#can we maybe like. be open to more than one specific interpretation of things? is that possible??

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

"If you had a happy childhood of course you don't find the movie scary and find it rather boring. "

"if you didn't experience abuse it isn't scary for you"

these takes are driving me bonkers I had a perfectly normal childhood with no abuse or trauma and that movie scared the pants off me. I have a thing about audio/visual distortion. also liminality. also I liked to stay up way too late as a kid. also everything scared me as a kid because I have a very anxious personality. not trauma just like... I definitely felt Unsettled in a place that still dissonantly felt Safe as a kid and it wasn't due to any trauma or neglect or abuse. I had a good childhood and Skinamarink still terrified me.

[alexanderwales]

The high-level prophecy interpreters all worked for the government or major corporations. They were the ones with the money, and the ones most likely to be the subject of a prophecy. Sometimes you'd have a multi-billionaire hire on a prophecy interpreter, but usually they just had one on retainer. The same went for celebrities who were famous enough to attract significant prophecies.

But at the lower level, there were prophecy interpreters who opened up their own firms, usually just one or two if they weren't in a major city. That was me: I had gotten in prophecy interpretation in college and ended up majoring in it after the Kepler Incident. I had my name on bus stops and billboards, and a single secretary in my employ who thankfully handled most of the phone calls.

In the field we sometimes divide the business up into three sectors based on timing. There's "prophecy impact", which is when we do a consultation right after the prophecy has been made, or at least sometime before it rears its head. Some prophecies are decades in the making, but people want to be told what to do about them. I hate that part of the job, personally, because there's not a whole lot to do, depending on the language. Plus the conversations are pretty repetitive: a guy hears a pretty clear-cut prophecy that he's going to die falling out of a plane, and he's begging for some way out, as though there's something I can do about it, as though I can tell him that prophecies are lairs sometimes. Prophecies are liars, but they're clever liars, hiding meanings inside words, only clear after they've passed. You can't escape prophecy, and at least half of "prophecy impact" clients explaining that fact to them.

The second sector is "prophetic immanence", when the client has a prophecy that they think is coming true. Sometimes this can be because there's a trigger phrase in the prophecy, a conditional that appears to have been met. One of the dirty secrets of the industry is that nine times out of the ten, people are mistaken: the nature of prophecy is such that you can't often pinpoint when the prophecy is nigh. In my opinion, you can judge a prophecy interpreter by how upfront they are about this. The weasels will milk their clients dry by pretending that every moment is a crisis moment.

It's the last sector that I find the most satisfaction from, which is why it's a disappointment that it's the least in demand. This is post facto prophecy interpretation. You're not trying to prevent anything, you're not formulating a reaction, you're just trying to figure out what happened and how it all fit together. These are clients that are in the aftermath of prophecy, or what they're pretty sure is the aftermath, and a lot of the time, they just want someone to talk to more than they want my specific expertise.

My client that day was an artist, a rising star who had a few very successful gallery showings. It had been prophesied that her older brother would accidentally kill her father, but it had been her instead. This wasn't a recent trauma, but the wound was clearly still there, so I tried to navigate it as carefully as I could.

"One of the things that makes prophecy tricky is ambiguity," I said gently. "There are some, outliers, that depend on pretty tortured readings. But in this case, I think it's just an alternate meaning. From what you gave me, the prophecy was specifically 'the child who first draws breath', and that's in reference to your career as an artist."

"That's stupid," she said. "He's two years older than me, would he really never have doodled a person drawing? Just a few lines indicating that something is coming out of their mouth?" Her hands were folded in her lap. They were curiously still, for someone who used her hands for a living, but maybe artists were like that, preserving the tools of their trade.

"It's stupid," I agreed. "But I do think it's entirely possible that his drawings didn't include anyone breathing, and that yours did."

"How can we know for sure?" she asked.

"We can't," I replied. "Though if we take for granted that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that you were the one to fulfill it, then we have to search for answers within the realm of what we know. And if you're not satisfied with that answer, then I need to spend some time searching for alternate meanings, to find some interpretation that lands better."

"I could understand it if I had some obsession with drawing breath," she said. "If I had done a series of paintings of visible breath escaping from a person's body, then that would make sense. But it's not that, it's the first to draw breath, and that's just ... I mean, doodles we did when we were children. It means nothing. We have no way to mark that. It wasn't pivotal."

I shrugged. "It is what it is." I use that phrase a lot. "There's a selection effect with prophecies. The ones we hear about are hugely ironic, they show the hand of fate, they warp and twist people. But many of them are just," I shrugged again. "Things that happened."

"My brother moved away," she said. "My father had kind of accepted it, probably from the moment we were born, or before that. He'd made peace with it, hadn't tried to fight it. But it was a hard thing to learn for my brother, and he'd just left to go to school a thousand miles away, and coming home was always stressful for him, because maybe this was when it was going to happen."

I nodded. "I can see where that would be difficult. How did he handle it?"

"Poorly," she sighed. "Dad was a good guy. My brother lost all that time, and it had always been a source of tension between them, not the death, but their perspective, you know? Dad preached acceptance, my brother wanted to avoid it, and so when my brother went out west, dad was disappointed. He said it was like losing his son, and that he'd have rather died than have that happen. So not only did my brother not have a close relationship with my dad because of the prophecy, it turns out that dad was right all along. It would have been better for everyone not to fight it."

"Maybe," I said. "In the business we don't counsel people not to fight prophecies. Sometimes it's the right thing to do."

"Well, sorry for wasting your time," she said. "Though I guess I'm paying by the hour, and I'm not going to apologize for something I paid for. So I'd like my apology back, please."

I smiled at her. "Certainly."

She stood up to go, and I marked the time so I could bill her later, but she paused for a moment. I put in the time all the same; so far as I was concerned, we were off the clock.

"Do you have any unresolved prophecies that you know of?" she asked.

"That's sort of a personal question," I said. "But I get it a lot, and if it might help you, I can share: I'm going to be eaten by an alligator."

"You're ... what?" she asked.

"An alligator?" I asked. "They live in swamps."

"And how are you going to be eaten by one?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know," I replied. "There's a chance I've dodged it already, or ... dodged it in the way that you can sometimes dodge an obvious reading." I held up my hand and showed her my pinky, or rather, my lack of pinky. "I went down to Florida, had my finger amputated, then fed it to three baby alligators under the supervision of a zoo keeper."

She stared at me. "And that works?" she finally asked.

"We'll see," I replied. "In general, yes, it's an approach with relatively good outcomes. A self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a peace of mind thing."

"But ... your finger?" she asked. She was looking at it. I sometimes thought that going with a toe would be better, or a chunk of flesh from somewhere else, but I had heard that losing a toe could interfere with balance. I had never regretted that it was a pinky finger.

"If I didn't avert the prophecy, I want to be the kind of guy who says 'oh, well that's funny'," I replied. "I think ... whatever helps you, you know? And now I don't need to stay up at night wondering how the hell it's going to happen. See, your father had it right, I think. You have to find a way to make peace with it. And this was what it took for me to make peace with mine. Though I have to admit that I'm not a fan of zoos, and I don't take vacations south of the Mason Dixon, so maybe I'm not as much at peace as I would like myself to believe."

"Huh," she said. She looked away from the missing finger and to my eyes. "Thank you for sharing that."

"It's okay if you think it's kooky," I replied.

"No," she said. "I was just ... thinking that if my brother had something like that, he might have had more time with dad before he passed."

I nodded. "You can share that story, if you think it will help. Sometimes it does."

When she left I went back to my computer, cruising the local news sites to see whether there had been any updates. I hadn't given her the best advice. My mind had been elsewhere.

A local guy had been busted for breeding reptiles without a license. I was sure it was nothing, but they hadn't said what specific reptiles it had been. It was probably nothing. I mean, a full-grown alligator escaping from custody, finding me, and managing to eat me was a little too much for me to believe.

But fate is a funny thing sometimes, and I was going to keep my eyes open.

[exitwound]

Maybe think about why you care so much about calling gerard way a woman to the extent that you equate it as the only correct way to engage with their work, as if art as well as support for the trans community can’t have value by itself, as if that isn’t the point, not their literal personal internal experience of gender that’s no one’s business, the same way trying to decide if anyone is trans is not your business if that person doesn’t want to tell you or talk about it with you, because it’s gender essentialist, and why it’s so baffling to you that a celebrity in general but especially gerard way might want to avoid labels or this specific type of intrusive categorization , as they have explicitly stated as well as created music that is about the same thing. And shouldnt we live in a world where someone can present gnc, and talk about experiences with gender and with femininity in honest ways, without people not just obsessing over whether that means they’re “really a woman” but outright deciding, and acting like they are. That’s a narrow fucking definition of womanhood. And shouldn't we value that authenticity from people who don’t want to choose a label as much as we do from people who identify in ways they do choose to label, (labels or the lack of btw have never been individual terms but tools for relating or not relating ourselves to the world in specific ways,) Isn’t that a better more open and beautiful mode of creating relationships to each other? Why does gerard need to be a woman to you? Why are you so obsessed with this? Why is transness and queerness and gender nonconformity itself, to you, some kind of item, an object or artifact for distribution upon others — and it is not in fact “creating cisnormativity” to accept the way a person wants to relate their identity to an audience. There are lots of trans women and transfeminine people who are doing everything gerard way is doing for transness and much more. If you want to call someone a woman go call a woman a woman. If you want to celebrate trans joy go celebrate trans joy. Please by all means do I will celebrate with you I am celebrating with you and I am doing it while listening to my chemical romance. So what’s the point in acting like this. I really don't get it. But it concerns me because this isn't the only time I've witnessed this kind of attitude and although its well-intentioned and "playful" its ultimately weird, ultimately harmful. So honestly, if this really feels "low-stakes" to you it might be because you've never dealt with the kinds of situations where the stakes exist, or considered the perspective of someone who has a different relationship to the stakes of your argument than you do.

Because not to be dramatic, but these stakes are the same stakes relevant to the literal record numbers of legislation currently being passed in the US using bioessentialism and gender essentialism to install systems of state-controlled gender-enforcing and forced gendering of trans and non-trans gnc children in schools and in healthcare. What you're doing is, if on a small scale, still contributing to the same conceptualization of gender as these laws, and as the people who passed them, even if you're well intentioned and hate the laws, even if your beliefs are reversed, the framework is the same, and that framework is going to empower the dominant culture, not yours. That's how power works. Which is why it's stupid. It's literally just stupid. And it hurts trans people who have had experiences in the real world where people are just as intrusive as you are being about trying to interpret their gender, and you’re no different for trying to clock people. If you don't know the stakes of your words, you should learn them before you use those words. Just because you're in a bubble of people who agree with you and think this is just about being either "right" or "wrong" about gerard way's gender and wanting to be "right" doesn't dismiss you from the meaning of the actual words you are saying and the ideologies informing your beliefs, whether or not you're aware of them, because the rest of us aren't trying to be right, we're not living in a this-or-that world in the first place. Personally I don't know them. I've appreciated & engaged with what they have said about their experiences with gender as well as their art while also respecting their statements about not liking labels, and treated their silence on their own identity as intentional, because I like knowing what words, and the absences of words, mean

[lilacstro]

★for the astrologers and astro girlies here on tumblr★: checking your relationship to astrology through asteroids

On the suggestions of @astroloverosette under one of my posts, I will be making this post. This post is not a final full stop or declarative in any way.

We are using this to determine, what areas of your life can benefit from astrology, and what astrological talents may be available to you and if you are naturally inclined to astrology.

We will be seeing the following asteroids:

8958(Star Gazer), 24626(Astrowizard), 30(Urania), 6465(Zvezdotchet) Russian for astrologer

Now I am short on time to make a full length post, however we will be seeing some chart examples to understand what effect it could have, so you can use your own pre existing, even the basic most knowledge in astrology to figure out what it could mean to you.

If you have more advanced knowledge, you can also use speed and declinations to get more knowledge through these asteroids.

Let us see the placements of these asteroids for Astrologer Chris Brennan.

We can see majority of his asteroids are indicating a few very oblivious things: he can earn money through astrology (2nd house), he can make it his career (10th house), he will have great in depth knowledge of astrology or can acquire great depth in astrological knowledge (8th house) to add to this is his Libra, which can talk about using that knowledge to bring more harmony and help to other people, and he literally shares that knowledge.

He will talk about astrology, it will be a part of who he is, his persona (1st house). I would add an extra thing to this information, your placement of Jupiter and if it is aspecting any of these asteroids, makes an extra impact, since Jupiter is the spiritual teacher, and expands, both. I would also add this for Neptune. We see he does has Jupiter in his 1st house, along with asteroid Astrowizard, which conjuncts his Jupiter.

he also has major aspects of these asteroids to his mercury, moon and Jupiter.

Now let us see a chart of someone who was not an astrologer, but rather really close up to astrology, my mother.

The very first obvious observation we make, is presence of these asteroids in the angular houses, which represent the core foundations and the dynamic forces that shape an individual’s life And my mother is indeed someone who actively talks, believes and grew up around astrologers, very very much. She is indeed someone who enjoys astrology(5th house), someone who does in fact believes in it pretty much, it is a part of her(1st house). She does in fact has a contact to astrologers, i would say more than normal for an average person (7th house, which deals with one on one relationships, apart from marriages and business partners)

now let us see her aspects:

damn, so many. A lot of aspects are to Saturn, and she indeed turns to astrology in her hardest times, and in fact her first encounters to astrology were during times of hardships. My mother is also very spiritual by nature, so aspects to neptune and Jupiter are further testifying that.

Now again, I can go in depth and interpret each aspect for her individually which in my opinion would be very long and unnecessary since these aspects are less important and very dependent on the placements of these asteroids in houses, I would even say more than signs.

★Summary ★

Now for the summary, we understand, that none of these placements though guarantee anything per se, but they do provide a great insight in how astrology can shape your life, especially if they together are in some pattern or clusters like being in angular houses, cadent houses, forming a lot of aspects to some specific planet, say saturn, etc.

Reblog and maybe let me know what placements do you have, even one that can show your nudge for an astrology enthusiast or even an astrologer :)

i love you all

paid readings are open xoxo

support me on ko-fi :)

[gallus-rising]

opening this with the obligatory "AUs are fun" and "you can do whatever you want forever" i'm talking about the canon relationship and characterization vs a very common fanon. so without further ado i present:

Dimple Was A Friend: A Friendship Manifesto

the fanon in question is "Dimple as Mob's Dad/Uncle figure". in general i'm tired of the fandomized “Found Family” but in this particular case it totally fucks over an entire series spanning character arc and removes the interesting nuance from Dimple and Mob's relationship.

one of Dimple's big hang-ups is that he thinks all of his relationships have to be hierarchical in some way, but broccoli arc’s whole thing is that he actually wants someone to respect and acknowledged him as an equal.

normal humans can't see spirits at best and are terrified of them at worst. most other spirits we see have degraded to mindless monsters. espers more or less treat spirits as animals, specifically as pests or pets. spirits are dehumanized to the point that Matsuo doesn't seen any problem treating Human Man Mogami like a particularly unruly pet. so if Dimple can't be treated like an equal then he can at least try putting himself at the top of the food chain. no one respects him as a person, so he'll make them respect him.

Mob is in a very special place re: attitudes towards spirits off the bat. he's grown up with the supernatural as a normal part of life and sees no significant difference between humans and spirits. at first is doesn't seen like he's treating Dimple with any sort of respect, but in retrospect it's exactly the sort of thing Dimple wants. Mob doesn't treat him like a pest, he treats Dimple like an annoying guy that's following him around. even as their friendship develops Mob doesn't treat Dimple as though he's become useful, he trusts Dimple like he would Reigen or Ritsu or any other friend in a dangerous situation.

but despite his newfound Friendship Emotions Dimple still hasn't broken out of his old mindset. there must be an inherit hierarchy to the world, and while he can't afford to lose his spot, maybe he can trust someone to be by his side.

Dimple himself repeatedly states in the broccoli arc he wants them to become co-cult leaders. he doesn't want Mob to join him as a subordinate or apprentice or anything like that, he want's Mob to join him as an equal. father/son and uncle/nephew relationships are inherently hierarchical! that doesn't necessary make them bad, but it's not want Dimple wants.

if we accept that Dimple is a father/uncle figure to Mob then the broccoli arc concludes with Dimple realizing he doesn’t want authority over people in a malicious way, he wants authority in a nurturing way. not only is that still an unequal relationship, nurturing is definitely not a word that comes to mind when discussing Dimple.

it also means we must accept that Mob sees Dimple as some kind of authority figure which is simply not true. Mob never treats him with that elevated level of respect and even gets confused that Dimple thinks their relationship is weighted in one way or the other. all in all the father/uncle interpretation is straight up out of character for both of them and downplays mp100’s emphasis on friendship.

and then it creates a second problem. since Mob & Dimple have been shoved into the Family Box that means by order of elimination Reigen is Dimple’s closest friend (or more commonly romantic partner) compared to Mob for most of the mange Reigen doesn't really treat Dimple with the same human-to-human attitude. he frequently makes jokes about Dimple being a like pet, which to Reigen is just normal snark, but probably hits Dimple harder than he realizes for reasons stated at the start.

hell during the separation arc Dimple took Mob’s side and was perfectly fine ditching Reigen even tho he didn’t really have to. he was even mean about it!

during this short exchange they're both antagonizing each other but i feel like it's notable Dimple only leaves after Reigen starts shit talking Mob. Reigen is right that Mob won't use his powers in normal day to day life and Dimple knows he's right. Dimple's been following Mob around this whole time watching life a perfectly average life. and then Reigen, no psychic defenses, charismatic guy with an established following, offers Dimple join him! oh boy is that an easy situation to take advantage of!! (and also of an example of how Dimple's started to lose sight of his "villainous schemes", but that's a whole other tangent lol)

Dimple only reaccepts Reigen into his social circle after witnessing him and Mob reconcile. by downplaying Mob and Dimple’s friendship Reigen becomes Dimple’s closest connection by default which is just not true for most of the manga, but, and i'm about to have a grouchy aromantic moment here, most people are fine with it because Shipping. now Reigen and Dimple can be Mob’s dads together :]

the power of Reigen being a fan favorite typically causes people to elevate him, sometimes even in scenarios he's not all that involved in, but please allow me to point out how amatonormativity plays into this particular reading 😒 Dimple Is Mob's Dad/Uncle doesn't always go hand in hand with ekurei of course, but i see it happen often enough to be a trend. even though a family-esque relationship should logically still emphasize their personal bond just as much as a platonic one, in this case it still typically comes with shipping, and by extension Reigen, tacked onto it.

mean aro moment over. if it sounded like i'm dissing ekurei i promise i'm not! i like it just as much as the next guy! it's just that, like all ships in every fandom, sometimes it gets pushed to the detriment of other relationships and even characterization.

but anyways. in closing: guys. they literally call each other friends.

that's it! thank you for reading my rant ❤

if you've made it this far i wanna peel back behind the scenes for a sec (because i've been trying to write this thing for so long orz) and let you know the term "Friendship Manifesto" is a play on ye' olde fandom Ship Manifestos, which i think we need to bring back in new and exciting ways. classic shipping manifestos. friendship manifestos. qpp manifestos? enemies manifestos?? should we bring back the term "drift compatible" or perhaps even the quadrant shipping system???? we're not taking proper advantage of this meta format. we need to have fun and go crazy with it.

[charcubed]

I NEEEED people—especially those with unfathomably large platforms???—to start doing just a tiny bit of internal evaluation before they log onto a blue website and say “I don’t want these queer characters to fuck in canon” or “I’d be fine if these characters never kissed again” or whatever.

This is a post about Good Omens and the prospect of Aziraphale and Crowley potentially having sex in season 3. It's a response to a tweet that I'm crossposting, but let it be known the above statement and this topic applies broadly across multiple fandoms too.

But anyway, in regards to Good Omens specifically:

I am seeing this take that essentially boils down to "Canon has now made it clear that these characters want to have sex with each other through subtext (i.e. Aziraphale and the ox), but I don’t want that to reach narrative completion because the idea of them having sex makes me uncomfortable or isn’t my personal preference” and it is, to put it mildly and delicately, A Very Bad Take.

This is rhetorical (and I do not expect or particularly want an answer), but: explain to me how and why queer characters who are unavoidably visibly queer (aka 2 "man-shaped beings") fucking on screen wouldn’t be a net positive, especially when you can indicate how canon has set it up.

Presumably, some people say things like this because ~they want to see them as visibly ace.~ Okay. But by some of these people’s own admission, there IS more evidence in canon now to indicate these characters crave sex with each other (vs arguing otherwise)... yet people would rather that be ignored/erased all for the sake of them feeling comfortable or feeling better about what canon shows or doesn’t show explicitly??

I’m sorry, but—speaking as an ace person, to be clear—your personal preferences for the story shouldn’t / don’t affect anything here. There’s too much in this.

Yeah, I understand on a personal level not having “representation.” I almost never see myself or my unique experiences and identity reflected in stories. And yet, I also understand that that doesn’t change any story or the world in which we live. Things like this are not said in a vacuum.

Any queer characters having sex on screen IS a net positive. It is rare and impactful, and openly calling for or hoping for otherwise when canon points to its potential is a detrimental alliance with purity culture, whether intentionally or accidentally. Because we live in a Goddamn society!

Who knows (other than Neil Gaiman) whether Aziraphale and Crowley ARE going to fuck on international TV. None of us do! But the subtext right now blatantly says they’re starving for it. And you don’t have to like the prospect of that, but honestly? We SHOULD get to see it play out. There’s no truly legitimate reason we shouldn’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whether you "prefer" it or not.

And my ultimate hot take is… if someone balks at the idea of that or doesn’t understand the importance of it, despite even seeing the subtext… then they should perhaps unpack that? Just a thought.

Truly the way fandoms are managing to hit either “subtext doesn’t count :/ ” or “let’s keep it to subtext so it’s ‘open to interpretation’ :) ” nowadays depending on what corner one visits is MADDENING. Whiplash-inducing. Surreal. And so much nonsense you can’t pick where to start.

So! I do genuinely hope I'm not kicking off discourse but I felt this Needed To Be Said (and on more than one site). Because posts like “even if they never kiss again, we’ve won <3 “ make me want to be like…

These characters are YEARNING. Do not doom them and us to it. For once, we can reach for the stars and maybe–against all odds–pull them down. Embrace it!

---

[Update: after more discourse has occurred, I have somewhat elaborated on this further, from the POV of the significance of the queer themes in Good Omens and more specifically how they center illicit pleasure/desire]

[apparitionism]

Bonus 3

I so frequently have to start these intros with “where were we?”, because I so frequently confuse even myself with regard to where any given in-progress story left off... typically it’s a cliffhanger of some sort, but off of, or onto, which specific cliff were we hanging? Well. Here in this continuation of a Christmas tale, we—or rather, Myka and Helena—were suspended in a broken-down elevator in an accounting firm’s office building in Cleveland. Something might’ve been juuuuust about to happen (see part 2 for what that something probably was, and part 1 for the causal chain that got them there), but a voice interrupted, seemingly from on high.

Bonus 3

“Is everybody okay in there?” the voice from heavenward repeats.

Myka looks up, this time confronting not her own reflection but a dark emptiness, one that is partially filled by... a firefighter?

She is sorely tempted, in the moment, to proclaim that everybody in here is most certainly not okay, given that she herself is among that “everybody” and is ready to spit nails at the timing of this supposed rescue... she talks herself down, though, because the firefighter certain doesn’t need to be informed about the grinding frustration of unrealized near-certainty.

The firefighter, most likely concerned about the lack of response, goes on, “If you’re in distress, we can hoist you up through here, get you faster help. If you’re okay, you can wait till we let the car down to the next level and get the doors open. Then you’ll be able to walk out.”

Myka looks at Helena, and they are on the same page regarding being hoisted. “Walk,” they both say.

“Good choice,” the firefighter tells them. “Easier on everybody. Never know when you’ll run into injuries, though... or sometimes worse, claustrophobics, so we gotta check.”

“Among our many problems, claustrophobia is not,” Helena says. She smiles up at the firefighter.

Who smiles back. She’s good-looking, this firefighter.

Not jealousy, Myka admonishes herself. Not now.

“Good for you,” the firefighter tells Helena. Maybe a little jealousy. Then: “I’ll put the lid back on; you two sit tight.”

She disappears; the mirror reappears. Magic-esque.

“Well, this is overdetermined,” Myka mutters.

With a head-cock, Helena says, “I believe I know what that word means, but I’m not certain I know what it means. In context.”

Is she serious? Might as well assume so... “It’s kind of like if you actually had remarked on naughtiness,” Myka says. “But maybe all I really mean, in context, is ‘story of my life.’”

Now a squint. “I know what those words mean as well, but again I must ask—”

“Never mind. I had this wild hope that maybe one thing might go right. But here we are.”

“Being rescued doesn’t fall into the ‘go right’ category?” Helena asks. And now she blinks ostentatiously, combining innocence with a sparkle of eye.

You’ve been teasing me, Myka now suspects, and she wants to say it—to accuse it!—but the interruption stole her boldness. Instead she sighs out “of course it does” and resigns herself to contemplating the complications that have, over the span of time during which she and Helena have been hamhandedly dealing with their destiny, sat themselves down solid-awkward between possibility and realization.

And anyway, if Helena is teasing, does that mean she fails to feel the same urgency Myka does about what might, in the absence of intervention, have been... realized?

Myka has made so many miscalculations with regard to what Helena does, might, could feel. Could the tease, if that’s what it is, have a different significance? Maybe. But Myka is tired. Of miscalculating, yes, but also of hoping. Of wishing. Of hanging on a knife-edge of believing in something that fate keeps deciding should not happen...

Okay, deep breath. Maybe it isn’t fate this time. Maybe in this case it’s nothing more—or less?—than a disapproving elevator.

As they at last exit those hypercritical confines, Myka leans into that latter interpretation, saying back in the car’s direction, “You were pretending to be Jesus-birth-focused, whereas I think in actual fact you’re harking your way around the Old Testament, but as said testament gets cherry-picked by fundamentalist New-Testamenters who don’t know Hebrew. So congratulations on your historically insupportable theology.” She’s pretty sure the unnecessarily extended creak she hears from the mechanism is its version of a crude gesture.

Their firefighter, who had been the one to pry the doors open inch by inch and set them free, now says to Helena, “Did she maybe hit her head when the car stopped?”

“No, she’s merely imaginative,” Helena rejoins, cheerily.

“I’m imaginative?” Myka demands. “Says the father of something.”

The firefighter touches Myka’s arm as if it’s the next step toward physically restraining her, a clear indication of how unhinged her last statements must have sounded. Further indication: the firefighter says, “The whole elevator system’s shut down till they figure out what happened. Can you get down a lot of stairs okay, or do you need assistance?”

“Oh, I definitely need assistance, but not with stairs,” Myka tells her.

Helena steps smooth between the firefighter and Myka, taking Myka’s arm herself instead. “She’ll be fine, I believe. But thank you.”

She’s very gracious. The firefighter is very attractive. Did Helena move to break the firefighter’s hold on Myka... or to place herself closer to the firefighter?

Not jealousy, Myka reminds herself. Not now.

Particularly not now that they’re embarking on a stair-descent and leaving the firefighter behind, one step at a time. It’s an endless-seeming series—“a lot of stairs” indeed—on which they expend no small amount of time. And no small amount of energy.

As they near what seems, blessedly, to be the end, Myka huffs out, “If I ever start thinking I want to live in a high-rise, just say ‘elevator dealy-thingy’ to me to make sure I understand how much I’ll end up regretting it if there’s ever an emergency.” It’s the kind of thing she would say to Pete, so she backtracks: “Sorry. Never mind that. I’m tired.”

Helena’s breathing isn’t exactly unlabored as she says, “No, no. Object lessons. I might take one as well: feign injury so firefighters will convey us via stretcher down accursed emergency stairs.”

“Brilliant idea,” Myka says, though she does spare a “glad we didn’t put you through that” thought for their firefighter.

“Thank you. Coming from, as quite recently noted, such an imaginative individual, that’s a great compliment.”

“Sorry for that outburst too. I was just so ticked at the elevator for how it clearly intended to put a stop to—”

Fortunately/unfortunately, Myka doesn’t manage to finish the utterance, because fortunately/unfortunately, they’re at last pushing through the first-floor fire door.

In a perverse twist, which Myka suspects the elevator of somehow contriving, that door releases them into the cubicle farm. Very near Bob’s location. Where he is now enthusiastically, rather than resentfully, stationed.

“Ladies!” he greets them. Did the elevator text him to lie in wait? “I finally got paid! I’m flush!”

Helena nods in satirical approval. “And we were rescued from the elevator at an overdetermined moment. Such good news all around.” The verbal irony chokes Myka, for it confirms—entirely—that Helena had indeed been teasing.

“Good thing I was here to light a fire under you,” Bob swaggers, clearly oblivious to Helena’s sarcasm, and it’s for once a good thing that he’s paying most of his attention to Helena anyway, because Myka is utterly failing to keep her eyes from widening, her jaw from slackening, into the very dictionary illustration of incredulity. “So what are your plans, now that you’ve put the fear of god into Nancy and made her give me what I deserve?”

Fear of god... now Myka’s certain he and the elevator are in cahoots.

“We have business to attend to,” Helena tells him.

“IRS business?”

Helena smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Not at all,” she says, and Myka recognizes that tone as “continue at your peril.”

So of course Bob continues. “Oh, that kind of business,” he smarms, like the two of them are speaking in some super-secret, super-specific, only-we-know-what-the-word-“business”- means code. Infuriating in itself, but he goes on, “If you’re not on the clock, maybe you’d enjoy an evening out.” The “enjoy” is slimy, and the “maybe” is smug, as if he has no doubt the answer will be yes.

“Oh yes,” Helena says, bringing Myka up short, and “very much so,” she continues. What performance is this? “But not with you.” Myka exhales in relief. Helena then turns to her and says, “I believe you promised me an evening that would make up for our having been trapped?”

Myka nearly chokes again, now at the way “an evening” and “make up for” absolutely roil with salacious intent.

Bob yelps, “I knew it!” which Helena skewers with a completely, and completely transparently, fake-dense, “Knew what?”

He is sufficiently cowed to refrain from responding with anything involving the word “naughty.”

When they finally escape the building, Myka fumes, “Nancy Sullivan did not in any way go far enough with that guy. I don’t know what this pen would let me smite him with, but I’m extremely tempted to take it out of the bag and make a list of my own.”

“Despite the downside?” Helena asks. She’s dialed back the punish-the-offender spice; now she sounds her baseline undercurrent-of-amusement self.

Myka envies her ability to change registers so seemingly effortlessly. “I’m already off the charts, judgment-wise,” she admits, “so I honestly wonder how much downside I’d really feel.” It’s more than she would have been inclined to say, pre-elevator. But something has surely shifted.

“Hm,” Helena noises, a not-quite-poke of an answer. But she then asks, “Would I be on this list?”

Whiplash: back to an unassimilable suggestiveness. That’s better, though, than Helena making and conveying a guilt-ridden assumption, as she most likely would have done in the past, that Myka would pass judgment on her for her misdeeds.

“And if so, in which column?” Helena muses on.

Again Myka would love to have panache, to be able to play into the overdetermined idea of “naughty” or at least counter it with a clever turn on “nice.” Instead she offers something in hope, which she hopes is most immediately legible as practical and not too hopeful: “Since you implied I’m taking you out, I think I’d better do that. Or some other mechanism might decide to get all... judgy. Disapprovey? Obviously from a different theological perspective than the elevator, but even so.”

“Such other mechanism sounds strangely chivalrous. Holding you to account on my behalf? I confess I’m curious as to the form that chivalry might take.”

It’s a perfect opening to probe Helena’s true interpretation of the overdetermined interruption. “But the consequence of said chivalry,” Myka says. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“Any such consequence would be, at this point, merely delay,” Helena says.

Delay... the interruption was merely delay... which means Helena thought that not-quite realization of all their pent-up possibility was—thinks it is!—as inevitable as Myka had. As Myka does. Does now again. Okay, the tenses may be hard to render sensically, but Myka knows what it all means.

Alas, despite the change in their together-weather, she can’t quite see her way clear to realizing that inevitability on a sidewalk... to move in that direction, though, she undertakes to demonstrate that she can be the chivalrous actor, no disapproving mechanism required. Object lessons. “I know you haven’t had any food since this morning,” she says. “Are you hungry?”

Helena’s eyebrows rise. “Oh,” she says, as if only just remembering that her body has physical requirements. Could her time as a hologram have affected—dampened—her awareness of such necessities? Even thinking the question jabs Myka with want, to be the one to bring her back to the body. Its needs. “Yes, I am.”

“What do you like? What’s a favorite?” Please don’t let her say tacos from a truck, Myka begs the universe, because she would really rather not have to explain her lingering shivers around taco trucks as yet another dealy-thingy.

“Preferences are still in process.”

It isn’t “tacos from a truck,” so hallelujah. But it’s inscrutable. “Are they?”

“I’ve traveled through America and elsewhere, over the weeks I’ve been away.” Helena pauses, giving Myka time to appreciate this window, however minimal, onto an answer to the “where were you” question... sadly, “America and elsewhere” gives precious little insight into the reason for all this travel. Helena continues, “What I’ve found is that contemporary cuisine bears little resemblance to what I knew. Some is strange and off-putting; some is strange but surpassingly delicious. Have you experienced a ‘blooming onion’?”

Is that intended to occupy the former or the latter category? “Pete loves those,” Myka says. That should fit as a response to either one.

“They represent what I cannot help but imagine is a foretaste of paradise,” Helena says.

She sounds rapturous.

Thus Myka has a new goal: to inspire a tone in Helena’s voice even approximating the one with which she’s just expressed this unexpected adoration.

However, Myka also has a new frustration: that not one but two of the people who occupy essential positions in her life venerate blooming onions. Which she herself cannot stomach. How to process this? Maybe she could do it by simply watching Helena eat one of the vile things... that really might be worth doing, if only as a stick against which to measure Pete’s gusto...

Sadly, that’s not going to happen today, for a frantic search on her phone yields zero restaurants in the vicinity offering even an approximation.

Onions aside, however, the number of restaurants near to them is, in positive news, nonzero. Myka reads her list of results to Helena as suggestions, and she is genuinely entertained, as well as informed, by the vehemence with which Helena vetoes every option that isn’t aggressively carnivorous.

Twenty minutes later they’re seated at Marble Room, which billed itself on its website as featuring “Steaks and Raw Bar”: Helena had turned up her nose at “raw bar” but landed with claws on “steaks.”

Watching Helena leaf through a menu—sitting across from her at an intimate table for two and doing the same—is even more astonishingly normal than any of the other normal things Myka has seen Helena do, and has done together with her, today. “Have we ever been to a restaurant? Just you and me, being seated? Getting menus and looking at them?” She would of course remember it, if they had, but she asks so as to press on the newness of it.

Bonus: Her asking the question prompts Helena to propose they conduct an inventory, limited though they both know it is, of shared non-B&B meals. It seems a gentle tiptoe through the past, one that might help rather than hurt, so Myka agrees.

“We didn’t share any table in Tamalpais,” Helena begins.

“Too busy saving Claudia from combusting,” Myka concurs.

“And removing you, vertically, from the path of marauding vehicles,” Helena concurs back. She smiles at Myka with a spark, one that is neither naughty nor nice, but rather alchemizes both into a gift of energetic attention that should be impossible.

Oh, this... this is what Myka has found irresistible from the start, for the full alchemy is in fact not only Helena’s impossibly true spark, but how Myka herself responds to it: with an internal melt, the “oh, this” that always hits new, each time she feels it. They say the body doesn’t remember pain; apparently it also doesn’t remember, from one moment of recognition to the next, how it greets its perfect match.

Another of those irresistible moments—actually a cascade of them—had occurred on a plane, as they traveled to Pittsburgh to probe what had happened to the students in Egypt, about which Helena was of course hiding her full knowledge. Myka tries not to push too hard on how significant that episode had been to her, given all the internecine baggage, as she says, “Sitting on a 737 in row 32, me in E and you in F, choosing between the market snack box or the chicken-salad-sandwich plate... that doesn’t count, I’m pretty sure.”

“Alas, no. I did, however, appreciate your willingness to share your sandwich with me.”

“You said it was one of the worst things you’d ever tasted in your life.” In the sandwich-share’s wake, Helena’s face had presented an astonishingly unnuanced canvas of disgust, and Myka had despaired at having caused such a reaction, even as she had reveled in having taken the unprecedented opportunity to do so: “Want a bite?” she’d asked, desperately casual, and Helena had accepted the invitation, biting, all teeth and lips and... and then, sadly, the reaction.

“It was,” Helena says. “Nevertheless I appreciated your willingness—but aha!” she pounces, “sandwiches! We ate ful sandwiches together from that cart in Alexandria.”

“No seating there,” Myka reminds her. “Also no menus.”

“Disqualifying,” Helena concedes. She falls quiet.

They both know Egypt is the end; what follows is adversarial. And then incorporeal.

But today—this collaborative, embodied day—is a beginning. “So we should mark this as a first,” Myka says.

“Celebrate this as a first,” Helena responds... corrects? She looks down at her menu and doesn’t look up as she says, “Of many. If I may dare to hope.”

Myka waits to answer until the look-back-up has occurred. “Only if I may too,” she says, meeting and holding Helena’s eyes.

Which roll, those eyes, and Myka panics. “You may and I may, but such mutual hope will likely have no earthly effect,” Helena says, providing relief: the scoff was directed not at Myka, but at... everything.

Hoping to unscoff her back to celebrating, Myka tries, “Can’t we mutually hope for it to have that effect though? In addition to that underlying mutual hope, for this being the first of many?”

“We can,” Helena says, her brow skeptical, “but would that be sufficient? I suspect the overall situation is likely to require several recursive applications of hope.”

“I can’t dispute your suspicion,” Myka concedes. Is hope a finite resource? That feels like a philosophical dead-ender, or at the very least the beginning of a descent, so she tamps down her impulse to voice the question. They’re here now, a circumstance on which Myka certainly, and Helen probably too, would never have thought to expend any hope at all.

She gives her own look at the menu and, without thinking, blurts, “This meal’s going to cost me several recursive applications of my credit card.” Immediately she wants to swallow back those words; they’re yet another instance of something she’d say to Pete, and anyway mentioning money is so picayune, here in the midst of an historic first. And yet... it never ends well when she tries to pretend to sophistication, moneyed or otherwise, that she doesn’t have, so she gives up and goes all in. “I don’t even know what a ‘duroc pork chop’ is, much less why it would cost more than a coffee-table book. And my dad’s brain would break at the thought of adding a lobster tail to a meal. At the price of it too, but the very idea.”

“I can’t dispute your father’s position,” Helena says, and Myka loves the echo—loves that Helena bothered with the echo. “My mother would most likely respond the same. She was a servant, you know.”

Myka could assure her that she does know; she’s done enough research on the historical H.G. Wells to produce a double-doorstop of a family biography. But she is over-the-top eager to know what Helena might be willing to say, so she goes with what she hopes is an appropriate please-inform-me prompt, sugared with just enough eagerness: “Was she?”

Helena nods. “It trained her to be exceptionally practical, but she became even more so after the failure of my father’s shop compelled her to return to service. That was difficult for her—for all of us. Charles and I were both desperate to rise above that station... insofar as one could, we did a reasonable job of it, and what I’ve learned of Charles’s later life suggests he went even further. A century later, I have as well. So I’ll pay for the meal.”

“But disapprovey mechanisms!” Myka protests, realizing she’s piled error on error: first, she’s supposed to be taking Helena out; second, she’s implying that she can’t pay; and—

“For good or ill, money is no longer my limiting factor,” Helena says, halting Myka’s thought-careering.

She seems genuinely indifferent to the financial consequences, so Myka sets herself to try, against every fiber of her frugal  and responsible being, to pretend like that’s okay. Besides, there’s another issue to pursue. “If not that... what is your limiting factor?”

“Ironically, time,” Helena responds instantly. Acerbically.

“That’s everyone’s,” Myka says, but just as instantly she understands it’s another utterance she should have censored, because she knows what the response will be.

“Unless one is bronzed.”

Expectation fulfilled. And yet: “You aren’t bronzed anymore,” Myka says. To emphasize that—or rather, to emphasize its implications—she extends her right hand across the table. Maybe Helena will take it... she is more hopeful about such a possibility than she has ever been.

“Or unless one is a hologram. Or, now that I think of it, unless one is a vampire.” Helena says this musingly, but she offers her left hand, and now they are touching, and Myka is regretting her vamp somewhat less. “Does that support your earlier postulate?”

Myka can muster few words with their fingers atangle. “Doesn’t matter,” she manages. “You aren’t those either.” So as to put all time-suspending states away, as the past or impossibilities. Or both.

“You are correct. I am none of those.” Helena’s grip on Myka’s hand tightens.

They are holding hands. And if it’s overly adolescent of Myka to find this barely precedented joining significant? So be it.

Together they sit, not letting go. Accustoming themselves, even, to skin on skin. Learning it.

A throat-clear invades Myka’s ears from some unclear direction; she raises her eyes to regard a server.

But those joined hands, hers and Helena’s, don’t immediately disengage. Helena doesn’t let go, and Myka doesn’t either. This has meaning, here among the bonuses: the waiter seeing is okay, and that okay-ness is a continuation. Nancy Sullivan saw. Bob saw—differently, but still. This server, different yet again, but even so: seeing.

“I’m Frank,” that server says. “Really pleased to be here for you tonight. First I need to explain not checking in earlier: you were in conversation, and we try not to let service intrude on your privacy. If that’s an error, it’s on me.” His voice is sleek, as is his physical presentation: he wears a spectacularly well-fitted all-black uniform, as every server here does, but he’s also beautiful, with Roman-ideal bone structure and perfect raw-umber skin. His teeth are perfect too.

Gazing upon him makes Myka regret even more her jump to jealousy with the firefighter—for it now seems more likely that Cleveland has simply been doing its best to show its loveliest helpers to her and Helena.

Bonus.

“No error whatsoever, darling,” Helena says, her sincerity evident via the endearment. From anyone else, it might seem dismissive, even infantilizing, but from Helena, as Myka knows thanks to Claudia’s reactions to being on the receiving end, it’s a notice-signifying prize. If an occasionally unnerving one.

Frank, however, is not unnerved. He visibly warms, turning toward Helena, drawing his hands apart, opening his shoulders—expanding his physical presence, like a peacock, but one whose display is appreciation. When he speaks, however, he shifts to include Myka in his openness. “Like to start with drinks? And I can clarify anything on the menu, if you’ve had time to look.”

“I can clarify that she wants a steak,” Myka says, to speed the process along, given how long it’s been since they both ate.

“The Delmonico,” Helena clarifies further.

“That’s a standout cut. Preparation?” Frank asks.

“Bloody.”

Myka laughs. “Saw that coming. Rethinking the vampire thing a little by the way.”

This makes Helena smile—not naughty, but rather, again, with attention. As if she and Myka really do know things about each other... under a tragic knife, they’d said words about knowing, knowing better than anyone, but Myka is aware, and she presumes Helena is too, that those words weren’t true; they were nothing more (or less) than wishes, postulates about a better world than the too-real one that seemed inescapable.

But now they might be inching closer to that better world.

Helena says to Myka, “In deference to our parents’ sensibilities, I won’t add a lobster tail, but perhaps Crab Oscar? For the resonance?”

“I have to admit, that’s like the pork chop: I don’t know what it is,” Myka says. “Except for the resonance.”

“Is resonance like instagramming?” Frank asks. “Unless it’s just for that, I’d go elsewhere.”

Helena glances kitchenward, then looks back at Frank. “So. A specialty, but not of this house,” she says, voice lowered, almost-but-not-quite comically cloak-and-dagger.

“Few blocks west for cooked seafood. Blue star on the door; can’t miss it,” Frank says, lowering his voice too.

They are beautiful co-conspirators.

“Oh, Oscar would have liked you.” Helena now sounds silky. Fey and silky, and Myka wants to wrap herself in that magicky silk.

“The Grouch?” Frank tries, a little flippant—but only a little. He’s keying on Helena’s every word.

“He certainly was,” Helena says, with approval, as if Frank has passed an exceptionally exacting test.

“Okay,” Frank says. His I-don’t-know-what-just-happened-but-I-think-I-liked-it tone is painfully familiar. “And for you?” he asks Myka.

“The beets and blue cheese salad, please.”

“A salad?” Helena gasps, clutching at her chest.

Could that level of indignation possibly be real? Myka ignores the histrionics for the moment and tells Frank, “A couple of vegetable sides too: the blackened carrots and also the steamed asparagus.” She then says to Helena, “They sound subtle.” Real reaction or no, Myka might as well start defending her choices.

“You vegetarian?” Frank asks. “Vegan? Kitchen can modify whatever you—”

“Not as such. I’m just not as carnivorous as she is.”

“Mm,” Helena noises, and Myka can already hear the “Aren’t you?” that will follow... she tries to shape a riposte, and she is so preoccupied with that impossible task that she nearly misses what Helena actually says: “I’m sorry. You should of course have what you want.”

Her contrition seems genuine. But in the end it doesn’t matter, for the reason Myka now articulates. “I do. This minute, I do.”

Which... flusters Helena? She looks down at the menu again, down then up at Myka, blinking, then turns her attention to Frank, as if he might save her. From an overload of honesty? Of resultant expectation?

Frank doesn’t seem inclined to offer any lifeline. Instead, he says to Myka, “Listen. If you’re into subtle vegetables. It’s not on the menu, but chef’s serving a really special kabocha squash with some of the meat dishes. I could bring you some of that too? If it doesn’t hit you right, no harm no foul.”

“That would be great,” Myka says. She doesn’t know what kabocha squash is, but she’s copped to enough unsophistication already; she and her phone can figure this one out, and anyway, squash is pretty much squash. It’s not some coffee-table-book pork chop.

“Thinking about those drinks?” Frank then asks. “I’ll tell the kitchen to expedite that steak though.”

The idea of making yet another decision is too much pressure; Myka declines. Helena declines too, in a way that suggests she is deferring to Myka, conforming to her wishes. It’s another bonus: not only does Myka not have to defend her choices, but she can in fact shape choices for both of them.

It’s as intoxicating as any cocktail.

Frank adds, “But with the meal? Maybe? I can bring out the full wine list.”

More pressure, and Myka, despite the fact that the thought of drinking wine with Helena is lovely, opens her mouth to say no. But then: “Do you have a recommendation?” Helena asks Frank. It’s defusing. As if she knows that’s how it hit Myka, as pressure but also as potentially lovely. And as if she wants to resolve “pressure.” So as to reach “lovely.”

“To stand up to that Delmonico, it’s definitely a cab. Sommelier likes to pair the Hall Coeur 2013. Young, but deep. Takes that journey, you know? It’s a Napa, from St. Helena.”

Helena raises an eyebrow at Myka. “A signal of approval for once?” Her voice rises, up up and away from cynicism.

The last thing Myka would ever do is quash that rise. Hearing it—knowing it applies to the two of them together—is another bonus. “Saint Helena,” she agrees, without irony.

As the meal proceeds, the bonuses multiply: Helena’s face lights up when the steak arrives, and that is of course a gift, as is the voracity with which she attacks it. But watching her begin to cut and consume the stark slab has a further effect on Myka, in that it puts her in mind of Helena’s basic personhood. Or, no: her animalhood. An animal, here a human one, eats a piece of meat. Throughout prehistory, recorded history, all the history, this throughline. “Let me try a bite,” Myka says, and Helena obliges, slicing, transferring across the table, connecting each of them, as a consuming animal, to the other, the two of them, as animals, to all others. There’s both thrill and comfort in that.

The service, too, is a plus: Frank attends to them with delicate discretion, never interrupting conversation, yet always appearing when a dish should be cleared, when the wine should be poured. Sleek. Smooth. In addition, this serves for Myka, surprisingly, as a sotto voce contrast to Helena’s aspect, revealing her as a bit less sleek and smooth than Myka always ideates her as being... why does the difference, if that’s what it is, seem so striking? Well, Frank is clearly practiced at his tasks. Experienced. Does that mean Helena, here being with Myka in this way, sitting and sharing, is in fact doing something... new?

Myka knows her preferred answer to that.

Also rewarding, completely unexpectedly: the kabocha, presented as thick slices that are charred but not smoky, seasoned but not overspiced, sweet but not cloying, creamy but not clottingly so. It’s unlike any squash Myka has ever eaten... thus squash is not pretty much squash. “I could have this squash every meal,” Myka says as she finishes the not insubstantial portion, literally licking her lips. She suspects her voice is betraying something very like rapture, and could this possibly be how Helena and Pete feel about those execrable onions? “Every single meal. For a week. A month.”

“I could do the same with this steak,” Helena says.

She’s managed to down an impressive percentage of its sixteen ounces, which prompts Myka to say, not entirely jokingly, “We may need to talk about heart-healthiness at some point.”

Helena takes a moment. Then she says, “Healthiness of heart... mine? Yours? Or both?”

It’s a bit sardonic, involving an eyebrow, and Myka berates herself for not having preconsidered, and consequently rejected, bringing up hearts, because they could not possibly be ready to speak directly about—

—but then Helena is extending her left hand, and Myka is meeting it with her right, and just like that, they are rejoined.

With her right hand, Helena raises her glass. “How did we fail to toast when the wine first arrived?” she asks.

“You were too focused on the steak.” Myka says this with affection. With familiarity. She can imagine—and wishes she could confidently predict—saying these same words to Helena again at some future celebratory meal. She can imagine—and wishes she could confidently predict—their hearts being made healthy by such continued affection and familiarity.

“That was certainly an error, and as our charming Frank would say, it’s on me. So I’ll toast now as I should have done then: To you.” Helena’s salute is candid. Open. As warm as her hand on Myka’s.

“To you too.” Myka has to raise with her left hand—it feels a little weird, but isn’t that appropriate for a first toast with Helena? “And to us,” she adds, a dare that Helena reward by not withdrawing her warmth or her hand.

Their hands are still joined when Helena’s phone announces its presence. The intrusion breaks their hold. Myka’s heart, just now so high, sinks, for such interruptions—of chats, of meals, of anything consequential—are so rarely good.

She braces herself for an adverse outcome.

She tries to hide the bracing by directing her attention to her remaining stalks of asparagus, slicing them into bite-sized pieces, then slicing them again, halves halved, quarters quartered, sixteenths sixteenthed, practically baby-fooding them as she aggressively pretends to ignore the words Helena is saying.

Not that those words are revealing: “yes,” and “all right,” and “I understand.” Repeated with slight variations.

Upon disconnecting, Helena says to Myka, “Apparently my reprieve has come to an end. I’ve been instructed to go to the airport.” Her voice is calm but somewhere sharp, a blanket smoothed over blades.

“A reprieve? That’s what this was for you?” Bracing had been the right instinct, but Myka had not expected that to be the body blow. “For me, it’s been a bonus.”

Helena inclines her head. “A bonus, certainly. If you prefer.” Smoothing, smoothing.

Myka does prefer, but she pushes back. Back to punishment, hoping to expose the blades. “What you prefer—what you called it, even if you don’t prefer it—matters more. If this was a reprieve, what was the sentence?”

“It wasn’t pronounced in any court, but from my perspective? To keep my distance from the Warehouse,” Helena snaps, then winces. “And the obvious corollary.”

Myka has hit her mark. And now, saying it out loud... that will make it real. So: “From me,” Myka says.

“From you,” Helena says back. Her saying it, realing it too: it’s gratifying.

“You can’t even stay for dessert.” It’s an absurd heaviness to put on such a silly thing, and it’s not like Myka would have eaten any dessert herself. But she would avidly have watched Helena do so... “I’m questioning the Fredness of it all,” she laments.

Helena turns quizzical, but there’s no way Myka can explain. Well, no: there’s no way Myka can imagine wasting time by explaining.

“My flight isn’t till tomorrow,” she says instead, plaintive. She’s seized by an impulse to—what is it?—go with Helena to the airport? Yes, of course she wants to do that, but there’s more—again, what is it?—to figure out a way to fly with Helena wherever she’s being sent, damn the consequences? Yes, that’s closer. But Myka can’t gift herself such a wildness. Not even for Christmas. Not even if she put herself on her own “nice” list.

Should’ve taken this to a hotel room, her body berates. Should’ve skipped to that. All this time wasted in a restaurant. Sitting. Menus. Should have pursued the satisfaction of what you’ve always known, from the marrow of your bones all the way out to your skin, is a greater hunger.

But. Even as her body tries to persuade her of its primacy, she thinks back over their interactions of the past hours. Would she trade them for that satisfaction? Would she really? Perhaps, in a different world—a more desperate one. But in this hopefully better world, this time was not wasted. All these bonuses... they were, they are, important. Conversation has been essential to each incremental increase of their intimacy. She shouldn’t discount it. She should celebrate it.

“I went to a wrong place just now,” she tells Helena, whose face is on pause—she must have been waiting for Myka to make even the slightest bit of sense. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to go with you? At least in the taxi?”

Helena’s post-pause expression is deeply indulgent. “I think you should stay and enjoy dessert. Let me imagine you seeing this unprecedented meal to a sweet completion.”

“I’m not really a dessert person,” Myka says, not wanting to be indulged quite like this, and additionally not wanting to misrepresent. “And anyway I don’t see how I could enjoy it with you gone. Could you maybe imagine something else?”

Helena softens; clearly, that was a good response. “What if I simply think of you. You eating your salad, your vegetables,” she says, then, “and one bite of bloody steak.” That’s another of those transcendent attentional gifts. One bite of bloody steak. Myka files that away for future comfort, even as Helena continues, “While I watched you do those things. Reveling in the fact that, as established, such a thing has never happened before.”

“I like that,” Myka says. “I know I’ll be thinking of you eating your steak, how I watched you. Which also, as established, never happened before.” She is compelled, however, to add, “But you’re leaving again. Which has.” She checks the time, and now it is Christmas Eve. She tries not to draw inferences from that.

“But I will come back.”

“When?”

“When I can.”

“Why did we get stuck in that elevator?” Myka asks.

“Because the mechanism malfunctioned. With intent?” Helena says that last playfully.

Myka doesn’t, here at the end, want to play. Play along. “I repeat, more existentially: why did we get stuck in that elevator? Bearing in mind that the elevator itself may not appreciate its role in the... grand design.”

Helena takes a moment. Then she says, “So that we might have this goodbye rather than, as before, none at all?” The words are a softness.

Myka wants to respond in kind. “Or—and?” Fighting against fearful reticence, trying to be truthful, she says, “So I could work my way up to saying this out loud: please come back. To me.”

Helena breathes. “And so I could say this to you: when I can, I will.”

They’re in public. How different might this have been if Myka had pushed them toward a hotel room? But she can’t help checking herself: it’s not like things couldn’t have gone spectacularly wrong in such a space. Plus an elevator would most likely have been involved, so...

In the space they are actually inhabiting, Helena now rises from the table. Myka does the same, moving to meet her.

They share a hug, one that terrifies Myka—because they’ve never touched like this before; because it feels awkward rather than natural as their bodies surge, press, warm; because if they can’t even hug right then what does that bode for anything else—but as they emerge from this confusion of arms and torsos, Helena says again, “I will.” Her assurance reshapes the ungraceful embrace into a profound affirmation.

The certainty heats into Myka: any goodbye, even a clumsy one, is a bonus compared to no goodbye at all.

But then Helena is gone.

And Myka is not at all surprised—yet still devastated—to be sitting alone at a table for two in a steakhouse in Cleveland on just-turned Christmas Eve.

“I’m sorry your lady had to leave.” Frank has materialized next to her, like he’s the Ghost of Christmas Bonus. Or, no: the Ghost of Christmas Bonus Rescinded.

“Story of my life,” Myka says, trying for a jest, fearing it’s a sob.

Frank juts his perfectly sharp chin like he’s considering a similarly perfectly sharp comment... but then his face gentles. “She paid the check and then some, so you can sit here forever if you need to.”

“I should probably go,” she says. Sad but true.

“Wait a second though. She said to bring you this, because she wants to make sure your heart stays healthy.” He places a small plate of kabocha squash before her. “She seems for real,” he concludes. But then, “Is she?” he asks.

Yet another gut-familiar reaction to the Helena of it all: not-quite-belief. “She is,” Myka testifies, again fighting that sob. Because before tonight, before today and tonight, her response would more likely have been “I hope so.”

As she eats an additional portion of absurdly delicious squash on Christmas Eve in Cleveland by herself, Myka considers calling Pete. He would at least rescue her from this sudden crush of loneliness...

... but on second thought, would he? Or would his presence make it worse, as it sometimes has before? Myka knows she’s at fault for that; she’s never really explained to him, out loud in words he would understand and accept, what Helena is to her. How entirely she matters.

Which in turn brings her to the keynote, which is that she should feel the loneliness. She owes it to Helena, for this is one of the visceral testaments to Helena’s significance: because her absence matters just as much as her presence.

****

When Myka gets back to the B&B the next day—after having been offered on both of her flights the opportunity to purchase a chicken salad sandwich, each time rendering her nostalgic and frustrated in equal measure—Steve is waiting for her.

“How was it?” he asks as he relieves her weary hands of the pen-bearing static bag.

“Really, really nice,” she says. For the resonance.

Steve smiles a smile Myka doesn’t understand.

TBC

[alex51324]

That Tweet, take 2

OK, so my first reaction to That Tweet, by Djenks, was as follows:

My money is on DJenks realizing that he shat the bed & now furiously trying to write himself out of the corner he's in. (My second guess is that he basically already knows there won't be a Season 3, but there's some network or business-related reason for not announcing it yet.)

But now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I am kind of seeing a scenario where he could've intended it to be a fuckery all along.

Step one is that we imagine him being a bit disappointed by how Lucius's death fooled absolutely no-one. It's likely that he was planning for the reveal that he was alive to be a much bigger moment than it actually was; maybe he even has some Big Reveal ideas that he had to put on ice once it became clear that there was very little actual suspense surrounding Lucius's fate. This is, obviously, since I don't know him personally, a big hairy guess, but it seems like a very plausible reaction for someone to have, when they put a lot of effort into planning a surprise and it falls flat because everyone guessed it.

Step two is him deciding to sell Izzy's "death" a little harder, with the emotional death scene and the funeral (where we do not actually see the body, and a mourner, Wee John, is missing) and all. It's laying it on a little thick, in my opinion, but again, we did all confidently (and correctly) assume that Lucius was alive based on the evidence that "this show wouldn't do that" and "The Stede-Ed reunion won't work if he's really dead," so you can see how a showrunner could, hypothetically, get to--

Step three, is Djenks opening up his socials at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning, expecting to see reams of speculation and analysis about how Izzy could have survived, and being genuinely shocked to instead find seas of angry and devastated fans suggesting that he should perhaps give up television in favor of a career in going and fucking himself.

Step four, realizing that he drastically overshot the mark re: creating genuine suspense over character death, he tweets out a big obvious hint.

I don't love this interpretation--for one thing, there is nothing in the episode we saw that would provide a plausible in-universe reason for faking Izzy's death. It would be pretty easy to create one--have Prince Ricky No-Nose vow personal vengeance against Izzy Hands in specific for calling him a syphilitic cunt/his role in foiling the "end of piracy" scheme--but we did not see anything like that. To make the funeral scene work as a fuckery, it would be necessary to insert a flashback between the "death" and the funeral in which A) this happens, and B) the other characters find out about it. That's a cheap trick that I personally hate--the old, "Haha, I made you feel a thing by deliberately withholding context"--but again, if it's an overcorrection for the complete and abject failure of the effort to create suspense around Lucius's fate, I guess I can live with it.

If Izzy's death is a fuckery, that addresses a lot of the other problems with the finale. First, Ed and Stede's obviously-doomed, harebrained scheme to give up piracy and be innkeepers (in a dilapidated shack, on an island where we see no other people or settlements) is plausibly funny, as long as we aren't thinking that Izzy died for it.

Second, the tonal whiplash of going from the funeral to the wedding is also fine if everyone involved knows perfect well that the guest of honor at the funeral is actually recuperating just offscreen.

(Thirdly, there's Captain Frenchie--I haven't seen much discussion of that, but the only problem I had with it is that I can't think of any moments from the season where he stood out as being a leader for the crew. I might've missed something; he's not one of my particular blorbos, but it wouldn't have taken much, just something you can look back on and see how it was setting up him becoming captain.

And, crucially, we do have those few little moments of setup for Frenchie as First Mate to Captain Izzy. Frenchie was there during the dark days, during which he presumably underwent some skill development, pirate-wise, and definitely bonded with Izzy to some extent. We see him holding Izzy's hand during his breakdown, and he presumably helped hide him and definitely lied to Blackbeard about it, and then how they were sitting in the cell on Zheng's ship--it isn't a whole lot, but you can look back and see why it makes sense for Izzy to pick him.)

Making Izzy's death a fuckery doesn't do anything to fix the way the whole Zheng thing fell flat. (Why give her a massive fleet in the first place, only to take it away? Why did we get those scenes of ships being towed across land? What was she doing selling soup on the Republic of Pirates? For that matter, why did she come to the Caribbean in the first place, after becoming Pirate Queen of the Chinese seas?) It doesn't help with how Ed and Stede keep repeating the same beats of getting closer, then running away, then reuniting without ever talking about their relationship or their issues. It doesn't address why the Kraken Era had to go that dark, if the whole thing was just going to be smoothed over in the space between episodes 4 and 5, and how Ed never really takes responsibility for any of what he did.

However, middle installments of trilogies are notoriously difficult to write, and it isn't particularly fair to judge them before you get to the last part. Most of the weak points could look better in hindsight once we know how it all turns out.

(And, not for nothing, as long as Izzy is alive, we can still get something where Ed reckons with the Kraken Era, and particularly-but-not-exclusively what he did to Izzy. I don't see how that works with a dead Izzy, though--it's too easy for Ed to keep minimizing what he did and offloading blame onto him.)

There isn't a whole lot of evidence for an Izzy Lives scenario. All we have is:

This Show Wouldn't Do That (which, recall, was point 1 in why we didn't believe Lucius was dead. However, it is weakened by the absence of point 2--unlike with Lucius, the person who "killed" Izzy isn't a character we're expected to like or root for.)

No body at the funeral. I initially interpreted the funeral as being intended as proof that Izzy was really dead, a sort of "don't get your hopes up, guys," after what happened with Lucius. But again, if we're thinking about the framing of Izzy's "death" as an overcorrection to how completely non-fooled we all were by Lucius's, maaaaaybe not? I mean, if he really wanted to hammer the nail into the coffin, we would have seen Izzy lying in the grave, or his body being sewn into a shroud of sailcloth (as was the custom), or something. (Also, point 2b, the unicorn did have two legs.)

No Wee John at the funeral. There are certainly Doylist reasons he might've been left out--maybe the way the shooting schedule worked out, it saved money or some other resource to just leave him out of that scene, something like that. But for an in-universe reason, "somebody had to stay back and nurse Izzy" makes a lot of sense. (I mean, if this show operated on real-world logic, someone would have had to stay with the ship, but that's never been a concern before.) Wee John helping Izzy with his makeup for Calypso's birthday was presumably a bonding experience that involved some vulnerability on Izzy's part, so it would be weird for him to just nope out of the funeral, but plausible that Izzy would find him acceptable as a caregiver.

Stede and Ed's conversation over Izzy's grave could, just barely, make sense as a conversation about how Ed and Izzy are now on separate paths, with no particular guarantee that they'll see each other again. It takes a certain amount of massaging to make it fit, but it almost could? (Except Zheng's part really doesn't--unless the grave actually contains someone Ed cares about, or she isn't in on the secret that the funeral is a fuckery.)

I'm not in love with any of this, or even particularly convinced by it--my enthusiasm for any Season 3 is going to be pretty dampened, unless the announcement that it's been picked up includes the information that Con O'Neill has a contract to appear as a major character in all 8/10/whatever episodes--but IDK, I guess it's maybe not outside the realm of possibility? Ish?

[chaosduckies]

First of all, Congratulations for 100!

For the writing commissions thing, Could you do a story based on a song?

I have been obsessed with this song (funny that it's already based on a novel) and would love to see a g/t story with it!

Thank you! :D

This one was hard if I’m being honest, but I still managed it! (If you don’t like it, I’ll re-write it! But please tell me what you specifically want haha-) This one is basically a combination of how I interpreted the song and what the novel it’s based on is about (It’s Six of Crows right? Cause if it isn’t that would ruin this entire piece-) This is a kind-of parental g/t, so I’m sorry if you don’t like that trope TwT

But I hope you enjoy! :D

Word Count: 3.7k

CW: Mentions of death

Birds Of A Feather

I’ve never had to stay more quiet in a single house in my entire life. The way the humans’ steps seemed to echo throughout the house sent a slight shiver down my spine, but I didn’t pay any mind. I’ve done this before thousands of times. I wait for him to go outside on his daily walk, get what I need, and head back to my home in the walls where my sister was waiting. I never trusted her to go on her own. She was too young (I mean I was only 14 but still), and I didn’t trust this place at all. 

This area was secluded, what had looked like a nice, humble little cottage, was actually a death trap for borrowers like myself. The human that resides here had seemed kind. A bright smile on his face, friendly with any visitors and his family, but when he’s alone,  it just disappears. As if the kind presence never existed in the first place. There was also one other thing. This entire place gave off an ominous vibe that screamed, “Stay the hell away from here.” It was a mystery to me why I had even decided to settle down in this place. Because I wouldn’t have to worry about so many humans? Well this one was a lot to deal with too. 

After staying a couple nights here I had started to notice just how creepy the place was, and how odd this human’s schedule was. It almost always stayed silent here besides the tv rarely being played at night. But it was almost always quiet. Of course you’d think that would be good for me, but it wasn’t. Normally humans are busy doing something. This one? It’s like he’s waiting for something to happen. He walks quietly through the house, doesn’t talk to anyone unless someone stops by for a visit, only has the tv on when it’s raining. It’s almost like he knows that my sister and I live here, but that would be impossible. I’ve been nothing but quiet and careful this entire time. My sister included since I make her stay at home while I’m out. 

This human seemed to always go on daily walks around the small, secluded forest outside his home. He would come back nearly two hours later, take a short shower, make something to eat, and head into his room that I never dared to go into. I had no idea what I would find in there, but it’s probably not something I want to see. 

I hurried to the counter, grabbing my hook from the side of my hand-made belt and throwing it up as far as I could, barely managing to make it to the top before the paperclip latched onto the ledge. I tugged on it a coupe times before starting my trek up, trying to get out of the open as fast as I can. I hated almost everything about this place. Or maybe it was just me. Lizzie, my sister, claims that she does just fine and doesn’t find a reason to stay quiet, but she just didn’t understand. Humans would hurt her. I’ve seen it happen, and I don’t want her to be in trouble because I just let her do what she wanted. I knew we were small. I knew that we could probably speak louder than a whisper, but I just didn’t trust it. As much as I want- need help, I didn’t trust a single thing about this place. 

When I walked onto the vast expanse of marble, I looked around for literally any kind of food. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. I cursed under my breath, my head turning out of fear to see if the human had heard me, but I forgot that he wasn’t home. I let out a sigh of relief, continuing my journey to find food. We had some at home, but I had zero idea if it would last my sister and I until my next trip, or when the humans leaves something out again. Plus, I don’t think I can eat bread for dinner again. I’d prefer something healthy, but I can’t be too picky. 

I moved onto the little bowl that he usually kept snacks in plastic wrapping, seeing that there was a small package of peanut-butter crackers among other snacks I already knew I couldn’t get into without making a huge mess. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling it, but anything I can get I guess. 

With a little bit of perseverance, I tore open the package, grabbed a few pieces of the cracker and shoved them into my bag. It should be enough for now, I didn’t want to stay any longer than I needed to be. I tried my hardest to make it look like the package wasn’t ripped open and climbed my way out, rushing over to the edge of counter where my hook was waiting for me. 

I was a good borrower. At least I think I am. I’ve always been good at hiding, “borrowing” as we like to call it, I think I’m also pretty good at not leaving a trail that I even exist. It’s like planning a heist every time I go out. I have to know the fastest way in or out, where all my exits would be. At least in this forsaken house. I just get the creeps here. 

I picked my head up, staring straight at the door that was slowly creaking open. My heart pounded in my chest, fear creeping up and down my spine, breathing becoming ragged. He wasn’t supposed to be home yet. I rushed down the remaining distance, not caring at all about the rope burn I’ll have on my hands later. He won’t see me. It’ll all be okay… I held in a breath, not daring to hesitate sliding down the rope for even a second. I bit down on my bottom lip so hard to help ease the burning sensation on my hands as I rushed down to the ground. 

As soon as my feet were planted on the ground, I pulled on my hook, taking the time to messily wrap it up and run all the way back to the small crack in the wall. I ran as fast as I could, only looking back once to see hazel eyes staring deep into my soul.The breath I was holding in was caught in my throat, shoving my body through the crack and slamming my body onto the hard surface behind me once I was out of view. I tried to calm down my breathing, clasping my hand over my mouth as I felt the human walking closer. The small amount of light that the crack in the wall emitted had nearly vanished, the human most likely blocking it. Everything remained quiet, all noise becoming muffled to me. Were they saying something? I couldn’t hear. Please just go away. Be my imagination. This isn’t really happening. 

  The light came back, I felt footsteps walking away, but I didn’t trust it. I stayed hidden for another couple minutes, about to leave when the shadow came back, making me clasp my hands over my mouth once again. If they were talking, I couldn’t hear. Of course this “heist” doesn’t go as planned this one time. Why did he even come back early? Or did I just take too long? 

I had no clue how long I waited. The human was long gone, but I was too frozen in fear to move. There was no way I was going to risk getting caught. Who knows what this… sadistic human would do to me? Keep me in a jar, a pet, use me for his own entertainment? Kill me. I didn’t even want to think about that. Leaving my sister all alone. Better me than her though. I would hate myself if she was ever hurt because of one of my own mistakes. 

Gathering up the courage, I peaked my head out, shocked at what I saw. There were two bottle caps, one full of actual food, and one filled with water. My heart started to beat fast again, thoughts working. Was the human just waiting for me to fall victim to this very obvious trap? Was the food poisoned? Was he going to kill me if I step out? I jumped when a tall figure emerged from the hallway holding a book and sitting down on the couch. I ducked my head back, standing up on wobbly legs and gripping my the strap of my bag tightly. Time for me to go. 

I maneuvered through the walls, carrying what was like precious jewels to my sister and . What even was that? I-I know he saw me… so why didn’t he just grab me when he had obviously seen me long before I had even realized. Or did he want to capture me in an inhumane way. lure me out with food like I was some kind of… animal. Trap me in a jar or a cage afterwards. I couldn’t think of anything but what was could’ve been going through his sick mind. 

When I walked into out tiny home on the walls, a sigh of relief escaped my mouth. Lizzie was still here, playing with the stuffed animal our mom had given her years ago. I mean she just a six year old, there wasn’t really anything to keep her busy when you were just barely over two inches tall and was forced to keep below a whisper just so you’re not caught into huge… terrifying… human hands. My mind went back to what had just happened in the last thirty minutes, a shiver running down my spine. 

Lizzie stood up, hugging me with a bright smile on her face. I was still trembling slightly from the encounter I had, but hugged her back all the same, mindful of the burn marks on my hands. 

“Did you get anything good?” She cheered, hugging her teddy bear close to her chest. I nodded my head, laughing and pulling out a small piece of the peanut butter cracker and handing it to her. She gasped, taking the piece in her hands and biting into it. I could’ve brought back some actual food if I didn’t think it was poisoned. I sighed, burying my head in my heads as she went off to entertain herself once again. Would we have to find another place again? Probably. Humans aren’t supposed to know about us, and well, this one does now. Thanks to me.

I wouldn’t tell Lizzie yet though. She’d be devastated. She’s always telling me how much she loves this place. She likes how we can go outside sometimes, how the human living here is quiet and not loud like most humans were. I can see why she likes it here, but it was just too dangerous. We might be in danger. Like I’ve said, I didn’t trust this place at all. This guy living here… just doesn’t give off “nice” vibes. 

It was late at night, Lizzie and I were about to head to bed. I wasn’t that much older than her. I was just a kid who really new how to steal and survive. I guess I’d have to revoke that title since I’ve been caught. I tucked Lizzie in, and pulled the fabric over my head, falling asleep and pushing all of my worries for tomorrow. 

—————— 

I woke up to foot steps. I picked up my head, grabbing the needle that I probably should have been carrying with me yesterday and checking on Lizzie. My heart skipped a beat when I didn’t see her there. Which meant… My eyes darted to the entrance of our little place, seeing that the cloth blocking it was moved. Soon enough, I started running towards the little crack that lead to the kitchen. I heard quiet sobs that sounded like Lizzie. 

Please don’t be what I think it is. 

When I arrived, I was too afraid to take a little peak out of the side, afraid of what I might find on the other side. What could I do against someone who was twenty times my own size? He has my little sister… but what could I do? He’d just take us both. Probably torture us for his enjoyment. Just make us live in terror and agony until we die. What would happen if I didn’t do anything? I would never forgive myself he did anything to hurt Lizzie. So I just have to make sure she can get out of this. 

I sucked in a deep breath, slowly peaking out and seeing that her teddy bear was left on the ground, along with a little pool of water right next to the bottle cap the human had left. My eyes widened, breathing hitching in my throat as I saw the huge being pinching her effortlessly in between his thumb and pointer, whispering for her to calm down. Nononono. My breathing became fast, and my legs pushed myself out of the crack, pointing the needle right at the human, whose eyes darted cautiously over to me. 

“L-let her go!” My hands and arms were shaky as I looked away, my eyes shut and closed. I was terrified. Being out in the open in front of a human was the worst imaginable thing. It could only be worse for Lizzie for actually being held by one, but I was threatening one. I’d have a worst fate than her, but I just want her to be safe. 

I opened my eyes, a little blurry from the few tears that escaped, but it had seemed like everyone stopped moving, heck, even breathing all together. Lizzie tried her hardest to escape the grip around her, failing miserably and giving up. This time, she just quietly cried to herself, slightly reaching for her teddy bear on the ground. I bit the bottom of my lip, keeping my needle pointed towards the human and reaching down to grab her bear. 

The human’s eyes shot open wide, looking between my and my sister he was currently keeping hostage. But I swear his eyes softened before he carefully placed my sister down a little ways from me. She looked up at him, tears still in her eyes. The human bit the side of his cheek, looking away from Lizzie and back to me with sympathetic eyes. He had to be lying. There was no way he’d just “let her down” like that. 

Lizzie ran over to me, hugging me tightly and hiding behind. My entire body was shaky as I guided us slowly back towards the crack in the wall. 

“Sorry for trapping you.” He whispered, looking behind me. I paused, watching as my sister ran back to the crack in the walls. Now I was alone. No telling what would happen. But I was more hung onto the fact that this human just apologized. As much as I didn’t trust him at all, or thought that he was a mean person, he apologized. This was something I had least expected from this guy. Instead of taking us against or wills, he just apologized. Not to mention just let my sister go without so much as a complaint or deal. 

“You can take the food I put there.” He pointed to the bottle cap behind me, filled with fresh food. My mouth watered at the sight, but I shook my head, hands still shaky as I stayed in place while still pointing my needle towards him. The human paused for a second, looking confused. 

“Why not? Isn’t that what you were stealing from me earlier today?” His words sounded harsh through my ears, making me wince and take a couple steps back, ready to dart straight for the tiny hold in the wall if he had tried anything. It was intimidating I admit, and I had no idea why I didn’t just run back with Lizzie. So why don’t I just go? What was I waiting for? 

“That came out.. harsh, didn’t it.” The mountainous being in front of me sighed, ruffling my hair a bit. I don’t say anything, wondering why I haven’t been dangled or threatened yet. He always looked so… intimidating. Or maybe that’s just the way he looked? Honestly I can’t even tell. 

“How long have been stealing from me?” His eyes were full of sympathy again, hands away from me. Making no move. I guess it would be okay to answer. Just so I could lower the amount of torture I would endure if this was all a trap. 

“A m-month or two? Give o-or take?” I kept my arms up no matter how much they screamed for me to put them down. Lizzie was safe, I would be back in a little, and we could go out tomorrow to find another place to live in. Even if the next house or town is miles out, we just need to get the hell away from here. 

The human’s eyes widened again, quieting in the dark to get a better look at me, which only made me slightly insecure, but ignored it, “You don’t even look old enough to be taking care of yourselves,” He started, “Look, the least I can do for you after trapping your sister is to give you both something to eat. I’m pretty sure you’d like something better than peanut butter crackers.” I really would, but how could I know to trust him? He trapped my sister. I’m pretty sure it was meant for me, but still! 

“You trapped my sister! I can’t t-trust you!” I whisper yelled, hoping I wouldn’t be killed on the spot. His eyes hazel pierced through my soul, making me close my eyes shut and look away while raising my puny weapon. Soon enough, something pitched the needle and dragged me along with it. I let out a yelp, letting go and stumbling to my knees, my face hitting the hard floor. Nonono. Please don’t- I sat up and buried head in my knees and covered myself with my arms, expecting a sharp pain, a stab, anything to indicate that I was dead. Just like that, my only sense of protection was gone. I couldn’t defend myself with or without a weapon what was I even thinking? 

The human above me sighed, and soon enough I was pinched between two of his fingers just like my sister. I started kicking and trying to pull myself out, but to no avail. Tears formed in my eyes as I tried my hardest not to let them fall. The last thing I needed was for this human to take pleasure in my own suffering, but of course he noticed anyways.

“For someone who was just threatening me with a needle you overreact a lot.” The human chuckled, standing up and turning on a dim light, keeping me pinched. Could he feel how fast my heart was beating? Could he feel how my body trembled under the surprisingly soft grip? I just kept quiet, afraid anything I said now would just make my fate even more dreadful. 

The human moved fast, grabbing a few snacks and either breaking them up into miniature pieces or cutting them up with an extremely sharp knife I would not like to be on the other side of. I was shocked at what he was doing, but also scared. I mean, I was basically being held against my will right now. He placed the snacks into a small bowl, kind of like the snack tray my mom would make. My mouth watered, my stomach growling, and I guess the human heard it because he glanced at me for just a split second, a smile on his face. It was embarrassing, but also somewhat… nice of him to be making us this? 

“I use to steal just like you, pretty close to your age actually,” he chuckled, “I may only be 22, and you still don’t trust me, but I think it’s better if you just ask people for help little guy.” He walked back over to where the small hole in the wall was, placing down the bowl and myself. I tripped over my two legs, earning a small laugh from him. Now I just felt… terrible for ever thinking he was bad. It doesn’t mean I trust him fully yet, but maybe one day? This could also be some sick trick to enjoy my suffering later of course, but for now I’d like to believe that he was doing this because this was really who he was. 

“S-sorry. For the stealing.” I fidgeted with my hands, eyeing my needle still in his other hand. His hand carefully came towards me, offering it back. I took it from his fingers, hugging it close. My heart was still racing, and my thoughts were all jumbled up, but I still couldn’t believe that I was alive. Without a single scratch too. 

“You were only doing what you needed to survive. I get it,” He smiled, “But, just ask me if you need anything next time?” i gave an “i don’t know” look at him, but he just playfully rolled his eyes, “What’s your name anyways?” I bit the bottom of my lip

“Andrew…” My voice came out quiet, feeling a little insecure. 

“Gabriel, but you can just call me Gabe.” He smiled, and left just as quiet as ever. It took me a while to realize what had just happened, then my eyes trailed off to the vast amount of snacks waiting to be eaten. Best part about it? There was finally something healthy to eat that I didn’t think was poisoned. I turned back to the hold in the wall, hoping that Lizzie was okay. 

“Lizzie!” I whisper yelled, expecting her to be back home, under the sheets, but she came out of the hold, hugging her bear tight against her chest. I rushed over, hugging her before her eyes widened at the huge amount of snacks that awaited her. Sure, it was way past midnight, but it couldn’t hurt to have something nice to eat, right? Borrowers rarely ever get a chance like this anyways. 

“I told you he was nice!” She giggled, forgetting just how scared she looked minutes ago. We both giggled, and for the first time in what felt like forever we felt safe. Even if I still didn’t entirely trust Gabriel, there was a small possibility I could just as much as my sister does. Just maybe. 

——————

Yeah I have no idea about this one either (My brain cannot come up with good scenes anymore whyyyy… also I kind of gave up on editing halfway through so I’m very sorry for mistakes-)

Again, if you don’t like it, please tell me! But I hope you liked it! Writing based off of songs is pretty hard, but I might as well give it a try! If you would like a part 2 to this, please let me know! (Cause I kinda do… I might make it just for the fun of it)

Thank you for the prompt! I had fun writing it! :3

Writing commissions are still open for anyone interested! Please keep them strictly sfw! (If I’m uncomfortable with a certain commission I will let you know!)

[ohdorothea]

If you’d like to send in interpretations or propaganda for a specific song you can send them to my inbox! All interpretations are welcome and let’s be open and kind in response to all interpretations <3

This tournament is being run by and for queer fans so please keep that in mind! Homophobes will be blocked on sight <3 More polls here and more info and lyrics for the songs under the cut!!

The question is which song is queerer to you! Queerer can mean whatever you want it to mean; you might consider a song queer because you think it was written that way, or because of Swiftian lore. It might be queer to you because of how you relate it to your own life. Maybe you think from a purely literary standpoint the lyrics have queer themes; maybe you're just thinking about vibes.

🫶🫶🫶

Call It What You Want lyrics

My castle crumbled overnight

I brought a knife to a gunfight

They took the crown but it's alright

All the liars are calling me one

Nobody's heard from me for months

I'm doing better than I ever was

'Cause

My baby's fit like a daydream

Walking with his head down

I'm the one he's walking to

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

My baby's fly like a jet stream

High above the whole scene

Loves me like I'm brand new

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

All my flowers grew back as thorns

Windows boarded up after the storm

He built a fire just to keep me warm

All the drama queens taking swings

All the jokers dressing up as kings

They fade to nothing when I look at him

And I know I make the same mistakes every time

Bridges burn, I never learn

At least I did one thing right

I did one thing right

I'm laughing with my lover

Making forts under covers

Trust him like a brother

Yeah, you know I did one thing right

Starry eyes sparking up my darkest night

My baby's fit like a daydream

Walking with his head down

I'm the one he's walking to

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

My baby's fly like a jet stream

High above the whole scene

Loves me like I'm brand new

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

I want to wear his initial on a chain 'round my neck

Chain 'round my neck

Not because he owns me

But 'cause he really knows me

Which is more than they can say, I

I recall late November, holding my breath

Slowly I said, "You don't need to save me

But would you run away with me?"

Yes (would you run away?)

My baby's fit like a daydream

Walking with his head down

I'm the one he's walking to

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

My baby's fly like a jet stream

High above the whole scene

Loves me like I'm brand new

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

So call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want to

(Call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

(Call it what you want, call it what you want, call it)

Call it what you want, yeah

Call it what you want

To

🫶🫶🫶

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things lyrics

It was so nice throwing big parties

Jump into the pool from the balcony

Everyone swimming in a champagne sea

And there are no rules when you show up here

Bass beat rattling the chandelier

Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year

So why'd you have to rain on my parade?

I'm shaking my head and locking the gates

This is why we can't have nice things, darling

Because you break them

I had to take them away

This is why we can't have nice things, honey (Oh)

Did you think I wouldn't hear all the things you said about me?

This is why we can't have nice things

It was so nice being friends again

There I was, giving you a second chance

But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand

And therein lies the issue

Friends don't try to trick you

Get you on the phone and mind-twist you

And so I took an axe to a mended fence

But I'm not the only friend you've lost lately (Mm-mm)

If only you weren't so shady

This is why we can't have nice things, darling (Yeah)

Because you break them

I had to take them away

This is why we can't have nice (Nice things) things (Baby), honey

Did you think I wouldn't hear all the things you said about me?

This is why we can't have

Here's a toast to my real friends

They don't care about the he-said, she-said

And here's to my baby

He ain't reading what they call me lately

And here's to my mama

Had to listen to all this drama

And here's to you

'Cause forgiveness is a nice thing to do

Haha, I can't even say it with a straight face

This is why we can't have nice things, darling (Darling)

Because you break them

I had to take them away

This is why we can't have nice (Uh-uh) things (Oh no), honey (Baby, oh)

Did you think I wouldn't hear all the things you said about me?

This is why we can't have nice things, darling

(And here's to my real friends)

Because you break them

I had to take them

(And here's to my baby)

Nice things, honey

(They didn't care about that he-said, she-said)

Did you think I wouldn't hear all the things you said about me?

This is why we can't have nice things

[inthestarsme]

Astro Observations pt.5

‼️Don't repost my Observations without consent and mentioning my page‼️

I very much respect non-binary or trans people. If i'm talking about man or woman, i'm talking about cis-men or woman i know, because often, due to societal coding/standards, there can be differences depending on the gender. But it could very much apply to you if you are non-binary or trans. Just take what resonates and leave what doesn't, as spiritual people like to say.🫶🏻

If you don't agree with my observations, please don't send any hate. They're only my personal observations that i'm posting just for fun. Especialy the specific ones can only apply to certain people. So don't take anything you read too seriously. It's not a science, just pop-astrology!😎

‼️TW: Mentioning of mental health struggles, abuse and other darker stuff. If you think reading this might trigger you, please stop reading!‼️

So let's go!

Lots of planets in the 7th house, especialy conjunct: A big part of this life might be about your marriage partner or life partner or just the relationship to your closed love ones. This can be amazing, but i need to tell you to be careful who you choose as a partner and who you let close to you in your life. As this is the house of open enemies too, this could also go south, especialy if there are also planets like mars, pluto or saturn involved. this could go from just staying in a unfulfilling relationship way too long (because your life seems to revolve around this relationship and you don't see a live without it) to being in an abusive relationship. ❤️‍🩹

Saggitarius AC: This gives the person bad guy vibes, but in a different way than Sag MC. In the MC it's more how the public perceives you, maybe through the career choices you made, but not necessarily how you actualy are as a person. In the Ascendant it is how you might actualy be like in more private settings or how you show yourself to your closer peers. Not a bad person, i feel like to be that saggitarius has way too strong morals, but just this bad b*tch energy that surrounds them and like a dark "emo" vibe. Or your actual personality could be described as "bad bitch"-like. could also really like dressing in black/ darker colours and/or with spikey/scary accessouirs.😈

Sun in Leo in the 8th house: I already talked about in another post how i've met a few people with leo sun who told me they love sex. One of those people has Leo sun in the 8th house, and he is into bdsm. so basicaly, i think the 8th (scorpio) house influence gives this love for sex a more extreme touch, and because scorpio is also posessive, stuff like bondage fits into it as well.⛓️

Chiron conjunct AC: You might've struggled with bullying or got outcasted by people who were dear to you because of the way you looked, dressed or how you behaved. But it doesn't have to be because of other people, it could just be that for some reason, you never liked your personality and always saw something wrong about who you are. Because of this, the thing you're most insecure about or hurt you the most is yourself or how you view yourself. I feel like this is a difficult placement for Chiron because it's hard to heal Chiron wounds. They are where we know how to heal others but we don't know how to heal ourselfes. And especialy because we might not think we're even worthy of healing, this placement might especialy struggle with dealing with their insecurities.🫂

Planets in the 22nd degree: As many may know, this is the so called "kill or be killed"- degree. How i personaly interpret it is, that in whatever planet or other placement you have this degree, it will be hard for you to develope the good trait of the planet. Let's take sun 22nd degrees in the 7th house as an example. You may naturaly love to be in love and love relationships, it's where your heart lies, but because of this degree, you have experienced so many relationship wounds, that you get a huge ego (the sun can also be ego if underdeveloped) to either hide your wound, or in the hopes of never getting hurt again (or both). This could then either make you completely turn away from relationships or a very narcissistic partner. And especialy when you have other more challenging planets conjunct the sun, it can make it even harder. You feel like, you either kill your heart, or you will be killed by it, because it may for example hurt too much. 🔪

Jupiter conjunct mars in the 10th house or conjunct the MC (also just Mars, but Jupiter "enlargens" the placement): Your career might be all about fighting. If it's just in the 10th house it's just your career and what you may be professionaly most respected for, conjunct MC may be what the general public knows you for. This can mean literal fighting like marshal arts or fighting in a war.🤼‍♀️

Ruler of the Ascendant in the 12th house: I personaly have this placement, and it's really hard for me to truly understand who i am and what defines me. As i get older i learn more and more about myself, but at the same time i have to unlearn a lot of stuff people told me about myself which i then belived to be true (because i didn't know who i am). For example, when i went to school i was always directly or indirectly told that i was more or less stupid. Everyone thought that, because i couldn't express myself properly in front of the class because of social anxiety. Because of this social anxiety, i was also always seen as shy, which is why i always thought of myself as shy and introverted by nature. But now as i got into university and learned how to approach people and my social anxiety has gotten a lot better, i now know i am actually way more extroverted than introverted as long as i'm surrounded by the right people and actualy not shy at all. And i learned that i wasn't actualy stupid, my struggle was just expressing myself properly and not having enough access to proper knowledge or the mental capacity to learn new things (i had quite a hard childhood, so i mentaly had to deal with a lot of stuff). So i feel like with this placement, it's important for you to always challenge what you believe to be true about yourself and be open to changing your perspective on yourself. Just because you may think something about yourself because everybody has made you feel like you are whoever they thought you were, doesn't mean you are actualy that. To you especialy i wanna say: i feel you, and you can got this!💪

Moon in the 12th house: This could mean your mother being abscent because of her having to stay in psychitric care or in prison or just some sort of very restricting place or situation. She might have been a drug/alcohol addict. Or she could've been emotionaly absend or it just felt like she was absent because the connection to her was missing. But i personaly could never make a connection from my moon sign to my mother, even though this is a interpretation a lot of astrologers make (which is why i feel like mentioning it, it's still valid). For me personaly, i feel like the moon just tells you about your emotions and how you might try to soothe yourself in different situations. With this placement specificaly, it might be very difficult for you to access your emotional life because you surpress your emotions and so they hide in your subconscious. Because of that, it might be very hard for you to know how to soothe yourself, so you might turn to drugs and because of that end up in prison or they express themselves in mental health struggles which may lead to you needing psyhchiatric care (or also to prison, if you do something bad because of that). But i don't want to make it seem like it's not okay for you to get the help you need. This is not an easy placement, so if you feel like you cannot handle what is going on with you psychologicaly, please seek professional help!🌘

Mars in the 7th house: This placement can indicate your partners (or just close loved ones) being potentialy abusive or you tending to be more aggressive towards your partners. Whoever is your open enemy might especialy try to go against you in a more aggressive way, so be careful with this one!🤕

That's it for today! If you liked it, feel free to leave a like, comment or to even reblog my post. Until next time, stay the beautiful human being you are.🫶🏻

[deathsbestgirl]

txf mytharc: pilot

preface: what you can expect from this series of mine.

i’m likely going to talk about each mytharc episode in full (at least nearly). the point of this isn’t to focus on mulder and scully, but there will still be a lot about them. we mostly see the mytharc through their eyes, and their partnership & experiences are a major part of that (and i think at this point, it’s clear i never shut up about them!). so for those that don’t really care about the mytharc, you might still find things to enjoy. at the end of each post, i’ll do a little summary of episode connections. i’m doing this as i rewatch so i will not have watched the future episodes yet – so please forgive any mistakes in details! i’m also pairing this with reading myth x: one fan’s interpretation of the the x files mytharc, and i’ll include some pieces that helped me unravel certain things, or that i’m simply keeping in mind as i rewatch! but mostly, this is just me enjoying the show. it’s what i think about when i watch. if it’s not your cup of tea, i completely understand. i do welcome discussion, but i make no promises to engage. i’m just sharing my little thoughts on this show that i really, really love.

sharing has gotten more difficult for me, but i truly enjoy it. just asking everyone to be kind & thoughtful, because i’m putting a lot of my time into this and i’m sensitive about it lol

something i get caught up in every time i watch the pilot is what csm & the syndicate were thinking (specifically in regards to assigning scully to the x files with mulder — i will probably talk about this over & over).

in the pilot we don’t even know about the syndicate. we meet section chief blevins, and other men with no names. including csm, who doesn’t even speak. he stands there looking stressed and smoking, observing scully and listening intently to the whole exchange. at the beginning, it’s hard to imagine how deep this goes, how widespread the government conspiracy is and it’s what makes it so fun for me to go back. we have so much more information later on, and we can take it back when we rewatch. there are so many connections to be made and although a lot of it doesn’t line up perfectly, i think it’s way more in line than people say. for me, there are several reasons that fit in with the world of the x files. first, there are so many unreliable narrators, people dealing in lies and coverups, only letting mulder & scully and whomever see what they want them to see. they purposely feed certain beliefs, and stifle them at other times. csm’s goals are muddled: he wants mulder on his side, he’s trying to save the human race/shape it into his own creation. he pretends to be a chess master, but as he says in sixth extinction/amor fati: he is one man.

the pilot starts with a cold open, a young woman running through the woods in her pajamas. we see a male figure and a bright white light. next thing, the young woman is lying dead on the forest floor as a team documents the scene and tries to identify her. detective miles identifies here as karen swanson and walks away, as the other investigator shouts “it’s happening again, isn’t it?”

next we follow special agent dana scully into the hoover building and to blevins office. he peppers her with questions about her fbi experience, if she’s heard of fox mulder and the x files. she’s young and open and maybe a little too honest. every time i try to write about the pilot something i always end up writing: scully understood what these men wanted her to. i don’t think it’s what csm wanted, but it might be what the syndicate wanted. scully was expected to debunk the x files, and if she did, they would probably reward her with whatever promotion or job she wanted within the fbi (or better, recruit her to the syndicate?). but as will consistently happen, they underestimated her. i’m not sure any of these men could have predicted what her & mulder would come to mean to each other. i don't think they could grasp her honesty or goodness, her ethics & morals, her complex beliefs & sense of justice. they live in a world where everyone is selfish & cruel, where they do what is “necessary” or what they're ordered to, where people will always choose themselves above others, but that is not scully. and it isn’t mulder.

(aside that maybe isn’t necessarily relevant but the thought always pops into my mind: it’s very interesting to me that they have this meeting with her and just send her down to mulder’s office. there’s no meeting with mulder, scully and their superiors together. all of it strikes me as a punishment for mulder, and a test for scully. i really think there’s something of interest to them in scully’s background. scientist, medical doctor, navy captain’s daughter, semi practicing/lapsed catholic. in theory, she could have been a perfect fit for the syndicate. but i really think most of them lack an understanding of people, of humanity. they deal in the worst of humanity – and mulder & scully are the best of humanity.)

initially when i started this (my little notebook) i was going to focus on just csm. but lately, the mytharc has gripped me. i don’t typically rewatch those episodes, unless i’m watching the entire series or a season in full. or a specific arc (like the cancer arc of course). but i’ve been slowly watching the mytharc episodes and they all connect, intricately, weaving a complicated web of truths & untruths & half truths. it’s so detailed and convoluted and maybe confusing. and so i wanted to go piece by piece. as i’ve said before, i don’t think everything lines up perfectly, and it isn’t supposed to. this is a global conspiracy, we learn things as mulder & scully do. they are largely on the outside of it, trying to break in to expose the truth & hopefully dismantle it. they are continuously misled, misdirected, stonewalled. there are many different projects with experimental science developing different defenses/giruses/andmtidotes, with different goals. evidence destroyed or stolen, tampered with. they are manipulated and used and discarded and returned and nearly killed as the syndicate sees fit at the current time. but so many things connect back to the pilot. the writers may not have had a show bible, but they most certainly looked back to pick up different threads and carry them through.

after scully’s meeting, we follow her down into mulder’s basement office. scully knocks on the door, opens it when he responds and takes in the whole atmosphere. he jumps right into it, letting scully know he’s aware of what her assignment is, that he looked into her background, and starting in on the case. in mulder’s way, he starts testing scully too, and i think she passes every single one. even if she’s saying things he doesn’t really want to hear. at the least, she takes him seriously (enough) to give rebuttals and show she cares. i’m not sure mulder has ever distrusted a single soul, but at least scully earns it.

the few things we learn about the case, what makes it an x file: the marks on the girl’s back, the compound in the surrounding tissue, no clear cause of death. and the fact that there’s a string of these killings in bellefleur, oregon with similarities to other cases in shamrock, texas and sturgis, south dakota.

mulder poses two questions, the first:

maybe what you can explain to me is why it’s bureau policy to label these cases “unexplained phenomenon” and ignore them.

scully has no answer, but i do think this starts her mind rolling. right here she’s put on the path of radicalization, in her scully way. the second:

when convention and science offer us no answer, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?

and i think this moment sets up their roles. scully responds with “the girl obviously died of something. if it was natural causes, it’s plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. if she was murdered, it’s plausible there was a sloppy investigation. what i find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. the answers are there. you just have to know where to look.” mulder, the believer, turning to the fantastic. scully, the skeptic, turning to science. this is my favorite thing about them, it builds the way they communicate and is a huge part of building trust between them. it’s also a major part in how they get to know each other. it’s always been one of my favorite things about them. it’s built on listening, not just pushing their beliefs or agenda. they always incorporate what the other says – as in, scully tends to shape the science & investigation around his theories. it gives her a place to start and build from. and scully’s science refines mulder’s theories and gets them closer to the truth.

it very quickly becomes one of the ways they depend on each other, setting up expectations they don’t yet understand the implications of and will take them years to rewrite (still built on the trust blooming from this first scene).

as soon as they’re in oregon, even still on the plane, the weirdness starts. unexpected turbulence, radio interference, inhuman like corpse unburied, the metal implant in the nasal cavity. mulder isn’t surprised by the turbulence or radio static, he marks the spot with an x. scully is just confused and baffled by his behavior (i love it). during the autopsy, they’re a little combative. my favorite moment is when mulder tells her:

i’m not crazy, scully. i have the same doubts you do.

this is an important moment for scully. he cares what she thinks, and she does take him seriously. i think it’s easy to think that she doesn’t, she does dismiss his ideas initially. but she’s still following him, peppering him with questions. they talk it through every time, and that’s special. it only gets stronger.

when mulder lifts peggy o’dell’s shirt to find the marks on her back, scully is so angry (she’s afraid) and she storms out of the building – mulder immediately follows her. she doesn’t believe these are alien abductions, she doesn’t know yet what the marks are, what the experience is. she has questions and she wants answers, she wants the truth. scully doesn’t believe his theory of alien abductions, and he asks her “do you have a better explanation?” and this is the first time he directly asks what she thinks. to me, this is the scene that really determines their dynamic. what mulder takes from this conversation is scully really does want the truth, she cares. and that’s important. and scully asks: “what were they doing in the forest?” cut to mulder and scully in the forest, scully pocketing dirt, detective miles coming upon them. (he listened to her, and the next step in their investigation becomes trying to answer that question!)

in the car, she shows mulder the dirt. he asks if it’s a campfire (it does look a lot like ash). but scully tells him it was all over the ground. right after, the car loses power and they lose nine minutes. scully doesn’t witness the time change but mulder is ecstatic.

this all leads to the motel room scene. scully has marks on her back and she can’t see them and the marks on peggy o’dell scared her. you could see it in her face, even through her anger & annoyance with mulder. the fact that she goes running to mulder, clearly afraid and vulnerable…it showed something else to mulder. this moment lets him see beyond ‘scully’s a spy” and her disbelief/skepticism. mulder cares about people, and he cares about scully despite himself. so when she turns into his chest, he puts his arm on her shoulder. shocked at her vulnerability, the way she seeks comfort from him. mulder lets her stay in his room, gives her a blanket to curl up on his bed as he sits below her and tells her about samantha.

usually this scene is discussed because of the intimacy between mulder & scully, but we learn a lot about the mytharc here too. samantha “disappeared from her bed one night” and there was no evidence, no contact, and no one would talk about it. he went to oxford, got recruited by the bureau. (while they’re having this conversation, someone is lurking outside the motel room.) he finds the x files and he was allowed to indulge because of his success and connections. mulder tells scully:

i’m telling you this, scully, because you need to know, because of what you’ve seen. in my research, i’ve worked very closely with a man named dr. heitz werber and he’s taken me through deep regression hypnosis. i’ve been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared. i can recall a bright light outside and a presence in the room. i was paralyzed, unable to respond to my sister’s calls for help…listen to me, scully, this thing exists…the government knows about it, and i gotta know what they’re protecting. nothing else matters to me, and this is as close as i’ve ever gotten to it.

he covers sam’s abduction, how he found the x files, why he’s allowed to work on them, and the first inkling (for the audience) of a government conspiracy.

this is when mulder gets the call about peggy o’dell. (scully’s jump at the phone ringing is striking. she was so focused on mulder and what he was telling her, everything else faded away.) they go to the scene and mulder is shocked to hear peggy was running – “on foot?” just really cracks me up. as he’s focused on talking to the man driving, scully is taking a look at peggy’s body and makes note of the time on her watch, which is stopped. but just then, mulder learns ray soames’ corpse is missing. when they get back to the motel, it’s on fire with scully’s laptop, pictures and evidence inside.

theresa nemman approaches them in the chaos, they take her to a diner to hear what she has to say. she talks about finding herself in the woods, not knowing how she got there. she tells them she has the marks on her back too. she’s afraid she’s going to die too. her nose starts to bleed, like peggy’s did earlier, and as scully jumps up to grab napkins for her, theresa’s father, dr. nemman shows up with detective miles to take her home. this is when they realize det. miles’ is billy’s father.

mulder & scully have a brief conversation, brimming with their frustrations of losing their files & evidence, being denied access to a girl who needs help and wanted to talk, realizing how much these men are concealing. scully’s putting together dr. nemman’s & det. miles’ involvement. “they know” vs “they know something” – leading to mulder’s ultimate question (at this moment lol) of what’s in the other graves. when they go to check, the graves have already been dug up. the only other bodies already taken. at the graves, mulder puts together that billy miles is responsible. scully starts to follow his thoughts. he talks about time being stopped, he pauses “you think i’m crazy” and scully…she’s silent for a moment before telling him about peggy o’dell’s watch. another huge moment to me. she doesn’t believe it’s alien abduction, but she starts to understand the way mulder’s mind works, the connections he makes and the subsequent leaps. she doesn't keep this information from him despite it feeding a theory she doesn't agree with.

they head over to see billy miles. mulder talks to the nurse and scully starts to examine billy, finding his feet dirty, covered in the same dirt she found in the forest. a boy, who has been in a coma for years, completely bedridden and seemingly unaware of what’s happening around him. and scully is ready to run with this. he was out in the woods!!! and another important moment, mulder grounds her. reminds her of what she needs to do, her reports, procedure. and i think this is the moment that cements their roles – but shows they can also switch as need arises. mulder didn't understand how much he needed the science & evidence until he had someone ready to find it. so they go back out to the woods to get another sample of the dirt. that’s when they hear theresa scream and they go running. det. miles hits scully over the head and goes running after mulder, holding him at gunpoint as theresa continues to scream. and i love this moment too, because mulder appeals to this man’s better nature, urging him not to let billy kill another person. mulder stops him from shooting his son too. we see the marks on billy’s back, as a white light starts to overtake the scene with leaves blowing like a cyclone around billy & theresa. when the light finally fades, billy is conscious again, theresa is safe and the marks are gone from billy’s back. instantaneously.

the ending scenes are billy under hypnotic regression with dr. werber. mulder in the room with them. scully, blevins, the other man from scully’s meeting, and csm observing. billy talks about the aliens, the tests, the implant. the tests didn’t work, and the aliens were destroying the evidence. killing the abductees…mulder and scully make eye contact through the glass. cut to scully reporting to blevins. she can’t substantiate anything, they have no evidence, how do you prosecute?? this is what blevins & company care about. but scully held onto one piece of evidence: the implant, made of a metal that could not be identified, the implant billy miles claimed was controlling him. she leaves it with blevins, and when she exits, she watches csm enter blevins’ office. she has no idea who this man is, but he has been present at crucial moments and she took notice. she doesn’t understand yet but she won’t forget him.

in the end, mulder calls scully late at night to tell her the case file on billy miles has disappeared. csm is walking into the pentagon storage facility, filing away the metal implant with others just like it.

the pilot really lays a lot of groundwork. the implants, the marks/scars. the abduction experience, time loss, electronic interference, hypnotic regression. deformed corpses. government connections. disappearing evidence, constant interference. samantha’s abduction.

episode connections (before i watch future episodes):

conduit: small detail, but the ash-like dirt reminds me of the sand & glass at lake okobogee.

duane barry: he has an implant in his nasal cavity, much like the one they find. later on, in the anasazi trilogy, we learn scully has a chip in her neck which later connects her to other female abductees and carries through to cassandra in patient x/the red and the black.

cancer arc: billy miles indicates the exact place scully gets cancer.

reduxes: blevins is exposed as the mole. for the first part of the first season, scully reports to him until the x files is reassigned to skinner’s jurisdiction. his involvement isn’t fully explored, but he doesn’t completely disappear.

deadalive: ray soames’ transformation – possibly a failed attempt of what happens to billy miles & others, and nearly happens to mulder. also similar to the bodies mulder finds in anasazi.

csm: he’s there for scully’s meeting with blevins, he is there at the end for billy miles’ hypnotic regression. he is the most prominent figure in the conspiracy, as far as what we see, with a direct hand in scully’s & mulder’s experiences.

samantha’s abduction: there are two different versions of her abduction. truthfully, i think they just changed the story to work better for them. BUT (as i’ve mentioned before) i think it fits well into the mytharc later on – within the framework of the show, i think it’s possible samantha was abducted twice. conduit, paper hearts, demons, and another episode.

myth x:

one thing i really do like about this book is that it breaks down all the players. each group of aliens are given a clear name (which appear in the show but was never completely clear to me until this time around). michelle bush purports that the aliens abducting the oregon teens are walk-ins, representing the divine. they’re supposedly good but don’t know how to go about their goals. in some ways, this rings true. it’s the walk-ins that “save” samantha from more suffering. it’s like the walk-ins cassandra spender believes are trying to help them. bush describes their goal as “reintegration of both halves of the whole (alien and human) using natural means; this results in a single sentience allowing a return to physical and spiritual harmony.” which on paper, doesn’t sound bad. but their methods are as harmful as any of the others (alien and human alike).

[shakingparadigm]

Sooo, like I noticed something.

Ivan's Anakt Garden uniform seems to have a different design than all the other children there. Like his top has a collar on it, which I kind of find ironic since he doesn't even wear a collar (because he's a "good boy" they said). But anyways

The thing is, it goes same for Luka, while slightly similar to the standard Anakt Garden uniform (?), his has a slightly different design on the collar part, yet he's also wearing a collar.

So what's the deal with that, like, if it's based of behavior (y'know being a good pet and all) how come Sua doesn't also have a unique uniform? Or is it a way to Spoil Ivan because of good behavior by his owner, then how come Mizi doesn't also have one(we know she and her owner are on okay kind of terms)

I don't know, just kinda sus in a way.

I just really find it ironic how Ivan's uniform has a collar, whilst he doesn't even wear a collar like all the other children. Like sure, he doesn't wear the collar because of his 'goodboy behavior', yet somehow,

that collar part of his uniform, like somehow symbolizes that while he might not wear that collar like everyone else, he was still not entirely free.

I don't maybe I'm just feeling silly and delusional ahahaha (though I'm not entirely sure if there's a canon explanation for it, is there? Let me know muah muah)

The timing of this ask is impeccable actually I was in the middle of drawing my whole Anakt uniform thing and when I saw this pop up in my inbox I thought to myself: Huh!

Regarding the uniforms: overall, I don't think they're modified for any specific purposes, Ivan and Luka's uniforms are just special because, well, they're special, you know? When your Guardian has money and they really invest in you, it's not too hard for them to switch up your outfit a bit. Just to help you form an image. Maybe even coo at you a little bit and tell you how handsome you look. You know, embarassing shit.

That last paragraph though, wow. There's a lot of ways you can interpret Ivan's "collar". Ivan's shirt collar still technically being a collar, even though he's been gifted privilege (the illusion of free will, exceptionality) at the end of the day he will always remain a pet. I do think that's part of it. After all, how unsightly it would be to see a pet with a bare neck? Wild animal, unable to be restrained, uncivilized, a threat.

Ivan is well-behaved, but his place as a pet must be constantly be made clear, even if the humans may not recognize it that way. In this paradisiacal prison a collar is a collar, whether it fabric or metal. In a way, it seems almost belittling, almost mocking.

No wonder Till's outfits so often consist of wide, open necklines. It must be suffocating to be so restricted.

Moving forward, Sua's uniform is unaltered because although she has a wealthy guardian, they unfortunately don't care much about her. Definitely not enough to give her a special uniform. She's not the type to outwardly want for much, anyway. She's conditioned to wear whatever she's given. She has more pressing matters to worry about.

Mizi's outfit is unaltered too, but for a different reason. Mizi is most likely just satisfied with what she has already. The uniform isn't far from the dress she wore on her way to the Garden, and she's already been established to be a rather free-flowing person. Although her Guardian is more than capable of providing for her wishes and preferences, Mizi doesn't seem to mind simplicity at all. She's just happy to be here!

Anyway, back to Ivan. He forgoes his collar because of his good boy behavior, yes. While the high shirt collar could symbolize the aforementioned false trust, it's also quite in line with Ivan's personal style! He's usually seen with his neck covered, after all. It seems like his trademark. Ivan played himself as more of the mature reserved type (save for whenever he's around Till, apparently), so it makes sense for his owner to commission a uniform that further reinforces this proper and responsible persona. Or maybe it was Anakt Garden that directly issued that uniform to him, who knows. Either way, the uniform makes him stand out and immediately sends the message that he's a special pet.

(Fun fact! Many of Ivan's important outfits center around this theme of uniform, his performance outfit in ROUND 3 literally inspired by the key word uniform.)

I believe Luka's uniform is different because his guardian thought it would be cute. HAHA sorry. no but like genuinely. His collar is quite cutesy and fancy, lines up with Luka's overall trademark aesthetic of white frills and ribbons. Even his sleeves are puffed, like a posh little prince! I can't see a practical explanation for these, they seem purely decorative. And it checks out, because of course someone as influential and desperately prideful as Guardian Heperu would want to make his pet the specialest little boy in the Garden.

On a more serious note, though, I think it further hammers down just how much of a doll Luka is. Sua is described as a doll in her own right, but the difference is that her guardian only cares about her when the cameras are on. Guardian Heperu has his eyes on Luka almost 24/7, attending to his needs for success, ensuring that Luka must remain exceptional. I guess the outfit really helps get across that "little prince" kind of vibe.

There's a chance that the thicker, puffier sleeves of Luka's uniform help him stay warm? I'm not exactly sure about the other ways his heart condition can affect his body, but since he has several health issues I'd assume he has trouble regulating body temperature. And the shoes, isn't that one interesting addition? Luka is the only character sporting footwear in the Garden. It's not like the Garden is "dirty" by any means, as it's just simulation (unless they tried to make this simulation as realistic as possible). Maybe Luka wears shoes once again for health reasons. Perhaps Heperu is just extra protective of Luka.

(Side note: Luka's "shoes" MIGHT be socks. To me they seem more like shoes? But they could very well be socks.)

As far as I know, there's no official explanation for the Anakt uniform variations (honestly, I'd bet if they explained their reasoning Q and V would say they thought it just fit the characters, haha. To me it seems like the uniforms are meant to reflect the characters personalities rather than their circumstances, although just like with Ivan's it could definitely be read both ways).

This is just me speculating too! Thanks for the ask, I really enjoyed talking about this!

[peculiar-potato]

Among Us animated series trailer analysis post!

(+ a theory on who dies first and who the impostor might be!)

here’s the trailer if you want to watch it yourself :)

This is going to be pretty long, whoops.

~~~~

Firstly, overall impressions on the tone/artstyle!

I mentioned a lot about the art style and everything in my first analysis post, but I just want to reiterate that it’s fun and I like it, and I like seeing how they take details of the game and translate them into the show.

From what I can tell the tone seems pretty lighthearted, well, as lighthearted as a murder mystery can be. It’s a little silly but in a charming way- but with a slight hint of dread. Kinda what I expected.

I think there’s still probably a little way to go before the show is ready considering there were no voice lines in the trailer, and it seemed more like “these are the characters look how fun they are” then actual plot/scenes, but that’s okay I actually really like that we’re not really seeing any glimpses of the plot or voice acting yet!

Anyways, now to the actual trailer!

So opening shot here is The Skeld. We already kinda knew it was going to be set there, but confirmation! At the moment I don’t think the planet/moon/asteroid thing behind them is important, it’s probably just to fill up the background, but who knows, it could be something!

Maybe impostor(s) come from there or something… or maybe it’s just a rock in space.

(My theories get better I promise)

With this image, we finally have an answer to my question from last time- what kind of pizza do the beans eat?

I noticed immediately that there was prosciutto and arugula (a specific kind of bitter lettuce) on the pizza, and with a little googling and a few subsequent suggested searches, I managed to find recipes for fig and prosciutto pizza with, you guessed it, arugula and cheese. (There were multiple kinds of cheese it could be- goat, gorgonzola, mozzarella to name a few)

So those round things are figs. Who would have thought?

Next up we see our first glance of the additional room they added to the Skeld for the show- the kitchen! And the first glance at a depiction of an impostor!

Yellow and Brown seem like good buddies. I wonder how long that friendship will last when impostor stuff starts happening.

My guess is the depiction of the impostor here is a bit more figurative- Nobody really notices them (expect one bean, but we’ll get to that later), and they just kinda seem to be lurking around being scary. Feels more like, idk the idea of an impostor than the actual impostor? I don’t know if I’m explaining that super well.

Maybe this is like the impostor checking out the crew before they start actually impostoring. Idk.

Also, seems like one shadow (although who knows honestly). Maybe it’s a sign of there just being one among the crew? …or maybe I’ve flipped the other way and am interpreting this too literally now.

Regardless, the impostor(s) do/does certainly seem very alieny.

(Alternate impostor conspiracy theories- impostor switches between crewmates/they’re all impostors (which would kinda defeat the purpose tho) or everyone’s just paranoid and there is no impostor (I feel like people would get disappointed by that though so they wouldn’t do it)).

After that we head to navigation.

Here, Red is slacking off playing video games (oddly enough with a human in them- as someone pointed out in the Innersloth discord server, which has some interesting implications. To expand on that myself, it seems like a kind of ancient-civilization human, which is interesting. I tried to figure out what game this is with a reverse image search but I couldn’t, I wonder if it’s a real game or something one of the devs made or something else.)

Anyways Red receives a call from a shadowy figure, presumably a boss of some sort, and scrambles to look like they’re doing what they’re supposed to. The image looks kinda similar to how they’re animating the impostor, but this could be an intentional red herring or just how they’re showing an unrevealed character or an “everyman” type being. Regardless, vaguely ominous.

As for navigation itself, I like the vibes honestly. I want to go there. I love the little headslug bobble head and a lot of the details in the background. Can’t assign everything there directly to a task, but it does have the three consoles and the chair. Also I noticed the bright yellow sticky note- like the “dum” visor cosmetic! I wonder what those papers on the floor say.

Next we’re in the cafeteria. (You can tell by the coloring of the wall, this is probably the vent near weapons)

A couple things I noticed here!

First of all, everyone’s very nonchalant about Lime venting. That seems to mean it’s established that Lime is an engineer like the role in the game (honestly I’m a little surprised a new role was included here!) and that the crew knows this and doesn’t think Lime traveling though vents is a big deal. Will this extend to other crewmembers? Will this put suspicion on Lime as things progress? Who knows!

Also, small thing here, but Cyan signs Orange’s waiver (on the clipboard they seem to carry with them everywhere) simply as “Cyan”. I assumed they would just be going by colors the whole time and not have names or anything, but this kinda confirms that.

(By extension, maybe colors aren’t even codenames or anything for them lore-wise, maybe their names are literally their colors. Also makes me think there may be just one of each color in the entire series if they sign simply as a color. Then again, here I am over analyzing small details again.)

We follow Lime through a vent and into the reactor, which is being watched on the cameras by Purple.

I don’t have a ton to say about Purple, they just seem to be doing their job here. I do find it interesting that the shadow blocks out the reactor camera and then makes it malfunction (is something going to happen in there?) but it may just be a kind of moving the trailer forward type thing.

Also, side note, what’s Lime’s deal with the reactor? They run up to it and snuggle it with hearts floating above them. Engineer really loves their engine I guess haha. I know people have to have already been meming this.

Next is a scene in the medbay.

They do seem to have the medical scanner in the background there, so I wonder if that visual task will ever come into play.

Also I see the MIRA logo on a poster in the background, so my guess is they are somehow under/related to the MIRA corporation.

Green is blushing as Blue checks their reflexes. I remember Blue’s character being described as very attractive, so it could be possible that everyone gets that way around them, or it could just be Green. Idk I’m not here to navigate the minefield that is shipping beans.

White is busy swirling around wine(?) until of course, the impostor shadow thing creeps in as with all the other scenes.

This time, however, someone notices. White.

My guess is White is going to die, and they’re going to die pretty early on.

I was already kinda suspecting White was going to die first simply because of how their character is described. Rich, here because they won some kind of contest, seems to be a bit of a jerk. Feels like the kind of person who would die first idk, just a vibe I’ve had for a while.

Also, I was thinking that 11 is kind of an interesting number, especially considering there were 12 original colors. (Side note, my guess is they’re waiting to include Pink alongside Coral and Rose as “the pinks” or something if they add the new colors in a later season). I feel like maybe they wanted a main crew of ten (because that is what the original lobby size is and thus what a lot of people associate with the game), but needed someone to die early to set up the plot so they needed up with 11.

Now, White being the first and only one to notice the shadow creeping around, and to immediately look terrified and be overtaken by it on screen? My guess is they’re the first to go.

One could also argue that this is an indication of them being an impostor, but idk that feels too obvious of a way to reveal that. (Also I have a different theory as to who it could be). My guess is we won’t know who the impostor is as the audience for a while.

Finally we have this image. I have quite a bit to say about this one!

First of all, I just love this image in general. Makes me so happy to see all the beans!

Anyways, the impostor shadow thing comes in and covers the “not” in “we’re not dead” and I love that I think that’s fun. Also, again, love the falling apart blinds (why are there blinds on a spaceship?) and the balloons duct taped to the window.

We also see them eating the aforementioned fig and prosciutto pizza. There are also a lot of red spheres on the table, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. Fruits of some kind? Or decorations perhaps? Maybe all red gumballs? Whatever they are, Orange is holding one. There’s bologna or summer sausage or something near Brown, and a gray disk in front of it. Not sure about that either, looks kinda like a giant coin, or one of those round lights you tap to turn on and off. Red’s reading what seems to be a rule book (they really don’t seem prepared aha), and there’s also an image of a crewmate on the other side. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be Pink or Tan.

Blue has a piece of paper with a skull on it which looks pretty ominous, and Brown is holding a knife, but I think those are just red herrings related to their professions. Blue’s a doctor and Brown’s a chef, and Yellow is also holding a cooking implement.

Also, once again, no sign of an emergency meeting button. (Unless the weird gray circle is related somehow?)

With that I was almost ready to wrap up the analysis…

but then I noticed something.

Idk if it’s just me but this image is giving the vibe of the Leonardo Da Vinci painting The Last Supper. I don’t know where my mind pulled this from, but I just kinda looked at it was like… wait this looks familiar. At first I thought it was just my brain making connections, but when you look at the two images right beside each other, it seems like a pretty deliberate parallel.

If it is intentional… Orange is in almost the exact same position that Judas (the betrayer) was in in the painting.

Just saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe the red gumball thing made them an impostor /s

Also, just spitballing here, not really part of the theory, if Orange is working against the crew (either as an impostor or an accomplice), and they’re apparently affiliated with HR… what kind of implications could this have for the lore as a whole? Red’s probably just talking to their boss or something, but it feels ominous- what if MIRA (assuming that’s who’s in charge here) is in on the whole impostor thing?

But again, this is also kind of obvious of a hint, so I’m slightly skeptical of it.

Anyways, lots to think about with this, as you can tell I’m pretty excited.

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

Hi everyone!

It is I, Aduah, the grandma herself. I just wanted to say a lil thing.

First of all, thanks for all your support! All the comments, reblogs, likes and asks really motivate me to keep going with this passion project! I know it’s getting a bit confusing, I will improve the tags so you’ll be able to follow the specific ones you want and ignore the rest!

Second of all, sorry if that anon hate attacked you as well. I wanted to reassure you that you’re not wrong for following and liking my stuff. I know some characters deviate from canon, but when you age people up, you also gotta take into consideration what happened in the timeskip and how it affects them. Some character are more “OCfied” than others, depends on who we are talking about and how they were in the show. I will put my own spin on them and put them into situations I myself found into. I think that’s what we do to cope with them, and that’s ok! As long as your visions don’t step on others’ and are not forced or controversial, you can read a character as you want!

That’s the beauty of fandoms, everyone has their story and their interpretation of characters! We can’t make 100% canon accurate depitions, we literally can NOT. Because we’re just fans. Only the original authors can make canon content. We’re here to fill the blanks with what we like!

I didn’t post that anon hate to gain simpathy. I am a grown ass adult who tries to let stress out by inventing stories from kids shows, I have been through enough already. I won’t cry for someone calling me “toxic”, especially if they won’t elaborate it. That’s just the only way I can answer them. If they sent an ask with their account, I could have replied in private. Or they can reach me with DMs. I’m open for adult talk.

I just got irritated they specifically tried to hurt anyone following me. That’ s just… hateful. That’s pure, free, unmotivated hate. Idk what this anon has going on in their life to be this spiteful, but I hope they will get in a better space! I have been there, I know sometimes people think hate helps. It doesn’t. But yeah, maybe they will get happy in the future! That’s what I hope for them!

Again, please don’t feel bad for following me. I will try and improve more and more!

Thank you for your trust!

Aduah 🐔

[lmae98]

╰┈➤ Verlady Week 2024 Day 1: Misc Promp

Note: Here in my city it's already september 9th, so, I want to share this right now. I'll have a busy day but I'm excited for this week!

Happy start of Verlady Week! ❤️

@verladyweek

Song that I associate with Vergil and Lady:

▶ Cirice - Ghost

「 ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯ 」

I relate these two a lot to this song because for me, Vergil and Lady have that potential to be able to understand each other much more than they could with Dante. And, taking away the obvious context in which Ghost unfolds, I basically interpret the song as an unspoken understanding, a deep connection between two individuals.

To begin with, the first two verses of the song:

❝I feel your presence amongst us/ You cannot hide in the darkness❞

I can't help but think directly of DMC3, specifically the fact that Vergil was aware of Lady from the moment she stepped on the Temen-ni-gru. He knew every move, even when Arkham supposedly "took over" the unwanted guest.

Then there are these two verses that are key to me:

❝I can feel the thunder that's breaking in your heart/ I can see through the scars inside you❞

Canonically they didn't interact much, but in that fleeting exchange of words I always seemed to perceive that Vergil somehow saw through Lady, like an open book.

They have some things in common in my opinion, such as that eagerness to be tough in front of others, even in heartbreaking moments. Maybe we didn't see it on stage with Vergil, but we see Lady break down twice during DMC3 and both are when no one is watching her (of course, when Arkham is "dying" she allows it because she thinks he's innocent and didn't count on her father deserving an Oscar for such a good performance).

What more can I say?

Oh, right.

These lines:

❝A candle casting a faint glow/ You and I see eye to eye❞

I can't help but see that in them, especially in this moment:

And finally this:

❝I know your soul is not tainted/ Even though you've been told so❞

More than anything I see a description of Lady in these words. In DMC3 I see many of Lady's actions – having a hard and cold attitude in front of everyone she comes across – as a way to protect herself and cope with everything she lost, behind all that anger and hunger for revenge. She has that attitude of "I've already lost everything... what else can happen to me? What else can I lose?" then she, in her belief, perceives in herself a premature adulthood; Mary, the "pure and innocent" girl, died with her mother.

And it turns out that she doesn't. The good, pure girl showed a sign of life when she forgave Arkham that last time and called him "father" again, in that naïve, but well-intentioned idea of doing justice to Arkham, because she believed that Vergil orchestrated everything.

That's why, half-dismissively, Vergil calls her "foolish girl." But I feel like there's something in his gaze, beyond his lousy insult intent, if it gets to that level. Calling her "girl" has that hidden meaning for me. Beyond deciphering her, he understands her, he's been in that position before.

And with that I conclude my crazy ideas.

I would say "yes, it's cinema", but I'm the only one who see it that way.

Maybe the others would say, "They missed a lunatic from Arkham Asylum."