#every time I see him in so many layers I remember he’s 8-flipping-1

[javelinbk]

Paul McCartney talking on BBC Radio 1, 2nd November 2023

[shingia]

DATING SUNA...

in honor of this smexy middle blocker’s birthday, here are MANY hcs about what i think dating suna would be like (as exhaustively as possible) bcs he’s on my mind 25/8 <3

cw : one or two suggestive stuff, mentions of food

— EARLY RELATIONSHIP

• ok so suna would definitely not waste his time dating someone if he wasn’t truly in love

• that’s why it took him a few months to ask you out because 1. he wanted to be sure of his feelings 2. he wanted to be sure of yours 3. he was scared

• he probably acted detached at first, but it was just to compensate for the fact that you had him wrapped around your finger since day 1

• he probably didn’t officially tell his friends that you were dating and just casually kissed you before for his class (lowkey enjoyed leaving without a word while everyone else was freaking out)

• nicknames came after a few weeks, when he ‘accidentally’ called you babe after asking for a kiss. yeah he is that smooth

• because it took him so many months to ask you out, you already knew each other pretty well so he felt comfortable around you very quickly

• and he tried his best to make you feel the same if you were a bit more nervous

• honestly he couldn’t wait for you two to become closer over time <3 he's a sucker for the boyfriend/bestfriend dynamic

— LOVE LANGUAGE

->| QUALITY TIME

• he cherishes every single moment you spend together, even if it’s just for a few minutes between classes

• sure, there are times where you two just hang out at his place or yours, scrolling on your phones and enjoying each other’s company. but tell him once that you want to talk to him about something and you’ll have his undivided attention

• and lemme just kdjqdhvjdmsjvh real quick : eye contact. that’s how you know he’s listening, and he always leans in just enough for you to know that he’s paying attention. no phone in sight, just you.

• he doesn’t need to take you out on fancy dates for it to be called quality time, because he values impromptu face-to-face late night conversations much more than a dinner at the restaurant.

— DATES

• your first date was one of the only dates you spent outside, it was nothing extravagant you just went for coffee after school and ended up walking through the city, holding hands for the first time

• once you guys started officially dating, you realized that at-home dates were actually more your thing. but there needs to be a difference with the rest of the time you spend at home, so you always have one or two things planned like :

• cook together an elaborate meal for once, actually put an effort in the choice of the movie/tv show you’re gonna watch (and not end up watching rick and morty for the 23rd time this week), try the most questionable face masks recipes - he loves them and doesn’t even deny it

• but i feel like you guys might go out for your anniversaries, and it’s a great opportunity for him to take really nice pictures of you and update his phone’s lockscreen (he’s a huge simp)

• your dates often take place in the evening because he loves to see your face illuminated by the city lights, and he likes to know that you might get cold because he can be smooth af and give you his jacket (most of the pictures are taken when you’re wearing it)

• i think official and ‘elaborated’ dates with suna maybe occur every two weeks because he wants them to be special and likes to look forward to them

— CUDDLES

• he gets a kick out of kissing your whole face except your lips, but really he’s just waiting for you to get frustrated and kiss him yourself

• however, if you ever don’t play along he’ll stop like “wtf you’re not supposed to do nothing”

• he’ll give you lazy and passive cuddles where you just lay on top of him, hugging him while he watches something on tv or on his phone, BUT

• if he ever wraps a blanket around you then real cuddles begin. i’m talking scalp massages, back strokes, kisses, playing with your hands...

• i just know his kisses are aphrodisiac, there’s something about the way he holds your head still with his hands that’s just UGHHH

• you could be sharing a perfectly peaceful moment together and he’ll suddenly get bored and feel an urge to tickle your sides, squish your cheeks or randomly blow in your face/ear

• but god forbid you ever do that to him, he will crush you with all his weight until you can’t move

• he also uses your hand to scratch his back because he can’t do it without writhing like a cat, not that you’d complain about seeing that one day

• you two always end up dozing and losing track of time. “we stayed like that for NINETY MINUTES?” (he’d have to find an excuse for being late at practice, because there’s no way in hell he will tell the truth in front of the twins)

• it’s very likely that you guys wake up still cuddling after nine hours of sleep. i mean it’s canon that he has a good shoulder mobility so he can keep holding you even if you’ve moved in your sleep

• his biggest struggle is morning cuddles because it’s really hard for him to get out of bed and go on with his day when he’s so comfortable in bed with you

— PDA

• i think he’d adapt to your needs, he doesn’t really mind pda

• if he ever pulls you in for a hug in public, it won’t always be a soft and sweet hug, no. sometimes it might look like a literal headlock, but he’ll give you a quick peck on the head to make up for it

• in fact the only times his hugs are sweet and lovey in public are after his matches

• if atsumu ever makes fun of him for ‘being a softie’, he’ll do the exact opposite of what’s expected of him : and by that i mean ruthlessly tongue-kiss you until tsumu begs him to stop

• he uses hugs as a way to talk shit to you about someone without them realizing it

• he doesn’t necessarily hold your hand all the time but he has affectionate gestures like giving you little pats on the head or wiping dirt off of your clothes

• pokes your cheek for no reason, and that’s daily

• he’s also a fricken tease and doesn’t have any problem with gripping your thigh when you’re sat at a table :)

— COUPLE DYNAMIC

• he tries so hard to act like you’re the clingy one but everyone knows it’s a lie

• he probably has a private story called ‘being held against my will’ where it’s just him roasting you on a daily basis

• which is a great contrast with all the albums full of pictures of you in his camera roll. like i said, he’s a MAJOR SIMP

• you also have a private story called ‘exposing the truth’ and it’s filled with stolen clichés of him being a needy and whiny little bïtch (sorry i got carried away) : it’s the twins’ main source of blackmail

• i said before that suna’s a sucker for the boyfriend/bestfriend dynamic. yeah well you guys definitely have it - you can spend entire afternoons together without once acting like a couple

• he’d give you a kidney if you ever needed one, but steal one of his fries and he’ll flip your chair over without thinking twice

•  you both think that your failed attempts at being romantic are hilarious. one time he tried to kiss you under the rain but you were so cold that you couldn’t stop your teeth from chattering and yeah it was just terrible

• the efforts you put in to embarrass each other are remarkable. you once kissed him in a supermarket and he just pulled away, yelling “MOM AND DAD SAID NOT IN PUBLIC !”

— RANDOM HCS THAT GIVE ME LIFE

• remember when i said you guys would do face masks together ? yeah well suna doesn’t own any headband which means that you have to tie his hair up in two pigtails at the front (it’s too short for one ponytail or a bun hehe)

• he has a silent laugh, the kind of laugh where he just wheezes while slapping his thighs, and he has to make a conscious effort to catch his breath

• he tugs on your sleeve whenever he wants to show you something <3

• in winter he writes messages on the frost of your car’s windows. nothing cheesy, probably something along the lines of “nice ass”

• he thinks it’s hilarious that your contact name in his phone is your full name, no emojis, nothing. he even put caps at the beginning 

• he sends you 30 tiktoks per day and expects you to answer to all of them

• he makes you playlists for the dumbest things. one of them is called ‘dentist appointment vibes’

• he likes to see you wear many layers of clothing in winter because he takes great pride in being the only one to know what’s hiding under them *wink*

• when he’s driving, he often tries to be smooth and stare at you lovingly when he’s at a red light, but he always misses the moment when it turns green and the other drivers start to furiously honk at him (another failed attempt at being romantic)

• i’m gonna be honest w/ you : he’s probably effortlessly seggsy when he drives

in conclusion : you might not be the most romantic couple, but your vibes are 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 because you’re both so madly in love with each other

pspsps: here’s a link to my suna playlist that fuels my mind with thousands of scenarios 

[babbushka]

Hi,Z ✨from the 40 questions for fic writers would you please answer if you’d like of course #4,7,8,15,&16 ☺️

Hello my dear anon! Thank you so much for asking :) 

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Oh my gosh in terms of chaptered fics, 9 or 10, I think! Lol. I have lots of plans for the new year, and I can’t wait to get cracking on some of them. There’s a lot of fun in just thinking about and daydreaming about the ideas though, so even if 1 or 2 of those actually turn into something, I’m still grateful for the time to mull over new AUs or ideas. 

Currently the one that’s on my mind is Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which will be a Lawyer!Kylo AU chaptered fic in which Kylo is wrongfully accused of murder and needs you to represent him. Classic slowburn, enemies to friends to lovers, murder mystery court-room drama, lol. 

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

For this question I’m going to choose this scene from Each Eye, my Mob!Kylo Ren x Reader fic: 

You were hunting, hunting him down. On your way to rip him apart limb from limb, on your way to gouge out his eyes and yank his heart straight out of his throat.

Snoke.

The man who had ordered your beloved to kill his father, which he had done! Which he had done so well, so deservingly – it hadn’t been enough. Not enough for Snoke, not enough for him who lured him into a trap for his sister to strike him down. The wretched old man, the monster who had taken your Kylo away from you, who had warped and twisted him into a puppet who had to obey.

Well, he didn’t have to obey any longer, not anymore.

Kylo was passed out, blacked out in your bed. You had found him had saved him, had sewn the chasm of his face back together with ugly fucked up stitches because you didn’t know how to do any better, you didn’t know. You had never done anything like this before, had never even seen it done. Nothing but sheer force and willpower had pushed your fingers forward, nothing but blind determination and fear had given you any sense of calm.

Were you calm?

For context, this story is about how Kylo Ren deals with the apparent news of a traitor within his family of organized crime moguls. The entire fic is shadowed by a sense of underlying tension between literally every character (other than Kylo) and you, but for the majority of the story there isn’t a clear reason why. The paragraphs above are the beginning of that why. 

I’m proud of this whole setup because really it’s something that is set up through the entire story leading to this point. There’s a curiosity there -- why does everyone fear her? Why does everyone blindly respect her? Even Kylo submits to her, and he doesn’t submit to anyone. 

Well, in the scenes that follow, you find out exactly why. It also unveils another layer to her character that we don’t see in the present. In the present, she is perfectly put together. In the flashback, she is absolutely unhinged, and that is a sort of simmering dichotomy that everyone in the story -- and now at this point, the audience -- knows can flip at any moment. 

She is capable of sheer brutality, and you see that firsthand. 

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

You know what I’m also going to choose a scene from Each Eye for this question lol, which as a matter of fact follows shortly after the scene mentioned above: 

“Do you remember? Remember what I did to him?” You asked softly, removing the napkin from your lap, folding it and placing it on the table. You knew there was one last course coming, some sort of ice cream, but you didn’t care.

You wanted to go home, you needed to plan.

“Yes.” Rey said, voice barely above a whisper, because she did – she was there.

“Remember how I spared you?” You asked, snapping your finger and drawing her attention so that she could look at you, so that you could look at her, really look at her.

“Yes.” Rey answered, terrified.

You were no longer all smiles, all warmth. You were no longer sunshine and charm as you had been, as you tried to always be. No, no now you were angry, now you were impatient, now you were offended. Your eyes were cold and hard when you regarded her, when you bore your gaze into hers as you leaned in ever so slightly, leaned in just enough to make her lean in too.

“I’m starting to regret that.” You whispered, before pulling away.

The waiter arrived then with the ice creams, and you returned to your normally cheerful disposition, checking your phone and collecting your belongings.

“Shit, would you look at the time!” You laughed breezily, apologetically to the waiter. “I need to get going, Kylo will be expecting me back home soon. You know how he gets if he’s away from me for too long.” You said to Rey, who was stunned.

“Of course.” She said, mind racing, pulse jumping.

The waiter nodded, handed the ice creams off to someone else passing by so they wouldn’t melt, no use in wasting them on people who wouldn’t eat it.

You eyed the little piece of newspaper that was still on the table, and picked it up.

“Oh, would you mind holding onto this for me? He doesn’t like it when I fill in the puzzle without him, gets all sour.” You winked, folding it up and handing it to Rey.

“Did you finish it?” Her voice shook as she accepted the paper.

“No, there’s one left, I was hoping you could solve it.” You smiled warmly, standing up and putting on your coat, “It’s got me stumped I’m afraid. Forty-two across.”

There’s a lot of dialogue in the Tea Room scenes, because there’s a lot of unspoken truths being revealed. But I like this moment a lot, because it’s the moment that Rey realizes she is completely and totally fucked. It’s the moment where, without saying anything at all, you tell her that you know what she’s done, what she’s doing. 

It’s also an example of that switch I mentioned above being flipped, how thin the layer of her patience is. It was all in all, just such a fun scene to write, that whole tea moment. 

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

This is such a fun question!! For those who may not know, I’m actually a spec screenwriter, and I use many of my chaptered fics as the base/starting point for some screenplays. So do keep an eye out, because there’s actually quite a few in the process of being tweaked and adapted into scripts. 

But to pick just one for this question, the answer is definitely Two Doves, a Flip Zimmerman/Reader fic I wrote which gives us a glimpse of Flip’s time in Vietnam. 

There are so many movies about the war in Vietnam, but in the updated for-screen version of Two Doves, that movie is more about veterans grappling with death and grief, humanity, morality, and what it means to be human. It’s very much an anti-war film that talks about the treatment of veterans after the war and how that’s a parallel to the treatment of vets today, as well as a commentary on the imperial militant industrial complex that has such a grasp on our country. 

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Oh hands down Flip & His Darling Jewish Wife. I just have so much invested in that version of Flip, and there’s so so much that I could write about with them. Probably because that AU is also the personal AU put into prose lol, but idk. I’m just always very interested in seeing where they go, and how they handle the things life throws at them. 

[writersplanetarium]

Facade: Peeling The Layers Away

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

Aelin needed revenge, she decided after getting her car back from the shop. She'd hit his car on accident, he'd done it on purpose. 

And she knew just how to get him.

They had a live interview today with Ren Allsbrook for his web show and Aelin had just purchased her perfect bottle of revenge. She'd had to admit it was tricky getting his skin color right since he had such tan skin, but lucky for Aelin, Elide had offered to help. She said she'd warned Rowan not to get revenge, but he hadn't listened, so she was looking for a little revenge of her own. Elide worked in makeup for the show, specifically on Rowan, so she had his exact shade for Aelin to match the foundation to. 

So Aelin arrived early to their hair and makeup room. So early the artists weren't even there yet. But the makeup was. Aelin quickly switched her concoction with the actual foundation that was going to be used on Rowan and took a seat.

A few minutes later, the artists arrived, greeting Aelin happily.

"We are such big fans of the show," the older woman, Julia, gushed as she came to get started on Aelin, "Yours and Rowan's relationship is by far the most titillating ‘will-they won't-they’ I've ever seen. I mean the progression of your relationship has just felt so real and natural." Most people outside of the show didn't know Aelin and Rowan hated each other and they'd made a deal to keep it that way. Most of the time their bickering was seen as teasing between friends since they were careful not to snap at each other in public, no matter how badly they usually wanted to.

"Well our characters are written well," Aelin said with a grin. Aelin adored Charlotte and Daemion, truly. It was odd at first, to watch herself and Rowan interact so differently, but Aelin could see what they saw. Charlotte and Daemion were indeed perfect together. Aelin and Rowan? Not so much.

"What's it like to kiss him?" The younger woman, Fiona asked, sitting down in the chair for Rowan with a big grin, her chin in her hand.

"Between us?" Aelin asked, looking between them.

"Of course," both women said in unison, leaning in to listen to the secret.

"It used to be okay, but now… I don't know. I think he's getting sick or something. He's been off his game a lot lately."

"Really? Do you think it's bad?"

"I don't know," Aelin said, "But… today is the first day he's going to have been out of his house in a week." Aelin had been sure to keep him up extra late that night to ensure the dark circles under his eyes to continue her plot.

"My God. I hope he's alright," Julia said, setting a hand over her chest.

"The show can't go on without both of you. I hope he'll be okay."

"So do I," Aelin said. Just then the door opened and Rowan walked inside looking just as she'd hoped. Exhausted.

Fiona was up and out of the seat in a flash, offering it to him.

"Mr. Whitethorn, it's so nice to meet you. Just take a seat right here." Rowan sat down, setting his coffee on the table, enough bite in his brief look at Aelin to let her know he was having a bad day. And she smiled to herself knowing she was about to make it just a little worse.

She was careful not to watch him. Too many glances could set him off to her plan. So she waited patiently, letting the woman work through her hair and makeup. When they were done, Rowan and Aelin headed out to the stage.

"You knew we had an interview today," Rowan ground out quietly as they walked side by side, "What could you have possibly been doing up so late?"

"Stuff," Aelin said vaguely.

"Some of us actually need sleep," Rowan said, taking a long drink from his coffee.

"And some of us have lives."

"Well my life right now involves actually getting sleep for once, you should try it. God knows we won't be getting much when the new season airs." Aelin was about to remark when a voice cut in

"Aelin! Rowan! Good to see you two again. How’ve you two been?" Ren Allsbrook asked, standing with a grin and his hands on his hips. They’d been on once before when he’d just been getting his start. He reviewed shows and movies and occasionally had on guest stars to interview or just have a good time with. They had been some of the first people on as guests.

"Rowan's pouting because he's a baby who can't sleep if there's any noise." Rowan rolled his eyes, his fingers paling as they gripped his drink tighter.

"I can sleep if there's noise, I can't sleep through dubstep you're playing so loud it shakes your house."

"I was working on stuff. I work best with some music." That was a lie, she had just been messing with him.

"I hope you go deaf. It's the least you deserve," Rowan said with an annoyed huff as he set his coffee off to the side and took up his spot.

"Why me? If you went deaf it'd solve both of our problems. You wouldn’t have to hear it and I’d stop getting interrupted whenever I try to do anything.” 

“You’d stop getting interrupted if you actually thought about anyone but yourself.” Aelin glared at him.

“I paid for a surround sound system and I’m going to use that surround sound system.”

“Alright one minute to stream,” Murtaugh Allsbrook said from behind the camera, “And it’s nice to see you again Aelin.”

“You too,” she said with a grin, crossing her legs as she took her seat. Anticipation rolled through her as she waited for her revenge to be enacted. She didn’t know how long it would take for it to work, but she had her fingers crossed that it would.

“Three, two, one… Action!” Aelin put on a big smile.

“Hello Terresen,” Ren said with a warm smile to the camera, “Today we have two much-awaited guests. They were here once and you begged to have them back again. Your pleadings have been heard. Back again is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius and Rowan Whitethorn!”

“It’s so nice to be back,” Aelin said, "It's been too long. But we've been so busy with the show that we haven't had much time. But now that we've finished filming this upcoming season, we were able to finally make it on."

"Now that you've finished, can you tell us something about this season?"

"It's going to be one you'll never forget," Aelin said with a sly smile.

"So last time you were here we talked about the characters, but this time people want to know more about the two of you. So what better way than to see how well you know each other. On the show, you two are best friends who know each other like the back of your hand, but how well do you two know each other?" Aelin and Rowan both looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes, knowing this was about to get rough. "We have a test and whiteboards for you two to write your answers on." They were brought over and Aelin and Rowan accepted them with thanks.

"This is a best friend test with answers chosen by your fans. You write your answer on the left and the other's answer on the right. So let's start. Question number one. It's an easy one. Favorite color?" Aelin blanched for a moment. She had no idea what colors Rowan liked. She didn't even think he had a favorite color. So she wrote as much and put down red for hers. She’d always thought she’d liked blue, but she finally admitted she loved red.

"Got your answers?" Ren asked.

"I'm ready," Aelin said.

"I'm ready," Rowan said as well.

"Alright let's flip them and see." Aelin smiled and flipped her whiteboard. She glanced over at Rowan's to see if she'd been right and frowned as she saw she wasn't right. But he wasn't either.

"Red?" He asked, "Seriously?"

"Yes red. It’s pretty!"

"Why'd you think I didn't have a favorite color?"

"Because I thought you'd be just brooding enough to not have one. But green? Seriously? How vain." Rowan was clearly resisting an eye roll, which made Aelin happy.

"That's too bad. Question one goes to neither of you. Let's hope you'll have better luck on this next one. Birthday?"

"Yikes," Aelin laughed.

"I've actually told you this one," Rowan said, writing down his answers.

"What? When?" Aelin asked, narrowing her eyes at him. He was just lying to make her look bad. She knew it.

"That's for you to figure out because I plan on winning."

"You don’t know my birthday," Aelin said.

“You throw a party every year. I can’t miss your birthday.” Aelin gritted her teeth, her eyes flicking between Rowan and her board.

“You never told me your birthday. You don’t tell anyone your birthday.”

“Well, then that just makes this easier for me if you don’t remember.”

Aelin wracked her brain, rifling through every conversation she’d ever had with Rowan.

“Alright, are you ready?” Ren asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Aelin sighed, writing down a random date she thought might suit him.

“Alright! Let’s flip them and see.” Aelin flipped her board, her eyes trained on Rowan’s. 

Her jaw dropped.

“How did you get it?!” He smirked, leaning back. May 3rd. She couldn’t believe he got it right.

“Doesn’t matter. But that's one point for me."

"One point for me," Aelin said beneath her breath in a mocking tone before realizing she was trying to win at being a better friend to Rowan that he was to her. She wanted to beat him, but at what cost to her pride knowing if she won it'd prove she paid more attention to him than she cared to admit. “You do not seem like a December baby.”

“Since when does your birthday dictate how you act?” Rowan retorted.

“You just have a November vibe!”

"Sorry Aelin,” Ren laughed, “One point to Rowan." She seriously hoped her revenge kicked in soon.

They went through other various questions, right answers bouncing between them. Aelin was surprised by some of the answers and answered others easily. Like she didn’t know his favorite activity was working out, though from the looks of him she should have guessed. She did know they were tied, waiting to see who got the winning point when Rowan finally did what she’d been waiting for. He rubbed his jaw.

Aelin pretended not to the notice the peeling, fake focusing on her answer that she was going to get wrong on purpose. Aelin knew his favorite food was just meat on a stick since he didn't have a very refined palate, but she was going to say garlic bread, just to spite him.

"Alright, final answer. Who will win? Turn your boards in three… two… one!" They turned them, Rowan guessing hers right as chocolate hazelnut cake. He had a soft promise of a slow death in his eyes as he saw her answer.

"No!" Aelin said, playing upset that she'd lost.

"That's a tough loss, but it makes Rowan the winner! How does it feel to be the better friend?" That realization that hit Aelin rounds ago hit Rowan and she saw him have to visibly restrain himself.

"Bet it feel great, huh, Rowan? To be the better friend?" Aelin remark, letting her eyes say everything her mouth couldn’t.

"Yeah, great," he said, rubbing his jaw. Now a considerable piece peeled back.

"Rowan, are you okay?" Aelin asked with feigned concern.

"Wha- What do you mean?" He asked, confusion at her concern playing over his face.

"Your skin." There was a gasp as a few people off to the side noticed as well. He touched his cheek, feeling where the foundation was peeling. He furrowed his brow pulling at it making a few people scream and freak out.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Ren asked with a furrowed brow.

"No," Rowan said, peeling more back.

"Well luckily that's a wrap for today," Ren said, "This is Ren Allsbrook signing off. Good day, Terrasen." 

"Cut!" Everyone rushed around Rowan as Aelin slipped off, barely suppressing a grin.

"You were right! He must be sick," Fiona said, standing at Aelin’s side, "But how bad… He may be dying…"

"Dying? No, I think he’s just… out of his depth." She was going to win this war against him, even if it was the last thing she did. Aelin grinned as she slipped off, letting Rowan deal with the fallout of his “sickness”.

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[entwinedmoon]

John Torrington: Reflections

(Previous posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Today, January 1, 2020, is the 174th anniversary of John Torrington’s death. Him dying on New Year’s Day must have dampened whatever celebrations the crew were most likely enjoying, a dark day in a quite literally dark month, as the sun would not return for some time. He would have been buried in that endless night, during a snowstorm (a layer of snow was still preserved on top of his coffin), the first death in what had so far been a successful expedition. A death so soon may have worried the crew, but since it was due to an illness he’d brought with him, it may have just been considered a fluke. They may not have been concerned, still thinking they would make it through and discover the last piece of the Northwest Passage. If they had succeeded, Torrington would have been a minor footnote in the history of a triumphant journey, his grave a small curiosity for anyone who may pass by. But no one made it home from the Franklin Expedition, and Torrington is now seen as an early warning sign of the tragedy awaiting the rest of the men.

Why is it that, after all these years, anyone still talks about Torrington? What is the fascination with him and the other men buried on Beechey? I know what draws me to his story, and while I can’t speak for everyone, I think there are at least some people who share the same reasons.

So what intrigues me about John Torrington? Why did I write this series, spanning eleven blog posts and over 25,000 words (that’s half a book!), about a 174-years-dead Victorian sailor, spending my spare time researching and dedicating long hours to studying his life and death?

In trying to pin down just what fascinates me about Torrington, I went through some of my old writing, and I found this little snippet from an essay I never finished. It was written almost ten years ago, on January 13, 2010:

It was all John Torrington’s fault. I couldn’t sleep because of that frozen grimace, mouth and eyes both slightly open—eyes, intact, seriously, staring back at me. He just stares, cold, frozen, dead. I’m not likely to go on a polar expedition any time soon and possibly die from lead-tainted food or whatever killed him, but it’s not that idea that frightens me. He stares at me in the night, in the corners, in the reflections in the moonlit mirror on my closet door, in the folds of the dirty laundry on the floor, he’s there, staring at me. Going to the bathroom at night is the worst, walking through the dark hallway, knowing he’s following me, just behind me, out of sight, but still manages to jump ahead to stare at me in the split second before the bathroom light comes on, inches from my face in the thick darkness, but then he runs and hides again in the shadows of the hall, lurking, waiting to follow me back to my room.

Sometimes it’s Otzi or Jaunita or Ida Girl or Cherchen Man. Never King Tut or Ramses II for some reason though. But John has always stood above the rest, just the memory of a picture haunting me.

As you can see, I had a slightly different attitude toward Torrington back then. To explain this, let me start from the beginning.

When I was about seven or eight, my older brother brought home a copy of Buried in Ice from school, where he was learning about the Franklin Expedition. He of course shared the pictures in the book with me and my older sister because he thought they were creepy and that’s what you do when you’re a kid, you share creepy stuff to try to scare your siblings. I’m in my early thirties now, so the memory has faded over the years, but there’s still a lot that stands out even now. I remember eating a particular type of corn chip that to this day I associate the flavor of with lead poisoning. My brother told me about how the brains of the three mummies had turned into a yellow liquid—something we thought was gross but also cool for some reason. I remember that there was no way to just flip the book over to cover up the picture of Torrington on the front cover because—oh goodie—there was a picture of him on the back too. My brother and I commented on the golden color of Torrington’s discolored skin (I don’t know why we thought “golden” instead of yellow—it sounds more poetic to call it “golden” but that was certainly not our intention). I also remember that later, after my brother had returned the book to school but we were still haunted by the images, we couldn’t recall the names of Hartnell and Braine, so we called them Big Head and Snarl Face instead. But we remembered the name Torrington, probably because he was featured more prominently in the book. And due to that prominence, Torrington was the one I would think of when lying in bed at night, watching shadows in the closet morph into monsters.

To try to combat my fear, I used a trick I’d learned where I turn the scary thing into something ridiculous (this was before Harry Potter was published, but it’s the same theory as how to fight a Boggart). I put the three mummies into a long-running story that I’d made up in my head—and I made them undead idiots. Like zombie versions of Beavis and Butthead. Yeah, I did that. I made them weird funny sidekicks in my story, but it didn’t really stop me being afraid when I saw pictures of them again.

Remarkably, despite being terrified of Torrington, I became obsessed with mummies as a kid, an obsession that continues to this day. I would marvel over pictures of Tollund Man, Ötzi, and the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland.

But not John Torrington.

Whenever I would flip through a book about mummies, if I encountered a picture of Torrington, I would slam my hand over the page to cover it. I would be creeped out by other mummies, but it was never to the same level as it was with Torrington. And yet, I would still be compelled to peek, even after covering the page. I would regret it immediately, but there was something that made me want to look, even though looking at him was the last thing I wanted to do.

Over the years, Torrington would find his way into a few more stories of mine, in some form or another. In college, I wrote a short story for a fiction writing class where the picture of Torrington on the cover of Frozen in Time started talking to a young woman, representing her repressed thoughts and fears (he cracked a lot of jokes in that one). At that point in time, however, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read Frozen in Time. I had bought a copy a while ago—the 2004 revised edition—and when it arrived from Amazon I flipped through it, telling myself that I was an adult and I loved mummies and I could bravely face the pictures of these boogeymen from my childhood.

That last part turned out to be incorrect. Several weeks of being too afraid to turn off the light at night ensued. I wouldn’t read the book for another eight or nine years.

But eventually I did read it, multiple times in fact, and I’m no longer terrified of pictures of Torrington, or Hartnell and Braine. That all started a little less than two years ago.

It began with another story idea I had that incorporated Torrington, one I have yet to write. I thought I should do some research into him first if I was going to include him. Around the same time, The Terror was airing on AMC. The exact timeline is a little hazy for me, because the story idea actually first came to me at the end of 2017, but The Terror first aired in March 2018. I can’t remember if I had the idea to add Torrington to my story before I started watching The Terror or not, but I think it was before.

Once I started researching Torrington and the Franklin Expedition, I quickly became obsessed. I had poked around Franklin research before, but my fear of Torrington would always hold me back. I would peer through my fingers at pictures and facts, but I could never do more than that. But now I was hooked.

My childhood nightmares were there at first, just out of the corner of my eye, but my research started to shift those in strange ways. I had always seen Torrington as this ancient, towering monster, but then I discovered that he was only twenty when he died and stood at only five-foot-four. I’m older than him. I’m taller than him. His desiccated body weighed less than ninety pounds, which I definitely weigh more than. Basically, if he came charging out of the closet, I could take him.

But what really drew me in was realizing that we knew so little about him. I could look at a picture of his face, frozen in time, but I couldn’t reach back into the past to ask him about himself. I’ve known about him almost my whole life, with him skulking in a corner of my brain, stepping out of the shadows every now and then, but I didn’t really know who he was as a person. The Franklin Expedition can drive people mad with the mystery of what happened to the men after they entered the Arctic, but suddenly I became obsessed with knowing what had happened before the expedition. Who was John Torrington? Who was this guy that has occupied my dreams and nightmares, who has taken up a permanent residence in my mind ever since I first laid eyes on him? Who was this young man who has somehow been a part of my life for so long, but whom I know so little about?

I know I’m not the only one who has been asking these questions, or who has been living with the Franklin ice mummies in their heads. I’ve met some amazing people online who are just as obsessed, if not more so. Thanks to this series, I’ve had people contact me about their own interest in Torrington and the Beechey Boys and how they understand my love for them.

Many times before, I’ve attempted to put in words just what draws me to mummies. In 2011 I even started a long-since-abandoned blog about mummies called Digging the Dead, where I tried to explain my interest. But I’m going to try my best now to pin down what has compelled me to study Torrington, and why he keeps popping up in my life.

I think part of the appeal of Torrington—and Hartnell and Braine—is the shockingly alive appearance of their preserved bodies, with some morbid curiosity over their undead vibe thrown in. The preservation of a body, preventing the natural process of decay, is fascinating. It’s a type of immortality, although one the mummy doesn’t get to enjoy. Torrington looks like he could get up and walk around—possibly in a zombie-like way, but still. He looks more like a real person than some mummies, like bog bodies that became too twisted by the weight of the peat or desert mummies that have a freeze-dried appearance. But a large part of the fascination with Torrington, and mummies in general, is that it’s like touching a piece of the past. When we see their pictures, we’re looking at something that is from a time long gone, but they seem so very present, so tangible in the here and now. They are time travelers, in a way, and this is our way of reaching out to them across the years.

And with the mystery of the Franklin Expedition, Torrington, Hartnell, and Braine add an extra layer of intrigue as well as reminding us that there were more than just officers on board. We have pictures of Franklin, Crozier, Fitzjames, and many of the lieutenants and mates, but the ordinary sailors and marines didn’t have the luxury of having their pictures taken. What they looked like has been lost to time, but the preserved remains of Torrington and the Beechey Boys literally puts a human face on the ordinary men of the expedition, the ones who never wrote memoirs or had journals that were preserved for posterity. Men who have been largely forgotten by history, who don’t get the same reverence we give the captains, who don’t get memorials or landmarks in their names. When thinking of the men of the Franklin Expedition setting sail for their destiny, it’s easy to see Torrington on deck—alive, his striped shirt billowing in the wind as they sail toward Lancaster Sound—and to imagine that these were working ships, fully manned with ordinary people who led regular lives and had dreams of what they would do when they returned home to double pay and the fame of having helped discover the Northwest Passage.

But on January 1, 1846, those dreams winked out for one of those men. On this day, I think not about how well Torrington’s body has defied time and decomposition, but about who sat with him as he passed. Was he alone? Did he have friends on the crew? And what of his family back home? Did they toast him and his journey, not knowing that he was gone?

Who said a prayer for John Torrington 174 years ago?

If it’s not too late, I think I’ll say one for him today.

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Torrington Series Masterlist

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OoC: Favorite Characters

I decided to focus on villains or anti-heroes, it’s hard picking just favorites in a general sense.

1. Harleen Quinzel A.K.A Harley Quin - DC Comic Universe I have been in love with this woman since September 1992 when she first aired in the Batman Animated series, Joker’s favor. Due to her brilliant creators of Paul Dini and Bruce Tim, led with the voice talents of Arleen Sorkin. She was born from her own raw desire to help people in her own best way possible, using her talents of understanding, reading and in many sense controlling people. Sadly, like Alice in wonderland, she fell into a realm of madness and uncertainty. She has been one of the most complex characters in animated history with large backstory and many turns and takes. Extremely popular on various forms and has made many appearances over the years even scoring some of her own comics and shows and now movies. When she was first created, she was merely a fill in and not meant to take and yet here she stands, a triumphant beauty whose overcome Abuse, trauma and degradation.

2. Azula - Avatar the last air bender animated television show + comics What can i say about Azula? In many retrospects she’s fierce, powerful, driven and just intelligent! I think a lot of people forget something pretty important about her: SHE WAS FOURTEEN! This young teenage, overthrew governments, taking whole cities and was the closest to killing the Avatar compared to anyone else. Not to mention her pure intelligence! People compare to playing a game of chess when it comes to moving people or controlling their actions. No, to this woman it was checkers. I truly believe if she didn’t become as over-confident as she did, the war would have ended with her taking the world. With the right nurturing, she would have become the most feared overlord the world would ever see.

3. Loghain Mac Tir - Dragon age book (The Stolen Throne by: David Gaider) and Dragon age Origins the Video game. Yeah, there’s a theme so far i am guessing you are seeing. I can’t help but appreciate sheer intelligence. Loghain is sort of obvious in the video games, it’s clear his intents. At the same time, there is far far more than what is merely on the surface with this man. An obvious villain, almost to the point of it being boring. Yet, why in the games are so many people hesitant and trusting of him? This man had proved himself, over and over, that he had his country in his heart and would do anything to protect it and keep it from the true monsters of the world. People. He was never shy about the routes he’d take, the lengths he’d go, he was brass, courageous, and deceptive. He called things out, forced people to seeing the bigger picture, he didn’t need to control or lie to people about things. He got what he wanted in the most unique ways possible, not his title, not his money, not his charisma but by being true in what had to be done. 

4. Sylvanas Windrunner - Blizzard Entertainment Video games I don’t see her as a Villain, an Anti-hero, yes. Look, we all know Blizz can’t seem to understand women or know how to write them on a large scale. I seriously feel bad for both, Piera Coppola and Patty Mattson as they have to watch this poor woman get brutally torn to pieces. I will always, always have a soft spot for her and remember the days where in many respects was like Illidain, and (above) Loghain. A woman who saw the bigger picture and would sacrifice anything to save everything she cared for. I wont drag on for her, simply because i know the most people who are doing this and following are from the Blizzard franchise and i know we have all heard many many layers to this continued argument about this particular character. If ya wanna PM about it or rant at me, bring it. I’m an Alliance player at heart, but i only got into w.o.w because of this woman. Both sides are shit. *drops mic*

5. Aaravos - Dragon Prince, Netflix television animated show. Okay, seriously, if you haven’t seen the show yet: DO IT! Just as with this theme, INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE! Tactful, charming, knowledgeable, i mean...look at that face! He is hands down perfect. Sadly, we still know very little of him but goshdamnit! Love! Love! Love! I can not wait to know more of him and see more of him. 

6. Maleficent - Fairy Tale story / Disney The jist of her, from stories and movies, is general: She was snubbed or insulted by the royal court and took her revenge on the child they were all celebrating. I’m sorry, but this has always been fantastic to me. What is more painful and hard to deal with then your own child being cursed? Claim petty if you want, but no, oh no my dear friend, this is a brilliant revenge. A normal person would blame the man in charge and curse him, but meh, whatever. Kings wont remember how they snubbed others, this is proven time and time again in many stories. Will this act ever be forgotten? Will the generations always remember not to snub a powerful faerie? You better believe it! She made a ever lasting mark, an impression that has lasted since the 13th century! Throughout the years no one has changed these facts: Maleficent was powerful, she was disrespected and she took her revenge onto a child. Normal stories like these over the years have changed both villains and heroes, or even circumstances. This classic has even seen the beautiful creation, directed by Robert Stromberg from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton, and still they honour the root of what was and with a focus on the villain and her origins.  How many villains get this?

7. Narberal Gamma - Overlord Anime/ Manga series Who doesn’t love a maid? Not to mention a Battle maid. Narberal is...mm, i don’t even know how to express her. She’s just generally cool, powerful, intelligent, loyal and honest with everything around her, just a demeanor of a refined perfection. She’s enjoyable to watch. Another thing i enjoy, she’s not the main villain. The show itself has many “villains”, i say in such way because it’s never really clear or obvious what you can count as villain or hero in a lot of ways. Yes, some are obvious but even then in many cases showed within it’s all about circumstances, who you are following, why you are following them. I enjoy the not so cut and dry of “good and evil”. This character also helps continue that ploy, helping and yet also killing people.

8. Carmilla - Castlevania Netflix series I’m a huge vampire fan, been so since middle school. I’m not as quick whipped as i use to be about the lore, history and so on when it comes to many Vampires and their origins. With such said, damn she made me bring out the books again, especially because she was one of my favorites to read about. I mean, Lesbian vampire. Do i need to say more? For now, i’ll only focus on the more recent adaption of her. So, yeah theme? We get it, intelligence. The world truly is a chess board for her, however she does not expect people to just flip the board on her. God, Jaime Murray, thank you so much for that wtf moment cause you expressed her sheer just horror at watching everything fall around her with perfection. Throughout the points we see Carmilla we see her truly be the tact master, stirring the pot and also showing her prowess in form. There is also a lot of restraint i don’t think people will give her credit for. We see how she expresses her emotions in violence, but i also think we are seeing it in a very, very pulled back way. I look forward to seeing how she changes her circumstances and sets things back into her own order in the coming season.

9. Akasha - Book series: The Queen of the Damned by Anne rice and movie: The Queen of the damned. Ah yes, the books that helped start the joys of vampires and how could i not fall in love with someone toying into the very beginning and trying to draw into the beginnings of a creature known throughout the world and time. Why do i choose Akasha considering i already touched base on vampires? Simple, she will always deserve a spot on any favorite list of anything. She gave so little cares about anything and only wanted the world to die and feel her wrath. Not to mention Aaliyah played this part so beautifully well it deserves every recognition it can get. I know she doesn’t seem to quite fit with the rest, but this is partly why she is so low on the list.

10. Callisto - Xena television series Last but certainly not least, we can’t forgot about this one. Good? Bad? Surely just pure chaos! She does what she wants and cares little about the consequences. It’s been ages since i’ve last seen the show i will admit, so my bases on her is a bit rusty. However, i will always remember her out of the many other villainous people we meet in the Xena universe. Fun, witty, combatant, you never knew what she was really going to do. As soon as she popped into a episode, i would recall fondly sitting at the edge of my seat just wondering how or why she did the things she did. There is my list of favorites, i’m sure you can see the themes between them all as many of them have common traits, inspirations and personalities. Hope you all enjoyed! Tagged by: @olivia-lovecraft​ tagging: *boops* you!

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Tomorrow Never Came PT. 11 (TW)

The year is up - tonight is the night, and you do your best to prepare for what is to come, both on this night and after all of it has died down. But because we can never be happy, a wrench is thrown into the works. 

Read PT. 1 here | Read PT. 2 here | Read PT. 3 here | Read PT. 4 here | Read PT. 5 here | Read PT. 6 here | Read PT. 7 here | Read PT. 8 here | Read PT. 9 here | Read PT. 10 here | Read PT. 10.5 here

TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE, IMPLICATIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, GENERAL ANGST

You didn’t tell him what day it was. It wouldn’t help him tonight, anyways. He had a gig – ‘a massive one,’ as he had called it, and he was quite sore that you had turned down his invitation to come.

“You never come to any of my good shows,” he complained loudly, his body situated between your legs in front of the couch as you brushed through his hair, helping him decide how to style it for the aforementioned show.

“They’re all good,” you replied absentmindedly, trying to find his part and pursing your lips in concentration. “Besides, what good does a girlfriend at a show do? You’ll get much more attention from the crowd if I’m not there to scare all the groupies off.”

“Fuck that attention. I want you to be there,” he grumbled, leaning his head back so he was looking up at you, making you lose your progress with finding the part in his hair. Frowning a bit at both at your foiled attempt and Roger’s thoroughly upset expression, you caressed his cheek gently and sighed. “Can’t you just ask for the night off?”

Ask off the one night you’d been sent back to this era to fix? “No, sorry bubs,” you answered truthfully, though the word was loaded. But Roger didn’t put 2 and 2 together, so he continued to pout and lifted his head up again to let you continue your magic.

And he hadn’t questioned it again, thank God. He’d simply made sure to see you on his way out, pestering you more than normal while Freddie took a bit longer to get ready.

“Are you going to play loud for me?” you asked as you fixed a stray piece of his hair, marveling at the solid hairstyle you’d chosen for him tonight. “Damn, you look good like this.”

“Thanks, my girlfriend did it for me,” he schmoozed, making you laugh, and his arms wrapped around your waist as he pulled you onto his lap, laying back a bit against the couch. “Of course I’ll play loud for you. I want you to hear it even if you’re across the city.”

“Wish I could be there,” you murmured, a bit wistful, but gravely aware of the reason you couldn’t be. Tonight was the night. At an ungodly hour of night, your mom would stop in to pick up some materials and be ambushed on the way out. It was your job to stop this ambush. There was a lot resting on this night, and to say you were anxious would be an understatement.

Roger felt the anxiety in the way your hands shook as you traced shapes into his chest, staring off at seemingly nothing, and his eyebrows furrowed. “It’s okay, babe, really. There’s one at the end of the week, you can just come then. I know work’s been busy.”

God, it made you smile a bit at how ignorant he was right now. He knew it was happening soon, but in his panicking about this gig, he’d forgotten the exact date, and you were so thankful it wasn’t weighing on him anymore. It was nice to not have his worries on top of yours, to have your boyfriend just as whacked out about you saving your mom as you were. It was calming. And he was right – you could just come Friday.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” you agreed, raising your head and slowly sitting up as your other roommate walked in, fixing his sleeves.

“Ready, Rog?” an ever-impatient Freddie asked, raising an eyebrow as you climbed up off the couch, stretching before walking over to the entryway while Roger took a bit longer. “We’ve got to be off in a few or we’ll be late for the show. Brian won’t let us hear the end of it.”

“Coming, coming,” Roger grumbled playfully, and the pair of them approached together, but Freddie’s arms extended first, roping you into a big hug as he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Unfair. I believe that’s my girlfriend, Fred.”

“Well, she was my roommate first,” Freddie retorted, mussing your hair before putting you at arm’s length. “Scrabble tomorrow night? You’re off, right?”

Roger began to protest, as he’d wanted to take you out, but you talked over your boyfriend with a wide smile and genuine agreeance in your voice. “Absolutely. Don’t think I won’t kick your ass if you try to pull the triple vs. double square thing on me again, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Cheers!” And with that, he was off, leaving you to a disgruntled Roger that still pulled you in for warm, prolonged hug. You didn’t want to leave the security of his arms, almost whining as he pulled back for a moment, but your whine was quickly silenced by his lips pressing against yours, distracting you immediately as you kissed back eagerly, bringing a hand up to his arm and pressing close. Every time he kissed you was like the first time, and a dizzy feeling edged into your brain as he pulled away slowly, kissing your nose.

“Go on now,” you urged quietly, although there was zero conviction in your voice to match the words, and Roger smiled knowingly before giving you one last, quick kiss before heading to the door.

“We’re staying at Bri’s, I’ll be home in the morning to wake you up at the asscrack of dawn!” Giving him a playful warning look, you followed him down the entryway and held the door open for him, leaning your head against it. He paused for a moment as he exited, his captivating blue eyes searching your face for a moment before a wider smile graced his peachy lips.

“Alright. See you tomorrow, bubs.” With that, you started to close the door, watching him the entire time you closed it. And he matched your intensity with the same gaze, the contact not breaking until you finally shut the door, sighing and leaning your forehead against it. You had maybe a few hours to prepare. It was go time now.

Weaving your way through the flat, you gathered a few things – your notebook, a hat, and some sunglasses. Though it was a poor disguise, you couldn’t be too careful about your mom seeing you and throwing all kinds of things extremely off balance in the future. Even though you weren’t going back, you were terrified of what the consequences of her own recognition would be, so you decided to play on the safe side.

Looking behind you and staring at the door for a minute to make sure the boys wouldn’t pop back in, you then made your way into Roger’s room where you knew there was a pocket knife. You’d seen it in Kensington Market and mentioned it once as a joke for protection against your coworker – a day later, he came home with the exact thing, complete with your initials crudely engraved on the handle on one side, and his on the other. RMT.

Entering Roger’s room, you beelined for the desk, opening the top drawer and pulling it out. Flipping it over in your hands, you ran your thumb over the bumpy initialing on the handle, smiling at the sentiment of his own initials on there. It was corny, sure, but the fact that he’d remembered and went out of his way to bring back this gift was a reminder of how devoted Roger was. As much as Freddie tried to pass him off as the ladies man with a short attention span, you knew there were far too many layers to your dirty-blonde boyfriend for that simple of a characterization to ever have merit.

With a quick sigh, you pocketed the knife and turned to his mirror, pulling up your hair into a tight bun before pulling the cap up over it and letting the bun stick out of the back. After that, you quickly slid the sunglasses on and stared at your own reflection, shaded by the lenses of the glasses you’d brought with you from 2018. Now, all there was left to do was wait.

And that was the worst part – sitting out on the street in Roger’s car, just staring at the church. You didn’t know what time it happened. Your uncle never gave you a specific time, just a general idea that it was later at night than she usually came. So, you sat there for hours, distracting yourself only with your notebook and staring at the pocket knife, hoping desperately that you wouldn’t have to use it but dreading the very likely possibility that you would.

And then, there she was. It was hard to tell it was her at first – the streetlights on your block were admittedly running on their last legs, so the dimly lit sidewalks almost concealed the younger version of your mother, confidently approaching the church without a single care in the world. God, if only she knew.

You checked the clock for a brief moment. Damn. You’d been here for almost 3 hours. Sitting up in the driver’s seat, you stretched and observed warily as William and Ted came to greet her on the front steps, ushering her inside. Taking a shaky breath, you realized this was it. You fix this, and everything would be alright again. You could be with Roger, your mother could be safe from those bastards, and life would go on, as fucked as the space-time continuum probably was. Or whatever they’d called it in those bullshit time travel movies. You supposed Roger wouldn’t even know – Christ, you were so far back in time that Back To The Future wasn’t even a fucking thing.

Shit. There she was again, arms full of teaching materials and books. She exited without even a hint of being troubled, turning down the alleyway and marching straight towards her inevitable attack. Shoving the knife in your pocket, you unlocked the car door and crawled out, looking around to see if there were any cars coming before you shut the door quietly and crossed the street. And as you got halfway across, you heard it – the shriek of a helpless woman, quickly muffled by a strong hand.

Adrenaline kicked in as you raced across the other half of the road, blood rushing in your ears so violently that you could barely hear your own voice as you shouted down the dark, incredibly terrifying alleyway. “Hey! Stop it!” The tone of your voice betrayed you, more shaky than anything, and you quietly cursed at yourself for being so out of your element. But right now, there was no time to be scared and back out – this was it.

Sucking in a deep breath, you felt your heart rate spike even more as you started sprinting down the narrow passageway, quickly gaining on the trio. And what you saw was horrific – William, towering over the two of them while Ted had her pinned to the ground, her skirt in the process of being torn to shreds while William had frozen in reaching down to clamp a hand over her mouth. And she looked so terrified, so dazed, like she had no idea what had hit her, probably because she really didn’t – not yet.

They knew they’d been caught in a compromising position, but William and Ted were frozen in place, unsure how they were supposed to talk their way out of this. William was breathing heavily, obviously already riled up over the entire 30 second experience, and Ted was a bit wide-eyed, looking frantic and caged and pathetic as he stared at you. His eyes followed your trembling hand as it dove into your pocket, pulling out the knife and flicking it open. This was not what you’d expected - somehow, you expected it to be less animalistic and more civilized, but all of your expectations were shattered with this horribly indicative display of male entitlement and pure lechery. It was simply horrrific, not a grandiose display of disgusting matter but rather a raw, unfiltered one. Whatever they had to say, they could shove it up their asses.

“Get the fuck off of her. Now.” That was all you had to demand, coupled with a lift of the knife into an offensive stance, ready to go if need be. They were gone in a heartbeat, running off down the alley away from the church, and you realized they were attempting to cover up the fact that it was them. But it was already too late. The look in your mom’s eyes was full of betrayal, of knowledge that her closest friends had planned her degradation/assault. That’s when you realized she was bleeding from the lip, her lower lip busted and bruised, possibly from a slap or a hit from William and his tarnished, false purity ring. “Oh shit, m- you’re bleeding, let me help you.”

Hurrying to her side, you helped her up from where she was still laying, wrapping an arm around her waist and helping her across the empty street to your flat building, opting to use the bathroom in the lobby instead of revealing your home base. It was poorly lit, unbelievably grimy, but it looked like she wouldn’t even have noticed if she’d tried. She had the thousand-yard stare, one you’d already seen far too often in 2018, symptoms of PTSD that would go undiagnosed for over 20 years. God, this was your mom right in front of you. Flesh and bone.

Hands shaking, you wetted down a paper towel and started dabbing at her lip, hoping that she couldn’t see how wide your eyes were behind the sunglasses. Even though they hindered your vision quite a bit, you kept them on as you cleaned her up, a deafening silence surrounding the two of you until you’d thrown away the last paper towel. When your back was turned, she finally spoke, her voice ringing out clear as day and making you shiver.

“Thank you so much.” Turning around slowly, you saw that she was now looking directly at you, and you held back a gasp as you saw a bit of life in her eyes again, something you hadn’t seen in so long it almost seemed to be fake. “I don’t know what I would have done if-“

“You’re welcome.” You again sounded so unsure, you wanted to smack yourself, but you cleared your throat and ran a hand over the back of your head, swallowing hard. “Fuck those guys.”

“Yeah.” She paused for a moment, then laughed sadly, letting her gaze drop down for a moment as she leaned back against the sink, wincing a bit at the cold. “Yeah, fuck those guys. I just can’t believe… I don’t know. I think I’m just going to go back to my brother’s flat. I can’t think straight for the life of me.”

“I’ll walk with you,” you offered, shoving your hands in your pocket before giving her a questioning look. There was so much of you in her, it made you feel a bit sick, but you pushed the queasy feeling in your stomach down and watched as she raised an eyebrow, her face of contemplation mirroring your own before she nodded. A sigh of relief left your lips and you opened the door for her, leading her back out to the sidewalk on the other side of the building so she wouldn’t have to see the church again. Not right now.

“I really can’t thank you enough,” she mumbled softly as she started off in the direction of Dan’s apartment, walking side by side with you down the sidewalk and sending you glances every once in a while. The sunglasses seemed to be making her curious, but you ignored the glances in favor of remaining more of a mystery to her. “What’s your name?”

And damn your mind, because for a moment, you slipped. “Y/N.” You immediately tensed, closing your eyes for a second as you mentally slapped yourself, but then you returned to normal, trying not to raise any more alarms for her than she’d already had tonight. “What’s yours?”

“Y/M/N.” Nodding, you kept your gaze straight ahead and let her lead the two of you, fiddling with the buckle on the back of your hat. “I like your name. Y/N. Very pretty.”

“Thank you,” you almost whispered, feeling tears start to well up in your eyes, but you forced them to go away, sniffling once and pursing your lips. Not now. Don’t cry in front of her. This is about her, not you. “You know, those guys are a bunch of assholes. I live across the street and they’re seriously the biggest pair of hypocrites I’ve ever seen.”

“A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that, but now…” she trailed off again, looking up to the sky as if she was forcing some tears to roll back in her head. She probably was, and you sucked in a harsh breath as you realized that there was no way to guarantee she wouldn’t be just as fucked up from this as she was from the last time it’d happened. “I guess I just don’t know who to trust anymore. It’s a scary world.”

“Hey, it’s not all that bad,” you assured, trying to remain positive as you looked over at her, seeing the glistening wetness of her eyes. “Just… don’t be afraid to ask for help about this. Shit like this can really mess you up in the head, and I guess…. I wouldn’t want someone as nice as you all screwed up because two assholes couldn’t keep their hands off.”

She was slowing, indicating that you were nearing the building, and you came to a stop with her in front of a building you’d remembered your uncle mentioning once or twice. Your mom put her hand on the door handle, hesitating a moment before glancing across the street and squinting a bit, then looking back to you. “Do you want to come in? I’m sure my brother would love to meet you.”

“No! No, it’s okay, I, uh…” You trailed off, looking across the street to stall a bit when you saw him. Weston, standing on the other side of the road, leaning up against the bonnet of one of the cars and smoking nonchalantly. It was a dim resemblance in the shitty night light, but it was definitely him, and you felt your heart drop into your stomach as you looked back to your mom, smiling weakly. “It was nice meeting you, but my boyfriend’s probably expecting me. Listen, just, uh… stay safe, alright? The world’s not as bad as those guys make it seem.”

Looking down at her skirt, your mom seemed to weigh both sides of the argument before nodding, still a bit unconvinced but giving you a satisfied enough smile to set your mind at ease. “Well, goodnight, Y/N. Thank you for everything. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, maybe,” you agreed, though you knew you’d be avoiding her at all costs. You’d gotten lucky enough not nearly getting killed for being around her this long. It would be suicide to go out of your way to see her any more. “Good night.”

With one last smile and nod, she retreated inside of the building, clutching at the ripped ends of her skirt as she disappeared up the staircase. Watching her until she was out of view, you got a moment of peace before you felt his presence slowly emerge, coming to rest right beside you. “Need a pal to walk back with?” The smell of smoke invaded your nostrils, and you could hear him stomping out the cigarette as you closed your eyes, trying not to blow up on this stupid salt-and-pepper haired man.

“God, I thought I’d get lucky enough to never see your stupid ass again,” you muttered, turning on your heel and huffing a bit as you started to quickly walk back to your flat. You were not in the mood, but Weston very much was, easily catching up and matching your pace as you crossed the street. “Could you seriously just fuck off? I don’t need your lofty opinion of what I choose to do about my future. Tonight has been enough already.”

“It’s never going to work. You and that scruffy drummer.”

“Oh, please enlighten me. I’d love to hear all about how you think I don’t belong here and that I shouldn’t spend the rest of my life with someone I love now that I know I’ve fixed things for my mom,” you spit, so much sarcasm dripping from your words Weston would have been an idiot not to catch even a drop of it. And he did, chuckling while rubbing his 5 o’clock shadow and falling into step with you.

“Are you really going to make me spell it out for you? Don’t go back to him. Leave while you can. He’s not home right now, is he?”

“I’m not answering that,” you replied simply, crossing over another street and getting thoroughly annoyed at the fact that there was no way to shake him. He was persistent, his strides matching yours and locking you into pace that was frustratingly in sync. “I’m not leaving him. Why should I?”

You meant it more as a rhetorical question, but Weston did not take it that way, sighing as he followed you down the last block of walking, your flat building in view. “Because I know exactly how you feel. I was there once.”

“What?” you asked suddenly, so floored that you stopped abruptly. He didn’t anticipate the stop, walking forward a few steps before skidding to a stop and coming back to stand in front of you. “What do you mean you were here once? You were in love with Roger Taylor?”

Weston burst out laughing, moving his hands to his jacket pockets as he shook his head, acting as if the thought was absurd. “God, no. I don’t even know who he is besides the fact that he’s Queen’s drummer. I meant, I’ve been in your position before. In love with someone who I belonged with so much that it was never meant to actually be in a world that was fair.”

“I-“ You were at a loss for words, standing there listless for a moment before slowly starting to advance past him towards your building, barely noticing him trailing you as you muttered, “How could you ever know how I really feel?”

“I don’t,” he replied simply, looking up at the balcony that was roughly in the vicinity of your flat, just outside Roger’s window. “I just see you two up there a lot. Looks a hell of a lot like love. Like true love.”

“It is,” you murmured softly, your heart simultaneously swelling and contracting at the thought of Roger and leaving him. “I love him so much. I could never leave him. Not like this. Never.”

When you reached the building, Weston walked around you to grab the door, holding it open as you passed through like a ghost, not really seeing where you were going but going through the motions – up the stairs, down the hallway, unlock the door, go into your flat. Weston talked the whole way up, the words hardly registering in your ear but drilling into your brain as you pictured Roger, probably having the time of his life at his gig right now. “I had that once with a girl just down the road from here. It was beautiful – she loved me and I loved her, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere but here with her, even if I didn’t belong here like that. She was the reason I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t.”

When it got quiet, you sat down on the couch, not really inviting Weston to sit but not protesting when he took the chair adjacent, and you frowned. “Couldn’t what?”

“Couldn’t stay. Not when the universe was doing everything to prevent it. It wasn’t meant to be. I couldn’t keep putting her in danger like that. She deserved so much better.”

“But….” You trailed off, your heart shattering as you remembered all the tiny ways the universe had threatened you and Roger. Nearly getting hit by a car, your run-ins with the creepy coworker, a few close calls with Roger and the train that he’d written off as being a klutz. 

There were so many more that popped up as red flags now. A cut from a dropped knife that ended up in stitches, Roger nearly catching on fire after a show, all small things you’d chalked up to insignificant blunders that now painted a bigger picture. The world would really try until the very end to break you two apart or kill one or the other, as long as it ended your bond. That was the end goal – the termination of you and Roger. You didn’t belong here. Weston was right.

“I know, it’s a lot.” Weston’s voice called you back out of your thoughts, a small tear coming to the corner of your eye as you looked up at him, searching his face for any hint that he was joking. Finding nothing but a stony-faced middle aged man, you broke down into crushing sobs, the weight of everything falling on you all at once, shattering your ribcage, piercing your heart. You couldn’t stay.

“I told Roger I’d see him tomorrow, in the morning. I wanted to wake up to him coming home.”

But tomorrow never came.

(a/n: this is not the end! There are a few more parts left, so keep your eyes peeled. Also here’s some tissues if ur upset srry jk i dont have any)

PT. 1 PT. 2 PT. 3 PT. 4 PT. 5 PT. 6 PT. 7 PT. 8 PT. 9 PT. 10 PT. 10.5

taglist - @crosmopolitan @just-ladyme @rogerfxckingtaylor @fourmisfitz@shae-is-not-ok @moreinfinite @fruityfreddie @poachedhazontoast@strawberryfields-forever @imladrs @psychoticobsession @killer-queen-xo@rebelrebelyourefaceisamess @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen@brownhardyho @stardvstial @iminlovewith-rogers-car @benyeehawdy@mercurys-bike @mazzelloplots @beaaatle @sunshine112 @wonderless-screwup @rogers-sweatbands @whowaits4everanyway @sunflower-borhap-boys @bitemerog @sitonmyhot-seatoflove @siriusly-a-nerd @rockerchic93@darkangel711 @jennyggggrrr @bensrhapsody @xiaoqueencava

[this-is-our-fandom]

Bucky Barnes: I’m in Control

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader (Sophia)

Rating: M (18+) 

Warning: Smut.

The super soldier walked to you, "hey, Sophia," he says and gives you a hug, he had just finished his daily exercises with Sam and Steve.

You lift your head at the sudden action before realising what was going on, "oh, hey Buck, sorry Tony wanted me to tell everyone that there's a meeting for everybody. I'm just crossing off who I've told because knowing me, I'll forget."

Bucky nods, "yep, okay, what time?"

"He wants everybody there at 8am." You yawn, you had gotten up so early so you could tell everybody and so that everybody still had time to do what they like. It was currently 6am.

Bucky woke up at 3am and you faintly remembered him kissing you cheek saying he had to go for a run... what a morning person - unlike you who needs about 4 cups of coffee just to know what 1 + 1 is.

"That's all good, have about an hour to shower, gonna join?" He wiggles his eyebrows mischievously.

You giggle a little, "nah, I have so many other to tell still."

Bucky sighs but doesn't force you, "that's alright, I'll see you then?"

"You will." You smile and kiss his cheek before he walks off.

~

It was currently 10 to 8 and nearly everybody was in the meeting room.

You eventually got to everybody by quarter to 7 and you then ate your breakfast - which was a cup of coffee and your favourite bowl of cereal.

As you sat down, Tony put on the projector showing the title which was something stupid he came up with. Bucky strutted towards the spare seat next to you and places his hand on your thigh softly, smiling towards you. "Hey hun." He whispers, trying not to disturb Tony who was introducing the latest problem which needs to be solved immediately.

"Hey babe, was the shower good?" You whisper in the same tone as his.

"Yeah, pretty good actually, be much better if you-"

"Barnes, if you want to disturb my meeting you can exit the room." Tony says, clearly annoyed - someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Bucky turns, "sorry baby." You whisper close to his ear and you physically see him shudder.

He turns slightly, "it's okay." He mouths.

As the meeting continued you noticed what Bucky was wearing, his regular (probably worn too many times) red Henley along with a pair of black sweats that showed his thigh muscles a little too much and made your mouth water - previous images going through your head where you would often ride his thigh for his and yours enjoyment.

In the corner of your eye you see Sharon biting her lip at Bucky and you clench your fists, how dare she? He was yours and that slut can back off.

"Um, Tony," you put your hand up slightly, he nods, "could you tell Sharon to look at the front?"

Everyone turns to look at you, "Sharon, eyes to the front." She sends you a daggering glare and you put your finger up at her. She deserved it for looking at your boyfriend like that.

You lean forward in you chair and lean your chin on his metal shoulder, "she was staring at you." You whisper, lightly biting on his ear lobe when nobody was looking. Bucky decides not to speak, afraid he would let out a moan instead of speaking, "you're mine, all mine."

Your hand comes up and brushes along his sweats, a shudder rips through his body again and he swallows hard. "Doll," he says lowly, trying to grab your hand which was undoing the string of his sweats.

"Don't doll me, you're mine." He swallows thickly, biting his tongue when he feels your hand brush across his hardening member.

You grab him in your hands and start to pump him - him becoming harder in your hand as you continue your actions. His breath becomes harsh and you feel him throb.

Everyone continues to watch the projector on the screen, luckily for you no one else sat on this side of the table.

"You like me doing this and you trying not to moan in front of everybody?" You whisper seductively in his ear.

Bucky whines, "Doll, stop... please." He goes to grab your hand but you get your other hand and hold his wrist still. You knew very well he could get out of your hold with no problem but decided not too, liking the change in position with you now being the dominant one.

You feel him twitch in your hands and knew he was about to cum, "don't cum." You growl.

He bites back the moan and closes his eyes, his face now flustered. "Doll-" He warns.

"Don't. Cum." You say again, more firmer than the last and he whines as quietly as possible.

"I- I can't, S- Sophia." His eyes roll to the back of his head, struggling to breath and not cum. "I'm gonna- gonna-" You pull back and stand up.

"Bucky's not feeling good, I'm gonna go and take care of him. I'll come to you later about it." You grab Bucky's hand who managed to pull his pants up without anyone noticing.

Tony nods and continues the slide he was on.

Almost in a rush, you pull him along to the closest closet before locking the door and dropping to your knees before pushing his sweats back down putting your mouth on him instead.

He chokes out and places a hand in your hair but you swat his hand away, "no, not today."

"What's gotten into you?" He whispers out, clutching onto the doorknob, almost breaking it into pieces from the pressure. You chose not to answer and swirl your tongue around his tip lightly, earning a low whine from him, " Soph- ah, shit doll. Sophia!" His voice becomes louder as you take him in your mouth and swallow around him. You pull away again and he breathes out.

"Room." You say and he moans, close to release but pulls his sweats up for a second time before you lead the both of you out to the 8th floor of the tower which was dedicated to you and Bucky alone - as people explained that they didn't want to hear the sex sounds every night.

When you get there, you lock the door and push Bucky back until he lands on the bed with his chest facing you, "babe, if your mad there's no-"

You cut him off, "shut up."

Bucky looks upset but you decided not to let it get to your head. You were upset and angry from Sharon but was putting your anger out like this.

You pull down your tight jeans and panties, pulling your shirt and bra off leaving you completely bare to him and move so your core was right above his mouth.

He understood where you were going at and you lean down to meet his lips which start to devour you straight away. You hiss and look down at his eyes, they were already looking up at you in an apologetic way.

"I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at her. She doesn't deserve to look at you like that and get away with it." You manage to say out to him and his hands go to flip you over but you hold him by the shoulders, "doesn't mean your in control. I'm in control today." He whines against you and starts to suck your clit into his mouth.

You huff and get off him, leaning down to kiss his lips, "what do you want me to do then?" He asks, feeling completely submissive to you.

"Get your clothes off and go up to the head board."

He does as you ask and you straddle his waist when he positions himself correctly. "Now what?" His breath was hitting your face.

"Now I'm going to fuck you." You smirk and grab his member in your hand, lining you up to him before pushing down his length, both of you moaning and groaning out at the feeling.

You rest there for a moment before finally lifting your hips up until just the tip was left inside of you before lowering yourself back down on him - faster than the last.

Bucky chokes on a cry, "oh God, Sophia." His hands grab your waist but you grab them both in your hands and pin them to the wall behind him - interwining your fingers together.

You start to move up and down his cock faster and you knew both of you wouldn't last much longer - especially Bucky who was moaning everytime you went down his thick shaft.

You feel him twitch inside of you, "don't cum." You whisper.

"Sophia, please d- don't. Let me cum, p- please." Bucky was pleading, a thin layer of sweat on his skin.

You feel yourself clench around him, just about to cum yourself, "w- wait." You moan, wanting to both release together because it always sent you both into utopia.

"Nargh, Sophia, seriously I can't. You're so fucking tight and I can't."

His words tipped you over, "Bucky, Bucky! Oh God, cum for me."

He let's a loud moan out as he spills himself inside of you, resting his head on the back wall with his eyes squeezed shut and fingers tightly squeezing your own.

As you fall down from your highs, Bucky leans his head up to look at you, "God doll, you should become jealous more often." He voice was just above a whisper.

You smile and lift off him, earning a whine from him and you. "Yeah, okay. Maybe now you'll let me be more dominant."

"Damn right I will." He chuckles and pulls you to his side, there was a pause before he continued, "so, about that shower?"

You get up and pull him along to the ensuite, "I'm still in control."

Bucky just couldn't get over how much he was in love with you.

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 - My Will, Our Will (7)

A new challenger has appeared!

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Being on the other side of Shuichi’s glare and pointer finger is terrifying and now I’m understanding why all the culprits and others start freaking out so much. 8′D

Also, ooooh there it is, oh there’s Clair de Lune, i’mnotcryingyou’recrying

WE’RE REALLY DOING CLAIR DE LUNE THE WHOLE WAY THROUGH AREN’T WE

OH NO

A hope that requires two of their classmates to die... that’s the definition of ‘hope’ that was forced on them. K1-b0 is happy as long as he’s opposing despair - but Shuichi isn’t. I.... I think I understand what he’s saying.

“S-Seriously Shuichi, I really don’t get a chance to be cool very often and you’re really stealing my thunder -”

“You, uh, remember that my name is pronounced ‘Kii-bo’ too, right - ?”

“YOU HEARD WHAT I SAID!”

The music is continuing?!?! We’re using Clair de Lune the whole way through?? Man this is making even more of an impact than them playing the opening music - because there’s no triumph to be found here.

He seems so betrayed! S-Sweetcheeks, we really need to finish his last FTE when this is all over!

Oh..... oh....... oooooooh -

Shuichi why would you say something so controversial yet so brave -

“SEE!!! I CAN DO THIS TOO SHUICHI!!!”

mmm also look at my sweet v-counter skills guys -

It’s not some great overwhelming force of nature, or some grand enemy to be conquered, something that can be easily shoved into a defining box! It’s a feeling, like anything else! And sure, despair is considered ‘the dark side’, but are we just going to let them also define hope for us?

........

also. ALSO.

THESE COMMENTS. THESE COMMENTS. I-I can’t stop collecting them -

No, that’s wrong!

What are you saying, hat boy? i might steal ‘hat boy’ that’s really good

Can’t say anything now, scrub

He’s not wearing a hat anymore. THE COMMENTER CORRECTED THE OTHER ONE GFGH

What if Shuichi is the mastermind? girl where have you been for the last hour -

I wonder who’s going to live.

Hope always comes in waves.

You’re slipping up, detective.

hurry up and vote

Show me hope.

There’s hope because there’s despair.

Suck it, hope

Keebo’s not gonna lose!

Keebo is hope...

and hope lives on!

Shuichi is the cycle of despair?

Things are getting interesting.

The fight’s just started!

The endorphin rush they get when, despite all odds, the good guys win over the bad guys, reaffirming that ‘good’ always overcomes ‘evil’....

Or worse yet, they revel in it, because to paraphrase a certain someone, ‘they’ll use these tragedies to shine even brighter.’ Watching someone rise above adversity and come out the other side even stronger is inspiring. For the same reason that we enjoy playing the games and cheering the survivors on when Junko or whoever is ultimately defeated in the end, this audience eats up every round of the killing game. They can enjoy that with the privilege granted by being able to observe it from the outside, just like us. But strip that layer away, and -

I’m sorry, excuse me?

YEAH SHUICHI IS ON A ROLL HERE DON’T STOP HIM NOW

What’s with that look, Tsumugi? Is it because Shuichi wasn’t actually supposed to fight for despair? Or was the idea that he would be cheered on/convinced by K1-b0, the same way that Naegi convinced the others in the first game?

Th.... The music..... stopped....

LAZY PARALLEL WORLD!!!

oh man maybe Tsumugi can hear the music cues. Maybe she realizes Shuichi is onto something. now I’m imagining every time the music shifts Tsumugi’s the only one aware of it, and she’s also the only one reacting appropriately to it ffhg

Also, I assumed that the punishment was execution... but was... was that the mental trap???

Why wouldn’t there be?! They’re being ‘sacrificed’, aren’t they?!?!

Everything would make sense -

Oooh! Ooh - ! Is - is that what it is, then?!

Jeez, it’s super interesting to be in K1-b0′s POV for this - especially with Shuichi being the one asking us questions. Being in his POV before meant he never had the opportunity to really use leading questions like this, which really lends him an unexpected air of authority. Unexpected but earned, mind you...

HE’S DIRECTING QUESTIONS AT THE AUDIENCE NOW TOO?!?!

You continue the cycle....

Oh, poor, poor Rantaro -

Did he have the same options laid out for him? Or did he know that he would be choosing to repeat the game? He still had the determination to end the killing game.. so was that left over from his last game’s iteration? How many times has he repeated it? For that matter, how long has he been in holding while they gathered new people??? I swear that one commenter said they had waited 3 years, so???? Rantaro how old are you?? 

Was there only one person made into a sacrifice, or two like last game? .... side-eyes K1-b0 and Tsumugi -

Does... that mean Tsumugi was the mastermind last game too, or....

Also Maki as the Ultimate Survivor would absolutely tear things up. They’d have to pull another stunt like they did with Rantaro if they wanted her out of the game. She definitely has the fitness and demeanour to survive, unless she snaps on someone like she did on Kokichi in Chapter 5.

Just like Kokichi did, Shuichi is going to try and attack the game itself. His name really hasn’t come up since the motive video reveal, but I’d like to think that this strategy was inspired by his Chapter 5 plan.

What an interesting set of characters to represent despair winning. First we have Izuru, being all disdainful of their choice and mocking him with the word ‘boring’ - very much his thing, but also reminiscent of Kokichi. In fact, I suppose the despair option is very similar to the stalemate situation Kokichi installed when he was pretending to be the mastermind!

Then Celestia. She’s not a people-pleasing person. So why her? Thinking back, she was one of the most desperate to escape, despite hiding it... so maybe this is Tsumugi ‘showing’, not telling, that she isn’t happy with them choosing the despair option?

And then the hope fanboy... basically telling them that despair is the inferior option, but couching it in positive language. Passive-aggressively pushing them towards the actual answer (s)he wants - very on point for him.

Is it really okay to pass the buck like that?

In perpetuity...

I..... I don’t have an answer for that.

It does... sort of suck that he’s singling out those two in his speech, because it can feel like he’s being dismissive of everyone else - but I don’t think that’s true. He definitely appreciates the losses of everyone else, but those two were the ones that hit him hardest.

of course it’s bloody Komaeda over there having the time of his life during this speech

First of all - how strange is it that there are only a few people who look like they aren’t in excruciating pain right now. Rantaro’s face can’t be seen, Angie, Ryoma and Tenko look like they’re sleeping, and Kaito is smiling....

And - ah, Kokichi can’t even be seen. But there ‘he’ is, with his own section in this collage - I guess that third ‘body discovery’ we had in chapter 3 was the closest we would ever get to something real, huh? Poor guy...

“You said I’d be fighting the entire world, Tsumugi? Fine by me! Meet me behind the school after the trial!”

“S-Shuichi that’s a lot of people -”

“AND I’M GOING TO FIGHT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!!”

That’s... true. There is a mental barrier that is hard to cross, especially if they’ve all conditioned themselves to accept real people dying for their own entertainment.

Also there are new comments, which means I am obligated to transcribe them.  Most of them is the audience turning on Shuichi, damn. Okay, here it goes:

Forget about Shuichi

You’re in despair, right?

show me the despair ending

it’s okay to feel despair sometimes... THANK YOU ANON COMMENTER

Why have we been doing this...?

Hope doesn’t turn back!

The big reveal, at last

And it was just getting interesting.

We’re the mastermind.

Are they blaming us?

hurry up and refute it

C’mon, Keebo! Attack!

Force hope through.

something’s different right?

C’mon Keebo!

No, that’s wrong!

No, that’s wrong!

What’s going to happen?

mmm... Shuichi’s eyes ^q^ SWEETCHI97 STRIKES AGAIN

What are you saying, detective?

Oh!!! Oh shit!!! Shuichi you brilliant bastard!!!

“Thank god - I mean, let’s be honest, we all knew this was coming - uh, I mean -”

Actually though, how depressing. So many times we’ve talked about ‘reasons to live’, and later on, reasons to die, and lo and behold here we are, at the end of everything...

Shuichi’s learned from the best, Kokichi Ouma - sometimes, death is just a means to an end, and that end is usually flipping someone off.

Random thought - isn’t it interesting that Shuichi is the ‘lone man against everyone’ while Tsumugi, the final boss, is the one ‘acting on behalf of everyone’? When Naegi was trying to rally everyone on his side, they had known at that point that people had been fighting and dying to rescue them. For Hajime and the others, they had the defected Future Foundation members who had risked their own safety to come in and rescue them, and even had Nanami reach out to him. Shuichi, though... Shuichi came to this conclusion on his own, with everyone either against him or swept up in the narrative.

He told Kokichi at the end of Chapter 4 that ‘he was alone, and always would be’. But maybe... that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe Shuichi needed to be alone to have that clarity of thought, and to come up with a way to ‘end everything’. Anyway, it’s just an unexpected parallel I thought of - m-maybe I’m just inserting endgame Kokichi and Kaito thoughts here because the game didn’t. Whoops

I AM LIVING FOR THE TOTAL REJECTION OF THE ‘HOPE’ AND ‘DESPAIR’ THEME

TAKE THAT!!!!

It’s not your own will. 8c

Can you fight it? Do you have the ability to fight it? The strength of will?

I love Monokuma’s priorities.

OH WE HAVEN’T HAD A DEBATE IN A WHILE

omg we only have hope as a bullet

And all the noise says hope

Also Shuichi is dominating it too, holy shit! This strength in his voice is super inspiring!

thank you for bringing back angry Hanamura it’s still one of my favourite things from the second game

Ohoho I see what you did there with that line ~

i’m sorry I was just curious about the fluff text

CHARACTER GROWTH

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT

K1-B0 LEARNED TO LIE!!!! I NEVER THOUGHT THIS DAY WOULD COME!!!

“That’s redundant btw - I can read the comments just like the rest of you, and they literally are not shutting up about how much they want hope to win.”

speaking of which

What are you doing, Keebo?

Don’t give up hope!

Hope! Hope! Hope!

Please side with hope.

1 vote for hope!

I bet the mastermind is shocked. lol

Hurry up and show me hope.

HOPE!

COME BACK HOOOPE

Hope counter!

show us maki roll! oh hey she has fans too!

it’s unanimous hope.

Hope hasn’t lost yet.

Defeat despair!

cmon it’s hope again! right?

I’m routing for despair so *shrugs*

I got 10 bucks riding on hope. that’s it? weak

I’m on the side of hope, so...

I wanna break Shuichi’s fingers <3 SWEETCHI97 WHO HURT YOU

Huh? It’s hope?

So... So wow, even most of the people talking about wanting despair really did want the hope ending in the end. Shuichi read them like open books.

HE CAN! HE CAN DEFY THE AUDIENCE!!!! I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU K1-B0!!!!

This - this is why you’re the Ultimate Robot. Forget the upgrades - the ability to learn, grow, adapt and choose your own path is another part of your strength!

WE.... WE’RE LOSING HIS POV..... We’re losing his POV?!?!

Yeah??? You wanna expand on that???

T-Though I mean, they said they’re happy to let themselves die via no vote so exactly what can they do anyway? At the end of the day, they’re viewers, right? Relegated to an observational role. Powerful and untouchable.... but in turn, that separation of realities means what’s left of the class can’t be hurt by them, either.

Tsumugi he literally said he’s fine with dying. Exactly what can you threaten him with here???

How is it that after all of this, Shuichi is still unable to fight for himself? Maybe I should amend what I said before - he is fighting for other people. They just... well, they don’t know it yet. He’s fighting to prevent future victims, and he’s trading his own life to protect them. I guess in a sense he is fighting something ‘greater than himself’ like Naegi did, but even he had ‘hope that he and his friends would survive with a happy ending’. This is... completely the opposite of that.

GOODBYE DANGANRONPA INDEED, DAMN

And we’re back in his POV!

Oh man she is not happy about this. Not at all.

Hey? Hey Shuichi? What - what the fuck does that mean? You were going to end it all right then? Mid-trial? Excuse me what the hell did you take poison with you to the trial or something -

Oh - oh. I just realized. This... This was bloody foreshadowed, way back in Chapter 1 with the escape tunnel. With Kokichi’s speech to Kaede, about how she technically had the moral high ground when she was doing all the classic ‘we can’t give up here!’ encouragement, we got to see firsthand hope being weaponized against us. It was right there.

Of course they have Naegi pleading for hope here

He’s just talking over her omfg

You trivialized their lives in the first place and now they’re supposed to consider them sacred?!

It’s literally the only thing that still wholly belongs to them, so what other choice do they have???

Wait what is happening -

I’M HIMIKO NOW??!?!?

i can’t believe she was a slytherin this whole time

I’m quietly relieved that she doesn’t ‘nyeh’ in her internal monologue

THIS IS THE DARKEST EVIDENCE BULLET FOR ENDGAME DEAR LORD

this might be worse than nihilism - at least you weren’t able to use that

How interesting to have him fighting us (along with Sakura and Peko for that matter, the former who literally threw away her life for her classmates and the latter who treated her life as a tool for Fuyuhiko). This was his philosophy and motive of his trial, but he also chose to be the killer and used his life as a means to save the rest of his class, right? Tsumugi, what are you trying to pull here?

Though I guess the whole point was that they were all trying to help the others survive, and Shuichi is getting the whole class to kamikaze themselves so...

Damn, she didn’t take much convincing at all. It’s nice that she’s repping both Tenko and Angie here. 8′)

FUCK YEAH WE NAILED THIS HIMIKO! We work well together, who knew!

Himiko is so well-spoken here. And to think that she was the first to follow in Shuichi’s footsteps - I really thought it would be Maki. Good on you, Himiko.

lmao that segway - Alright, now it’s Maki time, right?

also Tsumugi why would you phrase it in a way to piss off Maki like damn seriously??

“No seriously why would you just call me out like that.”

........................

okay she has a point actually

Never forget that we are in a class trial where almost all of the survivors are introverts who prefer their emotions on the inside.

!!!!!!!

DFJGDSKFL SHUICHI ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME

Her... internal dialogue is so interesting and immediately comes off as different from Shuichi’s, Himiko’s and K1-b0′s. It seems... angrier, maybe. Is that it? Or maybe it’s all the red lines that makes it seem that way...

This whole line of her entire self being at the whim of someone else’s writing seems to be targeted at her more-so than the others because she’s already struggled with the idea that she’s had no choices in her life, and that she’s always been a weapon to be used by others. Actually, that’s probably why this hits so hard - she thought she was developing feelings on her own and making a choice to fight to defend him, and the idea of even that being taken away from her...

“I have love, but more importantly SPITE ON MY SIDE!!!”

AND ANOTHER ONE

hsdfjgh no don’t pan over the Kaito portrait w h y my heart

Angry Mikan is still as terrifying as she was in SDR2!

As an aside, I don’t know why Hagakure repeatedly showing up is so funny to me - I swear he’s been used more than the others? I-Is he secretly Tsumugi’s favourite character? is it because he’s also older than everyone else and she finds that thought comforting -

“I won’t go far as saying I don’t want to die mind you, but I’m surprisingly neutral on the subject!”

If Tsumugi’s ‘everyone’ who she’s fighting for is the living, then the ‘everyone’ Shuichi is fighting for is the dead...

Even if it’s fiction - it’s their reality. Expecting them to understand that because it’s someone else’s fiction... that’s just not fair, is it?

Sweetcheeks has an uphill battle to fight, but to have a second class revolt in a single game....

HEY SAIHARA-CHAN DID YOU HEAR THAT? THE ROBOT’S GETTING SASSY WITH ME!

K1-B0 YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND

THE TEAM’S BACK TOGETHER!!!

That’s... that’s it. I think we’ve done it. They’ve finally done it! They were able to turn it around after all!

THIS IS OUR TURNABOUT!!!

[dorkyungsoowrites]

Spontaneous Attraction Ch. 29

Pairings: Kyungsoo x You

Genre: Fluff/Angst/Smut | Ambiguous AU

Warnings: None

Word Count: 5.6k

Description: Kyungsoo tries to ask you a question.

A/N: It is explained, but there's a significant time jump from the last chapter.

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |

"So what's the special occasion?" The question had been choked down for hours in the back of your throat. He made you promise to trust him when he came home that night and told you to dress up as he hurried to put on a suit. So you did and followed him to a restaurant. The one you went to on your first date, you noted. You even sat at the same booth. Everyone else around you wore comfortable jeans and other casual wear. You felt terribly overdressed. But the real thing that tipped you off that something more was going on--something more than a normal date night--was when he ordered two glasses of expensive wine. It just wasn't like him to drink that often. At least not fancy rosé like the waiter was pouring for you both. Filling the tall stemmed glasses a third of the way with the shimmering pale pink liquid. Kyungsoo was fidgeting also. Tugging on the cuffs of his sleeves and smoothing his tie. Going to run his fingers through his hair only to remember he styled it up and stopping himself. Pushing up his glasses instead. He was nervous about something. So once the waiter left with your food orders you let your curiosity be known. You adjusted your dress as you waited for him to answer your question.

"Well, I-" Kyungsoo halted with a dry voice. He held up a finger for you to wait then grabbed his wine glass. Tipping the alcohol past his lips, you watched him swallow twice before setting down an almost empty glass. You reached partway across the table, palm up, and lowered your voice.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong? You're worrying me." He reacted immediately by placing his hand in yours, curling his fingers around it. His palm was sweaty.

"Nothing," he urged with a shake of his head. Kyungsoo exhaled forcibly to calm himself and smiled, the corners of his mouth fighting with his will to show he wasn't anxious. His gaze settling on you in that way that filtered out the rest of the world. "Absolutely nothing could be wrong with you here." You giggled and squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture.

"My heart still does funny things when you talk like that."

"In a good way?"

"You're endlessly charming. You should know that by now, Kyungsoo." You stroked the side of his hand with your thumb. His eyes flickered to the movement. His focus was back on your features just as quickly.

"Thank you. I'm sorry for making you worry. I'm trying to surprise you, but I'm not very good at hiding my nerves."

"Why would you be nervous? You know I love surprises." He looked away. Back to your joined hands. You stopped your thumb when he pinched the silver band on your ring finger and began to twirl it. His answer was spoken slowly. Carefully. Trying to keep his secret.

"I...don't know how you'll react to this one."

"Well then I'll wait until we're done eating. That way you can have time to relax and think of what to say and even if I don't like it, which I seriously doubt, we'll still have had a nice dinner together. Dressing up was a cute idea by the way."

"Yeah?" Then he repeated it as if to confirm to himself. "Yeah, after eating. Sounds good." You reached for your wine glass with your free hand, swirling the liquid inside first to see the little layer of film appear. You took a small sip, letting the sharp tang hover on your tongue before swallowing. It was sweeter than you anticipated. You brightened your smile and changed topics. Fingertips playing with the stem of your glass.

"So, did Chanyeol tell you about his new project?" Kyungsoo shook his head, eyes hesitantly raising to yours. "He's making a mixtape for his girlfriend for christmas."

"They've been together a year right?"

"Almost. I remember because they started dating about a month after our third anniversary."

"It's crazy how almost four years can feel like a lifetime," Kyungsoo mumbled with a softness to his tone.

"As long as he doesn't recreate our accidental audio for the boys then I think he'll be fine." You both laughed at the memory. The day Junmyeon called to scold Kyungsoo and you on speaker over the phone had to be the most embarrassed you've ever been. Apparently Yixing was the first to discover the recording and had frozen in shock and horror. Sehun thought his face would be permanently red. It was deleted in every way imaginable before you could even apologize.

One day while visiting Kyungsoo at work things got a little out of control in the practice room. It had been on your fantasy list, you could turn on a light to show not to disturb the people inside, and it was soundproof. The perfect spot to get away with having sex. So you thought. Turns out when Kyungsoo flipped on the light outside the door he started recording by accident. The two microphones in the room picked up everything. Yes, everything. Especially to your frustration the next few weeks after that, the way Kyungsoo spoke to you when he was dominating you. Baekhyun and Jongdae and Sehun had teased you for so long. Now, however, it was just another funny story on your list of anecdotes that you could laugh at with everyone. It was over a year ago at this point.

"Speaking of dates," you continued. "Your christmas concert is next week right? Then those extra concerts in southern Japan. Will you be back in time for your birthday?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well what about our anniversary? I know five is supposed to be the bigger one, but we can make four fun too." You saw his thoughts flickering behind his eyes. Staring into space. Had he even heard you? Then his eyebrows twitched up minutely. Like he had an idea. He snapped back to reality.

"Actually, I...I wanted to talk to you about that." He must have seen how your smile sagged because he laced your fingers together tightly and corrected himself quickly before you could assume anything bad. "I meant the concert. Yes I'll be home for our anniversary. Shit, my brain is all over the place right now." So he had heard you.

"Okay," you answered warily before perking up. Letting his odd behavior roll off your back. "What's up?"

"Maybe you can come with me?"

"To Japan?"

"Yes. You always talk about wanting to see our concerts but never being able to buy tickets. Let me talk to our manager about letting you come."

"Kyungsoo, we've discussed you just letting me in your concerts. It doesn't feel right."

"Then you can pay for your own flight and share a hotel room with me just like we would on holiday. Consider the concert my christmas gift." His hopeful grin made you want to accept. It widened when he saw you contemplating the offer. "Come on, I'd love to share my work with you. You can watch us perform and hear the fanchants. The whole experience. And we get to spend christmas together." Your heart began to melt until you remembered something.

"Christmas..." You took your hand back dejectedly. Both of you wiped the dampness off from his sweating palm. "I have my christmas concert with the orchestra. I can't leave."

"Oh...that's right." He was already thinking up a plan to get this to work. "Don't they have substitutes? You could say you're sick."

"I'd love to spend christmas with you, sweetheart. You know I would. But some of the other orchestra members know Exo. They'll see I was at your concert. I'd never ditch my job like that anyway." He downed the rest of his rosé. You witnessed his hope crumbling. Biting the inside of his lip to contain his frown. You wanted to make it work. For him. Brain working toward a compromise. "...but I can fly out to the concert after that. That's only three days after christmas. We can do that." The joy he exuded at your offer could have lit up the universe. Or maybe that was just the illusion since his eyes held so many stars. You wanted to take his face in your hands and kiss him breathless. You imagined the other restaurant patrons wouldn't appreciate that so much, though. He was about to burst with happiness. You needed to add your condition before he got too carried away. "If your manager says it's fine, then I'll quietly sit backstage so I don't feel like I'm taking anyone's spot who bought a ticket."

"Yes, of course. Anything. I'll talk to him first thing tomorrow, jagi. Thank you." The waiter came back to refill your wine glasses. He left right after with a quick mention that your food was almost done.

"Is that what you were so nervous about before Kyungsoo?"

"No, but uh, well." He was searching for the right words. "Why wait until after eating? I, uh, got a part in a new movie." It didn't sound very practiced. You wondered for a second if this was truly what had him so worked up before.

"Why were you so nervous then? That's fantastic news, darling. Now I understand why we dressed up. This is so nice."

"Because, uh...there's a kissing scene."

"Kyungsoo," you laughed. "How ridiculous. It's just acting. I won't be upset. It's so great you can keep making films. Can you tell me anything about the plot or is it a secret?"

"Secret," he sighed in relief. One side of his mouth pulling up further than the other in a lop-sided smile.

"Are you the lead? I mean you must be with how good you are." He chuckled bashfully at your compliment.

"Thank you, but I'm still learning."

"So...?"

"Yes, me and the two actors playing beside me are the leads."

"When do you start working on it?"

"The first table read is in two weeks."

"See? That wasn't so hard." You raised your glass. "To the success of your career." He mimicked you and added,

"To you coming to our concert." The crystal rang when you tapped your glasses together, stopping as you both sipped the sweet wine. Ready to enjoy your dinner with no nerves getting in the way.

The amount of notifications you got the next week from all the members was staggering. They were all so excited to show you their tour life. You received the okay from their manager to sit backstage or stand by the security at the front of the stage so you could watch as well as listen. So once you finished the last day of your own christmas concerts you flew out to meet them. The venue was huge and you had to put on a staff badge Kyungsoo had given you so no one would kick you out. You arrived hours ahead so you could see the rehearsal. Sneaking in and sitting near the stage to watch as they finalized the lighting setup and ran through a few of the sets to check the audio. Smiling to yourself as you observed their professionalism even when going over where they were meant to stand on stage during dance breaks and such. It was fascinating. The differences between your concert prep and theirs was incredible. The rush of taking in a multitude of new things at once was exhilarating. There must have been dozens of lighting techs and audio engineers and stage hands. Not to mention the power it took to use all these ginormous LED walls and spotlights. Then you had to coordinate them all together. There was an expert for every facet of the concert. It was the largest front of house setup you'd ever seen. You were half afraid of the chaos you would find backstage.

It was after the staff declared they were prepared and the members went away that you made your way backstage. Sure it was a humongous space, but you had been inside enough concert halls in your life to navigate your way easily enough. Plus the boys were pretty loud. You found them in the green room away from staff fighting over snacks. The space was fairly large for a green room with two big sofas, a wall of vanities for makeup, and a table with an assortment of drinks and food on it on the far wall. You were frightened to think of the disarray it would all be in by the end of the night.

When you entered and said hello all nine of them came barreling to give you a hug. You laughed and greeted each of them. They were more chipper than usual. Hyped up for the concert, you imagined. Kyungsoo waited to be the last, dipping down for a quick kiss before inviting you to sit with him. Everyone slowly trickling back to the sofas with you as they got their snacks and water. You chatted like normal until a few makeup artists came in. You were introduced before they stole away a few of the members at a time to get them ready. You followed Kyungsoo to the vanity out of curiosity and talked with the woman doing his makeup as she worked. Doing your best trying to understand what Kyungsoo experienced whenever he had to tour. You weren't sure how he managed it all. There were a million things he had to remember and keep organized, and he had to do it while smiling and having fun. You know they all loved it, but you would've collapsed from exhaustion years ago. It was a blessing they all had such bright and energetic personalities. It made everything easier for them. It was no wonder why Kyungsoo had been so grateful towards you all that time back when you first started dating. Your support and encouragement meant a lot to him in times like these. When days blurred together and there was so much to memorize and adapt to. You were his grounding force. The calm amidst the flurry of busy schedules. You only wish you could always be there for him. Like on christmas.

"Alright," the woman doing his makeup declared. Snapping you out of your thoughts. She set down the brush she had just been using and switched it for a pencil and a pink tube. "I'm doing his lips, so no more kissing tonight."

"Yes ma'am," you chuckled. It had been amazing watching him transform. The makeup itself was subtle, but it highlighted some of his best features. The eyeliner, the slightest contour of his cheekbones, and his lips. She matched his shade almost exactly. The wand with the tinted lip gloss painting on the last touches to his look. Kyungsoo smacked his lips together a few times, making a popping noise.

"You're all done. You know the drill." She began packing up her things while Kyungsoo stood and took your hand.

"Follow me," he told you. The next stop was in a different room down the hall nearest the stage. Some of the others were already in chairs on one side. The other half of the room was dedicated to clothing racks with nine variations of each outfit they'd wear that night. And every rack had a tag with a members name on it. Kyungsoo paused in front of his and let go of your hand. You stood to the side while he changed. This room smelled like various hair products. Exactly like a salon. Right as you thought that a woman turned on a hairdryer and began blowing out Jongdae's hair. You did your best to stay out of the way when Kyungsoo sat in one of the empty chairs and started getting his hair styled. The man doing it was friendly and rambled on about his wife and two daughters while he worked various mousses and sprays into Kyungsoo's thick locks. Blowing it out even though there wasn't much for his brush to grab so it had more volume and stayed in place. Suddenly you felt someone poking your sides and you startled with a tiny gasp and whirled around to see Baekhyun. He chuckled and pulled you away from Kyungsoo, leaning close.

"I have a question for you." You weren't sure why he was speaking so conspiratorially, but didn't think much about it.

"What is it?"

"Have you ever thought about how Kyungsoo will propose to you?" You grinned and shook you head. It wasn't even a question to the others if he was going to at some point by now. They joked about how you acted married already. You had to scold them to stop pestering him with it a while back.

"Well that's out of nowhere. Not really. Why?"

"Oh I was just thinking about it seeing you here. I could see him calling you out on stage at the end of the concert and asking. Don't you? That'd be really romantic."

"You mean awful?" you scoffed. Baekhyun's grin dimmed slightly. "Being the center of focus in front of thousands of people sounds like my nightmare scenario. Why do you think I love being third chair in the orchestra? No solos." His eyes darted over your shoulder. You glanced and greeted Kyungsoo as he strolled up beside you.

"B-but,' Baekhyun stammered like he was working to get his thoughts out as quickly as possible. "I thought you loved big romantic gestures and all that?"

"In movies," you replied. "I'd probably get a panic attack if he took me up on stage. Besides," you nudged Kyungsoo with your shoulder. "He doesn't need to try. He's already naturally a prince charming." You expected a hardier chuckle from him, but they both only gave you forced smiles and a quiet,

"Thanks jagi," from beside you.

"Anyway," you brushed off. "Fairy tales are nice and all, but we're private people. I couldn't imagine Soo kneeling on stage. It just wouldn't be him. You, maybe. Chanyeol, definitely." Baekhyun joined your laughter then.

"Yeah. Yeol would pull something like that. Hey, uh, why don't we do your concert ritual?"

"But it's not my concert."

"Well maybe I want to start doing it too."

"You want to walk around all the different seating sections to see the stage through your audiences eyes?" you questioned skeptically. Not for his intention. He had a good heart. But going around the whole arena would take time he didn't seem to have.

"Well then we'll skip to sitting in the back row. Can I steal her Soo?"

"Yeah," he answered slowly. Then his brain caught up and he pointed at Baekhyun. "But you need to be back in twenty minutes for micing."

"You got it." The singer grabbed your hand and bounded away, pulling you with him.

It took half the time allotted just to walk up to the furthest row. When you sat you both marveled at how small the staff appeared. Even the front of house looked like ants. Imagining what it would look like once the seats were filled. Baekhyun set his hand on your knee. You looked over but he was still focused on the stage. He began massaging your knee anxiously. Voice soft and eyes serious.

"Everything's going to change, isn't it?"

"Why do you think that?"

"When you marry Kyungsoo for real."

"Baekhyunnie," you cooed. "Is there something you want to tell me about tonight?"

"No," he answered calmly. "No, just...saw something online. That's all." You rested your hand on top of his to still it and hopefully comfort him. He took a deep breath and clasped your hands together. His fingers squeezing tightly.

"Have you all been getting enough sleep? I know how you get."

"That's not it."

"Are you sure? Because everyone's been acting a little strange since I got here, and I'd like to blame it on excess adrenaline."

"You've just never seen us before a concert," he smirked. As his mood brightened it eased your worry slightly, but you weren't stupid. Something was going on. You put your other hand over the ones already joined, encapsulating his soft hand in both of yours.

"Well please take care of yourself. You make me worry when you talk like that. You know Kyungsoo loves you. He would never leave. Not even for me."

"He left the dorm for you, and he said he'd never do that."

"Oh honey," you breathed before pulling him in for a hug. Both of you twisted sideways in your chairs to reach comfortably. You felt him hide his face in your neck. He might have smudged his makeup so you threw caution out and carded your fingers through his hair. Petting him to soothe him. It was still soft under all the hairspray. "Even if Kyungsoo wanted to run off and elope with me tonight nothing would change tomorrow. Marriage isn't some all-encompassing event that changes everything. It's a piece of paper and some words. Adding one more member to your family doesn't sound that scary, does it?"

"You're already family," he spoke firmly. Words muffled by your clothes. "But you're right. You make it sound like it's not that big. Thank you." You eased him off you and smiled gently while fixing his hair back into place.

"Besides, who knows if we'll ever even get married. Either way we'll be here for you. All of us together. Okay? I promise. Do you feel better?" He nodded and returned your smile. You noticed his smudged eyeliner and did your best to wipe it with your thumb just under the outside corner of his eye, but it would need to be fixed properly. "Let's go back before you get scolded, okay?"

"Hold my hand?"

"Sure," you chuckled as you stood and took his hand. He followed you that time. When you arrived back he was nagged at by the makeup artist while she properly corrected the eyeliner before being rushed to get his mic set up. You stayed out of the way for a while. Waiting in the green room on your phone until the lights dimmed. You shut off your phone and walked quietly behind the center of the stage where you saw all nine of them getting ready. You went to Kyungsoo and told him you'd be enjoying the performance from the camera monitors backstage. He bent his mic away from his mouth and took out one of his earpieces.

"Are you sure?" he questioned. "The manager said you could stand in front of the barricade with security to see better. Or with the front of the house."

"I don't want to stick out."

"Well, maybe just for the last part then? They'll play a video and you can sneak out to watch the ending mention and the final song. It would mean so much to me to see you in the crowd." You glanced toward the stage. The joined conversations of all the waiting fans seemingly getting louder the longer you stared. There were so many people out there. Your ears hummed with their garbled speech. Then you looked back at Kyungsoo. His kind, hopeful eyes and his wavering grin. The rest of the world didn't seem so noisy anymore. He got you to go this far for him. What was standing by a crowd with a few cameras pointing at you? Nothing, if it made him happy.

"Okay." Yixing leaned over.

"You're going out there later?"

"Yes." At your answer he turned around and started passing the word around to the others. "You're going to be wonderful Kyungsoo. Just like always."

"Thank you jagi. Now I'm all fired up!" Kyungsoo jumped in place and laughed, clapping his hands together in excitement. He looked over your shoulder before hurriedly stealing a kiss. You giggled and covered your mouth with your hand. You felt where he had rubbed the tinted lip gloss on your face. Doing your best to wipe it off before someone saw. He smacked his lips together playfully and grinned. "Enjoy the performance."

You more than enjoyed it. You loved it. Watching them dance and sing and talk with their fans. Seeing them run past you during the video clips to change outfits, dab off sweat and chug water. Hearing the fanchants and seeing the ocean of lights. You didn't think you'd get your heart to calm down for days it was such a rush. When the final video clip was playing you froze staring at the split in the equipment that opened to the steps that would lead you in front of the barricade and out to the front of the stage. You could peek at a group of people who were making comments to eachother while they watched the video. Suddenly it wasn't just excitement making your heart race. You couldn't get what Baekhyun said out of your head. What if Kyungsoo was going to propose to you? What would you do if he asked you to stand on stage with him? You clutched your chest and took a deep breath. Doing your best to put away the anxiety. Because even if he did, would it really be that terrifying?

No. No...you don't think it would be that bad at all. If nothing else, you rationalized, you would do your best to tune out the crowd. Just focus on Kyungsoo. He would ground you. That's what you told yourself.

Taking the first few steps forward, you squinted at the dark floor and found your way to a security staff who, once you gave your name to them, they smiled and escorted you to the right place. Informing the guard they were leaving you with of the situation before going back to their post. You ended up where the stage branched in two directions. It was taller than it looked on camera, but you could see the large semi-circle that made up the back part of the stage. The part that connected to the straight walkway you were beside. A perfect view for where they'd be standing during their mention. You remembered that from rehearsal.

The people behind you were talking quietly. You did your best not to look around. If you saw just how many people were around you you knew you'd panic. You began using your thumb to massage the opposite hand and focused on the stage.

"Hey," you heard from behind you. Then it was repeated with your name attached, so you couldn't help but pivot on your heels. It was a girl who looked a few years younger than you. She waved her lightstick and smiled. "You're Kyungsoo's girlfriend. I didn't see you before. Are you here for something special?"

"Oh, no," you answered politely with a small smile. "We've both been working so I was only able to come support him today."

"I saw clips of your concert on christmas eve and christmas. It was very beautiful. You must be very proud."

"I am. Thank you very much."

"You must be really tired from flying. I hope you ate."

"I did. And not tired don't worry. Just anxious with so many people in one room."

"Oh you have anxiety? Is that why you've never gone to an Exo concert before?"

"Plus it's so damn hard to buy a ticket." You both laughed and the video ended. The room filled with screams and cheers. The girl included. You turned back around and your eyes immediately found Kyungsoo. Junmyeon started talking so the space grew quieter. Kyungsoo was squinting, trying to see past the stage lights, scanning the crowd around the edges of the stage. Then he found you. The corners of his mouth lifted. You grinned back and waved. The hand holding his mic spared two fingers to subtly wave back. Chanyeol tapped his shoulder and whispered in his ear. Kyungsoo nodded his head in your direction and Chanyeol found you as well. He was less subtle. Shaking Kyungsoo in his excitement before going around to get Jongin's attention and point at you. Each of the members had seen where you were by the time three of them had finished their mentions. It was so surreal to see the men you drank and hung out with for years standing under spotlights and talking to their fans. Their very real, very loud fans. You were so caught up in your thoughts you were startled when you realized Kyungsoo had already been speaking.

"And I'm so grateful to have the people closest to me here supporting me tonight, and every day." His gaze landed on you. "I know even when we're far apart you're sending me your love. To the ones who give me strength, thank you." Kyungsoo looked away to see more of the crowd, but you were stuck with a dopey grin on your face. "I hope you all travel home safely and eat a good meal. Be careful of the weather also. It's getting colder since it's almost janurary. Thank you for coming out tonight." He bowed deeply and everyone cheered. Suddenly they were all done and their final song started. The members broke apart to spread around the stage. It was a ballad. You heaved a sigh of relief. No proposal. He didn't even mention you were here directly. You went mostly unnoticed.

Until Baekhyun sent you links to different posts online anyway. They were positive, but it was embarrassing to see your lovestruck, stupid face from five seperate angles with captions and comments about how in love Kyungsoo and you were. A thousand screenshots shared a thousand times from when they were singing and he kneeled in front of you. The moment when Kyungsoo winked at you before returning to wave at fans. The girl you talked to briefly had made a popular post recounting the little chat. People were sharing it like wildfire. Saying how great it was that you overcame your anxiety to watch Exo live. Re-sharing old stories about you interacting with Exo fans as evidence of how kind you are. There were negative comments as well just like every other damn thing posted on the internet, so you got off your phone. Re-affirming to yourself on why you were glad you hadn't created any social media accounts. At least not one where you interacted openly as yourself. Private accounts existed for a reason.

The final straw that proved once and for all that Kyungsoo was planning to propose to you happened the day after he got back from Japan. He had insisted you go for a walk in the park. You say insisted because you'd rather he catch up on sleep and it had gotten late already. He had on suit pants and a button down white shirt instead of clothes he was more comfortable in. That was suspicious enough, but he also went out without anything to cover his face. All you had were your coats. Fingers braided together, he lead you to the river. Following the paved path. It wasn't as abandoned as you suspected it would be. There was at least a dozen other people you could spot. You kept your free hand out of the cold in your coat pocket. The one linked with his growing clammy. He was nervous again. After some time passed, however, your nose began to get icy from the wind.

"Hey Soo," you called softly. He looked over at you, slowing his steps. "We've been out here a while. I love walking with you, but my face is starting to freeze. Can we go home?" He chuckled.

"Sorry, I...I guess I just don't know how to start this."

"Start what?" Instead of answering right away he turned off the path. Taking you into the grass closer to the river bank and stopping to face you. The lamps from the park cast shadows around you and made his skin glow.

"You know I've always been crazy in love with you right?" His free hand went up to your cold cheek, stepping closer. "I feel like because of my position as an idol our relationship hasn't been able to progress in the most traditional manner, but I wouldn't change a thing."

"Of course, sweetheart. I love you too."

"Well I--I actually..." Kyungsoo cleared his throat, eyes darting around your face. He laughed nervously, trying to keep composed. "I've been trying to do this for a long time." Your heart galloped in your chest. You pressed your lips together tightly. Trying your best not to give away you knew by smiling full-on. His palm lowered from your cheek, reaching into his pocket. You were on edge, voice caught in the back of your throat. Ready to scream 'yes'. His visage shaded a bright pink you hoped wasn't only from the chilly wind. It really was freezing out. You were starting to shiver.

"Oh my god!" Someone shouted beside you. You whipped your head around to see a group of five girls and three boys coming your way. They were students. Still in their uniforms. You knew the drill at this point. Dropping your hand from his, you took a step back while Kyungsoo greeted them. They apologized for interrupting, he assured them it was alright, and signed some of their notebooks. Keeping idle chat throughout to be polite. As they apologized again for barging in on your date another couple saw the commotion and came over. Kyungsoo talked with them as well. You smiled to yourself.

Once he was done he took your hand again and you both said goodbye to the small crowd. Kyungsoo walked faster than before away from them towards your apartment. Jaw set in a hard line.

Guess you'd have to wait for him to plan a different proposal.

[imjustthemechanic]

The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Part 5/? - Breathless Part 6/? - Escape at Last Part 7/? - Fox in Socks Part 8/? - Things Go Wrong Part 9/? - Downey and Out Part 10/? - Road Trip Part 11/? - Temptation Part 12/? - An Awful Reunion Part 13/? - Unreality Intrudes Part 14/? - A Call for Help Part 15/? - Loki’s Guests Part 16/? - Stan Lee Cameo Part 17/? - Reassessment

This chapter is mostly things I just thought were funny.

With Bettany and Connelly gone, that left Natasha looking at Downey, still in handcuffs.

“Are you gonna make me promise to stay before you untie me?” he asked plaintively.

Nat thought about it for a moment – or at least pretended to, in order to make him squirm.  “No,” she decided finally, and got to work on his bonds with the cheese knife.

Meanwhile, Loki and Thor were still arguing.  “Why must you ruin everything?” Loki demanded. “Every time something is within my grasp, here comes Thor with his ridiculously costumed friends to take it away from me!”

“Maybe you should stop grasping at things that make you look like a villain!” Thor retorted.  “And I don’t need my friends, costumed or no, to thwart your silly schemes. Jane Foster could do it with no weapon but her Wellington boots!”

“Hey!” the girl in the bandanna barged in between the two men.  “That’s mean!”

“Yeah, why do you have to be like that?” asked the one in the costume.  “Haven’t you figured out yet that he just wants you to love him?”

“It’s not his fault your father lied to him his whole life!” bandanna girl agreed.

“You’re nothing but a big bully with a hammer!” said the one in the raglan.

Loki smiled proudly, arms folded across his chest. “You see?  These mortals understand!  Why should you have a throne, while I do not?”

“If you were worthy of a throne, you would not need to seek validation from teenage girls,” said Thor.

Steve gently steered the three women out from between the arguing brothers.  “You ladies…” he began.

“Chloe,” said the one in the costume, assuming he was asking their names.

“Christine,” said the one in the raglan.

“Wendy,” said the one in the bandanna.

“Your name isn’t really Wendy,” Chloe said.

“Yes, it is,” said Wendy.  “I had it changed.”

“Ladies,” Steve repeated.  “I think you’d better go – this may take a while.”

“But it’s Loki,” Christine protested.  “All this time we thought he was just having fun in character but it’s actually Loki!”

Loki was shaking a finger under Thor’s nose.  “I remind you,” he was saying, “had you not broken the rune stone before I finished programming it, we would be in a proper universe right now, instead of this magic-less nowhere!”

“I remind you,” Thor said, “that if you hadn’t stolen the tesseract and run off, not only would we not have had to come after you, Thanos wouldn’t be looking for you!”

“You still broke it!  You break everything!” Loki said.  “Remember when Mother gave me a toy flying ship big enough to ride?  You said you would play with it for five minutes, and you crashed it into a wall!”

“We were six!” said Thor.  “Are you going to hold that against me the rest of our lives?”

Hayley took Christine’s arm.  “Chris is right,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

Together they escorted the young women to the door and gently but firmly showed them to the elevator, then returned to the hotel room to make sure the door was closed and locked behind them.  Meanwhile, Natasha finished getting Downey out of his cuffs – he thanked her, then sprinted for the exit.  Steve and Hayley moved aside to let him through, but instead of leaving the suite he dashed into the bathroom and didn’t even bother to close the door.  Steve closed it for him, and then he and Hayley stood awkwardly in the little hallway while Thor and Loki argued.

“So, ah…” Hayley looked sideways at Steve.  “You really are Steve Rogers, then?”

“Yes,” said Steve.  “Yes, I am.”

“Did you really come to our Q&A panel just to ask me that question?” she wanted to know.

“Yes,” Steve repeated, then realized that wasn’t true. “No.  I wasn’t going to say anything at first, I just… I wanted to see what you looked like.”

“Surely you knew what I looked like,” said Hayley.

“Yeah,” said Steve.

“Well… I probably ought to apologize,” Hayley said. “I’m sure you were hoping the answer would be a bit more romantic than a scolding.”

Steve shook his head.  “No, don’t apologize.  The scolding was… you’re right, that’s exactly what she would have said.”  She would have cried while she said it, too, but they would have been happy tears.  The future he could have had with Peggy would have been full of happy moments – but he’d denied himself that, because it didn’t feel right that he ought to go home and live happily ever after when Bucky was dead.  Bucky himself would have been the first person to tell Steve that was stupid.

“She never stopped thinking about you,” Hayley added.  “She always thought of you as the love of her life – everything she did, she always tried to live up to your legacy.  I know it probably doesn’t help to hear that, but the fans do love the tragedy.”

Steve wanted to think of something to say in reply, but before he could, there was the sound of a flush.  Water ran, and then Downey came out of the bathroom, zipping up his jeans.

“Okay, that’s done,” he announced.  “Let’s see what’s left of Loki’s dinner.”  Downey went to the dining table and grabbed a leftover roll, taking a bite out of it as if it were an apple.  Then he started picking bits of crab meat out of the remains of a shell.  “Mmm… he likes good food, anyway.”

Natasha came to join Steve and Hayley.  “So much for your romantic moment,” she observed.  “We have to figure out what we’re doing next. If this Stan Lee guy is right and magic can’t help us…” she frowned.  “Hey, Bob?  Who is Stan Lee and why does he know everything?”

Downey made some muffled noises, his mouth full of food.  “Stan Lee? He’s the guy who wrote all the comic books they based your movies on.  Kind of the creator god of your universe.  Whatever he has to say about this mess, my money’s on it being true.”  He stuffed the rest of the roll in his mouth and shook his head.  “Listen to what I’m saying!  It’s finally happened!  I’ve snapped! Just plain lost my mind.  Somebody ask me.”  He pointed at Natasha, Steve, and Hayley.  “Any of you, I don’t care.  Ask me if I’m Tony Stark.”

Steve looked at the women.  They seemed worried.  “Are you Tony Stark?” he tried.

“No!” said Downey, and then sighed with relief. “Okay, good, I’m not that far gone yet.  Susan might still take me back.  I should write this stuff down.  The Russos… no, no,” he shook his head.  “This meta shit is more Joss’ speed.  We can get around to it when we’re done with Avengers: the Musical.  Oh, or better yet!  Wes Craven!” He grinned.

Thor and Loki’s argument was winding down, but it was not quite over yet.  “If we can find a way to return home, I will go with you,” Loki said, “but if we are trapped, it is because of you.”

“We are not trapped,” said Thor.  “The universe is infinite, and all things are possible.”

“Indeed,” said Loki.  “Some things are merely very, very difficult.”

“If we cannot pass between worlds by magic, then we must seek another way,” Thor said reasonably.  “Downey, what do people in this reality know of other universes?”

Downey was stuffing more food in his mouth, including the lettuce leaves the crab claws had been sitting on.  He had to pause to chew and swallow.  “Not much,” he said.  “There are a lot of smart people who say they exist but nobody tries to get there.  NASA’s probably playing with some stuff but I doubt any of it works.”

“NASA?”  Steve perked up.  “Romanov – remember when we had lunch on the film set?  Maddy told one of our co-stars that he had a call from his friend at ‘Actual NASA’.”

“That’s right,” she remembered.  “That’s an ‘in’ we could use.  Have you got his phone number?”

“I don’t know,” said Steve.  “I might.”  He took a look.  Chris and Donny were evidently at least casual friends, since Donny had invited Steve to go bowling with him.  When he flipped through his contacts, however, he couldn’t find a ‘Don’ or ‘Donny’, and he couldn’t remember the man’s last name.  Several of the contacts were identified only by nicknames, but he didn’t want to call them all one by one and ask.

“It’s getting late anyway,” Hayley said.  “Maybe you should stay the night and figure it out in the morning.  You look like you could use a good night’s sleep.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Downey.  “We could have dinner, too.”

Natasha frowned at him.  “You’re already eating,” he pointed out.

“This is scraps,” Downey said.  “I missed lunch!”

“We can’t just stop, not when there might be an alien invasion at any moment!” Steve protested.  He hadn’t stopped when he was in boot camp, he couldn’t do it now no matter how tired he might be.  If his body were failing him he’d just have to push it harder…

He looked at Thor and Loki, and found Thor yawning.  That was right, wasn’t it?  In this universe, they were all just ordinary human beings – no powers, no enhancements. Captain America could go a couple of days without sleep, Thor probably longer, but these actors had no such abilities. If they were planning to return to their own bodies, which they were, they had a responsibility to keep their borrowed ones in good repair.

So they did stay for dinner.  Downey went through the room service menu and ordered them a great big pepperoni pizza and pasta carbonara, and then demonstrated how to make sandwiches out of it by layering the pasta in between the pizza slices. It was the sort of thing Steve would ordinarily devoured, because his body demanded so many calories.  At the moment, it looked kind of disgusting.  He tried it anyway, as did Thor, while Hayley, Natasha, and Loki all stuck to the pasta and vegetables, which they ate with forks.

“Barbarians,” muttered Loki.

“I’ll give you all a ride back to Los Angeles,” Downey said, “since there’s room in the van and I’ll be going there anyway. I’ll also warn you, if we run into Mark or Tom – the other Tom – don’t tell them anything.  Bruce Banner and Peter Parker can keep secrets, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland cannot.”

“Who is Peter Parker?” asked Steve.

Downey paused in his chewing and a moment of terror crossed his face.  “Never mind. I’ve already said too much.”

“It’s the kid in the spider costume,” said Natasha.

“See, now you’ve ruined it,” said Downey.  “What if in a future movie it’s a big plot point that Captain America finds out Spider-Man’s secret identity?  But now he already knows!”

“Then it cannot be a plot point,” Thor said reasonably.  “I’m sure these things allow for themselves.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Downey.  “This isn’t the kind of thing where anybody knows how it works.  They put a lot of effort into those scripts, they don’t just write down whatever occurs to them in a dream.  They’re already writing Thor 3 and Avengers 3, and what if the stuff you guys know when you go back changes that?  I mean, would it change the movies, or does your universe diverge from the movies there, or what?”

“Does it matter?” asked Steve, who didn’t want to think about it.  It was one of those things, like time travel, that made his brain feel weird.

“Not really,” said Downey, “but I’m curious. Come on, don’t you have any questions about this mess?”

Steve had one, and it popped out before he could stop himself.  “Did Stark really think the apology letter was douchey?”  It wasn’t something he could ask Stark himself, after all.

“Right now?” Downey asked, shoveling neopolitan ice cream into his mouth.  “I’m pretty sure Tony Stark thinks you’re the douchiest douche ever to not actually be sorry. Like Prince Geoffrey levels of douche.”

“I told you so,” said Natasha.

[grinwolfe]

What it's like living here

I would like to tell you a story. A long story. It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Maybe one day you'll find yourself in a situation and some part of this will resurface from ancient memory and absorb some of the shock. Or maybe you already know, and my story might provide some validation or relief. The point is, it's a story and we always learn things in stories. I live in a prairie. I live where hardly anyone comes to visit and half the people who live here want to leave. I live with extreme heat and drought, extreme rain and floods, the occasional snow and hail in July, 8 months of winter, the highest crime rate in my country, plagues every year of different insects and animals (this is the jack rabbit and bumblebee year, so it's a good year), and the most light on average in a year, with our 180° skies and endless fields. It takes hours to get anywhere else, there aren't any public buses anymore for between the towns, so if you're on your own and have no car, best of luck to you and see you in two days. There is nowhere to hide from the sun, the bugs will feast on you, as will bears, cougars and coyotes once you've been trampled/gored by a moose or stag. This is a desolate, dangerous, empty space where if you stop and listen for a while, you start to feel the great expanse of ever consuming existence and how small and very very mortal you are. How fragile and brief we all are, and quite meaningless. That silence can either take you to new levels of consciousness and understanding, or drive you insane until you are babbling and screaming just to hear anything beyond the soft drone of all those bugs who want to eat you and the hungry giggling of a pack of coyotes. That is where I live. I also live in a century old house. This is quite the accomplishment; there aren't many of them left in the community where I live. Anything old, antique, or possesses character is immediately destroyed because 'it doesn't appeal to businesses.' A plain metal box always replaces it, which is the ugliest damn thing you've ever seen. My house is 110 years old, maybe older; the furthest the records go back is 1906 and my house was already built then. It came from a Sears catalogue and was built by laymen. I exist because of this house. It brought my parents together; my mom was my dad's first and last renter who only ever paid one months rent because she lost her job. I grew up in this house, amid the constant reno's saw dust, rusty nails, century old horse hair, exposed wiring, and power tools. My father is still renovating it. No, it isn't in that bad of shape, he's just really bad/slow at it and is very possessive of the house so he refuses to let anyone outside of me or mom help. And we don't like to help him because he's a huge jerk when you help him. You need to know all of this because understanding the circumstances of growing up in this house, in this place, adds another unnerving layer upon my tale. It's hard to know if it was like what I remember before I was born, or if activity ramped up as I grew up. I have no way of finding out because neither of my parents are a)organized, b)observant c)tolerating of differences. The earliest event I can remember was the most traumatic. I was around the age of 4, and while my parents watched tv in the living room, I went into the kitchen with their permission to grab a caramel candy. Our kitchen has one huge single pane window looking into our backyard and midway up I saw two lights reflected in the glass. My first instinct was that those lights were reflected from a hallway light behind me. I wasn't wrong. I just didn't immediately grasp that the light was rebounding off two eyes that were over ten feet (over 3 m) off the ground. Not little eyes either. They were yellow white, round, forwards facing, 1 1/4" (32 mm) in diameter and roughly 8 inches. And they were staring right at me. Do you know what that is? Because I still don't. Frankly, it's amazing I didn't pee myself. I was so scared, I couldn't scream or make a noise. I collapsed and played dead like a baby deer while trying to slowly crawl out of the kitchen while gasp crying softly for my parents, terrified that the monster will come through the glass. I eventually made it, got rebuked for crawling on the floor, and then I hid under the coffee table while they watched their show. It wasn't until the end of their show that they bothered to ask why I hadn't said a word and was still under the coffee table. They dismissed my fears. To this day they denied it ever happened, yet they still mock me for saying back then, 'the trees have eyes.' From then on, I avoided that window, or any ground floor window at night, afraid of what I would see for 10 years. Blinds and a heightened night vision became my friend. I figured if the lights were off around me, then nothing outside could see me. I would not, and still don't sit with my back to windows. That was only the beginning. As I child I remember hearing things that didn't make sense; footsteps around the house, mysterious bangs, someone calling my name, and a full blown tea party in the kitchen when no one was home. I challenged my parents the next day about why I wasn't invited to the party, it was only 9:30 but they replied there was no party, the babysitter left at 9 and they didn't get home until 11. Things went missing and I would get blamed until I realized how disorganized and irresponsible with other people's stuff my parents were. Then we all blamed each other. Toys that I broke by accident were mysteriously repaired, and I know for certain that my parents would never miss an opportunity to turn something I did into a lecture, and pound their chests on how benevolent and wonderful they are to fix it and how grateful I should be for the next year and how Santa would bring me one less present. When I was ill, someone would tuck me in and wipe my forehead but when I opened my eyes no one was there. Our three cats also saw things, as did I. Things that moved fast but were otherwise transparent. The cats were very affected, flight or fight modes activated, hissing, growling, mews of fear, charging and fleeing. I was 6 when I heard about ghosts from a friend, and that seemed to make sense. But ghosts scared me so ghosts became a banned thought in my home and if you dared bring up the subject you were met with 'don't be ridiculous, that's a silly thing to think, you're letting your imagination get away with you and are irresponsible with your things,' and I had to agree because I was six and what the hell did I know? As I got older and my dad ripped more of the house apart, events became less frequent but more intense. Once in the early morning before school, my stereo went crazy, flipping through all the station MANUALLY (the dial was turning) while a very loud buzzing traveled around my room, occasionally dive bombing me. If it was a bee, then it was a bee the size of a guinea pig, but I would've seen that and I saw nothing. I screamed for my dad, who also heard it, who also couldn't figure out what was making it, and then leaving it unresolved with a 'stop wasting my time.' I ran in, grabbed the rest of my clothes and changed in the bathroom. I never heard that buzzing again and never found a very large insect in the house. I saw shadows watching me at night in my room, and shadows of insects and insect like things crawling around in my home. I honestly thought I was going crazy. Since then I've been tested for schizophrenia and psychosis and nope, I'm an average crazy, no more sane than anyone else. Then things got more obvious. Once, while dancing in my kitchen (i only dance when I'm alone) I was startled by a young man, about 16, quickly leaning out from behind my refrigerator to say 'hi!' in the most excited pleased tone you can imagine. I screamed of course and tried to leap up onto the opposite counter tops and by that point he was gone but I still remember what he looked like from the waist up (the rest was hidden behind the refrigerator). He had suspenders, a green shirt, one of those paperboy caps, a round raw face like it had been cooked, with a short button nose and bright blue eyes. He was genuinely pleased to meet someone close to his age, or that's how it felt. On another occasion, in the morning, a different young man walked into my room and said 'my name is Marlow.' It was so clear. I sat right up, he had vanished by then and said loudly 'who the f@ck is Marlow???' Funnily enough, he did resemble Christopher Marlowe a little, but I refuse to believe a 17th century poet/writer decided to visit me in my bedroom. Also, I still don't know who the f@ck Marlow is. When I misbehaved or shirked chores I got tapped. Anywhere, often on the top of my head, sometimes on my ear or shoulder. Soft the first time but if I had been ignoring it by the 3rd then they got harder. Last year a hand fondly patted/ ran through my hair. I could feel the individual fingers on my scalp. Not everything has been benign. My dad took down a wall in the basement and suddenly there was a Shadow Person, which for the uninformed is a non-human entity and they generally mean bad news, like this one. I did not know this at the time, I thought I was going insane and the internet couldn't answer my questions. They are incredibly malevolent, and this one kept threatening all of us, intending to kill any and maybe all of us for pleasure. But my feckless parents were in more danger than me because they couldn't see it. It fell entirely to 15 year old me to research and handle it. I begged my mom to help, even though she laughed in my face, and I told her I was scared for their lives. They couldn't even help me keep it contained in the basement (for some reason the doors -which were original, kept it from moving around freely.) For a month, that thing steadily increased its energy and territory. It grabbed my ankle as I was going up the stairs and chased me the rest of the way up. Half of me thought I had finally lost it, but another part of me, that rational side, trusted my instincts because if we were really in danger, now was not the time to ignore it. I eventually triumphed; I used the door trick, specifically the front door. I locked it out of the house and now it's out there in the world but not terrorizing me. I thought when I went to college that all that would change, that I'd be away from trigger memories and in a new place in a safe supportive setting doing something that I loved. Not so. The forest next to the college also possessed things, some of which were even worse and more powerful than the Shadow Person. Luckily, I only saw them from a distance and through my window. I have had CAT scans done, MRI's, I've talked with psychiatrists, neurospecialists, psychotherapists, and have had 3 psychoanalysis done. None of them can explain any of this and no one wants to try. I tell them what I've experienced and they go silent because they're rational, scientific doctors and though in every other way I am sane, what I am saying must be impossible. So I researched. And researched. And researched. Now? I'm not scared of ghosts, nor do I go looking for them. They're people without bodies, but still people. They're going to be just as enthusiastic, seedy, annoying, mean, bossy, or kind as they were in life and mostly don't want to be bothered or have their home ripped apart. Don't mess with things you don't understand is a good rule of thumb. It might be fun to scare yourself and your friends silly by trying to summon something BUT DON'T. It's not worth it, and you might have to face consequences that will stick with you forever. Plus, it's kinda rude. But if you get a Shadow Person, or some other non-human entity, dude, get that shit dealt with right away by a professional. They do exist. As for me, I'm just fine. Back in this old house for now, the remaining spirits are on good terms with me and are waging war on dad and his eternal renovations. I expect when he passes, he'll be in this house too, there is no wall, no floor, nothing he has not put his mark on. And as long as the people standing in the back yard watching the house don't get in, we'll be fine for a while yet.

[hollywoodx4]

Sticking with the Schuylers (31)

I really had to think about how many chapters this has good lord 31 chapters of you guys sticking through it-and supporting it-and commenting and loving and I just-Thanks for everything you do, I love you all so much. This one’s a long one because I feel bad for my post-vacation I think I might have walking pneumonia lack of updates this week. 

(Happy Easter to those who celebrate it-Happy weekend to those who don’t!)

Tagging: @ellzabethschuyler (Hope you’re feeling well and wonderful!)

Let’s talk about John Laurens and the media....

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There are many things that present themselves as a façade in New York City; cozy chairs that dig into bodies in just the wrong way, discount coffees just above five dollars…the entire city seems to live as a picture of itself, showing a version that it would rather be than what it truly is. To tourists it is perfect, picturesque. They arrive in Times Square, or Central Park, or Rockafeller Center with every picture they had seen online ideally filled. They traipse with their tour groups in safety and with careful guidance. There is no guesswork-only the ability to lay back and enjoy the sights while somebody else does the work.

               There were many things about New York City that had stunned Alexander when he had first arrived; a seventeen year old who had lived a life mostly taken up by the care of his mother or the desperate scrambling to get out. There were so many people, always rushing about, with goals in their minds and dreams tucked in their pockets. And he relished them, these dreams. These people with their brief cases-their shoulder bags, their purses….each person who walked by Alexander had a life separate from his own. And although his own life had been a struggle he was here, walking through the city reading street signs to find his way to Columbia.

               It was his dream; the people, the crowds…Alexander had waited so long to get out of the Caribbean that it came as a shock to him that he was among this life now-that he wasn’t just a map-muddled tourist. This was his world, with its bright lights and throngs of busyness. He longed to be an immediate part of it. At seventeen, he yearned for the opportunity to be a part of something.

               One of the first things he decided to do was grab something to eat-the journey to the city had been long and tiresome, and there were many things that weighed deep on his mind. Every so often in the face of a passerby-a beautiful child, a work-worn mother-he would find a fragment of the delicate features his own mother had possessed. His stomach is in knots by the time he reaches a tucked-away café, whose doorway sits in an alley rather on the main streets. He tosses his bag under a table and orders a coffee and a croissant, proudly handing the cashier his money before tucking into a long table situated in front of the window. The windows face the street in this shop, and although Alexander thinks this is a little backwards he is thankful for the peace that people watching brings him.

               He sits with a pen and an old notebook, bound by hand and given to him as a gift by a shop owner in Nevis he had grown close to. She spent her days binding these notebooks, and even as a boy Alex would stop by her shop whenever possible, always carrying around one of the books and an idea in his head. When he left she was teary-eyed, wishing that his dreams would be fulfilled as she pressed the soft leather cover in his hands. Now, it sits open on the table. He records what he sees-each passerby with their own description, the emotions running rampant and dancing across the pages. He flips the pages fervently, looking up only occasionally to think-to take in another centimeter of the scenery or to enjoy the coffee that has already grown slightly cold.

               Once, in the middle of a particularly long span of writing about the differences between foot traffic between this city and Nevis, he looks up to find somebody sitting next to him. The man looks to be about his age, with hair as seemingly unruly as his pulled neatly into a ponytail that fluffs up at the ends. His coffee-colored features are splashed with a layer of freckles that dot a playful line across his cheeks, which lift in a smile as Alex looks over at him. He waves. Alex nods, looking between the man and his notebook, unsure of what to say.

               “You’re a writer, I’m guessing?” The freckled teen begins the conversation, breaking the silence for Alex. He nods again before realizing that he should speak, clearing his throat with a hesitance.

               “Yeah-mostly for myself, though.”

               “And the bag?” He uses his foot to gesture to Alex’s navy blue duffle, on the floor below his feet and stuffed with what little possessions he had arrived with. Alex shrugs, moving it further underneath the high table with his foot. He feels his face redden-he knows the usual social implications which being an immigrant will bring him. Those truths were already engrained in his mind when he stepped off the train in the city; by those in his village, by his mother…even passersby who did not know his story. People either embraced his past-the past of so many others in the city-or spat the word immigrant as if it were a disease rather than an accomplishment. But this man seemed nice, although chatting with a stranger in the middle of a coffee shop would not have been Alex’s first choice of activities.

               “I actually just moved here.”

               “Like…just now?”

               “Pretty much.”

               “From where?”

               “Uh, Nevis.” Upon seeing the stranger’s eager eyes Alex is comforted, and although he knows nothing about the man there is a sense of sincere security between them. There will be no judgment, unless he’s very good at hiding it. But Alex decides to take that chance; with nothing to his name and knowing not a single soul in the city, there really isn’t anything to lose. “It’s in the Caribbean-small place, but it was home.”

               “And your family?”

               “None that I’ll miss.”

               “Wow…good for you, man. I guess that makes me your official welcome wagon, then.”

               “Oh, my name’s John, by the way. I guess it’s kind of rude not to introduce myself.” He holds his hand out with a large grin plastered on his face. It is cheerful and sincere, taking up most of his features with its charismatic light. Alex accepts the handshake, as well as a relief that floods through his system in copious amounts.

               “There are stranger things-like talking to random people in a coffee shop?”

               “You’ve got a lot to learn about the city…”

               “Alex.”

               “Alex. Well, if you’re looking for something to do tonight we have a big family dinner. You could start to get to know a few people around here, make yourself at home-hey, wait. You have a place to stay?”

               Alex looks away for a moment, the sudden embarrassment from the lack of a plan returning full-force. It had been enough of a task to get here from Nevis-the actual plan to stay hadn’t quite made its way to his heavy-weighted mind just yet. He shakes his head, refusing to look at the stranger-at John. He’s met with a slight chuckle and eyes that dance with a glittering mischief, teasing him.

               “Well, it’s a good thing I decided to stop by this shop today, then. My mom won’t mind you staying a while-our house basically has a revolving door.”

…

               John finds their usual seat by the window, head in his hands. They shake under the weight, a pure exhaustion having hit him so hard and so sudden that he can barely keep his eyes up to watch out for Alex. It’s their sophomore year-just getting into their second year of their friendship. The amount of up and downs have taken them on a ride but there they stood, side-by-side, through it all. Still friends.

               Still friends.

               It surprises John just how far they have come; especially since their friendship had begun in such a strange place. He’d attempted to teach Alex the ways of New York City-some methods had worked, others had failed miserably. It had taken Alex months to learn how to navigate the subway without getting sidetracked or missing his stop but only a day to learn the tax conversions in his head and pick up enough broken Spanish to navigate the craziness of the Laurens household. He’d even managed to find a job, although he hated being a dishwasher for the small diner down the street more than anything. Through it all, he’d had John. And John had been a happy, supportive friend.

               The thing about being himself that he hated so much was that familiar tickle that often landed in his stomach and traveled up through his hands. It was a sensation so familiar and yet so unwelcome that he had tried to push it away, lock it and hide it until his mother had sensed what was going on. And she’d pulled him aside one day, after an argument with a sibling about something that had sent him away near tears. He hadn’t remembered how it had started, only how it had ended…with shouting and vile words he hadn’t meant to spill, causing his middle sister to start crying right as his mother walked through the door. Luckily, his mother didn’t yell. Luckily, she was one of the few parents in their community who would talk and listen to an explanation before settling for a punishment. Luckily, Ana Laurens was a mother who would accept her children no matter what.

               He’d gotten lucky. Even with seven mouths to feed and only John and his older brother helping with the bills, their mother had taken Alex in. And then they’d both gone to Columbia together, already having a built-in friend. Alex had similar interests; big dreams and a drive to get him there. They’d take Columbia on together, roommates and best friends. John considered himself very lucky-if he hadn’t stopped in the shop that day…he couldn’t imagine a future without Alex Hamilton by his side.

               But then, John found a great misfortune within himself. Every time he and Alex were together, there it was. His hands itched. His stomach rolled. And Alex would chuckle, re-tying his hair into a ponytail before sipping on his dark brew. He always smelled like coffee-even at night, when they’d ducked into a movie theatre to avoid the cramped space of their dorm for a few more hours. Even then, when Alex shrugged off his old leather jacket, a warm and bitter scent always came wafting through. It was comforting-secure. It made the knots in his stomach tighten upon the thought alone.

               John Laurens had been gay his whole life, but never had he experienced something like this before.

               He was unsure of the protocol-if there was any, at all. What he was aware of was the glaringly obvious fact that even if by the stretch of John’s vivid imagination Alex was in some way interested in men, he was in no way interested in him. It was a sense that he picked up, from the way Alex spoke to him in the same tone as Laff or Herc. There wasn’t even a single moment of discomfort, not on his end, anyway. While John found that being roommates with him had become increasingly difficult, there were no signs of discomfort from the other end. And then, he knew.

               He had to tell Alex.

               Which led him to the coffee shop where they’d first met-at least if by some miracle things worked out in John’s favor, it would end up being a wonderful story to tell. If not…well, he hadn’t gotten that far yet. Alex walked in with his hood over his head, shaking out unruly curls mussed by the beginnings of rainfall. He ordered his dark brew and settled in the chair next to John, slinging his backpack underneath the table. John won’t let himself look up-not yet. Instead he lets himself feel the presence of his best friend one last time. It feels like a death sentence, the way a lump has settled in his closed throat and his hands have begun to shake. But there is a confidence, stuck deep under negative emotions that have rooted themselves in the front of his mind. So he takes a long sip of his drink and sighs, opening his mouth so that everything can spill out at once.

               “I don’t want to be awkward but I’m gay and I’m pretty sure-no, I’m absolutely sure that I have feelings for you.”

               If there was one thing that Alexander Hamilton lacked within the power of his mind, it was the power of observation. The truth hits him with surprise, o much so that he nearly chokes on the coffee he’s been nursing. John looks back at him with already dejected eyes and Alex is barreled over with instant regret. He wishes he could be more-do more for the man that had been his friend from the beginning. Instead, he’s stuck with his tonge caught in his throat, unsure of what to say.

               “It’s okay.” It’s the best he could come up with, a phrase that leaves his mouth and causes him instant regret. John nods. Alex cringes from the embarrassment at the lack of comfort in that first phrase had brought. He shakes his head.

               “I mean, I wish I could say more. I wish I could say that I was gay, too, and make you happy.”

               “Alex,”

               “-Wait. I might not be able to say any of that, but what I can say is that this won’t affect my friendship with you. If you still want to be my friend-if I haven’t just made things too complicated-I support you. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

               There’s a shift in the air between them-John can feel it in Alex’s tentative yet sincere smile, the way he refuses to look away from him although there’s still a hint of an awkward silence hanging around the pair. But within the sting of rejection there is a hope; it hurts, the way the truth he’d known comes crashing down on him. But the fact that Alexander seems to unchanged, so willing to accept him without hesitation, is enough to let a monumental sigh of relief escape his system. There is still the glaringly obvious pang in his stomach-the shiver down his spine when Alex smiles back at him. But at least he’s still there. At least Alex is still his best friend.

…

               John Laurens hates Elizabeth Schuyler.

               It’s been a year since he’d told Alex about his feelings. There hadn’t been many girls between then and now, just a few, far-between flings that hadn’t lasted much past the realization that Alex is very much in love with his work. It hadn’t been difficult to deal with-even when they shared a room, and John had been left to wait until the end of a date to enter his room multiple times. It was never taxing-he knew things weren’t going to work out. He was aware of that fact. In the year since Alex had let him down it had actually become easy to ignore his feelings. It was almost as if they’d gone away completely. He was relieved.

               They hadn’t gone away.

               The first time Alex lays eyes on Eliza is through the screen of Lafayette’s phone. He is skeptical. John had been watching the Schuyler streams for quite some time, but Alex never understood what could be so great about a bunch of senator’s daughters. Watching the change within his best friend hurt more than anything he’d felt before. The look in his eyes as Eliza sang, clear as a bell that echoed across the room-that familiar, stabbing pang found its way back to his stomach as if it hadn’t been a year since it left. And then, Alex was incessantly talking about her. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week-his life had been consumed with the thought of this girl although he didn’t even know her. It was hard, but John could manage. It wasn’t as if he knew her, anyway.

               And then, they’d met her.

               She greeted them all with such a warm smile, bringing cupcakes to their apartment and making herself into the perfect house guest. Alex looked at her with wide and shining eyes, and her face flushed scarlet. John leaned against the wall of the living room and tried not to watch. His hopes had come crashing down with one singular introduction. Alex was clearly as far gone as John had been with him. And then, Eliza felt the same.

               The worst part of it all was that the more he spoke with Eliza-the more time she spent around their apartment-the harder it became to hate her. She was sweet as could be, doting and kind and optimistic. She brought John his favorite candy and knew when he worked late and needed company. She worked her hardest to ensure that he always had company. She listened to him when nobody else would. Yes, Elizabeth Schuyler was impossible to hate. Except she was living the life he so desperately wanted to live. She had Alex. He didn’t.

               So he resented her for a while-really resented her. He’d walk away when she and Alex were both in the room. He’d feign plans while she was waiting for Alex to get out of work so he wouldn’t have to spend time with her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like her, but the pain that came along with her relationship status was just too much to handle. It was doubly so knowing how well Eliza fit with him, in a way that John never could.

               But then she’d opened up to him; after her panic attack in Starbucks things had changed. It took a while, a lot of coaxing, but John was patient and calm and treated her as a friend. She was his friend. She’d told him everything, as much as her filter would allow, and suddenly there was a light on the last speck of shadow he’d held against her. Alex was great for her. Alex was protective, and understanding…she brought out a side of him John had never seen before. He took breaks. He took care of himself. He was helping her heal.

               There was only one more conversation to have.

…

               He’d made sure that Alex was working-that Eliza would be the only occupant in their apartment. It was a chilly December afternoon, fresh snow from the morning cancelling classes and dropping the temperature another twenty degrees. When he knocks on the door with a bag of takeout and a bright smile she flings it open, ushering him in and immediately setting out plates. She speaks in this airy, weightless voice that carries like a bird’s song and resonates off the hardwood flooring clear as a bell.

               She’s instantly cheering. He hopes it’ll make the conversation go much easier than anticipated.

               John mulls over his lo mein with incredible concentration, swirling it around with his chopsticks and investigating it as if it’s not their usual meal. She notices an instant change in his demeanor. He clears his throat. His posture is stiff and unsure. He keeps his head down and his quickened pulse is practically audible. Eliza pushes her plate aside and rests her arms on the table, tipping her head in attempts to catch his eyes.

               “John, what’s wrong?” He flushes, head bent in a mixture of embarrassment and worry. He’s not sure how Eliza will take this conversation; she’s good of heart, sure, but this? The thought of losing someone now so close to him weighs heavily on his conscience, but he knows this has to be done. The need has been eating him alive, taking away sleep and sanity in anticipation of this moment. He has to say something.

               “I just-I’ve been thinking a lot. I know so much about you, but I’ve been kind of…guarded? I’ve been guarded around you. It’s not fair to us. I feel like this friendship has been really one-sided in that way, and it’s not fair to you.”

               “Okay.” She’s using a quieted tone of voice now, barely above a whisper. It’s the hush of wind brushing against fresh grass-of snow falling silently through a dawn-lit sky. She has this innate and consuming need to nurture brought out in hand that finds its way toward his, a warmth that soothes him just enough. “Go ahead, it’s alright. I’m here to listen.”

               “Alright. Okay. So,” He takes in a breath, prolonging the inevitable. “When Alex and I met, there was kind of this connection I felt with him. I really liked him. And it’s lasted a really long time.”

               “Okay…”

               “I mean, of course you know by now that I’m super gay…like, really gay. And Alex, he’s a really great person. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the entire first year of our friendship. So I told him. And I mean, he’s not into men, so I kind of got over it. Almost. But I kind of hated you when we first met.”

               “Oh.” She draws back a bit; pulls her hand away from his, mirroring his downward gaze. John is immediately wracked with guilt for causing such a pain, pedaling back through his words in a panic.

               “I don’t hate you anymore-really, I don’t. That was completely unjustified, and I just-I couldn’t. You’re actually one of my closest friends now.”

               Eliza rolls her shoulders, nodding, considering his words. Silence lingers in the apartment. John picks at his food with his chopsticks, his mind racing in a silent prayer for his friendship. Finally Eliza lifts her head, eyes searching his with a curiosity laced with understanding. Still, there is not an angry, or upset, or offended piece about her.

               “Well, I’m glad you don’t hate me anymore.”

               “Eliza,”

               “No, I mean it. I’m glad we’re friends. I just…I wish you had told me sooner.”

               “Does it change things?”

               “No, god no! It only changes how I’ll talk to you-god, I feel like such a jerk. How many days have I spent telling you how much I love Alexander, and how good he is to me? I can’t even imagine-why didn’t you tell me?”

               “I just didn’t want to wreck things. And trust me, those feelings?” He laughs, shaking his head and lifting a hand to wave her off. “They’re pretty much gone. The amount that kid works? The amount of time he spends talking? I don’t know how you do it, E. I was his roommate for 3 years and I still don’t know how I survived.”

               Her laughter is more than just a typical bell-tone, then. To John, it is a hallelujah call. The serenity that crosses his features then consumes him, and he laughs along with her. Then she’s holding her hand over her mouth, choking through that mirth before sipping her drink.

               “I could tell you stories, John. I love him but my god you’re right. There’s this thing that he does when he’s stressed, and,”

               She’s cut off by the sound of the door slamming against the wall. A snow-dusted Alex stands in the doorway, shaking precipitation from his hair and kicking his shoes off at the door in haste. They hit the wall in two resounding thuds and he pulls a chair from the table, nearly knocking their food over in response.

               “Can you believe this?” His higher tone comes out somewhere between a shout and a cracking nerve, and he turns his phone so that they both can read what’s on the screen.

               STRAYING SCHUYLER: THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICA’S SO-CALLED SWEETHEART

               He never expected things to turn south so quickly. Social media star and hopeful politician James Reynolds opened up to US in an exclusive interview at a local rooftop bar over the weekend, where he dished on all things Jeliza. “It was hard for me to keep her attention,” he says about now ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Schuyler. “She was always really flighty-always looking for another fling to keep entertained.” The two ended their eight month relationship abruptly last March, sources stating that Reynolds is “still deeply upset” and “wanting Eliza back more than anything.” Now, Reynolds spends his time reflecting.

               It isn’t hard to see why the Sentator’s middle daughter is so desirable-with her bright eyes and soft smile, she’s dazzled America since her first magazine appearance at the young age of eleven. Now, she’s on the covers of People, Entertainment Weekly, and has graced our own front cover 6 times.

               It’s hard to see her now, a source close to Reynold’s divulges. “She has been in so many pictures with so many men lately, it’s made him very distraught.” Pictured above are two of the men in question. Alex, her new beau, had been first referred to as Mystery Man by fans and sceptics alike. Now, the two are spotted in public nearly every day. But there’s another man on the scene-a nameless ‘hispanic hunk’ who’s taken to holding Schuyler’s arm on a walk through the city nearly as often as Alex.

               The rumors may be true-if the continued series of photographs are any clue to the key of Jeliza’s breakup, we’re ruling with Reynolds on this one. America’s sweetheart may just be America’s serial dater. The verdict from Reynolds? “He still wants her back-he’d forgive her, even for everything she’s done.” Looks like there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #130 - Veronica Mars

Spoilers below (for the TV show too).

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes!

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes. #283.

Format: Blu-ray

This post is dedicated to @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer, the best Marshmallow I know.

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

1) Veronica Mars - this film - exists because of a Kickstarter campaign that went live on March 13, 2013. The series ran for three seasons before being cancelled but gained an incredible cult following. Series creator Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, and the rest of the cast had been hopeful about a movie being made for years before turning to Kickstarter. Their goal was 2 million dollars, they got that in less than 24 hours (breaking most of Kickstarter’s records at the time). They ended up with five million total dollars by the end of their campaign (which was broke the REST of Kickstarter’s records at the time). This movie is made by the fans, for the fans basically, and that’s awesome.

2) I first started watching “Veronica Mars” on Netflix DVDs AFTER the Kickstarter had come and gone, meaning I did not have to wait the seven years many fans did for a resolution to the series’ cliffhanger ending. I fell in love with the show instantly. I binged it as quickly as I could with Netflix DVDs (ie: not very quickly but passionately) and love almost every twist and turn. It is an excellent show and my love for it definitely in part fuels my love for the film.

3) The opening, “I need your help Veronica,” montage is a great way of starting off the film. For fans of the original series it reminds us of everything we’ve been missing for a while, and for people who have never seen a single episode it gives them enough info to understand the movie and its characters. And it has this wink to the fans of the show:

Veronica: “New me? People say I’m a Marshmallow.”

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

For all you newbies, fans of “Veronica Mars” refer to themselves as Marshmallows because of this line from the pilot. It was either that or “twinkies” and you can spell “Marshmallows” without “Mars”.

4) Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars.

It’s difficult for me to talk about Veronica as a character because most of my understanding of her as a character comes from both the film AND the TV Show. A lot of what I have to say is really going to be echoes of what @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer has said in her fantastic recaps for the series. Veronica is strong willed, fiercely loyal, but she’s got some blinders on. If she decides you’re guilty or innocent, it is fact. That is just the way it is and she will not recognize the notion otherwise. But see, that does not come into effect in as huge a way in the film as it has in the show in the past.

Veronica is incredibly sharp. I will speak later on how physical strength is not one of her greatest attributes, but she more than makes up with it in wit and the ability to think on her feet. Tough as nails, with an incredible sense of humor (which in and of itself is probably a defense mechanism of some sort), Veronica is amazing. And Veronica would not be the Veronica we know and love if it were not for the truly perfect Kristen Bell.

There are some character who are just defined as much by the actors who play them as the writers who craft them. Veronica Mars is one of those characters. Kristen Bell inhabits all of Veronica’s qualities perfectly. Her contradictions, her strengths, her weakness, her love, her aggression, her need for intimacy with some people, her ability to be independent with others. Honestly in the same sense that Sarah Michelle Gellar IS Buffy or that Robert Downey Jr. IS Iron Man, Kristen Bell IS Veronica Mars and no other actress could ever play her with the same perfection as Bell.

5) Jamie Lee Curtis.

Understand that even though this film made more than twice what it was asking for in the Kickstarter campaign, five million bucks to make a movie these days is close to nothing. Comparatively speaking at least (although recent best picture winner Moonlight only cost 1.5 million so...). Most of the famous faces in this film - the small bits here and there like Jamie Lee Curtis in the very beginning - have some sort of working relationship with those involved in the movie (usually the actors). For example: Curtis worked with Bell in 2010′s You Again. I’m sure this most be some sort of favor to her.

6) This flip off is very Veronica. You can tell a lot about her way of handling jackasses and her sense of humor from this moment.

7) 

Gayle: Fifteen separate articles or briefs in cases ranging from multiple homicides to dognapping.

The season one episode “Hot Dogs” involves Veronica helping what was one of the kindest and most sincerely uncorrupted characters on the show (Mandy) help find her missing dog which she loved so much. I like to tell myself that is Veronica thinking fondly on this case which means little to others (especially when compared to multiple homicides) but one where she helped this really kind girl with something that really mattered to her.

8) Let’s talk briefly about the film’s “sex tape” references. Towards the end of season 3 a “sex tape” was released of Veronica and her then-boyfriend (and current boyfriend, at the start of this film) Piz. Except Veronica said she and Piz were just fooling around and didn’t actually have sex. We see the sex tape very clearly later on in the film, that has clearly been retconned. Painfully, too, as Piz is not exactly the most loved of Veronica’s boyfriends.

9) On that note...Piz.

I cannot get into the intense dislike people have for Piz without getting into how he was written and portrayed in the final season of the TV show (which was the season he was introduced in). In a nutshell, Piz was the Nice Guy™. As in the character who in reality isn’t really a nice guy, but is sort of a privileged manipulative white dude bro who thinks he deserves to be with a woman he basically sees as the female lead in his own personal romantic comedy. But the writers still write him as the “nice guy”. The movie does not have as much of that Nice Guy™ vibe to Piz though. It’s definitely still there though. He tells Veronica that he oversold her to his parents. That, “They cannot believe I landed a creature such as the one I’ve described.” But mostly Piz is kinda sorta not an awful dude. He seems to have some genuine feelings for Veronica but you can tell Veronica is with him just because he’s the safe choice. Because this is the clean life she wants. And that’s never who she was and so Piz isn’t dating the REAL Veronica. Piz is not interested in the REAL Veronica just the kind of girl he expects her to be and wants her to be. Even if he’s not a total dick about it in the film, that’s still what their relationship is.

HOWEVER I will say even though I may have issues with Piz as a character I do truly enjoy Chris Lowell as an actor. My distaste for how Piz has been written in the past is not a reflection on his performance.

10) Veronica talks about how Bonnie DeVille used to be known as Carrie Bishop. Carrie Bishop was featured in a few season one episodes of the show played by “Gossip Girl” actress Leighton Meester. Meester had scheduling conflicts with the show so they recast her part.

11) Never ever think too hard about the timeline or continuity in the Veronica Mars universe. Like...Logan is supposed to be a different age than her but they were still in the same graduating class or his dead girlfriend was a different age because she went to school with her brother who was...just, it’s confusing to think about it too hard. Just know that this film - while released in 2014 - takes place in 2016. Because the characters graduated high school in 2006 and their ten year reunion is featured in the film.

12) The theme of addiction is heavily featured throughout the movie, mainly throughout Veronica’s internal monologue. She constantly mentions her alcoholic mother while comparing her return to Neptune and the world of a PI to that idea. Not to mention Veronica described her past self as a, “possible adrenaline junkie,” within the first five minutes of the film. It’s a neat idea that gives the film a unique arc and helps it feel more than an extended episode.

13) Logan Echolls, ladies and gentlemen.

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

With most of (if not all of) these characters, it is difficult for me to talk about them ONLY as they are presented in the film. Logan is someone who throughout the TV show had a very troubled life. His father beat him, his mother committed suicide, his girlfriend was murdered, the murderer turned out to be his father, he had been manipulated by many people he considered family, but he was good to Veronica (for the most part) when they started dating. He cared for her, truly. There was an honesty to their relationship, an ability to be himself, which he lost when she left. I think the second Veronica Mars book Mr. Kiss & Tell goes into this more (I read it two years ago), but Logan needed to get his life together post-Veronica. So he joined the freaking Navy. That first image of Logan already sets him up as a clean cut, mostly kept together man that is FAR different from the, “obligatory psychotic jackass,” we met in the pilot of the show.

Much like Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring gives Logan a lot of depth. The reason the character was given such a prominent role and more layers - initially - was because of Dohring’s skill as an actor. He is able to present Logan as mostly collected but still vulnerable. Still with a deep sorrow in his soul, still with a darkness to him. But we as an audience are invested in him as a character. We understand Veronica’s trust for him because we see just who he is around Veronica. The chemistry between Dohring and Bell is incredible. It is not just hot steamy chemistry (although it can be, more on that later). It’s a trust, it’s friendship, it’s an ability for these two to truly be themselves around each other in a way they can’t be with pretty much everyone else.

It is a truly wonderful performance and character we get to see in the film and I think the entire franchise of Veronica Mars would be far less without Jason Dohring and Logan Echolls.

14) It is fun how to see how easily Veronica slips into her old routine at her dad’s office. Also it goes into the idea of how an addict is more easy to fall into their addiction when they get into a certain habit. Veronica was addicted to being a PI when she was in Neptune, working with Logan, and helping at her dad’s office. Is it any wonder she can’t fight off the need to go back to that life when she’s in the town for less than a day and all these things have happened already?

15) Keith’s face when he sees Veronica!

We don’t get AS good a look as Keith’s relationship with daughter Veronica in the film as we did in the TV show (we got three seasons to examine it, after all), but it is still one of the best parent/child relationships to ever grace screens and the chemistry between Enrico Colantoni and Kristen Bell is great.

16) Although the film only had a budget from Kickstarter of about five million dollars, Warner Brothers studio was comfortable enough with the film that they paid an extra million (I think it was a million) for some reshoots to help make the story more understandable. The most noteworthy of these reshoots is the scene where Keith and Veronica are driving through town and discover a bunch of kids being framed up by the police, tazzed, basically abused for being “riff raff” and Keith being able to extort the police into letting the kids go by taking a video of them abusing their power. This was all told to the audience in the original shoot at the office scene, but the use of “show don’t tell” not only paints a grim picture of what kind off corrupt place Neptune is but also what kind of man Keith is. He really is - as his daughter says - the George Bailey of Neptune.

17) Mac & Wallace!

Again, if you like what you see of these two in the movie and want more...GO WATCH THE TV SHOW! The friendship Veronica forges with Wallace is one of the strongest in her life, second only to her father and even ahead of her relationship with Logan I think. He is there through it all. Through all the boyfriends, all the drama, all the times she’s a pariah, he is there for her. He helps her out, he does favors with her, and it is just such a beautiful and loving friendship.

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

The relationship Veronica has with Mac - while not necessarily as strong - is still great. Tina Majorino breathed such life into this character from season 1 who could’ve easily been a one off but ended up being second only to Wallace when it came to Veronica’s friends. The trio of them are great, and they’ve always got each other’s backs.

18) Dick Casablancas.

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

Otherwise known as: your problematic fave! Man, I don’t even know where to start with Dick. He’s...well...he’s a dick! But like a likable dick! Somehow Rob Thomas gets away with Dick doing some really awful shit in the show and still have him be Logan’s best friend. Dick in this film is - I think - mostly comedic relief (and, at one point, a suspect) and Hansen is just a lot of fun in the role.

A little note about Dick though. This line has way more significance than you would think:

Dick [after Logan’s potential lawyer makes a remark about his pot brownies]: “Medicine, man. I got my card. Chronic depression. You wouldn’t think, huh?”

That’s actually very telling about Dick. Season two ended with his younger brother being revealed as a mass murderer before killing himself, and there was some fair amount of time devoted in early season three to examining how Dick dealt with this.

19) This scene alone shows a lot of fun back and forth between Veronica, Logan, and the idiots of Neptune.

Logan [after these two Canadian drunks call a girl a crazy bitch at karaoke night]:

(GIFs originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

20) Again with the theme of addiction:

Veronica [internal monologue]: “You know what? It’s a one time deal. A farewell tour, if you will. [Sees hot as fuck Logan] Then again, you ever hear the one about the junkie who was satisfied with just one more taste of the good stuff?”

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

Veronica: “Neither have I.”

21) Chekov’s random trucker hat line...

Veronica [about being able to hide cameras in anything]: “My dad has a trucker hat that’s rigged with a camera -”

22) There’s this rule Pixar has with writing: a coincidence that gets the character into trouble is plot. A coincidence that gets them out of trouble is cheating. The fact that Veronica is able to get into someone’s house by saying she’s doing a location scout for a Clint Eastwood movie only for that person to have a connection to Clint Eastwood falls into the former of those two categories.

23) This film THRIVES on fan service which also serves the plot. For example, Veronica - like she did all the way back in season one - calls Wallace for a favor.

Veronica: “Hey Buddy! I need a favor. Can you get me a student’s permanent file?”

Wallace: “You do realize that I’m a teacher now, Veronica? An educator? This is a position of responsibility.”

Veronica: “So you’re saying it’s gonna be super easy. Good. I did NOT want to put you out.”

The theater I saw this in - with quite a few Marshmallows - all found this scene hysterical.

24) The inclusion of Deputy Sacks is a nice way of bringing in even what some would call the smaller characters into the film. AND it ends up working out really well.

25) Jerry O’Connell as Sheriff Dan Lamb.

The perfect personification of slime and corruption in Neptune. Lamb’s brother Don Lamb was the incompetent (and assholish prick of a) sheriff throughout most of the show, and somehow they made his brother even worse. At least Don Lamb would OCCASIONALLY do his job if presented with enough compelling evidence. Meanwhile Dan is even more egotistical, even says at one point he doesn’t care if Logan is innocent or not, and later in all likelihood tries to have Keith killed. Jerry O’Connell plays Lamb as wonderfully vile. A villain you love to hat.

26) I love that this film brings in so many memorable characters from the TV show, even though some are limited to one scene. But that one scene is enough for us to remember why we love them. This is very true for Daran Norris as Cliff McCormack, Neptune’s resident public appointed attorney.

27) It is interesting seeing how these characters have grown in the seven years since the TV show ended. For example, Veronica is able to show off QUITE clearly that she spent a considerable amount of time at law school when she’s defending herself at the police station.

28) The whole scene at the 09er is very entertaining, if for no other reason than a trio of fun cameos we get. We see exactly the stupidity of the “cool kids” at Neptune, we get the series’ first use of the word, “fuck,” AND we get Veronica’s trademark sass. Also we get this nice moment between husband & wife:

29) But the 09er scene is NOTHING compared to the reunion at Neptune High.

The entire graduation scene perfectly shows off the film’s ability to balance out fan service AND move the plot forward. It brings back almost all the memorable characters from the TV show, friends and enemies a like. And for you who haven’t seen the show, we get a very clear picture of just how much Veronica “enjoyed” high school.

Veronica: “In a lesser known epic poem, ‘Dante’s Inferno 2: Hell Freezes Over,’ ten years after escaping the nine circles, Dante returns. You know, for old times’ sake. Have a couple shots, catch up with the gang...”

Madison [as Veronica approaches]: “Name?”

Veronica: “See if Lucifer’s still a bitch.”

We get a see of characters in this scene.

Madison Sinclair is still an entitled, judgmental, condescending asshole.

Gia Goodman (played by the incredible Krysten Ritter of “Jessica Jones” fame) is REMARKABLY different from the last time we saw her. Back then she was a chipper, positive (if a little naive) young woman. Then Veronica exposed her dad as a pedophile to the world, he was killed by Dick’s brother in a plane explosion, and some really awful psychotic shit went down where she is basically owned by a man named Cobb (Martin Starr). Gia is likely the most changed character since the TV show and Ritter’s amazing range supports that.

Eli ‘Weevil’ Navarro has gotten his life together, which is an incredible thing to see from the former member of a bike gang. He has a daughter, he has a wife, he is reformed! But of course Neptune is gonna tear him back down.

We even get a chance to see Horny, the recurring comic relief and nice dude from the show, in a little moment which I as a fan appreciate.

Edit: I have had it pointed out to me that the character’s name is Corny, not Horny is I’ve thought for four years. You can find the reply in notes, but I’m going to leave the name as I originally thought so you all know my shame.

30) The high school reunion also serves as a turning point for the story. Veronica realizes that Carrie’s death is tied to the death of her friend Susan Knight YEARS ago on Carrie’s father’s boat. And now her investigation has some more direction.

31) When you watch the works of Rob Thomas (the writer, not the singer) you find he is wonderfully aware of his famous name-twin.

Piz [about talking about some 2006 music]: “Maybe some SOLO Rob Thomas.”

That’s nothing compared to what we got on “iZombie” though.

32) I love this.

(GIFs originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

33) A great peek at how Veronica is not as alone as she may think is after Madison (asshole) shows Veronica’s sex tape at the family reunion. For one thing Wallace is immediately at Veronica’s side, running to turn it off. Then Wallace, Logan, Weevil, Dick, and Piz (at least. Maybe Horny too, I’m not sure.) all jump into a fight with the assholes who want to put the tape back on. A great recall from this line:

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

34) Principal Clemmons is another example of a great supporting character from the show making a brief but appreciate appearance in the film.

35) Veronica at the reunion’s after-party is very much her being in her natural environment. The scene where she’s dancing and it cuts to slow mo is very predatory to me. She is a lion ready to pounce on its prey. This is her in her element and its great to watch.

36) Martin Starr as Cobb is a...unique new character in the film. He was not in the show at all and now he’s part of the group of established characters. In hindsight it’s obvious that he’s the evil mastermind of it all (spoiler alert).

37) Veronica impersonating Martina Vasquez to get info out of Lamb is as nice callback to the series while also showing new viewers just how crafty she can be.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

38) Leo!!!!

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

Leo was like the best boyfriend Veronica had on the show who wasn’t Logan, an actual nice guy and not Nice Guy™. Max Greenfield has gotten a lot more recognition lately for his memorable turn as Schmidt on “New Girl” but he’s GREAT on the show and in this film. He only has one scene but it’s a bit bigger than say Cliff’s scene or Clemmons’ scene, and him screwing with Veronica by pretending to not remember her is a lot of fun.

39)

Leo: “By the way, I didn’t know the FBI was looking into the Bonnie DeVille case.”

Veronica: “I’m not with the FBI.”

Leo: “You sure? I could’ve SWORN I heard somewhere that you were in the FBI.”

Veronica: “Another life maybe.”

Rob Thomas pitched a drastically altered version of the show which would have seen Veronica join the FBI in season 4. I’m kinda glad it didn’t work it, but they shot this pitch:

40) So James Franco is in this movie.

Rob Thomas said in an interview:

"My producing partner, Danielle Stokdyk, her husband is an Academy Award-winning visual effects artist who happened to have just done 'Oz the Great and Powerful.' He had become friendly with James, and it really was easy as this: I emailed a script and said we'd love you for this part and honestly five minutes later, five minutes later, he emailed me back and said, 'sounds fun, I'm in.'"

41) Add Vinnie Van Lowe to the list of fun appearances from the show!

42) According to IMDb:

In one of the shots, a man dressed like a gorilla was needed to dance in the foreground while Kristen Bell and Ken Marino played a scene on a bench. Ryan Hansen had just wrapped his last scene in the film a few hours earlier and was hanging out on set and agreed to do the scene. Rob Thomas and Ryan then decided to prank Kristen and Ken, who didn't know it was Ryan in the gorilla suit. The stint made the DVD bloopers reel.

43) Veronica cannot say, “I know what happened,” without me thinking of this:

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

44) Chekov’s random trucker hat line.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

45) This line that Deputy Sacks has is very telling about who he is as a character, his conflict, and what is up in Neptune.

Sacks: “I saw this thing on, uh, YouTube a few weeks ago, Keith. It’s a funny video. A...uh...two nazi they’re uh...looking at the skulls on their insignias and the piles of dead bodies. And they have this moment of clarity. Wait a minute...we’re the bad guys.”

46) Deputy Sacks’ death is a surprisingly powerful moment. This is a character who has been around since the pilot in 2004. Someone who was always there and who Veronica or anyone else never got super close to. But he was always there, always a good cop, and the sorrow of his loss is seen in one simple unanswered question:

Doctor: “Was he a friend of yours?”

47) The following LoVe love scene (LoVe is the ship name for Logan + Veronica) really shows off how these two not only have a chemistry built on being able to be themselves, but also the fact they’re each INCREDIBLY attracted to each other and just have this raw sexy passion. There is a tenderness, a connection, a heat to them that is just unmatched by any of her other boyfriends.

48) Remember how Veronica is sort of an addict?

Veronica: “The only way I’m not going to spend the day obsessing about my dad is by nailing Gia and Luke to the wall.”

49) One of Veronica’s most defining character traits is that when she decides a person is guilty, they are guilty. And it takes a lot for her to alter her theory or her idea of what is going on. This is seen when she is watching Gia and Cobb hook up, and she comments...

Veronica: “Gia seduced her lap dog into killing Carrie.”

There is NOTHING about that scene that shows Gia initiating sex with Cobb, it’s totally Cobb doing it. But Veronica can’t see that, she only sees what supports her theory. And then there’s this line that shows what she thinks of Gia.

Veronica [after Logan warns her to be careful]: “Child please, it’s Gia Goodman. The day I can’t handle Gia Goodman...”

This is very much a line that would be applied to high school Gia, not this new Gia. Veronica has little to no idea who this new Gia is.

50) The following scene between Veronica and Gia is a great character moment for Gia. Krysten Ritter’s skills as an actor show us just how tortured and trapped this once kindhearted and positive girl was, and it’s heartbreaking.

51) The entire climax (where Cobb has Veronica trapped in Gia’s apartment building) is very tense. Cobb has the upper hand physically and Veronica knows that. She has to play this confrontation by hiding, being patient, and outsmarting Cobb. And she does! It is wonderfully paced and choreographed and just a great moment of tension.

52) My biggest criticism of this film is that I’m always surprised by how quickly it wraps up, but it’s also something I’ve gotten more comfortable with in repeat viewings.

53) The metaphor of Veronica as an addict has never been clearer than her last lines of the film (an internal monologue).

Veronica: “My name is Veronica, and I’m an addict. Hello Veronica.”

54) Logan often had inspirational messages on his voice mail in the show. This message which plays over the end credits is very nice.

Logan: “This is Logan reminding you: if you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask which seat, just get on. Sheryl Sandberg said that. So don’t leave a message. Go get on that rocket ship. Or, leave a message. Your call. Your decision will tell me a lot about you.”

That - to me - seems very telling about the film. They took a chance on asking fans to finance it and it turned out wonderfully! They got on their rocket.

This recap ended up being much longer than I intended. And there’s still a lot here I can talk about which I haven’t. And that is very telling of the film. There is a lot to dissect, a lot that works and is going on in the movie. The writing is incredible, with a good balance of fan service and plot. The acting is as good as it ever was on the show, Rob Thomas’ direction is great, and it is just what fans who were waiting seven years for closure deserved. A great, great film and a fantastic potential finale to the series.

[kathydsalters31]

12 Summer Gear Essentials For Every Dog!

Worried regarding maintaining your pet cool this summer season?

In this write-up, we’ll consider 12 GEAR ESSENTIALS designed to assist keep your pet cool and also comfy when temperature levels start to soar.

Heatstroke in dogs is seriously:

Once a canine’s core temperature level increases past the regular 101.5 ° F to over 105 ° F, the risk of DEATH comes to be very real.

As well as considering that our pets will always attempt to please us and conceal their pain, it’s our duty to see to it they’re secured from overheating.

Good sense tells us that we must maintain our pets in the shade, out of hot vehicles, off hot asphalt, as well as maintain activity degrees very little when it’s hot, while offering lots of water!

What else can we do?

12 Gear Essentials For Beating The Summer Heat

1) Dog Cooling Mat ($40-$60)

These canine cooling mats as well as pads offer your dog a cool spot to set and also relax– without any additional initiative from you.

Loaded with a copyrighted gel, these pads work without any demand for electrical power or refrigeration.

They’re pressure-activated! And also immediately charge.

The Cool Pet Pad: Self-Cooling Gel Dog Mat You’ll find many variations offered

for sale on Amazon.com, however below are a couple of the top-reviewed models. You’ll see countless four-and first-class reviews on these cooling down mats; dog proprietors rave concerning them. They require to be place cleaned up, to ensure that’s a consideration … But they’re mobile and also light-weight so wonderful for travel, around your house, and in dog cages.

Arf Pets Self-Cooling Mat For Kennels & Crates 2)Elevated Dog Bed( $45- $50) With their raised, off-the-ground layout, these raised pet beds boost airflow on all sides of the bed, which helps keep your dog awesome as he’s resting. And also– the suspended design is additionally excellent for

senior pets that struggle with joint discomfort. Easy to wipe tidy and keep, the lightweight yet sturdy design suggests they’re both portable and also resilient for both interior and also outside use.

Plus, it looks like the AmazonBasics version, featured first, can be bought with substitute covers for approximately $10 (that would be very important to me).

AmazonBasics Cooling Elevated Pet Bed Or the elevated SHADE BED, which is available in a range of dimensions: Elevated Sun Shade Dog Bed 3 )The Evaporative Cooling Vest( $60)Dogs do not sweat like humans … They pant, and also they sweat through their feet, however that’s it. So these cooling veterinarians

are created to keep your pet dog’s body temperature level down with a three-layer cooling system: The inside layer keeps your canine dry, the center layer soaks up and also stores water

, as well as the outer layer reflections heat and advertises evaporation. Thousands of four-and also luxury evaluations from canine owners confirm that these vests truly do function to maintain pets cooler. Dog Cooling Vest With Harness 4)Foldable & Portable Dog Pool($ 37-$79) Have you ever saw that standing in awesome water regulates your total body temperature with your feet? It functions the same for canines, too. The only area pet dogs sweat is via their feet.

Pet swimming pools are a mobile, durable means to offer your pet dog a location to cool down in your backyard. Thick, slip-resistant PVC implies it will withstand routine use … And it can even be an excellent place to BATH your pet dog during warmer summer days.

Pecute Foldable Dog Bath & Swimming Pool 5)Outdoor Patio Misting & Cooling System ($28-$ 56) If even the shaded areas of your yard or outdoor patio become insufferably warm, an outdoor patio area misting system may be the answer– for both you and your pet dog. These misting systems are created to bring down the temperature of your exterior areas by as high as 30 ° F with great misting innovation.

Patio Misting & Cooling System 6)Dog Water Fountains ($16-$24 )Dog water fountains are made to slowly dispense filtered water from a tank right into an alcohol consumption dish utilizing gravity … making

sure your pet dog has the water he needs while you’re out.(These water fountains can be especially good for dogs that are inclined to FLIP their water bowls! The extra weight helps stop this.)

Plus– these systems generally feature antimicrobial defense that helps to stop germs from expanding in the base!

Petmate Gravity Water Fountain Dog Gravity Fed Water Dispenser By AmazonBasics 7) Traveling water

bottle for dogs($ 16.99 )If you’ve ever before tried to pour

a container of water into your pet’s mouth,

or let your canine slurp water from your hands on the side of a roadway, you’ll value the brilliant layout of these portable canine water bottle/bowl combinations. Perfect for walks, cars and truck travel, and also more … It’s a canteen & bowl in one: Iesotc Dog Water Bottle For Travel(BPA Free)< img course="alignnone wp-image-17062 size-full

“src=”https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2.jpg”alt =”dog traveling canteen “size=”400 “elevation=”400 “srcset=”https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2.jpg 400w,

https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-150×150.jpg 150w, https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-300×300.jpg 300w, https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-100×100.jpg 100w “sizes=”(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px”> MalsiPree Dog Water Bottle For Hiking, Walks & Travel 8)Collapsible Water/Food Bowl I love that these bowls are foldable as well as lightweight … making them easy to bring in packs as well as dual for a food AND water dish when you require it.

Plus, they’re dishwasher risk-free. A win.

Guardians Collapsible Dog Water & Food Bowl For Travel 9)Dog Crate Fan( $23 )Somebody was assuming! This skillfully developed follower is excellent for maintaining crated pets cool on hot days, with up to 100 hours of run time and ultra-quiet design.

Metro Dog Crate Fan 10 )Canine Rectal Thermometer For Emergencies (MUST-HAVE!)If you don’t currently have an anal thermostat for your pet,

I very advise getting hold of one. It’s a vital piece of safety and security devices that must take a trip with you throughout the summertime.

It can be hard to analyze your canine’s body temperature just by considering him. A temperature level of 101 ° F to 102.5 ° F is considered normal for a canine. Anything over 103 ° F is thought about high as well as you ought to call your veterinarian quickly. Anything over 105 ° F is lethal.

(Remember that it’s important you don’t immerse an overheated pet in cool water or ice water, as this can cause blood vessels of the skin to constrict, which in fact TRAPS the warm in your dog’s body as opposed to launching it!)

An anal thermometer empowers you to take a precise reading of your pet’s temperature level, right away.

There is a series of canine thermometers readily available, with prices from $7-$69, however here are a number of budget friendly ones:

Veterinary Thermometer For Dogs(Rapid Response) SharpTemp Dog Thermometer, Stainless Steel A Few Other Tips For Protecting Your Dog From The Sun Dog sun block: Did you recognize that veterinarians suggest dogs with exposed skin and/or white coats use SUNSCREEN? Your pet dog’s nose is subjected skin goes to risk of burning, too. Some advised canine-friendly sunscreens include: SnoutScreen Sunscreen For Dogs Dog sunglasses: If your canine gets on the water with you

a whole lot, or takes pleasure in the wind in his face

while you’re driving, these pet dog safety glasses may be a good selection for you:

Dog Sunglasses & Goggles For Sun, Wind & Water Protection Lastly, please keep in mind that if you’re locating it HOT, your pet dog is, also …

Discourage energetic play throughout the heat of the day, and also prepare your walks throughout amazing morning hours and also in the later night, prior to sundown.

Beware of hot sidewalk and also asphalt … if it’s too hot for your bare feet, it’s also hot for your pet dog’s pads.

And also must we state it? Never leave a dog in a cars and truck, despite the home windows down.

Keep in mind, the easiest way to accurately assess warmth stroke is with a rectal thermometer.

Anything over 103 ° F warrants a phone call to the veterinarian.

Various other signs that your pet is overheating include:

– Excessive panting – Hypersalivation (drooling) – Rapid heart price – Dry nose – Quiet/weak – Confused – Vomiting/diarrhea – Pale gums/grey gums

If your pet is showing signs of overheating, relocate him to a trendy, shaded area quickly, apply trendy water to his body (without submerging him!), use awesome damp towels to his head and also body, offer water to consume, and also CALL YOUR VET!

source http://www.luckydogsolutions.com/12-summer-gear-essentials-for-every-dog/ from Lucky Dog Solutions https://luckydogsolutions.blogspot.com/2020/07/12-summer-gear-essentials-for-every-dog.html

[barryswamsleyaz]

12 Summer Gear Essentials For Every Dog!

Worried regarding maintaining your pet cool this summer season?

In this write-up, we’ll consider 12 GEAR ESSENTIALS designed to assist keep your pet cool and also comfy when temperature levels start to soar.

Heatstroke in dogs is seriously:

Once a canine’s core temperature level increases past the regular 101.5 ° F to over 105 ° F, the risk of DEATH comes to be very real.

As well as considering that our pets will always attempt to please us and conceal their pain, it’s our duty to see to it they’re secured from overheating.

Good sense tells us that we must maintain our pets in the shade, out of hot vehicles, off hot asphalt, as well as maintain activity degrees very little when it’s hot, while offering lots of water!

What else can we do?

12 Gear Essentials For Beating The Summer Heat

1) Dog Cooling Mat ($40-$60)

These canine cooling mats as well as pads offer your dog a cool spot to set and also relax– without any additional initiative from you.

Loaded with a copyrighted gel, these pads work without any demand for electrical power or refrigeration.

They’re pressure-activated! And also immediately charge.

The Cool Pet Pad: Self-Cooling Gel Dog Mat You’ll find many variations offered

for sale on Amazon.com, however below are a couple of the top-reviewed models. You’ll see countless four-and first-class reviews on these cooling down mats; dog proprietors rave concerning them. They require to be place cleaned up, to ensure that’s a consideration … But they’re mobile and also light-weight so wonderful for travel, around your house, and in dog cages.

Arf Pets Self-Cooling Mat For Kennels & Crates 2)Elevated Dog Bed( $45- $50) With their raised, off-the-ground layout, these raised pet beds boost airflow on all sides of the bed, which helps keep your dog awesome as he’s resting. And also– the suspended design is additionally excellent for

senior pets that struggle with joint discomfort. Easy to wipe tidy and keep, the lightweight yet sturdy design suggests they’re both portable and also resilient for both interior and also outside use.

Plus, it looks like the AmazonBasics version, featured first, can be bought with substitute covers for approximately $10 (that would be very important to me).

AmazonBasics Cooling Elevated Pet Bed Or the elevated SHADE BED, which is available in a range of dimensions: Elevated Sun Shade Dog Bed 3 )The Evaporative Cooling Vest( $60)Dogs do not sweat like humans … They pant, and also they sweat through their feet, however that’s it. So these cooling veterinarians

are created to keep your pet dog’s body temperature level down with a three-layer cooling system: The inside layer keeps your canine dry, the center layer soaks up and also stores water

, as well as the outer layer reflections heat and advertises evaporation. Thousands of four-and also luxury evaluations from canine owners confirm that these vests truly do function to maintain pets cooler. Dog Cooling Vest With Harness 4)Foldable & Portable Dog Pool($ 37-$79) Have you ever saw that standing in awesome water regulates your total body temperature with your feet? It functions the same for canines, too. The only area pet dogs sweat is via their feet.

Pet swimming pools are a mobile, durable means to offer your pet dog a location to cool down in your backyard. Thick, slip-resistant PVC implies it will withstand routine use … And it can even be an excellent place to BATH your pet dog during warmer summer days.

Pecute Foldable Dog Bath & Swimming Pool 5)Outdoor Patio Misting & Cooling System ($28-$ 56) If even the shaded areas of your yard or outdoor patio become insufferably warm, an outdoor patio area misting system may be the answer– for both you and your pet dog. These misting systems are created to bring down the temperature of your exterior areas by as high as 30 ° F with great misting innovation.

Patio Misting & Cooling System 6)Dog Water Fountains ($16-$24 )Dog water fountains are made to slowly dispense filtered water from a tank right into an alcohol consumption dish utilizing gravity … making

sure your pet dog has the water he needs while you’re out.(These water fountains can be especially good for dogs that are inclined to FLIP their water bowls! The extra weight helps stop this.)

Plus– these systems generally feature antimicrobial defense that helps to stop germs from expanding in the base!

Petmate Gravity Water Fountain Dog Gravity Fed Water Dispenser By AmazonBasics 7) Traveling water

bottle for dogs($ 16.99 )If you’ve ever before tried to pour

a container of water into your pet’s mouth,

or let your canine slurp water from your hands on the side of a roadway, you’ll value the brilliant layout of these portable canine water bottle/bowl combinations. Perfect for walks, cars and truck travel, and also more … It’s a canteen & bowl in one: Iesotc Dog Water Bottle For Travel(BPA Free)< img course=“alignnone wp-image-17062 size-full

“src=”https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2.jpg”alt =”dog traveling canteen “size=”400 “elevation=”400 “srcset=”https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2.jpg 400w,

https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-150×150.jpg 150w, https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-300×300.jpg 300w, https://thedogtrainingsecret.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/travelwaterbottledogs2-100×100.jpg 100w “sizes=”(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px”> MalsiPree Dog Water Bottle For Hiking, Walks & Travel 8)Collapsible Water/Food Bowl I love that these bowls are foldable as well as lightweight … making them easy to bring in packs as well as dual for a food AND water dish when you require it.

Plus, they’re dishwasher risk-free. A win.

Guardians Collapsible Dog Water & Food Bowl For Travel 9)Dog Crate Fan( $23 )Somebody was assuming! This skillfully developed follower is excellent for maintaining crated pets cool on hot days, with up to 100 hours of run time and ultra-quiet design.

Metro Dog Crate Fan 10 )Canine Rectal Thermometer For Emergencies (MUST-HAVE!)If you don’t currently have an anal thermostat for your pet,

I very advise getting hold of one. It’s a vital piece of safety and security devices that must take a trip with you throughout the summertime.

It can be hard to analyze your canine’s body temperature just by considering him. A temperature level of 101 ° F to 102.5 ° F is considered normal for a canine. Anything over 103 ° F is thought about high as well as you ought to call your veterinarian quickly. Anything over 105 ° F is lethal.

(Remember that it’s important you don’t immerse an overheated pet in cool water or ice water, as this can cause blood vessels of the skin to constrict, which in fact TRAPS the warm in your dog’s body as opposed to launching it!)

An anal thermometer empowers you to take a precise reading of your pet’s temperature level, right away.

There is a series of canine thermometers readily available, with prices from $7-$69, however here are a number of budget friendly ones:

Veterinary Thermometer For Dogs(Rapid Response) SharpTemp Dog Thermometer, Stainless Steel A Few Other Tips For Protecting Your Dog From The Sun Dog sun block: Did you recognize that veterinarians suggest dogs with exposed skin and/or white coats use SUNSCREEN? Your pet dog’s nose is subjected skin goes to risk of burning, too. Some advised canine-friendly sunscreens include: SnoutScreen Sunscreen For Dogs Dog sunglasses: If your canine gets on the water with you

a whole lot, or takes pleasure in the wind in his face

while you’re driving, these pet dog safety glasses may be a good selection for you:

Dog Sunglasses & Goggles For Sun, Wind & Water Protection Lastly, please keep in mind that if you’re locating it HOT, your pet dog is, also …

Discourage energetic play throughout the heat of the day, and also prepare your walks throughout amazing morning hours and also in the later night, prior to sundown.

Beware of hot sidewalk and also asphalt … if it’s too hot for your bare feet, it’s also hot for your pet dog’s pads.

And also must we state it? Never leave a dog in a cars and truck, despite the home windows down.

Keep in mind, the easiest way to accurately assess warmth stroke is with a rectal thermometer.

Anything over 103 ° F warrants a phone call to the veterinarian.

Various other signs that your pet is overheating include:

– Excessive panting – Hypersalivation (drooling) – Rapid heart price – Dry nose – Quiet/weak – Confused – Vomiting/diarrhea – Pale gums/grey gums

If your pet is showing signs of overheating, relocate him to a trendy, shaded area quickly, apply trendy water to his body (without submerging him!), use awesome damp towels to his head and also body, offer water to consume, and also CALL YOUR VET!

from Lucky Dog Solutions http://www.luckydogsolutions.com/12-summer-gear-essentials-for-every-dog/ from Lucky Dog Solutions https://luckydogsolutions.tumblr.com/post/623778201922060288