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pixiemage · 1 year

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5, 17, and 43 for the fic ask game!

[For the Fanfiction Writing Ask Game]

Three questions??? You spoil me! <3 I think I'll need a Read More for this one my friend xD

Hahaha! Ha! Ha.

Many. So, so many.

I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them, so I have a plethora scattered throughout my Google Docs files that are anywhere from multiple pages of unposted fic, all the way down to single-sentence unused prompts. Sometimes I left them behind because I lost motivation, sometimes my hyperfixation shifted and I (sadly) couldn't focus on that fandom anymore.

But let's see...uh....I glanced through my older stuff first just to see. But for now I think I'm just gonna count what I'm either actively working on, or what I wish to continue when my motivation returns...because if you counted all the abandoned WIP's I've gathered over the years, I think the number would be close to 30, and I don't want to list them all up here. (Maybe I'll drop it at the bottom of this post if you're curious***)

For one, I have two IronDad fics I plan on finishing: one that's a shorter Mafia AU that's 2/3 complete, and a much longer (and heftier) multi-chapter fic that has been awaiting a new chapter for over a year I think. A Little Late On The Blood Work my beloved...I'll come back when I get inspiration again 🥺💞 I also have an old Jacksepticeye Egos fic called #SamLives that I've been wanting to continue for ages but haven't, along with a Night at the Museum fic (Jedtavius) that I at least need to finish the current arc for because the comment section is sad.

And MOST recently I've got a bunch for Hermitcraft/Empires/Traffic Life that I'm in the process of actively writing...which I believe add up to a total of six?? I think? THREE are partially posted/being updated (Through a Crack in the Void, Domino Effect, There's Not a Word Yet), and the OTHER three (two Team Rancher, one that's literally Every Ship Under The Sun With Some Found Family On Top) aren't gonna be on my plate until I finish some of the other ones.

17. Do you have a writing routine?

Not really! Usually once I get an idea, I just - jump in. If I get stuck and want to skip something just to keep the writing ball rolling, I'll throw one of these in the middle of the page: ASDJNAKFBEKAJBA ...and just leave it for later. It's bold, red, and easy to spot when I'm scrolling through a long document, which is nice! It helps make sure no blank spots get missed in editing! (I also red-dye words, sentences, or paragraphs I'm feeling shaky on, so I can spot them easily and come back later when I get a better idea to fix it.) And if I decide to completely change a section I'm writing, I'll often copy the original version, paste it at the bottom of the doc in case I decide to change it back, and turn it a pastel color so I don't confuse old versions for the current text.

I also sometimes make calendars on Excel/Sheets if I really wanna keep track of time, and I often have a separate (and somewhat disorganized) doc for Notes on my longer fics. There's also a document where I write down potential lyrics options for There's Not a Word Yet chapter titles, but that's the only time I've done that for a fic.

43. Is there a trope or idea that you’d really like to write but haven’t yet?

I feel like someone asked me this a while back, so I've definitely thought about this! But honestly? A mystery or a time-travel fix-it...which I am well aware are two VASTLY different tropes lmao.

I've always been envious and in awe of well-written mystery/detective stories, because so many little details go into them to make them work. I'd love to build one of my own someday, but I have yet to find the right motivation to do so.

As far as time-travel fix-its go...they're just...they're so fun to read, because I love to see how one little change can affect an entire timeline (see also: Domino Effect) but they're also a LOT of work to write because it involved basically retelling a story that's already been written but in your own words and with a twist. Somehow writing something fully original comes easier to me than trying to build my writing around something else that already exists. But god I'd love to have the motivation to write one of 'em anyway! It'd be fun to decide how everything changes all because of one little difference in choice :3

5. How many WIPs do you have? What fandoms/pairings are they for?

Hahaha! Ha! Ha.

Many. So, so many.

I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them, so I have a plethora scattered throughout my Google Docs files that are anywhere from multiple pages of unposted fic, all the way down to single-sentence unused prompts. Sometimes I left them behind because I lost motivation, though most times my hyperfixation shifted and I (sadly) couldn't focus on that fandom anymore.

But let's see...uh....I glanced through my older stuff first just to check for this hah. But for now I think I'm just gonna count what I'm either actively working on, or what I wish to continue when my motivation returns...because if you counted all the abandoned WIP's I've gathered over the years, I think the number would be close to 30, and I don't want to list them all up here. (But I'll drop it at the bottom of this post if you're curious***)

For one, I have two Marvel/IronDad fics I plan on finishing: one that's a shorter Mafia AU that's 2/3 complete, and a much longer (and heftier) multi-chapter fic that has been awaiting a new chapter for over a year I think. A Little Late On The Blood Work my beloved...I'll come back when I get inspiration again 🥺💞 I also have an old Jacksepticeye Egos fic called #SamLives that I've been wanting to continue for ages but haven't, along with a Night at the Museum fic (Jedtavius) that I at least need to finish the current arc for because the comment section is sad.

And MOST recently I've got a bunch for Hermitcraft/Empires/Traffic Life that I'm in the process of actively writing...which I believe add up to a total of six?? I think? THREE are partially posted/being updated (Through a Crack in the Void, Domino Effect, There's Not a Word Yet), and the OTHER three (two Team Rancher, and one that's literally Every Ship Under The Sun With Some Found Family On Top) aren't gonna be on my plate until I finish some of the other ones.

(One of them is a cute 5+1 one-shot about Tango calling Jimmy "buddy" and Jimmy learning that "buddy" has a lot of different meanings depending on how Tango says it and who he's saying it to. The second one is an extension of a one-shot I already posted called Coming, Coming Home, where S8 HASA!Tango crash-lands in the mesa outside Tumble Town, and like - yeah. Yeah. I'd love to continue that one. And the LAST one is a Double-Life-based Witches/Familiars AU that started as Renchanting Duo and has since extended to every member of the Life series and even some Hermits.)

***ALL THE OLDER FICS I HAVE YET TO COMPLETE: I've got one for Doctor Who, a handful for JSE Egos - #SamLives - one for Night at the Museum, one for Encanto. Six for Marvel/IronDad (including a Mafia fic, a SPN AU, a Peter-gets-shot and Tony-goes-dad-mode hurt/comfort, and A Little Late On the Blood Work which as I said I'm just longing to get inspiration to return to). A witch/familiar Supernatural AU fic and an SPN time travel fix-it that I barely started. There's a TangoTek one-shot I've abandoned featuring his rage moments from both LL and DL. I also have an old fic from high school for a game called Ib that I'd love to revamp someday...and my Original FanFic that started it all, which was for Harry Potter, and I was like 12, and it will never EVER see the light of day. My god. It's...it's rough.

#I'd apologize for the length but YOU ASKED ME THREE QUESTIONS #and the last one was a DOOZY #Ask the Mage #Fanfiction Writing Ask Game #Ask Game #unpredictably-ghostly asks

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Caltiki, the Immortal Monster

We've talked about how there are an awful lot of fishman movies. There are way too many Bigfoot movies. There are even a surprising number of movies about monsters named Paul, but one thing I swear I never thought would be in two different movies is growing space blobs in the Mexican jungle. Yet here we, are following up The Flame Barrier with Caltiki, the Immortal Monster. The cast includes Gérard Herter from Secret Agent Super Dragon and Daniele Vargas from Hercules Unchained. Mario Bava insists he didn't direct this but Riccardo Freda says he did, while most film websites blame both of them.

Long, long ago, the Maya were doing math and building pyramids in Mexico when a sudden unknown cataclysm forced them to abandon their cities. In the present (or at least the 60s), a group of scientists have come to the ruins to see if they can solve this mystery. Two of them venture into a cave, and only one returns, raving about Caltiki, a Mayan goddess. The rest of the party set out to find out what happened and perhaps rescue the other man, but instead discover a huge carnivorous blob monster! Most of this beast is destroyed by crashing a gasoline truck into it, but they take a sample back to Mexico City with them for analysis. Because that's a great idea that won't bite them in the ass at all.

The opening titles of this movie tell us that it is 'based on an ancient Mexican legend'. I don't know anything about Mexican folklore but I did look through the List of Mayan Gods and Supernatural Beings page on Wikipedia and there are no names there that you can remotely bend into 'Caltiki'. I'm going to assume this movie has about as much to do with ancient Mexican legends as Village of the Giants has to do with H. G. Wells' Food of the Gods. The same credits also tell us that the dancer we see ripping her own clothes off in some 'native ceremony' was a woman named Gay Pearl. The early 60's was around when the word 'gay' stopped being used to mean anything other than 'homosexual', so I suspect she changed it shortly thereafter.

Although the basic premise of a growing space blob in the jungles of Mexico is strongly reminiscent of The Flame Barrier, in several ways Caltiki, the Immortal Monster takes an opposite approach to telling the story. One of the things that made The Flame Barrier kind of annoying was how it puttered around in the jungle with character-driven stuff for ages before it even introduced the monster. Caltiki goes almost entirely in the other direction. The first thing we see is the aftermath of a monster attack, with the dying archaeologist staggering back to camp. In the minutes that follow, we watch the rest of the expedition puzzle over what happened to their colleagues, but we have almost no idea of who they are. Most of the character development has to wait until they get back to Mexico City.

Unfortunately, the characters are really not very interesting people. Our supposed hero is the dishwater-dull Dr. John Fielding, who is one of those movie science guys whose significant other whines because he would rather look down a microscope than gaze into her eyes. Fielding promises his wife Ellen that he'll pay more attention to her, and I guess he does because next time we see him he appears to be happy with her and their little daughter, but if I were to call the issue 'minimally addressed' I would be giving it way too much credit. The other subplot in the movie is about a mixed-race woman named Linda (repeatedly described as a 'half-breed') and her relationship with one of the archaeologists, Max. Max was a dick to begin with, and when he goes mad with pain after being attacked by the blob monster he only gets worse. He never seems very interesting or threatening, and since the audience knows there's a blob monster coming, we feel our time is being wasted. Linda, as the only major character who isn't white, is killed when Max decides she is no longer useful to him.

Another place where Caltiki does exactly what The Flame Barrier didn't, but with far better results, is with the monster itself. In The Flame Barrier the space blob was immobile and basically just looked like somebody spilled a truckload of petroleum jelly. The blob of Caltiki, however, truly is the coolest thing in the movie. It's a pulsating, leathery mass that reproduces by stickily dividing in two, and dissolves people's flesh to leave only their skeletons. There were worse monsters on Star Trek: the Next Generation nearly thirty years later. Not only that, but the blobs are active, able to roll around and grow to engulf screaming victims, with a satisfying sense of weight and volume to their movements. There are also some pretty good gore effects, my favourite of which is a guy who's still breathing despite having had his face dissolved.

The Flame Barrier kept its blob in the distant jungle, where the only people it was menacing were three explorers and a chimp. We were told about the threat of its exponential growth, but that was fairly abstract. In Caltiki we still don't get the city-smashing rampage depicted in one of the posters, but just knowing that the city is there and having Fielding's wife and daughter around to be chased by swarms of blobs makes the threat feel far more concrete.

So this movie gets right a lot of things the other Mexican Space Blob movie got wrong, but I wouldn't be reviewing it if it wasn't still a bad movie. The dull characters and the refusal to deal with their arcs is one big problem. Another is the poor picture quality. The lighting is mostly good enough that you can tell where people are and what they're doing, but the film stock itself is not very good, which makes for a loss of detail. In some of the wide shots you can't tell who's supposed to be talking because it's impossible to see whose mouths are moving. In another, Fielding consults a book that appears to consist entirely of blank pages.

The dubbing is also not great. Fielding and his wife have very bland voices, which is a big contributor to them seeming like very bland characters. The guy voicing Max gnaws on the scenery, sounding like a villain from an old Disney movie. Fielding's daughter Jenny has the voice of an adult woman trying to talk like a child, and it sounds even worse than the same thing did in Manos: the Hands of Fate.

The script is pretty ham-fisted at times, particularly in the character scenes that tell us things far more often than they show us. Much of this is the fault of whoever wrote the English dialogue, but there's also the series of ridiculous plot devices that prevent anyone from warning Ellen Fielding that the blob in her basement has begun to grow. First, Max escapes from the hospital and goes to the house to get help from Linda, and pulls out the phone cord so nobody can turn him in. One of the scientists, finding no answer on the phone, tries to drive out to the house to talk to Ellen, but gets into a car crash. The police block the road off while they investigate the wreck, and Fielding runs the road block in his own haste to get home, leading him to be arrested and thrown into jail! I have to admit, it was pretty funny just watching these contrived events pile up.

As far as having a point to make goes, Caltiki, the Immortal Monster kind of shaves by one in two different places, but never quite gets there. For starters, there's the idea of archaeology as a treasure hunt. When the diver first ventures into Caltiki's sacred underground lake, he finds the bottom littered with bones but also with the gold jewelry the sacrificial victims were wearing. He returns to the surface and does not even mention the skeletons, but brings fistfuls of gold and goes back for more despite the risk of running out of oxygen. I suppose he is punished for this, as is Max when he tries to retrieve a piece somebody else dropped, since they're both attacked by the blob. It doesn't really qualify as a thematic thread, though, since the gold is never mentioned again. For the rest of the movie, the characters are motivated by scientific interest in the blob itself.

This leads into what's sort of a second motif, people disregarding the danger posed by the blob. Fielding has a sample he wants to study (the movie has no idea what kind of scientist he is. An archaeologist? A microbiologist?), and upon discovering that radiation makes it grow, he pumps more into it to see what happens. He and his colleagues are admittedly more cautious about this than the characters in Reptilicus, but the idea's still there: scientists who think they have everything under control, but don't understand how dangerous what they're working with really is. Again, this doesn't really go anywhere. At the end they about-face and insist on destroying every scrap, not even leaving enough for an “... or is it?” ending.

Caltiki, the Immortal Monster comes very close to being so bad it's good. There's plenty of stuff to laugh at, while the actual monster is threatening and well-executed enough to be entertaining in the way it was intended to be. If the film-makers had diverted a little of that money into better film stock, I probably would have enjoyed the movie very much.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #caltiki the immortal monster #i reference star trek #60s #we're running out of plots

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grim-faux · 3 years

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2 _ 15 _ Between the Lines

First

The narrow hollow beneath the dresser was crammed with clothing, wound around tightly and forming into a safe little nest. If the need arose, kicking out backwards would be clean and swift matter. If When something should wander in and take interest of the debris beneath the broken dresser. The space is very dark and equally dusty, but he is accustomed to this, like he is accustomed to the world and all its hostile designs.

It is also very damp, his clothing still clumped from grit and mud after passing through a harsh storm. The drilling cold happened when foods are scarce, and harder still to choke down before some abomination came prowling (or he got spooked off). Though he hadn’t the chance to shake out his coat, he’s crammed down in this tight crevice and shielded from drafts.

Outside, the room is dry and brittle, not a drop of rain braved the building. The draft lazing through the rooms settled on everything damp and clammy, like fog, but dozens of times worse. If possible.

“Cold. Hurt,” he mumbled, half-lucid. He dug down tighter between the shirt and trousers, tensing muscles. Coiling his arms over his face helped too, he was tucked in so neatly he could huff warmed breath through his coat. He held very still to preserve the frail barrier of tepid air settled over him, the excess of water leeched into the fabric swathed around him but that was all right.

If wait, maybe the Thin Man sleeps. Might maybe. The Thin Man didn’t sleep so much lately. Even if the tall thin man insisted he didn’t ever sleep, sometimes he did nod off. Maybe the dreams haunts got him bad. That is bad, not only due to dream haunts not being good for the man in the hat, but he didn’t rest like he sometimes would. Mono couldn’t be clever and steal warmth.

Being cold plus drenched was nothing new, it was easier to deal with if he had eaten. He was miserable, but at least he could do some sleep. Even if the night terrors found him.

When he let his guard down, sometimes he’d see Her face gazing through the ambiguous mist. The walls broiled and rolled, dozens of eyes viewing the event. Surrounding the hooded face, a ghastly reef of animal pieces celebrating his certain end all. She snapped Her hand from his. An icy gale swept through his palm, the darkness flooded into every crevice of awareness.

Falling.

Until he is not. He doesn’t know where, he doesn’t know when. Thoughts and sight blank out entirely.

Then, he’s someplace awful. An endless void swirling with flesh, more eyes than he could possibly count peer into the small space he was abandoned. The air was stifling, he can hardly breathe. He wants to scream, but he’s so frightened of the so many eyes waiting and watching, lurking for some reaction. Hungry to observe his terror and confusion for eternity, cackling mirthlessly at his shattered fortitude. The gummy sinew rising and dipping under his feet, every inch of the horrible surface alive and thrilled by his horror.

With a jolt, he smashed his head against the underside of the dresser. A moment creaked away, and on reflex he buried his face into the rotted clothing to unleash a muffled whine. His body is all knotted and sore from convulsions not made for warmth, his eyes puffy from crying, and his lungs ached because he tried smothering out the whimpers.

When finally he’s gotten control, he crawled out from under the dresser and tugged on a hat. The room has a few other furniture pieces, but nothing solid or substantial – a desk, a flattened bed, a nightstand. He shivered in the open air, rueful of emerging. He didn’t want to risk another dream haunt.

The Thin Man is somewhere around, he’s sure. But he’s not sure which room. He doesn’t look, instead, he goes to the corridor that connected to the kitchen. Before he was too cold to do any real scouting, he’s still cold, the difference now is he’s more in the mood to root around.

Everything of the kitchenette looked in order, some countertops wrapped along the wall, the typical cupboards and cabinets, eroded ceiling. First, he climbed onto the counter and tried the tap. The pipes didn’t work. He was parched from laying in the dust, breathing nothing but dust.

He opened one of the high cabinets and stole a bowl. Carefully, he pushed it to the sliding door of the balcony. Utilizing one pot from a low cupboard, he managed to unlock the door and haul it open. An inch. Enough to pass the bowl through and gather some rain, all without getting himself soaked. He did take some of the frigid water and pressed it to his hurt eye.

Wonder of wonders! While looting through the cupboards, he found that the refrigerator worked. This he knows, because it gushed hot air from the backside. He huddled into the corner of the wall where the refrigerator sat, absorbing some of the balmy breeze. He still quaked from the dampness, but he was able to press in and melt the frigidity from his skin. Such a good feeling. He curled up more, and stuck his tongue out. A rare find. Bliss. So happy.

It reminded him of good memories, with his pack. A group of kids, not like him but close enough. Kids. That’s all they were. Crammed up into a broken space of the wall, like the little sardines they sometimes found in a can. Packed in tight together, so no one was out in the open. Warm. Just together with his friends, against a hostile world. Not all of them were super particularly fond of every other child, they packed out of necessity.

Someone was on watch, sometimes two – no one liked dealing with dream haunts. The rest of them had a chance for rest, sit still and recuperate from the challenge of survival. Maybe someone or two went for a scout, rooted out foods. No one ever really brought back foods, ever. It was a big event finding something and eating that, before tearing off into a flee. A few mouthfuls, keep legs working and senses active. If the vigor was present, scouting was good. Look for dangers, before the dangers stalked in. A big pack was hard, because kids got into spats or got scared of each other. Fighting was something that happened, though not often, it was better to avoid it.

Maybe settle the score later….

Refrigerators are strange. The big machine huffed out hot air, but inside it’s chilly. From the counter he reached around the door side and snagged the latch, but when he swung around to pull the lever, the door failed to budge. He pried his toes into the crease, and wrenched at the doorhandle. It took a mighty effort, but with the leverage and unwavering determination, the door peeled open. He shook at the chilly rush of air as he ambled over to inspect the guts.

Not a lot of salvageable inside the icebox. Indeed, it worked to keep contents ‘cool’, but the edibles did not outlast the test of time. The best items Mono could haul out were vegetables, such as a bag of peas and some corncobs, along with green beans. The veggies are near petrified, though not corrupted by fungi or other growths.

Mono checked his surroundings, before chomping into the dried peas. None of this is his favorite sort of foods, but he’s not complaining. Never. If his teeth get through, then it is a win. He does pull out a package of ground meat and gave it cautious scrutiny, before tearing off the plastic cover. Smelled all right.

The slight tenure of whirring threw Mono into alert. He checked the remains of the refrigerator and is a little disappointed in what he hasn’t gnawed through yet.

From the arched doorway, the Thin Man bowed down. He directed his attention to Mono, still collecting remnants from the chilled walls.

Mono snatched the bag of green beans and hastened to the tall thin man. He shook the lumpy contents above his head. “Want?” After a short examination, the Thin Man only grimaced and pivoted. “Good,” he rasped, and pursued a step. “Strength.”

The Thin Man spoke not but did stop and removed the bag from Mono’s hands. And left.

That didn’t make Mono feel any better, but he tried. That is what mattered.

He returned to the refrigerator and finished going through the edibles. Dried lemons were in no way great, but he ate them skin and all. Long ago, the bowl on the balcony overflowed with rainwater. He popped out to drink his fill and erase the tartness from his mouth, by a small amount. Then, it was time to search the rooms through for threats. Not outside the hallways yet, perhaps later. Roaming would give him a chance to air out his coat.

In this residence, the Thin Man elected to sit at a table in a room offshoot from the big room. Mono wandered through the living area briefly, straying away from the man in the hat’s attention. It appeared the tall figure was invested in the thin pages he flipped though, as Viewers invested their time in television screens.

Only when Mono satisfied his examination through the other rooms – a couple bedrooms and not much in contents – did he return to the living area. He ventured to the offshoot room and clambered up onto one of the chair seats.

Same as the other places they took shelter in, the Thin Man didn’t bother with Mono too much. Aside from the recurring questions, if he got enough to eat or had taken the time for rest. Important tasks, the essentials the man in the hat sought to suffice.

“Did you get enough food?” the Thin Man prompted, while Mono clambered up onto the tabletop.

He nodded. It wasn’t true and he’d search later for more scraps, but he didn’t want the Thin Man leaving. New places spooked him, the other residences dotted through the corridor needed a thorough search. Who could tell when the Thin Man might come back? If he decided too.

Mono drew up his knees and buried his arms behind his legs. If he was allowed, he would stay near the Thin Man for a bit. A few of the stacked pages, the books, sat on the table. Even the ones catered to children would be too large for Mono to haul around, though the books fitted for adults at times were ridiculously small in the Thin Man’s hands. Like the bag of green beans. Where did those go?

Briefly, he shut his bad eye to have a rest. But the Thin Man reached an arm over, and Mono swiftly vaulted off the table. He strayed to the wall and scurried through dark patches, back to the room with the cracked dresser.

Perhaps the Thin Man wanted to knock off his hat and ruffle his hair, pick him up, or something. The tall thin man wasn’t in the mood for Mono to lurk around and watch or wait, he was certain of that. And he didn’t want to be caught, when the corridors went unsearched. Mono preferred checking the floors for threats, but he needed a few minutes to catch his wits. Build up the drive for the task.

The Thin Man was strange, and seemed to have many hidden troubles. He belonged to the man in the hat, but at the same time, the Thin Man didn’t always want him around. When it suited the man in the hat, he liked to see where Mono was, know that he was there. Hide was fine, though it annoyed the Thin Man. He didn’t want to look for Mono or chase. The confusing game. Too many secrets and not enough speek, but he was a good listener. He knew the sounds of dangers, when they tried to pretend they are not there.

Mono crammed himself up under the dresser, far into the back. Dark, bundled up, face tucked into the crook of his arm. Not exactly safe, but guarded and wary. The dull thrum of electric current didn’t follow, so he was left alone. He didn’t want to be alone, but the Thin Man went where he wanted and whenever it suited him. This is where Mono would feel most protected and warm. He hated waking up alone in the stillness and quiet.

Periodically between the shades and shift of light, he plucked up and checked that he remained where he was. Dream haunts felt so real, the pain inside the spaces of his mind indistinguishable from illusions of wander and hide. Some faces fresh, others old and worn, he hardly knew by the lines in the cheeks and the hollowed eyes watching. He hated being watched.

The paper bag kept eyes at the fringes of his vision from being seen. He felt when he was watched, but the dark frame around his head sustained the deception. For a time he could forget.

When he and She first traveled, sometimes she had to watch. It was okay, because he didn’t know Her and She didn’t know him. Aside from their together and help to trick the Hunter. He traded out the paper bag for the new fur cap, and that satiated some of the distrust she held. A perfectly ordinary child, like her. Nothing to hide.

At first, he didn’t trust her either. But, she had been caught and kept. How dangerous could she be?

He didn’t have a choice. He had run out of options. He had nothing. Nowhere else to go, no place to reach, nobody else he trusted his life to.

Mono dragged himself from under the dresser by half a torso and checked. Cautious. No sounds. He hauled out the rest of his body and fluffed out his coat. Still damp and crusty. The mud drying along his pants flaked off. He went to wander through the rooms and check the living space.

Light peered in through the available windows, spinning across crooked boards nailed into the frames. The rain let up a bit, but it might pick up again. It must’ve been daylight time.

“Hey. HeEEeey.” He roved along the outline of the rooms, creeping over broken furniture and peering through the gloom where the radiant beams are frightened to touch down. He knows the Thin Man isn’t here, the static has evaporated. Still, he searched; his calls light and diluted. Did he make him sad? Was the Thin Man upset? “Hai.”

In the offshoot room, he climbed onto a chair and leapt to the table. Maybe was still upset about the other day. He kind of felt stupid, but he didn’t mean anything by it. The Thin Man R̷͚̿ë̴͙́a̶͠ͅl̶̪͘l̷͓̐y̸͖͝ didn’t like what he did. He wasn’t sure what he did, but he stopped and left the man in the hat alone. It was the best solution during those sort of times.

A few of the smoke sticks sat crushed into the tabletop, beside the book things. It’s like a television, Mono supposed, except they don’t move. Or maybe they did somehow, and they only did so when something special was applied. He never got a good look at how the Thin Man made them work, when he looked into them. Maybe it was like a television.

He pulled one of the books from the stack and flipped it open. He didn’t feel anything from it, the stacked pages inert and boring. The marks inside did not dance or shimmer. He placed his hands on the page but as expected, nothing comes from it. Still inert and boring. Was there a switch or something he missed? He can make out patterns in the figures stamped within. Some are very same, others are not. There’s a pattern like static, but he can’t grasp it. This could just be one of those adult things.

The book flailed gracelessly to the floor and landed, spine up, pages underneath crinkled. Mono tipped his head. Loud. He shoved another book to the table edge, but gripped the corner tightly and let it down a few feet. Up until he lost his balance and did a somersault, tumbling with the book to the floor. Ow.

For a while he lay stunned, hip throbbing. Not badly hurt, but he’d be sore. Not the best game. He maneuvered upright and hurried off to the kitchen space.

He left the refrigerator door open, or couldn’t close it from all the baskets and stuff he hauled across the floor. There was nothing else within that could be eaten, but he checked anyway. In case. Something could’ve been crammed and forgotten into a back edge, still edible.

When nothing came of that scrutiny, he rifled through the cabinets above. He found a box of grain leaves, but they are easiest to eat when soaked in something like water or egg yolks. He dropped the container off the shelf and hauled it over to the water bowl set outside. He couldn’t budge the sliding door any further, and tipping the bowl would unleash the precious collection of water. He’d just make do stuffing some of the flakes into the bowl and eat through the slot. Maybe he’d find something better.

A lot of the stuff in the cabinets was packaged and hard, or dust. There was a bag of flour dust, and it was kind of good to lick. Pasta stuff was impossible, and he still had a broken tooth. Food was food, and he did his best to gnaw the scraps into something manageable.

The residence remained unchanged and empty, by the time Mono finished with the soaked grain flakes. He returned to the offshoot room and climbed onto the chair, opposite of where the Thin Man usually waited. His legs swung below as he sat at the edge, peering just a little above the table surface to see across the top. He sat a while pondering and working through understanding things that did not make sense. He waited as the light faded from the rooms, only the dim bulbs on the ceiling or a lamp held the rooms form.

Gone somewhere. He might come back or not, Mono would wait. Because of same, he was for the Thin Man. Did the Thin Man keep Mono for feel needed? It wasn’t because Mono wanted the Thin Man, the man in the hat did whatever he wanted. When he was bored of Mono or Mono was too much of a nuisance, he left. That was the way it was. But Mono could wait.

At least he was able to get warm now. He curled up under the dresser as always, feeling dry at last. Except for his sleeves, but they were no matter. When the terrors and haunts became relentless, he did a scout through the rooms. Just the rooms of the residence, for now. He didn’t want to be leave if when the tall thin man came back. In the bathroom he climbed the toilet to the sink, and sat in the basin for some think. Even while the rooms remained placid, he was driven to check the gloom. There is plenty to look for, and more to do in his free time.

The dust flour he worked to dump by handful and handful, into the bowl on the other side of the sliding door. Was the mush safe to eat? He didn’t know. It was good, anyway. And there was quite a bit left. He feels silly for not doing this with the pasta, would’ve been so much simpler. He would have to remember that.

Another browse through the cabinets revealed he’d eaten all the dry pasta. He’s disappointed, because the next time (if) he ever found pasta again, it would not be in easy access to water. What a jip.

His focus shifted from the search, to the entry of the kitchen when the steady thrum of vibration hovered. Even when the Thin Man bowed into the kitchen, Mono kept tense. In case. But the tall thin man only delivered something in a container, a cylinder of bread maybe.

“Hey.”

The Thin Man flicked his hand. “Don’t bother. I have already eaten.”

Mono tilted his head. “T’n share?” He dropped off the counter and crossed to the kitchen entry, to claim the container. And froze. He tightened his arms around the canister and crept forward, inching out beyond the threshold of the portal between cold plastic floor and dingy carpet.

Distortions and particles persisted to wind through the rooms, but it became leagues more intense the further it roamed. A familiar riled tinge to it. From this placement he could not see where the Thin Man was, but he knew without a doubt where he would be.

Without a whisper, Mono slinked from the bent frame and crossed into the corridor drilled among the rooms. These buildings and the rooms within at times felt crud and cavernous, the winding paths cleaved from solid timber, the hollow chambers sculpted out of existing plaster. His footfalls made no echo against the splintered wood, against the walls stretching high around him.

He teetered around the castoff crate and searched the dismal curtain for the glistening edges of the rectangular cutout. The Thin Man always knew where he was, where he would arrive at. If Mono was out of sight for a time, perhaps he would relent. It was a better plan than staying out in the open, better to have something between him and the man in the hat.

When at last reaching his haven, Mono wedged up beneath the shattered bottom and shoved the food canister all the way to the back. It was important to untangle out of the haggard clothing, certify nothing was touching or wrapped around an arm or leg. Shove everything to the front and blot out view of the underside. The sides stayed open, clear escapes should he need the gap to bail in an instant. A teleport was possible, but he wasn’t good at pinpointing his leaps.

Settled in, he waited in the silence clasping the canister and resting his cheek on the rough texture of its labeling. Quiet. Dangerous calm. Thinking. What think? Confused? Not happy. Certainly not happy.

Mono tightened up a bit more, about fully hidden behind the container when he drew his knees up. Stay. Quiet. Hide. He was sorry. He didn’t think.

The steady and precise steps glided into the room. Among the shiver through the floor, the sizzle of electric current on the air. It made the hair on Mono’s neck bristle. The steps came right to the dresser front and stopped.

His hat slanted far to the side ready to abandon the whole scene, while Mono shoved the canister away and crammed his body further back against the wall. Teleport. He could do that. Find the crack and hide away, at least until the Thin Man calmed down.

“W̵͓͊o̴̩͒ų̷͒l̵̲̿d̴͈̀ ̵̡͋Y̷̭̓ō̵͇u̴̮̽ ̵̝͐C̵̜̒ọ̸̈́m̵͓̄e̶̥͆ ̵͈̿Ŏ̸̬ů̶ͅt̶̖̔,̷̘̉ ̸̣C̷̓͜h̴̦̐î̸͎ḽ̶͑d̶̦?̷̿͜”

No.

Shifting clothing permeated the air. Wait. Not enough cover from the furniture would prevent the Thin Man from snaring him. Wait until he made the move. One. Two. Three. Maybe a fourth teleport, to get him through the doorway.

“W̶̳͂o̶̬̍ȗ̴̺l̶̺͛d̴̦̊ ̶̟͝Y̷̞͂o̶̗͝ǘ̷̻ ̸̣̈C̷̬̚ợ̶m̴͈̌e̷͓͆ out? Let me see you?”

It was only a matter of time before the Thin Man lost his patience. He dug his toes into the carpet and listened for his cue.

“Please? I would like to speek with you. Won’t you come?”

The voice was less distorted, but Mono still felt the harsh grind of static. He pried at a painful hangnail on his thumb. And without warning, the whole upper drawer wrenched loose. All the way out. And suddenly his nice snug nest was exposed to the world and all its frigid air. He had no idea the drawers did that. It came right out! He didn’t know!

He gawked at the Thin Man, coiling up so much more. “Hey,” he squeaked. He held perfectly still.

“Won’t you come out?” he grated.

Mono shook his head. “Stay.” Don’t move. Hold still. He watched the Thin Man’s hands warily, clasped to the frame of the dresser after relocating the drawer. “Sorry. M’sorry. M’sorry.” No-No. The Thin Man didn’t like sorry.

“Why did you rip my book apart? Child! Don’t you Ȑ̷̠ṷ̸̕n̷̪̐!”

Mono jammed himself beneath the side of the dresser, when the Thin Man reached for him. He held tight to the base of the leg, whining in his throat. “Sorry!”

“Why did you do it? That’s all I want to know!”

“Pik-chures!” Mono gave a pitiful yowl when he was ripped loose. He flailed and slashed and fought at the hands, for all the good it would do. “No! No!”

“What did you do with the pictures? Why take?”

Mono was NOT about to say AND explain. “Not! Want! M’sorry! Sorry!” He kicked and clawed for a handhold of something, until finally he couldn’t take the interrogation, and coiled his arms around his head. The best he could do. He couldn’t wind up into a tight protective ball.

It was bad, he knew better. He was sorry. There was no way to fix what he broke. He was sorry. He didn’t understand. The Thin Man always left to take new books and left books. He didn’t know he still wanted that book. Maybe the pictures. It was stupid. That was wrong, he shouldn’t have done it. Books belonged to the Thin Man; they were not his. Idiot. How could he?

“Sorry,” he burbled. It was the only thing he could give. He had no better speek. “Mm’sor-ee. Sorry.”

The Thin Man took a breath and sighed. He set Mono back inside the drawer space, and the boy shoved himself into the nearest corner. “It’s all right, child. I was only curious of your reasonings.” He reached in and rubbed the boy’s back. “You can calm down. I’ll let you alone.” The child didn’t respond, but remained crammed against the dresser leg.

Carefully, the drawer ground back into place above his head. The Thin Man was still upset, but the precise stride carried out and faded entirely. Mono wouldn’t leave for a while, he’d done enough damage. He was so embarrassed and angry at himself. Those books weren’t his, he didn’t collect them. He had no reasons, nothing. He knew better.

Dolt. That was so stupid.

#little nightmares #mono #feral mono #the thin man #thin dad #the man in the hat #little nightmares fanfiction #little nightmares fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #mono nests and its fucking cute i swear

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modestmuses-a · 4 years

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the positive & negative : mun & muse / fill out & repost .

EKKO

MY MUSE IS : canon / oc / au / slightly canon - divergent / fandomless / complicated

i try to stay mostly close to ekko’s canon but i also have a fuckton of aus for him including some real self-indulgent bullshit that isn’t even on his verses page. if you want me to make a new au for ekko to fit him into a different skin line or something, i’ll probably do it tbh.

IS YOUR CHARACTER POPULAR IN THE FANDOM ? YES / NO / I DON’T KNOW

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED HOT™ IN THE FANDOM ? YES / NO / IDK

for better or worse. when “giants” first came out, i had more ekko smut on my dash than i ever cared to see.

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED STRONG IN THE FANDOM ? YES / NO / IDK

i can tell you what i think of ekko’s strength, and i can tell you that... it isn’t much. he’s not the most adept fighter in the series, and most of the time, he wins fights by cheesing them with time travel. in my thread with @uncaged-bloodhunter ekko would be DEAD four times over by now if not for the zero drive.

however, i haven’t seen much fandom opinion about his strength? i’m going to go out on a limb and say most people probably don’t find him very strong bc? i don’t see a lot of people saying that but. who knows.

ARE THEY UNDERRATED ? YES / NO / IDK

canon-wise, fandom-wise, and on this blog, ekko gets a lot of attention, which i’m not complaining about. he’s a fav.

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN STORY ? YES / NO / IDK

he is important around zaun, but considering he won’t LEAVE that place, i doubt we’ll see him achieve much relevance in the bigger overarching conflicts in the league universe anytime soon.

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER ? YES / NO / IDK

if league did have a main character, i’m sure he would never meet them unless they were from piltover or zaun lol

ARE THEY WIDELY KNOWN IN THEIR WORLD ? YES / NO / IDK

around piltover/zaun, all the academics are trying to get him to sit down with them, but overall? nah. if he went anywhere other than piltover or zaun, they would have no fucking idea who he was.

HOW’S THEIR REPUTATION ? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL

pilties HATE him! click to find out why!

no, but in seriousness, around zaun, his reputation is quite good as one of the few decent souls in the city. but in piltover, he’s just another thuggish troublemaker on a spree of petty crimes, as if zaun doesn’t already have enough of those...

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON ?

shrugs. i don’t actively think about adhering to canon with every thread i write, of course, but i do think i have a pretty good handle on his character so.

SELL YOUR MUSE !( try to list everything that makes your muse interesting to make them spicy for your mutuals )

he is a nice sweet boy who WILL adopt every single child and will go out of his way to help those in need. he also has plenty of spunk and a real get-up-and-go kind of personality, he’s not the kind of person who likes just “hanging around” so he’s a perfect companion for someone who likes to get out and adventure as long as you don’t go outside of piltover/zaun. he’s very loyal and will stick up for his friends, even when it would be more convenient to sell them out. and of course, he’s willing to call authority figures out on their bullshit and doesn’t sit back and passively watch injustices happen.

NOW THE OPPOSITE !( list everything why your muse could not be so interesting . even if you may not agree. what does the fandom perhaps think ? )

he’s got abandonment issues up to HERE, and because of that, he is c l i n g y. if he gets attached to you in any way, he will NOT let you go. he will NOT get over you. he will probably keep trying to worm his way back into your life for months or YEARS because he just doesn’t know how to deal with being left.

furthermore, he represses every negative emotion he has ever felt because he feels like his problems are trivial compared to other people’s so he bottles that shit right on up like cheap cough-syrup-tastin’ whiskey. he holds onto a LOT of resentment - at piltover, at the chembarons, at himself, at the world - and because he doesn’t allow himself to DO anything with said resentment, he’s a ticking time bomb (pun fully intended). i do have... timelines... where all that internalized hostility blows up in a really messy way. and by messy, i mean bloody.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE ?

around the time i first started getting into league, a bitch was going through it. we were pretty destitute and received an eviction notice, and i had to work my ass off to keep us from losing our apartment. it was a very depressing time for everyone involved. but then i found ekko, this boy who had even less than i did but made the most of it, who always found some way to make the day better. writing him became very cathartic for me because it allowed me to take something positive away from what was one of the worst years of my life.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING ?

punk rock music, haha! especially that of billy talent. their whole dead silence album is pretty ekko, but they have a lot of bangers that remind me of him scattered across all their albums. we deserved punk rock ekko and instead we got fucking true damage because riot didn’t wanna get political, i guess. smh.

some more personal questions for the mun . give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters , which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not .

DO YOU THINK YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER JUSTICE ? YES / NO / IDK

DO YOU FREQUENTLY WRITE HEADCANONS ? YES / NO / IDK

i kind of only address headcanons as they come up. very occasionally i will drop a few for a new muse just so that people get a better feel for who they are before writing them but... yeah written headcanons are pretty few and far between here. it’s really not even worth me having a headcanon banner lmao

DO YOU SOMETIMES WRITE DRABBLES ? YES / NO / IDK

i would like to, but writing my replies here kind of sucks up most of my time!

DO YOU THINK A LOT ABOUT YOUR MUSE DURING THE DAY ? YES / NO / IDK

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR PORTRAYAL ? YES / NO / IDK

too confident some might say, but those people would be silly fools

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR WRITING ? YES / NO / IDK

ARE YOU A SENSITIVE PERSON ? YES / NO / IDK

sometimes i get anxiety about stupid shit but i try and often fail to be secure

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL ?

nope, i ain’t changing a thing. i’m the best ekko on this site, and you are free to disagree with that because everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion, but my askbox is closed to those kinds of complaints. :)

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS , WHICH HELP YOU TO EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER ?

yeah, sure, although i understand why people don’t send them because i often draw blanks on what to send without somebody reblogging a headcanon meme or something. if you just reblog “send my character questions on anon!” i’m probably not gonna do it bc i have no idea what kinds of questions would even be relevant or helpful for you.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS , DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY

nah, everyone can do what they want. i usually won’t follow people if i don’t agree with their headcanons, but i’m not about to get all up in somebody’s business about it.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL , HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT ?

again, wrong opinion, but you’re allowed to have it and you’re also allowed to SMASH that unfollow button.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER , HOW DO YOU TAKE IT ?

who hates ekko of all people, first of all? but second of all, i don’t care. just don’t get in my dms about it ‘cause i’ll block you. i’m not really interested in somebody bashing one of my muses to my face.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ?

shrugs. yeah, i guess. i usually leave other people’s grammatical errors alone as long as i can read their stuff.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN ?

yeah i think so. i try to be, anyway. i like to make ooc friendships bc i find it way more satisfying and easy to write with friends. although i sound a little bitchy in parts of this, it’s mostly jokes for exaggeration effects.

tagged by: @bikmui

tagging: @storiestotell (akutagawa), @bystcrdust, @dimensionaljumper (for eliza ‘cause i always send stuff for scribe lol)

#sad sappy sucker [ooc]#//thanks for the tag cas!#//this was a welcome distraction from the shitshow that has been the past couple days <3

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myfriendpokey · 5 years

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50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole.

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another. So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view” and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it.

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

#vgames #50 short games #indie games #gamechat #game criticism #notes

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vatrixsta · 5 years

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How Long Will I Love You (1/2)

PRESTO! @the-corsair-and-her-quill IT IS I, YOUR SECRET SANTA! It was so, so fun stalking getting to know you over the last few weeks! Because you do not love Christmas in a traditional, cheesy way, I have written you an angsty CS AU Emma who is having trouble with her husband. Yes, it’s very cheery :D Hopefully I’ve read the room right when it comes to your tastes and preferences and I REALLY REALLY hope you enjoy it!!

I’ve tried to leave the first part in an okay place, but I’m hoping to finish it off for you by the weekend at the latest. Yes, it’s the gift that unfortunately keeps on giving!

Man, I really thought I could write this little angst bomb as a one shot, but I very much underestimated my own desire to torture poor Emma. This will be up on AO3 after I’ve... slept. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

How Long Will I Love you (1/2)

xxx

Emma Swan-Jones was absolutely positive of one thing: her husband was hiding something.

Killian was not the secretive type. He’d worn his heart on his sleeve as long as she’d known him, something that had caused them both a great deal of frustration early on in their courtship. Emma had been jaded single mother just trying to keep her and Henry’s head above water and Killian… well, he’d just been so steadfast, so sure right from the start that it had freaked her out a little. The fact that he was Henry’s favorite author? That had definitely made his job of winning her heart a hell of a lot harder.

So yes, she’d been the one pulling away, doubting, constantly testing him for the first few months of their relationship, something she felt bad about later but honestly couldn’t imagine any other way. Her walls had been sky high after, you know, her whole fucking life, being abandoned, foster care, all the people who made it clear they never wanted her and no one ever really would - then fucking Neal and prison and Henry was the only good thing she got out of all that - no way would she get a charming British rogue who spent his free time writing children’s stories about a skewed take on Peter Pan. No, that was not for her, no matter how much he tried to convince her that she and Henry were all he wanted.

Except… he had. They built a life together. They got married. They moved around for a long time, three nomads looking for a place to plant roots as Emma’s work took her wherever the leads did and Henry was all too happy to continue home study and Killian could write from anywhere. He let her read his first drafts and she let him read over her shoulder when she was researching her skips. He was constantly challenging her and annoying her and being the best stepdad to Henry and just… he wasn’t perfect, but he also kind of was? She could barely remember what life was like before their twosome became three; didn’t really want to remember. It felt like they’d always been together, the three of them, with Killian in charge of steering the ship, emotionally speaking.

Maybe that was the real problem. Emma had gotten used Killian always being the grown up in the relationship and now that he was taking up the part of the sullen, moody teenager who lied to her face when she asked him what was wrong, she didn’t know how to deal with it.

Hadn’t he read the contract between them? She was the moody teenager in the relationship, at least for a few more years, before Henry turned into an actual moody teenager.

This had to stop. She was going to stop it. Be the bigger person. Not fall back on decades of rejection and shitty emotional behavior and lose the nerve to force him to talk to her.

….

So yeah, she totally lost the nerve. Killian was sitting in the office, broodily staring at a blank computer screen and she tried to use the perfect opening.

“Hey. Are the pages not cooperating?”

It was smooth. She actually thought about it before she said it, not at all typical Emma behavior. She’d asked him about his writing before, when it seemed like he was in a bit of a funk and he’d always use the opportunity to escape for awhile, maybe take Henry to a movie or, if they were near water, to look at the boats by the harbor. Sometimes he’d compliment her - all, your boy’s a marvel, Swan, nothing like a trip to the pier with the little spitfire to knock a spot of writer’s block into the dust. Over time, it became our boy and her heart clenched with how easily the word rolled off his tongue and hers.

So his response today was somewhat underwhelming.

“What?” he asked, distracted, moody, dare she say - a bit twitchy.

Emma’s eyes narrowed. Every hackle she has was rising. But this was her husband. She trusted him. She loved him, completely. So he was having an off week. She’d had her share of them and he bore them with grace. She was not going to interrogate him like a suspect.

“Let’s go out to dinner,” she said, trying to be positive. Henry was at a sleepover and maybe he was feeling like she was - a little out of sorts without their favorite playmate. She would ignore the fact that this behavior had been going on for weeks, pretty much, she realized, since they’d settled down in Boston. “Somewhere nice, with tablecloths where you can get handsy while we overpay for whatever’s labeled market price.”

Seafood and groping - two of her husband’s favorite treats. But when his eyes flickered, it wasn’t with the normal interest and good humor she expected. If she had to name the emotion that flashed behind those blue, blue eyes of his, a split second before his whole face shuttered to a neutral expression, she’d call it guilt. Maybe even a pinch of despair.

“I’m sorry, Swan,” he said, definitely looking sorry, but not in a way she liked, “I should really keep plugging away at this.” He gestured at the keyboard with his prosthetic hand, the right scratching at the back of his neck like he had a rash.

“Yeah. Me too. I’ll make us some pasta then,” she mumbled, tucking down how much his rejection and the fact that he was lying to her hurt.

She fled to the kitchen and threw together a simple dinner neither of them really touched. He escaped back to his office as soon as he could and she went to bed early, wondering what the hell was going on with the man she married.

~~~

Henry returned from his sleepover late the next day and since it was Sunday, he reminded Killian they were supposed to check out the docks, an activity they hadn’t had time for since they moved to town. Boston was both big and small and getting to specific parts of the city sometimes took a huge chunk of time unless you were on foot. That was why they’d splurged on an apartment that was pricey but perfect and if you squinted, just within their budget - Killian had a great nest egg from the book sales and would receive an advance as soon as he’d finished the first three chapters of his next book. Emma had been saving from the moment she graduated from waiting tables to bail bonds and their combined good financial habits had secured them three bedrooms, a top floor and a glorious view of the water.

“It’ll be perfect, Swan,” Killian had said while they were still living from rental to rental. “Our first little hideaway by the sea until you retire and we can live somewhere much quieter, with fewer bail jumpers needing your always pertinent attention.”

That was back when he was still sweet talking her like usual. God, she hoped his outing with Henry would help him settle. He was always calmer by the water and the view aside, she knew he wasn’t satisfied until he’d gotten a good lungful of salt air.

She bided her time while they were out by doing laundry. Every time she passed the office - they shared it, but since his work dictated a quiet space a lot more than hers did, it was mostly Killian’s domain - she had to fight off the knee jerk urge she had to go snooping on his computer for answers. The doubt that was beginning to live in her breastbone was making it hard to remember how much she trusted Killian, like she’d never trusted anyone in her life.

The urge to snoop was definitely going to get the better of her if she stayed in the apartment, so Emma quickly bundled up and grabbed her wallet and keys. They were out of eggs and a few other essentials. Besides, it was six weeks ‘til Christmas and with all the moving drama she hadn’t bought anything for Henry or Killian. She could at least do some in person recon before she came home and ordered them stuff online.

She was putting away groceries when the apartment door banged shut.

“Hey Kid,” she greeted Henry, noticing the lack of anyone else behind him. “Where’s Killian?”

“He said he had an errand,” Henry huffed into the kitchen and noted Killian’s behavior with his usual tact and charm. “What crawled up his butt?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “We were having a good time, we got ice cream and he was telling me about ships and Liam and it reminded me about my ancestry project for school. I asked him about his parents and he reminded me - as if I didn’t know - that he isn’t my biological father. We kind of… had a fight. He was trying to talk to me about him.”

Emma paused with the Eggos halfway to the freezer. Him. That was how Henry had referred to Neal since he was old enough to understand their history. Emma had no idea why Killian was suddenly bringing the subject up - as far as she knew, his feelings about Neal mirrored her own: if she ever ran into him in a dark alley, she’d at least bloody her knuckles on some part of his face.

“Maybe Killian was just trying to make sure you didn’t want to talk about him,” Emma offered. “I haven’t exactly done the best job of keeping you a neutral third party where he’s concerned. It would be… normal… if you were curious about your dad.” The words were like ash on her tongue, but she forced them out, mentally awarding herself ten points for Gryffindor.

Henry made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “After what he did to you? I don’t care about him. He’s not my dad. Killian’s…” He looked down and Emma was horrified to see tears in his eyes. “I thought Killian… I guess I was wrong.”

“Hey.” Emma put her hand on Henry’s chin and pulled his head up to meet her eyes. “Killian would take a bullet for you, kid. Whatever is going on with him - it is not about you and it is not about how much he loves you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Henry mumbled, eyes still downcast. “Can I play Xbox until dinner?”

Sighing, Emma forced her stiff little boy into an embrace and kissed his forehead soundly. “Yeah. Play something nice and violent.”

He nodded against her side then trudged into his room. Emma pursed her lips.

Fuck it. She was snooping on his computer. Henry was upset by whatever the hell was wrong with him and she was done being the mature adult. Ten points from Gryffindor - maybe she’d always belonged in Slytherin after all.

xxx

All Emma got out of snooping through Killian’s laptop was a recipe for buttered rum and a knot of guilt in her stomach. His browser history was weeks old, like he hadn’t searched for anything; she even tried all the tricks she knew to find hidden tracks on a laptop - he’d really done nothing on it since before they’d moved to Boston and that included working on the new book.

Maybe his odd behavior really was as simple as an intense case of writer’s block. Maybe he was afraid to tell her, because they’d gotten this fancy apartment and with the bail bonds trade usually drying up a bit after the holidays, they’d be counting on his advance once he delivered his publisher the detailed synopsis.

Abandoning her shitty, mistrustful wife plan, Emma headed back to the kitchen (it was possible she’d left the ice cream out to melt) but stopped when she heard not the sounds of violent bloody gore, but quiet voices coming from Henry’s bedroom.

“It’s fine,” Henry was saying in a tone that clearly indicated it was anything but.

“It’s really not,” Killian said and Emma leaned against the wall that kept her out of their line of sight but made eavesdropping on Henry’s room much easier. Hey, the view wasn’t the only reason she’d been eager for this apartment.

“I just… I guess I thought… we were a family,” Henry said, sounding so vulnerable Emma wanted to hug him and hurt Killian a little for making him sound that way.

“Henry… lad.” Then Killian sounded just as lost, just as broken, and Emma just wanted to wrap her arms around them both. “The love I have for you and your mother outweighs all the grains of sand in this or any other realm. Never doubt that.”

“Then why did you bring him up?” Henry asked. “I don’t want to do my ancestry project about him. I can’t ask Mom, because she doesn’t know who her parents are. I know yours are gone, but you knew them at least. I still want to do my project about my family.”

Killian took a deep breath. She knew well the sound of air filling his lungs from a thousand nights falling asleep with her ear pressed to his chest, a thousand moments sat across from him as he prepared himself to say something sappy or meaningful or cheeky.

“My father’s name was Brennan and my mother’s name was Alice. They married young -- too young, it turns out. He was a bastard and she would have adored spoiling you, her first grandchild, young master Henry.”

Emma bit her lip hard to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. Her boys kept speaking to one another, Henry asking questions, then telling Killian to wait, he had to write this down, and Killian detailing as much of his history as he could - the small English village he was born into, the Jones line before him (he’d never known his grandparents and unfortunately couldn’t be of much help further back, but he did delight Henry by informing him they were rumored to be descended from the Davey Jones) and any other detail that came to mind. Emma was pretty sure he was making at least some of it up, but it was a fifth grade ancestry project and she’d punch any teacher who gave Henry less than an A for the yarn he was about to spin.

Deciding she’d had enough of this emotional roller coaster, Emma spent some time researching a skip - he was slippery and she might have to go out of town for a few days to nab him. With Killian and Henry on an even keel, she felt a lot better about the prospect.

A solid hour of research confirmed her suspicion - Travis the douchebag had fled to Rhode Island and was stupid enough to still be using his own credit cards. He had also already set up a new Tinder profile. Emma would drive the Bug to the most recent hit she had on his card and let the tight red dress on her Tinder profile do the rest of the location job for her.

She’d leave in the morning. She wanted to spend the night with her boys first.

They were still in Henry’s room, though ancestry talk had morphed into the video game Killian hated playing the least, something with knights and quests. They were spread out on Henry’s small full bed and Emma took a flying leap between them, forcing them to either dive out of the way and lose a life or accept her full weight.

Naturally they both took the hit, their characters living to fight another day.

“Oi! Swan,” Killian complained.

“Jesus, Mom,” Henry added, sounding much more parental than she ever did.

“Third controller,” she demanded.

Henry hooked the wire with his foot and launched it at her. She caught it easily and entered the game when it let her. Every time she did something Killian or Henry couldn’t, she elbowed them until Killian finally called for a mutiny. He and Henry ganged up on her, assaulting her with tickling fingers and raspberries, the game abandoned and Emma feeling lighter than she had in weeks.

xxx

“I have to go to Rhode Island tomorrow,” Emma said later that night after they’d settled into bed. Killian seemed to be keeping a little more distance between them than was customary and he was also wearing his prosthetic to bed, which he never did.

“Hmm?” Killian responded, irking her because apparently he wasn’t even listening to her.

“I’m going away tomorrow,” she repeated, turning on her side to face him. He was staring at the ceiling, the black t-shirt he wore getting in the way of her favorite pillow, his chest hair. Come to think of it, he’d been withholding her favorite pillow for awhile now. She’d been so exhausted by the move that she’d basically fallen asleep as soon as her head hit an actual pillow.

He finally turned to face her. “Where are you going?”

“Rhode Island,” she repeated. “I’ve got a hit on a skip. It’ll be a nice payday for the holidays.”

“That’s good,” he said, nodding a bit, mostly to himself, it seemed.

“I’ll be gone a few days, most likely,” she added, frowning when he just nodded again. “I’ll miss you, too,” she said sarcastically, before turning her back on him, half curling into a ball of confused anger and sadness.

“Swan,” he muttered.

“Save it,” she said. “If you’re not going to tell me the truth, I don’t want to hear it.”

Several moments passed, so many that she really thought he was going to remain silent. Then, so quietly she might have missed it if she hadn’t been listening so carefully, he spoke.

“Have you ever woken up one morning and felt like an utter fraud?” he asked.

Her frown deepened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked. “Is this about the book?”

“I wish it were about the bloody book, Swan,” he muttered, his his breath close enough that she could feel it puffing against the bare skin of her shoulder. “Just go to sleep.”

“Killian--”

“You’re leaving in the morning, in that deathtrap of yours - I’d like you to be rested before you get on the road. It’s an icy drive this time of year.” He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back against him and she rested her head against his other arm. He was still keeping her at a distance, but she could feel his concern, his affection, even through such a strange distance. Her mind replayed his declaration to Henry, the passion and conviction in his voice as he’d vowed his love for them both. He hadn’t been lying.

Why the hell would her husband think he was a fraud?

xxx

Emma debated bailing on the trip, but forcing Killian to talk when he clearly wasn’t ready to had never lead anywhere good. So she kissed him and Henry both on the forehead, made them promise to text her updates while she was gone and headed out. Killian had gotten up earlier than she had to make sure the snow chains were on the Bug’s tires and he’d filled the tank up with gas, something she routinely forgot to do until she was already on the road.

Her first night in Rhode Island, Emma logged onto her fake Tinder profile, the one that let her breasts and a tight red dress do all the advertising necessary to pick up any creep in a fifty mile radius. It only took about a hundred left swipes for her mark to pop up and she reluctantly swiped right.

Henry’s text (a picture of the breakfast Killian made him and a row of sad face emojis) interrupted her briefly; she replied that egg whites and salmon were good for a growing boy. Killian’s text (a simple “The boy’s been fed well and sent off to school; come home safe, Swan”) intensified that ache in her chest and she fired off a quick heart emoji in reply. If she started actually texting words, she was afraid word vomit would soon follow and she needed to concentrate on nabbing this dirtbag.

Her skip was laughingly easy to lure but not so seamless to capture. They scuffled outside the restaurant, Emma tackling and handcuffing the guy after a graceless fall sent them both to the icy ground. It was only after she’d handed him off to local law enforcement that she noticed how badly she scraped up her wrist. She rinsed it off in the motel bathroom, but immediately changed into traveling clothes. It was late, but there wouldn’t be traffic at this hour and she’d be home, in bed with her husband, in less than ninety minutes.

Unfortunately, being alone with her thoughts on a long drive and no case to think about meant Emma had little to do but consider Killian’s odd behavior.

When she added it all up - attempting to remind Henry they weren’t actually father and son, the guilt in his eyes, the disinterest in sex, feeling like a fraud - her stomach clenched at the most obvious conclusion: Killian was cheating on her.

Maybe it wasn’t physical. Maybe it was only one time and he didn’t know how to confess. Maybe he had fallen in love with someone else and felt guilty about wanting to leave them. Leave her. Maybe he was only staying for Henry. Maybe he just didn’t know how to tell her he’d made a mistake by marrying her, the same mistake her first foster family had made by wanting to adopt her, only to send her back when she was three.

Emma’s wrist was starting to ache as much as it stung and she worried it might be sprained on top of the scraping. Her vision was also getting blurry, which meant she was probably crying and that always pissed her off, so she used her injured hand to angrily wipe her eyes clear.

If Killian had decided she wasn’t enough, that he wanted something else - that was fine. It would hurt Henry, but they could survive. They were just fine when it was the two of them and they could be a family of two again.

Something hollow started forming in her chest at the thought of no more Killian - no more sullen hours trying to get the words right only to emerge victorious and tumble her into bed to celebrate, no more healthy breakfasts to send them off for the day with ‘vim and vigor,’ no more grown up in the house, no more feeling safe with someone, no more forgetting what it felt like to be a lonely, unwanted little ugly duckling again.

Fucking tears. She was going to get into an accident if she didn’t get a grip on her emotions, but it was impossible when it felt like her whole world was caving in on itself. Killian didn’t lie to her. If he was lying now, it meant… it had to mean something bad, given how long it had gone on, given all the other signs. She wouldn’t be able to make it another night wondering about this. As soon as she got home, she was ripping off the Band-Aid - even if it took several layers of skin with it.

She made a lot of noise coming in the front door, kicking her boots off and leaving them in a messy, wet heap just inside, the way Killian hated. She draped her coat over a chair and caught a look at herself in the mirror by the door - her makeup had run due to all the crying (waterproof my ass) and her hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail, which just made her face look even more gaunt.

“You’re home early.” Killian’s soft voice drifted from the living room and her shoulders hunched in on themselves at the sound of it. The sound of his feet encased in those warm, fuzzy socks Henry loved brought him closer. “Did you get your man?”

Emma turned to look at him and wanted to cry even harder. He was wearing a soft black sweater, one of the many new items they’d purchased for the frigid Boston weather. The dark color made his eyes look even bluer, or maybe that was all the lights she’d just noticed he and Henry must have hung up while she was gone, their whole apartment transformed into a cozy winter wonderland. Like a real family lived here. Like he was planning to stick around until Christmas.

She felt fucking crazy.

“You're hurt,” he said, eyes obviously ticking over her to figure out what was causing her mental breakdown. He moved quickly, his right hand pushing a piece of hair that had escaped her punishing ponytail back behind her ear, thumb skimming over her cheek to trace the black tear track that made it all the more obvious she’d been crying. His eyes were still moving over her face furiously and when he realized she hadn’t been punched or visibly concussed (wouldn’t be the first time) he started scanning the rest of her.

His ex-naval captain’s eagle eye narrowed in on her wrist in a snap and her hand was soon cradled between his right and his prosthetic. He made a tsking sound (chastising her for using water as a disinfectant again) and leaned forward to kiss her forehead, the way he always did when she was hurting. The tears came again but she didn’t try to fight them. He made soft shushing sounds and cradled her hand against his chest protectively, letting her cry it out for a few minutes before gently ushering her into the bathroom.

Emma sat on the sink so he wouldn’t have to crouch and Killian pulled the Neosporin out of the medicine cabinet. He used his teeth to open the bottle then curled her hand over his prosthetic to hold her still. Carefully, he applied the disinfectant, knowing how prone she was to kicking when something stung her. Once he’d gotten a good, thick layer applied, he reached for the gauze.

“Do you think it’s sprained as well?” he asked.

She nodded, unable to make her vocal cords worked and he fetched an ace bandage from the emergency room drawer as well.

“You should get an X-Ray,” he said.

“Maybe,” she agreed, her voice sounding like she’d been crying over a half broken heart for the last hour.

They both knew she wasn’t going to get an X-Ray, but she really, really loved him for worrying about her.

“This is how we met,” she said quietly as he leaned forward, using his teeth to hold one end of the gauze so his right hand could smooth it down.

His gaze snapped up to hers, a wary look in them, and her eyebrows scrunched together. “Remember? My timeless grace?”

If he didn’t even remember how they met, he wouldn’t have to leave her - she was going to kill him.

Killian blinked and nodded slowly, as if the memory was replaying in his mind. He cleared his throat before speaking. “You were carrying drinks for you and Henry. Slipped on a patch of ice. Tore your palm up.”

“You bandaged it with your scarf and tied one end with your mouth. Very ballsy for a total stranger,” she added with an affectionate nudge to his hip with her knee.

“I’m nothing if not bold,” he agreed.

“I never even saw you coming,” she confided. “All those walls and that cynicism and keeping everyone out and I never even saw you coming. I wanted to run so far and so fast from you and I still wanted to jump your bones.”

He scoffed. “You thought I was annoying. And possibly a stalker.”

“I still wanted to jump your bones,” she said. They shared a laugh, but she sobered fast. “I know I did run away after that. I know I… didn’t make it easy.”

Was that it? Was she still more difficult than she thought? Emma thought she’d gotten better at letting him in, that she’d let him all the way in, but maybe… maybe he just got tired of it. Of her. Everyone did eventually, everyone but Henry.

“Emma… I don’t like easy,” he said with that grave tone he sometimes got when he wanted to make sure she understood him. “A man unwilling to fight for what he wants, deserves what he gets. You have always been worth the fight of my life, darling. Always.”

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead, a soft, reverent thing that made her cry again. He brought her bandaged hand to his mouth, kissed the back of it, her palm, her wrist, the patch of skin on her forearm left bare from his first aid work.

“Do… do I need to fight for you?” she asked, the quiet, scared question nothing like the rage she’d planned to unleash on him during her drive. Funny how Killian being Killian could disarm her in the blink of an eye.

“Oh, luv,” Killian muttered, pressing his forehead to hers. “I have been yours from the moment we met. It just took me a little while to realize it. You’ve done nothing wrong, Emma. I’m sorry. I know I’ve been… I’ll be better.”

“I don’t need you to be better. I need you to be you. I need you to want to be here.”

“I do,” he vowed and that was exactly what it was: a vow. “There is nowhere else for me but by your side, Swan.”

“You’re confusing me,” she whispered, like it was a secret.

“I’m confusing me,” he assured her. “Please just… give me a little time? To figure a few things out?”

Emma sighed. It wasn’t the resolution she wanted, but she felt oddly lighter. They hadn’t talked about anything specific, but already her earlier fears felt ridiculous. Most of them, anyway. At least he wasn’t pretending things were fine - he’d given her months of space to realize she was in love with him in the beginning. She could give him a few weeks now, to figure out whatever was going on in that ridiculously attractive head of his.

“You’ve got four weeks ‘til Christmas,” she grumbled. “I want my husband front and center by then, got it, buddy?”

So she wasn’t nearly as patient or understanding as he was. He knew what he was getting into.

His grin at her words indicated that he did and that he still found her rather charming.

She could live with that. For now.

#csss #cssecretsanta2k18 #@cssecretsanta2k18 #captain swan #my fic stuff #cs fic #how long will i love you #MERRY CHRISTMAS

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marshmallowatheart · 5 years

Text

To All The Boys I've Loved Before (Part 26)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25)

She's broken one rule, it's not really that big of a deal if she breaks another, right?

"Veronica?" Wallace taps on the window, concern spread all over his face.

She knows he's remembering the last time she'd sat here - except she was a crying mess that was unable to form words and he'd been the understanding best friend that held her until she could talk about how her mother had abandoned them for a brand new family.

She takes a breath and says, "I kissed Logan."

His face scrunches in a twist of confusion. "Why is this news worthy?"

She looks at him, wide eyed as she thinks about last night's events that she'd momentarily packed away into a neat little bowed up box and stored it away in the corner of her mind.

The only problem with that was after the adrenaline of the night died off when she laid in blanketed cocoon ready to sleep, the bow of the box came undone and she couldn't resist peeking in and reliving the fire she felt kissing Logan.

She'd felt so much in that moment, she still feels so much just thinking about it and it's become so much more than her little bowed up box can bear to seal up again.

It's become evident that she needed to let it all out; this would usually be the moment she'd turn to a blank white page and a smooth inked pen but that's how she'd gotten into this mess in the first place.

So she turns to her best friend, her confidante and partner in bending the rules in the name of justice because Wallace Fennel is the one person in the world that she trusts enough to not judge her no matter how bad of a mess she creates.

"He kissed me back," she breaths out as though this is a revelationary thing. "Like a lot back."

He's giving her a grossed out look and she finally looks him in the eye and helplessly confesses, "Logan and I aren't really dating."

--vm--

They're in his room, Veronica's curled up with a pillow on her lap and her knees folded up. Wallace is beside her trying to comprehend her tale of the fake romance between her and Neptune's 09er King.

"So you guys have been faking this entire time?" He confirms because he's seen them together and it never once felt fake at all. He saw the subtle touches, the smiles, and the looks.

He doesn't care if Logan Echolls is a product of Hollywood A-list actors, there's no way that all that was him simply putting on a show for people that, Wallace is sure, faded into the background whenever Logan had his sights on his best friend.

She nods, dejected and frustrated with herself. "Yeah," she whispers. "It's become so much more than what it was supposed to be," she admits.

She doesn't know what's real and what's pretend anymore. She hasn't known for a long time because she loses herself in the essence of Logan, letting herself enjoy his presence, his soft touches, his sharp silver tongue, the way he surprises her more and more everyday and the kindness he has to him that not many people get to see.

It's scary how easy it is to be with him. It's scary that there's variables she can't control. It's scary that he makes her feel so happy and it's scary that any moment it all could just be... gone.

"I don't know what to do," she says, giving him a tired and soft smile, thanking him silently for listening to her. "I just feel kinda stupid to fall for a guy that's in love with someone else."

He gives her a look and shakes his head. "I don't know how he's looking at Lilly but I've seen the way he looks at you, Vee. Homeboy likes you."

She tries not to show that her heart jolted at the sound of that because she's lost herself in his eyes more times than she can count and she's realized somewhere in between the light in his eyes and the way his iris widens that no boy has ever looked at her that way before - in a way that makes her body feel all sorts of tingly right down to her toes.

"How does he look at me?" She asks, hopefully sounding more casual than she feels.

He grins, letting out a small chuckle and she knows that she's come of anything but casual.

"Like you're his world and everything in it," he puts simply. "How can he be pretending all of that," he gestures with his hands circling an air ball. "For the sake of making Lilly jealous or to get Duncan to back off you when all of the times we've hung out neither have been there at all?"

He quirks a brow at her, staring at her expectantly as she silently revels in soul bearing moments and excused kisses.

"Let's look at the facts of it all," Wallace decides, appealing to the logical part of his best friend. "The whole fake relationship was his idea, you came up with the no-kissing rule and now you're actively trying to push him towards another girl. So I'd say if anyone stupidly fell for someone who doesn't like them back it's not you. It's Logan."

She lets out a breath, the wheels spinning in her head at even the possibility. "You really think Logan likes me?"

He snorts at the question. "I know he does."

Her lips slowly grow into a wide smile and Wallace chuckles at her look, shaking his head. "You really are a marshmallow, Veronica Mars."

She laughs, scrunching her face up and sticking her tongue at him. He laughs, scrunching his nose back at her and bumping her shoulder with his, happy that she's looking better and brighter than when he'd found her sitting out on his driveway.

"Veronica, honey," Alicia calls, popping her head from the side of the door. "Are you staying for dinner?"

She shakes her head no and provides, "Heather and Logan wanted to go to the carnival today."

Alicia lets out an ah of understanding and quizzes, "So you're gonna stuff yourself with junk?"

"That's the carnival experience," she shrugs with a seemingly helpless smile. "Do you wanna come?"

"I've got a date with my television set tonight," Alicia rain checks, mimicking Veronica's shrug and smile. "Wallace and Darrell can go with you though."

Veronica beams, happy to have her best friend with her as back up. "What do ya say? Cotton candy and drinks that turn your mouth blue?"

He laughs at her wiggling her brows as though he needs any more temptation other than the word carnival itself. "Hells yeah."

#veronica mars #wallace fennel #mentions logan echolls #vm fic #vm fanfic #inspired by to all the boys ive loved before #to all the boys i've loved before #part 26 #Alicia Fennel

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huntertales · 6 years

Text

Let’s Write a Different Ending: Chapter Two.

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Prophet!Reader

Word Count: 3,492. // Episode Setting: The Monster at the End of This Book.

Summary: What if the “Supernatural” book series wasn’t written by Chuck Shurley? Instead, by a young woman named Y/N Y/L/N? She finds herself living out her most recent story—about the end of the world, an archangel whose sworn to protect her is moonlighting as a trickster and two fictional characters by the name of Sam and Dean are about to drag her straight into it. (Semi-rewrite from episode 4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book to—?)

Previous Part | Full Masterlist

When you were much younger, when your writing abilities consisted of nothing more than short stories you scribbled down in composition notebooks you abandoned for new ones and doodles of creatures your mind that you imagined, you made a wish one year on your birthday that everything you wrote would come true. You had to be no longer than seven or eight, too naive to know that it was impossible. The things you wrote down were just stories, they only were real inside your mind. It was an escape from reality. That was the reason why you wrote in the first place, to create a world that wasn’t your own.

You wrote the “Supernatural” books because it felt like a world that was exciting, with characters that you made up in your mind. You gave up a long time ago about that little dream. Only it was coming true. Maybe. In all honesty, you didn’t know what the hell was going on anymore.

You sat at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee in your hands and Winchester at your feet, happily devouring a pork bone from last night’s dinner. You hadn’t said a single world since you stepped back into your house. You felt like you were on autopilot while you continued on with your usual morning routine. 11:15 was around the time you had the third cup of coffee and gave Winchester his bone as a treat after breakfast. The only thing that was different that two strangers—two people who were a figment of your imagination—were standing in your kitchen.

“I’m having a mental breakdown. It’s the only explanation for what’s going on right now.” You mumbled to yourself, shaking your head as you brought up the cup to your lips to take a drink of the coffee that was still burning hot. You didn’t even flinch when the liquid burned slightly going down your throat. You shut your eyes for a second and inhaled a deep breath, calming yourself before opening them up again. You could feel the tightness remain in your chest you saw them again. Dean leaning against the door frame and Sam resting his hands on the chair. “Oh, God. You’re still there.”

“Yup.”

“You’re not a hallucination.”

“Nope.”

You leaned back in your seat and ran your fingers through your hair. You tried to ignore them for long as you could, pretending you were alone. You tried to keep your eyes away from them, however, you slowly moved your eyes away from the fridge, watching them man from the corner of your eye. Sam Winchester, the man who you had written dozens upon dozens of books about. Standing in your kitchen, staring at you. You staring at him. Your lips stretched into a faint smile, knowing exactly what he’s capable of. Hoping he wouldn’t try and kill you like some sort of monster.

"So, let me get this straight. I write things and they come to life. I mean, if you two are here alive and in the flesh...Oh, God. The things I’ve done.” You found yourself suddenly overwhelmed at the memories of what you wrote from the very first book...up until just an hour ago from when you were disturbed. “The things I put you two through—the physical beatings alone.”

“Yeah, you don’t need to get so choked up about it.” Dean said. “We’re still in one piece.”

“I killed your father. I burned your poor mother alive. And then you had to go through the whole horrific deal with Jessica again.” You apologized for the crappy situation you put them through at the expense of your own personal emotions at the time while writing. Sam didn’t so heartbroken about it as he mumbled your name, trying to get you to focus. But you couldn’t. “All for what? All for the sake of literary symmetry. I toyed with your lives, your emotions, for...entertainment.”

“You didn’t toy with us, Y/N, okay?” Dean said, trying to get the reality of the situation through your mind so you could focus on answering their questions. “You didn’t create us.”

It sounded so easy to think that. But you were freaking out on the inside. You needed to be sure that he was right, that the two men standing in your kitchen were real. Inhaling a deep breath, you pushed yourself up to your feet and gathered all the courage you had and approached the two men. You slowly brought up your hand and...poked Sam right in the chest, feeling flesh and clothes. A human body. You fully expected this, but for some reason, you acted like a small child confronting a monster, jumping slightly in the air. You scrambled back to your seat, avoiding eye contact with the young man from what you had done.

“Okay...you’re really real. Not a figment of my imagination.” You muttered to yourself, suddenly feeling more relieved at the fact that these two men were real. The whole supernatural universe you had created was real. “Did you really have to live through the bugs?”

Sam looked over at his brother from the questions you were asking before he answered, “Yeah.”

“Ooh. That gave me nightmares for days. I don’t know why I thought that...why I even published that piece of crap.” You said, your nose scrunched up slightly from the things your mind was able to come up with all on its own. Only the expression dropped when you thought about another book that was just as terrifying. “Wait. What about the ghost ship?”

“Yes,” Dean answered with a quick response. You could tell from his body language that he was growing agitated from what was going on here, but he was trying his hardest to be calm with you from the way you were acting. But you were too nervous to realize. “That too.”

"Oh. Let me just say this, I am so, so sorry for what I've done. I mean, horror is one thing, but to be forced to live through my bad writing...Eck. Eighteen year old me wasn’t the best. But thanks to you guys, I paid my way through college." You said with a smile at your accomplishment. Neither one of them changed their serious, blank expressions. “Look, if I would have known all of this,” You gestured a hand to them, “Was real, I would have done another pass.”

“Y/N, listen to me. From what I can gather you seem like a sweet, very smart girl.” Dean said. He approached the table where you sat and stood next to his brother. “Believe me when I say you did not create us. Everything you wrote about is real. But you didn’t make it up.”

“What?” You asked, stopping dead in your movement from what you heard. You felt your voice shift into almost a whispering sound, too quiet for you to hear. Everything was happening all at once, too fast for your brain to comprehend the comfortable reality being pulled out from beneath your feet. “So you’re saying...”

“Everything is real. Monsters, angels, demons. All those things you wrote about happened. But you weren’t the one who made it up. You were just the unfortunate sucker who had to see it.” Dean said, giving you the God’s honest truth about was happening. Your eyes moved away from him and to around your kitchen. You didn’t know if you wanted to faint or throw up. “Sorry, kid. It’s a lot to take in. We know.”

You grew up believing monsters were just made up things. They were only real in the sense of your imagination and stories you wrote for entertainment. Turns out you were wrong. The supernatural creatures you thought only lived in books and lore were real. It was under nose this entire time, and you had no clue. Suddenly you felt like you were a character in one of the books you wrote about, the bystander having the talk with Sam and Dean about the supernatural. The world you thought you created.

“So…” You shifted slightly in your seat. “Why the hell have I been dreaming about this?”

“We think you’re probably just psychic.” Sam said. Your brow raised slightly from his presumption, only providing more questions than answers for either one of you. “It seems that somehow, you’re just...focused on our lives.”

“Yeah, like laser-focused.” Dean added. “Are you working on anything right now?”

You nodded your head slowly to answer the man’s question. You were editing a piece you were working on last night before you forced yourself to go to bed when dawn was just a few hours away. You only slept for a few hours, eager to wake up early to continue a routine you slipped into a few months ago after graduating. Writing a story nobody would ever read came a habit of yours because it was a fun way to pass the time, something you could do to forget about your troubles. When you realized what part of the story you were editing, panic fell into your face, making the boys suddenly appear cautious, wondering what was wrong.

“Oh, crap.” You muttered underneath your breath. You pushed yourself up to your feet and went to your office that was just in the next room to fetch the papers you were supposed to be editing. Coming back to the kitchen, you placed down the pages and slid them over to the boys. “The, uh, latest book. It’s, uh, it’s kind of weird.”

“‘Weird’ how?” Sam cautiously asked.

“It’s very...Vonnegut.” You said, giving him a feel of what you were trying to accomplish.

"'Slaughterhouse-five' Vonnegut or 'Cat's Cradle,' Vonnegut?" Dean asked.

You knew exactly what he was going to say. And you knew Sam was going to mumble “What?” in a surprised tone, not expecting such a scholarly guess to come out from his brother's mouth. He thought the man’s only source of reading material outside of lore books were

articles about what frisky woman's favorite activities were. They were good guesses, but he was off. They weren't books, per se, more of a fictional being breaking the fourth wall.

“It’s, uh, ‘Kilgore Trout,’ Vonnegut. I wrote myself into it. I wrote myself, at my house...confronted by my characters.” You said, trying to explain the situation more to yourself at the mess you made. You didn't know what was going on, you didn't know what to process first. Monsters were real. Two people you had been writing about for years were real. They weren't figments of your imagination. You rubbed your eyes in frustration, not seeing the uneasy looks the brothers shared from what was happening. "I need a drink."

+ + +

Dean sat in the almost empty laundromat, the only soul besides his and his brother was an older gentleman folding his darks after pulling them out of the dyer. The older Winchester peered over his shoulder when he read the passage from the newest part of the novel Y/N had been working on. His mind was comprehending the situation he landed himself in. About how meta his life had become. How he was sitting exactly how he was reading it. Every little action. An endless cycle.

“I’m sitting in a laundromat, reading about myself sitting in a laundromat, reading about myself—my head hurts.” Dean stopped himself from trying to comprehend what the hell he was reading anymore. He furrowed his brow slightly when he found his eyes landing onto the part where his supposed fictional self thought about how the writing had slightly improved.

“There’s got to be something this girl’s not telling us.” Sam said.

Dean glanced down back to the papers to read off the passage after his brother repeated word for word from the story. “‘Sam tossed his gigantic darks into the machine. He was starting to have doubts about Y/N, about whether she was telling the whole truth.’”

“Stop it.” Sam warned his brother.

“‘Stop it,’ Sam said.” Dean repeated what his brother said, a smirk curling at the ends of his lips at how easy he was easy to get all riled up. “Guess what you do next.” Sam didn’t say a word, he wouldn’t give his brother satisfaction of being right. Only he was. “‘Sam turned his back on Dean. His face, brooding and pensive.’ I mean, I don’t know how this chick is doing it, but she’s doing it. I can’t see your face, but those are definitely your ‘brooding and pensive’ shoulders.”

Dean looked down at the papers, wondering what was going to come next so he could read it out loud and piss off his brother even more. When he read the next line, it wasn't dialogue, but a personal thought the younger man had. He furrowed his brow when he read a line that wasn’t so nice. “You just thought I was a dick.”

Sam turned around to face his brother, impressed how quick you were. Never missing a beat, never missing an emotion or personal thought one of them had. "She's good."

+ + +

You've written all sorts of different things during the "Supernatural" series. Things from violence to heartbreaking stories that made you shed a few tears, to monsters and side characters you found yourself killing off to keep the plot going. What wasn't in every book was explicit scenes. All out in the open, nothing to leave to the imagination. You added it into a few novels because you felt it was the right mood. And your publisher urged you not to be shy about "letting it all flow to the pages." Sex was just a small part to the scene, Dean sleeping with Cassie, a woman he fell in love with for a few weeks. Sam being intimate with Madison, the first woman he truly loved after his beloved Jess passed away.

You had another dream like that last night after you went to your local liquor store and picked up a bottle of your favorite of wine. You by yourself with a clean glass and drank...and drank until you passed out on your couch, only to wake up with Winchester’s wet nose pressed against your cheek, trying to get you to break out from the deep slumber that took a physical toll on your body after a while. This time when you woke up, you didn’t feel rested, you were emotionally drained from coming to terms with everything. Part of it was the reality of the situation that you were living with the supernatural right under your nose. The other was the disturbing dream—or was it a vision?—you had. You didn’t question what it was. You went straight to your office and wrote everything you remembered down.

Winchester sat on the couch you had been sleeping on previously this morning. He stared at the two men you called over just an hour ago before you managed to get the time to take a quick shower so you didn’t smell like sweat and cheap wine. Your dog was rather friendly being that he was a larger one of the breed. He was friendly to strangers and sociable, he didn't bark at small dogs and listened to any command you gave him. While you fetched the papers from your office, Winchester sat, sat straight at Dean, with a look in his small eyes that made the older man shift uncomfortably in his seat. He was being stared down by a dog.

“Uh, thanks for coming." You emerged from the office and headed to your living room where you told the two men to sit. Dean was on the loveseat and Sam remained standing, leaning himself against the bookshelf with all sorts of novels and framed pictures of your life over the years. “I, uh…” You lifted up the papers to gesture what you were trying to say, but you couldn’t get anything to come out. Not a single word or sound. You found yourself overcome with anxiety as you stared at the two men, the reality of the situation hitting you all over again.

"So..." Sam must've sensed your nervous behavior was making you a sudden mute. He raised his brow slightly and took a guess to what you were trying to say. "You wrote another chapter."

You nodded your head, swallowing down the fear best as you could so you could tell them what you saw. "Sorry." You whispered your apology for behavior that wasn't normally like you. Your lips stretched into a small smile before looking back down at the papers, all before you let out a sigh, knowing how much of an idiot you were acting like right now. "This was all so much easier before you were real.”

“Well, we are. Whatever you got, we can take it.” Dean reassured you. “Just spit it out.”

“Yeah, uh..." You glanced down at the papers, skimming the words you hasty wrote before looking back over at the man. "You especially are not gonna like this."

“I didn’t like hell, kid.” Dean said. “Tell us.”

You let out a sigh and came right out with it, “It’s Lilith. She’s coming for Sam.”

Dean’s expression dropped into shock at the information you told him. The demon that wanted his younger brother's head on a stick, the one who toyed with a poor family's sanity and killed the very man who sat on your very piece of furniture you bought for yourself after moving out. All of it was details, but you knew that she wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. She made it quite clear she wanted the Winchesters out of her way.

“Coming to kill him?”

“When?”

“Tonight.” You answered the younger man’s question first, leaving his brother left to wonder for a moment what was going to happen.

"She's just gonna show up?” Dean asked. “Here?"

You moved your way to the couch to take a seat, Winchester scooched himself closer to you and rested his head on top of your legs, getting himself comfortable like how he would always do. You let out a sigh as you began to flip through the papers to the part that you wrote last night. Clearing your throat, you cringed slightly at what you were about to do and the lack of editing. You didn’t really want to tell them straight out, you felt it was better to read what came to you last night.

“‘Lilith padded the bed seductively. Unable to deny his desire, Sam succumbed, and they sank into the throes of fiery demonic passion.’” You bit your bottom lip from how badly it sounded. You should have just handed them to Dean and let him read it for himself. The man stared at you, a bit lost for his own words at what you read out loud. Sam, however, has no trouble showing his reaction. He let out a loud laugh, thinking all of this was some kind of joke.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Sam asked. Dean looked over at his brother, wondering if he thought this whole situation was funny. "And you don't? I mean, come on. 'Fiery demonic passion'?"

“Don’t need to be rude.” You mumbled, suddenly feeling the need to defend yourself against your wording choice. “It’s just a first draft.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Dean quickly repeated himself. He got a wrong vibe about this situation.

Last time they saw Lilith in the flesh, her meatsuit wasn’t any one a man would desire to spend a night of passion with. “Lilith is a little girl.”

“No, uh, this time she’s a,” You looked down a the paper to remember the new body she chose to try and seduce Sam. “’Comely dental hygienist from Bloomington, Indiana.’”

“Great. Perfect.” Dean spoke between clenched teeth. You swallowed slightly at his reaction. You knew he was pissed at what you told him. “So what happens after the…’fiery demonic’ whatever?”

“I don’t know.” You admitted, shrugging your shoulders. “That hasn't come to me yet.”

"Dean, look, there's nothing to worry about. Lilith and me? In bed?" Sam asked, smiling slightly as he continued to treat this situation like it was all some big joke. He wanted to kill the demon, not spend a night with her. “You seriously believe this crap?”

“She hasn’t been wrong about anything yet.” Dean pointed out.

“And it’s not the first time you slept with a demon…” You found yourself letting out a personal thought out into the open than thinking to yourself. When you heard the room suddenly go quiet, you looked up from the papers to see two sets of eyes on you. Your face dropped slightly in surprise at what you said, not meaning to say that out loud.

“How does this whole psychic thing of yours work?” Dean asked, ignoring your snarky remark that came out of nowhere and Sam’s least bit amused expression.

“It usually starts with a headache. I thought when I first started writing it was just due to stress from what was going on. When it gets too bad, I take this medication that makes me pass out." You explained to them. "The first time it happened, I thought it was just a crazy dream."

“The first time you dreamt about us?” Dean asked, you nodded your head.

"Mmhm. It just...flowed. I wrote the first chapter because the idea wouldn't leave my head. I thought that once I got it out of my system that would be the end of it. I mean, I didn't really stick to a lot of stories at the time." You admitted, shrugging your shoulders. "But it wasn't. I kept having dreams...and I don't know. It felt natural to write it. My parents were the ones who encouraged me to keep going and to publish the books. So I did. The dreams never stopped coming to me. Writing was the only thing that felt right to do with it.”

Sam, who was listening to every word that you said, found it a little funny that you had a personal meaning behind what you did. You looked over at him when he stood there with a smile stretched across his lips. You narrowed your eyes on him when he thought you were full of crap. "You can't seriously believe—"

“Humor me.” Dean cut off his little brother. He pushed himself up to his feet and decided to try and come up with a plan that everyone could agree with. “Look, why don’t we just…” You raised your arm with the papers of the newest part of the story when Dean walked your way. He stopped when he realized what you did. You gave him a smile when he grabbed them. “Take a look at these and see what’s what. You—”

“Knew you were gonna ask for that.” You finished his sentence. You saw Dean’s tongue press itself against this cheek, trying not to make a remark about how weird that was. “Yeah.”

You let out a quiet sigh as you looked down at Winchester, your hand subconsciously running your fingers through his long fur at the situation that was going on. He let out a low whine and snuggled himself closer like he was trying to comfort you, as if he could sense the anxiety rushing through your mind. Fiction was reality. Reality was fiction. You leaned back against the couch, attempting not to have an anxiety attack from what was going on...at least not in front of the boys. You’d wait until they left for you to do that.

[Next Part]

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zoemurph · 7 years

Text

dewey decimals

on ao3

i was doing a close reading assignment the other night and i started thinking about connor as an english major and then i started thinking about connor as a librarian and now im here

enjoy this and also my opinions on wuthering heights

Connor loves books.

He does, no matter what look Larry gives him whenever he locks himself in his room to read for a few hours. Larry probably thinks he’s getting high. Okay yes, sometimes he’s just getting high. But he also reads.

It’s cliche as fuck, but books are the best friends Connor’s got. They can’t hate him or judge him or abandon him. They’re just there. Plus it’s pretty morbid to sometimes think about how they’re insights to the minds of people who are dead.

So yeah, Connor likes books. He likes classics and gothic novels and young adult lit and middle grade books. He doesn’t really get book snobs, because there are shitty books in every genre. He tries to give all books a try.

Except Twilight. Zoe went through a Twilight phase. Fuck Twilight.

Loving books means that he should probably like his job more than he does. But he doesn’t love it. Because being a part time librarian is boring as shit.

All Connor has gotten from this experience is minimum wage and the ability to alphabetize things relatively fast.

Libraries are not active places. They just sort of exist. If Connor were anything like his father — and the day they become alike at all is the day he jumps out a window — he would say that libraries were dying because everyone was too focused on technology these days or something. Which is partially true, but the local library also…sucks.

They don’t get new books quickly, the computers they do have are old as fuck, and everything is slightly dusty. Which is just annoying, because Connor literally dusts on a weekly basis. It’s part of his job. Where the fuck is this dust coming from? They may be right across from the high school, but most high schoolers have better things to do than sit in a dimly lit library for a few hours. Like getting high behind McDonald’s.

Most of Connor’s job is cleaning. Which is ironic because his room is a travesty. But as boring as it is, there’s something weirdly calming about shelving books. There’s a nice routine in pushing the cart through the shelves, making sure all the books are in the right order, pushing them all up to the right part of the shelf so they’re all perfectly aligned.

Sometimes the head librarian misplaces the duster. That switches things up.

Once all the books are reshelved and the shelves are straightened and dusted, Connor makes himself comfortable at the front desk. On slow days like this (but who is he kidding, every day is a slow day), he just sits at the desk and reads a random book until someone needs to check out books or needs help. Usually he’s kind of shit about the help part, but he’s getting better.

Some of the more elderly visitors like him, they find him charming or something. Entertaining maybe. Suburban mothers judge him for having his combat boots up on the desk. They also judge him for his hair and his piercings and the fact that he hasn’t worn a color other than black in two years. They literally keep their children away from him as long as they can. It’s more amusing than insulting, besides, kids think his hair is fucking awesome.

But almost no one is in the library today. It’s one of the slowest days they’ve had in weeks, which means Connor is able to get comfortable in the old desk chair and ignore all the other happenings of the world for much longer than usual.

Today, he’s reading Wuthering Heights. It’s for class, but he doesn’t hate it so that’s an improvement from the last book they were assigned. Supposedly it’s a romance but Connor isn’t seeing it. Some girl in his english class is trying to convince them all that it is, but whenever she brings it up, Connor just flips back to the page where Heathcliff breaks into Catherine’s coffin to see her dead body.

Sexy.

He tugs on his hair as he squints at the page, trying to see any sort of romance in any of these relationships. It all kind of just sucks.

“E-excuse me?”

Connor looks up without lowering his book. Libraries aren’t known for their customer service, right? “Can I help you?” he asks flatly.

“I-I…” The boy furrows his eyebrows and pulls on his sweatshirt. “There’s a book I’m— looking for a book.”

“Cool.”

“Uh… I’m…”

Connor sighs and puts down his book, marking the page with a sticky note. “Is there a specific book, because you can look it up on the computers.” He jerks his head toward the old machines that everyone pretends aren’t five years out of date.

The boy stares at him with wide eyes. “H-how?”

Connor stares right back at him, expression blank. “I’m sorry, how?”

“I-I know how to use a computer!” he says quickly. “I just don’t know how to use those and I kept getting weird pop up messages and then something happened and I think maybe one of them timed out but I don’t really understand what I’m doing and I think I actually might’ve broken the middle one because it started making a weird noise and—”

“That thing is a fuc— freaking dinosaur,” Connor interrupts, catching himself on the swear and glancing over to the children’s section. No one’s here right now, but moms are like hawks. It’d be just his luck for one of them to swoop in and get him fired for swearing. “It’s impossible to break but if it’s broken it’s because it’s old as…crap.” He leans back in his chair. “Just follow the instructions.”

Connor moves to pick his book back up. The boy does not move.

Shit. He’s going to be one of those people.

“Do you need me to show you?” Connor asks, trying to sound like he doesn’t hate life too much.

The boy jerks away. “N-no! It’s fine I’ve got this I just have to, um, figure it out quickly and then I think I should be able to get it but I just don’t want to break anything because if I do I might have to pay for it but I don’t actually think I can do that because computers are expensive and then not only will I not have my book but also I—”

Connor stands and the boy stops talking, shrinking away. Connor blinks. Holy fuck he’s a lot taller than this kid than he initially thought. “Do you need me to show you?” he asks. The faster this kid gets his book, the faster Connor can go back to reading.

“Yes,” the boy says shaking his head no. “I-I mean—!”

Connor sighs and steps around the desk. “Let me just…” He leads him to the computers and doesn’t even bother sitting down. He bends over and clicks the mouse a few times until the monitor wakes up. “What are you looking for?”

“A-a book for class,” the boy sputters. He digs through his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, holding out the crumpled page to Connor.

Connor resists the urge to roll his eyes, smoothing it out on the desk and skimming over it before turning back to the computer. He inputs all the information, the book sounds familiar to him which is promising, and then lets the piece of shit they call a computer load.

The boy just awkwardly hovers next to him as he works.

If Connor were better at his job he’d probably, like, explain this process. So next time, the kid can do it himself. But he’s not.

“We have it,” Connor says when the page finally loads. He turns to the boy. “Can you find it with this info or…” he drawls. He really wants to sit back down.

The boy steps a little closer and squints at the screen. He smells like cinnamon and something else that Connor can’t name but knows smells nice and this is creepy and he needs to stop immediately. “Is— um…” He tilts his head.

Connor raises his eyebrows at him. “It’s a science book. So it’s shelved using the Dewey Decimal System. Do you…?”

He stares at Connor with wide and terrified eyes. Yeah that was what Connor thought. “Follow me,” he mutters. The library isn’t big. It’s almost directly proportional to the size and quality of their town. So small and shitty. But if you don’t know your way around it is a little confusing. The labeling is bad and Connor still hates the Dewey Decimal System, even after working here for over a year.

He glances down at the boy, who’s trailing slightly behind him. He looks…familiar. “Do you go to school here?” he asks, gesturing vaguely toward where the high school probably is maybe. Usually Connor hates small talk, but this is bugging him.

The boy looks up with a start. “Y-yeah,” he says, getting the gist of Connor’s strange hand motions. “I’m a, uh, senior. There. Yeah.”

Connor slows his strides to study him carefully. Admittedly, Connor doesn’t pay much attention to anything in school, but most of the people in this town are born here and die here. He notices the collar of a shirt under the boy’s sweatshirt and it snaps into place. “Evan Hansen, right?”

Evan stops walking. “Ye-yeah? I’m not— you know who I am?”

“Vaguely,” Connor says dryly. He doesn’t think they’ve ever had any classes together and Evan isn’t exactly a memorable person. “I haven’t had a reason to.” “F-fair.”

“You know me, though.”

“I never said that!” Evan blurts out.

Connor looks at him with raised eyebrows. “Are you telling me you haven’t heard rumors about me.”

Evan pulls on the strings of his sweatshirt. “I-I never said that either. I just meant—”

Connor crosses his arms.

Evan ducks his head. “Okay yeah but I wasn’t going to… I should shut up now.”

Connor shakes his head. “Come on, let’s get your book. Who do you need it for?” He still hates small talk, but now he feels obligated. Fuck.

“AP Environmental Science,” Evan mumbles. “With Ele— Ms. Daniels.”

“Isn’t that the fake AP class?” Connor asks. He stops walking and skims the shelves. He sees Evan turning pink out of the corner of his eye.

“I-I mean… Yeah everyone kind of treats it that way so I guess it is but it could be more interesting if people actually tried and we get to go on field trips to like forests and stuff and it’s, um, I mean not fun but... It could be…worse?”

Connor pulls the book off the shelf and turns to hand it to Evan. “That’s cool.” He surprises himself by genuinely meaning it. He’s not super into the ideas of the outdoors, bugs can go fuck themselves, but it sounds like a chill class. Anything to get out of the hell hole that is their high school.

Evan takes the book and laughs awkwardly. “You’d be the first to think that, it’s a joke.”

Connor shrugs. “So is life.”

“I…guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Evan glances down to the floor, smiling a little.

Connor clears his throat and shakes his bangs out of his eyes. “Do you need anything else or do you want me to just check you out?”

“Please,” Evan says, his voice almost a squeak.

Connor leads Evan back to the front desk, grabbing a few misplaced books as he does so. Those will have to be reshelved before he leaves later. He takes the book back from Evan and Evan’s library card, scanning it and printing out the receipt.

“We got rid of the index card things,” Connor explains, grabbing his sticky note out of Wuthering Heights and flipping the book upside down. It’s not his book. Who cares if the spine breaks. “The due date is just on the receipt but honestly it’s shitty and easier to forget. So here.” He writes the due date on the sticky note and pauses for just a second before scribbling down ten digits in slightly messier handwriting. He sticks it on the inside cover before he can change his mind. “Here. You’ve got two weeks without renewal or we fine you some money because we need to make money somehow.”

“T-thanks.” Evan takes the book and opens the cover, checking the date. He frowns. “Wh-what’s that one?” He tilts the book so Connor can see what he’s pointing at.

“Haven’t you seen a phone number before?” Connor asks, raising an eyebrow.

Evan’s ears go red. “O-oh! That’s…” He ducks his head, but Connor catches the ghost of a smile. “Th-thank you I…yeah! I’ll uh…see you around? I guess?”

“In case you need help finding a book or something,” Connor says with a shrug.

“O-or something,” Evan repeats. “I’ll see you in school.” He smiles at Connor quickly before rushing out the double glass doors.

Connor grabs Wuthering Heights off the desk and hides his face in it. He’s almost smiling and if anyone sees him smiling that’ll definitely wreck his reputation as the grumpy emo librarian. He doesn’t manage to read any more of the book in the remaining hour of his shift, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s got a better romance, anyway.

#connor murphy #evan hansen #convan #tree bros #dear evan hansen #my fics

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just-french-me-up · 7 years

Text

Triptych

Enjoltaire Week | Day 1 | Painting

Summary: Three portraits are discovered in a hidden cellar in Paris, all three dating back from the nineteenth century. What's weird is that the man in the portraits looks an awful lot like Enjolras. What's weirder is that the paintings are all signed "R."

Tags: Modern AU; Reincarnation AU; Rated G

Word count: 3.5k

READ ON AO3

"Remind me why anyone would choose to watch what is considered to be the worst movie in history?"

Enjolras sat on the couch and balanced a huge bowl of popcorn on his lap. Courfeyrac's picks for movie night were usually more mainstream and understandable. Well. As understandable as romantic comedies could be, but at least they didn't require much brain activity. At least it allowed Enjolras to switch off his brain and shove handfuls of popcorn into his mouth while wondering how heteronormativity and dumb misunderstandings had become such crowd-pullers.

"That's because it's an experience!" Courfeyrac argued, slumping on the couch next to Enjolras and seriously compromising the balance of the popcorn bowl. "As your best friend, I just can't let you die a Room virgin!"

"What's so great about it, anyway?"

"Everything! The acting is so bad! It's like... You know how people say that if you let monkeys in a room full of typewriters the monkey would eventually end up rewriting Shakespeare? Well switch the monkeys with aliens who only have a vague idea of how human interactions work and you've got The Room! It's flipping fantastic!"

Enjolras shrugged. The enjoyment of intrinsically bad media was beyond him.

"There are some really interesting studies about trash movies and their ironical audience, actually," Combeferre chimed in as he joined them in the living room. He brought heavy-looking pizza plates that he settled on the coffee table before settling next to Courfeyrac. "Something about collectively liking something so bad that it gets good."

"Exactly!" Courfeyrac exclaimed, triumphant. "So sit back and brace yourself for this absolute masterpiece."

He switched on the TV and started rummaging through the pile of DVDs to find the right one. Automatically, the first channel popped up on screen. The news were still on and a generic news anchor looked at the three of them in the eyes.

"Wait," Enjolras said before Courfeyrac could switch on the DVD player.

"And tonight we come back on an incredible discovering in Paris earlier today," the news anchor announced, "when three paintings were discovered in a cellar in the Latin Quarter. The three works of art allegedly date back from the nineteenth century and predate the Haussmanian renovations of the capital. For more on this story, we go to Olivier Barron in the Latin Quarter, Olivier?"

The three paintings appeared on screen. Silence fell on the living room, leaving nothing but the artificial chatter of the television. In his seat, Enjolras turned to stone.

"-Twitter already rushed to title the works names such as 'Apollo in Red'-"

"Enjolras..."

That jaw line. That nose. The same eye colour. Enjolras' throat tightened. A cold shiver ran down his spine.

"Holy shit," Courfeyrac whispered. "Enj, it's you!"

Enjolras shuffled some papers around, trying to get his hands on notes he had written down the night before, somewhere around his third cup of coffee o'clock. There were some points about the upcoming the labour reform he really wanted to discuss during the meeting, if only he could find the damn thing. A pat on his shoulder took him by surprise.

"I think you're looking for this," Combeferre said, handing him the very notes he was looking for. "I forgot to tell you I took it. I just added a few remarks."

'A few remarks' in Combeferre's vocabulary entailed enthusiastic and colourful highlighting and additional notes scribbled in the margins that were illegible, including to Combeferre himself. Still, two minds were better than one, and Combeferre's mind was an undeniable asset. Enjolras took the revised notes with a smile.

"Thanks, I'll read though them."

Combeferre nodded and took his seat between Courfeyrac and Feuilly. Enjolras was the only one standing at this point, towering over his notes and the various things he had brought with him. The chatter began to fade. They all turned their attention towards him. The meeting officially begun.

"Okay, guys, so I thought we could start things off with some details about the labour reform and how―"

"Er-Sorry," Courfeyrac cut off, "but aren't we going to talk about the fact that they found paintings that look exactly like Enjolras?"

His remark was met with a few raised eyebrows and confused looks. Enjolras nervously raked a hand through his hair. Courfeyrac had not let this go since the night before.

"Oh come on! It was all over the news! Didn't you see it?"

"Courf, I don't think it's―"

It was already too late. All the others had already taken their phones out. Enjolras stood there awkwardly while they checked the news, and even more awkwardly when their eyes went from the screens to him in shock. Joly's jaw dropped.

"Oh my god, Enjolras, it is you!" he exclaimed.

"There's even the mole on your shoulder!" Bahorel added.

"See? It's him, I'm telling you!"

Emboldened by the number of allies on his side, Courfeyrac started listing the similarities between the painting and Enjolras, much to the latter's dismay. Why did it matter? Maybe he had a nineteenth-century look alike who had the same mole at the same place. So what? Enjolras let out a long sigh that was immediately drowned in the voices rising from the table. He shared a look with Combeferre, who picked up on his mood.

"Okay, but can we try to focus on the meeting?" Combeferre tried, rushing to Enjolras' rescue.

Almost like reprimanded students, the rest of les Amis sat back properly on their chairs and quietened down. Enjolras nodded in Combeferre's direction as a 'thank you'.

"So, as I was saying―"

"It's signed R," Feuilly said, deadpan.

"What?"

"It's signed 'R.'," he repeated. "It written right here, 'all three works are signed by the same hand, an unknown painter only identified by the letter R.' R. Like Grantaire."

There was electricity in the air. All eyes turned towards Grantaire, who looked as stunned as the rest of them. The room grew suddenly silent.

"What?" Grantaire asked, shuffling uncomfortably on his chair.

"I mean, you have to admit it's weird," Bossuet said.

Grantaire pointedly avoided looking at Enjolras in the eyes, running his hand through his curls. That was a lot of coincidences, even for Enjolras. For a second, his mind when for outlandish scenarios about how Grantaire could have planted those paintings there for whatever reason, before his logic took over. No. That cellar had been buried underground for more than a century. There was no way for Grantaire to know it was there! And experts had already dated the paintings!

Enjolras cleared his voice.

"Grantaire, did you somehow go back in time to paint me before abandoning those paintings in a random cellar?"

Grantaire snorted.

"No."

"That's what I thought," Enjolras said, giving Courfeyrac a meaningful look. "Now, if that's settled, can we go back to the labour reform and how it's going to affect us all?"

The rest of the meeting went without a hitch, with the usual amount of wits, snark, and dedication Enjolras cherished in his friends. Joly had been in charge of writing down all the ideas and suggestions for them to use as a starting point the following week. All in all, an evening well spent.

They all lingered in the backroom of the Musain for a while, talking about more casual topics while they stacked the chairs against the wall. The room emptied slowly. Enjolras was putting his things away in his satchel when Jehan came up to him.

"Hey. Can we talk?"

They looked a little hesitant. Enjolras smiled at them in an attempt to put them at ease.

"Sure. What's up?"

"It's about that thing with the paintings."

Oh. Clearly something in his expression had changed, because Jehan rushed to add:

"Just hear me out. It's just―Listen, okay? Is it okay if we sit?"

Enjolras nodded and sat on one of the few remaining chair. Jehan took another and sat across from him. They looked very serious, all of a sudden.

"Okay, so when I was in highschool, I participated in that poetry contest my school organised every year. So I wrote my poem and submitted it, but it was denied. Plagiarism. Even though I'd written it all myself. I didn't get it, so I asked what the original poem was from, just to see it for myself. It was from an old poetry collection from the nineteenth century, a book that had been sleeping in the Parisian archives for decades. And my poem was in there. Word for word. And the rest of the book was just... me. My style. It was like an out of body experience."

Enjolras listened intentely. He didn't know what to think about it. It was too weird. Stuff like that... It was only weird coincidences, right? What was it that Courfeyrac said about monkeys and typewriters? Still, he could not deny the sick feeling weighing on his stomach.

"Do you know who wrote the poetry collection?"

Jehan shook their head.

"I asked, but the people at the archives just told me it was seized propriety from someone who had committed treason. Then maybe someone deemed the poetry good enough to archive it. There was no name on it. The last poem was written in 1832, and the pages are all blank, so I guess the poet was arrested around that time."

"Sounds like a free thinker," Enjolras smiled. "Maybe you have more in common than poetry. So you think it's a similar thing? That it's a coincidence?"

"I don't know," Jehan sighed. "But it's weird, right? I mean surely it means something. Stuff like that wouldn't randomly pop up unless there was an explanation behind it, even if it's not a scientific one."

That where Jehan differed from Enjolras. While Jehan accepted the metaphysical and the paranormal as a natural aspect of life, Enjolras' mind favoured more rational interpretations. It was weird, for sure. But people simply did not exist in two timelines. That didn't happen. They would know about it by now if it existed.

Enjolras rubbed his neck. It was stiff from staying up too late doing research on that fucking labour reform.

"I don't know what to tell you, Jehan. It's just beyond my understanding, you know? Maybe someone really looked like me, two hundred years ago. It happens. People have look alike, even today. As for the poem... I just don't know."

Jehan smiled at him softly and rubbed his shoulder.

"It's getting late, Enj'. Courf and Ferre are waiting for you. Get some rest, okay?"

"Thanks, Jehan. I'll try."

When Enjolras went to bed that night, he dreamt of a book of blank pages, and when he looked down, he had a rose in his breast pocket. The colour had bled onto his shirt, and the stain kept growing, and growing, and growing.

When he woke up, he could still smell a hint of gunpowder.

The following days were spend avoiding the news, which was highly inconvenient because a) Enjolras liked to keep himself informed and b) you never know how much news exposure there is until you try to avoid it. Enjolras just couldn't bear to see his face on the screen, or whoever's face it was. It freaked him out. It would have freaked anyone out. He didn't even know how Jehan coped with the fact that there was a book out there that mirrors their lyricism.

Eventually, he resorted to studying in his room, in the hope of avoiding the clutter of thoughts that raged in his mind. It's nothing, his reason kept telling him. In two centuries, at least two people were bound to look alike.

Still, he couldn't focus. He kept rereading the same sentence from his textbook over and over, none of it making much sense to a very noisy mind. Frustrated, Enjolras snapped the book closed and leant back against his chair. On his desk, his laptop was open on the google search page. He hesitated. Reason held back his hand, but another voice whispered to his ear. What if there was really something going on? Curiosity killed the cat, reason retorted. Enjolras took a deep breath.

Fuck it.

A quick search informed him that the paintings were being studied by experts in Paris, so that they could properly date it. A website had uploaded close up photographs of details, ranging from the golden laurel wreath crowning the model's head to his beauty marks. An uncomfortable feeling weighed on Enjolras' stomach. Even the details were uncanny.

The signature was studied under every angle, with matching hypothesis about who the painter could have been according to the loop of the R. People had really spent time on this. Enjolras was a stranger to art history and discoveries, so perhaps those paintings were a gold mine for people who worked in that field. Perhaps it was their Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun's tomb moment.

He went back to the google homepage and typed "1832 France." The first results mentioned something about a cholera epidemic. Enjolras kept scrolling until something caught his eye. Republican Insurrection in Paris, 1832. Jean Maximilien Lamarque. He clicked the wikipedia link and started reading. Barricades, students, National Guard, Faubourg Saint-Martin... His eyes were glued to the screen.

That's something I could see myself participate in, Enjolras thought, before the uneasy feeling overwhelmed him again. That event felt too close for comfort. Yet, Enjolras kept on reading.

A knock on the door made him jump. He almost knocked his chair over, and himself with it. The sky had gone dark outside, and Enjolras's eyes had the greatest difficulty to adjust to the darkness. Someone switched the lights on.

"Are you okay?" Combeferre's voice asked.

"Yeah. I've just been staring at the screen for too long," Enjolras said, rubbing his eyes.

Though blurry, his vision got slightly better. For one thing, he could see Combeferre standing by the door. He was holding steaming mug in each of his hands.

"Is that coffee?"

"Infusion, actually," Combeferre smiled. "I came to see if you wanted one. You've been in here for hours, we were starting to get a little worried."

"I'm fine. I was just reading stuff."

Enjolras scratched his scalp and lifted his arm to accept Combeferrre's plant water. It wasn't coffee, but he had to admit he was parched. Combeferre sat on the bed next to him.

"Anything interesting?"

"Just history stuff. Very educational."

Enjolras closed the various tabs he had opened on the June Rebellion, accidentally missing the one about the three paintings. "Apollo in Red." The name seemed to have stuck.

"I thought you weren't interested in those," Combeferre pointed out, taking a sip out of his mug.

"I don't. I mean, I do but it's not... It's weird, right? I keep telling myself that it's not weird and that those kind of coincidences happen all the time, but it's still weird."

"Well it doesn't happen every day, that's for sure."

There was a moment of silence during which Enjolras sighed and dragged his hand across his face. His mind was buzzing.

"You look like you could use a break," Combeferre said, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. "Come. Courf is making dinner."

Enjolras nodded slowly. Maybe he did need a break. He followed Combeferre to the kitchen, holding his warm mug against his chest. In his room, Apollo in Red shone in the dark.

A few weeks passed. Enjolras still heard about Apollo in Red here and there, but it was quickly replaced by other, fresher stories. His heart still made a double back-flip when he heard that the experts had situated the completion of the pieces around the 1820s early 1830s. After that, he did his best to direct his mind towards the future to avoid dwelling on the distant past. Whatever happened to that sitter or the poet of Jehan's book, they were long gone. There was no time like the present.

Yet, in spite of his best efforts, Enjolras couldn't seem to escape the past. One morning, Courfeyrac presented him with a museum ticket, sliding the piece of paper across the breakfast bar.

"Thank you?" he said, a little confused. And sleepy.

"They're putting the paintings on display today," Courfeyrac explained. "Now you can see them from up close."

Enjolras' gaze went from Courfeyrac to the ticket. It was too early for this. He didn't even know if he wanted to be awake right now.

"Or you can just go to the museum after class," Courfeyrac shrugged, since Enjolras hadn't said anything. "For fun. Or whatever you go to museums for. Elevate your understanding of humanity, or some shit."

Enjolras let out a hoarse chuckle in his mug.

"I guess I'll consider that as a cultural outing. Thanks, Courf."

He carried the ticket around in his wallet for the rest of the day. By the end of it, Enjolras had forgotten up to its existence. It's only when he looked for his métro pass that he noticed the piece of paper stuck between his ID and his insurance card. The museum was only three stations away. For a minute, Enjolras stood there, debating whether or not he wanted to dive head first into the uncanny and the unexplainable. He looked at his watch. The museum was closing in an hour. The past can't hurt you, he thought as he got into the coach, waiting through the three stations.

There weren't as many people at the museum as he had expected. Perhaps because closing hour was slowly but surely ticking by. Enjolras didn't need to look for the painting for long. They had made sure to guide people right to the jewel of the exhibition. As Enjolras entered the oval room where the paintings were kept, his attention wasn't directed to the paintings, but to a familiar face, standing a few yards away.

Grantaire.

Enjolras' heart did a somersault. There was something about seeing Grantaire here, right next to Apollo in Red, but Enjolras couldn't quite pin point it. One of his hands held nervously on to the strap of his satchel as he came closer.

"Hey," he said, trying to sound casual, though the atmosphere didn't quite work in his favour. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Well, apparently I painted these, so I thought I might as well go and see them. My first exhibition. It's a very emotional moment."

Enjolras could tell he was joking, or endeavouring to. Maybe that's how he dealt with the uncanny and the unexplainable. On the wall, one of the paintings stared back at him. It was like looking in a mirror, but with a 180 year reflection delay. Enjolras lowered his eyes, stared down by his own image.

"Did Jehan tell you about their poem? The one that got denied for their poetry contest?"

Grantaire nodded, still looking at the paintings.

"Do you really thing it's remotely possible that this is me?"

"Maybe," Grantaire shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because it doesn't exist! It just doesn't happen like that. There's no way that could be me. I'm me, I am one person."

Voicing all the thoughts and doubts that had been reeling in his mind for so long felt liberating, though he had to keep his tone in check. Grantaire smirked at him.

"Now who's the skeptic, Apollo?"

"You can't be serious. It doesn't make sense."

"We're on a blue ball adrift in the universe, rotating around a giant ball of fire that will swallow us all one day. Nothing makes sense. Me painting you almost two centuries ago makes more sense than that."

Enjolras opened his mouth, but realised he had nothing to say to that. Yes. Maybe things didn't make sense. Maybe trying to make sense of it didn't make sense. He took a couple steps back and sat on a plastic bench. Grantaire followed him.

"So what if this is actually me? What does that mean?"

Grantaire shrugged.

"We may never know. But I have to say, my shading game was on point on that one."

"It's very beautifully done indeed," Enjolras agreed, giving him an amused look.

"Thank you."

"So that means we were close, right? If I sat for one of your pieces. Well. Three of your pieces."

He didn't really know if he was joking in all good fun or actually talking seriously anymore. For some reason, it felt right.

"Close enough for you to accept being drapped naked in a red sheet. It'd say that's pretty fucking close."

"How close?"

"Very close."

As close as they were now. Enjolras realised his hand was almost touching Grantaire's. To his own surprise, he found that he didn't mind it. On the contrary. That too, felt right.

"How much do you know about the June Rebellion?" Enjolras asked.

"What I've read online, why?"

"Well, I thought maybe you'd like to hear about it. It's all fascinating stuff. Maybe around a coffee, or something?"

He barely recognised the chirp in his own voice. Grantaire looked at him, as though he couldn't believe the words Enjolras had uttered. His face softened a second later.

"Yeah. Coffee sounds nice."

#les miserables #enjoltaire #enjoltaireweek2017 #exrweek2017 #enjolras #grantaire #exr #granjolras #written stuff #mine #les mis fic #les miserables fanfiction #les mis #les amis #courfeyrac #combeferrre #jehan #the ending is open because of course they fall in love #the luv

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firedingo · 7 years

Text

Some Thoughts & An Update To Me, Myself & My Evil Twin Depression

So I just discovered I have many unfinished draft posts........yeah I should sort that out :/

So this one is what helped me work out I had so many unfinished posts. Feeling like shit and thought, you know what let’s write a post, especially as I have updates I can share.

So as you may have gained from other posts, I have Depression and it has kicked my butt for more than a decade I think. Eventually I started fighting back against it but several unhindered years let my Depression get a good foothold D:

I should start at the beginning. First, How does a depressive episode start for me?

Well it first starts with a feeling of being unwell. You know how you can tell when you have the flu or something before you show symptoms? Well it’s a bit like that only I feel unwell like something is wrong but I’m not sure what. Often I can’t concentrate and I might seem fine but internally it’s like a level of uneasiness has settled.

After that I start feeling like my head is really really full. Like someone packed it with every item in the world and there’s no space left. I may also notice my body feeling a little tense.

Often I get teary and sometimes I get fussy like I can’t settle, normally I get fussy because I’m hungry but sometimes I get fussy because a depressive episode is beginning.

If you take a look at this page on Stress you might notice a lot of the signs I’m describing are listed. I’ve started theorizing that unconsciously I recognize the feeling of being unwell as a sign of an impending depressive episode, naturally I don’t want to be depressed, this causes me to become stressed in response because I can rarely if ever head off or stop a depressive episode from happening. I think this in some ways actually helps bring on the depressive episode more, but anyway.

After that I often have thoughts that I barely notice before they’re gone. Thoughts like:

You know no one can help you

There’s no one around you can talk to, might as well accept there’s nothing I can do

I’m hopeless at everything

I’m a failure

No one cares about me

You can get the picture, the thoughts just progressively snowball and if I wasn’t crying before I certainly am by now. I’m usually noticing I feel a sense of pain as well. Like it feels like my whole body aches but it’s not physical. I kinda wish it was as I handle physical pain really damn good.

If the pain, sadness and sense of being overwhelmed continues I’ve noticed my view shifts from I want this pain to stop and I would cut myself or kill myself to stop it to everything is pointless and I’m going to adopt a nihilistic view.

I already struggle to find value, meaning and purpose in life. To me everything feels old, nothing feels new or interesting. I feel like I’m constantly walking in someone else’s shadow so I often think what’s the point? Hardly surprising that type of view shifts to a very nihilistic view.

It’s usually at this point that the people closest to me walk away. Some temporarily, some forever. Recently I ended up very nihilistic in my view and the person I was talking to straight up went offline after telling me to fuck off and come back when my view had changed.

In my state of mind at the time this sent me spiraling, I thought I’ve finally sent the person I trusted the most packing, I thought I’m such a screw up, such a fuck up! I thought killing myself was only fitting for such the fuck up I was. I was lucky there was nothing at hand that I could find that could hurt me. Right then and there I was not afraid to kill myself.

Honestly, I don’t want to die but I’m not afraid of dying. I have tried to seriously kill myself twice before. Once I overdosed and went to hospital, another time I tried to hang myself. On both occasions I felt a sense of calm once I made the decision.

Despite seriously trying on those two occasions, I’ve tried to put into motion a plan maybe 5 or 7 times before. It’s hard to say want to hang yourself when you have no rope and all the shops are shut, or you want to cut your wrists but every knife is so fucking blunt it couldn’t cut paper let alone a human.

I suppose I was lucky on those occasions that I was unable to implement the plan I had. Despite that, on those times when I did try, especially when I overdosed I was lucky people called for help for me.

The more I dig into all this the more I peel back the layers and at the same time the more I realise how truly fucking complex my depression is. Now I’m not an expert by any means but recently I was pointed at a group focusing on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The person who showed me this group believes this could apply to my mother.

At first I wasn’t really sure, even now I’m not 100% sure but I do see an awful lot of match ups between my mother and traits of a narcissist. When I first started seeing my current psychologist Nicole she talked about Schema Therapy and I filled out a questionnaire. It came back with an almost resounding abandoned child schema.

When I think about the traits a narcissist has, some of the things I say like “I feel so alone” and that questionnaire’s result, I start to realise that maybe it’s all connected. Maybe someone tried to stack the deck against me for a turn of phrase.

I suppose it makes sense why talking and medication didn’t seem to help when I was at home or when I was on campus at university. I think part of the problem lies with my family and part of it lies with me. Yes removing my family can help but I think the damage done to me is enough to cause problems on its own regardless of my family.

CBT or Cognitive Behavior Therapy focuses on helping people develop coping strategies to deal with distorted thoughts, negative emotions and maladaptive behaviours. The thought being thoughts lead to emotions which lead to behaviours.

For example Thought: “I’m ugly, why would anyone think I’m pretty?”, Emotion: Feeling sad and low energy and unmotivated, Behaviour: Avoids personal self-care like bathing and eating.

As you can see that cycle is self-feeding. The problem I have is often my start is not an emotion or a feeling. Sometimes I feel like there’s a pit of darkness in my chest or as I did earlier feel like I’m unwell but not really sure why.

When I feel like there’s a pit of darkness in my chest I start to wring my hands and become quite a bit more obviously unsettled. I start getting distressed because I can feel myself feeling worse and worse. Before long I’m crying and then the thoughts begin.

But if the start point for me is a feeling in my chest or general sense of being unwell, then is talking or medication suppose to help me? Don’t get me wrong, CBT still taught me how to not make a bad situation worse but it didn’t teach me how to stop a near weekly depressive episode from happening. It didn’t teach me how to short circuit the episode once it has begun in order to stop it causing me harm.

The closest I’ve come to either of these two answers is sleep. Sleep is weird, Sleep can singlehandedly transform me from a person who was actively thinking about killing themselves into a perfectly functional human being in 12 hours. I don’t know why and I can’t explain how but sleep has never made me feel worse. Either I wake up the next day about the same, slightly better or 100% better.

Nothing else I have ever done has ever had quite the effect that sleep does. I can’t explain it, it’s honestly like a profound miracle. The closest to that I’ve come is being half out of it and feeling a presence near me. After that I woke up and felt numb, not a bad numb, just numb like someone turned the page and now I’m a blank slate again. It probably had half the effect sleep sometimes has.

If you have any thoughts I’d love to hear them. I’m on a quest to either find a cure for myself or at least find all the understanding possible so I can find a way to mitigate the hold Depression has over my life right now. At the moment I’m stuck, I can’t go back and although I want to go forward, I’m unable to. I have to find a way to break the deadlock that is my Depression, this is the one thing I truly am sure of!

#blog #depression #thoughts #narcissism #mental health #update

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