#earning your keep

[elementary-my-dear-daddy]

Earning Your Keep - Chapter 6 "I Really Wanna Make You Mine"

Analogical (Virgil and Logan)

Read the previous chapter here or on AO3!

Chapter Summary: After a very pleasant night with Virgil, Logan wakes up and realizes he's late for work. Virgil has a few ways to convince him to stick around.

Logan blinked awake. He was pleasantly warm under a soft comforter, with his head resting on a cool silk pillowcase. For a moment, he was about to return to his slumber when he realized that this was not his bed, nor his home, and the gentle snoring from behind him was a person and not the pipes creaking. Last night… actually happened. He and Virgil had-

He shifted up to lean on his hands and saw Virgil’s unconscious form snoring softly while deep in slumber. There’s no possible way he was comfortably sleeping with his arm hanging behind his head at that angle. He smirked and reached over to carefully lift his arm, laying it down by his side instead. This caused Virgil to scrunch up his nose and make a disgruntled groan, shifting into another uncomfortable position. Logan just rolled his eyes and scooted out of the bed. 

As he stood up, he noticed his clothes strewn about the floor. Sighing, he gathered them up and began to get dressed, pulling out his phone from his pocket to check the time.

“Shit.” He whispered to himself. How was it 10 already?! He should have been at work two hours ago and it was halfway across town- and 4 missed calls from his boss?!

“Mm, Lo? Where y’goin?” A sleepy virgil slurred from the bed.

Logan slipped on his shirt in a hurry, “Work, I’m late, and can I please use your restroom to get ready?

He looked around for his tie, meanwhile Virgil sat up and watched, “Uh, yeah, sure. You're not gonna call out?”

“I can’t.” Logan rushed into the bathroom to make himself look presentable.

“Why not?”

“I can’t afford it! I don’t live a life of luxury, Virgil! And I should have been there two hours ago which means I am already at a loss so I should really be-”

Logan scrambled out of the bathroom and nearly ran straight into Virgil, who was now blocking the entrance back into his bedroom with his arms crossed. He looked down at Logan with a grumpy expression.

“Can you calm down please.” He stated, “It’s too early for this.”

“Too early- It’s-” Logan pinched the bridge of his nose, “Virgil. Thank you for a lovely night but I don’t think you understand that every minute I’m not at my job is money lost and I cannot-”

“Afford it, yeah yeah I heard you the first time.” Virgil didn’t move, “How much.”

“What?”

“How much do you make.”

“Virgil.” Logan huffed, “Please, just let me-”

“How. Much.” 

Logan sighed, resigning to the fact that bickering would only slow him down and answering Virgil’s questions would let him leave faster, “Minimum wage.”

“Hm. How long’s your shift?”

“Seven hours.”

“Wait here.”

Virgil slumped out of the room, leaving Logan to his own devices. Logan quickly buttoned up his shirt and checked to make sure he had his belongings before slipping out the door of the bedroom. He was, yet again, confronted by Virgil standing in front of him and blocking him from leaving.

“Hey, I thought I said to wait?”

“How many times must I tell you I am late. I’ll contact you aft-”

Logan paused as Virgil held out a few bills to him, “Call out and I’ll pay you double what you make.”

“Oh, um… No, I really, uh-”

“Please?” Virgil asked softly. He couldn’t let Logan go off and work himself to the bone at a place that could barely pay him and probably treated him like shit.

Logan thought about the offer, carefully considering the consequences if he did. He probably would have to pick up an extra shift if he went in today to make up for the hours he missed. And he’d be berated by his boss for not giving notice. Although if he stayed he could very well be fired, but he did have a good reputation as a worker, being consistently punctual for the two years he’d worked there.

“What would happen if I did accept your offer?” He questioned.

“I’ll order breakfast, we can sit and talk for a bit again. Maybe about last night?” Virgil offered, “And of course I’ll pay you. I wouldn’t want you to not be able to pay your rent or something just to hang out.”

Logan frowned, “I want to stay, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to pay me. I refuse to take advantage of your wealth.”

“You saying that definitely helps, but I know you’re not. The fact that you wanted to give me back the money I gave you the first time makes me trust you.” He shrugged, “And if you’re worried about earning it, last night was enough reason to offer compensation.”

“I’m not a sex worker.” Logan said while very cautiously took the offered payment, folding it and putting it in his back pocket. This earned a soft smile from Virgil as he pushed past him to flop back down onto his bed.

“I know, Lo. You’d negotiate first before we did anything if you were.” He stretched out, much like a cat who’d just woken up. Logan just stepped out into the living room to call out.

 It was a short phone call. He called his boss, who expressed worry rather than anger, since he usually never showed up late or called out. A brief explanation of having to deal with a personal emergency was concocted as an excuse, and Logan was free from the hell that was his minimum wage job as a front desk assistant at a shitty hotel for today. He returned back to the bedroom and dared to sit down on the edge of the bed by Virgil.

“Now do you wanna eat and maybe talk about, y’know…”

“That seems appropriate, yes.”

It didn’t help that his answer was followed by a loud growl from his stomach. He quickly folded his arms over it to cover the noise, but it proved useless as Virgil snickered while pulling out his phone.

“Yeah, let's get some food first. What do you like?” He asked.

“It’s fine, Virgil, you’ve already given me-”

“Omelette?”

“I’ll be okay-”

“I am all for consent but this is the one instance I’m not taking no for an answer. Tell me or I’m ordering for you.” Virgil demanded.

Logan sighed, “There’s no way of convincing you to let me pay for my meal?”

“Nope.” He said, popping the ‘p’.

“Fine, just some toast then, please.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else, that will be suitable for me.”

Virgil stared at him with doubt.

“...and some scrambled eggs? If that’s alright.”

He nodded, entering the order into the delivery app open on his phone, “And?”

“Fruit? If they have it.”

“What are you talking about, you have one right here.” Virgil said with a smirk, earning an eye roll from Logan.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re hungry. One more thing.”

“Pancakes…with jam if they have it.” Logan offered shyly.

“Good.”

The response sent a shiver down his spine, as he was reminded of a similar tone of voice that Virgil used last night. Meanwhile, the other put in his own order and paid, now just waiting for the food to be delivered. He sat up against the pillows of his bed and tucked his knees up to his chest.

“While we wait, last night?” Virgil looked at Logan expectantly.

“Yes, what about it?”

“Any thoughts? You kinda just passed out there at the end.”

“Oh,” Logan’s cheeks turned a light shade of pink, “I had been up since five and it was late. Not to mention that intercourse is a fairly draining activity.”

“Since Five? Logan!”

“I had to get up for work!”

“Oh my god,” Virgil dragged out the last syllable and put his face in his hands, “How many hours of sleep do you normally get?”

“It depends, six-ish, on a good night?”

Virgil groaned, “That’s so bad for you!”

Logan shrugged, “I know, but either I don’t sleep and I’m on time for work or I don’t eat because I lose the hours that go toward my grocery budget. I’d rather have a meal and lose a few hours of sleep, honestly.”

Virgil knew what that kind of lifestyle was like, he was living it not too long ago, and he knew better than anyone the effects it had on your mind and body.

“Logan. You need to quit one of your jobs.”

Logan pouted, “That is simple for you to say. You have wealth. I have a rent that requires 80% of my income.”

“Then let me help!”

“No!”

“Dude get over yourself! Put your pride and guard down for a sec and just accept that I want to help you out here!”

The two sat in silence after his outburst. Virgil crossed his arms and huffed. He didn’t understand, he wanted to help Logan! It wasn’t like he begged for the cash either, he just needed it and he couldn’t get why he wouldn’t put his stupid pride aside and just take his help. When he realized that he didn’t have to have a shitty life anymore, he instantly bought better foods, dedicated more time to hobbies, and slept in for the first time in what felt like years. And it was great! He knew that he couldn’t help everyone, but he could help Logan, if he would actually let him.

“I thought this conversation was supposed to be about sex.” Logan stated bluntly.

Virgil sighed, “It still can be. Sorry. I’m just a little worried about ya, Lo.”

“It’s alright. Let’s just focus on last night, then.”

“We’re coming back to this.”

“Right.”

Logan was going to be the death of him, “Last night went a little fast. I just wanna know how things went for you.”

“I liked it.” The response earned an eyebrow raise to prompt Logan to give more, “I think you’re quite attractive and I definitely don’t regret anything we did. I just don’t want you to think I intend on taking advantage of your wealth-”

“Ah ah, nope. None of that. Only sex talk right now.”

“Fine. What else do you want to discuss about it?”

Virgil thought for a moment, “Well I took on a more commanding role when I wasn’t sure you were okay with that. I kinda prefer that since I panic when I’m not in control, but I should’ve taken it slower and asked you if that sort of behavior was alright.”

Logan just shrugged, “I didn’t mind it. I like taking a more, well… passive? Role?”

There was a slight blush already rising up on his cheeks. He wasn’t as oblivious to sex as most people in his life thought, since his typically calculated nature led others to believe he was either on the asexual spectrum or that he’d been too focused on a job or school to mess around. Much to their surprise, Logan thought he had a healthy relationship with sex. He experimented throughout college and knew what he liked, but telling Virgil made him… not embarrassed, but something close to the feeling. Meh, he’d always had vulnerability issues.

Virgil hummed in response, “Good to know.”

“Oh?”

“What?”

“Why is that ‘good to know’?”

Now it was Virgil’s turn to blush. He didn’t feel ashamed for what he said, but maybe it was a little too forward. Sex was like the one thing he wasn’t nervous about all the time, because it was supposed to be good, and if it doesn’t feel that way then normally people say something about it. At least in his world, that is. 

“Well, if you want, we could do it again. We both liked it.” He offered.

Logan bit his lip, “It isn’t that I disliked what we did, but perhaps we should slow down. And I really don’t want to-”

“-Take advantage of me, I know. You aren’t. How many times do I have to tell you that you aren’t.”

“Until I’m certain you know that I’m not.”

“Ughhhh.” Virgil groaned and rolled over on the bed to stare at Logan, “If we’re gonna date, I’m gonna spoil you rotten. So you better just get used to it now.”

“Nonsense.” Logan shot back, “If we’re going to date, we’ll put a mutual amount of energy into the relationship, as to not to create an imbalance of effort that leads to a disconnect.”

“If last night was any indication of what you consider effort then I’d say we’ll work out just fine.”

“Are you suggesting our arrangement be purely an exchange of sex and money.”

“No!” Virgil scrambled to sit up again, “No, sorry. I mean, it’s more than that. But I don’t mind that- ugh. Sorry putting this into words is difficult.”

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. He knew what he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure how it would be interpreted by the other.

“Logan, do you know what a sugar daddy is?”

Logan paled at the question. Of course he did. Virgil didn’t… He didn’t… Oh. Oh.

“You would like me to be-”

“No! No no no! Well… Not exactly I just- Ugh! Why is this so difficult.” Virgil put his head in his hands.

“Hold on, let me try to make sense of it.” Logan tried, “Are you saying that the exchange of my company for your money appeals to you?”

“Kind of. It’s more like I want to date you and spoil you, take care of you, but I know you want to earn it. And maybe that’s a way to look at how we should do this. Does that…?”

“Make sense? Yes, it does.” Logan nodded, folding his arms, “I’m amenable to trying it, if that’s what you’d like. Although, perhaps we should still restrict our pace. Dates, rather than just sex. If the night leads us to an intimate time then so be it.”

Virgil took a moment to process Logan’s words. If that’s the sort of thing that he wanted, then Virgil would agree. Maybe he was just a little bit smitten, or horny, or a bit of both, but honestly, he didn’t see why that couldn’t work. 

“Okay. Let's try it.”

[homo-sex-shoe-whale]

As a biochem student and certified nerd, I feel the responsibility to bestow this knowledge upon as many people as I possibly can:

You do NOT need to "earn" meals through exercise.

You know why?

Because exercise only accounts for about 20% of your calories. The majority of the calories your body burns, it uses to keep itself alive. It uses them to power your brain and metabolism. In fact, your brain ALONE is responsible for spending about 20% of your calories.

Your BRAIN, just to keep itself going, uses up just as many (or even more!!!) calories than all the exercise you do.

Your RESTING metabolic rate is responsible for burning between 60 and 75% of your calories.

You don't just deserve food because you're working out. YOU DESERVE FOOD BECAUSE YOUR BODY NEEDS IT TO STAY ALIVE.

[autosadist]

if you would like trans women to stop being suspicious of your intentions as a tme person you should probably take the very important step of not making it about you LOL like it actually really is not about you as an individual at all. part of having friends that are marginalized in ways you aren't - something that needs to be accepted to even get to this point - is listening to them discuss violence/oppression/control enacted on them by people in a group you belong to and accepting that they aren't fucking attacking you personally. how do you think people will come to trust you if you've positioned yourself to assume they look down on you specifically?

[sanctus-ingenium]

hi! I absolutely love your art, I was wondering if you're able to make a full-time living off of your personal work or if you do other stuff to supplement your income? I'm in my final year of art school and id love to make a living selling prints and stuff online but I know it's probably not very stable. do you have any thoughts/advice?

I never went to art school and never tried engaging with art professionally so I'm probably not the one to ask. As a side hustle it's fine it pays for some stuff like fuel and phone bills but I've intentionally not been very proactive about it (by not offering commissions or custom work for example) because I never had any desire to rely on an extremely unreliable skill, luck, & A Social Media Grindset to make a living. That's like hell to me lol. So what I make is nowhere near enough to live on, this isn't my job. When I did offer commissions it was on twitter and many years ago, because tumblr was and is a bad place to market yourself (which is why I came back.. I loathe having to be "marketable" as someone who's just a hobbyist, and having to stick to a consistent and cute furry art style for every ref sheet of someone's else character I drew turned me into the joker because furry culture discourages breaking the mold lol). So if you do go through with it, don't do it here

[jimmyspades]

"A farmer comes home one day to find that everything that gives meaning to his life is gone... Everything that he loved, taken from him. One can only imagine the pit of despair, the hours of Job-like lamentations, the burden of existence. He makes a promise to himself in those dark hours. A life’s work erupts from his knotted mind. Years go by. His suffering becomes complicated. One day he stops. The farmer, who is no longer a farmer, sees the wreckage he’s left in his wake. It is now he who burns. It is he who slaughters. And he knows, in his heart, he must pay. "Maybe you’re right. Maybe he could change. Maybe he’s not damaged beyond repair. Maybe he could make amends to all those that he’s hurt so terribly. Or maybe not." THE BLACKLIST 1.04 "The Stewmaker (No. 161)"

[mindibindi]

(x)

[whetstonefires]

The thing about the Shazam! (Captain Marvel but they don't have the rights to call him that) movie is that overall it's pretty good? Even if I question the pacing choices made in terms of screentime breakdown for '14yo boys making mortifying life choices and humorously failing judgment calls' vs. 'character development wrt to literally anything else about this fairly large cast.'

It's hokey; it should be. It's got some decent themes and fun character bits and set up good solid hero/villain parallels to subvert.

But.

But it massively clotheslined itself with a major storytelling fuckup connected to the opening hook mystery, whose resolution is meant to be the emotional inflection point of the whole film.

Because the thing is, this movie chose to be slightly interesting in how it approached its 'family' themes. In a variation on 'family of choice' (since your foster family are in fact assigned by the government and Billy not having a choice about living with them only about trusting them is a major story element) it went for the more nuanced and kind of interestingly grimy take that the people who are actually in your life giving a shit about you matter, if you let them, and that you need to stop giving the people who failed to love you power over your happiness.

Which is not a bad premise at all! As messages for a movie about a kid being sent to a group home go, that's the most upbeat you could possibly get and still be tied to reality.

The Vasquez couple are written and played well in these terms too because they really, genuinely care, and are making so much effort, but as system graduates themselves they never had competent parenting modeled for them and god does it show.

And the mental health problems of the kids who got enough characterization to have them were similarly...realistic in a best-case-scenario sort of way.

But! Still with the but! Even though they pulled off a lot of this fairly touchy premise rather well, there's a crack in the foundation that makes the whole movie kind of collapse on a thematic level.

Because the movie (following the prologue introducing the villain's backstory) opens with a juicy emotional hook where small Billy is separated from his mother at a Christmas fair and never sees her again.

Cut to some years later, establishing status quo scene, he's a Troubled Youth rebelling against the system in an endless quest to find his mother and go home. He is committing minor felonies to get access to police information about women surnamed Batson so he can go to their houses because eventually one of them has to be his mom.

His case worker after he's picked up again refers to his mother as 'someone who clearly didn't want you,' which Billy rejects as bullshit, and he's valid! Because that is not what you say when you have actual information. That's a surmise. That's a sentence that says Child Protective Services and the police couldn't find her either.

Especially because you don't immediately chuck a kid into foster care because he's found unattended. Maybe you do that later, after a lengthy period of oversight, depending on his mom's reaction to having him returned and her race and socioeconomic status and apparent mental health and so forth. But you don't just not contact her, and you definitely don't refuse to tell the kid about the result once you have.

The only normal situation where an accessible record exists of a kid's original parentage but it's denied to the kid is in sealed adoptions, which are a formal procedure that clearly didn't happen here. There is every indication in this opening sequence that his mom was never found.

Which means she's a missing person. Either because they located the correct Billy Batson and his adult never came back to their house (which would suggest foul play or some other drama) or because despite being old enough to be in school and knowing his own name, no one could find evidence that Billy existed prior to turning up at that street carnival.

Which would constitute a very mysterious situation! What is he, from a cult? Another dimension? Did someone (in the social worker's proposed scenario, Billy's mom) erase all record of her kid somehow? Was magic involved?

So: the way we're introduced to this scenario, there's a legitimate weird mystery here that none of the adults in Billy's life care enough about to do anything but tell him to write it off, the way they have. That his missing person clearly did it on purpose.

Billy's being ridiculous because if what he's trying would work then he wouldn't need to do it; his social worker could have arranged a meeting years ago. So it's a useless self-destructive behavior he needs to let go. But he's valid, in that he's being very obviously failed by the system and is doing the only thing he can think of to try to address his situation for himself.

And then! The Big Reveal is that his mom has been living under her maiden name in the same city as him this whole time.

Which the Gamer Kid Who Turns Out In This Scene To Be A Hacker (he's about 10) learned by. Breaking into a federal database.

So he goes to her house and it turns out. She'd been a teen mother and her babydaddy walked out after marrying her, and her parents cut her off, and she was depressed and felt like a bad mother so. When she saw the cops had her kid, she just walked away. And she wants to believe he's been happy and better off without her.

And the emotional arc of the film rests on how Billy comes to terms with this. With the fact that his past will never take him back and he has to learn to find joy in himself and his present situation and his future.

Having let go of that idea, he's able to emotionally commit to his gaggle of foster siblings and realize that unlike the villain, who was obsessed with punishing the people who never loved or accepted him, or the wizard who was focused on finding The Perfectly Worthy Champion, what you needed to be good and not lost was to be part of a mutually supportive group, like the wizard Shazam was before he and his siblings were betrayed. And then they can be a superhero team, woo!

And that part is actually depicted fairly well, all things considered!

But the problem is that the audience, to vibe with this properly, has to roll with the revelation that Billy was wrong to cling to the mystery of his vanished, beloved mother and the fantasy of going home again.

We have to be willing to participate in the idea that the Resistant Child Subjected To Foster Care was in the wrong.

And he wasn't! He wasn't wrong! His understanding of the situation was flawed but it should not have been flawed in this manner.

Because this scenario as it's depicted doesn't make any sense. The cops do not just keep your kid without following up if you fail to collect him from the baggage claim. CPS does not fail to provide a kid with the readily available evidence that he's been voluntarily surrendered to them, when he keeps running off trying to go home.

Why would they do that, after all? Billy's misbehavior was a huge hassle for them. They gained nothing by denying him access to his mother and the information about her that was, you recall, sitting totally available in a government database that could be hacked by a random 10 year old asian-american orphan. They just...made their own lives harder for no reason, while extending the suffering of a child in their care.

If the cops tried to return him back when and she said 'no i left him with you on purpose please keep him' maybe she gets prosecuted for child abandonment and maybe not, but either way, billy would know about it.

But if the screenwriters had made it clear early on that this information had been offered to him and he'd chosen not to believe it, they couldn't get a proper Reveal at the end because it would just be Billy being unable to continue pretending something the audience had known not to believe all along.

And they couldn't cram a good reason for the scenario they'd set up into the space they'd accorded it.

So they were just like, it's fine, if we cram enough cliches into this space people will react to the familiarity and go 'ah yes i know this one' and go along with it, and not notice that this isn't an actual coherent reply to the question that was set up an hour ago and therefore is emotionally unsatisfying somehow.

Anyway this is an important storytelling guideline: if you put in a mystery to control either the actual plot or, even worse, the emotional storyline, that mystery and its resolution have to make internal sense.

If you pull the Real Situation out of your ass, and it's not a matter of red herrings or That One Fact you didn't have that makes all the rest fit together differently, but in fact no one involved could have figured this out and especially if the people who did say this in the first place had no good basis for it, but still get narratively awarded the Correct trophy in a way that contributes to the thematic climax so the audience has to care. Then that will not get good results. It will make it hard to deliver on your intended themes.

Some people will not notice or care! This is true! But a lot of people will, and you'll get enough of a better punch even with the other folks, if the setup and denouement fit together properly and don't require reaching, to matter.

And when people do notice at all, rather than their naturally flowing along with the climax you're steering toward and experiencing A Story, there will be a tendency to notice you standing there placing roadsigns toward the Intended Emotional Response, and call you a hack.

People call out plotholes way too vigorously sometimes, so I want to be clear: it's not the lack of supporting logic I mind. It's that the active presence of illogic, of what's presented as a chain but is broken along its length, means the central character arc intersects with the core theme in a noticeably forced way. Which is bad craftsmanship on a meaningful level.

There is a loss of cohesion where you cannot satisfactorily resolve how the scenario we were initially shown came to be superimposed over the revealed truth, because that relationship between elements is very important to making a 'revelation' storyline land, you know?

In this case it's particularly vexing to me because the last-minute asspull and its thematic weight reaches back around and at the last minute moves the whole movie thematically to the other side of the line wrt whether it's approaching Billy, our protagonist, as a subject with whom we're supposed to identify or an object whom we're supposed to observe.

It makes all the high-school-freshman-posing-as-adult gags retroactively less funny because we were now more explicitly laughing at him, and takes a lot of the depth out of the emotionally sincere moments.

Up to that point I had really appreciated how, despite wavering that way, Shazam! hadn't actually fallen to the MCU Spiderman temptation to dehumanize its protagonist. Which seems to arise out of this weird tendency I've noticed to assume the natural sentiment of adults toward adolescents is bemused contempt, and that therefore if they ask their audience of paying grownups to empathize too closely with a teen hero instead of setting him and his Immaturity up as a clown for our amusement, they'll get themselves banished to the Children's Fiction ghetto.

And, of course, if they'd been fully committed to one side or the other of 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to closely' or 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to distantly,' they wouldn't have gotten snarled up about how much information to hand over when.

Committing to either option (giving us only as much information as Billy had and constructing a story that was solid from a being-Billy angle or giving us more information than Billy and operating confidently in the realm of dramatic irony) could have worked quite well. But because of the mixed signals and unstable narrative distance, they wound up with a distinctly weakened finale.

[martianbugsbunny]

I don't love Alexsandr Kallus because he's some precious, perfect paragon of a man; that's not what he is. I love Alexsandr Kallus because he was absolutely horrible and he changed. He made amends. He uprooted literally his entire life out of remorse for what he'd done in the past and determination to do better in the future. He sacrificed everything he'd ever built because it was built on the pain and death of others and he didn't want that to be the sum of his life anymore. He went into a future where all he knew he could expect was to be hunted because he was once the hunter and he wanted to make up for it. He opened his damn eyes and he looked at what he'd done and he said this isn't right, I'm going to be different from now on if it kills me. I love Alexsandr Kallus because he changed.

[maegalkarven]

I love this image of Gortash from the Emperor's story.

Look at him.

Look at his smug ass. He came to ruin both the Empreror and Stelmane's lives and is so proud of that.

[elementary-my-dear-daddy]

I am thinking normally about sex worker Janus. This may or may not be incorporated into earning your keep.

[hairtusk]

while the dinner with family yesterday was awful, I heard a story from my grandma that was genuinely chilling, and made me think of this sudden resurgence of 'stay at home girlfriend' or trad content that is being pushed online. basically, my grandma's male friend recently had a massive stroke, and is in a hospice essentially just waiting to pass away. this has really put his partner into dire straits - he never got married to his girlfriend of 30ish years, and now, she's living in (his) house that she has no legal right to occupy. she's been a stay-at-home partner, so she has no pension, no savings, no money whatsoever to move out. and the man's family (who *do* have a legal right to his house) are hovering like vultures ready to take possession. this woman is in her 70s, and has absolutely nothing in the world now that he's on his deathbed. i cannot imagine a scarier situation to find oneself in.

[weirdlybeans]

TW: blood, eyestrain, and gore?

Finally, I finished it! Anyways, this is fanart for one of my favorite writer, @masterwords, based on this fic, the night is young.

This would have been out sooner, but I saw @masterwords post about her Halloween party event and I decided to finish it for this event. So, I hope you enjoy it!

[mejomonster]

On a serious note, I do feel mysterious case lotusbook has a lot of sincere themes about getting older, realities of responsibility and dreams realized, how it's difficult to succeed and not always the direct path one expects, how there's value in little aspects of life. Almost every li lianhua scene seems to be about that to some degree. The murder cases aren't particularly deep as far as super complicated to figure out or Able to be predicted super well (since they don't always give all the details in the initial setup), but the themes about who was killed and why do connect to li lianhuas situation.

[jaevy]

your room was square

i once noticed from there

in your bed, as you slept

and i held my breath

everything had its own place

and i wondered what space would i take

in the order you kept

[quietwingsinthesky]

Thinking about the “Careful. That’s my Father you’re speaking about, boy.” line now. Because like. Raphael is the one angel with the perspective of “god is dead/so far out of the picture and not coming back that he is functionally dead to all of us anyway” so you’d think that they wouldn’t care if Dean is an asshole about it. Or at least, that they’d care dean is being an asshole and flippant to them, an archangel deserving his respect, but maybe not so much a little blasphemy because well. God doesn’t care about even the important things, so what’s a little quip from dean winchester?

“That’s my Father.” it’s like. “That’s my Father.” He left home and never came back. He abandoned Heaven, and he abandoned Michael, and he abandoned Raphael. He left. No instructions and a world to run. And Dean Winchester is making jokes while he stands at the epicenter of a godless universe.

It’s more personal here, right? In the show, there’s God, that amorphous idea of something all-powerful that made the world and skipped out on it, and then God, the father who had some kids and went out to get milk and cigarettes and didn’t come home. Venn diagram with a lot of crossover, but what starts in this scene, I think, as talking about the former and only the former, very quickly shifts into being about the latter. Dean’s taking the grandiose, the “Who ran off and disappeared. Who left no instructions and a world to run.” and turning it into the mundane, “Daddy ran away and disappeared. He didn't happen to work for the post office, did he?”

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Just that there’s a difference between an insult to God as God and an insult to God as the father to angels, and the way Raphael responds to the latter, the way Dean is able to rile them up by pushing that interpretation into the conversation, is interesting to me. Careful. That’s their Father you’re talking about. A deadbeat dad is still their dad.

[siriuslynephilim]

spending my whole life trying and trying and trying and trying to be good enough for people who don't give a fuck about me