with a pillow. Dave restrains himself to sending you 27 texts in a row before you turn your phone off. The two of you eat gummy worms by the fistful and look up silly animal videos. Jade has to drag you away from an argument in the Youtube comments section. She shows you pictures of dresses she likes, and you argue over which model is prettier. You feel like the child you could have been, if you’d ever dared to bring a friend home to spend the day or sleep over, if you’d ever let yourself relax into your youth instead of chasing your mother’s missing adulthood.

It’s nice.

The two of you fall asleep on the floor despite your sugar intake, and you wake up to see that you’ve left a purple stain on the carpet. “It’ll wash out,” Jade assures you. “We need to rinse your hair now.”

It looks terrible - a streaky mess of light and dark purple – but Jade guides you away from brooding in the mirror and shoves you into the shower. Then the color evens out. It’s a little darker than the lavender you would’ve preferred, but Kool-Aid dyes fade fast. You run your hands over it long enough that she asks, “Do you not like it?”

“What do you think everyone else will say?”

“That you look pretty.” That’s Jade, delivering all her assurances with conviction. Even though you know now some of them were feigned, she sounds sincere. “They’ll love it.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do about yours?”

She touches her roots, where the gray is just starting to show. “I think I’ll leave it. I’ve covered up enough. Hopefully Jake won’t think I’m his grandma.”

“You’re a few wrinkles short.”

“Memory is funny sometimes. The littlest things throw me. He coughs just like my grandpa used to. I hear it and always have to turn around.” She tugs out one strand that’s gone completely gray, wraps it a few times around her finger, and ties it off. “A reminder,” she says. “Even if I don’t need them anymore.”

 #

Jade has to coax you downstairs, but eventually you both walk down to the kitchen. Terezi, who against all prior behavior has chosen today to get up before noon, sniffs. “Does anyone smell anything different?” You make a slashing motion across your throat, (she sticks her tongue out), but the damage is done. Karkat nudges Dave, who looks up at you and chokes on his coffee. Kanaya’s eyebrows rise, and words line up on your tongue. It’s childish. A joke. It’ll wash right out.

“I think it suits you,” she says.

“Forget Rose,” Roxy says. “Who’ll turn my hair pink for me?”

“My hands are already ruined,” Jade says, holding them up.

Roxy high-fives her, to her surprise. “Perfect. But I want a turn at the exclusive sleepover times. Except with 100% more science. I’m talking bubbly rainbow shit in beakers, the whole shebang.”

“Am I on the ban list for this round?” you ask. If there’s one thing you can count on Roxy for, it’s lightening the mood. “I may not be part of the scientific community, but I can be present to scoff at mankind’s fumbling attempts to comprehend the mysteries of the universe.”

“That’s why you have to leave those kinds of probing questions into the fabric of reality to womankind. You can stay if…” Roxy pauses for dramatic effect. “You let me do your nails.”

“Roxy, do you know how to do anyone’s nails?” Jane demands from across the table.

“I’m a fast learner. Or… you could hold a workshop.” She waggles her unmanicured fingers at her. “Wanna volunteer?”

“I’d love to see how it’s done,” Calliope chimes in.

Kanaya raises her hand. “I’d like to be included in this, whatever it is.”

“Massive all-girls sleepover, that’s what it is. Or what it’s turning into. You can’t come,” Roxy adds to Dirk, who looks like he’s trying to decide whether to be disappointed or not.

The table dissolves into chatter, and you shake your head. “The last time I even heard the word sleepover, I must have been eleven. It always seemed like kid stuff.”

“I know,” Roxy says, and raises her hand to high-five you too. You meet her hand with a decisive clap. “Isn’t it great?”

[little-narnian-notes]

This is totally off topic to anything, but how do you survive high school I need some tips. PLEASE.😂

Um??? This is not off topic??? I’m always here for you guys. If you need tips on how to survive high school, then come ask Aunt Cecily. I’m legit ALWAYS HERE if you need advice for support 💕💕💕

So with that being said, oh boy do I have some tips for you. I don’t know anything about you, anon (other then that you’re likely 13 or 14 and going into high school, or are currently in it and have like 3 years left). As a result, I really can’t give you more specific advice. I’m honestly just going to give you some tips that I know helped me or things I wish I would have done. I’ll tell you some general tips, and then academic related tips.

Here’s the general stuff:

1. Music is so important. Have a good selection of singers on your ipod/phone. My go-tos were Lily Kershaw, Evanescence, Porcelain Black, Colette Carr, Neon Hitch, Trading Yesterday, Beth Crowley, The Cab, One Direction, Little Mix, Emilie Autumn, Kerli, Mayday Parade, Skillet, Simple Plan, Two Steps From Hell, and a lot of miscellaneous songs from various artists. My taste in music has changed and grown, but I still listen to a lot of those artists. Because I was so socially isolated throughout high school, I was constantly listening to music. It made me feel less alone. I had a lot of songs that I could relate to because of what I was going through.

2. Figure out what you love doing. For me, I started to love writing when I very accidentally found out fanfiction. And I mean accidentally. I was googling “narnia stories” or something like that. When I was 12, I was reading this critical analysis/theory book about C.S. Lewis and Narnia, and I was dying to know what happened to Susan post-The Last Battle. I did not find that; I find out about fanfiction instead on this website called Quizilla. It’s not active/online anymore - it was shut down way back in late 2014 or early 2015 for reasons I can’t remember now. ANYWAY. I loved the stories I found on there. I started to write my own (one of them was a Lord of the Rings one and another was with my first OC, Blaze, falling in love with Skandar Keynes. *cringe* *sigh*).

I obviously haven’t stopped writing fanfiction, but it’s because I discovered writing for fun, indulging your own ideas and interests with words and characters, that I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I mean, it’s also because I read this one specific fanfiction on there called Nothing’s Alright When You’re Bethrothed to Skandar Keynes (wow can you tell which celebrity 12 year old Cecily was OBSESSED with???). I was like, I WANT TO WRITE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Now I’m majoring in Creative Writing, because job security is for pussies (I’m kidding. I’m freaked out about what I’m gonna do post-college. Job security is some Good Shit, anon).

I also took a class in high school that was an elective, and it was called Video Productions. My teacher let me make my own vines, host some of my high schools’ weekly news segment, make a hunger games parody, etc. I also fell in love with making videos/filmmaking at that time. I knew that semester that that was something I was going to keep in my life and do something with.

Maybe it’s not as clear cut for you right now. But my point is that I discovered stuff in middle and high school that made me feel so damn alive and happy. Especially considering I was emotionally constipated and wanting to kill myself due to my major depressive disorder. So! Explore your interests. Give yourself room to create, learn, and develop skills. Useful ones and creative ones. Push yourself (safely) out of your comfort zone to try something that seems interesting. Even if you never do something like knitting or rock-climbing again, at least you tried it and figured out it’s not for you.

3. You’re in high school. You are not supposed to have your entire life planned. Some people know exactly what they want to do with their lives (go into medical field, go into law, do accounting, become a film director, etc) and that’s great. A lot of people change their minds. And then change it again. You are literally a teenager when you’re choosing a potential career in college, if college is where you decide to go. It is 100% okay to not have all the answers in life. It’s scary and can feel crippling. But guess what? It’s okay. It will be okay. Take deep breaths. Have a hot shower. Listen to your favorite song. But don’t wallow in anxiety forever. As I’ve said - start with figuring out what you love. Then figure out if you love it enough to make it a career, or if it’s just a hobby.

4. Have a job/be productive. After my freshmen, sophomore, and junior year of high school, I volunteered at a horse stable I took lessons at. It was a bunch of high schoolers helping out with summer camps meant for little kids. None of us got paid, but we knew we wouldn’t be financially compensated for our time going in. This guy I’ll call Micah ran the camp because he and his wife, Eva (also not her real name), owned the horses, barn, tack, jumping stuff, and some of the surrounding land. This was their business. In exchange for our four hours of volunteer work, we all got to have an hour or so to ride any of the horses for free and unsupervised (we were all advanced enough to do that and in a small enough group that it didn’t matter that we were left alone).

In my senior year of high school, I got paid like, $300 to write sports articles about the JV and varsity soccer teams at my school. Like give a detailed summary of each game for each time, upload them, and then I got paid in full at the end of the soccer time. That solidified how much I wanted to make writing my living, and that I didn’t want to be a journalist. I loved that job a lot, but I suspect part of why I liked it so much was because a) I knew it wouldn’t last forever, and b) I got to hang out with a lot of other girls my age. It made me feel like I had friends even if we rarely talked to each other.

I didn’t get my license during high school for a lot of reasons, none of which are relevant. If you don’t have money to pay for driving school, I’ve heard it’s a best to wait until you’re 18. That way all you have to do is get your permit, and then practice until you feel ready to take your driving test. Which I barely passed but lmao that’s a story for another time. Get your license when you’re ready or when you want it. Have a part-time job. Make some money. Make sure you SAVE your money. Don’t blow all of it on stupid stuff. Save half of your paycheck, anon.

5. High school doesn’t last forever. I’m not going to tell you some bullshit like “It gets better” (even though it does). Look, people can say that high school is only four years and doesn’t last forever, but if you’re going through a lot of rough shit in those four years, that sentiment doesn’t really help (well, in my own experience it didn’t). If you’re struggling with something like an eating disorder, parents who are divorcing, a death in your family, etc. it ends up sucking some ass to show up and care.

I think it’s more important to remember that you’re not alone. You can visit websites like 7 Cups of Tea to get support. You’re more resilient then you know. And you have more support around you then you know. There can be some dark times, but it’s possible to keep on keeping on until you find nuggets of hope and lots of help/support that help you out of your tunnel.

Also: high school only lasts four years. And that’s when most students start at 14 and graduate at 18. Those are not the best four years of your life. It’s the rest of your life that’s fucking amazing.

6. You don’t have to go to college. That’s not your excuse to be a burn-out, though, anon. If you don’t want to go to college, or can’t afford it, I’d suggest looking into going to a vocational school. From what I understand of friends who are currently in them or have graduated from them, you learn a specific skill/trade and can immediately go into the workplace you were trained for. It’s also apparently not as pricey as college. You could also consider going to community college. You can take a year or two off to do something with yourself, and figure out what’s best for you. Maybe it includes trade school or college, and maybe it doesn’t. It’s okay either way.

—

Below are two extensive school cheat sheets that tumblr user jwstudying put together. They’re more conscise and thorough then I can currently be (because it’s like. 2 a.m. where I am and I’m having trouble staying awake). I haven’t gotten a chance to look through all the stuff jwstudying provided, so I’m not sure if all the links work. Hopefully they do.

I hope all of this helps, anon! Good luck with high school. Message me again if you want to talk or need more advice. 

CHEAT SHEET 1

soothe yourself | self care

stationery

printables

helpful sites

music for studying | more music

note taking methods  | another one

studying methods

english | physics | chemistry | biology | maths | languages

how to learn a language

ultimate guide for writing | writing resources | writing helps | tips for writers

how to write a kickass essay | write a great essay | stuff you need to write essays | essay tips | essay checklist | grade your essay

how do I study for…

bullet journals | a guide to bullet journals

the testing effect

everything you need to succeed in school

time management

organisation

how to annotate | another one

guide to aesthetically pleasing notes | improve your handwriting

create a study guide

resources | helpful websites | there’s an app for that

get more out of google

productivity resources | 14 apps to become productive | how to stay productive

lazy night owl school survival guide

apps for a better life | useful websites for students

masterpost of studying tips

social media citation guide

college masterpost | another one | starting college on the right foot | packing for college | how to survive in college

how to ace that college interview

food to stay motivated | motivation guide

how to stay awake in class

balancing a healthy lifestyle

studying on your period

huge masterpost for the semester

a very long list to help you survive school

not enough time to finish an assignment?

100 delicious cheap recipes

53 posts for students

high school cheat sheet

CHEAT SHEET 2:

back to school masterlist

tips for exams

ultimate back to school tips

tips for the new school year

4 legal ways to get free textbooks

essential productivity apps

actual first time college advice | tips for lectures | how to take lecture notes

study breaks | studying hacks

bet your teachers never taught you this

how to take organised notes

text book tips

tips to make school life easier

how to do cover letters

studying a foreign language tips

dyslexia friendly fonts

writing about royal characters

language learning sites

tips for effective studying

travel cheap

23 editing tips

useful apps for students

words to describe someone’s voice

Joss Whedon’s writing tips | writing references

50 things to ask your character before you start writing

stop using google.com to search information

life hacks for school

how to write an essay

8 basics of creative writing | fantasy guide | songs for creating stuff

for crime writers

dear writers

a high school teacher’s list of 100 wisest words

confused what to underline, italicize and when to use quotation marks?

feeling anxious for school?

make pretty banners | another one | and another one | one more | okay last one i promise

how to study like a harvard student

how to do pretty lettering | how to make your notes pretty | handwriting and note taking | colour code notes | how to maintain good notes | take digital notes

using one note to take notes | another one

how to get shit done

things i wish people had told me when i was a freshman

handwriting reference

in class notes reference

20 things I found out about studying last year | things to do remember when studying

revising for maths

abbreviations for note taking | 2

12 things i learnt during 12 years of school

transition words

how to study from textbooks

how to make history timelines

what to do if you fail a class

backpack essentials

studying 101: how to stay focused, motivated, and on track.

secret study tips | top tips for studying in college

ultimate studyblr guide

hey, school’s hard

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 3: The Very Last Place On Earth ch 4

Chapter 3

IV

I woke up to the warmth of the sun on my face.  It wasn't much, not more than just you get from being outside around here, but you can tell – you can tell, and this was a new thing, and it was a good sign.  There were clouds gathering, you could see them way out from how high up we were, but it was the morning and the sun was out, and everybody was in one piece and was on board with going over the other side of the mountain – like we would find Riley's plane, and everything would be easy and simple, and we would stay good with each other for another couple days in paradise.  And then we ate breakfast, and then we strapped up with the stuff we'd need to go through the denser jungle over on the other side of the ridge, Riley loading up with a Geiger counter and a couple other monitors or weird probes that I didn't even recognize, and then we went over and down into the middle of it again.

Whatever we thought, about how the jungle was on this mountain, from climbing the trail, from going down over on the eastern side where, if Riley was telling the truth, everything had gotten crushed with bulldozers and torn out years back, we had to forget it on the western side.  There was tall trees as well as the thick brush, and long Tarzan vines hanging down in between with plants climbing up them to block the way; I could clear those out with my machete, but it was extra time to cut, something else to pay attention to, and you couldn't tell what was behind them right away.  The ground under our feet was soft and crumbly – like with every step it might just cave in and you'd fall down a ravine that you just cut your own self.  There was some of this on the other side, but I guess with so much of the jungle ripped away that time, more of the bad soil got washed out, and it hadn't here.  It was hot, and stressful, and dark – and then the rain started.

I thought yesterday's rain was bad – I thought I knew what bad rain was before I came out to this place.  But it was like the world had it in for us, after a clear night and a sunny morning, and even though there was like a canopy up over us, the rain came just slamming down through it like it wasn't even there.  There was a rumble in the distance – like lightning out over the ocean – and a hiss that came up on us from over the top of the mountain, and suddenly we were all soaked again, the water falling in torrents all around us, puffing out like steam from the ground as it hit, or as raindrops exploded off leaves.  I could still see – see as long as I could keep my eyes open with the ocean pouring down over my head all of a sudden – but I couldn't see far, and the waterlogged ground was more spongy than it was before, and everything was slick and slippery and that much more dangerous, especially when I had only one hand to hold onto stuff with, and the other one had to manage a foot-long chunk of sharpened metal.

"Stop!" Riley shouted, from somewhere in back of me; it hadn't been so long since we crossed over the trail, but already we'd gotten separated. "Everybody stop – everyone stay where you are!"  I stopped: I'd stopped before, right when the rain started, just to get my bearings, and if Riley was that concerned I didn't need to be told twice.  "Everyone, wherever you are, put a hand up – put a hand up with your machete or a tool in or something if you can.  If we just let ourselves spread out, we're going to get lost here – signal, and if I can't see you I'll yell for you to call off!" I braced a hand against a tree and lifted up my machete hand, waving it over my head; if there was a way for this morning to get worse, it would be Riley thinking I was lost because I was too far ahead of everyone and only this tall.

"Right – that's – Yuping, Yuping, move a little bit away from Simon, you're too bunched up.  Like – like ten meters right.  Keep going – keep your machete up, I'll tell you when to stop.  Nice and easy – watch your footing.  Okay.  Okay, right there – just stick right there for a second."  Riley paused, and I looked up behind me, to see if I could see where anyone else was, make out what we were going to try to do here.

"All right – shit – give me a second and think this out."  I could barely even hear Riley over the hammering noise of the rain on the leaves. "From where you're at, we're gonna play friggin Red Light Green Light across the mountain.  When I yell Green Light, you go straight; when I yell Red Light, you stop and signal, and I'll move you around if we're in the wrong place.  We oughta be covering most of the places a part of the plane could be – if we don't hit anything by the time we get to the other ridge, we'll regroup and I'll think of something.  Dammit!"  Riley was stressed out, and it was obvious that there wasn't a lot of prep put into this plan – so we had really come out to this island for Simon, and to get away, and this thing wasn't just a setup from Riley first to last.  But we were still on this side of the hill on purpose, and not having the right equipment or enough people or a solid plan didn't make what we were about to do any easier.  "Green Light!"

If it was hard to go through the jungle, through the brush and the rain and every second, you're afraid the slope is going to collapse under you, it was harder with having to listen every second for Riley yelling at you to stop, stop in mid-step, stop your machete in mid-swing.  At least I got to keep going on my line – the others kept having to get turned around or shifted as we went, and there was a big kickup when Riley tried to move Sajitha left through a fallen tree trunk she'd gone around, and that didn't work out at all.  The yelling, the stop and go, only hearing other people as Riley yelled at them, it all made it feel worse than it was – like we were lost and getting loster, like everything we were doing was just getting us in worse and there wasn't going to be a way back from it.  It had to be getting about noon, but between the trees and the rain it just kept getting darker, all around us, and it felt like we were sinking down into the jungle, into the mud and tangled brush, and we wouldn't ever come out, much less find anything else lost down here.

"Hey!  Hey!  I got something!  I got something!  Riley!"  I stopped, even without being told, and looked around, trying to see where Remy was yelling from, what he might have found.  I couldn't see him – I wasn't thinking about where he was, and I couldn't tell which way the sound had come from.  He was somewhere – at least he was in one piece – and if he'd found the plane, we wouldn't need to be splattered all over the mountain like this looking for it any more.

"Jesus, what?!" Riley wasn't any longer on patience than when we'd started.  "What do you got – the plane?  A wing?  A tire or something and you don't know if it's a landing gear?  Hold on a second – let me get up!"  There was more noise from uphill – that had to be Riley coming up to wherever Remy was.  I stayed where I was, listening, waiting.

"All right – right, shit, that is definitely something.  Everyone, bring it in – follow the noise!"  There wasn't any noise to follow for a couple seconds, but then there definitely was – a strange, hollow rattle, someone banging on sheet metal on the weirdest possible way. I listened, squinting around uphill, for the best way towards it: whatever Remy had found, there was a big chunk of metal lying around the jungle that way, and if that was enough of a clue for Riley, it was enough of a clue for me.  Making sure I didn't catch my feet as I changed direction, I climbed carefully up the rain-slick slope towards the sound.

Somehow I was the last one to get there; everyone was standing around soaked and exhausted and breathing hard around a giant shelf of a wing lying toppled over among the trees.  Riley saw me come up and stopped whacking the aluminum panel.  "All right.  We're all here; if the wing's here, the rest of the plane can't be far.  There's dead trees around here that there shouldn't be – something came down on this heading and lost half its wing – if we keep following the dead trees, we'll find where the rest of it came down."  Riley nodded off into the jungle; now that I knew what to look for, I could see them too: slick, rotting black spires that hadn't collapsed quite yet, dead trees with new growth at their feet.  I let the others lead and followed after; whatever plane it was, it couldn't've gone that far with that much of its wing gone.

It hadn't; the jungle had grown in thick around it where the plane had ripped its path into the mountain, but not thick enough that we could miss the chunks of the other wing underfoot – nor the tall  chunky tailfin sticking up out of the mist.  Riley kept on going for it, unaffected, but the rest of us just stopped and stood and stared: this giant skeleton of a dead plane lying in the jungle, new trees growing up through the holes in the wings, gaps where panels fell off like windows in a deserted house.  It was too dark, and the rain was coming down too hard – you'd talk a good game back somewhere dry and lit up, but standing there and looking at it, thinking about how it might be carrying something almost kind of like a nuclear warhead, and you couldn't not get the creeps.

"Look, hold on for a second," Riley said, scrabbling out the Geiger counter again.  "If this is our plane, I've gotta go in first and check it out; there may be active sources in this thing, probably not, but someone's gotta go and I'm not gonna make you pull straws. This is my deal and it's my responsibility.  Just wait out here a second while I check it out."  Riley turned back to the plane and started to stalk around it, looking around for a way in, some way that wouldn't involve just chopping a hole in the side.

It was nice and all in theory for Riley to volunteer to go in and check the plane for radiation, especially if there was like an atomic bomb in there that had been rotting in the jungle for sixty years, but for us outside, that also meant we were standing around in the rain, wondering whether it was okay for us to stand under the tail out of the wet, whether Riley was going to come out screaming at us to clear out, whether Riley might have walked into a heavy gamma emitter and might be just silently dead inside.  Something creaked from inside the plane, creaked or groaned or chittered like there was something else alive in there, and I couldn't blame Sajitha for grabbing for Remy's arm, Simon trying to stand behind Yuping.  I gritted my teeth and kept a hand on my machete – it wasn't going to do nothing against a radiation source, against a mutant fruitbat or whatever, against a goddamn hydrogen bomb going off, but it was something. I couldn't be the one to go and freak out here.

Something thudded inside the plane, banging off the fuselage sides with a whong!, and I jumped half a mile.  There were a couple other thuds, and then a keening, grinding whine, another thong!, and a chunk of aluminum fell out of the side and bounced off the wing root with a clang.  Riley's head poked out where the panel had been. "Hey!  Yo!  Carolína! Come up here, I need help planning the extract.  The rest of you, you guys just sit still for a second, okay; we'll come get you in a minute or two once we get this planned out."

I carefully made sure my machete was back all the way in its sheath and came up, picking my way through the brush and climbing up the tattered and twisted metal of the wing root.  "So, you find it? You get this 'equipment' you were after?  You gonna explain the rest of it now?"

Riley smiled as I came through the hole in the side of the plane.  "Yeah – yeah, but you got to see it first.  And it's nearly all here – the only part that's missing, trust me, we wouldn't want to find. Check it out."  Riley turned with a sweeping hand: whatever it was, it was right here, and it was immense.

I walked around it, as much as I could manage; they'd put it right over the wing root to balance, and whatever this device was, it filled almost the whole plane side to side, floor to roof.  It was some kind of squat cylinder, mostly, with protrusions on it stuck over with faded and peeling labels: a giant weird hatbox made out of metal, with empty threaded holes for hoses, rusty shield covers where cables would plug in.  "It's… real big," I said at last.  "Riley, I don' know what this thing is or what you want to do with it, but I do know it's gonna be a real pain to move outta here with just the six of us."

"I'm not so sure," Riley said, squatting to look at something behind the lump-thing.  "The plane's pointed downhill, thank god, and there should be a cargo elevator on the back that'll have an emergency crank like a car jack.  It'll take forever, but I want to crank it up, push up the tail as much as we can get it, and slide Ceiba here forward onto the front cargo doors.  We'll have to take the friggin cargo ramps out chunk by chunk to get it down, but the doors are intact for the most part, and we can cut them out of the frame – the hinges are a weak point – and then we've got a ready-built metal sled to shove this thing down to the beach on.  Shit's probably rusted together, but we've got a shovel to whack stuff with, and there should be a separate hydraulic reservoir for the ramp that might not have gotten ruptured out yet; if not, I guess we've got to use banana skins."

I was still confused; the plan made sense, but Riley had kind of skipped the part about what this thing even was. "Okay; okay, I kinda get that.  But Riley, excuse me, 'Ceiba'? What even is this thing?  It's not a tree, that's for sure."

Riley stood up, looking off into the side of the plane like it wasn't there, like we were standing out on a cliff completely somewhere else.  "Well, it is and it ain't.  Strictly, yeah; but this is Hardtack Ceiba – all the first-tranche Hardtack shots were named for trees.  Including this one – this one that got forgotten and not fired."

I got the 'Hardtack' part – the Operation Hardtack nuclear tests. "Hardtack – so this is a bomb."

Riley leaned back, sighing.  "Again, it is and it isn't.  Look, I dunno how much you know about what was going on with Hardtack, but you look it up, and you get a sense like people were in their own goddamned world back then.  There was a moratorium on nuke tests, and then the Russians blew something up, so we had to blow up a bunch of shit, but the politicians were putting the lid back on, so everybody in the military and the physics establishment just grabbed all their shit, every warhead or bomb config or other friggin nuclear thing that they thought they might be able to test, and ran like fuck out here to the Pacific Proving Range to get all of them shot off before they banned testing again.

"I mean, shit, you look at the energy budget on just the first phase, and you lose your goddamned mind.  Like thirty-five devices – and that's the ones that got shot off, we got at least one more just from the one that's in the plane with us here – for like forty friggin megatons anticipated yield.  Like, fuck – don't let anyone tell you nobody ever fought a full-scale nuclear war, we fought the shit out of a nuclear war against a bunch of sandbars in the Marshalls and the Marianas. And you dig in, and like I said it is the most randomest shit getting lit off, the stupidest most immature ideas, because nobody knew when they'd ever get the chance again.

"And that was kind of what happened with this thing."  Riley laid a hand on the shell of the test shot.  "This baby here was Hardtack Ceiba, a kind of prototype reactor based on the idea of shooting one of the hydrogen bomb designs from that time backwards; they were going to produce a containment on startup with a static plasma rather than compressing through, sort of like what you want to do with a tokamak.  The design's kind of iffy, but the math on it at least ought to work; I'm not a big fan of dragon's-tailing a thermonuclear, but when you can get yourself a fusion powerplant, you don't go looking a gift horse in the mouth."

This wasn't helping.  I didn't know a lot about the Dragon's Tail experiments at Los Alamos, but I did know that they tended to kill a lot of the physicists who worked on them: almost-not-quite making a critical mass on your workbench was bad enough when it was a fission thing – and back in the fifties, nobody knew how to start a fusion reaction without setting off an actual atomic bomb for the sparkplug.  "I… I mean, I can understand it, but I don' know why they were doing this with a nuclear test.  If this is a reactor, why don' they test it at like Hanford or Oak Ridge or wherever, somewhere that you build reactors?"

Riley grinned.  "Because of the one part that ain't here.  Like I said, the Hardtack tests were full of bad ideas – they couldn't come up with anything better to start off Ceiba than plugging in a Davy Crockett warhead and using that for a sparkplug."  Riley saw what my face was doing and hurried to correct the entirely reasonable misapprehension.  "No – no, we don't need a bomb to start it up if we're gonna use it; these idiots didn't have the next sixty years of high-energy physics and materials science to get them to their ninety gigajoules startup energy.  It's the friggin law of the instrument again – if you've got atomic bombs coming out your ears, everything needing a lot of instantaneous energy input looks like a problem for a nuclear warhead."

I squinted, head rattling, trying to wrap my brain around that tremendously stupid time in American science where anything about this could have pretended for a second to be a good idea. Backyard-deliverable cobalt bombs, Project Orion, the frigging Davy Crockett to start with, and now this thing.  It fit.  It didn't make any goddamn sense, but it fit.  "All… all right," I said at last.  "If we don' have to set it off with an atomic bomb, maybe this isn't any more crazy and super dangerous than any of the other stuff we build."  I looked around again at the inside of the plane, at the coffin around the bomb-reactor.  "But if it was part of Hardtack, why wasn't it a bigger deal that it wasn't shot?  Didn't someone want to test it?  And like what was this thing even for?"

Riley shrugged.  "Look, all I know – all we know – is that at least this one Hardtack shot didn't make it.  No idea how many other shots mighta gotten lost or canceled. There were a bunch of fizzles at the end, like the stuff that went last wasn't ready, and maybe whoever built this wasn't sure about it and didn't want a bad mark on their record.  And close as I can tell, the idea behind the Ceiba reactor was for the nuclear airplane and that was already canceled anyway, so maybe someone decided to just scratch it as a total loss.  And if there's no sparkplug warhead in here, this thing ain't even immediately dangerous – no wonder the government didn't really move heaven and earth to find it."

I nodded.  "Okay; 'not immediately dangerous', I'm sure that'll help when we get everyone else in here on this.  Are we good, or is there anything else I ought to know?"  I had the basic plan, I had an idea of what this "Hardtack Ceiba" was and wasn't.  But with Riley, you made sure to check all the way down, and make extra sure of the details.

"No; just get started.  I'm sure you've got it – I've got a couple things to check up topside, but you can bring the rest of the guys in and start working on getting the plane tipped up as much as we can. I'll be able to take care of myself."  Riley hadn't even turned around, grabbing up for a narrow and rusty-looking ladder that had to be going into the cockpit.  I nodded and leaned back out the hole in the fuselage to call the rest of us in.

Chapter 5